On the Postcapitalist Nature of Learning Spaces

This paper uses the concept of learning spaces to reflect on the pedagogies that will help humans acquire the wisdom to support a transition to a durable postcapitalist socioeconomy. Since Plato’s Academy dedicated “academic” spaces have been set aside from economic life. While humans naturally learn all the time, access to higher status learning remains restricted. Most learning is informal and outside academic spaces. An example is given from a novel published more than 100 years ago of an unpromising workplace becoming a space for deep learning about socialist resistance. I will suggest that all spaces occupied by humans at every scale from the room to the globe, and not just those of formal education, are learning spaces. The question is how they can be linked up to form a global space of exchange that could be called a learning society or, alternatively, postcapitalism, socialism, communism, or the society of associated producers. The ideas outlined here were presented in a module on Geographies of Education that I designed and taught at the University of Brighton until my recent retirement.     

Privatization Within the Chinese State

This article suggests that China's public and collective enterprises have contributed to its economic growth and socio-political stability. The efficiency of these enterprises has been improved not through the privatization of the state (transferring public ownership to private hands) but privatization within the state (decentralization, appropriation, and marketization). This article first provides statistics to juxtapose the growth of the Chinese economy to the continued expansion of public and collective enter-prises. I t then explains the causes and benefits of privatization within the Chinese state. A case study of privatization within the state in Shanghai City follows. The article concludes that China's economic reform has been a transformation of socialism, not a transition to capitalism, and that it is a less costly but more effective alternative to the privatization of the state approach. The former communist countries in Europe have painfully followed this latter approach and have suffered from its political, social, and economic consequences.     

Controlling money during socialist economic reform: the Chinese experience

Contrary to the easy job that some conservative economists imagine, the task faced by the socialist monetary authority in controlling the money supply during economic reform is a daunting one, as recent experience in China indicates. It is difficult to estimate the demand for money in the mixed system that has emerged from the reform process, with all its structural disequilibria. Given prevailing economic and political interferences, keeping the money supply within targets is also beset with problems. Monetary issues have not received much attention in the conventional discourse about socialist economics, before or during reform. Hence the Chinese central bank often has to take uninformed action on events that it cannot effectively control. The results could be very serious, even tragic. In any case, it seems that the bank should not shoulder the main blame.     

The Political Economy of Transition in Post-Socialist Systems: The Case of the Baltic States

The nature of the failed socialist systems calls for a transition which is as comprehensive in its objectives as were the systems themselves before they failed. Hence, the transition to democracy in the post-socialist systems cannot be treated as separate from the transition to a market economy and national independence. The critical part of the transition is the economic reforms inasmuch as the institutions of the planned economy are the major power base for the conservative elites. To be successful, the economic transition must be able - in both the short and the long term - to command political support, to achieve social acceptance of the distributional consequences involved and to be compatible with democratic institutions. Analysis reveals that in the case of the Baltic states widespread support for the transition to a market economy can be detected and that the democratically elected governments have so far been fairly active in establishing a legal framework for transition, but appear unable to implement the necessary stabilization policy. The reforms have produced strong social protests, and the governments have been under pressure to maintain social guarantees during the period of transition. The non-Baltic minorities in particular defend previous social privileges and are distressed by their uncertain status after independence. The ultimate outcome of political and economic transition in the Baltic states, therefore, remains in doubt.     

The housing system of the former Soviet Union: Why do the soviets need housing markets?

Abstract

The administrative‐command system that had been in full force in the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1990 had its own logic and internal consistency. It is now common knowledge that this economic system has flaws that led to a deepening secular decline over the past three decades. Because of ideological reasons, and an inadequate economic understanding of the capacity of their system to be liberalized, many reformers sought a third way between central planning and markets. The consensus today is that there is no third way. Among the former Soviet republics, Russia has just embarked on market‐oriented reforms and is facing a difficult and unstable transition because central planning mechanisms have ceased to function, but markets are not yet in place. This transition is particularly problematic for housing, which is a very severely distorted economic sector.

The international evidence on market economies that has accumulated over the past 20 years shows that, when housing sector distortions exist, they are predominantly found on the supply side. In socialist economies, however, housing is part of the compensation provided by enterprises and other employers. As a result housing suffers from demand‐side distortions in addition to the supply‐side problems caused by the absence of land markets, vague property rights, and burdensome urban regulations. The housing sector is already so large and distorted in these highly urban economies that overall economic reforms cannot succeed without housing reforms. In addition to presenting an overview of Soviet housing, this paper provides comparative evidence indicating that, among all the distorted socialist housing systems, Russia's probably is the most impaired. The basic elements of a market‐oriented strategy to improve housing are briefly presented.     

A Response to Giorgios Kallis’ Notions of Socialism and Growth

ABSTRACT

Kallis’ discussion of degrowth in a transition to socialism is misleading and substantially detached from the current context, especially with recurring cataclysms due to climate change and the requirements to implement a programme to prevent even worse outcomes while there is a narrowing window of opportunity to do so. The fallacies of Kallis’ arguments originate in his misinformed account of economic and physical growth relative to thermodynamics and ecological processes, his feeble grasp of capitalist relations, and his gross misrepresentation of socialist, and specifically ecosocialist, thought.     

Green Devaluation: Disruption,Divestment, and Decommodification for a Green Economy

This paper argues that taking up questions of value can help political ecologists and economists develop a more powerful analysis of the green economy, as it introduces new urban, industrial, and technological dimensions into a self-identified green capitalism. More specifically, I maintain that processes of green devaluation, decommodification, and techno-industrial replacement are as important in understanding green economic development as new value enclosure and green growth. Twenty-first-century green economic politics have been marked by Schumpeterian ambitions and zero-sum intra-capitalist struggles, alongside a more general hardening of anti-fossil fuel industry politics from both grassroots climate justice activists and, increasingly, mainstream investors. I explore three interrelated initiatives—disruptive innovation in Silicon Valley cleantech, the U.S. fossil fuel divestment movement, and the global financial industry’s stranded assets organizing—as windows into these struggles. Themes of devaluation, obsolescence (both technological and “moral”), and (more or less absolute) decommodification carry through this discussion as activists struggle to translate quantitative advances against fossil fuels into a more profound qualitative break. Understanding these fights is essential to developing more effective engaged scholarship on climate change and a just energy transition.     

Policy planning and management dialogue with countries in transition

The economic and social transformation of the socialist state is a central concern of public policy planning. This article discusses three aspects of this challenge: the growth of policy interventions in the welfare state; modalities of public policies; and the organization of public policy planning. Modernization of public management in the west underscores the respective rationalities of state and market. The modern welfare state is now under financial pressure, cutbacks proceed and privatization and deregulation take hold. The author appraises these trends and their implications for countries in transition. Emphasis is placed on the need to demarcate public and private whilst at the same time building in social protection through public participation in policy planning.     

Prospects for Democratic Transition in China

The core tenet of modernization theory is that as nation-states develop both economically and socially, they will inevitably transition to democracy. Yet, despite 30-years of robust economic development and growth, including increases in civil society, democracy remains elusive in China. In this article, we conduct a critical and empirical analysis to understand the challenges and possibilities of democratization in China. Should China transition to democracy, it will most likely occur through a top-down process that transforms the state and its institutions of government or through a cooperative pact by joint forces of top-down and bottom-up processes. Under either a converted or cooperative transition, the modeling in this study strongly suggests that China is likely to be successful should it undertake the process of democratization.     

以民主法制规范社会主义市场经济(上)

社会主义市场经济是中国经济矛盾演变的必要阶段.作为经济体制,它是社会主义制度的具体化,因此必须坚持社会主义原则,其核心就是民主.民主原则的制度化,形成社会主义法制体系.实行社会主义市场经济是克服旧的统制经济体制缺陷的历史性变革,其关键就在于以民主法制规范经济生活的各个层面和环节,并以执法、立法机构予以保证,由此促进经济的健康有序发展.     

Capitalism, socialism, and democracy: An empirical inquiry

Abstract. Some prominent economists have argued that the structure of a nation's economic life – capitalist or socialist - helps to shape its political institutions. Though its importance seems self-evident, scholars have not yet integrated this idea into the literature of empirical democratic theory. Drawing on previous work, we formulate four propositions about the relationship between economic structure and political democracy. Economic structure does in fact mould political forms, but not in a simple, linear fashion. Rather, it does so in a more complex, non-linear manner, a relationship we label the 'mixed-economy' model. This relationship survives and flourishes in the face of extensive challenges. Its implication is simple: democratic political practice reaches a maximum under moderate amounts of public direction of economic affairs, but suffers at the extremes of both unfettered capitalism and socialism.     

制约我国社会活力的因素分析

社会主义和谐社会是充满活力的社会,这种活力不仅表现在经济增长的速度和强劲势头上,更重要的表现在能够保证经济及社会的可持续发展的制度上,表现在社会民主政治机制状态完善上,集中体现在社会成员主动性、积极性、创造性的充分发挥和切实保证上。因此,对制约社会活力的诸因素加以分析,将对构建社会主义和谐社会的实践具有重要意义。     

Does economic inequality undermine political equality? Testing two common assumptions

In recent years, scholars have expressed concern that democratic political systems are more responsive to rich citizens than to poor citizens under conditions of economic inequality. However, it is unclear whether economic inequality leads to unequal influence on government. Moreover, despite claims that proportional representation reduces inequalities in representation, there is no evidence that it does. I test these two prominent claims by connecting two types of citizens’ preferences to the composition of government in non-presidential systems using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) dataset. I find that rich citizens gain better representation in government than the poor more often than the reverse. However, I find no evidence of an association between economic inequality and inequalities in representation or that proportional representation influences income gaps in representation.     

Measuring Ethnic Fractionalization in Africa

In most studies of the impact of ethnic diversity on economic growth, diversity is hypothesized to affect growth through its effect on macroeconomic policies. This article shows that most measures of ethnic diversity (including the commonly used ELF measure) are inappropriate for testing this hypothesis. This is because they are constructed from enumerations of ethnic groups that include all of the ethnographically distinct groups in a country irrespective of whether or not they engage in the political competition whose effects on macroeconomic policymaking are being tested. I present a new index of ethnic fractionalization based on an accounting of politically relevant ethnic groups in 42 African countries. I employ this measure (called PREG, for P olitically R elevant E thnic G roups) to replicate Easterly and Levine's influential article on Africa's "growth tragedy." I find that PREG does a much better job of accounting for the policy-mediated effects of ethnic diversity on economic growth in Africa than does ELF.     

Traditions of Populism

This paper argues that the notion of a ‘Keynesian revolution’ in economic policy in twentieth-century Britain as commonly presented in the literature is misleading. The conception of such a revolution is dependent on implausible notions of how economic policy is made, above all on an exaggeration of the role of economic theory. It is contended that such a stress on the theory allegedly adhered to by policy makers is complicit with some common socialist arguments on the role of ‘ideology’ in policy making, and that this leads to an inadequate analysis of the constraints facing socialist economic policy.     

Is China’s rise now stalling?

The variations on power transition theory so widely used to frame analysis of U.S.–China relation tend to assume the inevitability or at least strong probability of China surpassing the United States in economic power if not necessarily military power. In the terminology of social psychology’s attribution theory, China is imputed with the identity of a state that is inevitably rising. The Chinese Communist Party encourages this attribution among Chinese people and foreigners. But China’s economic rise – the foundation of its comprehensive rise – appears to have entered an inflection point in the mid-2010s and may now be stalling. In critical respects, China increasingly resembles the last two countries that ‘attempted’ a globe-level rise: the unsuccessful cases of postwar Japan and the Soviet Union. China’s labor force is shrinking; the country relies excessively on unsustainable debt increases to fuel economic growth; and pollution is seriously harming public health. But even if China’s rise conclusively stalls, it may take quite some time before the Chinese public and outside observers recognize the new reality because of intrinsic biases in the cognitive logic of attributing identities to actors.     

Declarations of independence 1

Abstract

With the recent landslide electoral triumph of Tony Blair's New Labour in Britain, the question of the degree of convergence between Labour and the Conservatives in opposition takes on even greater strategic and political significance. It is generally undisputed that the terms of political debate in contemporary Britain have been altered markedly in recent years, and that this is not unrelated to Labour's self‐styled “modernisation” in the face of four consecutive election defeats. More contentious, however, is the interpretation of this trend. Has Labour abandoned its socialist and social democratic traditions, re‐projecting itself as an essentially conservative, even Thatcher‐ite, party, or has it managed to develop a novel, dynamic and modernising social democracy for new times? In this paper I seek to provide a benchmark against which such propositions can be evaluated, assessing the extent of bipartisan convergence since 1992. On the basis of comparisons of policy commitments at the 1992 and 1997 general elections, I argue that there has indeed been significant convergence between the parties, that this convergence has been driven principally by Labour, and that Britain is witnessing the emergence of a new bipartisan consensus. Such an interpretation is further reinforced by a consideration of revisions to policy since the Tories’ electoral debacle, which would merely seem to confirm the ascendancy of neo‐liberalism in contemporary Britain. I conclude by considering the likely trajectory of social and economic policy under a New Labour administration with a seemingly unassailable parliamentary majority.     

The practice and effect of development planning in Bangladesh

Development planning in Bangladesh has not been conspicuously successful. Neverthless it is essential for the nation to continue to plan its economy. Bangladesh's plans must be explored within the context of the economic and sociopolitical constraints that are placed upon the plan and its implementation. The First Five Year Plan (FFYP) was prepared within the framework of a socialist economy but not implemented accordingly. The attitude of the government was a major factor in the eventual distortion of this plan. The mobilization of national resources and their allocation, land reforms, subsidy measures, and industrial policies pursued by the government appeared to protect group interests rather than following recommendations of the plan. A bitter triangular relationship emerged among the politicians, the bureaucrats and the planners. This can explain why the implementation of the plan fell short of what was minimally expected. Subsequent plans, unlike the FFYP which placed high priority on social sectors, have been formulated in favour of the more productive sectors of agriculture and manufacturing. The outcome has been a modest increase in economic growth, but inequality and poverty have tended to perpetuate themselves. To achieve growth with social equality, planning in Bangladesh appears to need strong public commitment and bureaucratic support, the absence of which may prove to make national development planning ineffective, if not counterproductive.     

“中国模式”之我见

"中国模式"不同于资本主义发展模式,也不同于传统社会主义发展模式,而是一种在经济全球化时代还处在发展过程中的中国特色社会主义发展模式。它从经济层面建构了一种崭新而高效的社会主义基本经济制度,从政治层面建构了一种全新而有效的社会主义基本政治制度,从文化层面则建构了一种开放包容、富有活力的社会主义思想文化体系。理论先行、上下联动、刚柔相济、增量改革是这一模式的基本特征。     

Which democracies prosper? Electoral rules, form of government and economic growth

Electoral rules and form of government have important economic effects, for example on taxation and public spending. However, there are no robust results in the literature when it comes to their effect on economic growth. This paper investigates whether electoral rules and form of government affects economic growth by applying panel data techniques on a very extensive dataset. There is no robust effect of presidentialism or parliamentarism on growth. However, there is very robust evidence for a positive, and quite substantial, effect of Proportional Representation (PR) electoral rules on economic growth. This is partly due to PR systems’ propensity to generate broad-interest policies, like universal education spending, property rights protection and free-trade, rather than special interest economic policies. Also semi-proportional systems seem to enhance growth relative to plural-majoritarian systems.