Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 1979"

Capitalism, socialism and democracy

Abstract: C A P I T A L IS M and socialism are generally taken to be irreconcilable opposites, and the conflict between their adherents has seemed so intense as to threaten the survival of the human species. In practice, no doubt, all sorts of compromises, accommodations and mixtures of the two are possible, but conceptually, considered as blueprints for the organization of society, capitalist and socialist ownership of the means of production appear mutually exclysive. I shall argue that this is by no means the case-that capitalism and socialism are, in fact, conceptually quite compatible; that a society be at the same time capitalist and socialist (by that I do not refer to a 'mixed economy') involves no contradiction. For it turns out, on closer examination than the matter usually receives, that capitalism and socialism are features of different parts of the social structure, and are therefore not necessarily in competition or conflict with one another-at least, not conceptually (whether they could in practice coexist with one another is a different and empirical question, which is raised by, for example, 'functionalist' theories of social structure'). In brief, while capitalism is a feature of society's economic organization, socialism is rather an aspect of its political system. In fact, as we shall see, socialism is a part of political democracy, and any democratic political system is therefore necessarily socialist.

Dependency and development in Latin America

Abstract: The theory of imperialist capitalism, as is well known, has so far attained its most significant treatment in Lenin’s works. This is not only because Lenin attempts to explain transformations of the capitalist economies that occurrred during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, but is mainly because of the political and historical implications contained in his interpretations. In fact, the descriptive arguments of Lenin’s theory of imperialism were borrowed from Hobson’s analysis. Other writers had already presented evidence of the international expansion of the capitalist economies and nations. Nevertheless, Lenin, inspired by Marx’s views, was able to bring together evidence to the effect that economic expansion is meaningless if we do not take into consideration the political and historical aspects with which economic factors are intimately related. From Lenin’s perspective, imperialism is a new form of the capitalist mode of production. This new form cannot be considered a different mode of economic organization, insofar as capital accumulation based on private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of the labor force remain the basic features of the system. But its significance is that of a new stage of capitalism.

Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism

Abstract: Since the 1930s, industrial sociologists have tried to answer the question, Why do workers not work harder? Michael Burawoy spent ten months as a machine operator in a Chicago factory trying to answer different but equally important questions: Why do workers work as hard as they do? Why do workers routinely consent to their own exploitation? "Manufacturing Consent," the result of Burawoy's research, combines rich ethnographical description with an original Marxist theory of the capitalist labor process. "Manufacturing Consent" is unique among studies of this kind because Burawoy has been able to analyze his own experiences in relation to those of Donald Roy, who studied the same factory thirty years earlier. Burawoy traces the technical, political, and ideological changes in factory life to the transformations of the market relations of the plant (it is now part of a multinational corporation) and to broader movements, since World War II, in industrial relations.

The rational peasant

Abstract: I have made assumptions about individual behavior diverging from those of the moral economists. These assumptions have drawn attention to different features of villages and patron-client ties and have led to questions about the quality of welfare and insurance embedded in both villages and vertical patron-client ties. This, in turn, has demonstrated that there is more potential value to markets, relative to the actual performance level of these other institutions. Commercialization of agriculture and the development of strong central authorities are not wholly deleterious to peasant society. This is not because capitalism and/or colonialism are necessarily more benevolent than moral economists assume, but because traditional institutions are harsher and work less well than is often believed. Depending on the specific conditions, commercialization can be good or bad for peasants. In many cases the shift to narrow contractual ties with landlords increases both peasant security and his opportunity to benefit from markets. In Latin America, “the patron held life-or-death judicial authority over his dependent serfs, and the murder of peasants or the violation of their wives and daughters was not uncommon.” Paige, , p. 167. As long ago as the fifth century, a monk described the transformation that overcame freemen who became part of estates: “all these people who settled on the big estates underwent a strange transformation as if they had drunk of Circe's cup, for the rich began to treat as their own property these strangers.” Hilton, , quoting J. LeGeof, p. 58. Single-stranded relationships may be far more secure for the peasant because there may be less coercion, an absence of monopolies, competition among landlords, and less need for submission of self. The development of an independent trading class can give small peasants easy low-risk access to international markets and a way of escaping the domination of large lords who use coercion to control the economy despite inefficient practices. Independent small traders like the Chinese in Vietnam, for example, are opposed not by peasants, but by large landowners. In particular, erosion of the “traditional” terms of exchange between landlord and tenant is not the only way for peasants to turn against large lords. It is not the case that if the patron guarantees the traditional subsistence level, peasants will cede him continuous legitimacy; peasants can and do fight for autonomy when better alternatives exist in the market. There are often better opportunities for peasants in markets than under lords, and markets can reduce the bargaining power of the lords. See, for example, Blum, “The Rise of Serfdom in Eastern Europe,” p. 816; Breman, , p. 75; Hilton, , p. 214. Indeed, it was not uncommon in Europe for men to buy their way out of clientage for the security and freedom of markets. Rodney Hilton, “Peasant Society, Peasant Movements and Feudalism in Medieval Europe.” in Henry Landsberger, (Barnes and Noble, 1973), pp. 67-94, 81; Blum, et al., , p. 23. One need only note the land rush in the new areas of Cochinchina after the French made it habitable to see that markets can be an enormous opportunity for the poor. Throughout the world, peasants have fought for access to markets when they were secure enough to want to raise their economic level and “redefine” cultural standards! In medieval England, when peasant conditions were comparatively secure. The essential quarrel between the peasantry and the aristocracy was about access to the market. It was not that the peasants were worried about the impact of the market in a disintegrating sense upon their community; what they wanted was to be able to put their produce on the market and to have a freer market in land which would enable them to take advantage of the benefits of the market. Hilton. “Medieval Peasants - Any Lesson?,” p. 217. The rise of strong central states and the growth of a market economy, then, even in the guise of colonialism and capitalism cannot always be directly equated with a decline in peasant welfare due to the destruction of traditional villages and/or elite bonds. In the short-run, local village elites with the skills to ally with outside powers may reap the most benefits from new institutional arrangements, but, in the long-run, new elites emerge which ally with the peasantry against both feudalism and colonialism. As Weisser notes for Spain, “anarchism sought to sweep away the remnants of that old system by joining with those elements in the outside world that had begun a similar attack.” , p. 117. Indirectly, peasants clearly benefit from the growth of law and order and the resulting stability, as well as the vast improvements in communications. The numerous and onerous taxes of the colonial period - as applied by village elites - increased stratification in the majority of countries, but the colonial infrastructure also led to wider systems of trade, credit, and communications that helped keep peasants alive during local famines. As Day has noted of Java, local crop failures were so serious in precolonial times before there was a developed communications and trade network “because it was impossible to supply a deficit in one part of the country by drawing on the surplus which might exist in another.” Day. , p. 25. Colonialism is ugly, but the quality of the minimum subsistence floor improved in most countries. Geertz, , p. 80; Tom Kessinger, (University of California Press, 1974), p. 87; Charles Robequain, (Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 328. By stressing the common investment logic of intra-village patron-client and market relations I have attempted to show that given the actual performance levels of patrons and villages, neither decline nor decay of peasant institutions is necessary for peasants to enter markets. Further, peasant support for revolutions and protests may represent not decline and decay, but political competence.

Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism

Abstract: INTRODUCTION 1 LAND AND SOCIETY 2 THE POLITICS OF CONQUEST 3 HISPANIC CAPITALISM 4 INDEPENDENCE AND THE AUTOCRATIC REPUBLIC 5 MODERNIZATION AND MISERY 6 NITRATE 7 POLITICS, LABOUR AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION 8 CHILEAN DEMOCRACY 9 CHRISTIANS AND MARXISTS 10 DICTATORSHIP 11 CONCERTACION: THE PAST AND PRESENT

Ecology As Politics

Abstract: Introduction: Two Kinds of Ecology. 1. Ecology and Freedom. Ecological realism Political economy and ecology: Marx and Illich Ecology and the inversion of tools Ecology and the crisis of capitalism The poverty of affluence Equality and difference Social self-regulation and regulation from outside Seven theses by way of conclusion. A possible utopia. 2. Ecology and Society. Reinventing the future Affluence dooms itself The social ideology of the motorcar Socialism or ecofascism Twelve billion people? 3. The Logic of Tools. Nuclear energy: a preeminently political choice From nuclear electricity to electric fascism Boundless Imperialism: the multinationals Labour and the 'quality of life' 4. Medicine, Health and Society. Introduction. Medicine and illness Health and society Science and class: the case of medicine. Epilogue: The Continuing American Revolution.

Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914

Abstract: By drawing on the current Marxist debate about the nature of the capitalist state, this article argues that the colonial state was obliged to be more interventionist than the mature capitalist state in its attempts to manage the economy, since colonies were distinguished by the way in which they articulated capitalism to local modes of production. This posed severe problems of social control, since the capitalist sector required the preservation of indigenous social institutions while also extracting resources from them. In early colonial Kenya this problem was mitigated by a rough compatibility between the needs of settler capital and the patronage exercised by African chiefs within a peasant sector which was expanded to solve the colonial administration's initial need for peace and revenue. The peasant sector was not destroyed, rather it was represented in the state, which never ceased thereafter to be plagued by the conflicts between the two modes of production over which it presided.

"'Capital' imperialism and exploitation in ancient world systems"

Abstract: The above title may appear provocative to those who would maintain that capital is, by definition, wage-labor capital, that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, and that before the industrial revolution there were only "embedded" economies whose goals were related to the gaining of prestige, conspicuous consumption, and the maintenance of alliances for "social" reasons (Polanyi, 1947; Finley, 1973: 130, 158). This is because our argument is aimed at a tendency in anthropology and anthropologically influenced history and archeology to divide the world's history into distinctive market/ non-market or capitalist/ pre-capitalist systems. We feel that such "substantivist" and "historical materialist"

Capitalism, war and internationalism in the thought of Richard Cobden

Abstract: Since twentieth century society has been so badly scarred by wars between the major industrial powers it is difficult to understand how it was that capitalist industry was once held to be the great material and moral force which would bring peace to the world. The idea was, nonetheless, firmly implanted in the minds of many men in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Richard Cobden, the English radical politician, was one of these and the eradication of international conflict became the central concern of his life.

The problem of slavery in african studies

Abstract: In the past few years the study of slavery in different parts of Africa has been transformed from a neglected subject to one of the most fashionable.1 The volume and quality of empirical work makes it both possible and essential for new conceptual approaches to be developed, yet current syntheses and the questions most of the local studies are asking reflect weaknesses in the theoretical basis of the social sciences, as well as a peculiar anxiety about the subject of slavery itself. Moreover, Africanists have profited little from two decades of extensive research and debate on slavery in the Americas. By and large, Africanists and Americanists are studying slavery in isolation from one another, venturing into the others' territory only to make a point about their own. Americanists have found African slavery to be a conveniently benign foil against which the exploitation and degradation of American slavery stand out. Africanists have been anxious to dissociate slavery in Africa from its bad image in the Americas.2 Eager to call attention to the achievements of African kings and entrepreneurs, scholars have often refused to face the question of whether in Africa, as in most of the world, the concentration of wealth and power also meant exploitation and subordination. David Brion Davis has argued that in Western culture slavery has always posed a moral problem, a set of contradictions stemming from the duality of the slave as property and yet a person, as a living part of a society and yet an outsider. But the problem needed to be solved only after the development of capitalism, when it became necessary to understand and justify a new economic order, in which the complex rights in land of cultivators and the complex relations of subordination and reciprocity that they had had with their lords were transformed into private property and a market in labour power. The architects of the new economic framework, the political economists, and of the new moral order, the humanitarians, came to define slavery as a 'peculiar institution', both archaic and evil, and wage labour as no system at all, but simply the workings of the universal and self-propelling laws of the market, freed of the constraints of the tyranny and paternalism of the lord.3 For all the subsequent development of the social sciences,

Underdevelopment in Northern Ghana: natural causes or colonial capitalism?

Abstract: The ‘natural’ conditions of soil, climate and even population have been used by several anthropologists and historians to ‘explain’ the relatively underdeveloped condition of Northern Ghana during the colonial period and its aftermath. Such explanations take no account of the requirements of the colonial economy for the labour power for mines and cocoa plantations. It was the demand for labour which determined migration from the North, and not the North's mythical lack of resources. In fact, prior to colonial conquest, the North had been at the heart of 19th Century trade routes and food production. An analysis of the incorporation of the North into the circuit of the world economic system reveals the fallacy of the ‘naturalistic’ arguments.

The Economic Thought of Karl Polanyi: Lives and Livelihood

Abstract: The democratic industrial societies face a deeply-rooted institutional crisis. The accepted ways and means of living lead to frustration and anxiety rather than creativity and joy. The roots of this crisis are political and economic. These societies contain economies that pervert and obstruct the human life process and polities that are subordinate to economic vested interests. Karl Polanyi was a Hungarian emigr ho witnessed first hand the cataclysms to which this political economic crisis can lead. He created a powerful social economic theory to analyze this institutional impasse and lay the foundation for social reconstruction. This book reviews Polanyi's life and work, his contributions to the methodology of economics, his concepts of social integration, his theory of market capitalism, and his view of freedom in complex industrial societies."

Valorisation and ‘Deskilling’: A Critique of Braverman:

Abstract: Braverman's work has been central to the return of attention to the study of the capitalist labour process. This paper focusses on his major theme, and rejects as inadequate both his analysis of capital's generic impulsion to deskill and his location of the consummation of that impulsion in monopoly capitalism . Instead it argues for an historically located theorisation of the transformation of the labour process, which would explicitly locate that transformation in relation to phases of valorisation and accumulation and their contradictions . Some features of such an account are discussed, with particular reference to debate about the 'labour aristocracy', analyses of the role of Taylorism and contemporary discussions of automation .

The management of surplus capacity: or how does theory stand up to protectionism 1970s style?

Abstract: Contemporary trends toward protectionism seem not merely to represent a passing phase in the world political economy but reflect widespread resistance to deep-seated structural change. In three major sectors of the world economy characterized by surplus capacity—textiles, steel, and shipbuilding—state policies increasingly challenge liberal, market-oriented economic arrangements. The emergence of restrictive arrangements in these areas is still primarily organized nationally: multinational enterprises do not dominate economic activity. Conflict among firms over market shares is reflected, therefore, in conflict among governments. Such conflict may be temporarily resolved through market-sharing agreements, but these are inherently unstable. Increasing state involvement is likely in the long run to exacerbate the problems of capitalism and to increase conflict over international economic issues. These adverse developments will call further into question theories of international political economy that assume compatibility between a liberal, market-oriented international economic system and a state-oriented international political system.

Slaves, Commoners and Landlords in Bulozi, c. 1875 to 1906

Abstract: The much-researched history of Bulozi in the late nineteenth century is re-assessed here from a marxist viewpoint. A hereditary class of landlords owned the principal means of production and extracted rent in labour services and in kind from the direct producers. Tribute was also paid to the king and royal family, in recognition of the ultimate royal ownership of the means of production. Surplus was employed to increase leisure time, to indulge in conspicuous consumption, to raise the level of the productive forces through investment, and to maintain repressive political and ideological apparatuses. The main weight of oppression fell on the slaves, with free commoners in an ambivalent position. Slaves were both economically exploited and socially discriminated against, and their position was analogous but by no means identical to that of European serfs. The evolution of class struggle was greatly affected by articulation with capitalism and colonialism. The first contacts stimulated exploitation by providing a larger market and more effective means of repression, but the colonial state later intervened to abolish slavery in order to intensify the flow of migrant labour to the capitalist heartlands of southern Africa.

Economic imperialism in theory and practice: The case of South African gold mining finance 1886-1914

Abstract: This is a timely work that provides us with a carefully researched and sensibly argued examination of late-nineteenth-century economic imperialism in action. Given current international debate on supposed European underdevelopment of the third world and the manner in which it affected the subsequent growth of today's emerging nations, a reasoned analysis of this nature is long overdue. It is a thoroughgoing appraisal, based on full utilization of mining records, the personal papers of key Randlords, and a wide range of printed materials. As such, it provides both a corrective to and updating of J. A. Hobson's classic Imperialism: A Study (London, 1902), although it should quickly be added that it is a far more searching work than that masterful piece of anti-imperial and anti-war propaganda. Furthermore, its subject matter assumes additional currency in light of the seemingly endless spiral of rising gold prices in today's market. Following an exceptionally fine opening chapter that is an excellent capsulation of historiographical trends on the subject (as such it will become standard reading for graduate students preparing for preliminary examinations), Professor Robert Kubicek discusses all the vital economic aspects of South African gold mining. These topics include mining capital, the manner in which this capital was obtained and utilized, technological developments, and the personalities and companies that comprised the industry. A concluding chapter summarizes his findings and makes pointed comments on previous theories of economic imperialism, such as those advanced by Hobson, Lenin, and others. Kubicek concludes, and one feels rightly in light of the impressive array of evidence he brings to bear to support his interpretations, that no single, simplistic explanation of economic imperialism and its causal connection with events such as the Boer War will suffice. Indeed, it can be argued with considerable cogency that capitalism of the international nature that characterized the South African gold mining industry "was in competition if not in conflict with imperialism and nationalism" (203). According to Kubicek, international capitalism, Birtish imperialism, and Afrikaner nationalism coexisted in South Africa during the period in question, but as forces at cross purposes. Accordingly, in his view, "South African developments . . . should be seen basically as a function of clashing priorities and the inability of any one or combination of these forces to achieve supremacy" (204). Kubicek's will not be the final word on the subject, but it is likely to be the catalyst, together with other recent works, such as Myra Fraser and Alan Jeeves (eds.), All That Glittered: The Selected Correspondence of Lionel Phillips 1890-1924 (Cape Town, 1977), for further study and debate on the connection between the mining industry, economic im-