French capitalism ­transformed,yet still a third variety of capitalism

Rather than one or two varieties of capitalism, this paper argues that there are still at least three in Europe, following along lines of development from the three post-war models: market capitalism, characteristic of Britain; managed capitalism, typical of Germany; and state capitalism, epitomized by France. While France’s state capitalism has been transformed through market-oriented reforms, it has become neither market capitalist nor managed capitalist. Rather, it has moved from ‘state-led’ capitalism to a kind of ‘state-enhanced’ capitalism, in which the state still plays an active albeit much reduced role, where CEOs exercise much greater autonomy, and labour relations have become much more market-reliant.     

The Wages of Intimate and Anonymous Capitalism

The spirit of capitalism is a sentimental reflection of its practice, and the practice envisioned by the likes of Adam Smith and other early proponets of capitalism assumed an intimate commerce among friends and neighbors. With the advent of the industrial revolution and the development of the modern corporation, commercial relationships increasingly became anonymous, with the result that the sentimal forces that once shaped capitalism withered, leaving a crude, uncomplicated form of self-interest in their place.Drawing on economic history, classic works of political economy, and personal interviews, I tell the story of these two competing visions of capitalism, the intimate capitalism of the old world (a phenomenon still visible in small town America, today) and the anonymous capitalism of contemporary commerce.     

The Neoconservative Critiques of and Reconciliation with Capitalism

The neoconservatives have fallen out of favor among Washington policy-makers under President Obama as well as among conservatives themselves. However, neoconservatives’ impact on contemporary political discourse remains significant. This article is about the evolution of neoconservatives’ thinking about capitalism. Specifically, it is about neoconservatives’ ideological journey from right-wing critics of capitalism to one of its most ardent defenders. At the heart of their writing about capitalism are two distinct, but related cultural critiques of capitalism. In their view, capitalism creates a culture that is decadent, effeminate, and preoccupied with immediate gratification. This culture threatens the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of patriotic self-sacrifice. The Protestant ethic legitimizes capitalist accumulation and inequality, while the heroic virtues made the US a global superpower. Through supply-side economics and American empire the neoconservatives sought to recover both, the cultural foundations of capitalism located in the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of a global superpower. Neoconservative writings on capitalism are key to understanding the shift in the discourse on the economy, the welfare state, and foreign policy over the last thirty years.     

Thoughts on building a just market society

This paper explores the tensions that exist in contemporary society between the individual as citizen and the individual as consumer. The power of the global market place can potentially drive the polity, so it is necessary to raise questions about the means to secure a healthy civic and political life. Financial capitalism, knowledge capitalism and social capitalism are explored as a means of understanding the nature of modern market capitalism. Can financial knowledge and social capitalism be turned into a virtuous circle of innovation, growth and social progress? The paper suggests that trust is the glue, the cement of a just society, and the dimensions of this trust are explored. Finally, the paper examines the nature of stakeholder society. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

From Provocation to Challenge: Degrowth,Capitalism and the Prospect of “Socialism without Growth”: A Commentary on Giorgios Kallis

Giorgios Kallis argues that Degrowth, as a pluralistic convergence of both theoretical perspectives and social movements, is part of a renewal of the critique of capitalism based on the ecological contradictions of this social order. In “Socialism without Growth” Kallis engages with other, more classical, approaches that have examined the contradictions of capitalism and the material conditions for a future, ecologically viable postcapitalist social order. After a quick exposition of the lineaments of a general theory of surplus and accumulation based on Bataille, Polanyi and Georgescu-Roegen, Kallis mobilizes Marx’s theory of accumulation to examine the growth drivers of capitalism. I will argue that economic growth in advanced capitalism can best be explained as a relation that articulates capitalist overproduction to overconsumption, and outline some analytical tools that such an explanation can provide to those interested in understanding the specific growth drivers of contemporary capitalism and their social and ecological consequences. This implies moving beyond the model outlined by Marx and mobilizing concepts and categories developed by the over-accumulation approach to capitalism, those developed by some of Degrowth’s most vocal Marxist critics, such as Foster. Through my dialogue with Kallis I will try and bridge these two approaches.     

关于社会主义的世界历史前景的几个重大问题

社会主义代替资本主义是历史发展的必然趋势.战后资本主义的新变化没有改变这一趋势,只是加速了这一趋势;苏联的解体、东欧的剧变不可能否定这一趋势,它只是表明了一种社会主义模式的失败和社会主义必然胜利的曲折性;信息社会的来临也决不意味着资本主义的永世长存,相反,它为社会主义战胜资本主义准备了更为坚实的技术基础,不仅如此,信息社会走向更高级的智能社会的发展趋势,印证着共产主义必然实现的真理性.     

资本主义文化价值观二重性剖析

马克思主义经典作家认为,资本主义文化价值观具有尖锐的内在矛盾和冲突,具有鲜明的二重性,它必然被更高阶段的文化价值观所代替。经典作家的这一观点为我们正确认识资本主义文化价值观提供了根本的方法论指导。而中外许多学者对资本主义文化价值观的二重性也进行过深入的分析和批判,为我们提供了诸多有益的借鉴。在经济全球化趋势日益加深、我国正在积极构建社会主义核心价值体系的今天,科学认识资本主义文化价值观的二重性具有十分重要的意义。     

Ecofeminism and Globalisation: A Critical Appraisal

Ecofeminism offers a useful yet limited framework through which to critique globalisation. Ecofeminism claims that the domination of women and of nature are intrinsically linked. Material ecofeminists, in particular, focus on the material conditions of women's lives locating the source of this twin domination in patriarchal capitalism. These ecofeminists provide insights into the impacts of globalisation on women but their analysis of the causes of globalisation are limited. They identify globalisation as an outgrowth of patriarchal capitalism, insisting on the primacy of gender as the determinant of social organisation and arguing that it is the dichotomy between production and reproduction that essentially defines capitalism. However, the rise of modern capitalism has been more convincingly described by those who focus on the domination of workers, the role of the market economy, and the enrolment of all sections of society through the propagation of the work ethic and the allure of consumerism.     

How and why capitalisms differ

Abstract

The variety of capitalism school (VOC) and regulation theory (TR) are both analyses of the diversity of contemporary national economies. If VOC challenges the primacy of liberal market economies (LME) and stresses the existence of an alternative form, i.e. coordinated market economies (CME), TR starts from a long-term analysis of the transformation of capitalism in order to search for alternatives to the Fordist regime that emerged after the post-Second World War era. Both approaches make intensive use of international comparisons, challenge the role of market as the exclusive coordinating mechanism, and raise doubts about the existence of a ‘one best way’ for capitalism. Finally, they stress that globalization does deepen the competitive advantage associated with each institutional architecture. Nevertheless, their methodology differs: VOC stresses private firm governance, whereas TR considers the primacy of systemic and macroeconomic coherence. Whereas for VOC there exist only LME and CME, TR recurrently finds at least four brands of capitalism: market-led, meso-corporatist, social democrat and State-led. VOC seems to consider that the long-term stability of each capitalism can be challenged only by external shocks, but TR stresses the fact that the very success of a regulation mode ends up in a structural crisis, largely endogenous.     

Das parteipolitische Paradox des Finanzmarktkapitalismus. Aktionärsorientierte Reformen in Deutschland, Frankreich, Italien und den USA

Addressing the debate over the political dynamics of different varieties of capitalism, this article tests the partisan hypothesis in the field of corporate governance. The state of research on distributional consequences of shareholder oriented corporate governance and on institutional complementarity between corporate governance and labor relations suggests that the center-left should oppose shareholder oriented reforms. In fact, our comparison of reforms during the last 15 years reveals the contrary. In Germany, France, Italy and the US, the center-left turned out the be the driving force behind the reforms, while the center-right parties tended to protect organized capitalism, state capitalism, family capitalism, and managerialism. The comparison allows specification of the impulses that made the center-left push for reforms while making the center-right protect traditional institutional arrangements. We present a conflict model that, beside class conflicts and insider/outsider-conflicts, includes conflicts over managerial control. The recent economic reforms cannot be understood without consideration of the significance of this conflict line.     

Capitalism and democracy

Abstract. This article attempts to examine the supposed causal connection between capitalism and democracy as assumed by Schumpeter, among others. An intellectual link might be traceable to the Utilitarians; but no causal connection between corporate capitalism and democracy emerges. In general they are separate concepts. Any indirect association arises from their 'liberal' roots.     

历史唯物主义重建之下的民主观念

伍德把民主视为超越资本主义的一种力量。她虽然肯定在资本主义条件下,政治民主有所发展,但更为根本的是,经济并不是民主的,而是充满压迫与强制的。因此,民主的发展,必然要超出资本主义社会。为此,她对历史唯物主义的一些基本范畴进行了重新思考,包括经济"基础"与上层建筑的关系。她不同意把经济与政治视为截然分离的两个领域,而是把资本主义社会所特有的这种分离视为资本主义本身政治功能的分化。伍德的民主理论,是力图从马克思主义视角来回应当代资本主义的民主理论,与所谓的后马克思主义有着重大的差别。     

Marxism Beyond the Economy and Exploitation Beyond the Wage

Since its inception Marxism has largely operated with a narrow definition of the economy which closely resembles capitalism’s own, focusing on wage labor as the pre-eminent example of capitalist relations of labor. A century-long series of challenges from heterodox radical economists, including those based in feminism and anti-colonial theory, has yet to broaden this definition of capitalism, but the fading importance of wage labor and the advent of new forms of precarious labor relations may allow us to break the hold of restrictive ideas of the economy. A larger, more comprehensive concept of economics locates value production and material exploitation in many forms of labor in addition to waged work, and provides a theoretical platform for building solidarity among seemingly disparate movements and constituencies. Marxism can and must incorporate critiques if it is to have continuing relevance. In fact, Marx’s original understanding of capitalism included the concepts of primitive accumulation and the reproduction of labor power, allowing broader concepts of capitalist exploitation to be incorporated into the Marxist worldview. New insights into the essential nature of capitalism and new possibilities for organizing and change may emerge from this paradigm shift.     

“Your Money or Your Life”: Money and Socialist Transformation

This article argues against a common-sense logic that money can assist in socialist transformation, espouses a non-market ecosocialist position and urges greater clarity in associated discourse. Analyses of capitalist operations show that growth is not simply a characteristic tendency of capitalism but rather an essential outgrowth of its deficiencies. Marx identified these deficiencies, indicating that the end of capitalism was an end to money, that is, exchange value. Money is not a tool but evolves as a code of conduct to structure social relationships that reproduce inequity, competition, distrust and alienation. Indeed, the existence of capitalists and capitalism without money is inconceivable and impossible in practice. Money refusal and the development and defence of fair non-monetary forms of livelihood continuously critique capital and demonstrate alternative (or at least “hybrid”) socialist forms. Contemporary anti-capitalists have developed constructive skills to move beyond money and capitalism in their practical development of “green materialism.” However, a wide-ranging discourse remains to be had on moving beyond money sooner rather than later. The final section of this paper sketches a non-market ecosocialist vision.     

French Corporate Governance in the New Global Economy: Mechanisms of Change and Hybridisation within Models of Capitalism

This article analyses the implications of the internationalisation of capital markets, and the influx of Anglo-Saxon institutional investors, for the French model of capitalism. Its central contention is that the global convergence thesis misrepresents contemporary evolutions because it pays insufficient attention to mechanisms of change within models of capitalism. Secondly, framing analysis in terms of hybridisation and fragmentation of national models, rather than convergence, offers greater explanatory purchase over the French model, constitutes a more accurate characterisation, and helps avoid the 'convergence or persistence' impasse within models of capitalism analysis. In exploring French corporate governance, it emphasises the importance of specifying the role of institutional mechanisms as transmission belts of change as a precursor to an assessment of how far shifts in international political economic context bring about changes within French capitalism. Focusing on financial market regulation regime, new legislation in corporate governance and company law, and the market for corporate control as three key potential mechanisms of change, it finds that pre-existing norms and structures endure, mediating the nature of a national political economy's articulation with the international context. Hybridisation and recombination of capitalist institutions drawn from different models provide a far more persuasive account than convergence.     

Why Steve Bannon Is Not a Fascist

Steve Bannon has often been accused of fascism by his opponents. His real intellectual affiliation, however, is with the first generation of American neo-conservatives of the 1960s, people like Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol. Like them he criticizes immoral elites and an amoral version of capitalism in the name of traditional values. His criticism is a symptom of the long-running battle between Mind and Money, the war between intellectuals and capitalism.     

Democracy and Capitalism: Collective Action Theory and Structural Analysis

The problem which I address in this paper consists in the connection between democracy and capitalism. I begin by specifying a model of actor theory which indicates a number of methods of achieving co-operation between actors I then review different structural theories of democracy which link up with these methods. Against this background I then seek to clarify—and to some extent evaluate—the arguments which different researchers have adduced in support of the thesis that capitalism is a prerequisite for democracy.     

近代黑龙江民族森林工业发展的历史原因初探

近代黑龙江森林工业是黑龙江林业经济史研究中不可或缺的一个组成部分。近代以来，伴随着外来资本主义的侵略，黑龙江林业经济卷入了世界资本主义经济的漩涡之中，迅速走上了近代化的发展道路。在这一过程中，俄、目的巨额资本输出依靠本国侵略势力始终在黑龙江森林工业中占据垄断地位，而本省的民族资本利用一切发展机会奋起抗争，走出了一条不平坦的发展道路。本文就近代黑龙江民族森林工业利用区域性独有的丰富自然资源不仅没有垮掉，而且保持稳定发展态势的历史原因进行了初步探讨，分析了国际国内特殊历史时期的有利因素。     

Stakeholdling and Corporate Governance in the UK

The 'stakeholder economy' forms a central part of the New Labour programme for reforming both the public and private sectors. The present paper considers the potential of stakeholding to address the weaknesses of corporate governance in the UK. It concludes that stakeholder governance is a concept which owes its appeal to its imprecision, and is unworkable in practice, and that its deployment, rather than imposing accountability on capitalism, merely represents an attempt to make free market capitalism look more acceptable.