Institutional Economics - (Volume 1)

Author: John R. Commons
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1997-02-01
Features: The Economics of Institutions is one of the major works of John R. Commons (1862—1945), an American bourgeois economist. In addition to this work, he also wrote The Distribution of Wealth (1893), of American Industrial Society (1910), The History of American Labor (1918), The Legal Foundations of Capitalism (1924), and The Economics of Collective Action, among others. The Economics of Institutions reflects Commons' openly wrong ideas in defending monopoly capitalism, and is an important representative work of the Institutional School. The Institutional School emerged in the early 20th century in the United States. At this time, the United States had become the leading country in world industrial output and had become a highly developed country of monopoly capitalism. Meanwhile, it was precisely in the United States that the contradictions of capitalism were most glaringly manifested, and the workers' movement was increasingly expanding. To deceive the people, monopolistic capitalists needed to beautify monopoly capitalism and seek a magic cure for capitalism. The Institutional School was born to meet this need.