Capitalist System (capitalist + system)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Toward a Critique of Latin American Neostructuralism

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2008
Fernando Ignacio Leiva
ABSTRACT This article offers a critical assessment of the first postneoliberalism development framework that emerged in Latin America after 1990. The ability of neostructuralism to present an attractive narrative about a twenty-first-century "modernity with solidarity" is based on abandoning key tenets of ECLAC's structuralism and the thinking of Raśl Prebisch and Celso Furtado; namely, a focus on the distribution and appropriation of economic surplus and a framing of Latin American development problems in a world capitalist system. This article argues that Latin American neostructuralism's discursive strengths, as well as its analytical weaknesses, stem from the marginalization of power relations from key dimensions of the region's political economy. Since 2000, neostructuralism has exacerbated its descriptive, short-term perspective, further dulling its analytical edge, by focusing on policies that promote social cohesion and state intervention in the cultural and the socioemotional realm. [source]

Reconsideration of Economic Views of a Classical Empire and a Nation-State During the Mercantilist Ages

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2009
Article first published online: 3 JUN 200, Mehmet Bulut
While the main aim of the economic policies of European nation-states was to use the power of the state to promote trade and economic growth and to build up national industries and manufacture, the Ottoman Empire continued to follow its provisionist, fiscalist, and traditional economic policies of land expansion in the early modern period. In Western Europe, this experience gave birth to a new class that gradually improved its trade ability and expanding industries and markets under a capitalist system. The Ottoman imperial policy was mostly concerned about the continuity of strong central authority and land expansion, which never meant improving the industry or trade concerns. Instead, the economic policies of the Ottomans were subsistence of the people, provisioning the major population centers, collection of taxes, and maintaining freedom of trade. The balance and stability in society explain the priority for the Ottomans in the economy. However, commercialization and profit explain the priority for the Dutch nation in the economy. This article elaborates the economic views of the Dutch Republic and the Ottoman Empire in the mercantilist ages. [source]

The Production of Commons and the "Explosion" of the Middle Class

ANTIPODE, Issue 4 2010
Massimo De Angelis
Abstract:, This paper builds on the author's previous theoretical work on the role of processes such as enclosures, market discipline and governance. It discusses the middle class in terms of a stratified field of subjectivity within the planetary wage hierarchy produced by these processes. It discusses the thesis that the middle class, qua middle class, will never be able to contribute to bring about a fundamental change in the capitalist system of livelihood reproduction. The production in common centered on middle class values,however historically and culturally specific they are,is always production in common within the system. Our common action as middle class action, whether as consumers, workers, or citizens, reproduces the system of value and value hierarchy that is the benchmark, the referent point for our cooperation. The paper then discusses some of the implications of the conundrum faced by those who seek alternatives: there will be no "beginning of history" without the middle class, nor there will be one with the middle class. [source]

"Grabbing Hand" or "Helping Hand"?: Corruption and the Economic Role of the State

GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2007
JONATHAN HOPKIN
This article seeks to disentangle which features of government intervention are linked to corruption and which are not, by distinguishing between the government roles of regulator, entrepreneur, and consumer. It finds that the degree of regulation of private business activity is the strongest predictor of corruption, and that high levels of public spending are related to low levels of corruption. There is no evidence of direct government involvement in production having any bearing on corruption. It is concluded that advanced welfare capitalist systems, which leave business relatively free from interference while intervening strongly in the distribution of wealth and the provision of key services, combine the most "virtuous" features of "big" and "small" government. This suggests that anti-corruption campaigners should be relaxed about state intervention in the economy in general, but should specifically target corruption-inducing regulatory systems. [source]

Famines in (South) Asia

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2004
David Hall-Matthews
Most historical studies of South Asian famines have appropriately taken a political economy approach, allowing them to critique colonial governance and free trade policy. It would be useful to see more work on social and enviromental aspects of famine. There is a danger, however, typified by Mike Davis' recent book, that analysis of the role of climate in causing famine can depoliticise the problem. Further studies are still needed of the politics of famine, under communist as well as capitalist systems. [source]