Poor choice? Smith,Hayek and the moral economy of food consumption

This paper explores the moral economy of food in the United Kingdom via discourses on food bank usage and obesity. It argues that both of these markers of malnutrition were interpreted under the Conservative-led governments of David Cameron (2010–2016) as failings of personal responsibility and identified primarily with the working class, advancing the assumption that poor people make poor choices. Based on a critique of this account, our wider contribution is two-fold. First, we identify the Hayekian lineage of the discourse of personal responsibility, highlighting its utility in facilitating a form of neoliberal market consent through its insistence on self-reliance. Second, we stake out an alternative to this conceptualization through a discussion of Adam Smith’s notion of self-command, which we call interpersonal responsibility.     

The EU’s Emissions Trading System,Part 2: A Political Economy Critique

This is part 2 of a paper that revisits the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in an attempt to take stock of how the system has worked and evaluate it from the standpoint of radical political economy. In part 1 of the paper the basic design, the workings and the outcomes of the scheme were discussed with critical perceptiveness. In particular, the paper revealed the unsatisfactory results of the scheme (even in its own proclaimed aims), including allowances surplus, allowance trades for pure financial profit, low and volatile prices of allowances, windfall profits, extensive use of Kyoto project-based credits, and several malfunctions and instances of fraud. These findings set the ground for part 2 of the paper, which offers a critical assessment of ETS, proclaimed by mainstream analyses as the major vehicle for the transition to a low-carbon economy. In particular, the complications and instabilities created by the increasing financialization of the carbon market are exposed. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of the ETS as a catalyst for investments in clean energy technologies, especially in times of economic crisis, is substantiated. Since the deep embeddedness of the scheme in capitalism risks climate sustainability, the analysis concludes that a more radical transformation of society with an eco-socialist orientation is needed.     

A Green Post-capitalist Alternative to a System of Accumulation: A Bioregional Economy*

This paper explores capital accumulation as the engine of the capitalist mode of production. Accumulation drives the socio-economic damage caused by capitalism, as well as the environmental crises of land use, climate change and resource depletion. It may not be possible to address these problems within a reformed capitalism. Rather, such a goal can only be met within “a practical, workable post-capitalist and post-accumulative ecological economy, an economy by the people, for the people, that is geared to production for need, not for profit” [Smith, R. (2010). “Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?” Real-World Economics Review 53: 28–42., 42]. This paper sets out a post-capitalist alternative, drawing from green economics and Marxian economics, that is, applied at a local and regional level.     

Sudan and the Unbearable Lightness of Islamism: From Revolution to Rentier Authoritarianism

The regime ruling Sudan since 1989 represents a pioneering experiment in the field of Islamist politics, being the first case in which a movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood managed to conquer power and hold on to it for a considerable time. During the late 1990s, internal and external pressures threatened the survival of the regime, leading the ruling class to abandon its ambition to represent a model of revolutionary Islamic governance. Oil exports provided a catalyst for this pragmatic shift, intensifying patronage-based relations at the expense of ideological affiliation. Seen from a political economy perspective, the Sudanese experience proves the flexibility of Islamism as an ideology, but also its failure as a political practice to constitute a real alternative to the authoritarian dynamics that are widespread in the MENA region.     

A Neoliberal Rentier System: New Challenges and Past Economic Trajectories in Iraq

The Islamic State’s conquest of swathes of Iraqi territory, combined with falling oil prices, revealed the fault lines of a model of economic development that made the country extremely vulnerable to the events of 2014. Over the last 13 years, the consolidation of the rentier economy in parallel to the promotion of a neoliberal model – a neoliberal rentier system – has not initiated a process of sustainable economic development. The main factors explaining this missed opportunity can be found in the tensions that exist between the two models and, in particular, between the relative roles of the state and the private sector as drivers of economic development.     

Renegotiating the empire,forging the nation(-state): the Bohemian/Czechoslovakian case through the political–economic thought of Thomas G. Masaryk and Karel Kramář, c. 1890–1920s

This article explores the dilemma of the small Bohemian Lands/Czechoslovak nation(-state) in staying “in” or “out” of the larger Habsburg supranational entity in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. It does so mainly through the language of political economy (on national wealth creation and redistribution) articulated in the opinions and political actions of Czechoslovakia’s two founding statesmen, the first president, Thomas G. Masaryk, and the first prime minister, Karel Krama?. The article argues that their choice of staying “in” the large imperial space was premised upon renegotiating a better political and political–economic deal for the Bohemian Lands, whereas the option of abandoning it and of forging the Czechoslovak nation-state was essentially based on political reasons. And while both advocated an interventionist role for the state in the economy during the imperial period, they considered such a prerogative even more essential for their new nation-state.     

“互联网 +”时代工会工作模式创新研究 —— 以重庆市产业工会和区县工会为例

"互联网+"时代为工会工作带来了前所未有的机遇和挑战。互联网的本质就是链接一切,它的广泛性、交融性、平等性等特点,使其能够更加广泛覆盖和联系社会各方,这与工会工作的群众性极为相似,所以把二者"+"起来,通过不断拓展联系层面、延伸工作触角,使工作更加贴近基层、贴近实际、贴近群众,更好为会员解难事、办实事、做好事。互联网的开放性和全民参与性,也为提高工会组织的覆盖率,提高工会工作效率和增加工会活动的知晓度、参与度和满意度提供了可能性。     

A dilemma for the welfare state: managing the cost for shorter working hours, 1919–2002

The purpose of this article is to study how the Swedish welfare state has managed the cost of shorter working hours. During the twentieth century, several official reports were published in order to produce knowledge about this issue and to deal with the cost for the reform. This article aims to examine the arguments and beliefs of the political economy of the welfare state that emerge from these formulations. An examination of shorter working hours as social policy sheds new light on the relationship between the welfare state and capital, in addition to limits for social policy imposed by the economic system. A reduction of work hours has never been justified as a reform that simply gives more time for leisure and less time for work, but has been assigned a cost that was necessary to manage. The reform was considered possible because it was interpreted as helping to reproduce labor power or capitalism as a whole. It was thought impossible and undesirable when considered to be a threat to this reproduction. This article shows the process of managing the cost for shorter working hours in Sweden and how arguments fundamentally changed over time, although the basic premises remained the same.     

俄罗斯虚拟现实产业发展状况探究

自2016年“虚拟现实产业元年”以来,俄罗斯虚拟现实市场快速发展,形成了以国家与大型企业投资为主,政府部门牵头、高校与科研院所提供智力支持、国企与私营企业平行发展的格局,设备制造、软件研发、内容制作、行业服务等产业链主要环节都涌现了一些优秀企业。国家是虚拟现实产业发展的主要推手,国企和创业企业是实现技术突破的关键力量,企业客户是市场需求主力,消费端客户正逐步扩展。总体来看,与发达国家相比,俄罗斯虚拟现实产业呈现出一种起步较晚,但增速较猛的“后发状态”,发展形势较好。不过,当前还存在研发资金缺乏、产业链完整性欠缺、国家与市场间信息不对称等问题,并受到5G网络建设缓慢、军工技术转民用速度迟滞等多个因素制约。随着世界虚拟现实产业需求的高涨,俄罗斯虚拟现实产业也将快速增长。     

抓住西部大开发机遇 实现四川跨越式发展

西部大开发是四川加快发展的千载难逢的历史机遇。认清四川加快发展的目标,原则、重点及主要措施,对推动农村经济改革与发展具有重要意义。