Capitalism as culture: critique of economic reason

Abstract

The paper critically analyses how economic thought deals with the concept of culture. The first part of the text discusses how the dominant economic approaches, from Adam Smith to the neoclassical economics, explain the culture. According to these approaches, human rationality is predominantly utilitarian and calculating, the cultural sphere is external to the economic one and only indirectly influences it. The second part of the paper presents key elements for the understanding of culture in three fundamental heterodox economics thinkers, Marx, Veblen and Furtado. These authors deeply criticize the dominant economic thought and construct concepts that historicize and criticize capitalist societies. The third section presents criticisms on the way both orthodox and heterodox economic thoughts portray non-Western cultures, assume the predominance of capitalist rationality in modern society and presuppose that economic rationality is non-cultural.