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A Historian's Reflection on the Unsustainable American State

Lizabeth Cohen

in The Unsustainable American State

Looking at the rising economic inequality of the last quarter century and how it undermines Americans' confidence that their democratic capitalist system remains sufficient in distributing political ... More

Looking at the rising economic inequality of the last quarter century and how it undermines Americans' confidence that their democratic capitalist system remains sufficient in distributing political and economic benefits to its citizens, the chapter begins by explaining the complex connections between the state and inequality through time. It argues that a better understanding can be attained only if the issue is historically contextualized and considered as part of the long evolution of the American state. Thus, in this chapter, a schema of five regimes of state building and their consequences for the shifting nature of inequality in American society is presented.Less

Capitalism

Michael Foley

in American Credo: The Place of Ideas in US Politics

This chapter discusses American capitalism. Capitalism has not only become integrally related to the growth of the United States into a global industrial power, but in doing so has acquired an iconic ... More

This chapter discusses American capitalism. Capitalism has not only become integrally related to the growth of the United States into a global industrial power, but in doing so has acquired an iconic property as the generic expression of American ideas and experience. Just as capitalism has played a role in giving definition to America's social identity and historical position, so the United States has emerged as the exemplar of capitalist organization and the defining reference point by which its merits and demerits as an economic and ethical system is adjudged.Less

Capitalism Versus Socialism: An Analytical Perspective

N. Scott Arnold

in The Philosophy and Economics of Market Socialism: A Critical Study

This chapter begins by giving a definition of the terms capitalist economic system and socialist economic system. The former is defined using the concept of a free enterprise system, a system where ... More

This chapter begins by giving a definition of the terms capitalist economic system and socialist economic system. The former is defined using the concept of a free enterprise system, a system where most of the means of production are privately owned and where people are free to sell their labor in the market. The latter is harder to construct but in identifying the most common denominators among socialist systems, this chapter comes out with a system that prohibits most private ownership of the means of production and which mandates social control of the same. Dispute arises as to which system most approximates the concept of a good society. However, the complete theory of the good society is something which is rare to find and thus leads to issues in the criticism and defense of both economic systems. This chapter lays down the philosophical framework underlying the debate between capitalism and socialism.Less

Exploitation and the Economics of Organizations

N. Scott Arnold

in The Philosophy and Economics of Market Socialism: A Critical Study

The market socialist system is differentiated from the free enterprise system by the types of organizations that are allowed to operate in their respective economies. While the free enterprise system ... More

The market socialist system is differentiated from the free enterprise system by the types of organizations that are allowed to operate in their respective economies. While the free enterprise system allows a variety of organizational forms, in a market socialist system, there are mostly worker-managed cooperatives and sometimes for specific reasons, firms wholly owned by the state and privately owned enterprises. Organizational types vary in their interrelationship with factors such as laborers, capital providers, input suppliers, monitors, central contracting agents, director of the firm's output, residual claimants, and ultimate decision-makers. This chapter also points out what differentiates a traditional capitalist firm from an open corporation and from a worker cooperative. In the discussions, this chapter goes back to the concept of exploitation in the context of the organization. An explanation for the phenomenon is sought from the ideas of bounded rationality and opportunism.Less

Challenges to Capital

ANDREW GLYN

in Capitalism Unleashed: Finance, Globalization, and Welfare

This chapter discusses challenges faced by the capital system. It begins with a description of the unprecedented boom of the economies of the most developed capitalist countries (North America, ... More

This chapter discusses challenges faced by the capital system. It begins with a description of the unprecedented boom of the economies of the most developed capitalist countries (North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australasia) in the 1950s and 1960s, dubbed as the ‘Golden Age’, characterized by low unemployment, low inflation, and rapidly growing living standards. This was followed by the apparent decline of the capitalist system during the second half of the 1960s and through the 1970s, characterized by the emergence of organized labour, international disorganization, and productivity slowdown.Less

Technocracy

Theodore Zeldin

in France 1848–1945: Volume Two: Intellect, Taste and Anxiety

The period 1914–45 was one of anxiety to those who lived through it not least because they did not know where it was leading. A great many people behaved, even after the war of 1914 and even during ... More

The period 1914–45 was one of anxiety to those who lived through it not least because they did not know where it was leading. A great many people behaved, even after the war of 1914 and even during the German occupation of 1940–4, as though nothing fundamental had changed. The battles of the politicians, the rise and fall of ministries, tell us about day-to-day preoccupations, but that is only one level of history. At another level, we can see three major changes occurring in these years which transcend the bitter quarrels, which were abetted by politicians of almost all parties, and which place the details of events in a different light. The capitalist system, first of all, received a fatal blow in 1914, at least in the form in which it had existed in the nineteenth century. Its death throes may be regarded as a central theme of the next thirty years. After that, the economy was run on radically different lines and the state, which hitherto had limited its interventions to a comparatively small segment of life, emerged vastly more active, and very much transformed. The rise of an expansionist France in the 1950s, based on a ‘mixed economy’ and welfare benefits, cannot be understood without going back to these years.Less

Economy and Society: A Silent Bourgeois Revolution

David Blackbourn

in The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany

This chapter examines the so-called silent bourgeois revolution in Germany during the nineteenth century. It explains that one of the main changes brought about by this silent revolution was the ... More

This chapter examines the so-called silent bourgeois revolution in Germany during the nineteenth century. It explains that one of the main changes brought about by this silent revolution was the emergence and consolidation of the capitalist system based on the sanctity and disposability of private property and on production to meet individual needs through a system of exchange dominated by the market. It also describes the changes in the law, in mechanical civilization, and in patterns of sociability.Less

Economy and Society: The Shadow Side

David Blackbourn

in The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany

This chapter examines the so-called shadow side of the achievement of the bourgeois revolution in Germany, which is the capitalist system. This system unlocked productive capacity, created a national ... More

This chapter examines the so-called shadow side of the achievement of the bourgeois revolution in Germany, which is the capitalist system. This system unlocked productive capacity, created a national market within an international economy, and opened up opportunities for entrepreneurial talent as material and institutional restrictions were pushed aside. It also increased consumption levels and generated employment. This chapter suggests that the principal problem with bourgeois society in Germany was not its absence but its ambiguity and that the bourgeoisie was as much a victim of its contradictory successes as its outright failures.Less

The Postwar Settlement

Daniel Stedman Jones

in Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics

This chapter describes the contours and limits of the political settlement in Great Britain and the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. It shows how at the heart of both New Deal ... More

This chapter describes the contours and limits of the political settlement in Great Britain and the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. It shows how at the heart of both New Deal liberalism and the British Liberal and Labour reforms was a happy conception of the state so long as its power was in the hands of an enlightened and expert policy elite. The famous Brain Trust around Franklin Roosevelt and the progressive liberal civil service personified by Beveridge and Keynes fit exactly this notion of top-down reform for the benefit of society as a whole. The progressive liberal project was not revolutionary; it was born of a desire to preserve and defend liberal democracy and the capitalist system.Less

Multiple Modernities and Socialist Alternatives in the 1970s

Sara Lorenzini

in Global Development: A Cold War History

This chapter describes how, in the 1970s, development assistance models offered an array of radical alternatives to the capitalist system. Three different models stand out: the Second World around ... More

This chapter describes how, in the 1970s, development assistance models offered an array of radical alternatives to the capitalist system. Three different models stand out: the Second World around the Soviet Union, the Chinese model of self-reliance, and Third Worldism with its project of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The NIEO saw a correlation between the growth of the world economy and that of poor countries: the expansion of world trade within a capitalist market was considered progress. It viewed technology as crucial to development and demanded better and easier transfer procedures to access it—but only one technology, the West's. In sum, the NIEO's goal was integration within the capitalist system, for which it was attacked not only by the Soviets, but by radical critics including Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein. The Soviets criticized Third World intellectuals because of the conceptual weaknesses in their ideas, particularly the paradox of rejecting Western models while hoping for Western support and the way that Third Worldist ideas remained fundamentally connected to Western thought.Less

A Summary of the Positive Description and Causal Analysis

János Kornai

in Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy: Two Essays on the Nature of Capitalism

This chapter discusses the concept of “equilibrium”. It also provides a summary account of the two demand-supply regimes and the generation of a surplus economy by the capitalist system.

Impossibly American

Christian P. Haines

in A Desire Called America: Biopolitics, Utopia, and the Literary Commons

This chapter distinguishes American exceptionalism from what the author terms a singular America. It argues that American exceptionalism depends on disciplining or taming the utopianism associated ... More

This chapter distinguishes American exceptionalism from what the author terms a singular America. It argues that American exceptionalism depends on disciplining or taming the utopianism associated with the United States. The chapter defines a singular America as a politics, culture, and literature that draws on American exceptionalism only to overturn the latter’s investments in capitalism, settler colonialism, and the nation-state. It argues that American Studies needs to pay more attention to the excluded middle between American exceptionalism and its critique—a zone of politics and culture in which complicity and critique mutually constitute one another. The chapter also explains the connection between the critical discourse of biopolitics and utopianism, reading the work of Michel Foucault in terms of how it refocuses utopianism on the body and life, rather than geography or space. It elaborates a singular America in terms of a literary commons: a tradition of literature devoted to non-capitalist and non-sovereign social relations. Finally, the chapter explains the book’s literary historical trajectory—how it connects the American Renaissance (or mid-nineteenth century) to the contemporary period—in terms of the rise and decline of American hegemony in the capitalist world-system.Less

Introduction 1

János Kornai

in Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy: Two Essays on the Nature of Capitalism

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main themes covered in the second part of the book entitled Shortage Economy—Surplus Economy. It begins by explaining some concepts, such as ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main themes covered in the second part of the book entitled Shortage Economy—Surplus Economy. It begins by explaining some concepts, such as capitalist system, socialist system, and surplus economy. It then discusses the place that the approach taken in the part occupies in economic discourse.Less

Benjamin V. Cohen: Architect of the New Deal

William Lasser

in Benjamin V. Cohen: Architect of the New Deal

This chapter summarizes the main themes covered in the preceding discussions. Contemporaries and historians alike view Cohen as a leading intellectual force behind the political philosophy of New ... More

This chapter summarizes the main themes covered in the preceding discussions. Contemporaries and historians alike view Cohen as a leading intellectual force behind the political philosophy of New Deal liberalism. Cohen stood squarely between those who sought radical reform of the capitalist system and those who opposed even modest changes. His goal—and, ultimately, the goal of the New Deal itself—“was not to make a revolution but to make the capitalist system work better, for the benefit of all.”Less

Big Government and Prosperity in the United States

Samuel Cohn

in All Societies Die: How to Keep Hope Alive

This chapter focuses on big government and prosperity in the United States. A lot of Americans are fairly skeptical about the federal government. Some feel the public sector is full of bureaucrats ... More

This chapter focuses on big government and prosperity in the United States. A lot of Americans are fairly skeptical about the federal government. Some feel the public sector is full of bureaucrats who waste money, interfere with business decisions, and push personal agendas. Others are obsessed with party politics and despise everything from “the other party.” Both groups miss a fundamental point: big government is essential to the survival of a modern capitalist system. The government provides institutional support for the economy that capitalists cannot provide for themselves. Business will not provide defense, education, public health, physical infrastructure, and scientific research because these services are completely unprofitable.Less