Equality, Participation, Transition: Essays in Honour of Branko Horvat

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Ideas and Ideals: Horvat’s
Contributions to Twentieth-
Century Economic and Social
Theory
Howard M. Wachtel
1.1 Introduction
Among Branko Horvat’s many contributions to twentieth century life
and thought, none stands out more than his quest for a new theory of
society that integrates ideas and ideals. The ideas derive from economic
and political theory; the ideals from a twentieth century fusion of
democracy and socialism.
With this project Horvat aligns himself with the great eighteenth
century originators of the enlightenment who sought a rational discourse
on society that would allow individuals to achieve their full
potential within a construct of scientific reasoning. It was a grand project
that delivered on some of its promises but not on others, advances
in medical sciences alongside Soviet and Chinese Gulags. This led some
twentieth century intellectuals to reconsider the enlightenment itself,
following on post-World War II revelations about the holocaust and
the consequences of science’s penetration of the power of the atom.
In economics, the enlightenment method and goals had its origins
first in France with the Physiocrats and then subsequently in Great
Britain, starting with the work of Adam Smith and his debt to the
Scottish Enlightenment during the last third of the eighteenth century.
But as the nineteenth century evolved, and capital accumulation contributed
both to economic growth and inequities in outcomes, political
economists began to turn their attention to the larger economic structures
of society, their impacts on the success and failure of economics.
Those who sought to extend the progressive aspects of the enlightenment
to the twentieth century constructed and examined alternatives
to capitalism, with obvious debts to Marx and the utopian socialists
who preceded them. The work of Horvat that I want to assess is nested
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