Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 1972"

From reproduction to production

Abstract: The concepts of liberal economics, derived from the analysis of capitalist societies, are both inadequate and inappropriate for the analysis of precapitalist societies. Marx's analysis of primitive societies focused largely on the historical succession of modes of production rather than on their inner workings. What is needed is an analysis of the type which Marx made of capitalism. The present analysis starts from Marx's distinction between land as subject of labour and land as instrument of production. Where the latter is the case (as in self-sustaining agricultural communities), the society is dominated by the production and reproduction of the material conditions of existence, of the community's members and of the structural organization; the relations of production and the organisation of the community are based upon control of the means of reproduction (subsistence and women) rather than the means of production. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the way in which capitalism utilizes ag...

The last phase in the transformation of capitalism

Abstract: This volume includes six essays, the first dating from 1935 and the last from 1967, by one of the outstanding economists of our time. The economics presented in this volume is political economy worthy of the name: a discipline which shows us the social relations, in particular the class and group conflicts, behind the economic quantitative relations. Michal Kalecki, as Joan Robinson has pointed out, anticipated the Keynesian system, from a training in the field of Marxist economics. The translation to English was executed by the author himself, just before his death in April 1970.

Towards a Political Economy of Education: A Radical Critique of Ivan Illich 's Deschooling Society

Abstract: The author critiques Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, arguing that, despite his forthright vision of the liberating potential of educational technology, Illich fails to understand fully how the existing educational system serves the capitalist economy. Gintis evaluates and rejects the book's major thesis that the present character of schooling stems from the economy's need to shape consumer demands and expectations. Instead, he offers a production orientation which maintains that the repressive and unequal aspects of schooling derive from the need to supply a labor force compatible with the social relations of capitalist production. Gintis concludes that meaningful strategies for educational change must explicitly embrace a concomitant transformation of the mechanisms of power and privilege in the economic sphere.

Political Economy and Capitalism: Some Essays in Economic Tradition

Abstract: Preface. 1. The Requirements of a Theory of Value. 2. Classical Political Economy. 3. Classical Political Economy and Marx. 4. Economic Class. 5. The Trend of Modern Economics. 6. Concerning Frictions and Expectations: Certain Recent Tendencies in Economic Theory. 7. Imperialism. 8. The Questions of Economic Law in a Socialist Economy. A Note to Chapter 8 on Stored-up Labour and Investment Through Time. Index.

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber:

Abstract: can make of this volume. It lacks an index. It often uses the same referent to illustrate different conceptsordifferentpointswithout cross-reference. It concludes with generalizations that are unsubstantiated (e.g., “With games more difficult, labels more dangerous, accounts more problematic . . . risk becomes a feature of everyday life”) and perhaps even untestable. It criticizes functionalism for its own assumptions but is not selfcritical towards its own assumptions, which it should be if it were truly phenomenological. Yet, when allissaidanddone,thisisanexciting volume; and the fact that it is written by two young authors from California may not be fortuitous—at least insofar as this Easterner’s image of California as a source of cultural change, ferment, informality and innovation in sociology and other areas has some basis in reality. There is a freshness and daring in sociologists bothering to draw from contemporary philosophy, from linguistic anthropology, and from literature—the product may not be finished but it indicates a very promising team behind it. Part of the promise is that Lyman and Scott can carry on the microsociological tradition of Cooley, Mead, Blumer and Goffman into new ventures. The onlythingtheyarenot doing, I might suggest, is a sociology of the absurd; rather, it might be better to think of their essays as providing a new and possibly radical conception of political sociology, one based on situational analysis rather than on the more staid institutional analysis. For in their interpretation and perspective, the quest for meaning and identity is more an intersubjective political matter, with power a crucial variable, than anything else. Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber, by Anthony Giddens. Cambridge, at the University Press, 1971. 261 pp. $11.00.

On the Theory of Monopoly Capitalism

Abstract: My subject requires no preliminary definitions or explanations. Such, if anyone feels the need of them, can safely be left to emerge from the discussion itself. But I would like to make quite explicit at the outset an implication of the title, that a theory of monopoly capitalism is urgently needed because of what I consider to be the growing inadequacy of the kind of economics which is taught in institutions of higher learning, not only in the United States and Britain but throughout the capitalist world today.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution

Abstract: HE Atlantic economy in the half century before American Independence underwent deep, wrenching changes. As a result, English capital and English decisions increasingly dominated the colonial economy. The freedom of the wealthy colonists, merchants and planters alike, to conduct business as they chose was restricted. Profit margins were lessened and possibilities for local development sacrificed. These broad, structural changes, and the accompanying short-run economic crises, troubled the colonial elite at least as much as did the parliamentary enactments which followed the Seven Years War. These new British measures remain one ostensible cause of revolt. But the colonial reaction to them was determined in large part by a growing concern for the economy and for economic sovereignty, a concern that only coincidentally reinforced the dictates of patriotic principle. This transformation of the colonial business world is the framework for the following broad and tentative reinterpretation of the American Revolution. Our reinterpretation, however, does not argue a monocausal explanation for the colonies' struggle with Britain. Consequently, an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of earlier writers provides a necessary introduction to the presentation of a new hypothesis.

Consumer Behavior and the Concept of Sovereignty: Explanations of Social Decay

Abstract: This paper deals with the way alternative economic models interpret important aspects of modern capitalism. What is to be explained is the clear tendency of capitalist societies to generate vast quantities of goods and services-both public and private while social life falls into progressive decay. WAork remains bureaucratic, fragmented, and unfulfilling; communities are rendered architectural, social, and ecological monstrosities; the natural environment is destroyed; cultural activity becomes a mere passive consumption item in our daily lives; education remains unequalizing and unliberating; and the list continues. The three alternative "paradigms" I shall discuss are the traditional neoclassical, the widely held Galbraithian, and the more heterodox "radical," with its heavy debt to Karl Marx. The neoclassical view takes social outcomes as the reflection of individual preferences, constrained by available resources and knowledge of technologies, perhaps distorted by ultimately correctible organizational "inefficiencies." For instance, the undesirability of work reflects the nature of technology and the preferences of individuals for yet higher levels of consumption rather than creative work. The fragmentation of communities reflects the individual's preference for private expenditure over increased tax dollars for community development. And so on. The Qalbraithian views social outcomes partly as the result of the direct power of those who control large productive organizations, and partly as the result of consumer choices manipulated by those who control production. In short, while neoclassical theory holds that "citizen, worker, and consumer sovereignty" obtain, Galbraith replaces them with a theory of "producer sovereignty." In contrast, radical theorists hold that social decay is a normal result of the development of capitalism and cannot be reduced to the irrationalities of consumer preferences or the autonomous and socially irresponsible exercise of power by controllers of production. This radical paradigm involves two basic assertions. First, the choice-set of socially feasible options in the areas of work, technology, and public policy does not extend over all technologically feasible alternatives, but is constrained to those compatible with the reproduction of the social relations of capitalist production. In this sense, worker and citizen sovereignty fail to hold, and social outcomes tend to follow the requisites of capitalist accumulation rather than the preferences of individuals. Second, observed consumer behavior in capitalist society is a rational reaction to the structure of available alternatives for social activity open to the individual. No theory of "con* Lecturer and research associate, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University. This paper was made possible bv massive doses of advice from Samuel Bowles, as well as helpful arm twisting by Keith Aufhauser, Andrew Barlow, Steve Marglin, James Medoff, and Ellen Willis.

Value problems of Welfare-Capitalism

Abstract: I have borrowed this term from Richard Crossman. When he wrote his contribution to the New Fabian Essays in 1952 he took stock of the present state of socialism, as the original Fabians had done in 1889. He hoped to discover ‘a philosophy of Socialism’ with life in it. But he failed. An obvious place to look for it was in the Welfare State, as it had emerged from the hands of the post-war Labour government. But the Welfare State, he decided, was not socialist; it was ‘the climax of a long process, in the course of which capitalism had been civilised and to a large extent reconciled with democracy’. Later on he referred to the product of this process as ‘welfare capitalism’. He ought to have called it ‘democratic-welfare-capitalism’ because, as I shall argue, democracy deserves to have a position as a third party of independent status, not just to be taken for granted.

Modern capitalism and other essays

Abstract: Few contributions to the understanding of modern capitalism and its mode of operation and evolution have been more important than those made by Paul Sweezy The essays in this volume continue and deepen his work of interpretation found in The Theory of Capitalist Development, Monopoly Capital, and The Present as History

Toward Class Consciousness Next Time: Marx and the Working Class:

Abstract: Why haven't the workers in the advanced capitalist countries become class-conscious? Marx was wont to blame leadership, short memories, temporary bursts of prosperity, and, in the case of the English and German workers, national characteristics. In the last fifteen years of his life he often singled out the enmity between English and Irish workers as the chief hindrance to a revolutionary class consciousness developing in the country that was most ripe for it. The success of this explanation can be judged from the fact that it was never given the same prominence by any of Marx's followers. Engels, too, remained unsatisfied. After Marx's death, he generally accounted for the disappointing performance of the working class, particularly in England, by claiming that they had been bought off with a share of their country's colonial spoils. The same reasoning is found in Lenin's theory of imperialism, and in this form it still aids countless Marxists in understanding why the revolution Marx predicted never came to pass in the advanced capitalist countries. Despite these varied explanations (or, perhaps, because of them), most socialists from Marx onward have approached each crisis in capitalism with the certainty that this time the proletariat will become class-conscious. A half-dozen major crises have come and gone, and the proletariat at least in the United States, England, and Germany are as far away from such a consciousness as ever. What has gone “wrong"? Until socialists begin to examine the failure of the proletariat to perform its historically appointed task in light of their own excessive optimism, there is little reason to believe that on this matter at least the future will cease to resemble the past. It is the purpose of this essay to effect such an examination.

Hopkins on Economic Imperialism in West Africa

Abstract: R HOPKINS is right in emphasizing that economic factors were important in British expansion into the hinterland of Lagos. He is by no means the first person to have pointed this out. Nor has he really answered the question which Robinson and Gallagher and others studying imperialism from the European end are trying to tackle, viz.: why did these economic factors which failed to move the British inland in the I 850's or I 86o's have so much success in the I 88o's and I89o's? Dr Hopkins replies that there was trade depression in Lagos in the I 88o's, that this depression, apart from heightening competition among traders of different nationalities, was the cause, not the result, of the wars in the Yoruba hinterland; that the wars in turn provoked the imposition of a British settlement aimed at improving Lagos trade; and that the Lagos merchants in their period of depression had the influence in London, which they did not have before, to move the British government to action. This series of paradoxes deserves closer scrutiny. "Whatever the origins of the Yoruba Wars," he says, "their continuation in the second half of the nineteenth century was very largely the product of a crisis of adaptation which faced African producers as a result of the decline of the Atlantic slave trade... The crisis of adaptation had no precedents." He suggests four aspects of this "crisis of adaptation". (a) Yoruba rulers "who had risen to power on the profits of the Atlantic slave trade found that they were driven to become specialized producers in a field where there was now a high degree of atomistic competition... Dependent as they were on earnings from foreign trade for a significant part of their total incomes, they viewed their new position with considerable misgivings." (b) They tried "to maintain the level of their previous incomes, and hence their current political power, by taxing the new wealth of the numerous small producers. This they did mainly by imposing taxes on trade." (c) They therefore resented the British presence in Lagos and particularly the anti-slave trade blockade. (d) The military leaders in particular "attempted to bolster their declining fortunes" by plundering. "The warriors had been forced to embrace legitimate commerce, but because the new trade was less profitable than the old they sought at the same time to carry on, anachronistically, as freebooters in the modern world of international capitalism." Unfortunately, Dr Hopkins gives precious little evidence to support these theories, and he shows very little knowledge of Yoruba history or society, and

Development and planning: essays in honour of Paul Rosenstein Rodan;

Abstract: Part I: Growth of Development Economics 1. Development Economic Before 1945 2. The World Bank's Concept of Development - An In-House Part II: Development and Planning 3. Should Growth Rates be Evaluated at International Prices 4. Economic Growth with Unlimited Foreign Exchange and No Technical Progress 5. Absorptive Capacity as a Constraint due to Maturation processes 6. A Model of Growth Capitalism in a Dual Agrarian Economy 7. Short-term Economic Policy Part III: Income Distribution and Regional Development 8. Income Distribution and Agricultural Development 9. Trade-off Curves and Regional Gaps 10. Tendencies and Determinants of Income Distribution in Western Countries - a Note 11. The Process of Industrialisation of an Overpopulated Agricultural Area - the Italian Experience Part IV: Development and International Trade 12. Restrictions on Direct Investment in Host Countries 13. Adjustment Under the Bretton Woods Code with Special Reference to the Less Developed Countries 14. International Capital Movements, Fixed Parities, and Monetary and Fiscal Policies Part V: Cost-Benefit Analysis 15. Further Reflections on the OECD Manual of Project Analysis in Developing Countries Part VI: Labour Productivity and Other Characteristics of Cement Plants - An International Comparison 17. Some Evidence on the Short-Run Productivity Puzzle VII: Value Theory 1*. A Quantum-Theory Model of Economics: Is the Co-ordinating Entrepreneur Just Worth His Profit?

The dynamics of U.S. capitalism: corporate structure, inflation, credit, gold, and the dollar

Abstract: This is the first of the series of four collections of essays in which Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, the editors of Monthly Review, chronicled, as it was taking place, the development of U.S. and global capitalism from the end of its "golden age" in the late 1960s to the full onset of the financial explosion of the early 1990s and after. With exceptional clarity, the authors explain basic economic principles and bring them to life with concrete examples drawn from the daily workings of the corporations and the financial markets, and the international monetary system.

Some International Foundations of Capitalist Growth and Underdevelopment

Abstract: Growth and Underdevelopment Amiya Kumar Bagchi We have long known that capitalism is a world-wide system; we have also known that capitalism released new sources of productivity growth in human society, or that it enabled man to have greater control over nature.

Competition and the corporate society: British Conservatives,: The State and industry, 1945-1964

Abstract: British society changed radically in the 21st century. Any political party dedicated to preserving the Britain of 1900 would have faced, over time, either major problems of adjustment or the possibility of its own destruction. The British Conservative party was just such a party, its character defined by its commitment to the defence of the British status quo. Yet it has also been one of the most successful political parties in the twentieth century. Not only was it able to adjust itself to the transformation of British society including two world wars and the most catastrophic slump – but it was able to win elections more consistently than any of its rivals. This book seeks to show how the Conservatives achieved such a metamorphosis, by identifying the main changes in the British economy and society, and the changing Conservative response. In practice, there was no single Conservative response to any particular change. The debate within the party revealed a surprisingly large number of responses; yet the range was limited. Indeed, with some simplification, one can see only two general political positions, from which flowed differing proposals on all detailed issues. In describing these two positions, the author suggests a new method of classifying dominant political beliefs in Britain and other Western countries. This study covers a wide field, bringing together contemporary Conservative politics, economic problems and economic history. The Conservatives were intimately related to the interests of what used to be called British capitalism, and their attitudes to the changes taking place in industry reveal most clearly the changing political priorities of the party. The book examines Conservative policy, proposals and attitudes to nationalization and the public sector, to the trade unions and labour, to private business and finally to the economic role of the State, between 1945 and 1964. For those wishing to gain an understanding of the British Conservatives, Nigel Harris’ detailed and stimulating material will make excellent reading and has been acclaimed since its first publication in 1972.

Veblen's Ideal Political Economy and Its Critics

Abstract: THORSTEIN VEBLEN (1857-1929) has been called by Max Lerner "the most creative mind American social thought has produced." The late C. Wright Mills has referred to him as "the best critic of America that America has produced (1)." He has also been called a peasant, a subversive, and an embittered, unsuccessful, iconoclastic professor with loose morals and a view of capitalism that was both unjust and inaccurate. Although Veblen ranks at the top of the hierarchy of American theorists of his time, it is not our major task here to become involved in the continuing dispute about his merits as theorist and social critic. Instead, we are concerned with clarifying Veblen's vision of the ideal political economy by scrutinizing this misunderstanding which has arisen about his value commitments on the part of other scholars. Before we proceed with our analysis of Veblen's ideal political economy and what we contend are the errors of some of his critics, it is essential to

Are the Jews a race

Abstract: quantity of commodities and not the quality of utility is the dominant category of economic life. Here, for the first time, counting was resorted to in economic life. But the elements of rationalism also penetrated into the economic life, owing to nomad habits, which thus ( !) become the father of capitalism in almost every respect. Again we find an immensely increased illumination for our understanding of the close relation between capitalism and Judaism, the latter here appearing as the connecting link between the former and nomadism."[7] The "immensely increased illumination" which we find here serves only to illuminate the boundless fertility of the wilderness of our professor's imagination.

A Prolegomenon to Latin American Urban History

Abstract: Ma /[ UCH OF THE CONTEMPORARY interest in the urban history of Third World countries attaches to the role of cities as agents, or as arenas, for the transition to industrial societies. Usually, this evolution involves transactions and accommodations between a non-Western civilization and certain ideological and organizational imperatives of Western origin. The Latin American case is different, for here European conquest terminated or violently redirected the development of Amerindian societies. The new societies of the sixteenth century were at once "colonial" and Western. The drama occurring in contemporary Latin America is therefore an encounter between two fragments, or successive moments, of Western experience. Oddly enough, this encounter is yielding an outcome less conclusively "modern" than that produced by the impingement of Western capitalism and technology on the alien cultural and feudal institutions of Japan. Until recently, the "development" mania has focused analysis of Third World urban societies on the supersession of archaic or traditional features as they enter the era of the industrializing, mass-based polity. More cursory attention is paid to the preservation and reworking of preindustrial features. Typical of this propensity is Gideon Sjoberg's widely read The Preindustrial City, which dichotomizes the world's cities by two primary categories, preindustrial and industrial.' Though claiming, unconvincingly, to avoid determinism, Sjoberg isolates industrial technology as a key variable that conditions social structure, allocation of political power, criteria for social mobility, division of labor, standardization of means of exchange, and man's relation to nature. By his reckoning all the world's cities before the nineteenth century as well as contemporary cities in parts of Asia, Africa, southern