当代资本主义国家社会主义因素的表现及成因

当代资本主义国家经过一系列调整,出现了一些社会主义因素,突出表现为：资本更趋社会化、经济运行有序化、收入分配公平化、社会福利普遍化、企业管理民主化和政治的民主法制化等。这些社会主义因素在当代资本主义国家内部不断孕育和发展,究其原因,并不是资产阶级的悔悟或恩赐,而是社会生产力的高度发展同资本主义生产关系形成尖锐矛盾的结果,是资本主义国家内工人阶级不断斗争的成果,是当代资本主义借鉴社会主义成就的客观结局,是资产阶级有识之士的明智之举。     

Imperial governance,sovereignty and the management of chronic instability in Africa

An important political consequence of the crisis of capital in the 1970s has been an increasing intensification of informal imperialism within Africa. This paper argues that the advanced capitalist countries again confronted the endemic problem of overcapacity alongside a decline in the rate of profit and that the major neoliberal reforms foisted upon the African continent were part of the spatio-temporal fix that followed. The quotidian management of many African states was not an intended consequence of structural adjustment, but the subsequent perturbations that beset many developing countries after following such policies has led to such a degree of institutional instability that a new form of imperial governance has come into being. Juridical sovereignty has been maintained, but political sovereignty has been severely compromised through the emergence of this neo-imperial governance. Today an array of external actors is embedded in the sinews of these states, setting the general parameters of state policy to such an extent that one can no longer speak of these countries as possessing de facto independence. The rise of these so-called ‘governance states’ and the new emphasis on ‘governance with government’ constitute a new non-territorial, political form of imperialism.     

Sergey Glazyev and the revival of Soviet economics

A veteran Western observer and authority on Russia's political economy examines the recent debate on economic growth in Russia. Focusing on Sergey Glazyev, a prominent statist and nationalist favored by President Vladimir Putin, who reemerged at the top of the public debate, the author discusses the essence of his ideas (state capitalism, Eurasian integration, and expansionary fiscal and monetary policy). He proceeds to analyze the critical response of liberals, citing inter alia objections to loose fiscal and monetary policies. Russia's liberal economists favor broader international integration, whereas Putin is clearly in favor of state capitalism and Eurasian integration. This study ends with an up-to-date politico-economic assessment titled “Where is Putin going?”     

The allure of global games for 'semi-peripheral' polities and spaces: A research agenda

Exploring the increasing propensity of 'semi-peripheral' polities and spaces to host major games as a pivotal strategic response to the exigencies of globalisation, it is contended that pursuing such events is intimately connected to the perceived expansion of 'marketing power' on the one hand, and to the legitimisation and celebration of conceptions of national identity and political orders, on the other. Given that various contingencies bear upon these sought-after outcomes, this analytical framework underscores the significance of questions about global inequality, power and identity to explain the apparent allure of global games. Hence, to determine whether major games deliver the kind of benefits proclaimed by proponents, requires asking questions about (1) identity building and signalling; (2) development and (3) political liberalisation and human rights.     

Germany: a good model for Labour Party renewal?

The policy debate within the British Labour Party after its traumatic electoral defeat in 2010 has been marked by a concern with Germany's system of economic governance as a potential model for renewal. The desirability of emulating key aspects of its institutions of economic democracy (codetermination) has been a particular subject of debate. This article analyses the source of Germany's attraction for many would-be reformers in the Labour movement. It then examines whether emulating German codetermination is either a feasible or appropriate strategy for Labour reformers whose goal is to rebalance power between capital and labour. Codetermination is deeply embedded in a wider set of governance institutions that have been subject to substantial reform in recent years. It concludes that effective institutional borrowing from Germany would require a far broader and more radical set of economic governance reforms than Labour reformers appear to recognise.     

A critical discourse analysis of 2008 advertising campaigns against software piracy in South Africa

Abstract

This article examines the discursive landscape of anti-piracy campaigns run by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) on behalf of major global software companies. Using semiotic techniques, rhetorical analysis and critical discourse analysis, the article demonstrates the primacy of new capitalism in reinforcing the public understanding of global knowledge economy. But the BSA's strategies and tactics are also found to offer mixed discursive messages, possibly attenuating a major objective of any communication campaign: social behaviour change.     

Reconceptualizing financial innovation: frame,conjuncture and bricolage

Abstract

This article argues for a reconceptualization of financial innovation which, as culprit and victim of the current crisis, is now damned by those who once praised it. But what is financial innovation? The dominant answers from mainstream finance and social studies of finance share variations on a rationalistic view whereby financial innovation is about improving markets or at least extending the sphere of rational calculability. Because improvisation is more important than the dominant perspectives can admit, this article proposes a new concept of financial innovation whose three main elements – frame, conjuncture and bricolage – are indicated by the title of this article. The importance of this problem shift is that it highlights the inherent fragility of this type of intermediary-led financial innovation where things will often miscarry and highlights the need for a more radical rethinking about policy responses to the financial crisis that began in 2007.     

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.     

The Swiss business elite (1980–2000): how the changing composition of the elite explains the decline of the Swiss company network

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the decline of the Swiss corporate network between 1980 and 2000. We address the theoretical and methodological challenge of this transformation by the use of a combination of network analysis and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). Based on a sample of top managers of the 110 largest Swiss companies in 1980 and 2000 we show that, beyond an adjustment to structural pressure, an explanation of the decline of the network has to include the strategies of the fractions of the business elites. We reveal that three factors contribute crucially to the decline of the Swiss corporate network: the managerialization of industrial leaders, the marginalization of law degree holders and the influx of hardly connected foreign managers.     

The Politics of Science and Sustainable Development: Marcuse's New Science in the 21st Century

ABSTRACT

In recent years, debates around development have seen the growing prominence of post-developmentalist proposals, which are driving the anti-capitalist discourse and at the same time serving as a springboard for non-capitalist development proposals. However, the search for an alternative approach to development can disrupt the construction of viable action strategies and dilute important elements of the contributions advanced by the heterodox tradition, mainly Marxist. The aim of this paper is to systematize the limitations of post-developmentalism and articulate a heterodox paradigm that can be measured in tandem with conventional and hegemonic approaches in development studies, such as approaches stressing human development.