Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 1984"

The American Ethos: Public Attitudes Toward Capitalism and Democracy

Abstract: Covers Libertarianism, Egalitarianism, the relationship between capitalism and democracy, ideology, and social and political awareness among the American public.

Growth, distribution and prices

Abstract: What determines the rate of growth, the distribution of income, and the structure of relative prices under capitalism? What, in short, makes capitalist economies tick? This watershed treatise analyzes the answers to these questions provided by three major theoretical traditions: neoclassical, neo-Marxian, and neo-Keynesian. Until now, the mutual criticism exchanged by partisans of the different traditions has focused disproportionately on the logical shortcomings of rival theories, or on such questions as whether or not input-output relationships can be described by a continuous-substitution production function.In this book, these are at best secondary issues. The real distinguishing features of the theories, for Marglin, are their characterization of labor markets and capital accumulation. For clarity, Marglin first sets out the essential features of each theory in the context of a common production model with a single good and a fixed-coefficient technology. He then formalizes the different theories as alternative ways of closing the model. In subsequent chapters he examines the effects of relaxing key simplifying assumptions, in particular the characterization of technology and the homogeneity of output and capital. And although his primary emphasis is theoretical, he does not ignore the problem of empirically testing the theories. Finally, he synthesizes the insights of the neo-Marxian and neo-Keynesian models into a single model that transcends the shortcomings of each taken separately.Marglin anticipates that partisans of the different traditions will agree on one point: each will allow that the book reveals the shortcomings of the other theories but will insist that it fails utterly to reflect the power and majesty of one's own particular brand of truth. "Growth, Distribution, and Prices" will be controversial, but it will not be ignored.

Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s

Abstract: In 1800 the Jeffersonian Republicans, decisive victors over what they considered elitist Federalism, seized the potential for change in the new American nation. They infused in it their vision of a society of economically progressive, politically equal, and socially liberated individuals. This book examines the fusion of ideas and circumstances which made possible this triumph of America's first popular political movement. When the Federalists convened in New York to form the "more perfect union" promised by the new United Sates Constitution, they expected to build a strong central government led by the revolutionary members of the old colonial elite. This expectation was dashed by the emergence of a vigorous opposition led by Thomas Jefferson but manned by a new generation of popular politicians: interlopers, emigres, polemicists--what the Federalists called the "mushroom candidates." They turned the 1790s into an age of passion by raising basic questions about the characters of the American experiment in government. When the Federalists defenders of traditional European notions of order and authority came under attack, they sought to discredit the radical beliefs of the Jeffersonians. Although the ideas that fueled the Jeffersonian opposition came from several strains of liberal and libertarian thought, it was the specific prospect of an expanding commercial agricutlure that gave substance to their conviction that Americans might divorce themselves from the precepts of the past. Thus, capitalism figured prominently in the Jeffersonian social vision. Aroused by the Federalists' efforts to bind the nation's wealthy citizens to a strengthened central government, the Jeffersonians unified ordinary men in the southern and middle states, mobilizing on the national level the power of the popular vote. Their triumph in 1800 represented a new sectional alliance as well as a potent fusion of morality and materialism.

Democracy and economic development.

Abstract: This discussion explains why democracy as is generally understood may not be suitable to meet the challenges of a developing economy and how democratic institutions generally fail to respond to the immediate demands of a population impatient to raise its level of living. It defines the terms economic development and democracy reviews some theoretical models of democracy which have been proposed in economic theory proposes an approach to the process of economic development and considers problems of development. Economic development is a process which calls for huge investments in personnel and material. Such investment programs imply cuts in current consumption that would be painful at the low levels of living that exist in almost all developing societies. Governments need to resort to strong measures and they must enforce them vigorously in order to marshal the surpluses required for investment. If such measures were put to a popular vote they would certainly be defeated. Mainstream economic theory assumes the virtues of a market system and the decisions arrived at by the interaction of market forces. This is the economic equivalent of democracy. Yet mainstream economic theory devotes little attention to the conditions under which a market system generates a just solution. The democratic developing countries have all inherited a class society with a highly skewed distribution of income. The wealthy minority often seeks to preserve its privileged position and to enjoy the benefits of development. It even seeks the help of the judiciary to preserve the sanctity of private property and to assure that its patterns of conspicuous consumption can continue. This is done in the name of democratic rights. Many developing societies are burdened with outmoded traditions and value systems that are incompatible with the production relations of the new society they hope to achieve. The international exchange of resources is believed by some to be an attempt to control the pace and character of development so that the economic colonization will survive. To end such unfavorable conditions for development 3rd world governments must demand greater sacrifices from their citizens and this cannot be achieved by normal democratic means. Recent events in several developing nations illustrate this point.

Welfare capitalism and the social security act of 1935

Abstract: A central concern of political theorists has been the relationship between the state and the economy, or more specifically, how political power gets translated into economic power. Recent debates have been shaped around critiques of the corporate liberal thesis, which contends that class-conscious capitalists manipulate the polity so that government comes to pursue policies favorable to capitalism. Alternative theories suggest that the state is capable of transcending the demands or interests of any particular social group or class. The Social Security Act of 1935, which represented the beginning of the welfare state in the United States, was a conservative measure that tied social insurance benefits to labor force participation and left administration of its public assistance programs to the states. In this paper the Social Security Act is used as a case study to adjudicate between several competing theories of the state. The analysis demonstrates that the state functions as a mediating body, weighing the priorities of various interest groups with unequal access to power, negotiating compromises between class factions, and incorporating working-class demands into legislation on capitalist terms. A central concern of political theorists has been the relationship between the state and the economy, or more specifically, how economic power gets translated into political power. Recent debates have been shaped around critiques of the corporate liberal thesis, which stresses the strategies of class-conscious capitalists to manipulate the polity. Alternative theories suggest that the state is capable of transcending the demands or interests of any particular social group or class. The core agenda of those espousing some variant of corporate liberalism has been to explain how major economic interests manipulated the polity in the twentieth century, so that government came to pursue policies favorable to capitalism (Domhoff, 1979; Kolko, 1963; O'Connor, 1973; Useem, 1983). According to this perspective, capitalists rationally pursued a series of policies designed to allow them control of the political process, resulting in a synthesis of politics and economics. For example, Kolko (1963) has argued that the regulatory "reforms" of the Progressive Era, traditionally explained as a respose to muckraker's criticism, were actually desired by large industry as a way, not only of controlling

The Emergence of Managerial Capitalism

Abstract: In this article, Professor Chandler compares and contrasts the emergence of managerial capitalism in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan. Though he observes that large firms tended to evolve according to a common pattern, he is equally impressed by international differences in the pace, timing, and character of change.

The forces of economic growth and decline

Abstract: Innovation, changes in market structure, and changes in income distribution are the forces that drive the general process of economic growth or decline. This is the concept that unifies these essays written between 1954 and 1983 by the noted economist Paolo Sylos-Labini. In each essay as he illuminates some aspect of this concept, Sylos-Labini displays a historical sensibility to theory that distinguishes him from most modern economists.Essays in the first section lay the groundwork for the book by going back to the classical economists, directly and indirectly through Schumpeter. Throughout the rest of the book, Sylos-Labini's explication and appraisal of the theories of Smith, Ricardo, Manx, and Schumpeter concerning innovation, market structure, and income distribution inform his own search for a theoretical model to analyze the process of economic growth and decline in the current stage of modern capitalism's evolution.In the book's second section, essays address innovation and changes in productivity. In the third section, they focus on changes in market structure, exploring the relationship among oligopoly, pricing, inflation, and economic growth. A final section of the book is concerned primarily with the relationship between economic growth and income distribution.

Industrialization before industrialization : rural industry in the genesis of capitalism

Abstract: 1. The origins, the agrarian context, and the conditions in the world market 2. The proto-industrial family economy 3. The structures and function of population-development under the proto-industrial system 4. Relations of production - productive forces - crises in proto-industrialization 5. Excursus: the political and institutional framework of proto-industrialization 6. Proto-industrialization between industrialization and deindustrialization.

A regulation approach interpretation of contemporary crisis

Abstract: Drawing upon the French tradition of regulation theory – most notably associated with Aglietta – the author describes the ‘forms of regulation’ that have characterized the various stages of capitalism. He argues that while the current crisis consists of a disruption of the whole structure of monopoly regulation, it is not a deathknell for capitalism itself. A way out of the crisis would involve the development of a new form of regulation, a new regime of accumulation as a given historical and central institution of capitalism.

The state and the economy in late imperial China

Abstract: Non-development of a modern economy, the failure to begin modern economic growth, I am prepared to argue but that would require another article- is “over-determined.” It's not a particularly interesting theoretical question any more. Proponents of economic, political, cultural, social structural, demographic and other explanations have each adduced overwhelming arguments and evidence for their favored explanations. In fact, any one - or two - is a sufficiently mortal debility for the premodern economies and societies that they have studied. More is merely overkill. What we really don't know for sure yet is how modern economic growth begins - even in the case of Western Europe whose economic history has been minutely examined for more than a century. The common fate of most of mankind before the very recent past - slow and uncertain premodern growth of population and output where it occurred, stagnation or decline otherwise - has not (by historians at least) received attention comparable to the more fashionable problem of modern development, whether that be phrased as the Marxist “transition” from “feudalism” to “capitalism,” the neo-classical growth model, or the perhaps now somewhat faded study of “modernization.”

Karl Marx and the Satanic Mills: Factory Politics Under Early Capitalism in England, the United States, and Russia

Abstract: This paper sets out from a theoretical paradox in Marx's analysis of capitalism: that the working class is the victim of the logic of capitalism: that the working class is the victim of the logic of capitalism and at the same time os supposed to rise up against that logic. Traditional resolutions of this paradox are inadequate; the resolution proposed here involves the distinction within the sphere of production between the labor process and the factory regime. By a series of comparisons of textile industries in 19th-century England, United States, and Russia, the article highlights four factors that shape factory regimes: the labor process, market forces, the reproduction of labor power, and the state. It shows how an examination of factory regimes can account for the absorption of working-class radicalism in England after 1850 and the deepening of working-class radicalism in Russia after 1905, culminating in the revolution-ary movements of 1917. Finally, it presents the implications for Marxism of this ...

The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism

Abstract: Marx warned against a straightforward application of his conclusions in "Capital" to experiences outside western Europe. Marx's method of understanding historical development is tied to many different considerations of structures and processes. This is evident in the debate regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The main features of this debate are presented here, especially the recent contribution of Robert Brenner which reveals significant variations in the patterns of feudal-capitalist transition in western Europe. The development of capitalism in Europe has implications of global significance. The universalistic urges of capitalism that Marx noted led to imperialism with all its variations of uneven development. Here, for marxists, the central issue is one of moving beyond capitalism from an odd mix pre-capitalist and capitalist features. In this context, the essay raises certain questions about the marxist theory and practice of transition in the context of a class struggle which builds upon the co-operative and communitarian potential of the toiling peasantry.

The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract: During Amsterdam's development as the commercial center of Europe in the seventeenth century, an informal “information exchange” appeared among the economic and political institutions of the city. Informational economies of the types discussed by Stigler, North, and Pred led to the emergence of Amsterdam as the focal point of information flows throughout Europe. They also encouraged a high level of innovation within all functional areas of Amsterdam's information exchange—especially in long-term data analysis—which contributed to the general modernization of capitalism.

The Kangxi Depression and Early Qing Local Markets

Abstract: Since 1949 much research has been devoted to the study of the economy of premodern China. The debate during the 1950s over the "sprouts of capitalism" uncovered a great deal of data on the Ming-Qing economy, but failed to reach any definitive conclusion. Empirical research during the last few decades shows that the predominant elements of the Ming-Qing economy were to use the words of Paul Sweezy "neither feudal nor capitalist." This phrase was used by Sweezy in the celebrated debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe (Hilton, 1978: 49). As is widely known, this remark was criticized by scholars who define feudalism as a mode of production in which the surplus product is extracted from small producers by a landed ruling class through various means of extraeconomic compulsion. This definition of feudalism as a mode of production also pervades Japanese historical studies of China. As a result, Ming-Qing society, where land tenancy widely existed, is characterized as a feudal society. (For a lucid exposition in English of Japanese controversies over Chinese feudalism see Grove and Esherick [1980].)

Reproducing Class Relations in Industrial Capitalism

Abstract: Stein, Herbert 1%9 The Fiscal Revolution in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tobin, James 1980 Asset Accumulation and Economic Activity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Treas, Judith 1983 "Trickle down or transfers? Postwar determinants of family income inequality." American Sociological Review 48:546-59. Tufte, Edward 1978 Political Control of the Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tussing, A. Dale and John A. Henning 1974 "Long-run growth of nondefense government expenditures in the United States." Public Finance Quarterly 2:202-222. Wonnacott, Ronald J. and Thomas H. Wonnacott 1977 Econometrics. Wiley.

The International Centralization of Capital and the Re-ordering of World Capitalism

Abstract: The search for a new international economic order has become a fashionable issue. But even the idea of an economic order has scarcely been spelt out clearly. Usually the present crisis is identified as a ‘disorder’ of the world economy. This hypothesis hides the reality, analysed in this article, that on the contrary, the crisis is a restoration of capitalist order.

The rise and fall of the South African peasantry: a critique and reassessment

Abstract: Colin Bundy's Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry has become a most important landmark in the development of an analytical understanding of the growth of capitalism in South Africa. From the emergence of his first article in October 1972, in 4frican Affairs, up to the publication of his book, his work has drawn considerable interest and gained a continually wider readership. 1 A beginning had already been made in the conceptual and empirical assessment of the basic thesis of Rise and Fall in a review article by Frederick Cooper. Cooper correctly argues that Bundy was seeking to refute the view held by both liberal and conservative South African historians, that the present impoverishment of the Reserve areas of South Africa was due to the 'backward' farming practices of black agriculturalists and their unresponsiveness to improved methods. He sought to show instead, in Cooper's words, that:

The international centralization of capital and the re·ordering of world capitalism:

Abstract: The search for a new international economic order has become a fashionable issue. But even the idea of an economic order has scarcely been spelt out clearly. Usually the present crisis is identified as a ‘disorder’ of the world economy. This hypothesis hides the reality, analysed in this article, that on the contrary, the crisis is a restoration of capitalist order.

Development and crisis in Brazil, 1930-1983

Abstract: In this first English-language edition of a book that has seen thirteen printings in Brazil, Dr. Bresser Pereira analyzes Brazil's economy and politics from 1930, when the Brazilian industrial revolution began, up to July 1983. First addressing the period of strong development in Brazil between 1930 and 1961, he discusses at length the import-substitution model of industrialization; the emergence of new classes—industrialists, industrial workers, and especially the new technobureaucratic middle classes; the conflict between the traditional agrarian ideologies of coffee planters and the nationalistic and industrializing ideologies of the new classes; and the new realities of the 1950s that led to the crisis of the populist alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie and the workers. Next he explores the economic and political crisis of the sixties, centering on the Revolution of 1964, when an industrialized and fully capitalist— but still underdeveloped—Brazil experienced the cyclical movements of capitalism. The final chapters of the book examine the Brazilian "miracle" of 1967-1973, the economic slowdown of the 1970s that culminated in the severe recession of 1981, the dialectics between the process of abertura led by the military regime established in 1964 and the redemocratization process demanded by civil society, and the "total crisis of 1983."

Why Has Japan 'Succeeded'?

Abstract: This book, by a distinguished Japanese economist now resident in the West, offers a new interpretation of the current success of the Japanese economy. By placing the rise of Japan in the context of its historical development, Michio Morishima shows how a strongly-held national ethos has interacted with religious, social and technological ideas imported from elsewhere to produce highly distinctive cultural traits. While Professor Morishima traces the roots of modern Japan back as far as the introduction of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism from China in the sixth century, he concentrates his observations on the last 120 years during which Japan has had extensive contacts with the West. He describes the swift rise of Japan to the status of a first-rate power following the Meiji Revolution after 1867, in which Japan broke with a long history of isolationism, and which paved the way for the adoption of Western technology and the creation of a modern Western-style nation state; and a similarly meteoric rise from the devastation of the Second World War to Japan's present position. A range of factors in Japan's economic success are analysed: her characteristic dualistic social structure - corresponding to the divide between large and medium/small enterprises - the relations of government and big business, the poor reception of liberalism and individualism, and the strength of the Japanese nationalism. Throughout, Professor Morishima emphasises the importance of the role played in the creation of Japanese capitalism by ethical doctrines as transformed under Japanese conditions, especially the Japanese Confucian tradition of complete loyalty to the firm and to the state. This account, which makes clear the extent to which the economic rise of Japan is due to factors unique to its historical traditions, will be of interest to a wide general readership as well as to students of Japan and its history.