Capitalism After the Fall of Communism

This article compares the economics and ethics of Anglo-American individualistic market capitalism with its rivals – notably the 'social market' model and communitarian capitalism. It argues that 'business ethics' is a threat to economic efficiency and does not guarantee higher moral standards in commerce.     

The Purse Strings of Peace

This article examines how commerce promotes peace between states. It diverges from the commercial peace literature and its predominant focus on international trade by looking inside the domestic economy to see how its structure influences conflict. Drawing on selectorate theory, I argue that substantial quantities of public property generate fiscal autonomy for governments, strengthen their hold on the domestic reigns of power, and create opportunities to pursue more aggressive foreign policies. A series of statistical tests shows that greater quantities of publicly held assets increase the likelihood that a state will participate in military conflict. Given that the predominance of privately held property is one of the defining institutions of capitalism, these results support the claim that capitalism promotes peace.     

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.     

Beyond compare? Free market Islamism as ideology

This article explores the ideological relationship between free market capitalism and Islamism. While existing studies have attended to Islam’s engagement with capitalism, less attention has been given to the ideological intimacy of this relationship and, in particular, the increasing presence of radical free market thought in global Islamist politics, or what I have termed ‘libertarian Islamism’. The dominant narrative of Islamism, thus, constricts our understanding of the wider ideological ecology at play in the global political mobilization of Islam. While political Islam is often regarded as being rooted in a broadly leftist intellectual milieu, it has rather encapsulated variant conceptions of liberty, both left and right, and is currently undergoing what one might term a ‘free-market turn’. Within this milieu, a distinctly radical, anti-statist libertarian ideology has also emerged with an intimate relationship to conservative libertarian activists in the West. The presence of libertarian Islamism serves to recalibrate dominant understandings of ‘radical’ Islam and its purportedly fractious ideological relationship with the West.     

“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.     

The Process of Globalisation and Class Transformation in the West

In this article the contemporary international capitalist system is examined and a rising New International Division of Labour is defined. It is argued that while in previous epochs an international market of commodities existed, during the post-war period a global network of closely interconnected production units and financial institutions has been created as well. But while production, finance and commerce are decentralised worldwide, their management and control is centralised in a few headquarters in the advanced capitalist countries. A colossal concentration of economic power and control over the world means of production, resources and labour force, unprecedented in the history of capitalism, is taking place. Information Technology is shown to be the current day means of centralisation of organisation and control of both material and service production by capital. It, at the same time, allocates work and degrades its knowledge content. Coupled with the prevalence of services in western society, it changes the features of its class structure.     

Free software production as critical social practice

Abstract

This paper analyses the phenomenon of free and open source software (FOSS) in the light of Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello's The new spirit of capitalism. It argues that collaborative FOSS production by volunteer software developers is a species of critical social practice in Boltanski and Chiapello's sense: rooted in resistance to capitalist social relations, and yet also a source of values that justify the new routes to profitability associated with contemporary network capitalism. Advanced via collective projects that are sustained by hacker norms and privately legislated ‘copyleft’ law, the FOSS ethos is apparently antithetical to private property-based accumulation. Yet it can be shown to embody the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ in its most distilled form; moreover FOSS developers have instituted new forms of property and new modes of profit creation around software that are in the process of being adapted for use in other economic sectors. Meanwhile, the private law constraints on profit-seeking that have emerged from the FOSS movement are counteracting some of the social pathologies that accompany network capitalism only to consolidate others. The paper concludes by identifying likely bases for a renewal of critique given these realities.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Alasdair MacIntyre: Social Practices, Marxism and Ethical Anti-Capitalism

Alasdair MacIntyre's concept of social practice sits at the core of his account of the virtue-fostering forms of resistance to capitalism, liberalism and the modern (un)democratic state. However, while this concept was articulated, in part, as a response to perceived weaknesses with Marx's analysis of working-class revolutionary praxis, and although MacIntyre has criticised Marx for the paucity of his theorisation of such practice, he has himself only gestured towards concrete instances of his alternative. This essay engages with one of these examples: MacIntyre's suggestion that Welsh mining communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should be numbered among those modern communities within which the virtues have flourished. I explore some of the ramifications of this example for MacIntyre's broader ethical theory through the lens of a discussion of the continuities and breaks between his youthful Marxism and his more mature thought. I suggest that this example problematises his concept of practice in a way that implies a space for reconciliation between his mature thought and his earlier Marxism.     

“The River Told Me”: Rethinking Intersectionality from the World of Berta Cáceres

ABSTRACT

Inspired by the spiritual and political journey of Berta Cáceres (1973-2016), a fierce Lenca woman leader from Honduras who died in defense of sacred indigenous rivers, the essay aims to rethink the frame of intersectionality that is axiomatic in feminist theorizing and activism. Against the backdrop of the January 2017 Women’s March in the USA, I interrogate inclusionary accounts that equate intersectionality with a pre-existing unity among women that leaves power differentials intact. I recover the intersection as an index of invisibility and violence by drawing on the intimate connections that Berta foregrounded between multiple structures of domination. However, I argue that attending to the relational histories and geographies of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, is insufficient for imagining more just futures that are hospitable to subaltern horizons. Feminist praxis must also interrogate the Western liberal conceptions of agency and human-nature relations that undergird its intersectional analysis. Through an exploration of the indigenous cosmovisions and transnational grassroots solidarity that coalesce under Berta’s name, I point to the importance of cultivating a disposition to listening to incommensurable worlds where rivers tell stories and call upon us. This is an ecofeminist vision capable of rooting intersectional analysis within decolonizing relations and alternatives.     

Beyond the Developmental State: The Cultural Roots of "Guerrilla Capitalism" in Taiwan

This article seeks to contribute to the emerging literature on moving "beyond the developmental state" by tracing the important role of "guerrilla capitalism" in Taiwan's political economy. The success of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with little linkage to the state in Taiwan strongly suggests that more than state leadership must have been involved in the island's "economic miracle." The SMEs are quite important for the overall economy, especiaiiy the export sector where they have long accounted for more than half of total exports. Their success has resulted from the practice of "guerrilla capitalism" which includes aggressive and even audacious pursuit of business opportunities, extreme flexibility in rapidly filling even small orders, atten tion to quality and design, audacious bidding, participation in complex networks of subcontracting, and only partial observation at best of government regulations and international laws, such as those regarding intellectual property rights. The emergence of guerrilla capifalism, in turn, can be explained by the long-sfanding challenge in Chinese history to "official" Confucianism by a "heterodox counterculture" that is quite conducive to entrepreneurship and small-scale business activities.     

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.     

Socialism Without Growth

In this article, I take issue with (eco-)socialists who embrace an ecological critique of growth under capitalism, but remain supportive or agnostic of the prospects for socialist growth. First, I argue that economic growth is ecologically unsustainable—whether it is capitalist or socialist does not make a difference. Second, I claim that economic growth rests to a large extent on exploitation. While it is logically possible to have non-exploitative socialist growth, in practice it is unlikely. Third, socialist policies are likely to have a negative effect on growth. A transition to socialism is a transition beyond growth.     

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.