Addressing the Poverty of Mainstream Economics

This book develops the rudiments of a historical-analytical approach to hierarchical control in human societies. It questions the adequacy of mainstream economic theory in the absence of a hierarchical class structure and inter-class conflicts of interest as well as the ‘benevolent government’ approach to policy decisions. It builds on an anthropological view of the genesis of the state and class society constructing several simple models inspired in different phases of human development in which producers and governors face the same consumption-toil trade-off as workers (slaves serfs or wage workers) at the bottom of the class hierarchy. Public goods and bads play a fundamental role in the functioning of society and in the power structure that sustains it. In most of the models the consumption-toil decision is present for all the classes involved. In the case of classes that organize production the planning organizing commanding and controlling (POCC) labor of the higher rank contributes to the production function along with the labor of the lower ranks. The final model represents capitalism with wage workers capitalist entrepreneurs and political governors as classes.