Reconsidering Identity Economics
Human Well-Being and Governance

Authors: Laszlo Garai



Applies physics concepts to evolving economic psychology

Develops a theory to mediate behavioral and identity economics

Examines socialism and capitalism as developed by Soviet and Eastern Bloc countries

This book presents an unorthodox identity economics that approaches social identity through a non-classical psychology. Garai applies the modern physics concept of wave-particle duality to economic psychology, finding a corresponding duality in object-oriented activity and historically generated social identity. These two factors interconnect to create a double-storied structure of social identity and its behavioral manifestations. The book then presents a calculation device for mediating between behavioral and identity economics. Garai then applies all these factors to two socioeconomic systems developed during the second modernization: Bolshevik-type “socialism” and post-Bolshevik “capitalism.” In this context, he examines the Eastern Bloc nomenklatura as a duality of bureaucratic and patron-client organization (“state and party”) and the establishment of both today's material capitalism and its other half: human capital economics.

Table of contents

Front Matter

Identity Economics, Indeed? A Psychological Introduction

The Structure of Social Identity and Its Economic Feature
• Front Matter
• The Double-Storied Structure of Social Identity
• Identity Economics: “An Alternative Economic Psychology”
• How Outstanding am I? A Measure for Social Comparison within Organizations
• Social Identity in the Second Modernization

Front Matter
• Preamble
• Theses on Human Capital
• Determining Economic Activity in a Post-Capitalist System
• Is a Rational Socio-Economic System Possible?

Psychology of Bolshevik-Type System
• Front Matter
• The Bureaucratic State Governed by an Illegal Movement: Soviet-Type Societies and Bolshevik-Type Parties
• The Paradoxes of the Bolshevik-Type Psycho-social Structure in Economics

Half of Capitalism—And Its Other Half
• Front Matter
• Inequalities’ Inequality: The Triple Rule of Economic Psychology
• What Kind of Capitalism Do We Want?

Back Matter