An Attempt to Reshape Capitalism’s Image

John Stuart Mill claimed to be a disciple of both Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo. This was a strange proclamation because each man advocated a competing theory of value; Bentham’s utilitarianism laid the foundation for the utility theory of value and Ricardo developed the labor theory of value. Mill’s goal in attempting to unify these theories of value was to provide a solution for the growing class conflict that plagued capitalism. Class conflict arose as feudalism was phased out and industrial capitalism replaced merchant capitalism as the dominant economic system. The Corn Laws symbolized this competition between classes. Capitalists were against the Corn Laws because the subsequent tariffs would lower their rate of profit. Landowners supported the Corn Laws because they increased the rent on land. Even Karl Marx held spoke out against the Corn Laws on behalf of the working class. Capitalism fostered persistent antagonism between classes as each struggled to gain or maintain power; no class was immune from this contest. Class conflict was therefore ubiquitous in capitalist society and generated widespread scrutiny and debate over capitalism. Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo took opposing sides in this debate. Bentham was initially supported it but died a reformist. Class conflict was resolvable but not under the current form of capitalism. Ricardo’s labor theory of value promoted the view that class division occurred naturally in a capitalist society. And since capitalism was the best possible economic system, class division was a necessary evil and could not be remedied. Both Ricardo and Bentham acknowledged that class conflict was inherent in capitalism but each treated it differently. In claiming to be a disciple of both men, Mill hoped to show that capitalism could exist alongside social harmony. His goal was to change the nature of capitalism. [excerpt

A different capitalism? : Guanxi-capitalism and the importance of family in modern China

The emergence of Capitalism is said to always lead to extreme changes in the structure of a society. This view implies that Capitalism is a universal and unique concept that needs an explicit institutional framework and should not discriminate between a German or US Capitalism. In contrast, this work argues that the ‘ideal type’ of Capitalism in a Weberian sense does not exist. It will be demonstrated that Capitalism is not a concept that shapes a uniform institutional framework within every society, constructing a specific economic system. Rather, depending on the institutional environment - family structures in particular - different forms of Capitalism arise. To exemplify this, the networking (Guanxi) Capitalism of contemporary China will be presented, where social institutions known from the past were reinforced for successful development. It will be argued that especially the change, destruction and creation of family and kinship structures are key factors that determined the further development and success of the Chinese economy and the type of Capitalism arising there. In contrast to Weber, it will be argued that Capitalism not necessarily leads to a process of destruction of traditional structures and to large-scale enterprises under rational, bureaucratic management, without leaving space for socio-cultural structures like family businesses. The flexible global production increasingly favours small business production over larger corporations. Small Chinese family firms are able to respond to rapidly changing market conditions and motivate maximum efforts for modest pay. The structure of the Chinese family proved to be very persistent over time and to be able to accommodate diverse economic and political environments while maintaining its core identity. This implies that Chinese Capitalism may be an entirely new economic system, based on Guanxi and the family

Book review: the new capitalist manifesto: building a disruptively better business

Nick Taylor finds the New Capitalist Manifesto’s constant positioning of “old” capitalism against “new” capitalism wholly unconvincing, despite the wealth of examples of well-meaning multi-national firms

Predatory Value: Economies of Dispossession and Disturbed Relationalities

This essay introduces and theorizes the central concerns of this special issue, “Economies of Dispossession: Indigeneity, Race, Capitalism.” Financialization, debt, and the accelerated concentration of wealth today work through social relations already configured and disposed by imperial conquest and racial capitalism. In the Americas broadly and the United States specifically, colonization and transatlantic slavery set in motion the dynamics and differential racialized valuations that continue to underwrite particular forms of subjection, property, commerce, and territoriality. The conception of economies of dispossession introduced in this essay draws attention to the overriding importance of rationalities of abstraction and commensurability for racial capitalism. The essay problematizes the ways in which dispossession is conventionally treated as a self-evident and circumscribed practice of unjust taking and subtractive action. Instead, working across the lethal confluences of imperial conquest and racial capitalist predation, this essay critically situates the logic of propriation that organizes and underwrites predatory value in the historical present. Against the commensurabilities and rationalities of debt and finance capitalism, conditioned through the proprietary logics of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, the essay gestures toward alternative frameworks for building collective capacities for what the authors describe as a grounded relationality

Minsky's Analysis of Financial Capitalism

In this paper, the authors discuss Minsky's analysis of the evolution of one variety of capitalism-financial capitalism-which developed at the end of the nineteenth century and was the dominant form of capitalism in the developed countries after World War II. Minsky's approach, like those of Schumpeter and Veblen, emphasized the importance of market power in this stage of capitalism. According to Minksy, modern capitalism requires expensive and long-lived capital assets, which, in turn, necessitate financing of positions in these assets as well as market power in order to gain access to financial markets. It is the relation between finance and investment that creates instability in the modern capitalist economy. Financial capitalism emerged from World War II with an array of new institutions that made it stronger than ever before. As the economy evolved, it moved from this more successful form of financial capitalism to the fragile form of capitalism that exists today.

Erich Fromm and the Critical Theory of Communication

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a Marxist psychoanalyst, philosopher and socialist humanist. This paper asks: How can Fromm’s critical theory of communication be used and updated to provide a critical perspective in the age of digital and communicative capitalism? In order to provide an answer, the article discusses elements from Fromm’s work that allow us to better understand the human communication process. The focus is on communication (section 2), ideology (section 3), and technology (section 4). Fromm’s approach can inform a critical theory of communication in multiple respects: His notion of the social character allows to underpin such a theory with foundations from critical psychology. Fromm’s distinction between the authoritarian and the humanistic character can be used for discerning among authoritarian and humanistic communication. Fromm’s work can also inform ideology critique: The ideology of having shapes life, thought, language and social action in capitalism. In capitalism, technology (including computing) is fetishized and the logic of quantification shapes social relations. Fromm’s quest for humanist technology and participatory computing can inform contemporary debates about digital capitalism and its alternatives

"The Road to Debt Deflation, Debt Peonage, and Neofeudalism"

What is called "capitalism" is best understood as a series of stages. Industrial capitalism has given way to finance capitalism, which has passed through pension fund capitalism since the 1950s and a US-centered monetary imperialism since 1971, when the fiat dollar (created mainly to finance US global military spending) became the world's monetary base. Fiat dollar credit made possible the bubble economy after 1980, and its substage of casino capitalism. These economically radioactive decay stages resolved into debt deflation after 2008, and are now settling into a leaden debt peonage and the austerity of neo-serfdom. The end product of today's Western capitalism is a neo-rentier economy—precisely what industrial capitalism and classical economists set out to replace during the Progressive Era from the late 19th to early 20th century. A financial class has usurped the role that landlords used to play—a class living off special privilege. Most economic rent is now paid out as interest. This rake-off interrupts the circular flow between production and consumption, causing economic shrinkage—a dynamic that is the opposite of industrial capitalism’s original impulse. The "miracle of compound interest," reinforced now by fiat credit creation, is cannibalizing industrial capital as well as the returns to labor. The political thrust of industrial capitalism was toward democratic parliamentary reform to break the stranglehold of landlords on national tax systems. But today's finance capital is inherently oligarchic. It seeks to capture the government—first and foremost the treasury, central bank, and courts—to enrich (indeed, to bail out) and untax the banking and financial sector and its major clients: real estate and monopolies. This is why financial "technocrats" (proxies and factotums for high finance) were imposed in Greece, and why Germany opposed a public referendum on the European Central Bank’s austerity program.Debt Deflation; Neofeudalism; Economic Rent; Finance Capitalism; Classical Political Economy; Pension Fund Capitalism; Bubble Economy

4. Mercantilism

The rise of the national state and the expansion of Europe, which have just been described, were accompanied by the further development of commercial capitalism along lines already laid down in the later Middle Ages. The most notable fact about capitalism between 1500 and 1789 was its overall growth, not so much in the development of new techniques (at least not until the very end of the period) as in the wider use and elaboration of old ones. The New Monarchy and its successors afforded protection to businessmen and something resembling a national market. In addition, the government with its military and other needs sometimes provided business with its best customer. The expansion of Europe stimulated capitalism by greatly increasing the physical volume of trade. Beyond that, the larger stock of money, for which this expansion was primarily responsible, encouraged business by fixing a money economy more definitely on Europe, contributing to a rising price level, and making available a larger supply of capital in a convenient form. All in all, capitalism affected directly the lives of a considerably larger percentage of Europe\u27s population in 1789 than it did in 1500, although most of the Continent was still definitely agricultural. Moreover, by 1789 the spirit of capitalism was much more commonly accepted than it had been three centuries earlier. Those who desired it could even find the profit motive now couched in religious terms. [excerpt