Abstract

Hegel develops a critical political economy, which is critical because he takes no aspect of the world to be discrete or impervious to revisionary re-reading in the light of its relationship with other spheres. Hence, for Hegel, the modern political economy is not accepted at face value; it is to be criticised in the light of a deeper philosophical reading of social and political developments. Hegel’s philosophy is critical and holistic. Within its perspective, the economy is not detachable from a wider set of social relationships. Hegel accepts that a modern political economy operates for the most part via self-interested utility-maximising behaviour, but he qualifies this acceptance by emphasising the need for wider social and political values and commitments to limit the autonomy of the market and the impact of economic individualism. Hegel highlights the wider web of social relationships within which the economic is situated. In achieving the prime objective of an overall rational organisation of the social world, the economic goals of producing and distributing goods and services are subordinated to the goals of securing an overall harmony between social practices and of establishing ethical relationships between members of a community. Again, for Hegel, political economy does not transcend time, for the modern market economy is part and parcel of the distinctively modern world.