Ian Hampshire-Munch: "History of Modern Political Thought: From Hobbes to Marx", Shanghai People's Publishing House, September 2022
Strictly speaking, this work is titled "Modern Western Politics" "History of Thought" may be more appropriate. However, Munch was also right. Since ancient Greece and Rome, Western political concepts, political thoughts and even political systems have influenced the entire process of human history. Secondly, the ideas of modern thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume have had a profound influence on the shaping of modern political concepts and even specific practices.
Specifically, the political thoughts of Hobbes, Locke, Hume and others are relatively classical, focusing on relatively static and complex moral philosophy and political beliefs; Rousseau, "The Federalist Papers", Bentham, Mill and Thomas Kerver corresponds to the stage from the Enlightenment to the beginning of the establishment of the capitalist system. There are two major events in between, namely the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Since these four groups of ideological giants were exposed to obvious historical changes, they devoted themselves to The theory of dynamic social and political development; and the political concerns of Hegel and Marx are close to those of contemporary people, such as their high attention to rights, the state and the economy, especially the latter, which is the direct origin of the socialist ideological trend in the twentieth century and up to today. because.
Pierre Bourdieu: "On the State: Courses at the Collège de France", Life·Reading·New Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore, April 2023
In this work compiled based on quotations from Bourdieu's lectures, the country is Based on Max Weber's monopoly of physical violence, the theory has advanced to a new stage of monopoly of symbolic violence, and advocates that the state builds its own legitimacy based on the monopoly of symbolic violence, thereby shaping people's mental structure and cognition. social reality.
As a cultural and social scholar who walks between structuralism and practice theory, Breton firmly opposes functionalism theory. He believes that as far as the theory of state is concerned, functionalism understands and explains the state system from the state thinking. This is a kind of cliché logic or the inability to say that "you don't know the true face of Mount Lu, just because you are in this mountain". Therefore, he started from the genetic research ideas of structuralism and asked how the country was born from the source, thereby breaking through the shackles of national thinking.
Bourdieu's "field theory", which we are familiar with, says that action will only be meaningful in its specific "field". "Field" provides the possibility of action, but only provides certain possibilities. In other words, it excludes other possibilities, and actors are restricted within it. His theoretical research on the state takes the state as the main line and re-understands other fields and phenomena from the state, the ultimate source - the meta-field. Therefore, to understand the metafield is to understand the country; to understand symbolic violence is to understand all things and phenomena within the country.
In general, Bourdieu’s theory of state construction is a mixture of sociology, political science and history, and is the second leap of state theory (Hobbes created state theory, and Weber made the first leap of state theory). , a latest refined expression of state construction theory, a non-traditional reverse theory weaving method, which has a greater amount of knowledge and more practical significance than classical political science theory.
Bao Gangsheng: "Arrival: A History of Political Evolution", Shanghai Joint Publishing Bookstore, July 2023
The author uses the four major issues of Hobbes, Acton, Locke and Tocqueville to summarize the important political issues in human history. Combining ideas with specific political practices to examine the political gains and losses of past dynasties.The Hobbesian question explains the origin of the state, how to obtain order through the state, and analyzes the limitations of the authoritarian view of power such as "Leviathan"; the Actonian question arises from the Hobbesian question, taking monarchy as an example , analyzes the paradox of state or paradox of power, and asks and answers the puzzle of "why do humans want to limit power" that has troubled mankind to this day; Locke's question has the meaning of modern politics, and his theory of decentralization explores the relationship between individuals and governments The relationship between direction of development. In general, the first two questions belong to the stage of classical political evolution, and the latter two questions belong to the stage of modern political evolution. They can be summarized in four key words: order, freedom, decentralization and democracy.
This is a book that combines the ambition to innovate political science theory and the dissemination of popular political science books. Looking at relevant domestic publications in recent years, there are many works focusing on a specific knowledge point, theoretical works that refine the history of human political evolution over thousands of years. Rarely, one can see from the references that the author has put in a lot of hard work, and one can feel his academic ambition. As one of the important political scholars of the generation born in the 1970s in China, openness, balance, tolerance, moderation, and criticism have been the main characteristics of his research over the years.
The author asked a question about how his theory of political evolution deals with the relationship between political system and religion. The author responded bluntly that religion was not within the scope of his research.
Liu Shougang: "Why is Modern: Financial Wisdom from the West", Shanghai Far East Publishing House, July 2023
The author uses a financial perspective and focuses on specific historical events or historical phenomena to explain the progress of modern countries through 15 specific topics. . Among them, the author was deeply impressed by the evolution of fiscal thought jointly promoted by politicians and scholars from various countries in the past dynasties.
"A stone from another mountain can be used to attack a jade". Examining Western financial thought and financial wisdom is of great benefit to further thinking about the direction, path and motivation of China to become a modern country. Fiscal modernization and national modernization are highly isomorphic, or fiscal modernization is the concrete manifestation of national modernization in the fiscal field, and the primary fiscal feature of a modern country is a tax state. As the modern state expands day by day, it is thought-provoking how to do all we can to raise funds (tax) for the state without harming the market, and at the same time avoid over-grabbing social wealth and leading to a fiscal crisis.
The first Finance Minister of the Republic of Austria and the famous economist Schumpeter once said, "A nation's spirit, cultural level, social structure, etc. are all written in the nation's financial history." This is indeed the case, and fiscal issues are fundamental Sexual issues concern everyone. The contribution of this book is that it cuts through the mists of financial history to reveal the crucial role of fiscal concepts in the process of institutional change and modern transformation.
Robert F. Ebel, Albert N. Link: "History of Entrepreneurship Theory", Guangxi Normal University Press, September 2023
In modern mainstream economic theory, entrepreneurs have always been "invisible people" "The embarrassing position. The standard manufacturer theory analyzes the repeated management decisions of a fully functioning enterprise. The entrepreneur is just a given parameter in this function, a passive element, and his actions only constitute a passive repetition of the procedures and techniques that have been learned and implemented in the past. .
There are two reasons: First, the most advanced and powerful microeconomic model studies eternal static equilibrium. But for entrepreneurs, the transformation process is the core of everything, and the focus is on change; 2. The core basis of most microeconomic theories is optimal analysis. This optimal calculation includes a comparison of possible alternatives, and innovation There is no such contrast between entrepreneurial entrepreneurs. In a certain sense, their innovations can be said to be made out of nothing.
The book "History of Entrepreneurship Theory" theoretically establishes entrepreneurs as the "central role" of the market system and the core driving force of the entire market process.The book believes that entrepreneurs live in a dynamic world (the so-called dynamic world is a continuous process in which an equilibrium is constantly broken, a new equilibrium is established, and then is broken again), making it a key player in this world. characters, and gave birth to an entrepreneurial spirit that people are familiar with but don’t know what it is. The author combs through a series of important Western entrepreneurship theories such as Schumpeter's "creative destruction", Israel Kirzner's "entrepreneurial vigilance", and Knight's "bearer of immeasurable uncertainty". History, provides readers with an in-depth and detailed analysis of the theoretical texture of each party, and fills the gap in the study of the theoretical history of entrepreneurship.
It is worth mentioning that "Reunderstanding Entrepreneurship" (Hainan Publishing House, June 2022) published by Professor Zhang Weiying in 2022 tells people in an academic and popular style that entrepreneurship is the kind of change that creates change but Something that is unchanging in itself. In the current urgent situation, how to stimulate entrepreneurial spirit and how to return enterprises, especially private enterprises, to their dominant position in the market is related to everyone's future.
(The author is a senior researcher at the Digital Economy Think Tank)
Weng Yi
Editor-in-chief Liu Xiaolei
