Abstract
I compare three approaches to economic history and institutions: the classical surplus approach, the Polanyian view, and New Institutional Economics (NIE). In the first institutions are seen in relation to the production and distribution of the social surplus. Research in economic anthropology, archaeology and history has validated the fecundity of this approach. The Polanyian criticism to classical and neoclassical theories is then considered and appreciated, although some severe limitations are envisaged. A good part of the paper concentrate upon Douglass North, the NIE most representative author in the field of economic history. Striking of North is the attempt to replicate Marx’s relation between economics and institutions in the context of neoclassical theory. Transaction costs economics revealed a dead end in explaining institutions and the power of predatory élites. Lacking a material anchor such as surplus theory, North’s theory became progressively more elusive and indeterminate. On balance, a surplus-based Marxist-Polanyian approach is the most promising direction although much further work is still necessary to explain the coevolution of the economic and institutional sides of the economy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A recent paper in this journal reviews the relation between institutional and post-Keynesian economics (Fernàndez-Huerga et al. 2023). While these authors mention here and there the relationship between institutions, income distribution and social conflict, the topic is not given central relevance. The paper appears even irresolute in admitting the Sraffian approach in post-Keynesian economics, certainly attaching great importance to issues, such as uncertainty, expectations and criticism of the concept of long-run equilibria, that have seen much disagreement between Sraffians and other post-Keynesians. A dialogue is, however, in my view necessary and possible.
A referee invited me to consider other non-marxist approaches to institutions moving within the classical-surplus tradition, particularly that by Pasinetti. In an interesting paper Enrico Bellino (2015) discusses the similarities and differences in Pasinetti and Garegnani's approaches to institutions. In both there is an analytical economic core and an institutional framework. In Pasinetti the technical core regards the properties of an ideal system capable of fully exploit the growth and prosperity potential of the economic system. The conditions that an economic system must satisfy to maintain full employment in the face of structural change can help the detection of the institutions more apt to translate the ideal in a real system in different geographical and historical contexts. For Pasinetti, concrete institutions will generally fall short of fully steering the economy to full employment, but can nonetheless be evaluated in terms of how much they make it possible to approximate it. Garegnani is keener on the study of the core distributive relations of a specific and historically given economic system (capitalism), an analysis that must be completed by the study of the actual institutions supporting the system. Being primarily interested in positive rather than normative issues, the present paper mostly refers to Garegnani’s approach. As argued by Bellino, however, Pasinetti’s normative and Garegnani’s positive approaches can well be regarded as complementary.
Childe rivals Lewis Binford (1931–2011) as the most influential archaeologist of the last century. On the basis of his impressive capacity of synthesis of the available archaeological knowledge, Childe provided between the 1930s and 1950s (he sadly committed suicide in 1957) the first grand narrative of prehistory. Both Childe and Binford ‘took a materialist perspective’ (Kelly 2014, p. 67), Childe out of a Marxist orientation, Binford inspiring in the late 1950s the so-called processual archaeology which relied on objective (say climatic or geographical) circumstances to explain social evolution (see below footnote 11).
On these lines see also Scott (2017). The emergence of social stratification and of the state (in the standard: sequence villages, chiefdoms, state) are roughly two faces of the same coin. There are various other theories in this regard. A classic theory is by the American anthropologist Robert Carneiro (1927–2020). In this theory population pressure and relative land scarcity would induce territorial conquests and the creation of larger political entities where military chiefs would be the natural candidates to take the lead of the state (Carneiro 1970). Note that, however, military conquests accompanied with forms of economic subjugation of conquered communities make sense as long as the latter are able to generate a surplus above their subsistence. The “Hydraulic Hypothesis”, the connection between the implementation and management of irrigation works and the onset of inequality and of states especially in the Near East and Egypt has a long tradition in economics. Archaeologists have also advanced a nexus between the adoption in the late neolithic/bronze age of the ox-drawn plough, extensive cultivation, and the inception of surplus-based inequality in Western Europe and elsewhere (e.g. Halstead 1995). Other irons in the fire have recently been added by the late David Graeber (Graeber and Wengrow 2021) who challenge the standard sequence looking at the hunter-gatherers age as a long epoch of institutional experimentation. These also included example of large, self-ruled urban conglomerates which would contradict the necessity of hierarchies to govern complex human settlements. Generally not well received by anthropologists and archaeologists, this work will deserve a future deeper consideration (cf. the special 2022 issue of Cliodynamics: ‘Leading Scholars of the Past Comment on Dawn of Everything’, (https://escholarship.org/uc/irows_cliodynamics/0/0).
Taccola (2020, pp. 109–110) reports that these critiques to Karl Polanyi were well present among Italian Marxists archaeologists and historians in the 1970s.
It sounds in fact paradoxical that NIE outlines the importance of institutions also in capitalism, while Polanyians downplay them.
See also Anderson (1974b, p. 403) and Garegnani (2018, p. 17). Polanyi’s tripartite subdivision of societies as based on reciprocity, top-down redistribution, and markets, can later be found in historians John Haldon and Chris Wickham, and in archaeologist Eric Wolf. In them, however, the tripartition refers rather to Marx’s economic classification between primitive sharing-communities, ground-rent based societies (basically founded on the extraction of a surplus from peasants), and capitalism (exploitation of ‘free labour’).
The distinguished anthropologist Robert Carneiro (1970, p. 733) also defines ‘automatic theory’ the idea that ‘the invention of agriculture automatically brought into being a surplus of food, enabling some individuals to divorce themselves from food production and to become potters, weavers, smiths, masons, and so on, thus creating an extensive division of labour. Out of this occupational specialization there developed a political integration which united a number of previously independent communities into a state. This argument was set forth most frequently by the late British archaeologist V. Gordon Childe’.
Further critical work is underway that aims to assess the relative fruitfulness of the surplus approach and marginalist instrumentation in interpreting the various theories about the onset of inequality (see footnote 5). Recent examples of mainstream analysis include Bogaard, Fochesato and Bowles (2019), Mayshar, Moav, and Pascali (2022), and Allen, Bertazzini, and Heldring (2023). Interestingly, these papers openly challenge the classical surplus theory.
A clash between those that privilege a materialist anchor in anthropological, archaeological and historical research, and those who favour cultural aspects re-emerges in the conflict between processual and post-processual approaches in archaeology (Watson 2007), Shanks 2007). Inspired by Binford (see above footnote 4), processual archaeology spread in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 1960s and 1970s (where it is likely still dominant), privileging material explanations with a clear Marxist contamination. Later, post-processual archaeology emphasised extra-economic factors (see Trigger 1993). For a defence of relative culturalism see Viglietti (2018). Luckily, there is not a solution of continuity between these opposite approaches, and a complementarity between them might be envisaged, as I shall allude in the conclusions.
Reviews of North's work include Ménard and Shirley (2014) and Hodgson (2017).
Putting aside the severe analytical problems with Walrasian theory (see Petri 2021, Chapter 7), what is wrong with this comparative method? In fact, also Marx in some famous passages suggested capitalism as a benchmark for studying pre-capitalist economies as much as the ‘Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape’ Marx (1973 [1857–58], p. 105. This is so because economic relations assume more definiteness in capitalism where they are mediated by prices and not by personal connections. However, he warns, although the ‘bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient’, this does not happen ‘in the manner of those [bourgeois] economists who smudge over all historical differences and see bourgeois relations in all forms of society’. Therefore, he concludes, while ‘the categories of bourgeois economics possess a truth for all other forms of society, this is to be taken only with a grain of salt. They can contain them in a developed, or stunted, or caricatured form etc., but always with an essential difference’.
The first hypothesis reminds of Carneiro’s theory (see above footnote 5).
North’s reference to the legitimising role of ideologies of the social status quo is anyway valuable in view of the Popperian accusation to Marx of functionalism, explaining institutions or ideologies, as functional to the working of the whole without reference to individual choices (Cesaratto 2024; Heijdra et al., 1988). In this regard North sounds as much functionalist as Marx.
Too many are the passages that might be quoted, e.g.: ‘I intend to demonstrate that institution basically alter the price individuals pay and hence lead to ideas, ideologies, and dogmas frequently playing a major role in the choices individuals make’ (North 1990, p. 22); ‘culture defines the way individuals process and utilize information and hence may affect the way informal constraints get specified. Conventions are culture specific, as indeed are norms. However norms pose some still unexplained problems. What is it that makes norms evolve or disappear …?’ (ibid, pp. 42–43); ‘a major point of this study is that institutions, by reducing the price we pay for our convictions, make ideas, dogmas, fads, and ideologies important sources of institutional change. In turn, improved understanding of institutional change requires greater understanding than we now possess of just what makes ideas and ideologies catch hold. Therefore, we are still at something of a loss to define, in very precise terms, the interplay between changes in relative prices, the ideas and ideologies that form people's perceptions, and the roles that the two play in inducing changes in institutions’ (ibid, pp. 85–86). It is difficult to find the tangle in this skein of concepts. The later North (2005) is likely his most elusive work where, according to a commentator (Krul 2016, p. 21), he introduced ‘undefined exogenous factors: “ideology”, or evolutionary imperatives, or simply a rather hand-waving “complex mix of beliefs and institutions” (North 2005, p. 44)’.
See e.g. Denzau and North (1994, p. 25) where it is elusively alluded to ‘evolving “climate of opinion” to analyze the changing meaning of terminology and ideological constructs’.
North’s flirting with Marx fascinated some Marxists. For instance, Wisman et al., (1988, p. 759) are dismissive about the role of surplus theory in Marx, conceding that most ‘social protests … are in some sense also related to economic struggles between those who produce and those who appropriate the surplus’ (my italics). They conclude that, once conflicts between nation-states and gender relations are taken into account, North’s ‘eclectic approach to conflict … is more useful than Marx’s single-minded emphasis on class’ (ibidem). Accusations to Marx and Engels of ‘single-mindedness’ on gender and state-relations are, to be mild, unfair. Galípolo et al. (2008) argue that North deliberately exhibited appreciation of Marx to attract also a heterodox audience. Christian Kremser (2019) presents North’s theory as a form of historical materialism: ‘As with Marx, so with North, historical change ultimately proceeds from technological progress’ under the pressure of competition. As a result of the ‘change in the mode of production as a material basis, the institutional arrangement as an ideal superstructure is renegotiated’ (ibid, p. 162, translation from German based on DeepL free edition). Admittedly, this is an edulcorated version of historical materialism that does not require ‘a concept of social class; a fact that brings the theory of institutional change close to the analytical Marxism’ (ibidem). (On the enervated Marxist credentials of ‘analytical Marxism’ see Tarrit [2006] and Veneziani [2012]). On the marginalist side, Heijdra et al. (1988) do not find major substantial differences between North’s NIE and Marx’s historical materialism, but find many on the methodological side, a point I shall evoke in the conclusions.
After all this is also true in neoclassical theory. This theory is however largely uninterested to explain the origin of the distribution of initial endowments of material and immaterial resources that distinguish individuals.
What Eric Wolf (. (2010 [1982], pp. 8–9) wrote about some early sociologists seems good enough to apply, mutatis mutandis, to Douglass North: ‘1. In the course of social life, individuals enter into relations with one another. Such relations can be abstracted from the economic, political, or ideological context in which they are found, and treated sui generis. They are autonomous, constituting a realm of their own, the realm of the social. 2. Social order depends on the growth and extension of social relations among individuals. … 3. The formation and maintenance of such ties is strongly related to the existence and propagation of common beliefs and customs among the individuals participating in them …4. The development of social relations and the spread of associated custom and belief create a society conceived as a totality of social relations between individuals. … relations constitute society … What is the flaw in these postulates? They predispose one to think of social relations not merely as autonomous but as causal in their own right, apart from their economic, political, or ideological context’.
Angeles (2011) observes that ‘the current emphasis on property rights as a fundamental driver of economic development may be overstated’ and that, in any event, ‘we should not expect the same institutional explanation to fit all cases’ (ibid, pp. 173–74).
Ankarloo (2002, p. 21) notes that the later North ‘tried to widen his institutionalism to incorporate everything from “ideology”, “mental models” to law and the state’. However, ‘the further he goes along this road, the more [the] economic sphere disappear in his NIE model’.
Cf. footnote 16.
See above footnote 11.
In 1927, while on the way to break with Marshall’s heritage and proceed into the direction of the recovery of the classical surplus approach, Sraffa noted that in studying economic theories: ‘it will be thought that the important part is the analytical and constructive’. In this way, however, the ‘significance of the historical side will be missed. And yet, this is the truly important, that which gives us a real insight into the mystery of human mind and understanding, into the deep unknown relations of individuals between themselves and between the individual and society (the social, or rather the class mind)’ (quoted by Ginzburg 2016, p. 47). As Ginzburg (ibid, p. 48) notes, the ‘adjective “historical” (opposed here to “analytical”) … refer[s] to the history of economic theories’. Nonetheless, the quotation indicates a particular sensitivity by Sraffa to integrating the economic and anthropological sides of human relations, disdaining any form of ‘economic determinism’.
References
Acemoğlu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity and poverty. Profile.
Adams, J. (1991). Surplus, surplus, who’s got the surplus? The subtractivist fallacy in orthodox economics. Journal of Economic Issues, 25, 187–197.
Allen, R. C., Bertazzini, M. C., & Heldring, L. (2023). The economic origins of government. American Economic Review, 113(10), 2507–2545.
Anderson, P. (1974a). Passages from antiquity to feudalism. NLB.
Anderson, P. (1974b). Lineages of the absolutist state. NLB.
Anderson, P. (1980). Arguments within English Marxism. NLB/Verso.
Angeles, L. (2011). Institutions, property rights, and economic development in historical perspective. Kyklos, 64, 157–177.
Ankarloo, D. (2002). New Institutional Economics and economic history. Capital and Class, 26(3), 9–36.
Bellino, E. (2015). Sraffa’s price equations in light of Garegnani and Pasinetti: The “core” of Surplus Theories and the “Natural” Relations of an Economic System. Papers in Political Economy, 69, 15–44.
Blankenburg, S., Arena, R., & Wilkinson, F. (2012). Piero Sraffa and ‘the true object of economics’: The role of the unpublished manuscripts. Journal of Economics, 36(6), 1267–1290.
Bogaard, A., Fochesato, M., & Bowles, S. (2019). The farming-inequality nexus: New insights from ancient Western Eurasia. Antiquity, 93(371), 1129–1143.
Carneiro, R. L. (1970). A theory of the origin of the state. Science, 169, 733–738.
Cesaratto, S. (2023a). Preliminary notes on the economic analysis of the Graeco-Roman economies in a surplus approach perspective, Quaderni DEPS, p. 897.
Cesaratto, S. (2023b) Preliminary notes on the Marxist debates on “historical forms of social production” in a surplus approach perspective, Quaderni DEPS, p. 898.
Cesaratto, S. (2023c). Surplus approach and institutions: where Sraffa meets Polanyi, WP-Centro Sraffa n. 61, forthcoming. Journal of Economic Issues.
Cesaratto, S. (2023d). Schools of Athens: Surplus approach, Marxism and institutions, WP-Centro Sraffa n. 62.
Cesaratto, S. (2024). Agency, functionalism, and all that. A Sraffian view. Journal of Philosophical Economics. Volume XVII (annual issue).
Cesaratto, S. (1988). Conoscenze tecnologiche e divisione del lavoro fra imprese. Note Economiche, 2, 141–164.
Cesaratto, S. (1999). Notes on division of labour and economic growth: Smith Schumpeter, Marshall. Studi Economici, 67, 95–121.
Cesaratto, S. (2007). The classical ‘surplus’ approach and the theory of the welfare state and public pensions. In G. Chiodi & L. Ditta (Eds.), Sraffa or an alternative economics (pp. 93–113). Palgrave Macmillan.
Cesaratto, S., & Di Bucchianico, S. (2021a). The surplus approach, Polanyi and institutions in economic anthropology and archaeology. Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 55(1), 185–216. special issue ‘Marshall Sahlins’s Stone Age Economics, a Semicentenary Estimate.’
Cesaratto, S., & Di Bucchianico, S. (2021b). The surplus approach, institutions, and economic formations. Contributions to Political Economy, 40(1), 26–52.
Childe, V. G. (1942). What happened in history. Pelican Book.
Clark, C. M. A. (1992). An institutionalist critique of Sraffian economics. Journal of Economic Issues, 26, 457–468.
Coase, R. (1937). The nature of the firm. Economica, 4(16), 386–405.
Darmangeat, C. (2020) Surplus, storage and the emergence of wealth: pits and pitfalls. In: Moreau, L. (ed.) Social inequality before farming. Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (pp. 59–70).
de Ste Croix, G. E. M. (1981). The class struggle in the ancient Greek world: From the archaic age to the Arab conquests. Duckworth.
Diamond, J. 2005 [1997]. Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. Vintage
Engels, E. (1884). Origin of the family, private property, and the state, available online at Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), revised version of Marx-Engels Werke, vol. 21. Dietz Verlag 1962
Erdkamp, P. (2001). Beyond the limits of the “consumer city”: A model of the urban and rural economy in the Roman World. Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte, 50(3), 332–356.
Fernández-Huerga, E., Pardo, A., & Salvador, A. (2023) Compatibility and complementarity between institutional and post-Keynesian economics: a literature review with a particular focus on methodology. Economia Politica, online first article, 4 March 2023.
Finley, M. (1973). The ancient economy. Chatto and Windus.
Frangipane, M. (2018). From a subsistence economy to the production of wealth in ancient formative societies: A political economy perspective. Economia Politica, 35(3), 677–689.
Galípolo, G., Gala, P., & Fernandes, D. (2008). Notas para uma Avaliação do Discurso Marxista em Douglass North. Revista Economia, 9, 195–213.
Garegnani, P. (1960). Il capitale nelle teorie della distribuzione. Giuffrè.
Garegnani, P. (1984). Value and distribution in the Classical economists and Marx. Oxford Economic Papers, 36(2), 291–325.
Garegnani, P. (1987). Surplus approach to value and distribution. In J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, & P. Newman (Eds.), The new Palgrave. A dictionary of economics. Macmillan.
Garegnani, P. (2018). On the labour theory of value in Marx and in the Marxist tradition. Review of Political Economy, 30(4), 618–642.
Ginzburg, A. (2015). Two translators: Gramsci and Sraffa. Contributions to Political Economy, 34, 31–76.
Ginzburg, A. (2016). Sraffa and social analysis: Some methodological aspects. Situations, 6, 53–87.
Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything. A new history of humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Gregory, C. (2000). Anthropology, economics, and political economy: A critique of Pearson. History of Political Economy, 32(4), 999–1009.
Gudeman, S. (1978). Anthropological economics: The question of distribution. Annual Review of Anthropology, 7, 347–377.
Haldon, J. (1993). The state and the tributary mode of production. Verso.
Halstead, P. (1989). (1989) The economy has a normal surplus: Economic stability and social change among early farming communities of Thessaly, Greece. In P. Halstead & J. O’Shea (Eds.), Bad year economics: Cultural responses to risk and uncertainty (pp. 68–80). Cambridge University Press.
Halstead, P. (1995). Plough and power: The economic and social significance of cultivation with the ox-drawn are in the Mediterranean. Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture, 8, 11–22.
Heijdra, B. I., Lowenberg, A. D., & Mallick, R. J. (1988). Marxism, methodological individualism, and the new institutional economics. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 144, 296–317.
Herskovits, M. J. (1952). Economic anthropology: A study in comparative economics. Alfred A. Knopf. originally published in 1940 as <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples</Emphasis>
Hodgson, G. (2017). Introduction to the Douglass C North memorial issue. Journal of Institutional Economics, 13(1), 1–23.
Kremser, C. E. W. (2019). Karl Marx und Douglass C. North—Die theorie des institutionellen wandels als eine spielart des historischen materialismus (The theory of institutional change as a variety of historical materialism), Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 106, 2019/2, pp. 145–166.
Krul, M. (2016). Institutions and the Challenge of Karl Polanyi: Economic anthropology after the neoinstitutionalist turn, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Working Paper No. 168.
Liverani, M. (2011). Antico Oriente. Storia, società, Economia, Laterza, Bari (English transl. London; New York: Routledge, 2014).
Marx, K. (1973 [1857–58]) Grundrisse. Foundations of the critique of political economy. Penguin Books.
Marx, K. (1974 [1867]). Capital—A critical analysis of capitalist production, vol. I. Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, K. (1974 [1887]). Capital—A critical analysis of capitalist production [Engels’ 1887 edition], Vol. III, London: Lawrence & Wishart (here quoted from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-III.pdf.
Marx K. (1977 [1859]). ‘Preface’ to A contribution to the critique of political economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/index.htm
Maucourant, J. (2012). New institutional economics and history. Journal of Economic Issues, 46(1), 193–207.
Mayshar, J., Moav, O., & Pascali, L. (2022). The origin of the state: Productivity or appropriability? Journal of Political Economy, 130, 1091–1144.
Meek, R. L. (1976). Social science and the ignoble savage. Cambridge University Press.
Ménar, C., & Shirley, M. M. (2014). The contribution of Douglass north to new institutional economics. In S. Galani & I. Sened (Eds.), Institutions, property rights and economic growth: The legacy of Douglass north (pp. 11–29). Cambridge University Press.
Morehart, C. (2014). The potentiality and the consequences of surplus: Agricultural production and institutional transformation in the Northern Basin of Mexico. Economic Anthropology, 1(1), 154–166.
Morehart, C. T., & De Lucia, K. (2015). An introduction. In C. T. Morehart & K. De Lucia (Eds.), Surplus: The politics of production and the strategies of everyday life (pp. 3–42). University Press of Colorado.
North, D. C. (1993). Autobiography, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economicsciences/laureates/1993/north-bio.html. Accessed 31 Oct 2022.
North, D. C. (1977). Markets and other allocation systems in history: The challenge of Karl Polanyi. Journal of European Economic History, 6, 703–716.
North, D. C. (1981). Structure and change in economic history. W.W. Norton.
North, D. C. (1986). Is it worth making sense of Marx? Inquiry, 29, 57–63.
North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press.
North, D. C. (2005). Understanding the process of economic change. Princeton University Press.
North, D. C., & Thomas, R. P. (1971). The rise and fall of the manorial system: A theoretical model. Journal of Economic History, 31(4), 777–803.
North, D. C., Wallis, J. J., & Weingast, B. R. (2009). Violence and social orders: A conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge University Press.
Ogilvie, S., & Carus, A.W. (2014). Institutions and economic growth in historical perspective, chapter 08 in handbook of economic growth (vol. 2, pp. 403–513).
Ogilvie, S. (2007). ‘Whatever is, is right’? Economic institutions in pre-industrial Europe. The Economic History Review, 60, 649–684.
Pearson, H. W. (1957). The economy has no surplus: Critique of a theory of development. In K. Polanyi, C. Arensberg, & H. Pearson (Eds.), Trade and market in the early empires (pp. 320–341). The Free Press.
Petri, F. (2021). Microeconomics for the critical mind. Springer.
Polanyi, K. (1957). The economy as an instituted process, In: Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C., & Pearson H., (Eds.) Trade and market in the early empires (pp. 243–270).
Polanyi, K. (1977). The livelihood of man, edited by H. W. Pearson. Academic Press, Inc.
Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C., & Pearson, H. (Eds.). (1957). Trade and market in the early empires. The Free Press.
Popper, K. R. (1960 [1957]). The poverty of historicism. Ark Paperbacks
Posner, R. (1980). A theory of primitive society, with special reference to law. The Journal of Law and Economics, 23(1), 1–53.
Renger, J. (2016). Weber—Polanyi—Sraffa: A consideration of modes of production. In: G. Bartolini, M.G. Biga (eds.) Not only history, proceedings of the conference in honor of mario Liverani, Sapienza–Università di Roma 1, 20–21 April 2009, The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Risch, R. (2016). How did wealth turn into surplus profit? From affluence to ‘scarcity’ in Prehistoric economies. In R. Risch, H. Meller, & R. Jung (Eds.), Rich and poor—Competing for resources in prehistoric societies. Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle Band 14.
Rosenwig, R. M., & Cunningham, J. J. (2017). Introducing Modes of Production and Archaeology. In ID (eds.), Modes of production and archaeology. University Press of Florida
Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone age economics. Aldine.
Scheidel, W. (2013). Studying the state. In P. F. Bang & W. Scheidel (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the state in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Oxford University Press.
Scott, J. C. (2017). Against the grain. Yale University Press.
Shanks, M. (2007). Post Processual archaeology and after. In R. A. Bentley, H. D. G. Maschner, & C. Chippindale (Eds.), Handbook of archaeological theories (pp. 133–144). AltaMira Press.
Sraffa, P. (1951). ‘Introduction’ to D. Ricardo, On the principles of political economy and taxation works and correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. I (P. Sraffa Ed, with the collaboration of M. Dobb). Cambridge University Press.
Sraffa, P. (1960). Production of commodities by means of commodities. Cambridge University Press.
Stedman Jones, G. S. (2007). Marx’s critique of political economy: A theory of history or a theory of communism? In Wickham (Ed.), (2007) Marxist history-writing for the twenty-first century (pp. 113–157). Oxford University Press.
Svizzero, S., & Tisdell, C. A. (2016). Economic evolution, diversity of societies and stages of economic development: A critique of theories applied to hunters and gatherers and their successors. Cogent Economics and Finance, 4(1), 1–18.
Taccola, S. (2022). Categorie marxiste e storiografia del mondo antico. Critica e storia in un dibattito italiano degli anni Settanta, Manifestolibri
Tarrit, F. A. (2006). Brief history, scope, and peculiarities of ‘analytical marxism.’ Review of Radical Political Economics, 38(4), 595–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613406293223
Taylor, M. (1986). Elster’s Marx. Inquiry, 29(1–4), 3–10.
Testart, A. (1988). Some major problems in the social anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Current Anthropology, 29(1), 1–31.
Trigger, B. (1993). Marxism in contemporary western archaeology. In M. B. Schiffer (Ed.), Archaeological method and theory (Vol. 5, pp. 159–200). University of Arizona Press.
Veneziani, R. (2012). Analytical marxism. Journal of Economic Surveys, 26, 649–673.
Viglietti, C. (2018). Economy. In M. Bettini & W. M. Short (Eds.), The world through Roman eyes. Anthropological approaches to ancient culture (pp. 216–459). Cambridge University Press.
Viglietti, C. (2021). Cultural hegemonies, ‘NIE-orthodoxy’, and social-development models: Classicists’ ‘organic’ approaches to economic history in the early XXI century. In E. Zucchetti & A. M. Cimino (Eds.), Antonio Gramsci and the ancient world (pp. 301–326). Routledge.
Wallis, J. (2015). Structure and change in economic history: The ideas of Douglass North, Vox. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/structure-and-change-economic-history-ideas-douglass-north. Accessed 1 Jan 2023
Watson, P. J. (2007). Processualism and after. In R. A. Bentley, H. D. G. Maschner, & C. Chippindale (Eds.), Handbook of archaeological theories (pp. 29–38). AltaMira Press.
Wickham, C. (2008). Productive forces and the economic logic of the feudal mode of production. Historical Materialism, 16, 3–22.
Williamson, O. E. (1975). Markets and hierarchies: Analysis and antitrust implications. A study in the economics of internal organization. Free Press.
Wisman, J. D., Willoughby, J., & Sawers, L. (1988). The search for grand theory in economic history: North’s challenge to Marx. Social Research, 55(4), 747–773.
Wolf, E. (2010 [1982]) Europe and the people without history. University of California Press
Acknowledgements
I thank an anonymous referee for the encouraging and constructive comments, and Giancarlo Bergamini for help in editing the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Cesaratto, S. Three approaches to institutions in economic analysis: Polanyi, North and the surplus approach’s third way. Econ Polit 41, 267–293 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40888-024-00323-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40888-024-00323-4