Capitalism

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

Entrepreneurs and Parasites: The Struggle for Indigenous Capitalism in Zaïre

Abstract: Originally published in 1987, this book used data from Kisangani, Upper Zaire and North Kivu to demonstrate the emergence of an indigenous bourgeoisie of local capitalists without political position. These entrepreneurs invested in productive enterprise for the local market, managed and expanded their business in rational capitalist fashion, and were reproducing themselves as a class. The text discusses how the spiralling economic crisis in Zaire resulted in a severe decline in the administrative capacity of the state, but also opened up opportunities for social mobility. Reliance on anthropological methods of intensive fieldwork, personal contacts and collection of case histories created the basis for this study, forming an ethnography of local class formation and struggle.

New Capitalism?: The Transformation of Work

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 From Post-Industrial Society to New Capitalism: The Evolution of a Narrative of Social Change Chapter 2 Technological Change: Autonomization and Dematerialization Chapter 3 Globalization: Mobility, Transnationality and Employment Chapter 4 Theorizing the Labour Market Chapter 5 Globalization, Demographic Change and Social Welfare Chapter 6 The Flexible Labour Market and the Contingent Economy Chapter 7 Long-term Employment and the New Economy Chapter 8 Job Insecurity, Precarious Employment and Manufactured Uncertainty Chapter 9 Conclusion Bibliography

Structural power and political science in the post-crisis era

Abstract: This essay highlights productive ways in which scholars have reanimated the concept of structural power to explain puzzles in international and comparative politics. Past comparative scholarship stressed the dependence of the state on holders of capital, but it struggled to reconcile this supposed dependence with the frequent losses of business in political battles. International relation (IR) scholars were attentive to the power of large states, but mainstream IR neglected the ways in which the structure of global capitalism makes large companies international political players in their own right. To promote a unified conversation between international and comparative political economy, structural power is best conceptualized as a set of mutual dependencies between business and the state. A new generation of structural power research is more attentive to how the structure of capitalism creates opportunities for some companies (but not others) vis-a-vis the state, and the ways in which that structure creates leverage for some states (but not others) to play off companies against each other. Future research is likely to put agents – both states and large firms – in the foreground as political actors, rather than showing how the structure of capitalism advantages all business actors in the same way against non-business actors.

Turbo-Capitalism: Winners And Losers In The Global Economy

Abstract: In this critical analysis of today's free-market capitalism, Edward Luttwak shows how it is vastly different from the controlled capitalism that flourished so successfully from 1945 to the 1980s. Turbo-capitalism is private enterprise liberated from government regulation, unchecked by effective trade unions, unfettered by concerns for employees or investment restrictions, and unhindered by taxation. The winners - the architects and acrobats of techno-organizational change - become much richer; the losers, the majority, become relatively or absolutely poorer and are forced by downsizing to take the traditional jobs of the underclass, more and more of whom end up in prison. Led by the United States, closely followed by Britain, turbo-capitalism is spreading fast throughout Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world (only in France and Japan is there any resistance) without the two great forces that check its enormous power in the United States: a powerful legal system and the stringent rules of American calvinism. Acknowledging the great efficiency of turbo-capitalism, Luttwak provides no solutions but describes in powerful detail the major societal upheavals and inequities it causes and the broad dissatisfaction and anxiety that may result.