Rethinking the International Economic Architecture

Abstract

This chapter recalls the link between social labour, social justice and the common good. Section two reconsiders the international dimensions of Hobson’s social economics. Section three analyses Hobson’s scheme in light of the structures and dynamics of want-creation and personality formation. It is argued that, beyond the basic levels required for continued physical existence, many resources that individuals need are culturally conditioned. Following Michael Walzer, it is argued that the meanings of these resources are generated through participation within cultural structures, and that it is by constructing lives which are infused with those meanings that individuals can come to live lives that they value. Finally, it uses Bosanquet’s theory of institutions as ‘ethical ideas’ to sketch a multilevel international framework in which such meanings can be negotiated and revised.