Abstract
More often than not, business ethics textbooks have included sections on "the great economic debate," that is, the discussion of capitalism as a total system, of the criticisms against it and of the proposed alternatives. The reason for such sections is fairly obvious: at some point one has to consider whether or not all the particular problems of employment, of product quality, of environment, of regulation and so on prove beyond solution without a radical change in the basic institutions of society. Since the collapse of real socialism as an alternative in the period 1989–1991, it has become increasingly difficult to have this discussion. Yet we cannot do without the critique of capitalism even if the answer may be that no other economic system is viable at this moment in history. My interest in this paper is to explore how we might now engage in this critique. Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History?" (1989) and Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (1993) provide a framework for this renewed engagement.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barlett, Donald L. and James B. Steele: 1996, America: Who Stole the Dream?(Andrews & McMeel, Kansas City, MO).
Beauchamp, Tom L. and Norman E. Bowie: 1983, Ethical Theory and Business(Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ).
Benne, Robert: 1982, The Ethic of Democratic Capitalism: A Moral Reassessment(Simon and Schuster, New York, NY).
Braybrooke, David: 1983, Ethics in the World of Business(Rowman & Allanheld, Totowa, NJ).
Davis, Keith and William C Frederick: 1984, Business and Society: Management, Public Policy, Ethics(McGraw-Hill, New York, NY).
DeGeorge, Richard T.: 1982, Business Ethics, 4th ed. (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ).
Derrida, Jacques: 1995, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, translated by Peppy Kampf (Routledge, New York, NY).
Donaldson, Thomas and Patricia H. Werhane: 1993, Ethical Issues in Business: A Philosophical Approach, 4th ed. (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ).
Engels, Friedrich: 1972, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, translated by Edward Aveling (International Publishers, New York, NY).
Engels, Friedrich: 1975, ‘Speeches at Elderfeld’, in Marx-Engels (ed.), Collected Works, Vol. 4 (International Publishers, New York, NY), pp. 242–264.
Erlanger, Steven: 1996 (Aug 18), ‘If Right is Center, Where is the Left?’, The New York Times, Sec. 4, 1, 3.
Fukuyama, Francis: 1989, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest 16, 3–18.
Fukuyama, Francis: 1992, The End of History and the Last Man(The Free Press, New York, NY).
Goodwin, Richard N.: 1996 (Aug 25), ‘Has Anybody Seen the Democratic Party?’, The New York Times Magazine, 33–36.
Head, Simon: 1996 (Feb 29), ‘The New Ruthless Economy’, The New York Review of Books, 417–452.
Hegel, G. W. F.: 1967, The Phenomenonology of Mind, Translated by J. B. Baillie (Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, NY).
Heilbroner, Robert: 1974, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect(W. W. Norton, New York, NY).
Hobsbaum, Eric: 1994, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 19l4–1991(Pantheon Books, New York, NY).
Hoffman, W. Michael and Jennifer Mills Moore: 1984, Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality(McGraw-Hill, New York, NY).
Hollander, Paul: 1981, Political Pilgrims: Travels by Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba(Oxford University Press, New York, NY).
Kerlin, Michael J.: 1980, ‘Christian Eschatology and the Great Economic Debate’, Cross Currents 3, 262–275.
Kerlin, Michael J.: 1996, ‘A Specter Haunts the World’, Cross Currents 2, 266–269.
Kojeve, Alexandre: 1969, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by James H. Nichols (Basic Books, New York, NY).
Lukacs, John: 1991, The Duel: 10 May to July 19, 1940: The Eighty Day Struggle between Churchill and Hitler(Ticknor and Fields, New York, NY).
Magnus, Bernd and Steven Cullenberg: 1995, Whither Marxism? Global Crisis in International Perspective(Routledge, New York, NY).
Maritain, Jacques: 1968, Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of the New Christendom, Translated by Joseph W. Evans (Scribner, New York, NY).
Marx, Karl: 1972, ‘The Civil War in France’, in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader(W. W. Norton and Company, New York, NY), pp. 526–576.
Melloan, George: 1996 (Aug 12), ‘What Happened to the Left? It Went Thataway’, Wall Street Journal, A, 13.
Mill, John Stuart: 1977, ‘On Liberty’, in Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Classics of Western Philosophy(Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, IN), pp. 1021– 1094.
Novak, Michael: 1982, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism(Simon & Schuster, New York, NY).
Rawls, John: 1971, A Theory of Justice(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA).
Rifkin, Jeremy: 1995, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era(G. P. Putnam’ s Sons, New York, NY).
Steiner, George A. and John F. Steiner: 1994, Business, Government and Society: A Managerial Perspective(McGraw-Hill, New York, NY).
Stevens, Edward: 1979, Business Ethics(The Paulist Press, New York, NY).
Uchitelle, Louis: 1996 (Aug 25), ‘How Both Sides Joined the Supply Side’, The New York Time, Sec. 4, 1, 4.
Vonnegut, Kurt: 1952, Player Piano(Delacorte Press, New York, NY).
White, Thomas I.: 1993, Business Ethics: A Philosophical Reader(Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, NY).
Wogaman, A. Philip: 1977, The Great Economic Debate: An Ethical Perspective(Fortress Press, Philadelphia, PA).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kerlin, M.J. The End of History, Specters of Marx and Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 17, 1717–1725 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006040123574
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006040123574