International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2021

The market economy and the open society: inseparable or incompatible? A historical analysis

(Abstract)

Bas van Bavel

The position that the market economy and the open society reinforce each other is often underpinned by referring to their seemingly connected rise in the modern Western world. This paper uses empirical reconstructions of the long-run development of market economies to reject this argument. In all historical cases, it was the open society that developed first, and only later the market economy. The functioning of the latter slowly eroded social and next political openness, and later shriveled itself, in an endogenous process that slowly developed from a positive interaction to a negative one and may also be seen in modern cases. The author rejects the linear development of economic and social organisation, and argues neither the view that market economy and open soviety are inseparable and nor that both imcompatible are correct. Their relations are dynamic, and both interact and change each other in a process with which all market economies are remarkably similar. It is best described as a cycle.