国际形势演进中的当代资本主义

第二次世界大战结束以来,在时代主题转换、冷战格局存续、多极化趋势发展、经济全球化深入等方面的国际形势演进中,当代资本主义既扮演了重要角色,又受到这些方面国际形势的重要影响。考察国际形势演进中的当代资本主义,不仅有利于深入认识国际形势演变与当代资本主义的关系,而且有利于深入认识中国特色社会主义建设的国际环境。     

Globalization,democratization, and the Arab uprising: the international factor in MENA's failed democratization

What explains the almost wholly negative impact of international factors on post-uprising democratization prospects? This article compares the utility of rival “diffusionist” and neo-Gramscian political economy frames to explain this. Multiple international factors deter democratization. The failure of Western democracy promotion is rooted in the contradiction between the dominance of global finance capital and the norm of democratic equality; in the periphery, neo-liberalism is most compatible with hybrid regimes and, at best, “low intensity democracy”. In MENA, neo-liberalism generated crony capitalism incompatible with democratization; while this also sparked the uprisings, these have failed to address class inequalities. Moreover at the normative level, MENA hosts the most credible counter-hegemonic ideologies; the brief peaking of democratic ideology in the region during the early uprisings soon declined amidst regional discourse wars. Non-democrats – coercive regime remnants and radical charismatic movements – were empowered by the competitive interference of rival powers in uprising states. The collapse of many uprising states amidst a struggle for power over the region left an environment uncongenial to democratization.     

论经济全球化与资本主义

经济全球化既是社会生产力高度发展的必然产物 ,其产生和发展又与特定的社会经济制度———资本主义结合在一起。资本主义生产方式的确立开启了全球化的历史进程 ,反过来 ,全球化浪潮的推进 ,又为资本主义的发展带来新的机遇。但它却无法从根本上消除资本主义固有的矛盾和危机 ,经济全球化意味着资本主义的发展空间已近极限 ,其前途只能是社会主义和共产主义     

如何认识当代资本主义的新变化

能否用科学的态度去认识当代资本主义的新变化,意义重大。对此必须把握住以下几方面:第一,不承认,不正视资本主义的新变化,是不行的;第二,把当代资本主义的新变化说成是资本主义在性质上的根本改变,是有害的;第三,关键在于要从实际影响中去把握当代资本主义的新变化。     

经济全球化条件下的社会主义和资本主义关系的新特点

20世纪80年代以来，由于经济全球化的加速发展，社会主义与资本主义之间的关系出现了新的特点：双方由和平共处的暂时性和不确定性转变为长期性和稳定性；由以对抗为主转变为以合作为主；由势不两立的对抗关系转变为相互借鉴的合作关系；影响双方关系发展的政治因素转变为经济因素；双方在竞争中由追求“零和”转变为追求“双赢”；从相互封闭与平行发展的战略转变为相互开放与交叉发展的战略；双方的合作领域日益广泛，矛盾范围日益扩大，摩擦也日益增多。     

State-owned enterprises,state capitalism and social distribution in Singapore

State-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds have ‘insured’ Singapore's domestic economy against financial crisis and restructuring interventions from multilateral institutions, engendered elite cohesion and political stability, binding middle class employees to the political system. This essay analyses paths by which the Singapore government established state-owned enterprises and transformed them into global enterprises. It also examines how sovereign wealth funds contribute to government social expenditure without increasing taxes. Such redistribution through state capitalism resonates with the People's Action Partys social democratic origins, inviting comparisons with contemporary developments in Chinese state-capitalism.     

Means to a Better World: Two Analytical Methods,Similar Policies

In different ways David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism and Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few tell us what we already know about capitalism’s rigged system favoring the rich while exploiting working people. Reich bases his analysis on five building blocks of “free markets” which demonstrate government’s unbreakable connection to the shape given to those markets. Reich’s solutions move the conversation leftward from the establishment mainstream. Harvey, on the other hand, examines seventeen contradictions in today’s capitalism that need to be resolved and proposes seventeen mandates to resolve them. His “mandates” have similarities to Reich’s policy suggestions. Coming from different perspectives and relying on different methodologies, but both focusing on establishing a more just society, both Reich and Harvey wind up suggesting similar changes.     

The new Korean political economy: beyond the models of capitalism debate

Abstract

A key theme within the literature on the evolution of the Korean political economy since the 1997/8 crisis has been the extent to which Korea remains a ‘developmental state’ or has pursued radical neoliberal reform. These debates have not only reflected a concern with understanding the Korean economy but with a wider set of questions relating to the future of capitalist diversity within a globalized economy. By the late 1980s Korea had come to be regarded as a model of successful state-led late capitalist development. Korean modern economic history has insured that questions relating to the extent that it has pursued neoliberal reform have been of keen interest to students of political economy globally. This paper argues that substantive neoliberal reform has taken place in Korea since 1997. The thesis that a new ‘developmental state’ is in process of consolidating itself is simply wrong. However, the state's reform program interacted with material conditions and political coalitions at the meso level in a complex and uneven manner. In certain critical sectors, such as finance, a neoliberal regulatory regime has been consolidated. In others, such as telecommunications, developmentalist regulatory structures have proven to be highly resilient. In order to fully understand the complexity of the contemporary Korean political economy it is necessary, therefore, to prioritize the importance of meso-level analysis.     

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.     

Semiotics of pride and profit: interrogating commodification in indigenous handicraft production

This study investigates the shifting terrain of pride, profit and power relations in minority language communities under contemporary globalisation. While “pride” associates linguistic-cultural heritage with identity and preservation, “profit” views these as sources of economic gain. In contemporary late capitalism, “pride” seems to be increasingly giving way to “profit”. Arguing that this transformation needs to be interrogated in terms of complexity and that a detailed, multilayered semiotic analysis can open a privileged window for such an inquiry, this study combines critical multimodal discourse analysis and an ethnographic approach to analyse processes of semiotic commodification in handicraft production in the indigenous minority language community of the Sámi in northern Lapland. The investigation focuses on the activities of an innovative Sámi artist and entrepreneur, and within these a range of paper notebooks, which are, although designed by the Sámi artist and sold in her handicraft shop in Lapland, produced by women living at the border of Thailand and Laos. The investigation illuminates two critical shifts: how the move towards profit can open up space to contest the ownership of pride within an ethnic community. Second, how this move makes way for new, globalised modes of production of ‘indigenous handicrafts’ and creates global vectors of power, engaged in both empowerment and exploitation, in the production of both pride and profit. The study thereby contributes to the understanding of the increasingly complex power relations and the ambivalence and multiple effects of practices constituting the apparent shift from “pride” to “profit”.