Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 2016"

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

Abstract: Sharing isn't new. Giving someone a ride, having a guest in your spare room, running errands for someone, participating in a supper club -- these are not revolutionary concepts. What is new, in the "sharing economy," is that you are not helping a friend for free; you are providing these services to a stranger for money. In this book, Arun Sundararajan, an expert on the sharing economy, explains the transition to what he describes as "crowd-based capitalism" -- a new way of organizing economic activity that may supplant the traditional corporate-centered model. As peer-to-peer commercial exchange blurs the lines between the personal and the professional, how will the economy, government regulation, what it means to have a job, and our social fabric be affected? Drawing on extensive research and numerous real-world examples -- including Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Etsy, TaskRabbit, France's BlaBlaCar, China's Didi Kuaidi, and India's Ola, Sundararajan explains the basics of crowd-based capitalism. He describes the intriguing mix of "gift" and "market" in its transactions, demystifies emerging blockchain technologies, and clarifies the dizzying array of emerging on-demand platforms. He considers how this new paradigm changes economic growth and the future of work. Will we live in a world of empowered entrepreneurs who enjoy professional flexibility and independence? Or will we become disenfranchised digital laborers scurrying between platforms in search of the next wedge of piecework? Sundararajan highlights the important policy choices and suggests possible new directions for self-regulatory organizations, labor law, and funding our social safety net.

Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital

Abstract: In Capitalism in the Web of Life, Jason W. Moore advances a new synthetic framework that draws on environmentalist, feminist, and Marxist thought to formulate a theoretical edifice of capitalism-in-nature (as opposed to capitalism and nature). Hailing from the growing World-Ecology Research Network, Moore’s book is unique in its transdisciplinary approach, spanning an impressive array of key scholarship from sociology, economics, geography, history, international development, and political science, among others. The crux of the argument hinges on an essential concept, the oikeios, that “enables—but on its own does not accomplish—a theory of capital accumulation in the web of life” (p. 10). For Moore, the oikeios names the life-making relation that includes all forms of human organization, which is both a product and producer of the oikeios. It is with this dialectical tool that Moore disrupts perceived separations of humanity from nature and anthropogenic contributions to ecological crises; in doing so, he shifts focus to how humanity is unified with nature within the web of life and chronicles the historical coproduction of wealth and power accumulation in which humans put nature (including other humans) to work. For Moore, human history must be reconsidered to reflect the coproduction of humans in nature within the web of life.

Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism

Abstract: Anthropocene or Capitalocene? offers answers to these questions from a dynamic group of leading critical scholars. They challenge the theory and history offered by the most significant environmental concept of our times: the Anthropocene. But are we living in the Anthropocene, literally the “Age of Man”? Is a different response more compelling, and better suited to the strange—and often terrifying—times in which we live? The contributors to this book diagnose the problems of Anthropocene thinking and propose an alternative: the global crises of the twenty-first century are rooted in the Capitalocene; not the Age of Man but the Age of Capital.

Flint, Environmental Racism, and Racial Capitalism

Abstract: In this essay, I argue that the recent poisoning in Flint, Michigan, is a powerful example of both environmental racism and the everyday functioning of racial capitalism. As a journal devoted to le...

Schumpeter and Plausible Capitalism

Abstract: IN THE FALL OF 1942, as the Allied and Axis nations marshalled their forces for decisive battles at Guadalcanal, El Alamein, and Stalingrad, Joseph A. Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (CSD) was published. Perceived by Schumpeter at the time as a "little book of essays" somewhat in the nature of a "potboiler,"' it distilled for the intelligent lay reader "almost forty years' thought, observation, and research" (1942, p. ix) by the Austrian economist-statesman-banker turned Harvard don. Fifty years later, it remains relevant. In particular, it brought into the main stream of economic discourse the question of what market structures were most favorable to technological change and hence economic growth. Both in the United States and abroad, policy debates over that issue persist. Schumpeter's conjectures on market structure, the work by economists to extend them, and the continuing policy puzzles are the main focus of this anniversay essay. II. The Challenge

Institutions Supporting Technical Advance in Industry

Abstract: elsewhere (1982), economists' beliefs that modern capitalism is a fine innovation-generating machine have no intellectual grounding in contemporary neoclassical theory. The twin theorems take technologies as given. The apparent effectiveness of capitalism in this arena must reside in characteristics and mechanisms other than those featured in the microeconomic theory textbooks. In our book, we attempt to analyze these. It also is true that the capitalist engine is a much more complicated one than many economists seem to think. I presently am

Financialization and Housing : Between Globalization and Varieties of Capitalism

Abstract: In the literature, one finds various explanations for the rise of financialized capitalism. In the different strands of financialization literature, housing either plays a minor role or is simply s...

Capitalism in the web of life

Abstract: Jason Moore’s eagerly awaited text offers a powerful reworking of established paradigms in both Marxist and ecological thought. Moore’s ambition is nothing less than to provide a fundamentally new ...

Variegated Capitalism, Chinese Style: Regional Models, Multi-scalar Constructions

Abstract: Zhang J. and Peck J. Variegated capitalism, Chinese style: regional models, multi-scalar constructions, Regional Studies. The paper explores tensions between the varieties of capitalism framework and the heterogeneous particularities of the Chinese case. Rather than forcing the Chinese model into analytical boxes derived, primarily, from analyses of European and North American capitalism, this complex formation more appropriately can be understood to exist in a ‘triangular’ relationship with the two conventional poles of varieties scholarship, the US-style ‘liberal market’ economy and the German-style ‘coordinated market’ economy. Furthermore, the substantial degree of internal (regional) heterogeneity evident in the Chinese case calls into question those models of capitalism that focus narrowly on institutional coherence at the national scale. Illustrating this point, a range of ‘sub-models’ of Chinese capitalism is examined: regional styles of capitalist development that remain distinct from one another...

Varieties of Capitalism and institutional comparative advantage: A test and reinterpretation

Abstract: How do national-level institutions relate to national comparative advantages? We seek to shed light on this question by exploring two different sets of hypotheses based on the Varieties of Capitalism and other branches of comparative capitalisms literature. Applying fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to data from 14 industries in 22 countries across 9 years, we find that comparative advantages in industries with radical innovation emerge in specific configurations mixing coordinated and liberal institutional features. Institutional comparative advantage in industries with radical innovation may thus be based on the “beneficial constraints” of opposing institutional logics rather than on the self-reinforcing institutional coherence envisioned in much of the Varieties of Capitalism literature. By contrast, we find that coordinated market economies may have comparative advantages in industries with incremental innovation, as envisioned in the Varieties of Capitalism literature. Our article contributes to our understanding of the “so what?” related to capitalist diversity and its implications for location decisions of multinational enterprises. We further present a coordination index going beyond Hall and Gingerich (Br J Polit Sci 39:449–482, 2009) with annual values for 22 OECD countries from 1995 through 2003.

Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises

Abstract: Neoclassical economical theory uses aspects of perfect functioning of markets as part of its basic assumptions and introduces imperfections as analysis proceeds forward. Many types of heterodox economics insist on dealing with imperfect competition but project backwards to a previous perfect state. In Capitalism, Anwar Shaikh demonstrates that most of the central propositions of economic analysis can be derived without any reference to hyperrationality, optimization, perfect competition, perfect information, representative agents or so-called rational expectations. These include the laws of demand and supply, the determination of wage and profit rates, technological change, relative prices, interest rates, bond and equity prices, exchange rates, terms and balance of trade, growth, unemployment, inflation, and long booms culminating in recurrent general crises. In every case, Shaikh's theory is applied to modern empirical patterns and contrasted with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Post Keynesian approaches to the same issues. The object of analysis is the economics of capitalism, and economic thought on the subject is addressed in that light. This is how the classical economists, as well as Keynes and Kalecki, approached the issue. Anyone interested in capitalism and economics in general can gain a wealth of knowledge from this ground-breaking text. Available in OSO:

The Nation Form History and Ideology

Abstract: ion of the capitalist market, but with its concrete historical form: that of a "world-economy" which is always already organized and hierarchized into a "center" and a "periphery," each of which have different methods of accumulation and exploitation of labor power and between which relations of unequal exchange and domination are established (Braudel, 1982; 1984; Wallerstein, 1974; 1980). Beginning from the center, national units form out of the overall structure of the world-economy as a function of the role they play in that structure in a given period. More exactly, they form against one another as competing instruments in the service of the center's domination of the periphery. This first qualification is a crucial one because it substitutes for the "ideal" capitalism of Marx and, particularly, of the Marxist economists, an "historical capitalism" in which a decisive role is played by the precocious phenomena of imperialism and the articulation of wars with colonization. In a sense, every modern nation is a product of colonization: it has always been to some degree colonized or colonizing, and sometimes both at the same time. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.127 on Wed, 12 Oct 2016 04:22:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Agrarian political economy and modern world capitalism: the contributions of food regime analysis

Abstract: This paper provides a selective survey of food regimes and food regime analysis since the seminal article by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael in 1989, and further traced through their subsequent (individual) work. It identifies eight key elements or dimensions of food regime analysis, namely the international state system; international divisions of labour and patterns of trade; the ‘rules’ and discursive (ideological) legitimations of different food regimes; relations between agriculture and industry, including technical and environmental change in farming; dominant forms of capital and their modalities of accumulation; social forces (other than capitals and states); the tensions and contradictions of specific food regimes; and transitions between food regimes. These are used to summarise three food regimes in the history of world capitalism to date: a first regime from 1870 to 1914, a second regime from 1945 to 1973, and a third corporate food regime from the 1980s proposed by McMichael within the...

Zombie socialism and the rise of neoliberalism in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract: Many scholars have asked themselves if and for how long they should use the concept of “post-socialism.” We review some ways in which post-socialism is no longer used productively and suggest that one way to analyze the enduring effects of socialism (a useful role for the concept of post-socialism) is by paying attention to how economic and political elites in Central and Eastern Europe continue to use the ghost of state-socialism as the ultimate boogeyman, disciplinary device, and “ideological antioxidant.” We call this blend of post-1989 anti-communism and neoliberal hegemony “zombie socialism,” and we argue that it is a key component of contemporary capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe. We illustrate briefly some cases of zombie socialism, using data such as EU 28 statistics on labor, wages, work–life (im)balance, income tax, housing, and housing policies to show the effects of this hegemonic discourse. The presence of zombie socialism for almost three decades in Central and Eastern Europe ...

How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System

Abstract: After years of ill health, capitalism is now in a critical condition. Growth has given way to stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the money economy has all but evaporated. In How Will Capitalism End?, the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues that the world is about to change. The marriage between democracy and capitalism, ill-suited partners brought together in the shadow of World War Two, is coming to an end. The regulatory institutions that once restrained the financial sector's excesses have collapsed and, after the final victory of capitalism at the end of the Cold War, there is no political agency capable of rolling back the liberalization of the markets. Ours has become a world defined by declining growth, oligarchic rule, a shrinking public sphere, institutional corruption and international anarchy, and no cure to these ills is at hand.

Claus Offe and the Critical Theory of the Capitalist State

Abstract: Back in 1972, German political sociologist Claus Offe published a book on the Structural Problems of Late Capitalism which, for almost two decades, inspired and stimulated an international and transdisciplinary debate on the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. An academic debate which, paradoxically, began to wane as the issues about which Offe had been writing became even more prominent: the "Contradictions of the Welfare State" (the title of a collection of Offe’s main contributions to the debate published in English in 1984) and democratic capitalism’s reality of the permanent "crises of crisis management". Since 2008, it has again become a widely shared diagnosis that advanced capitalism is in crisis. However, there is either scholarly disagreement or (more often so) mere perplexity when it comes to understanding this crisis and to explaining the prevalent patterns in dealing with it. In this volume, Jens Borchert and Stephan Lessenich critically combine a reconstruction Claus Offe’s approach to state theory with an analysis of the current constellation of democratic capitalism based on that same theory. In doing so, they expertly argue that his relational approach to state theory is much better equipped analytically to grasp the contradictory dynamics of the financial crisis and its political regulation than competing contributions. This is why systematically revisiting the theory of "late capitalism" is not only of a historical concern, but constitutes an essential contribution to a political sociology of our time.

The ideology of the ethical consumption gap

Abstract: The growth of contemporary capitalism is producing a broad sweep of environmental and social ills, such as environmental degradation, exploitative labor conditions, social and economic inequity, an...

Expropriation and Exploitation in Racialized Capitalism: A Reply to Michael Dawson

Abstract: With Michael Dawson, I hold that exploitation-centered conceptions of capitalism cannot explain its persistent entanglement with racial oppression. In their place, I suggest an expanded con...

Economic causes of the Eurozone crisis: the analytical contribution of Comparative Capitalism

Abstract: The article discusses advances and limitations of Comparative Capitalism scholarship on the causes of the Eurozone crisis. It explains the crisis by highlighting four basic mechanisms: first, the absence of a system of coordinated wage bargaining has been made responsible for the loss of cost competitiveness. Second, the specialization in price-sensitive medium-quality goods and the corresponding loss of market sharesto emerging markets has been attributed to the weak innovation systems of Southern economies. Third, the loss of competitiveness has been masked temporarily by a strong increase of public indebtedness and, fourth, private household indebtedness. These four explanations do not put the blame for the Eurozone crisis on a single government or a single type of actors, but rather highlight the systemic causes for the crisis, brought about by the construction of a common currency for institutionally very heterogeneous economies.

Income Inequality Under Soviet Socia lism

Abstract: SOCIALISM, according to its proponents, has diverse virtues, but not least is the notable degree of equity that it is seen as assuring in the assignment of claims to the community's income. With the substantial replacement of private by public ownership of the means of production, it is held, a cardinal source of inequity in incomes under capitalism ceases at once to be operative. Under socialism the intimate relation between income and work done that prevails under the rival system supposedly will also give way soon or late to the alternative principle, proclaimed long ago as the only equitable one, of distributing the community's output simply according to need. In the socialist world today, as no one must be told, incomes hardly conform to need anywhere. The question remains, though, as to how far socialist countries may have progressed toward implementation of that norm. That is a matter of interest even to those who do not subscribe to such an egalitarian principle. What is essentially at issue, however, is the extent of income inequality in socialist countries and how such countries compare in that regard with the mixed economy countries of the West. Those are matters on which socialist countries have not always been especially forthright. That is an interesting fact in itself, but it necessarily obstructs accurate appraisal of income inequality. Even where relevant data on incomes are available, their meaning is often obscured by complexities of prevailing commodity distribution arrangements. Pervasive imbalances in the retail market are the best known but not the only example of such complexities. These difficulties are encountered in inquiring into comparative income inequality under socialism everywhere. They seem especially pronounced, however, in the case of the chief country where that system prevails. The USSR, though, is of particular interest as the country where

Does capitalism have a future

Abstract: The Great Recession has prompted a reassessment of the specific mode of capitalist accumulation that achieved dominance in the era of globalization. Yet just about all of this literature has focused on one of two issues: why things went wrong, and what we need to do in order to return the system to stability. Outside of a contingent of radical socialists on the fringes of the debate, virtually no one questioned whether capitalism could continue. In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, the prominent theorist Georgi Derleugian has gathered together a quintet of eminent macrosociologists to assess whether the capitalist system can survive. The prevalent common wisdom, for all its current gloom, nevertheless safely assumes that capitalism cannot break down permanently because there is no alternative. The authors shatter this assumption, arguing that this generalization is not supported by theory but is rather an outgrowth of the optimistic nineteenth-century claim that human history ascends through stages to an enlightened equilibrium of liberal capitalism. Yet as they point out, just about all major historical systems have broken down in the end (e.g., the Roman empire). In the modern epoch there have been several cataclysmic events-notably the French revolution, World War I, and the collapse of the Soviet bloc--that came to pass mainly because contemporary political elites had spectacularly failed to calculate the consequences of the processes they presumed to govern. At present, none of our governing elites and very few of our intellectuals can fathom an ending to our current reigning system. Considering whether a collapse is possible is the task that the quintet--Derleugian, Michael Mann, Randall Collins, Craig Calhoun, and Immanuel Wallerstein--sets out to explore. While all of the contributors arrive at different conclusions, they are in constant dialogue with each other and therefore able to construct relatively seamless--if open-ended--whole. For instance, Wallerstein (who accurately predicted the collapse of the Soviet system in 1979) and Collins, identify fatal structural faults in twenty-first century capitalism. Mann, on the other hand, does not think that there is any serious alternative to the market dynamic, but he does identify other serious threats to the system, including environmental degradation. Calhoun and Derluguian are more circumspect and focus on the role of politics in steering the system toward either revival or collapse. This most ambitious of books, written by the highest caliber of sociologists, asks the biggest of questions: are we on the cusp of a radical world historical shift or not?

Algorithms that Divide and Unite: Delocalisation, Identity and Collective Action in ‘Microwork’

Abstract: Marx posited that labour is ‘disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production’ (1906: 836–37). The regimented nature of factory work and life in an industrial community provided the material basis for collective action and for the shared identity required to support it. But is this still true of the mechanisms of twenty-first century informational capitalism? Castells notes that in informational capitalism, ‘[t]he work process is globally integrated, but labour tends to be locally fragmented’ (Castells 2000: 18). The exploitation of global wage, skill, and regulatory differentials means that workers are often physically, temporally, and administratively detached and desynchronised from each other (Ashford et al. 2007). In the extreme case, coordination of workers’ efforts is achieved algorithmically, that is, by automated data and rule based decision making (O’Reilly 2013), leaving no opportunity for human-to-human communication. Under such dispersal and disconnection, it would seem difficult for a common identity, let alone effective organisation, to arise among workers.

From Performativity to Political Economy: Index Investing, ETFs and Asset Manager Capitalism

Abstract: As a discipline, political economy has often been reluctant to engage with the details of market devices and practices. This weakens the microfoundations of its analysis of capitalist macro-dynamics and cedes unnecessarily large stretches of intellectual territory to economics. The performativity approach developed by Michel Callon offers a theoretical way out of this dual dilemma. It allows political economists to study ‘the economy’ directly by investigating the links between the diversity of market devices and the diversity of capitalism. The argument is illustrated by an analysis of the gradual, performative evolution of the investment intermediation market, where the traditional high-cost model of active asset management has been challenged by the emergence of a low-cost alternative in the form of index-tracking investment funds. Highlighting the distributive implications of this development, the current article shows that the financial innovation of exchange-traded funds played a crucial par...