When we study the contents of AgeModern, we always come across themes that directly or indirectly refer to the economy. This is because modern economic science was constituted in the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when “Political Economy” began to develop, that is, a type of study on the dynamics of the economic system, from production (factories, machines, etc.), the process of division of labor, product distribution to consumption. One of the currents that dedicated themselves to this study was the liberalismeconomic, which, in turn, is associated with liberalism as a political-ideological current.
Economic liberalism has its roots in the classical thinking about wealth, accumulation of goods, work, etc., developed by thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham, Wilhem Von Humbolt, John Stuart Mill, between others. Economic liberalism has as its basic principle the non-intervention of the state in the economy, that is, it believes that it is more effective and more creative is the freedom of the actors in the economic process, which implies another principle, which is that of freedom individual. Liberalism values, above all, the individual and his potential, his ability to undertake and transform the economic scenario in which he lives.
For liberalism, the market economy system called capitalism it does not necessarily embody a wicked, inhuman, and exploitative process. This only occurs, for liberal authors, when there are inequitable relations between the State and large corporations, which receive privileges from it. For economic liberalism, free market competition encourages the guarantee of better products, better efficiency in services and a better relationship between employers and employees.
For this reason, one of the economics scholars, who lived in the 20th century, the Austrian Ludwing Von Mises, said that: “Liberalism is the most comprehensive concept. It comprises an ideology that encompasses all social life. The ideology of democracy comprises only the domain of social relations that refer to the constitution of the State" [1]. From liberalism, in general, and from economic liberalism, in particular, came, according to its defenders, the guarantee also of democratic political order, given that it is in individual freedoms that all the values that make a society are reserved healthy.
In In opposition to the liberal economic perspective, there are several currents of interventionist orientation, which defend a presence strongest state in the economic sector defending the guarantee of social equality and income distribution, among others arguments. These currents generally derive from the interpretationMarxist of the economy, mainly exposed in the work Capital.
[1] Von Mises, Ludwig. Liberalism according to the classical tradition. São Paulo: Ludwig Von Mises Brazil Institute, 2010. p.35.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
