Albert Hirschman's The Passions And The Interests

Albert Hirschman’s “The Passions and The Interests” tracks the origins and evolution of the modern day concept of economic interest. Hirschman begins by tracing the concept of interest through its binary opposition to the malevolent and destructive passions of man .Whereby one can see the first possibility that malevolent passions may somehow be harnessed for public good in Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees (pg18). Hirschman develops this idea through Francis Bacon and David Hume and the proposition of countervailing passions. Helvetius than brought forward the definition of interest as “those passions that are assigned the countervailing function” (pg28). The final formulation was “opposing the interests of man to their passions and contrasting the favorable

Akin to this, John Millar takes this concept to its logical limitations by putting forward the argument that “the spirit of liberty appears in commercial countries” (pg88). Essentially putting forward the idea that violence and chaotic nature of despotic rule is the by-product of passionate man, that is to say, men who are yet to come into contact with the civilizing and domesticating experience of commerce, and in turn the gentleness and polishing of economic interest.
Hirschman emphasizes that there is nothing minimal in regards to the relationship between economic interest and liberty. Hirschman achieves this by directing attention to the Physiocrats’ authoritarian perversion of Millar’s view. According to Hirschman the Physiocrats “oddly advocate both freedom from Governmental interference with the market and the enforcement of this freedom by a total power ruler whose self-interest is tied up with the right economic system” (pg98). This is the controversial argument for what is known as “legal