Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 1980"

Free to Choose: a personal Statement

Abstract: Explores the relationship between economics and freedom of the social thinking in 1980's America and Britain

The socio-spatial dialectic

Abstract: An increasingly rigidifying orthodoxy has begun to emerge within Marxist spatial analysis that threatens to choke off the development of a critical theory of space in its infancy. The concept of a socio-spatial dialectic is introduced as a means of reopening the debate and calling for the explicit incorporation of the social production of space in Marxist analysis as something more than an epiphenomenon. Building upon the works of Henri Lefebvre, Ernest Mandel, and others, a general spatial problematic is identified and discussed within the context of both urban and regional political economy. The spatial problematic is not a substitute for class analysis but it can be an integral and increasingly salient element in class consciousness and class struggle within contemporary capitalism. Space is not a scientific object removed from ideology and politics; it has always been political and strategic. If space has an air of neutrality and indifference with regard to its contents and thus seems to be “...

Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism

Abstract: Ever since the First World War, socialists have considered imperialism a calamity: responsible for militarism, economic stagnation, and assaults on democracy in the metropolitan countries, an impediment to economic and cultural development in the Third World. So widespread has this view become that it is shared, in its essentials, not only by Marxists but also by an entire school of liberal development economists. Bill Warren breaks with this traditional outlook, arguing that the theory of imperialism, one of Marxism's most influential concepts, is not only contradicted by the facts, but has diluted and distorted Marxism itself. In particular, Warren disputes the claim that "monopoly capitalism" represents the ultimate stage of senile capitalism and sets out to refute the notion that imperialism is a regressive force impeding or distorting economic development in the Third World. The book argues on the contrary that direct colonialism powerfully impelled social change in Asia and Africa, laying the foundation for a vibrant indigenous capitalism. Finally, it takes issue with the conventional view that postwar economic performance in the Third World has been disastrous, presenting a powerful empirical case that the gap between rich and poor countries is actually narrowing. Closely argued, clearly written, original and iconoclastic, "Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism" is a compelling challenge to one of the chief tenets of contemporary socialist politics.

Weber’s Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization

Abstract: A systematic formulation is given of Weber's theory of the origins of large-scale capitalism, based upon the lectures given just before his death. This last theory is predominantly institutional, unlike the emphasis upon religious ideas and motivations in his early Protestant Ethic thesis, and unlike his analyses of the world religions. Weber's institutional theory involves a sequence of causal conditions. The outcome of the sequence is capitalism characterized by the entrepreneurial organization of capital, rationalized technology, free labor, and unrestrained markets. Intermediate conditions are a calculable legal system and an economic ethic combining universal commercialization with the moderate pursuit of repetitive gains. These conditions are fostered by the bureaucratic state and by legal citizenship, and more remotely by a complex of administrative, military, and religious factors. The overall pattern is one in which numerous elements must be balanced in continuous conflict if economic development is to take place. Weber derived much of this scheme in explicit confrontation with Marxism. His conflict theory criticizes as well as deepens and extends a number of Marxian themes, including a theory of international capitalism which both criticizes and complements Wallerstein's theory of the world system.

Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America

Abstract: The germ theory and the upper classes emotional remedies but more fundamentally because. Hookworm and proprietors of the profession, practitioners to conclude that disproportionately owns directs. Not simply through the capitalist social engineering problem surmountable with those associated foundations. However seniors support for citizens pp whereas. In government but on a critical role for persuading the type.

Devil on the Cross

Abstract: This critique of modern Kenya highlights the greed and capitalism prevalent in society. Despair drives Wariinga to leave Nairobi and seek refuge in her home town of Ilmorog. On her journey she is handed an invitation to a feast of thieves, a competition organized by the devil.

Capitalist Financial Processes and the Instability of Capitalism

Abstract: (1980). Capitalist Financial Processes and the Instability of Capitalism. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 505-523.

Marx and Schumpeter on Capitalism's Creative Destruction: A Comparative Restatement

Abstract: Despite well-known differences, the respective visions of capitalism's future by Marx and Schumpeter show striking and neglected similarities. This is illustrated, first, by their strong focus upon capitalism's progressive and creative properties; second, by their analyses of capitalism's dysfunctional properties; and third, by their respective analyses of the creatively destructive character of institutional and attitudinal change in advanced capitalism.

Class and Nation, Historically and in the Current Crisis

Abstract: and generalize, although these are part of any scientific attitude. They rely instead on moral reflection— Platonic or Confucian. But those who want to change society are not gods living outside of it: there is a wide margin between the goals that they think they are adopting, those that they really (often implicitly) adopt, and the results obtained. I will try here to make an inventory of what history teaches us. This will be provisional, modest, but dangerous in that it invites all manner of criticism. It is based on the presupposition that only the present gives meaning to the past. I share the viewpoint of those who want a classless society. Further, I contend that the struggle

A Monetary Theory of Production: Keynes and the Institutionalists

Abstract: During the past century, perhaps the two most powerful minds devoted to economics have been those of Thorstein Veblen and John Maynard Keynes. One can hardly imagine two men with greater differences in family background, personality, life-style, methodological orientation, and worldly success. Yet, I find their fundamental economic ideas basically similar. This surprising similarity may be explained on grounds that both men were acute and realistic assessors of modern economic institutions, and their respective theories reflect a common, underlying insight into the role of money in those institutions. Both had what may be called a Monetary Theory of Production. By this I mean that each viewed money as the strategic institution of modern capitalism and the chief impediment to full production and full employment in advanced industrial societies, which would be capable of inordinate production if freed from the fetters of monetary and financial institutions. This finding should prove useful as a step toward integrating their ideas into a realistic theory of modern capitalism. A possible outcome might be a macroeconomic theory of institutional economics. A great fault of mainstream economics, beginning with Adam Smith, has been exorcising money from the theory of production; indeed, from

Economic calculation under socialism: the austrian contribution

Abstract: Economic theories of socialism during the 1930's were based on Walrasian general equilibrium models in which the central planning board was to function as the auctioneer. Socialists assumed that “market socialism” would achieve all the efficiencies characteristic of perfect competition while avoiding the serious market failures of real capitalist economies. The Austrians, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, argued that even market socialism would fail to ‘achieve the efficiency of real market capitalism because Walrasian models used to construct the economic theory of socialism left out important features of real markets that generate efficient outcomes. Specifically, the entrepreneurial nature of the adjustment process, the importance of decentralized information and the role of incentives under vaying institutional settings.

Capitalism, conflict, and inflation

Abstract: The essays collected in this volume form the basis of Bob Rowthorn's justly deserved reputation as the most original of the generation of Marxist economists which emerged in Britain in the sixties and early seventies. Bob Rowthorn says that the common thread to the theoretical and empirical papers is 'their emphasis on the importance of power and conflict in capitalist societies'. Perhaps more significantly they represent a major contribution to the attempt to develop Marxist economics as a way of understanding the present. This involves a critique both of the recent critics of Marxism (notably the Sraffans) and of the fundamentalist Marxists (for example, Ernest Mandel).

Social Democracy as a Historical Phenomenon

Abstract: Not to repeat past mistakes: the sudden resurgence of a sympathetic interest in Social Democracy is a response to the urgent need to draw lessons from the history of the socialist movement. After several decades of analyses worthy of an ostrich, some rudimentary facts are finally being admitted. Social Democracy has been the prevalent manner of organization of workers under capitalism. Reformist parties have enjoyed the support of workers. Perhaps even more: for better or worse, Social Democracy is the only political force of the Left that can demonstrate an extensive record of reforms in favour of the workers. Any movement that seeks to transform historical conditions operates under these very conditions. The movement for socialism develops within capitalism and faces definite choices that arise from this very organization of society. These choices have been threefold: (1) whether to seek the advancement of socialism through the political institutions of the capitalist society or to confront the bourgeoisie directly, without any mediation; (2) whether to seek the agent of socialist transformation exclusively in the working class or to rely on multiSocial Democracy as a Historical Phenomenon

Earnings Inequality in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract: Although debate has raged ever since Marx and Engels openly condemned British capitalism in the 1840s, little hard evidence has been brought to bear on the issue of economic inequality. This paper estimates British earnings distributions for four years in the period 1827–1901. The evidence supports the view of increasing inequality up to mid-century and a leveling thereafter. Coupled with newly available evidence on British eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wealth and income distribution, these estimates equip us to search for explanations. A strategy for modeling British inequality history is suggested.

Economic Liberties and the Constitution

Abstract: In this seminal work, Bernard Siegan traces the history of onstitutional protection for economic liberties in the United States. He argues that the law began to change with respect to economic liberties in the late 1930s. At that time, the Supreme Court abdicated much of its authority to protect property rights, and instead condoned the expansion of state power over private property.Siegan brings the argument originally advanced in the .first edition completely up to date. He explores the moral position behind capitalism and discusses why former communist countries flirting with decentralization and a free market (for instance, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos) have become more progressive and prosperous as a result. He contrasts the benefits of a free, deregulated economy with the dangers of over-regulation and moves towards socialized welfare most specifically as happened during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. Supporting his thesis with historical court cases, Siegan discusses the past and present status of economic liberties under the Constitution, clarifies constitutional interpretation and due process, and suggests ways of safeguarding economic liberties.About the original edition, Doug Bandow of Reason noted, "Siegan has written a vitally important book that is sure to ignite an impassioned legal and philosophical debate. The reason the necessity for protecting economic liberty is no less than that guaranteeing political and civil liberty." Joseph Sobran of the National Review wrote, "Siegan...makes a powerful general case for economic liberty, on both historical and more strictly empirical grounds.... Siegan has done a brilliant piece of work, not only where it was badly needed, but where the need had hardly been recognized until he addressed it." And Edwin Meese remarked that, "This timely and important book shows how far we have drifted from protecting basic liberties that the Framers of the Constitution sought to secure. I recommend it highly." This new, completely revised edition of Economic Liberties and the Constitution will be essential reading for students of economics, history, public policy, law, and political science.

Capitalism and colonialism in Mozambique

Abstract: Leroy Vail and Landeg White's lengthy, tightly-argued study of capitalism and colonialism in Mozambique fully lives up to the promise of a series of excellent articles published over recent years. Its focus is situated in Quelimane district, the seat of the plantation economy which produced most of colonial Mozambique's commodity exports. Rarely have the fundamental developments in a single African region over the last century been given such searching investigation. The first hundred pages recapitulates the prazo system of the nineteenth century and its transformation under the impact of an intensified slave trade and then a relatively free cash economy. This section traces the interrelationship of social, cultural, and political change and puts the anti-Portuguese struggles of the last quarter of the century into a plausible framework for the first time. The remaining three-quarters of the book is devoted to the rise, development, and implications of the plantation system that emerged in Zambesia before World War I. It is therefore the first serious historical study to consider the capitalist foreign-run plantation in Africa, Vail and White having had access to the papers of Sena Sugar Estates Ltd. They produce a finely-worked succession of arguments about capital strategies on competition and markets, but above all, labor over more than half a century. It is hardly surprising that a crop as unpleasant to harvest as sugar presented great problems for an employer dependent on cheap labor. Only to a limited extent were wages at Sena in any sense competitive. In the early years, John Peter Hornung, the company's driving spirit, relied on the constraints of the brutal, albeit paternalistic, prazo system. As labor requirements grew, he was obliged to turn increasingly to a complex, segmented migrant labor force that represented a niche in the enormous sub-continental army of cheap, oppressed migrant workers of southern Africa. At the same time, forced labor was provided through the collaboration of the Portuguese state. Because Sena was a British firm, its relationship with the regime contained considerable tensions. Nevertheless, particularly from the establishment of Salazar's Estado Novo, its sugar production was coordinated with the drive for an autarchic Portuguese imperium. To a considerable extent, it was the choice of the Portuguese regime to stress plantation production. The Quelimane peasantry produced cash crops willingly in the late nineteenth century and occasionally later when Portuguese policy permitted. Yet one is struck by the distinctive heritage of the prazo system which had undercut pre-capitalist production. Sena culture had a distinctly un-tribal flavor; the authority of the chiefs was minimal and people turned to the

Crime and Justice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England

Abstract: Recent historical studies concerned with the period of the English industrial revolution illuminate many relationships between crime and the criminal law, and social and economic change. The creation and abolition of the capital code and the invention of the penitentiary and the police suggest the importance of threats to political authority in deciding policy. Other studies emphasize the place of crime in popular culture, while quantitative work shows the importance of economic fluctuations, moral panics, war and the new police in explaining the level of prosecutions. Most suggestive for further work is the upper class assault on popular mores, poor men's property, and old economic orthodoxies. New legislation and new levels of enforcement, as well as less premeditated changes in English capitalism, created crimes where none had existed, and probably caused a crisis of legitimacy for the English criminal law. What emerged may have been not only a modern system of criminal law and enforcement, but a moder...

India: Transition from feudalism to colonial capitalism

Abstract: (1980). India: Transition from feudalism to colonial capitalism. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 359-399.

Presbyteries and Profits: Calvinism and the Development of Capitalism in Scotland, 1560-1707

Abstract: Part 1 Max Weber on the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism: introduction the grounds for the study, the controversial Max Weber, an outline of the study, Weber and Scotland Weber's protestant ethic theses, previous commentaries on Scotland and the Weber thesis, conclusion. Part 2 The Scots Calvinist ethic: sixteenth-century Scottish Calvinism introduction, a brief outline of Calvinism in Scotland, formal doctrine, commentaries and expositions, primitive Calvinism in sixteenth-century Scotland, seventeenth-century Scottish Calvinism introduction, commentaries and expositions, formal doctrine, neo-Calvinism in seventeenth-century Scotland, the doctrine of covenants and its implications. Part 3 The spirit of Scottish capitalism: traditionalism in economic activity Weber, Scotland, conclusion, the manufactory movement introduction, industrial policy, manufacturing enterprises in Scotland the Newmills Cloth Manufactory, Haddingtonshire early history, 1645 to 1681, the new company established, June 1681 to May 1684, capitalists at work, June 1684 to May 1703, labouring people, June 1684 to May 1703, the final years, June 1703 to March 1713, conclusion, colonies, credit, and coal colonial endeavours and the Darien company, banking, coal-mining. Part 4 The development of capitalism in Scotland, 1560-1707: Weber vindicated - the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism introduction, accounts of everyday practices, Weber, Marx, and vocabularies of motive, conclusion, the capitalist spirit and the genesis of modern Scottish capitalism, introduction, Weber's comparative analyses, ends, means, and conditions of action. Appendix: manufacturing enterprises in Scotland, 1560-1707.

Economic trends in the late Ch'ing empire, 1870–1911

Abstract: This chapter provides an analysis of the structure and development of Chinese agriculture in the nineteenth century and its implications for the rest of the economy. It discusses the single rural handicraft in the nineteenth century. The agricultural sector of the Chinese economy in the last decades of the Ch'ing dynasty was characterized by a factor mix in which land and capital were in short supply and the superabundance of labour was subject to some diminishing returns. Handicraft and modern industries in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century China were subservient to foreign capitalism. The economy of late-Ch'ing China was, at its given level of technology, characterized by a high degree of commercial development. Goods and traders moved extensively throughout the country and, to a limited extent, the domestic economy had developed links with the world market. In brief, the fiscal system of the central government like other aspects of its administration was quite superficial.