Struttura di classe agraria, crisi e ribilanciamento: uno studio sullo sviluppo del lavoro salariato in Cina.

This study is an attempt to bring together insights from the history of economic thought, economic history and development economics in order to understand in order to understand the role of organization in economic development. In what follows, we take the position that in the social sciences these two definitions are inseparable. In order to understand the wholes and structures of society, the behaviour of individuals who constitute them must be given heuristic priority over all other forms of explanation. The behaviour of individuals, in turn, depend upon their intentionality, that is the sensory system through which they connect the perception of the outside world and that of their own identity in order to purposefully relate themselves with the former. Intentionality, however, may fail. Failure are error of judgments or miscalculations. The reason for failures of intentionality lies in the fact that the amount of knowledge of the outside world required in order to act is often inaccessible. Historically, however, humans and other species have developed collective patterns of behaviour and organizations in order to economize on the knowledge required to act purposefully and pursue their relevant aims. The links between knowledge, the existence of organizations and social behaviour are widely recognized today. In economics, the issue has experienced periodical revivals, with many authors giving important contribution to the discipline. A general explanation of these links, however, remains to this day unachievable. At lower level of abstraction, however, explanations of economic activity based on the evolution of organizations and their ability to store, process and use knowledge of the outside world to learn and change their behaviour seems less unattainable. In what follows, we should make an effort to apply an evolutionary framework based on the interplay between individuals and different organizational forms such as states, firms and households, in order to explain long-run economic change. In so doing, particular attention will be paid to the condition of stability which characterize economic systems and the exceptional nature of change. The manuscript is structured as follows. Part one offers a synthesis of the state of the art for what concerns the problem of the nature and origins of capitalism. This is done by surveying first the terms of the classical debate, and then the contemporary literature, to illustrate those approaches which better understood the necessity to cast arguments in terms of individual motivations, collective organization and the contingent position of actors with respect to operative knowledge. Part two shift the focus towards the issue of contemporary transitions to capitalism and the experience of developing countries. A model of a developing agrarian economy will be developed, stressing the role of micro-level patterns of organizations and markets such as contractual arrangements, conflictual strategies and mechanisms of interdependency between agents. The point will then be brought home by building on the micro-level in order to illuminate the scope and limits of development policies. Lastly, in the appendix an extremely brief and largely speculative attemptwill be made to apply the framework to a concrete case. This part will consider whether the theoretical framework developed previously may shed light on some quite specific and problematic aspects of economic development in present-day PRC.