Starvation : the role of the market system

Abstract

The prime task for any science should be to provide us with sound theories enabling us to establish better relationships between man and nature and between man and man, and any theory which claims to be general must be able to comprehend its limiting cases. The author has chosen as the crucial test of the validity of neoclassicial economic theory the widespread existence of poverty and even of starvation in a market economy. The author is critical of those development economists who see exposure to free market forces as the road to prosperity for subsistence farmers. Data are given for Indonesian villages showing that marketization is as likely to injure as to help. The argument that government should act as an umpire in the market system is searchingly examined, with particular reference to the grievous consequences for Ireland and India, when both were under British administration. The dogma, elevated by neo-classical economists to the status of an axiom, that man is by nature competitively self-seeking in material matters — the concept of 'economic man' — is also closely examined. There follows argument to show that the market system through its functioning does not guarantee elimination of destitution or starvation. In fact it may cause it. The author points out the potential for economic and human costs if competitive economic exploitations in basic needs continue. He offers a simple yet comprehensive economic model which gives priority to human well-being rather than to industrial-commercial 'progress ' . He urges the displacement of neo-classical by social economics, and hopes that this leads towards a truly unified view of man in his natural human world. v