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Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order
... Imperfect or monopolistic competition is widely accepted in the applied branches of economic theory such as industrial economics (Bain 1959;Scherer 1980). Market power and oligopoly are the norm in monopolycapital approaches and Post Keynesian accounts of price determination (Baran and Sweezy 1966;Kalecki 1971;Gu and Lee 2012;Lee 2013;Foster 2014). Along with price fixing, market power stretches to information, branding, marketing, and customer relations. ...
... Individual firms develop and sell branded versions of the product, and the market emerges from the rivalry and mutual adjustment of the main producers. Such markets are widespread in modern developed economies, as has long been recognized in theories of imperfect or monopolistic competition and monopoly capital (Chamberlin 1933;Robinson 1933;Baran and Sweezy 1966). While no single organizing body exists, traders must obey the rules of property exchange overseen centrally through the legal system. ...
The theoretical ideal of a competitive market is generally assumed to separate organizing from trading, in an implicit dualism. Traders sell or buy within the market but do not organize it. This paper proposes an alternative, more realistic conceptual scheme based on duality, in which organizing and trading are distinct but intertwined. While the exchange of property rights is overseen centrally, many details of market trade are decided locally by traders. Producers and retailers may arrange the trading venue, specify the items traded, set and publish prices, provide information, and transport goods. They cultivate relationships with customers, recasting the pattern of trade and the social structures that underlie the market. Such dualistic, semi-decentralized organizing generates other dualities, including stability-change and continuity–creativity. A duality perspective can encompass the complexity of markets, as well as illustrate the numerous ways they may evolve.
... Alors que certains empiristes libéraux sont arrivés à la conclusion qu'on ne peut démontrer la fausseté du marxisme et ont décidé de ne plus y penser (Bregnsbro, 1979), d'autres chercheurs travaillent à vérifier les hypothèses et théories marxistes. Lorsque les hypothèses de Marx apparaissent comme fausses, ces scientifiques n'hésitent pas à proposer des modifications pour les améliorer ou les raffiner à la lumière de l'expérience historique (Baran et Sweezy, 1966 ;Sweezy, 1979). ...
... Toujours dans le domaine de l'économie, citons l'ouvrage de Baran et Sweezy (1966). Ces auteurs réévaluent la pensée marxiste sur le capitalisme 18 Notre inventaire de la recherche marxiste n'est pas exhaustif et ne correspond pas à des critères rigides. ...
... According to Keynes, financialization represented the end of capitalist rationality, and he referred to it as "a bubble on a whirlpool of speculation" (Sweezy 1994;Foster 2005). In Monopoly Capital, Baran and Sweezy (1966) argued that stagnation is the normal state of monopoly capitalism. That is, to absorb surplus, the government uses continuous and excessive military spending. ...
... Military spending during the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, along with other external stimuli, such as a rising sales effort and financial expansion, counteracted the stagnation of the monopolistic stage of capitalism (Baran and Sweezy 1966). Nevertheless, the long-term problem of underconsumption requires further measures. ...
Based on Arrighi, we empirically investigate whether financialization and militarization are mutually reinforcing phenomena in the United States. Military spending during the 1950-1960s in the United States counteracted the stagnation of the monopolistic stage of capitalism. Monopoly capital was transformed into finance monopoly capital as the intensity of financial capital increased during the late 1970s in response to stagnation. Considering alternative financialization variables and the profit rate in the financial sector, and using several parametric and nonparametric methods, we found a significant relationship between financialization and militarization in the United States for 1949-2019. The results suggest that the rise in financialization is parallel to the decline in the profit rates, leading to larger military expenditure in total, but with relatively smaller share in GDP. JEL Classification: C14, E11, G32
... La richesse des hypothèses marxistes sur f impérialisme trouve des échos contemporains dans une lecture très fine des rapports entre État et mondialisation (Gindin & Panitch, 2012).Lanotion de capital fictif est mobilisée pour comprendre la financiarisation contemporaine (Durand, 2014).Llidêe de paradigmes techno-économiques de Perez (2009) rebondit sur l'analyse des ondes longues développée par Mandel (1995). Il faut aussi signaler le regain d'intérêt pour la théorie du capitalisme monopoliste de Baran et Sweezy (1966) dans le contexte de I'essor fulgurant des entreprises géantes du numérique (Rikap,2OZI). ...
... This causes many regions of the world to be shared and subsequently exploited by monopoly capitalism (Lenin, 2008). 2. This theory points out that imperialist countries shape 'underdeveloped' countries within the framework of their own needs and understand this through the dichotomies of centre/periphery or metropolis/satellite (Sweezy and Baran, 1966). P. Marlor Sweezy, P. A. Baran and Samir Amin are the pioneers of this theory which is associated with the New Left and argues that one of the main objectives of imperialism, which came to the agenda in the period of national liberation/independence wars and the Vietnam War, was to ensure the collapse of the USSR and the integration of 'underdeveloped' countries into neoliberal capitalism. ...
Postcolonial theory perceives the world as divided between the coloniser and the colonised, thus indirectly reproducing the centrality of the West. For this reason, in literary studies, postcolonial theory fails to cover the literatures of those nations which were not colonised in a typical sense but rather occupied by Western imperialism, as was the case with Ottoman Turkey. This necessitates a convergent theoretical framework that might help evaluate the fictionalisation of the intersecting dynamics of oppression, violence, exploitation, and resistance in relation to the hegemonic narratives of imperialism and shape a new perspective regarding the politico-cultural dimension of imperial discourse. This article, in this respect, will critically develop the theoretical foundations of imperialism-oriented literary theory and construct it as an interdisciplinary field that has a potential to contribute to contemporary postcolonial theory and to encompass the intersectional dimensions of imperialism and imperial discourse for the articulation of the fictionalisation of imperialism-related issues in the under-considered corpus of modern Turkish literature.
... In many instances, therefore, digital has come to act as a form of corporation coordination mechanism, allowing companies to 'hollow out' operations and instead form a web of control over the activities of others via digital means (Nolan, 2008). They are controlled by "elite corporate hierarchies from one centre of strategic decision-making: indeed, this is the essence of the modern corporation, where activities are often extended beyond the firm's legal boundaries" (Cowling & Sugden, 1998) The economic unit was no longer a small firm "producing a negligible fraction of a homogenous output for an anonymous market but a large-scale enterprise producing a significant share of the output of an industry, or even several industries and able to control its prices, the volumes of its production, and the types and amounts of its investments" (Baran and Sweezy, 1966) -the economic unit of genuine interest was the burgeoning set of global players who would control prices, volumes and types and amounts of investments at a global scale -escaping the boundaries of national anti-trust regulation and nowhere have these set of processes been more apparent than in Big Tech. The combined forces of globalisation and financialisation combined with dramatically improving technology meant that monopolistic accumulation/concentration could seek greater profits on a global level. ...
The increasing use of data in various parts of the economic and social systems is creating a new form of monopoly: data monopolies. We illustrate that the companies using these strategies, Datalists, are challenging the existing definitions used within Monopoly Capital Theory (MCT). Datalists are pursuing a different type of monopoly control than traditional multinational corporations. They are pursuing monopolistic control over data to feed their productive processes, increasingly controlled by algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI). These productive processes use information about humans and the creative outputs of humans as the inputs but do not classify those humans as employees, so they are not paid or credited for their labour. This paper provides an overview of this evolution and its impact on monopoly theory. It concludes with an outline for a research agenda for economics in this space.
... As an approach used by liberal schools, however, MIC inevitably fails to explain the key role of military spending in the capitalist system. In contrast, the underconsumptionist view in Marxist thought (Baran and Sweezy 1966;Mandel 1968;Kidron 1970) can provide a more comprehensive theoretical explanation. According to this view, military expenditure prevents a crisis by absorbing the surplus in the economy, contrary to other types of government expenditure, such as health and education, that would conflict with the interests of the capitalist class. ...
... In the absence of exchange rate manipulations or other traditional monetary policy tools, indebted countries are compelled to the imposition of austerity and internal 3 The term "monopoly capital" should be better understood as a tendency towards which capitalism is headed. Baran and Sweezy (1966) explain that they use it "to include not only the case of a single seller of a commodity for which there are no substitutes, but also the much more common case of 'oligopoly' i. e., few sellers dominating the markets". 4 The phrase belongs to Friedrich List (1789-1846), the predecessor of the German Historical School. ...
The paper holds a critical view on EU austerity policies, with particular emphasis given to Greece. It is maintained that the main causes for the implementation of neoliberal reforms should be examined in the manner with which the Greek economy has developed in relation with the European capitalist division of labor as a peripheral economy. Greece is approached as intimately conditioned by a multifaceted institutional structure of dependencies that outstrips the country's ability to exercise economic policy for its own social interests. Essentially built upon the premises of a core-periphery dependency paradigm, the periodic post-war reconfigurations of the EU architectural design offered enough room to the formation of a stricter policy framework along these lines. By developing a set of differentiated indices on European poverty, the devastating consequences of the belated neoliberal reformation of the country's welfare state are highlighted. All calculations are based on microdata sets of EUSILC surveys.
... This cycle of production leading to more production-the treadmill-continues because of the dependency of all sectors of society (business, labor, and government) on continued economic growth to solve problems of business cycles, as well as to avoid problems associated with the unequal distribution of economic benefits (which are often created by growth itself). Schnaiberg draws upon the concept of crisis in capitalist economies developed by the "Monthly Review" school of Marxist political economy (Baran 1957; Baran and Sweezy 1966;Sweezy and Magdof 1972) and first applied to the environment by Anderson (1976). Another sociologist, James O'Connor (1994) makes an argument parallel to Schnaiberg and Anderson, adding that exploitation of the environment constitutes the "second contradiction" of capitalism. ...
State-of-the-art assessments of current research into the human dimensions of global environmental change and promising directions for future advancements.
The colossal human ecological footprint now threatens the sustainability of the entire planet. Scientists, policymakers, and other close observers know that any understanding of the causes of global environmental change is a function of understanding its human dimension—the range of human choices and actions that affect the environment. This book offers a state-of-the-art assessment of research on the human dimensions of global environmental change, describing how global threats to sustainability have come about, providing an interpretive framework for understanding environmental change, reviewing recent work in the social and ecological sciences, and discussing which paths for future advances in our knowledge may prove most promising. The chapters, by prominent North American and European authors, offer perspectives on population, consumption, land cover and use, institutional actions, and culture. They discuss such topics as risk, the new Structural Human Ecology approach to analyzing anthropogenic drivers of global environmental change, recent progress in understanding land use change, international environmental regimes, the concept of the commons, and the comparative vulnerability of societies around the world.
ContributorsUlrich Beck, Thomas Dietz, Carlo C. Jaeger, Svein Jentoft, Jeanne X. Kasperson, Roger E. Kasperson, Bonnie J. McCay, Emilio F. Moran, Eugene A. Rosa, B. L. Turner II, Richard York, Oran R. Young
... These forces include, for instance, the stimulation of additional demand through advertising and other sales forces, as well as military spending and other government expenditures. One counteracting tendency that Baran and Sweezy (1966) paid relatively little attention to, but that would become a focal point in more recent crisis theories in the tradition of the Monopoly Capital School (e.g. Foster and Magdoff, 2009), is financialization. ...
Marxist crisis theory is concerned with uncovering the underlying causes of recurring economic crises in capitalism. This paper’s contribution is to compare the theoretical assessments and implications of theories of a tendential fall in the rate of profit and underconsumptionist theories as well as to assess their relevance for recurring economic crises in a short descriptive empirical analysis of the economic crisis in 2001, the Great Recession after 2007 and the crisis of 2020. Theories of a tendential fall in the rate of profit focus on the production process, asserting that reducing the share of living labour in production through the mechanization of production eventually leads to a declining profit rate. As the profit rate is the main driver of accumulation, this leads to an interruption of accumulation, i.e. crisis. In contrast, underconsumptionist theories focus on the sphere of circulation, identifying the inevitably recurring lack of aggregate demand as the main cause of crisis. Profit rates in the U.S. fell before the crises of 2001, 2007 and 2020, while the data does not show declining consumption before the respective crises. This suggests that falling rates of profit rather than declining consumption caused the crises of 2001 and 2007. The shutdown of production due to the Covid-19 pandemic caused the 2020 crisis, but the data suggests that declining profitability was already an issue before the onset of the crisis.
... The interest to reinvest goes along with the profit-motive as explained earlier. Within high-income countries, such investments beyond the coercion of price competition often go along with the so-called sales effort -firms try to sell products despite satisfied markets by using advertising, inventing new products, or planned obsolescence (Baran & Sweezy, 1966). In order to prevent such motives and strategies to expand consumption and (thereby) also production, firm ownership would need to be collectivised. ...
The Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance provides a state-of-the-art review of core debates and contributions that offer a more normative, critical, and transformatively aspirational view on global sustainability governance.
In this landmark text, an international group of acclaimed scholars provides an overview of key analytical and normative perspectives, material and ideational structural barriers to sustainability transformation, and transformative strategies. Drawing on pivotal new and contemporary research, the volume highlights aspects to be considered and blind spots to be avoided when trying to understand and implement global sustainability governance. In this context, the authors of this book debunk many myths about all-too optimistic accounts of progress towards a sustainability transition. Simultaneously, they suggest approaches that have the potential for real sustainability transformation and systemic change, while acknowledging existing hurdles.
... Others stressed the inability of consumers to keep up with production, due to the failure of wages to grow adequately, and the failure of those who received the profits to spend them sufficiently. Baran and Sweezy (1966) focussed on this inability to spend the aggregate profits, or surplusa problem exacerbated by monopolies managing to increase profits still further. They argued that one way in which this surplus was spent was on Research and Developmentso that the benefits from this were less the actual innovations that might be produced, as the expenditure which helped to keep the economy moving. ...
... However, at least since the end of the Second World War, capitalist economies have also engaged in planning "to deal with the economic, as much as political, consequences of high employment policies" among other factors (Warren 1972). As corporations grew to unprecedented sizes in the latter half of the century, they could not depend on existing markets to absorb their burgeoning outputs and thus began developing means to manipulate the circulation of commodities to their advantage (Baran and Sweezy 1966). Capitalist production then called for "an immense amount of social coordination that was not previously required" (Braverman 1998, p.186). ...
AI ethics is proposed, by the Big Tech companies which lead AI research and development, as the cure for diverse social problems posed by the commercialization of data-intensive technologies. It aims to reconcile capitalist AI production with ethics. However, AI ethics is itself now the subject of wide criticism; most notably, it is accused of being no more than “ethics washing” - a cynical means of dissimulation for Big Tech, while it continues its business operations unchanged. This paper aims to critically assess, and go beyond the ethics washing thesis. I argue that AI ethics is indeed ethics washing, but not only that. It has a more significant economic function for Big Tech. To make this argument I draw on the theory of intellectual monopoly capital. I argue that ethics washing is better understood as a subordinated innovation network: a dispersed network of contributors beyond Big Tech’s formal employment whose research is indirectly planned by Big Tech, which also appropriates its results. These results are not intended to render AI more ethical, but rather to advance the business processes of intellectual monopoly capitals. Because the parameters of AI ethics are indirectly set in advance by Big tech, the ostensible goal that AI ethics sets for itself-to resolve the contradiction between business and ethics-is in fact insoluble. I demonstrate this via an analysis of the latest trend in AI ethics: the operationalization of ethical principles.
... This is more so when we consider that under capitalism the educational institutions have no bearing whatsoever with the occupational requirements in the economy. Secondly, and this is important for our discussion, the content of primary and secondary school educationwhere the future workers are educatedis so empty that there are cases in Tanzania where after twelve years of elementary education students leave the school with no basic skills of literacy (Sweezy & Baran, 1966;Braverman, 1974;Bowles & Gintis, 1976). ...
In the 1960s and 1970s there were lively and fervent intellectual debates and discussions at the University of Dares-Salaam, Tanzania. The debate revolved around how Africa could extricate itself from the barbaric capitalist socioeconomic system. It was pioneered by the radical wing of the University students who, partly, sought to transform the erstwhile colonial education system whose purpose was mental enslavement into the socialist education for liberation of mankind. Today, not only that such a debate has fizzled out, but more importantly, the paucity of the culture of reading has characterised the entire educational system inTanzania. The purpose of this article is to highlight the social factors responsible for this state of affairs. It is claimed thatthe onslaught of the neoliberal policies pursued by monopoly capital through its financial institutions, namely the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and in collaboration with the compradorial ruling classes in African countries, have been the principal forces responsible for the process of undermining the education system in Africa in general, and Tanzania and Nigeria in particular. In Tanzania today, for example, in contrast to the aims and ethos of the Arusha Declaration and the policy of Education for Selfreliance, the education system is for preparing candidates for the labour market, and hence, for subordination, exploitation, and the generation of mental confusion. The paper ends up by one, calling upon the left intellectuals in Africa to do a“rethinking” of the said issue, and two, by suggesting a tentative programme for reviving the culture of reading in Africa.
... Indeed, Lenin (1967) inspired many dependency theorists to incorporate imperialism into their analysis, often through the lens of monopoly capitalism (e.g. Baran and Sweezy 1966;Amin 1974;Foster 2013). Baran (1957) argues that since foreign capital tends to control domestic markets, the periphery enters straight into the monopolistic phase of capitalist development. ...
... Indeed, Lenin (1967) inspired many dependency theorists to incorporate imperialism into their analysis, often through the lens of monopoly capitalism (e.g. Baran and Sweezy 1966;Foster 2013). Baran (1957) argues that since foreign capital tends to control domestic markets, the periphery enters straight into the monopolistic phase of capitalist development. ...
In contrast to neo-classical mainstream approaches to economics, this innovative Modern Guide addresses the complex reality of economic development as an inherently uneven process, exploring the ways of theorizing and empirically exploring the mechanisms with which the unevenness manifests itself. It covers a wide array of issues influencing wealth and poverty, technological innovation, ecology and sustainability, financialization, population, gender, and geography, considering the dynamics of cumulative causations created by the interplay between these factors.
... In particular, the growing importance of managers and technicians, or in general of the new middle class, became the focus of a debate that centred around the contributions of Poulantzas (1973), Carchedi (1975a;1975b) and Wright (1976;. In parallel, the increasing awareness of the relevance of unproductive labour for the empirical estimation of Marxian categories (Gillman 1957;Mage 1963) and the reformulation of the distinction between productive and unproductive labour in the context of the theory of Monopoly Capitalism (Baran 1957;Baran and Sweezy 1966) also reached a high point during the same period with significant contributions by Gough (1972), Yaffe (1973), Bullock (1973;1974), Fine (1973), Gough and Harrison (1975), and Harrison (1973). ...
Η διάκριση μεταξύ της παραγωγικής και μη παρα-
γωγικής εργασίας, έχοντας τις ρίζες της στην κλασική
και Μαρξική πολιτική οικονομία, έχει αποτελέσει
την πηγή μιας εκτεταμένης συζήτησης στη βιβλιο-
γραφία. Στην παρούσα μελέτη υποστηρίζουμε ότι
ο ορθός ορισμός των κατηγοριών της παραγωγικής
και μη παραγωγικής εργασίας είναι καθοριστικός
για την εμπειρική εκτίμηση των κοινωνικών τάξεων
υπό μια Μαρξική οπτική. Επιπρόσθετα, χρησιμο-
ποιώντας το μεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο της Μαρξικής
παράδοσης, προχωρούμε στην εμπειρική εκτίμηση
των κατηγοριών της παραγωγικής και μη παρα-
γωγικής εργασίας για την Ελλάδα για την περίοδο
1987 έως 2020, χρησιμοποιώντας μικροδεδομένα
της Έρευνας Εργατικού Δυναμικού και συγκρίνου-
με τα αποτελέσματα που λαμβάνουμε τα με άλλες
αντίστοιχες μελέτες για την Ελλάδα
... As an approach used by liberal schools, however, MIC inevitably fails to explain the key role of military spending in the capitalist system. In contrast, the underconsumptionist view in Marxist thought (Baran and Sweezy 1966;Mandel 1968;Kidron 1970) can provide a more comprehensive theoretical explanation. According to this view, military expenditure prevents a crisis by absorbing the surplus in the economy, contrary to other types of government expenditure, such as health and education, that would conflict with the interests of the capitalist class. ...
Using a relatively large time-varying cross-country panel dataset of fiscal policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper examines the relationship between military spending persistency and the size of the fiscal stimulus packages. The results suggest that countries with more persistent military spending have had smaller fiscal-stimulus packages during the Covid-19 pandemic.
... (Kowalik, 1982a, p. 661) Kowalik believed that the much-debated radicalization of this argument by Rosa Luxemburg should not be interpreted as implying an automatic collapse of capitalism, rather an essential component of a more general trend. According to him, Baran and Sweezy's (1966) stagnationist theory about the limits of capitalism was the most advanced. Given the increasingly monopolistic feature of large corporations, the constant presence of surplus in excess over the existing capacity of capitalist investment and consumption is the manifestation of the failure of capitalism in finding a solution to periodic crises and unemployment. ...
... Baran, Paul A. and Paul M. Sweezy (1968), Monopoly Capital. An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order. ...
A Planetary Tragedy addresses the question of why, some 50 years
after the environment became a topic of public concern, efforts to address
environmental problems have by and large failed and the world appears to
be heading for a disastrous future. Although over these years, governments
have adopted a raft of national and international measures to combat
environmental issues, most of these have proven to be inadequate and the
rate of environmental degradation has continued unabated. The book critically surveys and analyses the environmental performance of countries, in particular, some that have been regarded as environmental leaders, and identifies and discusses three broad reasons for this failure. First, the way environmental problems have been predominantly interpreted, which largely ignores the deep and interconnected nature of the environmental challenge; second, the failure to recognise, let alone address, the systemic sources and causes of environmental problems; third, the power structures in the prevailing political-economic systems, which make it virtually impossible to fundamentally change those systems and to
put societies onto a path towards sustainability.
Covering an extensive literature, the book draws on research, theories,
findings, and ideas from the fields of environmental politics and policy,
including comparative, international, and global analyses and perspectives,
environmental sociology and history, economics and the environment,
political and social theory, and environmental management. It puts forward
a framework that can assist in taking a comprehensive and integrated
approach to the environmental challenge, discusses the strengths and
weaknesses of a range of theoretical perspectives, clarifies key concepts and
factors central to better understanding the systemic issues and obstacles
lying at the heart of the environmental challenge, and puts forward ideas on
how to strategically address the enormous imbalance of power that stands
in the way of transformative change. The main suggestion is the creation of
national-level Sovereign People’s Authorities based on the principle of
popular sovereignty that will enable societies to democratically steer
themselves towards a sustainable and desirable future.
This research article presents an agent-based simulation hereinafter called COMMONSIM. It builds on COMMONISM, i.e. a large-scale commons-based vision for a utopian society. In this society, production and distribution of means are not coordinated via markets, exchange and money, or a central polity, but via bottom-up signalling and polycentric networks, i.e. ex ante coordination via needs. Heterogeneous agents care for each other in life groups and produce in different groups care, environmental as well as intermediate and final means to satisfy sensual-vital needs. Productive needs decide on the magnitude of activity in groups for a common interest, e.g. the production of means in a multi-sectoral artificial economy. Agents share cultural traits identified by different behaviours: a propensity for egoism, leisure, environmentalism and productivity. The narrative of this utopian society follows principles of critical psychology and sociology, complexity and evolution, the theory of commons and critical political economy. The article presents the utopia and an agent-based study of it, with emphasis on culture-dependent allocation mechanisms and their social and economic implications for agents and groups.
This contribution aims to lift the ideological veil of apologetics and pseudo-criticism on advertising with the help of a reality-based systematic analysis that contributes to a materialistic theory of advertising. The content-related and methodological basis of such a theory is a Critique of the Political Economy of Advertising oriented towards the critique of capitalism and academic knowledge originally presented by Karl Marx and current societal analyses based on it. In this context, the academic objective is to consider the economic, political, and societal functions of (media) advertising. In doing so, the elementary economic and ideological functions of advertising for the existence and further development of the market economy and capitalist economic and societal systems become recognisable. Advertising then no longer appears as a necessary evil but as a necessary "elixir of life” for the media industry, the economy, and capitalism as a whole. Based on the applied critical political-economic analysis, it becomes clear that on the level of capitalism as an economic and societal system, advertising thus contributes economically and ideologically to the stabilisation of the systemic foundations of capitalist societies (the capital-labour relationship, the regime of accumulation; the economic, societal, and political [advertising] functions of the media). It is shown that a Critique of the Political Economy of Advertising – especially from the point of view of the necessarily growing importance of advertising for media production – also contributes to the development of a Critique of the Political Economy of the Media.
The role of the State on the origin of financialization from the Marxist y Minskyan perspectives: a comparative analysis O papel do Estado na origem da financeirização na perspectiva marxista e pós-keynesiana: uma análise comparativa Fecha de recepción: 15 de noviembre de 2022 Fecha de aprobación: 22 de mayo de 2023 Resumen El proceso de financiarización ha sido ampliamente estudiado. Se han ana-lizado sus efectos sobre diversos aspectos de la vida económica, política y social, incluyendo la relación con el Estado. En este trabajo se estudia el papel jugado por el Estado en el origen del proceso de financiarización. El artículo realiza un análisis comparativo de la manera en que se ha interpre-tado el papel del Estado en el surgimiento de la financiarización tanto en la teoría marxista como en la teoría minskyana. Se argumenta que, dado que la teoría minskyana considera que el marco institucional que regula la eco-nomía puede ser establecido por el Estado de manera externa, no es capaz de explicar las transformaciones en el Estado causadas por el proceso de financiarización. Se concluye que para alcanzar un mejor entendimiento de la financiarización del Estado la teoría marxista que incluye una perspectiva histórica es más adecuada.
Palabras clave: financiarización; Estado; neoliberalismo; money manager capitalism
Códigos JEL: B2, G18, H1, P11 CEC Año 9, Nº 18 (2023) pp. 33-53
Essa tese explora o relacionamento entre o discurso e a agenda anticorrupção no Brasil, durante o período de 1945 a 1964, e a implementação de medidas político-econômicas de racionalidade neoliberal, bem como suas implicações no arranjo político-social do país e na cultura política brasileira. Proponho uma nova forma de se entender o tópico da corrupção, não mais como um instrumento de manipulação social, mas como elemento dotado de racionalidade que vai além da ideia de instrumentalização política, pois é parte da essência neoliberal. Para isso, utilizo a perspectiva proposta por novos estudos que identificam os princípios do neoliberalismo já no pós 1ª Guerra Mundial como forma de conter aspirações sociais e o intervencionismo estatal. Trata-se de ideologia conservadora que assim como utiliza a austeridade para alcançar seus objetivos (Mattei 2022), também utiliza a agenda anticorrupção, seu braço moralista e, pretensamente, técnico. Sendo conservadora, ela consegue, para alcançar seus objetivos, coadunar-se com outras formas de conservadorismos, como ocorreu no golpe civil-militar de 1964. A partir dessa reconfiguração teórica, podemos entender a agenda anticorrupção como meio de se combater qualquer modelo de planificação estatal, ao mesmo tempo que o busca diminuir ao representá-lo como corrupto e corruptor, bem como qualquer classe ligada a ela. Por outro lado, esse discurso será utilizado para proteger e expandir o “mercado livre”, pretensamente isento das disputas políticas, movidos pela eficiência da “mão livre” e, por isso, livre de corrupção. O tema da anticorrupção também possui outra agenda, como a necessidade de legislação e regulação para conter fraudes no setor privado e na formação de trustes, visando não só suprir um dos maiores problemas do Brasil, a falta de divisas para investimento, como gradualmente eliminar o poder de decisões governamentais em favor de créditos privados e investimentos diretos pela Bolsa de Valores que se consolidará como fonte de poder e investimento à medida que as regulações pró-mercado se implementam no país. Apesar disso, mostro que estes eram regramentos sem dentes, pois nenhum ator será punido, mas o discurso de um mercado regrado era obtido, fazendo contraponto à percepção negativa de um Estado corrupto. Essa teorização e metodologia que aqui proponho permite investigar não só a seletividade presente nos discursos políticos anticorrupção, mas entender que há racionalidade por trás desses discursos e agenda, permitindo que se investigue casos de corrupção privada pela mesma ótica e no mesmo trabalho, antes estudados em separado, mas que agora pois agora fazem parte do
mesmo arcabouço teórico-metodológico: a implementação do neoliberalismo no Brasil.
This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the concept of spatial fixing and its relationship to the capitalist system that directs the global economy. It centres upon its application to the maritime sector whereby the process of globalisation that has been occurring with increasing pace over the past 1000 years reflects capitalism’s desire to find new markets. However, this process cannot go on forever despite capitalism’s need for just this to happen as the resources of the globe are finite. The exploitation of new territories by the maritime sector is an example of spatial fixation but once these territories are exhausted then capitalism needs to look elsewhere and an inexhaustible location in which to fix capital is provided by outer space through investment and resource exploitation. The circuits of capital are outlined and their relationship to space-time compression is discussed in addition to a consideration of commodification for both the maritime and outer space sectors. The role of the state and private sector is discussed along with the significance of the ‘commons’. The chapter concludes with a discussion on blockchains and resource exploitation including space tourism and the role of governance in each sector.
The classical nomothetic social sciences of economics, political science, and sociology have reduced the complexities of societal development not the least by abstracting from time and space. To understand these complexities better, it is recommended to study interacting processes of political-economic development, technological change, and changes in life support systems in characteristic times. Repeated and increasingly sophisticated warfare, deepening economic crises, and externalized ecological costs have all their own timescales. It is examined, therefore, in the context of Western industrial development, how the interactions of advanced industrialization and militarization have unfolded on different timescales in the trajectory of two main powers. In the case of Prussia-Germany, precapitalist militaristic mentality was modernized to catch up with other great European powers. The United States of America modernized warfare in a Civil War of contesting modes of production in Westward expansion. At a multiple characteristic timescale (MTS), these formerly dispersed developments on two continents converged, finally, into a Thirty-One Year War between science and technology-based rivals. The fatal mistake of a failing peace arrangement after the First World War prompted the backlash of the inter-war years. After the Second World War, it was replaced by a more robust peace arrangement with more comprehensive normative agreements regarding political economy as well as peacekeeping under the umbrella of the United Nations. However, a stepwise and protracted US decline from its 1945 top of hegemony finally replaced hegemony by violence-based domination. Since the end of the Cold War and of the “short twentieth century” (E. Hobsbawm, Age of extremes. The short 20th century 1914–1991. Michael Joseph/Viking Penguin, 1994) with its moment of hope for a peace dividend with developmental potentials unilateral power politics have again come to the fore and feed geopolitics with war dividends. The resulting world-systemic chaos with its erratic fluctuations also implies bifurcations: It may become possible to reject the history of industrialized warfare and by the way of emancipatory foreign politics to strengthen and synchronize an alternative, peaceful road formerly not taken. To achieve and maintain this solution, the problem of its repeated elimination must be understood from its industrial capitalist roots in the expanding modern world-system.KeywordsIndustrializationMilitarizationHegemonyDominationGeopoliticsEco-politicsWorld-system analysisEmancipatory foreign policyJEL CodeN9N90
Decisions by individuals, organisations, and nations shape the well-being of humans and other species, the environment, and sustainability. Decisions for Sustainability examines how we can make better decisions concerning our future. It incorporates sociological, psychological, and economic perspectives to highlight our strengths and weaknesses in decision-making, and suggest strategies to influence both individual and societal decisions. Sustainability challenges – from local land use and toxic contamination to climate change and biodiversity loss – illustrate how we can improve decision making and what factors lead to conflict. How we use science in the face of uncertainty is also examined, and a range of ethical criteria for good decisions are proposed. Emphasizing the need for diversity in decision making and clarifying the relationship between reform and societal transformation, this book provides a comprehensive view of what we know about decision-making, and how we can do better in the face of sustainability challenges.
El objetivo de este artículo es dimensionar y analizar la rentabilidad de la producción agrícola familiar de temporal en tres unidades económicas, con el fin de determinar en qué medida el excedente económico, efectivo e imputado, cubre los requerimientos de consumo y reproducción del capital del ciclo agrícola. El trabajo de campo se realizó en la localidad de Tecajec, Yecapixtla, Morelos, en el periodo de junio de 2016 a mayo de 2017 y se utilizó el método de investigación en granjas complementado con técnicas de estudios de caso. El resultado fue que el excedente resultó insuficiente para cubrir los costos efectivos e imputados de la mano de obra y el beneficio promedio por actividades de organización, es decir, no existe equilibrio entre el trabajo familiar con las necesidades de consumo y de reposición del capital; los subsidios fueron indispensables para el nuevo ciclo de producción.Abstract: The objective of the article is to measure and analyze the profitability of seasonal family agricultural production in three economic units, in order to determine to what extent the economic surplus, effective and imputed, covers the consumption and reproduction requirements of the capital of the agricultural cycle. The fieldwork was carried out in the town of Tecajec, Yecapixtla, Morelos, in the period June 2016- May 2017, using the farm research method complemented with case study techniques. It was found that the surplus was insufficient to cover the effective and imputed costs of labor and the average benefit from organizational activities, that is, there is no balance between family work and the needs of consumption and replacement of capital; the subsidies were indispensable for the new production cycle.Keywords: agricultural unit; profitability; surplus; subsidies; peasant family.Résumé : L’objectif de l’article est de mesurer et d’analyser la rentabilité de la production agricole familiale saisonnière dans trois unités économiques, afin de déterminer dans quelle mesure le surplus économique, effectif et imputé, couvre les besoins de consommation et de reproduction du capital du cycle agricole. Le travail de terrain a été réalisé dans la ville de Tecajec, Yecapixtla, Morelos, entre juin 2016 et mai 2017, en utilisant la méthode de recherche agricole complétée par des techniques d’étude de cas. Il a été constaté que l’excédent était insuffisant pour couvrir les coûts effectifs et imputés du travail et le bénéfice moyen des activités organisationnelles, c’est-à-dire qu’il n’y a pas d’équilibre entre le travail familial et les besoins de consommation et de remplacement du capital; les subventions étaient indispensables pour le nouveau cycle de production.Mots clés : unité agricole ; rentabilité ; surplus ; subventions ; famille paysanne.
Our particular rendition of world of the third Marxism cannot be founded without the return of a class-focused discourse—class understood in terms of processes of surplus labour. Beginning with the entry point of class as processes of surplus labour and the epistemo-ontology of overdetermination, this chapter provides a basic introduction to a bare minimum corpus of concepts associated with class-focused Marxian theory. Its object of analysis is then focused upon the manner in which various non-class processes constitute and are constituted by class processes. Using a class matrix, various types of class process of performance and appropriation of surplus labour—independent, slave, feudal, capitalist, communist, and communitic—are elaborated upon. The class-focused conceptualization of reality is presented as decentred and disaggregated. The focus then shifts to the capitalist class process which is explored in detail. Finally, the discussion moves on to capitalist class enterprise and to class struggle.
Capitalism was always dishonest. However, capitalism has generated massive wealth. Capitalism has been linked to exploitation, wealth inequality, economic collapse, and world strife. Political economy has studied capitalism’s multiple faces. Can capitalism’s problems be eliminated while retaining its benefits, as proponents claim? Capitalism can only be eliminated by limiting or abolishing it, say some critics. This issue’s outcome is largely influenced by theory. Economists believe markets are fair for assessing and rewarding economic contributions to society. Individual inadequacy, not market dominance, causes social and individual problems. The Marxian notion that production relations underpin every society is the key to understanding the contemporary breakdown of order. Class structures sustain political, cultural, and ideological institutions. New production relations, or “no class” interactions, are needed to create a postcapitalist society. Just as new economic relationships arose over the centuries during Europe’s transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism, and a new society developed on the foundation of these systems, so new manifestations of monumental growth in production will evolve in the coming generations to reduce crisis-stricken times. Banks needed a rescue after the global economy collapsed in late 2007. Market economies are not self-regulating. Since it upended traditional patterns of thinking, the disaster allowed people to reconsider long-standing issues that had never been resolved. After the crisis, Marx’s “Capital” sold well worldwide, according to booksellers. Marxism is making a return. Due to its critical legacy in the humanities and social sciences, Marxism cannot be confined in a 19th-century framework. Marx permeated our water and air even while he was rejected. Marxism is everywhere in the 21st century. Modern Marxism supports entrepreneurship and free enterprise if they improve society.
This article examines the trajectory of the surplus value (SV) rate in the UK economy, in the period 1992-2020, using ONS macroeconomic data (Blue Book) and micro-datasets (Understanding Society). We initially define productive and unproductive labour, proposing a "Marxist Productive Labour Classification System", framed in critical context. Standard occupational (SOC) and standard industrial (SIC) codes are uniquely combined, using UK data, to derive empirical estimates of Marxian categories, specifically an aggregate model based on the New Interpretation framework. Then, movements in this rate are examined in terms of absolute and relative SV changes. We find that, prior to the 2008 Crisis, SV extraction is more reliant on production-related drivers, while after this dislocation SV is more reliant on the sphere of distribution, with the pandemic impacting all drivers negatively.
In this chapter, I summarise the argument of an earlier monograph on this topic (Friedrich Engels and the Foundations of Socialist Governance, Springer 2021), since it was actually Engels who provided the basic principles for what socialist governance might be. The chapter begins with a summary of Engels’s well-known theory of forms of the state that had existed thus far, which may be formulated in terms of the state as a “separated public power.” Of more pertinence for socialist construction are his subsequent proposals. These begin with the explicit identification (not found in Marx) of the Paris commune as the dictatorship of the proletariat, as well as the important role of “force [Gewalt]” in the initial exercise of proletarian power. Engels also sought to clarify the crucial theory of the “dying away of the state.” In response to the Anarchists, who proposed that the first act of socialist power would be the “abolition [Abschaffung]” of the state, Engels emphasised that the state would die away of its own accord as one of the last results of socialism in power. It would not happen quickly, but would take a long time indeed. The final part of the chapter elaborates on Engels’s principles of socialist governance. These are: (1) Public power (Gewalt) continues, although it would not be separated from but stand in the midst of society; (2) Since it is not based on class conflict, it would lose its “political character”; (3) Governance entails the administration of things and the management of the processes of production for the sake of the true interests of society; (4) This reality may be seen as a dialectical transformation, an Aufhebung of baseline communism.
Abstract
In order to better understand how finance causes income inequality and to comprehend the ontology of this relationship, I started the ‘minor’ part of this thesis with the fundamental assumption that the knowledge sphere exists independently of our knowledge and regardless of personal subjective experience.
The overall (minor plus major) objective of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between finance and income inequality. To achieve this objective, I examine both the theoretical and a large empirical literature on the subject. At the level of theory, the thesis combines the orthodox and heterodox mechanisms through which finance generates income inequality in modern capitalist countries. Empirically, the thesis develops a Dynamic Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model that controls for indicators of globalization, rising monopoly power, business cycles, and other variables in an attempt to isolate the unbiased causal effects of financial variables on income inequality.
I estimate the ARDL model against two-panel datasets. I use the first dataset (48 countries from 1993 to 2017) to study how financial development, financial liberalization, and financial structure affect the Gini- measure income inequality across high, middle, and low-income countries. I employ the second dataset (14 OECD countries from 1980 to 2017) to study the long-run effects of financialization and neoliberalism on several alternative measures of income inequality across countries classified as neoliberal (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia); Nordic (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway) and social-corporatist (France and Germany).
The primary finding of this research is that financial indicator variables exert a significant effect on income inequality in the long run across high, middle, and low-income countries.
Second, countries with a more market-based financial structure promote more equitable income distribution, while countries with faster growth tend to generate greater income disparity. Third, increased trade openness leads to increased income disparity, while lower competition helps to reduce inequality. Our evidence does not support the inverted “U-shape” theory concerning financial development and income inequality. Finally, neoliberalism and financialization have increased disposable income disparity in the upper-tail and the lower-tail of income distribution within countries.
In this chapter I outline and critically evaluate two competing interpretations of Marx’s explanation of the money prices of commodities found in the literature. I refer to these as the traditional and monetary interpretations or approaches. The traditional approach interprets Marx conceiving of the value of the commodity as the quantity of abstract labour time actually expended in its production while the monetary approach interprets him conceiving of the value of the commodity as the quantity of money appropriated as incomes in the context of its production where money represents a certain quantity of abstract labour time. The basic argument I develop is that both approaches misinterpret Marx’s conception of the value of the commodity, causing them to misinterpret his conception of money and, consequently, his explanation of the money price of the commodity. I argue that the most obvious manifestation of these mistaken interpretations of Marx’s explanation of the money price of the commodity is that they interpret him seeing changes in the relative money prices of commodities taking place independently of changes in the aggregate money price level, and not also in the context of the latter.
This chapter discusses the relationship between neoliberalism and finance capitalism or financialisation and establishes a conceptual framework for the link between income inequality and finance. It focuses on the origin of neoliberal ideology, its main doctrinal tenets and its strategy to become hegemonic. A decreased share of capital in national income instigated the ruling classes to introduce neoliberal policies that later would develop into financialisation as a new mode of capital accumulation which most decisively resolved distributional issues in their favour. The third section examines the emergence of the new global financial order, explaining why and how the USA, as the hegemonic capitalist world power, broke away from the Bretton Woods regime. The chapter also offers a theoretical discussion of different concepts on finance capital, financialisation and finance capitalism.
Dallas Smythe bearbeitet polit-ökonomisch eine Reihe von Fragen, die dann in der späteren Rezeptionsgeschichte des Textes v. a. in der sog. Blindspot-Debatte und in der Digital Labour-Debatte kontroverse Antworten provoziert haben: Warum werden aus ökonomischer Sicht überhaupt massenmediale Inhalte, wie Information und Unterhaltung produziert? Was genau kaufen die Werbetreibenden mit ihren Werbeausgaben? Wie stellen die Werbetreibenden sicher, auch das zu erhalten, wofür sie bezahlen? Welche Rolle spielt das Publikum für die wirtschaftliche Beziehung zwischen Massenmedien und werbetreibender Industrie? Wer produziert die Dienstleistung bzw. Ware, die die Werbetreibenden kaufen? Wie lässt sich die Werbeindustrie im (Monopol-)Kapitalismus im Rahmen einer marxistischen (Arbeits-)Werttheorie verstehen? Haben sowohl kritische als auch orthodoxe wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Ansätze die ökonomische Rolle werbefinanzierter Medien bisher missinterpretiert? Mit der Einführung des Begriffs der audience commodity (Publikumsware) bestimmt der Text die Rolle des Publikums für die kapitalistische Ökonomie als eine produktive, dessen Aktivität unter monopol- oder oligopolartigen Marktbedingungen fortlaufend gesichert werden muss, um sie ausbeuten zu können.
This special issue investigates how in the times of war, political turmoil, and disruption of commercial practices during the Age of Revolutions two centuries ago, merchants appear as demiurges of a new order. This is part of a polycentric reading of epochal transformations that does not deny the primacy of politics and military power in establishing relations of force, but which underline the complex negotiations at their base. The collection of essays looks at the profound global consequences of the fall of the Spanish American empire, particularly as they related to the decline of mercantilism and the reconfiguration of both Atlantic and inter-Pacific commerce. A crucial element in this transformation was the war economy, which had implications not only in Spanish America, but in the whole of the Hispanic world and beyond. Global merchants or businessmen —foreigners and Hispanic— strategically located in the Hispanic World, whose networks and affairs linked Europe, Asia and the Americas, worked within the vacuum created by the crisis of the Spanish monarchy in what was a fluid and foundational moment. The essays investigate how the Napoleonic Wars and the Wars of Independence against Spain accelerated the emergence of new actors, practices, rules and commercial circuits, by analyzing the personal and business networks that built, redefined and renegotiated the role of Hispanic America in the global economy. This prosopography of merchants thus shows trajectories through which, despite infinite difficulties, global and transregional merchants appear as one of the maieutic forces in the birth of the modern world.
Cinema, like all forms of art, carry within itself the hopes, dreams, anxieties, and horrors of a society. Movies are social constructs meant to entertain their audiences by bringing them romantic stories, heartfelt dramas, fast paced adventures, and even dreadful horror. The production of films is something quite complex and entails the influence of many different individuals. From director and actors to producers and sponsors, every human element will bring its own social influence in the final product.
In that, a movie is, in a postmodernist approach, a parallel reality conceived of different visions. Given that this entails different possible interpretations for films and that, ever since the age of industrialization, class struggle seems like a constant characteristic of capitalism, it’s certain that many movies will often carry Marxist subtexts to them.
From Metropolis (1927) to Joker (2019), this research intends to use discourse analysis to interpret a selection of movies through Marxist lenses, thus adding to the already existing literature on sociological interpretation of cinema.
From the beginning in the late Middle Ages in European wool trade to support financial needs of the Vatican, capitalism has operated as a regional system of production, trade, and finance. Capital and labor migration propelled the expansion of the system reaching beyond Europe, especially in the “long sixteenth century” of 1450–1640. In succession, the United Provinces, Britain, and the United States achieved dominance in the capitalist world-system in historical eras from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Migration of capital and labor helped configure economic and political relations among core, peripheral, and semiperipheral regions of the growing world-system.
A garbage collectors’ strike is in the center of Tristan Egolf Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Corn Belt. Trash overflows the fictitious town of Baker, Kentucky the novel portrays, alongside a truly extraordinary catalog of numerous kinds of filth. The novel thusly charts processes of deterioration and decay – environmental, as well as social and moral, interconnecting the classification of waste and the categorizations of people, while pointing at the lamentable disposability of both. Drawing on various theoretical approaches to waste, this paper offers an analysis of the interrelated environmental, social and racial layouts it portrays. A harsh critique of American culture, this great American novel protests against consumer culture and its waste production, yet it also traces a linkage between hyper-consumption, waste and the tendency to treat people as filth – based on race, class, species or work place. Lord of the Barnyard is constantly preoccupied with racial tagging and epithets, repeated mapping and categorization of racial layouts – mainly of stigmatypes of “white trash.” Carefully unfolding these layouts, the paper further shows how the novel playfully subverts social conceptions in order to uncover endemic injustices and criticize them.
Hilferding identified the divorce of ownership and control which was beginning to take place in the large-scale corporations of his day. And he anticipated the relegation of shareholders to the status of simple ‘money capitalists’ who had, as the studies of Berle and Means were to demonstrate, traded in their economic control against the liquidity of their holdings of securities. Drawing on subsequent analyses, it is argued that this trend continues into our own day in spite of the neo-liberal attempt to restore the previous patterns of ownership and economic organisation. It is possible to suggest some of the ways in which the separation of ownership and control may be transforming socioeconomic relations, but there is as yet no full answer to a key problem posed by these developments: the lack of social control over large-scale enterprises.KeywordsLarge-scale corporationsDivorce of ownership and controlSocial controlTransforming socioeconomic relations
This chapter outlines the analysis of monopoly finance capital of Ludwik Krzywicki, in articles from 1890 and 1905, that anticipates key elements of Hilferding’s theory. While lacking the sophistication of Hilferding’s theory, Krzywicki’s exposition goes beyond Hilferding in two important respects. First of all its argues that the US kind of capital market finance, with investment banks in a coordinating role, is more durable than the bank-based finance capital of Hilferding. Krzywicki also introduced the concept of industrial feudalism, as a static social formation of rigid class boundaries that would emerge in a cartelised economy. Krzywicki’s analysis of finance capital was neglected in revivals of his work in the 1950s.KeywordsHilferdingKrzywickiFinance capitalMonopolyIndustrial feudalism
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