The Passions and the Interests Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Passions and the Interests - Essay ExampleThe point of departure in Hirschmans thesis is that capitalist economy would move some benign human proclivities at the expense of some malignant ones. In a specie is king or money makes the mayor go environment which basically elevates capitalism to the status of a savior ideology and a panacea to all social and individual ills, his commentary on capitalism stands out for which the proponent needs intellectual courage.One of the findings of Hirschman points towards the repression of human high temperature in favor of righteous commercial interests which became the centerpiece of capitalism but soon denounced as a negative feature emergent out of it. Thus nobel laureate Amartya Sen creates a scenario to elucidate the interplay between violent passion in nine and individuals interest in acquiring wealth in what he calls a crude example assume a situation in which you are being chased by murderous bigots who passionately disfavour so mething about you-the color of your skin, the look of your nose, the nature of your faith, or whatever. As they zero in on you, you pass some money around as you flee, and each of them gets down to the serious business of individually accumulation the notes. As you escape, you may be impressed by your own good luck that the thugs have such(prenominal) benign self-interest, but the universalizing theorist would also note that this is only an example of the general phenomenon of violent passion being subdued by innocuous interest in acquiring wealth. Hirschman makes the point that individuals are divulge off trading with each other rather than fighting with each other.Hirschman relives the intellectual climate of the ordinal and eighteenth centuries to highlight the changes in the capitalist ideology, wherein the pursuit of wealth which was once condemned as greed was after on upheld as a contributing factor towards harnessing and taming the destructive passions of individual. Com pared with the Marxian interpretation wherein capitalism would cease to live as an ideology with the withering away of the state, Hirschmans interpretation of capitalism and its rise takes an innovative form in that he maintains that capitalism is an unending ideology and that it only transformed itself through a series of native processes into the modern market economy or its various off-shoots witnessed in many parts of the world. Hirschman taking earnestness from a large number of thinkers including Montesquieu, John Miller and Sir James Steuart to gain a perspective on the meaning and significance of the views spends some time narrating different views on the impact of scotch activity on politics, and though the different views often advocate different policies, the common thread in the argument is that economic growth including betterment of the masses mites a society towards stabilization and which in turn may lead towards a process of democratization. According to Hirsch man, if passions represent the state, and interests represent capitalism, the state scotchs capitalism and capitalism is expected to regulate or tame the rulers passions..