Introduction
This special issue aims to introduce international readers to the latest views and trends among Japanese researchers who are examining the history of modern British economic thought. As guest editor, I have solicited new writings by prominent members of the Japanese Society for the History of Economic Thought (JSHET), whose ongoing research is making a valuable contribution to our understanding of the history of British economics. Since its establishment in 1950, JSHET has been the largest academic organization in Japan for the historical study of economic thought. Among its members’ diverse research interests, modern British economic thought has been one of the most intensely studied areas of inquiry.
Recently, the question of how modern British economists understood the relationship between the central concepts of modern economics, such as production, distribution and consumption, and those of ethics – to which A.C. Pigou once said economics should be a “handmaid”– such as liberty, equality, rights, and duties, has become a central concern among Japanese scholars. Behind this lies their interest, on the one hand, in the identity of economics as a discipline of social science, i.e. the question of to what extent economics ought to incorporate ethical and sociological issues, and, on the other hand, in the relationship between economics and political practice, i.e. the question of how economics could involve itself in policy-making processes. Both of these interests are presumably based on Japanese economists’ more fundamental concerns over the restructuring of the Japanese economy and social welfare systems during the ongoing “Great Stagnation” that began in the 1990s. The fact that modern British economic thinkers also shared these two overarching interests has thus strongly affected the perspectives of Japanese researchers in this field.
Through its four articles, this special issue presents this unique perspective on modern British economic thought possessed by Japanese scholars as well as the results of their research. The first article by Satoshi Niimura points out that by the time he wrote The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith had come to endorse economic equalization through public policy. This indicates that, from its very beginnings, modern British economic thought did indeed contain some consideration of ethical perspectives, which tended to be neglected by later classical economists. The following three articles deal with the period from the start of the twentieth century to the establishment of the post-war welfare state regime. This is the period during which economic equalization through public policy became a more urgent and practical part of the political agenda. The second article by Hanno Terao clarifies that new liberal thinker L.T. Hobhouse justified wealth redistribution on the basis of his critical taking up (rather than abandonment) of ethical concepts provided by classical liberal thinkers. The third article by Atsushi Komine illuminates W.H. Beveridge’s reformulation of economics which endowed the discipline with greater social responsibility regarding contributions to both policy-making processes and the development of policy-makers’ moral character. The last article by Koji Hatta contrasts Anthony Crosland and T.H. Marshall over their views of equality and civic duty, and concludes that the latter’s citizenship theory contains theoretical elements of greater value against the critique of the welfare state from the new right.
This special issue presents readers with a consistent perspective on “social ethics” held by the various figures of modern British economics, the presence of which in turn demonstrates that British economic thought should remain a rich and inspiring resource for the development of theories of social economics both today and in the future.
