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The interpretations of capitalism by Karl Marx and Max Weber are often subject to comparison based on various criteria. The most significant difference between their approaches is that while Marx assumes that the capitalist mode of production is essentially different from that of previous periods, and accordingly criticises the use of the term “capital” in the context of preceding epochs, Weber frequently suggests that “capital”—and capitalist thought—existed at various points in history around the world. The study analyses relevant passages by Marx and Weber from a socio-philosophical angle, briefly covering the capitalism interpretation of Werner Sombart as well, to argue that this opposition is caused by the differences between the terminology of the two authors, and that their views about their own time show more similarities than previously assumed. These parallels, as demonstrated by Takó, are revealed by comparing Marx’s narrow understanding of capital with Weber’s “capitalist spirit” rather than with what he denotes as “capital.”
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The discourse about the term capitalism and its subsequent evolution into an acknowledged historical and analytical description of an era were shaped by the works of W. Sombart and J. Schumpeter. Starting from their encyclopaedia articles on capitalism, this paper follows the inception and reception of their parallel contributions about the genesis and development of capitalism: Sombart’s reasoning on the role of Jews and Schumpeter’s metaphor on “creative destruction” as the driving force. Sombart’s attempt to show that the Jews, their otherness, and their moneylending activities played a crucial role in the rise of modern capitalism was met with a mixed and controversial reception—from applause to sharp rebuttal as unscientific nonsense—by conservative German professors and religious scholars alike. Schumpeter’s metaphor, on the other hand, became a byword. Rather than searching for an external factor responsible for the emergence of the capitalist spirit, Schumpeter described the development of capitalism as an endogenous growth process of entrepreneurial innovation. Despite some similar features of their outlook and ideas, Sombart’s manifold, unsystematic and contradictory, and in some respect politically biased, oeuvre is largely forgotten by now, while Schumpeter’s legacy continues to attract adherents in evolutionary economics.
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The study sets out to explore how János Kornai conceived capitalism in the years of socialism. The members of the scientific community related differently to the oppressive structures and censorship of the communist regime. Kornai opted for academic language and a publication-research strategy, which made it possible for him to avoid open confrontation with the representatives of the official “scientific ideology.” In the meantime—based on the results of comparative economics and on his new discoveries—he acquired the knowledge and methods which allowed him to develop one of the high impact programs of transition after the collapse of socialism in Hungary.
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Giacomo Corneo: Is Capitalism Obsolete? – A Journey through Economic Systems. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017. 312 oldal
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Albrecht Cordes – Margrit Schulte Beerbühl (eds): Dealing with EconomicFailure. Between Norm and Practice (15th to 21st Century). Peter Lang Publishing, Frankfurt am Main, 2016. 267 oldal
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Historical science today increasingly emphasize the role of the individual in the sphere of economic relations, especially the work of large industrialists and traders, their role in establishing links with various agents of foreign capital and in importing technical innovations and modern practices on the markets in which they were active. Unfortunately, the emphasis on the elite excludes a clear vision by the researcher of the mechanism of functioning of entrepreneurship at the lower level, of practices and techniques that give an idea of the peculiarities of the system of capitalist relations at the local and regional levels. In the present study we aim to examine these issues from the perspective of the guild merchants’ agents, who were at the bottom of the entrepreneurship pyramid.Based on the analysis of unpublished and published sources, of historical literature on economic relations in the Russian Empire during the 19th century, we came to the conclusion that in Bessarabia not only agents of local merchants, but also from other provinces acted. By the mid-1840s, commercial agents became the main commercial actors responsible for the bulk of commercial transactions, such as direct purchase of goods from various Bessarabian producers, as well as from fairs and markets, and even for the signing of contracts and agreements on behalf of guilds merchants. Their activities are reflected in the records of city dumas and magistrates, of the customs bodies of Bessarabia, in legal proceedings on various commercial matters, etc.
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The paper is about the emergence and development of the black market on the territory of Novi Pazar, Tutin, Raška, Sjenica, Nova Varoš, Priboj, Prijepolje, Pljevlja, and Bijelo Polje between 1941 and 1944, the profitability of numerous aspects of illegal trade, the massive participation of the local population of both religions in the various corrupt activities on the market, and the attitude of the occupational and collaborationist authorities as well as liberation movements, with regard to this phenomenon.
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Using the “Greek” (videlicet Aromanian) trading houses' archives as a paradigmatic sample, this paper advocates for the proper physical organisation of the archival material specific to old microeconomic entities, and for exorcising the traps set by collections.In order to dismantle the resistances that dictate maintaining these archives in a deficient statu quo, from the perspective of both scientific valorisation (constrained by the graeca non leguntur palaeographic obstacle) and archival treatment (marked by the antagonistic pairs: trading houses versus personal/ family archival fonds, accounting books versus manuscripts, archival fonds versus collections), the paper presents the current state of the art and the archival research methodologies (which are not spared, in their turn, from vicious touches), along with successfully employed or failed archival steps, objectives, methods, principles, and remedies.The virtual documentary reassembly ‒ a solution that is useful for research, albeit a compromise one ‒ is displayed in the “Annexes”, by relocating the accounting books into their matrix-fonds and coalescing the series of archives of the Euro-Balkan trading houses that operated in the Romanian territories during the XVIIth ‒ XIXth centuries.
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By this approach we have tried to recover, as possible, the history of some foreign entrepreneurs (Serbian, Armenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian) who activated in Craiova throughout the XIXth century and the first half of the XXth. We have chosen to point out their economic interests, topics we have met sometimes in documents, statistics and papers, and whom we consider necessary because they may outline the profile on an entire community. For some of the foreigners who came and remained in Craiova, and which we have been able to identify, until now, the information notifies the locality from where they came, the place of birth, along with their previous occupation.
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The hastened rhythm of Romania’s economic development achieved at the beginning of the XX th century, has made our country appealing for some foreigner citizens both from the nearby countries and the Western and Central Europe: Germany, Austria, France, Swiss, Italy, Czechoslovakia. Many of them have chosen to live in our country because they found here an affordable and easy living but also a broad field of activity. Together with Romanians, foreign citizens who developed businesses in Craiova, have played an important role in the economic development of the town, lots of them owning different affairs. Furthermore the ethnical minorities benefited in Romania from rights and liberties that allowed them to preserve and promote their ethnical and cultural specific.
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Bruno Walter (born in 1830, April 14th, in Clausthal, Germany – dead in 1890, October 19th, in Iacobeni, Bukovina) has worked in the field of mining in Bukovina. He was employed by Vinzenz Manz, and later, in 1872, he worked as a mining inspector and senior counsellor at the Religious Fund. He was concerned about the maintenance and profitability of the Fund’s operations, especially the exploitation of manganese from Arșița-Iacobeni and of the pyrite from Pojorâta. He is the author of two important works for the knowledge of the mineral resources of Bukovina: Mineral Deposits in Southern Bukovina (1876) and Chances of Oil Exploitation in Bukovina (1880).
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One of the agriculture branches practiced in the cities of Rzeczpospolita and Principality of Moldova of, in the XVI-XVII c., was vegetable growing. Vegetable growing has been stimulated by several factors including: geo-climatic factor (temperature suitable plant growth, the presence of water for irrigation and others); the religious factor (during the fasts the population consumed especially vegetal products); the commercial factor (the possibility of selling vegetables on the market). Practicing this branch requires more extensive knowledge of agriculture compared to other agricultural culture. Vegetable growing provided food and ingredients for different types of food. In the cities of these countries, the same vegetables were cultivated: cabbage, beets, carrots, onions, radishes and others. Usually, the vegetables cultivated by townspeople were used to meet local requirements, bringing some incomes to the inhabitants of urban settlements by selling them.
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In this short intervention the author analyzes the attestations of the Polish coins that circulated in the Romanian space. Since they are relatively numerous, it has stopped on one of them, namely the ”potronic”. Potronic is a word certified especially on the territory of Moldova and less in the other Romanian provinces to designate a divisional silver coin commonly used in various transactions or the payment of taxes and duties, which is why this currency denomination benefits from an extended documentary fund. Relative to the issue of the origin of the name of this coin, the proposed and accepted etymology is potrojnik (po + trojnik) which in Polish means ”three” or ”triple” (meaning coin of three groszy) and which in the Romanian numismatic literature came under the name of troyak (= trojaki). The significant presence of this coin, suggestively exemplified both literally and archeologically, is not an exception, but on the contrary confirms historical realities this numeral filling to some extent the lack of cash on the Romanian market.
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In this article we analyze the establishment of public granaries in Bessarabia according to the Regulation of 24 January 1834, their opening in 1840 and functioning during 16 years, in which, according to Regulation’s provisions, they were to be fully filled with prescribed quantity of grain. The analysis of unpublished archival and published sources on this issue allows us to conclude that the system elaborated by the Russian law-makers did not really give any benefit to the population, which in the drought years was forced to buy the grain they gave to the reserve granaries for free. The Crimean War (1853-1856) eloquently proved that the entire system created with the stated goal of ensuring the food security of the population had completely different goals. Grain stocks, which were located in rural reserve granaries, were provided to the army, practically they were transformed into army supplies, and the population was left even without the grain needed for sowing. On a larger scale, the reserve granaries were a serious obstacle to the involvement of peasants in the system of market relations. At the same time, it was advantageous for landowners, since they no longer had to take care of food for the peasants who lived and worked on their estates during the famine, thus selling their grains without making any reserves, to be exported abroad.
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Family businesses are a central topic in the history of business, especially in the early phases of the industrialization process. This case study attempts to identify the business strategies and the adaptation mechanisms used by a family business during the era of the Industrial Revolution. The main aim of the study is to explore which adaptation mechanisms and strategies were used during the Industrial Revolution by large family firms in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. The study focuses on a model example, the Klein family, which ranked among the foremost entrepreneurial families in the Bohemian Crown Lands. The Kleins initially rose to prominence through their road construction business. They later built private and state railways and also diversified into heavy industry. I delineate the main stages in the development of the family firm, discuss a number of key microeconomic factors which influenced the Kleins’ business activities, and describe the factors which ultimately led to the downfall of this once-successful firm.
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This article traces the formation of tourism to non-European regions from the late nineteenth century to the end of the interwar period with a focus on its East-Central European and specifically its Czech perspective. Tourism to Africa and Asia—considered here to be the culmination of “global tourism” in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century—has been generally regarded as part and parcel of the imperial endeavor: empire shaped both the infrastructure and the practice of overseas tourism. By focusing on Czechs as “non-imperial” tourists to non-European regions, this article traces their travel experience as defined by different coordinates: no imperial identity would determine their behavior abroad, and no reasoning of economic nationalism would favor the visit to certain world regions over others. Following an overview of the globalization of tourism and its interconnectedness with the imperial project, this article focuses on the specifics of Czech tourism to non-European regions. Some specifics have very practical implications, such as the language skills that generally catered rather to a Central European than a global environment, or the average travel budget that was lower than that of travelers from Germany, Great Britain or the United States. Others suggest a Czech identity that was drafted in contrast to the imperial “other” and outside the colonial dichotomy of “rulers” and “ruled.” While Czech travelers profited from a strongly imperial tourist infrastructure, they often professed a general skepticism toward imperial rule.
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The article briefly discusses the creation and activity of statistical institutions in the Łódź region during the interwar years. In particular, the history of the Statistical Department at the City Council of Łódź, established by the City Council on 19 September, 1917, was presented. The Department functioned from 1 January, 1918 and its most important task was to conduct censuses of the population, one of the largest and most difficult statistical undertakings. In the discussed period, the urban statistics of Łódź covered the most important spheres of the city’s life, including state and municipal offices.
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Celem tego artykułu jest poznanie struktury i poziomu produkcji rolnej w folwarkach dóbr królewskich w XVI i XVII w. Należy zaznaczyć, że wysokość plonów jest jednym z najważniejszych wskaźników produktywności oraz rozwoju gospodarczego preindustrialnej Polski. Podstawą źródłową przeprowadzonych badań są lustracje królewszczyzn małopolskich, wielkopolskich, mazowieckich i podlaskich z lat 1564–1666. Wyniki analizy odsłaniają niezbyt pomyślny obraz polskiego rolnictwa. Przez cały okres obserwacji odnotowujemy duże wahania plonów, a ponadto w XVII stuleciu widoczny jest znaczny spadek wydajności czterech badanych zbóż: żyta, pszenicy, jęczmienia i owsa. Na ogół najniższym plonem charakteryzował się owies, najwydajniejszy był zaś jęczmień, a miejscami także pszenica. W XVI i XVII w. najniższe plony odnotowano w Wielkopolsce, a najwyższe – na Mazowszu i Podlasiu.
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The main purpose of this article is to present verbal and numerical descriptions included in the works by Jan Długosz (the 15th-century Polish priest, annalist and historian) as a base for creating the statistical picture of the then economic situation of Polish regions, especially in the micro-scale (parishes, deaneries) and the mezzo-scale (dioceses). Jan Długosz’s biography and selected works were discussed in the study. The study focuses on the elements of state science in his works, particularly in Regestrum Ecclesiae Cracoviensis and in the introduction to Annales (the enumeration and description of Polish rivers, lakes and waterfront cities – Chorographia), as well as on the detailed description of the economic situation presented in Liber beneficiorum. This Długosz’s work along with the corresponding registers or inventories of church wages in the Poznań and Wrocław dioceses constitute a significant source for state science studies concerning the history of economy in Poland at the end of the Middle Ages.
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