Capitalism

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

Inequality in developed countries and Latin America: coordinated, liberal and hierarchical systems

Abstract: The first half of this article explains the enduring disparities in inequality and welfare states across advanced economies in terms of varieties of capitalism and political systems. Where capitalism is coordinated, as in much of northern Europe, political systems are consensus-based with proportional representation (PR); consensus politics and coordinated capitalism reinforce each other in generating relatively low inequality and strong welfare states. Where capitalism is liberal – the Anglo-Saxon countries – political systems are competitive with majoritarian voting: mutual reinforcement of politics and capitalism generates relatively inegalitarian outcomes and safety-net welfare states. The second half of the article develops a model of hierarchical capitalism to show how this reinforces and is reinforced by a Latin American political system with majoritarian presidents and PR legislatures to generate high and persistent inequality and reduce development options.

Introduction: elites: remembered in capitalism and forgotten by social sciences

Abstract: By any account, the last twenty years of the 20th century have seen the most rapid and dramatic shift of income, assets and resources in favour of the very rich that has ever taken place in human history. This ‘raiding of the commons’ has been most evident in the former communist nations, especially Russia after 1989, where an arriviste plutocracy emerged in little over a decade from the hasty, even squalid, privatization of state assets and public resources. We can see the rise of the ‘super rich’ in the ‘old’ capitalist nations, especially those such as the UK and USA, which have enthusiastically embraced neo-liberalism from the early 1980s. In both countries the top one or five percent of income earners have more or less doubled their share of total income since the early 1980s and we have now almost returned to pre-1914 levels of income inequality (Atkinson, 2003). There is no historical precedent for such regressive redistribution within one generation without either change in legal title or economic disaster such as hyper-inflation. For reasons which nobody yet understands, corporate chief executive officers have for two decades obtained real wage increases of 20 per cent each year and the much larger number of intermediaries earning multi-million $/£ incomes in and around finance has hugely increased. Where, however, are the social theorists who focus on these processes as central to understanding the contemporary dynamics of social change? As the rich draw away and inhabit their ever more privileged worlds, one might expect a revival of elite studies from contemporary critical writers who are concerned about such developments. After all, earlier generations of theorists were in no doubt about the importance of elites and elite formations for understanding the social dynamics of their nations. Max Weber’s first major sociological work was an account of the challenge to patriarchal relations on Prussian landed estates at the end of the 19th century (see Poggi, 2005, chapter 1). Karl Marx’s focus on the ruling class needs no demonstration, and his famous chapter on ‘Primitive Accumulation’ in Capital (Marx, 1961), which focuses on how a new capitalist class enriched itself from the enclosure of land and thereby set in train the process of capital accumulation, certainly repays reading in light of current events. Other early 20th century sociologists, notably Pareto and Mosca, also saw the nature of elites as fundamental to understanding the characteristics of their societies (see the discussion in Scott, 1996: chapter 5). Yet, from the middle

Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870-1979

Abstract: Over the last century, North Sumatra has been the site of one of the most intensive and successful pursuits of foreign agricultural enterprise of any developing country. Colonial expansion by Europeans resulted in overt--sometimes violent-- conflict between capital and labor, as workers resisted plantation interests. "Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870-1979" is a fascinating ethnographic history that analyzes how popular resistance actively molded both the form of colonialism and the social, economic, and political experience of the Javanese laboring communities on Sumatra's plantation borders."A well-crafted and expertly researched history . . . exhibits a brand of intellectual integrity that is rare in a work so critical and this makes it a major contribution to the literature of the impact of imperialism and capitalism on the traditional populations of the Third World." --Peasant Studies"From written historical records, as well as from very broad and intensive field work, Ann Laura Stoler has pieced together an eminently rich and meaningful episode of Indonesian history . . . . What makes for its quality is the remarkable balance, maintained throughout the study, between description, analysis and interpretation."--Pacific AffairsAnn Laura Stoler is Professor of Anthropology and History and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, and the author of "Race and the Education of Desire: A Colonial Reading of Foucault's The History of Sexuality." She is the recipient of the 1992 Harry J. Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies from the Association of Asian Studies.

The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa

Abstract: Editors' Introduction to the Second Edition - Peter C W Gutkind and Immanuel Wallerstein Editors' Introduction to the First Edition - Peter C W Gutkind and Immanuel Wallerstein Three Stages of African Involvement in the World-Economy - Immanuel Wallerstein Phases in the Development of South African Capitalism - Philip Ehrensaft From Settlement to Crises The Political Economy of the African Peasantry and Modes of Production - Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch Rural Political Economy of Africa - Lionel Cliffe Taking the Part of Peasants - Gavin Williams Rural Development in Nigeria and Tanzania From Peasants to Workers in Africa - Robin Cohen The Evolution of the Class Structure in Africa - Bernard Magubane The Congruence of Political Economies and Ideologies in Africa - Claude Ake Southern Africa in Crisis - Ben Turok and Kees Maxey Socioeconomic Effects of Two Patterns of Foreign Capital Investments - Tamas Szentes A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Political Economy of Africa - Chris Allen