西方学者对资本主义新发展及其未来的最新研究

西方学者用“数字资本主义”、“赌场资本主义”、“涡轮资本主义”、“全球资本主义”、“新帝国主义”、“金融垄断资本主义”、“消费资本主义”等生动描绘了资本主义的最新发展及其特征。在此基础上,西方学者还进一步分析了资本主义在发展中所蕴藏的不可克服的自我否定的内在矛盾和历史趋势,指出了资本主义衰亡崩溃的未来命运,并研究了以“后资本主义社会”学说和“新的历史蓝图”构想为代表的替代资本主义的方案选择。对于西方学者这些关于资本主义未来的新看法,我们应进行辩证分析和研究。     

The theory of unequal ecological exchange: a Marx-Odum dialectic

A world-system analysis of the ecological rift generated by capitalism requires as one of its elements a developed theory of the unequal ecological exchange between center and periphery. After reviewing the literature on unequal exchange (both economic and ecological) from Ricardo and Marx to the present, a new approach is provided, based on a critical appropriation of systems ecologist Howard Odum's emergy (spelled with an m) analysis. Odum's contribution offers key elements of a wider dialectical synthesis, made possible in part by his intensive studies of Marx's political-economic critique of capitalism and by Marx's own theory of metabolic rift.     

The legacy of social conflicts over property rights in rural Brazil and Mexico: Current land struggles in historical perspective

This article proposes an approach to the agrarian question that focuses on the establishment of absolute private property rights over land in Brazil and Mexico. The author argues that current land struggles are conditioned by the property regimes inherited from past struggles. The author examines the liberal reforms of the nineteenth century and argues that the balance of class forces led to the slow establishment of absolute private property in Brazil, while in Mexico they triggered the Revolution of 1910–1917, which limited agrarian capitalism. The author then turns to the consequences of these different property regimes in the twentieth century and argues that capitalist social relations have been more dominant in the Brazilian than in the Mexican countryside. The conservative modernization of the 1960s and 1970s is identified as a turning point in the fully capitalist development of agriculture in Brazil. The shift toward food imports, the elimination of subsidies, and the reform of Article 27 of the Constitution signal the re-establishment of the conditions for capitalist development of agriculture in Mexico. The article ends with an assessment of the MST and EZLN's strategies to protect peasants’ access to land and to influence the institutional setting determining access to land.     

Resistance,class struggle and social movements in Latin America: contemporary dynamics

ABSTRACT

This paper traces out the changing forms of the resistance associated with each advance in the capitalist development of the forces of production over the course of the neoliberal era in Latin America. The central argument is that the resistance to the forces of agrarian change and capitalist development over the past three decades has been mobilised by a succession of social movements, whose dynamics and changing forms can best be understood in terms of Marxist class theory. The central focus of the paper is on the current dynamics of the class struggle on the expanding frontier of extractive capital in South America in the context of what has been described as a ‘progressive cycle’ in Latin American politics – a cycle that to all appearances is coming to an end.     

Questioning pathways out of poverty: Indonesia as an illustrative case for the World Bank's transforming countries

The World Development Report 2008 uses Indonesia as an illustrative case for what it calls ‘transforming countries’. The main argument of this paper is that the three pathways out of poverty (commercially-oriented entrepreneurial smallholder farming; rural non-farm enterprise development, and out-migration) prescribed by the Report should be theoretically and empirically questioned because of the possibility of a reverse consequence: the perpetuation of poverty in Indonesia.     

Capitalism obscured: the limits of law and rights-based approaches to poverty reduction and development

The Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) was established by the United Nations in 2005 and concluded in 2008. Although inspired by Hernando de Soto's analysis of the role of property rights in economic development, the scope of the Commission was defined as ‘legal empowerment’ in general. This commentary offers a critique of the CLEP report, and argues that its underlying assumptions rest on an idealised version of liberal democratic capitalism in which a dynamic market economy assures ‘win-win’ solutions for all. This implies that there are no tensions between the four ‘pillars’ of legal empowerment identified by CLEP (the rule of law, property rights, labour rights, and business rights). However, in the real world of capitalism, in both democratic and authoritarian versions, there are structural tensions between classes of capital and classes of labour, which result in the economy and its underlying institutional order becoming a key site of contestation. The case of farm labour in rural South Africa is used to illustrate this argument. A focus on legal rights can, however, be ‘empowering’ to a degree, when it helps defend poor people from exploitation and abuse, or is located within broader strategies to eradicate systemic poverty.     

Modernity's Failure/Post-modernity's Predicament: The Case of Russia

Abstract

This paper explores the failure of modernisation theory and its more recent offspring as represented by ‘transition to democracy’ and ‘construction of capitalism’ theories to explain the post-communist development of Russia. Some post-modern theories, though, reinterpreted to emphasise the disintegration and fragmentation of the ‘hard core’ of social structures rather than the ‘post-philosophical’ mode of thinking and ‘aestheticised’ styles of consumption, are looked at for a more fruitful conceptual alternative. In the conclusion, the idea of ‘multiple fragile modernities’ is argued for as the most promising starting point for the conceptualisation of post-communism as well as its correlation with global ‘late capitalism’.     

智能时代的数字劳动异化及其消解

伴随着数字智能技术的发展,数字劳动已在西方资本主义国家呈现出新的异化表征,主要表现 为资本家对数字劳动产品的无偿占有、数字劳动过程的非自我的加速与规训 、数字劳动主体类本质的异化以及 数字劳动关系的异化四个维度。这是多种成因共同作用的结果,数字生产资料的私人占有是根本原因,数字资 本的逐利本性是动力原因,数字智能技术资本化是技术原因,市场监管与劳动保障的缺失是外部原因。由于中 西方数字劳动问题存在本质差异,中国在新时代数字建设中,通过积极推进数字生产资料的共有共享、完善数 据生产要素参与的分配制度、加强数字智能技术治理、完善数字劳动治理体系等多方位举措,有效防范并化解 了数字劳动问题,为西方资本主义国家摆脱数字劳动异化困境、构建和谐数字劳动关系提供了中国智慧。     

Crony capitalism in the Palestinian Authority: a deal among friends

Abstract

This article interrogates the multifaceted political–economic networks entrenched within the multiple structures of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA). The main argument of this article is that crony capitalism is a defining feature of the PA’s relations with a handful of capitalists and business groups. The demonstration of this argument is exhibited through the large-scale public and private monopolistic practices in strategic sectors of the Palestinian economy, which function within the framework of Israel’s settler-colonial reality and the persistent patterns of international aid to the occupied West Bank. While acknowledging the existence of cronyism as a feature of the capitalist system in its diverse typologies, crony capitalism may be more pronounced in situations characterised by political uncertainty, whereby political–business collusion strategizes the expansion of neo-patrimonial networks and rent-seeking opportunities as a meta-mechanism for social control and political stabilisation. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, crony capitalism was developed as part of the political allegiances and economic alliances that underpin the structures created by the Oslo process, which are fostered by Israeli policies and the international donor community to maintain the cohesiveness of the PA regime.     

Hegel,Haiti and revolution: the post-colonial moment

Abstract

Susan Buck-Morss’s argument that the Haitian Revolution embodied the most universal aspect of the French Revolution, namely the quest for universal freedom, relies on the supposed references to Haiti in the master–slave dialogue in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The revolution’s lodgement at the core of this foundational text of Enlightenment universalism is, for her, about as convincing a demonstration as one can have of the universal significance of the Haitian Revolution. Marxists have opposed her venture, and demonstrated their hostility to post-colonial thinking, principally by claiming that the master–slave is an expression of European class conflict. This paper agrees with Buck-Morss that the Haitian Revolution critically affirmed the principle of universal freedom and, indeed, pushed the revolution in France and Europe in a radical direction. A better affirmation of the universal significance of the Haitian Revolution than the thoughts of Hegel is possible. The latter do not actually provide such affirmation, because racism, Eurocentrism and a hostility to political radicalism are fundamental aspects of Hegel’s thought. The alternative affirmation can be found in Marxist analysis. This paper outlines such an analysis, and concludes that post-colonialism of Buck-Morss’s sort is no substitute for the perspective provided by historical materialism.