Capitalism

About: Capitalism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 27714 publications have been published within this topic receiving 858042 citations.

From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism, in Historical Materialism

Abstract: Since the crisis of Fordism, capitalism has been characterised by the ever more central role ofknowledge and the rise of the cognitive dimensions of labour. This is not to say that the centralityof knowledge to capitalism is new per se. Rather, the question we must ask is to what extent we canspeak of a new role for knowledge and, more importantly, its relationship with transformations inthe capital/labour relation. From this perspective, the paper highlights the continuing validity ofMarx's analysis of the knowledge/power relation in the development of the division of labour. Moreprecisely, we are concerned with the theoretical and heuristic value of the concepts of formalsubsumption, real subsumption and general intellect for any interpretation of the present change ofthe capital/labour relation in cognitive capitalism. In this way, we show the originality of the generalintellect hypothesis as a sublation of real subsumption. Finally, the article summarises keycontradictions and new forms of antagonism in cognitive capitalism.

How Capitalism Was Built: The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia

Abstract: Anders Aslund foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union in his book Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform (1989). He depicted the success of Russia's market transformation in How Russia Became a Market Economy (1995). After Russia's financial crisis of 1998, Aslund insisted that Russia had no choice but to adjust to the world market (Building Capitalism, 2001), though most observers declared the market economic experiment a failure. Why did Russia not choose Chinese gradual reforms? Why are the former Soviet countries growing much faster than the Central European economies? How did the oligarchs arise? Who is in charge now? These are just some of the questions answered in How Capitalism Was Built, covering twenty-one former communist countries from 1989 to 2006. Anybody who wants to understand the confusing dramas unfolding in the region and to obtain an early insight into the future will find this book useful and intellectually stimulating.

Socially sustainable degrowth as a social–ecological transformation: repoliticizing sustainability

Abstract: In the late 1980s, the sustainable development paradigm emerged to provide a framework through which economic growth, social welfare and environmental protection could be harmonized. However, more than 30 years later, we can assert that such harmonization has proved elusive. Steffen et al. (2015) have shown that four out of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed: climate change, impacts in biosphere integrity, land-system change and altered biochemical flows are a manifestation that human activities are driving the Earth into a new state of imbalance. Meanwhile, wealth concentration and inequality have increased, particularly during the last 50 years (Piketty 2014). In 2008, the collapse of large financial institutions was prevented by the public bailout of private banks and, nowadays, low growth rates are likely to become the norm in the economic development of mature economies (Summers 2013; IMF 2015; Teulings and Baldwin 2015). The three pillars of sustainability (environment, society and economy) are thus simultaneously threatened by an intertwined crisis. In an attempt to problematize the sustainable development paradigm, and its recent reincarnation in the concept of a ‘‘green economy’’, degrowth emerged as a paradigm that emphasizes that there is a contradiction between sustainability and economic growth (Kothari et al. 2015; Dale et al. 2015). It argues that the pathway towards a sustainable future is to be found in a democratic and redistributive downscaling of the biophysical size of the global economy (Schneider et al. 2010; D’Alisa et al. 2014). In the context of this desired transformation, it becomes imperative to explore ways in which sustainability science can explicitly and effectively address one of the root causes of social and environmental degradation worldwide, namely, the ideology and practice of economic growth. This special feature aims to do so by stressing the deeply contested and political nature of the debates around the prospects, pathways and challenges of a global transformation towards sustainability. The ‘growth’ paradigm (Dale 2012; Purdey 2010) is indeed largely accepted in advanced and developing countries alike as an unquestioned imperative and naturalized need. It escapes ‘the political’, i.e. the contested public terrain where different imaginaries of possible socio-ecological orders compete over the symbolic and material institutionalization of these visions. In this sense, the contemporary context of neoliberal capitalism appears as a post-political space, i.e. a political formation that forecloses the political, the legitimacy of dissenting voices and positions (Swyngedouw 2007). As Swyngedouw (2014:91) argues: ‘‘the public management of things and people is hegemonically articulated around a naturalization of the need of economic growth and capitalism as the only reasonable and possible form of organization of socionatural metabolism. This foreclosure of the political in terms of at least recognizing the legitimacy of dissenting & Viviana Asara viviana.asara@gmail.com

Legitimation Crisis? On the Political Contradictions of Financialized Capitalism

Abstract: Facade democracy. Post-democracy. Zombie democracy. De-democratization. In proliferating such terms, many observers posit that we are living through a “crisis of democracy.” But what exactly is in crisis here? I argue that democracy’s present travails are best understood as expressions, under historically specific contemporary conditions, of a general tendency to political crisis that is intrinsic to capitalist societies. I elaborate this thesis in three steps. First, I propose a general account of “the political contradiction of capitalism” as such, without reference to any particular historical form. Then, I reconstruct Jurgen Habermas’s 1973 book, Legitimation Crisis, as an account of the form this political contradiction assumed in one specific phase of capitalist society, namely, the state-managed capitalism of the post–World War II era. Finally, I sketch an account of democracy’s current ills as expressions of capitalism’s political contradiction in its present, financialized phase.