Capitalism

Capitalism

Paul Bowles

First published by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge

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Introduction to the series

History is narrative constructed by historians from traces left by the past, Historical enquiry is often driven by contemporary issues and, in consequence, historical narratives are constantly reconsidered, reconstructed and reshaped. The fact that different historians have different perspectives on issues means that there is also often controversy and no universally agreed version of past events. Seminar Studies was designed to bridge the gap between current research and debate, and the broad, popular general surveys that often date rapidly.

The volumes in the series are written by historians who are not only familiar with the latest research and current debates concerning their topic, but who have themselves contributed to our understanding of the subject. The books are intended to provide the reader with a clear introduction to a major topic in history. They provide both a narrative of events and a critical analysis of contemporary interpretations. They include the kinds of tools generally omitted from specialist monographs: a chronology of events, a glossary of terms and brief biographies of ‘who’s who’. They also include bibliographical essays in order to guide students to the literature on various aspects of the subject. Students and teachers alike will find that the selection of documents will stimulate discussion and offer insights into the raw materials used by historians in their attempt to understand the past.

Clive Emsley and Gordon Martel

Series Editors

To my parents

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chronology

Who’s who

Glossary

PART ONE ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT

1 HOW TO THINK ABOUT CAPITALISM

Introduction

Outline of the book

The capitalist system: a simple definition and some not-so-simple issues arising from it

Identifying changes in the capitalist system over time

2 CAPITALISM AS A SYSTEM: ‘NATURAL’ AND ‘FREE’

Introduction

Adam Smith: markets are natural for humans … but not for dogs

Milton Friedman on markets, freedom and Alka Seltzer

More from Adam Smith: markets feed us because of self-interest

Is private property ‘natural’ as well?

The state as impartial rule enforcer

Some states are better rule enforcers than others – and so sometimes capitalism fails

Capitalism is also the most economically productive system

Capitalism – the most economically productive system and therefore the ‘end of history’

Does capitalism lead to democracy?

Capitalism as equal and just

Capitalism as a friend of the environment

3 CAPITALISM AS A SYSTEM: ‘UNJUST’ AND ‘UNSTABLE’

Introduction

Unjust and unstable: Keynes and reformist critics

Unjust and unstable: Marx and radical critics

The importance of labour – or why workers are alienated but apes aren’t

Capitalism’s contradiction: poverty amidst plenty

Capitalism and crises

Capitalism as anti-Nature

Capitalism and gender inequality

The capitalist state: to be captured or replaced?

The capitalist state and education: enforcing the rules of American football or those of the treadmill?

4 EMPIRE AND CRISES 1870–1945

Capitalism unfolds

The curse of capitalism: late nineteenth-century crises

Overseas expansion as the response to crises

The curse of capitalism: the Great Depression of the 1930s

The human cost: riding the rails, searching for work and the crime of vagrancy

National responses to the Depression: Swedish social democracy, the ‘New Deal’ in the US and the spread of fascism in Europe

5 POST-1945 CAPITALISM: VARIATIONS ACROSS COUNTRIES

National capitalisms

How capitalisms differ: state–capital–labour relations

The Anglo-American model: decentralized wage bargaining and stock markets

The northern European or corporatist model: consensus decision-making and a large welfare state

Japanese (or East Asian) developmental capitalism: guiding the market and controlling labour

National varieties of capitalism as rivals

Varieties of capitalism: a matter of choice or history?

Varieties of capitalism: Asia, China, Russia and Latin America

6 POST-1945 CAPITALISM: VARIATIONS OVER TIME

Introduction

1945–70: the ‘golden age’ … hot economies, warm capital–labour relations, and the Cold War

The ‘golden age’ in the South: postcolonial capitalist states seek modernity and industrialization

The 1970s: oil shocks the system … and Keynesian policy responses

A new international division of labour: the lure of cheap labour in the South

The 1980s and 1990s: the rise of neoliberalism … capital strikes back

Neoliberalism in the South: open those doors, be ‘market friendly’!

Global turbulence: financial crises in the 1990s

‘Crony capitalism’ blamed for the Asian crises

Lessons not learned: The Global Financial Crisis of 2008

7 GLOBAL CAPITALISM

All the world’s a stage …

Are nation states still important actors?

I. The ‘globalization weakens the nation state’ view

II. The ‘globaloney’ or ‘states are still powerful’ view

III. The ‘some states are still powerful’ or ‘new imperialism’ view

IV. The ‘regionalism is more important’ view

As the curtain falls: what drama is unfolding on the capitalist world stage?

PART TWO DOCUMENTS

1 Adam Smith and the invisible hand

2 Friedman on economic freedom and political freedom

3 Marx and Engels on capitalism and class conflict

4 Capitalism and class conflict in China today

5 Keynes on Casino capitalism

6 The formation of the Bretton Woods institutions

7 The Washington Concensus

8 Wolf’s cry for more globalization not less

9 World Social Forum Charter of Principles

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

REFERENCES

INDEX

PLATES

Plates

1 The Tolpuddle martyrs

2 The 1930s Great Depression

3 The Golden Age

4 Japanese capitalism

5 The Battle of Seattle 1999

6 The Global Financial Crisis 2008

7 Global Capitalism

8 Global Capitalism

Acknowledgements

This book has been many years in the making. In fact, well before I knew I was going to write it. For more than 30 years, starting as a young undergraduate, I have been reading and thinking about capitalism. There are therefore many teachers, colleagues and friends who have shaped my thoughts and to whom I owe my thanks. Here I can only mention a few colleagues with whom I have shared many conversations over recent years: Osvaldo Croci, John Harriss, Brian MacLean, the late Tony Stone, and Henry Veltmeyer.

The first edition of this book was largely written while on sabbatical at the University of Adelaide. I am grateful to the University for providing such a pleasant environment within which to write. A small group of colleagues there – Ray Broomhill, Steven Barrett, Ken Bridge and Pat Wright – joined me for a discussion of the first draft of the book and provided many valuable comments. Other colleagues, Mark Beeson and Barbara Harriss-White, also read the whole manuscript and were generous with their insights. All of these discussions reinforced for me the fact that how a book on ‘capitalism’ is written is an intensely personal choice. They made me work through more fully exactly what it was that I wanted to say in Capitalism. In this, I was also encouraged by the series editor, Gordon Martel, who read the first draft and wanted to see more of ‘me’ in the final version. To all of these people, I offer my thanks for their comments and for enabling and encouraging me to set out my own views more clearly.

This edition has been updated not only to take account of more recent events, such as the Global Financial Crisis, but also to include a more explicit discussion of China. I have been researching China since the mid-1980s but deemed the nature of the capitalist transition in China to be too complex to include in an introductory text the first time round. As that transition has progressed further, and as no discussion of global capitalism can ignore the presence of China, I have included discussion in this edition. I am grateful to a number of friends and colleagues – Xiaoyuan Dong, Baotai Wang and especially the late Gordon White – for guiding me through the complexities of China’s political economy in our joint research work.

My partner, Fiona MacPhail, provided not only insightful comments on the book but also supported my efforts whenever needed. I am, as ever, grateful for her advice, her encouragement and for always being there.

This book is dedicated to my parents, my late father Geoff and my mother Irene. They have lived through a good part of the twists and turns of capitalism that are discussed in this book. I hope that this book’s theorizing of capitalism resonates with some of their experiences.

Publisher’s acknowledgements

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

Extract on pages 122–26 from Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Friedman, M. 1962) pp. 7–17, reproduced with permission of University of Chicago Press – Books in the format Textbook via Copyright Clearance Center; Extract on pages 128–31 from The role of the state, labour policy and migrant workers’ struggles in globalized China, Global Labour Journal, 1(1), pp. 139–41 (Pun, Nagi; Chan, Chris King-Chi and Chan, Jenny 2010), with permission of the authors; Extract on pages 131–34 from The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The Royal Economic Society (Keynes, J.M. 1973) pp. 151–64, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan; Extract on pages 135–36 from Pillars of Peace (1946) Documents Pertaining to American Interest in Establishing A Lasting World Peace: January 1941– February 1946, published by the Book Department, Army Information School, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.; Extract on pages 137–38 from A Short History of the Washington Consensus (Williamson, J. 2004) paper commissioned by Fundación CIDOB for a conference ‘From the Washington Consensus towards a new Global Governance,’ Barcelona, September 24–25, with permission of Peterson Institute for International Economics and the author; Extract on pages 139–41 from World Social Forum Charter of Principles, 08.06.2002, http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2.

Plate 1 Tolpuddle Martyrs Memorial Trust; Plates 2, 6 and 7 Getty Images/AFP; Plate 3 Photofest Digital; Plate 4 Science Photo Library Ltd/Peter Menzel; Plate 5 Michael McGuerty; Plate 8 Reuters/Nil Elias.

In some instances we have been unable to trace the owners of copyright material, and we would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so.

Chronology

1492

Columbus ‘discovers’ the Americas. European expansion creates a world‘capitalist’ market.

1600s

The European peasantry is gradually removed from the land.

1750s

The Industrial Revolution begins in England and then spreads to Western Europe and, later, to North America. A ‘working class’ is formed in the industrializing capitalist countries.

1848

Revolutions sweep Europe as the working classes and the rising capitalist classes make demands for new forms of political organization.

1870s

European colonial expansion spreads to include much of Africa and Asia. Colonialism spurs this wave of ‘globalization’.

1914

European powers go to war. The First World War.

1917

The first of the twentieth century’s ‘state socialist revolutions’ occurs in Russia. The scope of capitalism is, for the first time, geographically shrunken.

1929

The Wall Street Crash.

1930s

The Great Depression haunts Western Europe and North America and its effects are felt throughout the rest of the capitalist world.

1945

The Second World War ends with a new international economic order established which produces capitalism’s ‘Golden Age’.

1973

The ‘Golden Age’ fizzles out as high oil prices and US unilateral economic policy bring post-war Keynesianism to an end.

1978

China announces it is to follow a policy of ‘opening up to the outside world’.

1980s

A shift to the political right in Britain and the US ushers in a new period of neoliberal policies which strengthens capital. Developing countries are caught in the debt crisis and implement neoliberal policies as part of the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programs.

1989

The Berlin Wall falls signalling the collapse of the Soviet system. Capitalism regains its global reach and a new phase of ‘globalization’ begins.

1990s

Financial crises return with global capitalism affecting countries in Europe in 1992, Mexico in 1994, Asia in 1997, Brazil and Russia in 1998, and Argentina in 2001.

1999

The ‘Battle of Seattle’ marks the moment when the ‘anti-capitalism’ movement gets the attention of world leaders and policy-makers. It signifies the battle of ideas over the future of ‘global capitalism’, a battle which continues to be played out as evidenced by the protests in cities across the world wherever world leaders meet.

2008

Onset of the Global Financial Crisis. Starting with the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, the financial crisis quickly spreads across the world. The world experiences its worst economic decline since the 1930s. So-called ‘emerging economies’ such as those of China and India recover much more quickly than those of the US and Europe which remain mired in debt and financial fragility.

Who’s who

Hernando de Soto (b. 1941): Peruvian economist famous for arguing the world’s poor need to have their property rights more rigorously recognized and protected. This would enable them to prosper under capitalism.

Milton Friedman (1912–2006): Along with Friedrich von Hayek, he was the intellectual force behind the shift to neoliberal policies in Britain and the US in the 1980s. A believer in restricted roles for government and for greater use of private markets.

Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952): Rose to international fame when he predicted that the collapse of communism in 1989 represented ‘the end of history’. Capitalism and democracy had won and would remain dominant forever.

J.K. Galbraith (1908–2006): Economist famous for his analysis of modern capitalism as being run by a ‘technocracy’ associated with large corporations. Advocated a significant role for government in controlling corporate interests and in distributing income.

Alan Greenspan (b. 1926): Chair of the US Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006. Saw the Asian financial crisis of 1997 as vindication of the US model of capitalism. Failed to foresee the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and ensuing global financial crisis of 2008.

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946): British economist whose ideas were credited with bringing about capitalism’s ‘Golden Age’. He advocated government intervention to stabilize the economy and to avoid a repeat of the disaster of the Great Depression. The influence of his work waned in the 1970s as Keynesian policies appeared to have no answer to the problems of inflation and unemployment which began to afflict the advanced capitalist economies.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924): Leader of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, Lenin argued that the highest stage of capitalism was Imperialism. When this stage was reached (global) capitalism would lead to inter-imperialist wars.

Frederich List (1789–1946): German political economist who argued that countries wishing to industrialize after the first industrializer (Britain) would need to do so on the basis of greater state intervention. Often seen as the intellectual basis for German and, later, East Asian industrialization strategies.

John Locke (1632–1704): Writing in the mid-1600s Locke presented the argument that the fruits of one’s own labour can justly be claimed as private property.

Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895): As industrial capitalism expanded so did its critics. The two most famous were Marx and Engels who argued that capitalism needed to be overthrown and that humans would only be free when a classless society was established. State socialist revolutions throughout the twentieth century claimed adherence to their work.

Karl Polanyi (1886–1964): Sociologist and economic historian who argued, in The Great Transformation (1944), that as the market expanded there would be a ‘counter movement’ by society designed to protect itself from the worst aspects of market disruption.

David Ricardo (1772–1823): British political economist credited as providing the first coherent argument for ‘free trade’.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945): President of the US elected in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression. With a quarter of the workforce unemployed, Roosevelt introduced a raft of policies, known as the New Deal, including the creation of government jobs for the unemployed and the regulation of financial institutions.

Vandana Shiva (b. 1952): Indian eco-feminist and anti-globalization activist and writer. One of the most prominent popular critics of contemporary capitalism along with Naomi Klein and Michael Moore.

Adam Smith (1723–1790): His famous book, The Wealth of Nations, was published in 1776 and established Smith as a classic advocate of the free market system. His name has been invoked ever since to proclaim the superiority of the capitalist system.

James Tobin (1918–2002): US economist whose name is associated with the ‘Tobin tax’, a rallying cry for the opponents of global capitalism who would like to see the power of international financial speculators reduced by taxing the short-term purchase of foreign exchange.

Immanuel Wallerstein (b. 1930): Leading exponent of ‘world systems theory’ which views capitalism as being established as a ‘system’ in the mid-seventeenth century.

Max Weber (1864–1920): Sociologist who analysed the emergence of capitalism and traced the role of religion (the Protestant religion in particular) in facilitating capitalism’s emergence.

Glossary

Advanced industrial countries: The group of countries in Western Europe, North America and Japan who have reached industrial maturity and relatively high levels of per capita income.

Animal spirits: A term used by Keynes to highlight the fact that market actors, especially entrepreneurs and investors, are driven by psychology, confidence and emotion.

ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Originally formed in 1967 with six member states, it now has ten.

Authoritarian capitalism: A description of capitalism where it operates in countries with repressive governments which typically seek to deny labour many rights.

Battle of Seattle: The protests and street battles between anti-globalization activists and police which accompanied the World Trade Organization Ministerial meetings in 1999.

Beggar-thy-neighbour policies: Policies which countries use, such as exchange rate devaluations, to try to keep their economies competitive at the expense of others. Often used to describe the policies adopted by countries in the 1930s.

Beveridge Report: Report prepared for the UK government in 1942 by William Beveridge. It argued for an expansion of the role of the state in the provision of a wide range of social goods, including responsibility for full employment, and formed the basis for the post-1945 expansion of the welfare state.

Bretton Woods Agreement: Signed in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the agreement put in place an international financial and economic architecture designed to promote post-war growth and economic stability. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund were established as part of this.

BRICs: Acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Coined to highlight the growing importance and influence of these countries in the global economy.

British East India Company: Granted a royal monopoly in 1600, the company went on to control and administer much of India. The India Act of 1858 transferred its powers to the British Crown.

Bubbles: Increases in the prices of assets, such as stocks and housing, which are based on speculation. When the bubble bursts, as it did for example in Japan in the late 1980s, the economy often suffers heavily.

Bundesbank: Germany’s central bank which developed a reputation in the post-1945 period for its inflation-fighting ability.

Business process outsourcing (bpo): The range of activities including call centres, computer assistance, banking services, and legal briefs which have been relocated to parts of the world, most notably India and the Philippines, where labour costs are lower.

Cartel: An agreement among a group of producers to restrict supply in order to increase the price of their product on the market.

Casino capitalism: Term used to describe the speculative nature of contemporary capitalism, especially in the financial sector.

Chaebol: Large, conglomerate, family-owned firms found in South Korea.

Colonialism: The acquiring and administration of foreign countries.

Commodity fetishism: A term used by Marxists to describe the way in which we see goods as objects divorced from the human labour which made them.

Coordination problem: The problem of how to decide which resources should be used to produce which goods and for which people.

Core-periphery: A term describing the hierarchical relationship between the most powerful economic countries in the world and the rest.

Corporatism: A system of governance which includes cooperation between state and non-state bodies. Can consist of state-business-labour cooperation or just state-business cooperation.

Crisis: Occurs when profits fall and growth is adversely affected. Can be caused by many factors and have different forms, for example, financial crisis or exchange rate crisis.

Crony capitalism: Describes capitalist economies in which the relationship between government and business is too close giving rise to the possibility of corruption and crises caused by unsound lending practices.

De-commodification: The process by which some resources, goods or services are removed from the sphere of the market.

Developing countries: Those countries which are still at relatively low levels of per capita income and which usually still have significant employment in agriculture.

Developmentalism: An orientation by government elites favouring broad material progress and active intervention to promote this (as opposed to predatory self-enrichment).

Domestic labour: Work performed within the household without financial reward.

East Asian miracle: Term used to describe the high economic growth records of countries in East Asia from the 1960s onwards.

Economic democracy: Occurs when employees are included in workplace decisions and have some control over the company.

Fair trade: An idea, which grew into a movement, to channel more of a product’s selling price to its (usually developing country) producers who are often farmers and women handicraft workers. The concept of ‘fair trade’ has now expanded to include goods production which respects labour standards.

Finance capital: The financial institutions and investors who seek to make profits from the purchase and sale of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, derivatives and currencies. The process is sometimes called financialization and financial capitalism is sometimes described as an advanced stage of capitalism.

Fordism: The organization of production following the logic of mass production with assembly line production and blue collar workers. Usually identified with the 1945–1970 period which was also characterized by mass consumption, i.e. the widespread consumption of the mass produced goods.

G8: The Group of Eight leading countries (the US, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia) which meets regularly to discuss ways to govern the global economy. More recently it co-exists with the G20 which consists of the G8 plus other important countries such as China and India.

Gangster capitalism: Type of capitalism characterized by lawlessness and private enforcement of contracts.

GNP: Gross National Product: the measure of the value of a country’s annual output.

Gender wage gap: The difference between the average wages of men and women. Women’s average wage is usually presented as a percentage of the male average wage.

Gold standard: A mechanism used for the automatic correction of balance of payments deficits and surpluses between countries. Widely used in its pure form between 1870 and 1914. In the post-1945 period most countries settled their international payments in US dollars but this was fixed to the value of gold and so the gold standard continued in a modified form. The link between the US dollar and gold was unilaterally ended by President Nixon in 1971.

Golden age: The period between 1945 and 1973 when capitalism experienced high and widespread economic growth with living standards rising in many countries.

ICT: The information and computer technology revolution which facilitated the changes in production methods and locations associated with contemporary globalization.

IMF: International Monetary Fund, set up in 1944, and responsible for governing the world economy. Its methods for doing this have been the subject of criticism by many as being too favourable to rich country creditors and imposing too high burdens on poor country populations.

Imperialism: The projection of economic, political and military power overseas to enrich and advance the interests of the home country.

Intellectual property rights: The protection of private property in the ownership of ideas and the inventions and products which may arise from them.

Invisible Hand: A metaphor used by Adam Smith to illustrate how society’s best interests were best served by all individuals pursuing their own self-interest.

Keiretsu: The Japanese industrial system of multiple conglomerates organized around a bank.

Laissez-faire capitalism: Capitalism in which the market plays a relatively major role and the government only a minimal role. Similar to market capitalism and most closely associated with Anglo-American capitalism.

Late capitalism: Capitalism in which production is fragmented and global, work is ‘flexible’ and culture is image-driven. Typically dated as beginning some time after the 1950s.

Male breadwinner: Welfare state structures premised on a male wage earner who should earn sufficient to support a family.

Managerial capitalism: The form of capitalism in which the major corporations are run by managers rather than their owners.

Merchant capitalism: Early form of capitalism in which profits were made in the trading of goods.

Monetarism: The proposition that inflation could be controlled by controlling the money supply. Associated with Milton Friedman and extended to the proposition that the government’s main economic responsibility was inflation control (and not the level of employment).

Monopoly capitalism: A stage of capitalism in which large monopolies dominate production.

NAFTA: North American Free Trade Agreement. Signed between the US, Canada and Mexico in 1994.

Neoliberalism: A set of ideas premised on the need to allow the market to play the dominant role in society and to reduce the role of government.

New Deal: The set of policies introduced in the US in the 1930s by Franklin Roosevelt which acknowledged that an activist government was needed to combat the Great Depression and that the market would not be able to solve the problem without government intervention.

New international division of labour: Describes the shift of manufacturing production to low cost developing countries in the 1970s and afterwards.

New International Economic Order (NIEO): The call made by developing countries in the 1970s for a fairer world economic system which included greater technology transfer and higher levels of foreign aid.

OECD: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Formed in 1960 by the 18 richest capitalist countries. Now expanded to 34 countries including some from the former Soviet bloc as well as some emerging economies.

OPEC: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Formed in 1960 and now consisting of 12 members, mainly from the Middle East, OPEC acts as a cartel.

Patriarchy: A social system of male dominance in which women do not have the same life opportunities as men.

Per capita income: National income per head or average income in a country.

Post-Fordism: A production system which is based on filling niche markets and based on just-in-time production. Often operates with a set of core technicians and workers and a secondary, temporary, labour force.

Progressive taxation: Occurs when the rich pay a greater percentage of their income in tax than the poor.

Red capitalism: Description of capitalism in countries ruled by socialist or communist parties in which party cadres play important roles as economic managers motivated by profits.

Regressive taxation: Occurs when the poor pay a greater percentage of their income in tax than the rich.

Regulation school: An approach to analysing capitalism which stresses the roles played by institutions and social factors in producing an overall framework within which economic growth takes place.

Representative democracy: The process of electing leaders by voting. Also called procedural democracy.

Shock therapy: A set of policies aimed at radically transforming a (political) economy in a short time period.

Social wage: A measure of citizen’s well-being which includes their income from work and the value of public services which they receive.

Structural adjustment programmes: Policies designed by the World Bank to restore economic health to developing countries by a systematic liberalization of their economies.

Substantive democracy: A society in which citizens are active in the political system (including through voting) and have equality of access to goods and services (through effective redistribution policies for example) and guarantees of rights.

Supply-side economics: The proposition that economic growth can be stimulated by cutting taxes, and thereby increasing work incentives, especially for the rich.

Third World: A term adopted by developing countries which sought to differentiate themselves and their interests from those of the First World (rich capitalist countries) and the Second World (Soviet socialist bloc).

Tragedy of the commons: The overuse of resources caused by their common ownership; individuals use the resources to the maximum in the present and have no incentive to conserve for the future since they cannot be sure they will benefit from saving them for later.

Treasury view: The position taken by the UK Treasury in the 1930s that unemployment was caused by wages being too inflexible in the downward direction and not by a lack of aggregate demand.

Washington Consensus: The set of policies implemented by the World Bank and the IMF in developing countries premised on the need to liberalize their economies.

Welfare state: A range of public services including protection against unemployment (unemployment insurance), education, and health services.

World Bank: Established in 1944 to finance and promote economic development.

World Economic Summit: An annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, to exchange ideas on how to best manage and promote the global capitalist economy.

World Social Forum: An annual meeting of political activists, scholars and NGOs to exchange views on how best to construct an alternative to contemporary capitalist globalization.

World systems theory: The theory that capitalism is best seen as an integrated world system of trade originating in the seventeenth century.

World Trade Organization (WTO): Established in 1995, it serves to facilitate the free movement of goods and investment through promoting and enforcing international trade agreements.

Part 1

Analysis and Assessment

1

How to think about capitalism

Introduction

Capitalism is the most enduring economic system of our time. After a century of failed challenges to its dominance – from state socialist economies such as the former Soviet Union – the vast majority of the world’s population now lives in capitalist economies. However, despite its contemporary dominance, capitalism remains contested. World organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and many world leaders promise that global capitalism will bring prosperity to us all. Meanwhile, ‘anti-globalization’ movements have been evident on the streets of major world cities from Seattle to Hong Kong, arguing that global capitalism will only bring more poverty and more environmental degradation and give more power to corporations. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 provided another reminder of capitalism’s volatility and has sparked more protest in the form of those seeking to ‘Occupy Wall Street’. But capitalism’s pervasive grip on the daily lives of billions remains. Capitalism generates passion and sparks opposition. But how does capitalism work?

World Bank: Established in 1944 to finance and promote economic development.

IMF: International Monetary Fund, set up in 1944, and responsible for governing the world economy. Its methods for doing this have been the subject of criticism by many as being too favour able to rich country creditors and imposing too high burdens on poor country populations.

Battle of Seattle: The pro tests and street battles between anti-globalization activists and police which accompanied the World Trade Organization Ministerial meetings in 1999.

Capitalism certainly has daily familiarity. We are continually exhorted, by the close to half a trillion US dollars spent worldwide annually on advertising, (ZenithOptimedia (2011)) to buy this good or that good. Television channels find it necessary to inform us at hourly intervals of the latest gyrations of the stock market. The influence of capitalism can be found everywhere, including in our language – we ‘spend’ time, we ‘value’ friendships, we ‘earn’ respect. Even the mundane world of national income accounting is influenced, for example, in what we count as ‘economic activity’ – anything performed in the market sphere – and excludes other activities, such as working in the home. And yet, despite this pervasiveness, capitalism’s workings remain obscure. Why do we find works which offer us expositions on the ‘logic’ or the ‘essence’ of capitalism or the solution to its ‘mystery’? (See, for example, Heilbroner (1985), McQueen (2001) and de Soto (2000) respectively.) Why should capitalism require expositions of this kind? Why isn’t it obvious what capitalism is and how it works? Why is it, as Harvey (2010) says, an ‘enigma’?

One reason is simply that capitalism appears in a variety of guises across countries. For example, it has been described as ‘gangster capitalism’ in present-day Russia (Klebnikov 2001), as ‘welfare capitalism’ in Nordic countries, as ‘laissez-faire capitalism’ in Hong Kong, as ‘crony capitalism’ in parts of Asia and Latin America (Kang 2002 and Haber 2002), as ‘petro-diamond capitalism’ in Angola (Hodges 2001), and as ‘red capitalism’ in China (Walter and Howie 2011); and yet all are still capitalism. Capitalism not only varies across space, it also changes through time. For example, seventeenth century ‘merchant capitalism’ is in many ways vastly different from the ‘digital capitalism’ (Schiller 1999) of the twenty-first century; and yet, there are constants too.

Gangster capitalism: Type of capitalism characterized by lawlessness and private enforcement (often by force) of contracts.

Laissez-faire capitalism: Capitalism in which the market plays a relatively major role and the government only a minimal role. Similar to market capitalism and most closely associated with Anoglo-American capitalism.

Crony capitalism: Describes capitalist economies in which the relationship between government and business is too close giving rise to the possibility of corruption and crises caused by unsound lending practices.

Red capitalism: Description of capitalism in countries ruled by socialist or communist parties in which party cadres play important roles as economic managers motivated by profits.

Merchant capitalism: Early form of capitalism in which profits were made in the trading of goods.

Commodity fetishism: A term used by Marxists to describe the way in which we see goods as objects divorced from the human labour which made them.

Part of the challenge of understanding capitalism is therefore precisely that it is capable of exhibiting great variation across countries and through time and yet still retaining the common elements that enable all its varieties, spatial and temporal, to be similar at root. Capitalism, as a form of economic organization, is simultaneously adaptable, flexible and evolving but also contains constant and unchanging central features.

Another reason for the opaqueness of capitalism despite its daily familiarity is that, while capitalism has been described in the variety of ways just illustrated, it has also been a term that has been studiously avoided. ‘Capitalism’ is, as one commentator has noted, ‘a funny word’. As he explains, ‘just using the word – otherwise a neutral enough designation for an economic and social system on whose properties all sides agree – seemed to position you in a vaguely critical, suspicious, if not outright socialist stance: only committed right-wing ideologues and full-throated market apologists also use it with the same relish’ (Jameson 1991: xxi). Many have not wished to be so positioned – as either ‘suspicious socialists’ or ‘market apologists’. Capitalism has therefore been subject to ‘non-naming’. It is common to find a variety of terms to describe the contemporary world: the ‘information age’, ‘post-industrial society’, the ‘free market economy’, the ‘global economy’, the ‘postmodern or post-colonial world’, the ‘consumer society’ or the ‘network society’, to name but some of them. In all of these terms, the word ‘capitalism’ is conspicuous by its absence; and yet, all of them implicitly presuppose a capitalist economy.

To these reasons we must add a further explanation: capitalist societies are well practised in the art of concealing their workings. That is, we are invited to see the goods that the capitalist economy produces simply as objects and not as the products of labour and resources. Our lives as consumers and as producers are somehow divided. Accepting this division has been described by Marxists as ‘commodity fetishism’, as viewing goods as providing us with some particular qualities – glamour, sex appeal or whatever – rather than as seeing them as the output of a process of production involving people. Indeed, social activist and big business critic Naomi Klein (2000) has argued that we are increasingly being urged to define ourselves by our allegiance to particular corporate brand names – as a Nike or as an Adidas person, or as a Mac or an IBM devotee, for example. BMW advertises that it sells a ‘lifestyle’ rather than cars.

If we did think of goods as the outputs of processes involving people, we might be more inclined to ask who these people are, under what conditions do they work, and what are the environmental consequences of producing these goods. In general, capitalist societies do not encourage us to ask these types of questions. True, there are some exceptions: the ‘Fair Trade’ movement, supported by organizations such as Oxfam, has tried to impress upon us that as consumers we should be aware of working conditions and wage levels. We can then use our power as consumers to purchase those brands which pay their workers a ‘fair wage’, whether it be picking coffee or making souvenirs. The ‘no sweatshop’ campaigns in the clothing industry provide another example of the attempts to make us view goods as the outcomes of social processes. Many goods are now advertised as being ‘environmentally friendly’ although telling fact from ‘green washing’ is not always easy. But consumer and fair trade campaigns face an uphill task. Capitalist firms simply find it necessary – and easier – to bombard us with glossy images of satisfied consumers rather than to encourage us to dwell on production conditions and consequences. Occasionally events make us take notice of production conditions. For example in the summer of 2010 thirteen Chinese workers at Foxconn factories in China attempted suicide; nine were successful. Foxconn is the world’s largest producer of electronics components used in the computer industry. This brought an embarrassing spotlight on the industry but soon these events were largely forgotten and attention turned to the wonder of the apps available for iPhones etc. This was as true for Chinese purchasers as it was for others. Winner of an ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ in 1993, Indian activist Vandana Shiva (2000: 112, italics added) went as far as to argue that there is ‘a deliberate production of ignorance about ecological risks such as the deregulation of environmental protection and the destruction of ecologically sustainable life-styles for peasant, tribal, pastoral and craft communities across the Third World’.

Fair trade: An idea, which grew into a movement, to channel more of a product’s selling price to its (usually developing country) producers who are often farmers and women handicraft workers. Concept of ‘fair trade’ now expanded to include goods produced respecting labour standards.

Third World: A term adopted by developing countries which sought to differentiate themselves and their interests from those of the First World (rich capitalist countries) and the Second World (Soviet socialist bloc).

Given these reasons why capitalism can be regarded as opaque despite its daily familiarity, it is now possible to deduce how to think about capitalism and what questions should be answered. When thinking about capitalism, three central issues need to be addressed. Firstly, what is capitalism and how does it function in an abstract way? That is, to identify the constants, the defining characteristics, of capitalism, and what they imply about the way capitalism operates. Secondly, why is it that capitalism generates such passion both for and against, to the extent that mere mention of the term is often avoided? That is, to examine the case for capitalism as a form of social and economic organization and to analyse why others view it as a form of organization which must be replaced. Thirdly, what are the variations of capitalism over time and space?

Thinking about capitalism requires us to think at several levels, as Box 1.1 indicates. We must think abstractly to identify capitalism’s central features, and think historically to chart variations over time and space. We also need to think normatively about how the present capitalist system works, that is, how desirable it is as a system for the organization of life, in order to understand the passion that it generates both for and against.

1. Abstractly – to identify defining characteristics.

2. Normatively – to assess strengths and weaknesses.

3. Historically – to see the variations over time and space.

Outline of the Book

These three levels determine the structure of this book. In the remainder of this chapter, I will set out the central features of capitalism, that is, identify and analyse abstractly those constant characteristics which are the defining features of capitalism. I will also discuss some of the ways of thinking about the periodization of capitalism, that is, the ways in which capitalism’s evolution over time have been interpreted.

In Chapters 2 and 3, I will present the normative arguments and review the cases for and against capitalism. I will present these cases through the ideas of some of the major analysts of capitalism, starting with works from the past such as those of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. There is a problem in starting from here, since the ‘capitalism’ which Smith analysed in the late eighteenth century and that analysed by Marx in the mid-nineteenth century differ in very significant ways from that which we observe in the twenty-first century. However, it is not possible to launch into an analysis of contemporary capitalism without first knowing something of its evolution and, equally importantly, knowing something about the early writers whose analyses have profoundly influenced the ways in which subsequent thinkers have approached the topic of capitalism. Chapter 2 presents the arguments made by the supporters of capitalism who view it as a system which is ‘natural’ and which makes us ‘free’. This is followed, in Chapter 3, with an overview of the arguments of those who view capitalism as a system which is better described as ‘unjust’ and ‘unstable’, and a discussion of the arguments which they have advanced for either the reform or the replacement of capitalism.

Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are mainly concerned with the analysis of capitalism as an abstract system. The rest of the book analyses capitalism historically. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 consider how capitalism has worked in particular societies. Here I will examine the forms that capitalism has taken in different countries (such as Japan and the United States). I will examine how capitalism has performed over the twentieth century with its periods of growth and recession. These three chapters therefore analyse variations of capitalism over time and space.

In Chapter 7, I will examine what we should make of the contemporary phase of capitalism, that of ‘global capitalism’. Is this a new stage of capitalism in which states are increasingly weakened in the face of powerful international market forces? Or is this a huge exaggeration with nation states still powerful? Should we think of global capitalism as a new form of imperialism? Or is regionalism really a more accurate description of the contemporary world?

Imperialism: The projection of economic, political and military power overseas to enrich and advance the interests of the home country.

Throughout the book, capitalism is analysed as a system. The ‘capitalist system’ is introduced as an abstract process, meaning that it has requirements and dynamics. The capitalist system is also introduced as a historical process, evolving over time in response to various pressures and forces. This idea of capitalism as a ‘system’ implies that its various parts are tied together by a set of processes which can be understood in a reasonably coherent way; it is precisely for this reason that many have sought to identify its ‘logic’ or ‘inner workings’. Search for underlying ‘truths’ or ‘logics’ is, according to some, a false search. It is likely to conceal more than it reveals and to impose commonalities where really there are only differences. This view, popular in contemporary social science under the banner of ‘post-structuralism’, is not one that is accepted here. Instead, I will argue that capitalism can and should be analysed as a ‘system’.

One implication of viewing capitalism as a ‘system’ is that it consists of interrelated parts. This enables us to see that the acts of consumption and production are part of the same process rather than separate activities; that is, it enables us to transcend ‘commodity fetishism’. It also means that the ‘capitalist system’ must be viewed as not only an economic system; although economic processes must be a central focus of any analysis of capitalism, other political and social processes also constitute parts of the ‘system’. This will become evident in the following chapters as the relationships between capitalism and democracy and between capitalism and social equity, to give two examples, are examined.

The Capitalist System: A Simple Definition and Some Not-So-Simple Issues Arising from it

What is capitalism? or, more precisely, ‘what is the capitalist system’? As noted above, Jameson (1991: xxi) argues that capitalism is ‘an economic and social system on whose properties all sides agree’. There is considerable truth in this, but the answer to my question is more complex than Jameson suggests. To start with the easy part, capitalism is a system for organizing production which is based upon the institutions of private property and the market, and which relies upon the pursuit of private profit as its driving force.

BOX 1.2 Capitalism: the defining characteristics

A form of economic organization based on:

1. Private ownership of firms and society’s productive assets.

2. The market, that is, the voluntary purchase and sale of goods, services and factors of production such as land, labour and capital.

3. The profit motive as the driving force.

‘Ownership’ is, in fact, a complex concept. It may seem obvious what is meant by the statement ‘the factory is privately owned’, but it is perhaps only obvious because we are used to hearing the term. If we ask ‘who owns the modern factory?’ the answer is not so obvious. Is it owned by the factory manager? The Board of Directors to whom he or she reports? The millions of individual shareholders who might own shares in the company but who never attend the company’s Annual General Meeting? The pension fund managers who buy shares on behalf of individuals they have never seen?

‘Ownership’ is best thought of as a ‘bundle’ of property rights such as the right to use assets, the right to sell or transfer them, and the right to the income stream generated by those assets. Seen in this light, the modern corporation is owned by the shareholders in the sense that they claim the income from the use of company assets. However, they delegate the right to use the assets on a day-to-day basis to CEOs – a right which can be withdrawn if the shareholders are not satisfied with the performance of the managers in managing their assets. In the small firm, it is often the manager who is the owner and all ownership rights are vested in one individual. But whatever the size of the company, it is private individuals who own the productive assets of the private firm.

An economy in which most firms are privately owned is typically said to be a capitalist economy. The qualifying word ‘typically’ is added here because even in cases where the private ownership of productive assets dominates, some writers are still reluctant to classify economies as ‘capitalist’ if other conditions are not met. An example of this is the case of fascist societies. Are they capitalist? The extensive private ownership of capital would indicate that they are. Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman supports this view. He regards, for example, 1930s fascist Italy and Spain as ‘fundamentally capitalist’ since ‘private enterprise was the dominant form of economic organization’ (1962: 10). However, not everyone agrees. Because of fascism’s subjugation of the individual to the collective, the dominance of private property is not regarded as sufficient to conclude that the country is capitalist. Thus, eminent MIT economist Lester Thurow (1996: 5), for example, writes that ‘on December 8, 1941, when the United States entered World War II, the United States and Britain were essentially the only capitalistic countries left on the face of the earth and Britain was on the edge of military defeat. All the rest of the world were fascist, Communist, or third world feudal colonies.’ On this interpretation, fascist countries should not be classified as ‘capitalistic’; private property is a necessary but not sufficient condition for classification as a ‘capitalistic country’.

The second part of my definition of capitalism, that production be organized by and for the ‘market’, signifies that the coordination of the activities of multiple buyers and sellers is left to acts of voluntary exchange. But the ‘market’ is not just an abstract concept, it is also an historical process and the market, as a coordinator of economic activity, has been around for a very long time. Does this mean that the same can be said of capitalism?

For some the answer is yes – or at least the answer is that capitalism in some form has a relatively long history. Perhaps the most prominent advocates of this position are associated with ‘world systems theory’. This approach,

World systems theory: The theory that capitalism is best seen as an integrated world system of trade originating in the seventeenth century.

as its name suggests, views capitalism as always having a global character and traces a long lineage of interconnected markets and profit-making back to the Middle Ages. Capitalism, according to leading world systems theorist Immanuel Wallerstein (1979: 19), ‘found firm roots’ in Europe with its centres in Venice and Flanders from about 1450 onwards. The trading routes which became established over the next couple of centuries between the continents all represented channels through which an economic surplus was transferred from some parts of the globe (termed the periphery) to others (termed the core), with local ruling elites taking their shares on the way as well. Thus, alliances between the beneficiaries of the process (traders, local elites, European elites) formed as various forms of surplus were appropriated by means of stealth, colonial conquest, the slave trade, taxation and trade. Thus, a ‘capitalist world market’, with a single division of labour, became clear and was stable in form by about 1640 (Wallerstein 1979: 18). The structure of the capitalist world economy, and its division into core and periphery, dates from around this time.

Core-periphery: A term describing the hierarchical relationship between the most powerful economic countries in the world and the rest.

This dating of a ‘world capitalist system’ is controversial and others suggest that the economic activities described above represent part of ‘the long journey towards capitalism’ (Beaud 2001: 41), essential for the development of capital ism but not yet constituting its ‘mature form’. For ‘capitalism proper’ to emerge, the development of a market for labour was required. In Europe, it took several centuries for labour to become a marketable ‘commodity’. On this reading, capitalism is generally regarded as originating in Europe, and in England more specifically, during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. It was during this period that changes to land ownership (the enclosure movement) led to the removal of peasants from the land and the creation of a ‘free’ wage labour force. For the first time in history there was a class of people who were both able and required to sell their labour in the ‘labour market’; a ‘working class’ had been created.

The transition to capitalism also required a change in motivation so that ‘profit-making’ became legitimate and the primary motive for entering into production. It is the profit motive that not only gives capitalism its coherence as an abstract system but also explains its dynamism through time; the many ways and changing circumstances in which profit-making takes place explain to a considerable degree how capitalism has changed over time. The necessity of making profits also explains many of the actions which capitalist firms and states have taken over time.

The profit-making motive emerged in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries because of changes in what may be called the ‘enabling environment’. The social environment became more conducive to the operation of markets and to the pursuit of profit-making, partly because the technological changes associated with the agricultural, and then the industrial, revolution opened up the possibilities for money-making. However, it also relied on money-making being viewed as a socially acceptable, and even desirable, activity. Here, authors such as the sociologist Max Weber (1976) attribute this change in social norms to the influence of religion, and to Protestantism in particular. According to Weber, Protestantism encouraged its followers to engage in worldly affairs and emphasized self-discipline and rationalism. This ‘ethic’ allowed capitalism, with its emphasis on accumulation for its own sake and its restless pursuit of profit-making opportunities (or its ‘spirit’), to emerge. These religious changes explain why capitalism first emerged in Western Europe and North America.

To summarize, the essential elements of capitalism, as an abstract system, can be readily identified: it is a system which is based upon private property, the market and the pursuit of profit. There is more controversy, however, when we think of capitalism as a historical process, and the dating of the establishment of capitalist societies is more problematic. For some writers, the existence of markets indicates that a capitalist world system stretches back a long way, while for others the more recent emergence of labour markets suggests that capitalism ‘proper’ emerged during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Why does this matter?

It matters because this debate concerns the scale over which the capitalist ‘system’ operates and how we should think about capitalism. Should we think of capitalism as a ‘world system’? In which case, countries which were incorporated into the ‘world system’ – such as those in Latin America after Columbus’s conquest of 1492 – can be said to have been part of the ‘capitalist system’. Or, is capitalism primarily a nationally based ‘system’? In which case, we should think about capitalism primarily in national terms and view it as emerging later and spreading more slowly, and only becoming a global system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How we interpret today’s so-called ‘global economy’ depends very much on how we see the past.

The debate on the past has focused primarily on understanding and intepreting the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe. If we follow the argument that capitalism is a nationally based system, then more recently we have witnessed a new form of transition to capitalism – from state socialism. And in this transition, the essential elements of capitalism as an abstract system are again evident. However, in contrast to the transition from feudalism which took place over centuries, the transition to capitalism from state socialism was telescoped into a matter of years, if not months. In the countries of Eastern Europe and Russia, the enabling environment following the collapse of the Soviet bloc and facilitated by the policies of Western agencies, such as the IMF, led to the rapid establishment of capitalist societies. In Russia, for example, the ‘shock therapy’ administered by the Russian government and the IMF in the early 1990s replaced the centrally

Shock therapy: A set of policies aimed at radically transforming a (political) economy in a short time period.

planned socialist economy with a capitalist one within a short time period. Mass privatization schemes led to the immediate creation of a privately owned business sector. Prices were liberalized overnight so that the market would determine the prices of output and the allocation of resources. A labour market was created with the abolition of government job allocation and the reform of labour laws. The goal of profit-making was released from the social stigma which it previously attracted, and ‘entrepreneurship’ and money-making became the new creed. The abstract requirements of a ‘capitalist system’ were quickly put in place.

This discussion of the abstract requirements for a system to be described as ‘capitalist’ also leads to some differences in how contemporary China is analysed. As the world’s largest exporter and second largest importer of goods, and as the production site for thousands of multinational corporations, China can readily be understood to have been integrated into the world capitalist system and to be a part of the world division of labour. If we look inside China, however, the picture is not quite so clear. The existence of a sub stantial working class is evident and the reform of China’s economy since 1978 has created a pool of people who have to sell their labour; they have no choice. The term ‘smashing the iron bowl’ meant precisely this, the destruction of the supports which provided individuals with claims on employment and output. However, for some the ‘smashing’ has not been complete and the continual rights which rural Chinese have to access to land means that China cannot be said to be definitively capitalist. As long as these land rights can be exercised in practice then China’s peasants cannot be said to have become fully ‘commodified’ in which case, as Arrighi (2008: 24) argues, ‘in spite of the spread of market exchanges in the pursuit of profit, therefore, the nature of development in China is not necessarily capitalist.’

This short review has indicated that the essential elements of capitalism can be readily identified and agreed. However, the historical origins and evolution of capitalism remain contested, as the differences between world systems theorists and others on dating the emergence of capitalism have illustrated.

Identifying Changes in the Capitalist System Over Time

Capitalism is not static. How should we think about the changes in capitalism over time? One common answer is to say that first there was merchant capitalism, where the major form of capitalist activity was the trading of goods. Then there was industrial capitalism with its mass organization of the workforce into factories. This is followed by financial capitalism in which it is financial capitalists operating in banks and financial organizations whose operations dominate the economy. This periodization of capitalism – from merchant to industrial to financial capitalism, based on identifying which type of capitalist activity is dominant – is useful as a way of viewing the long-term development of capitalism.

The rise of international financial markets in the past 20 years makes financial capitalism a common descriptor of contemporary capitalism. However, the rise of ‘finance capital’ was hotly contested at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the most famous contributors was Lenin (1948) whose Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism identified the merging of banks and industrial cartels as giving rise to ‘finance capital’. It was the desire to export capital which led to the division of the globe among international monopolist firms and to European states colonizing large parts of the globe in support of their businesses. ‘Imperialism’ was thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of which colonialism was one feature. This will be discussed further as a historical process in Chapter 4.

Cartel: An agreement among a group of producers to restrict supply in order to increase the price of their product on the market.

Colonialism: The acquiring and administration of foreign countries.

Capitalism can also be divided between its early competitive phase and the subsequent, twentieth-century, monopoly phase driven and dominated by large corporations. Here the distinction is made not between the types of activity (trade/industry/finance) which dominate but by the nature of the market and the size and power of its competitors. Competitive capitalism describes those periods in which firms hold little market power, whereas monopoly capitalism occurs when large corporations are in control. These large corporations are typically seen as manipulating markets, through mergers and acquisitions on the supply side and through advertising on the demand side, to control the economy for their own benefit. The analysis of ‘monopoly capitalism’ was particularly popular in Marxist circles in the 1950s and 1960s but also resonates with non-Marxist writers such as the late Harvard economist J.K. Galbraith. His The New Industrial State (1967) described the rise of a ‘technostructure’ with its penchant for planning and control. And, of course, there are many contemporary analyses which stress the power of multinational corporations and the advent of ‘corporate rule’, with Thom Hartmann’s (2010) Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became ‘People’ and How You Can Fight Back and Naomi Klein’s (2000) examination of the ‘brand bullies’ in No Logo being two examples. In these analyses, ‘corporate capitalism’ is the subject of inquiry with the emphasis being on the control and power which large corporations exercise within capitalist societies.

Monopoly capitalism: A stage of capitalism in which large monopolies dominate production.

The focus on the large corporation as a distinguishing feature of the latest phase of capitalism is also common to accounts of ‘modern capitalism’ or ‘managerial capitalism’. Here, however, the emphasis is not so much on the structure of the market (competitive/monopolistic) but on how, and by whom, decisions are taken. Capitalism is sometimes portrayed as having gone

Managerial capitalism: The form of capitalism in which the major corporations are run by managers rather than their owners.

through an owner to a managerial phase. The rise of managers – delegated to run firms on behalf of the owners – is seen as a crucial element in the transformation of capitalism to its present-day form. This remains the dominant form of business organization today even if there are some well publicized exceptions in the information and communications industries where the developers (owners) of software and social networking sites such as facebook remain as managers.

Other accounts stress the technological conditions under which capitalist production takes place and draw inferences from this about the organization of capitalist society. This type of approach is followed by the (French) Regulation school which analyses twentieth-century capitalism in terms of the movement from Fordist to post-Fordist production structures. According to this interpretation, capitalism from the 1940s and up until the end of the 1960s could be characterized as Fordist; that is, as a system of mass production – based on the techniques introduced by Henry Ford in the automobile industry. Fordist production, at least as manifested in the advanced Western countries, was combined with a welfare state, to produce a historic social agreement or accord between labour and capital. The model of capitalism which emerged was based upon a male breadwinner, kept fully employed by government policy committed to that goal. The social accord also saw workers receiving a range of social benefits in exchange for wage restraint. Income inequality was low, so that a mass market was able to provide the demand for the newly mass-produced goods.

Regulation school: An approach to analysing capitalism which stresses the roles played by institutions and social factors in producing an overall framework within which economic growth takes place.

Welfare state: A range of public services including protection against unemployment (unemployment insurance), education, and health services.

Male breadwinner: Welfare state structures premised on a male wage earner who should earn sufficient to support a family.

This period gave way in the 1970s to post-Fordist production techniques based on the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution. Now, just-in-time production methods, pioneered in Japan but quickly spreading to all advanced capitalist economies, called for production methods which were ‘flexible’ and capable of responding to changes in demand with minimum delay. The need for flexibility in production was extended to the need for flexibility in labour markets, meaning that firms had greater ability to draw upon specialist skills when required and alter levels of their work-forces more frequently. This flexibility was therefore associated with ‘lean production’ in which the number of core workers shrank and the number of part-time, casual workers increased. The power of trade unions to demarcate skill areas and negotiate employment levels was reduced, and the rewards given to the high-skilled ‘techno geeks’ substantially exceeded those given to the hamburger flippers. Income inequality increased as firms faced niche markets replacing mass markets. This emphasis on the technological basis of capitalist production finds further expression today in analyses of, for example, capitalism in the ‘information age’ in which the technological requirements of ICT are shown to have altered the way work takes place and the forms that it takes.

ICT: The information and computer technology revolution which facilitated the changes in production methods and locations associated with contemporary globalization.

Lastly, some have used the term ‘late capitalism’ to describe the post-1970 period. It is ‘late’ not in the sense of final but as distinguishing it from the capitalism of earlier periods. This approach relies on the same changes in the production process described by the Regulation school – the emergence of ‘a world capitalist system fundamentally distinct from the older imperialism’ (Jameson 1991: xix) under the auspices of the multinational corporation, the ICT revolution and the new forms of labour flexibility. One of the distinguishing features of late capitalism is that it has produced its own ‘postmodern’ culture in which ‘culture’ itself has become ‘marketized’ or ‘commodified’.

Late capitalism: Capitalism in which production is fragmented and global, work is ‘flexible’ and culture is image-driven. Typically dated as beginning some time after the 1950s.

Late capitalism is characterized by the triumph of image over substance, of spin over policy, of rampant consumerism and of the ‘commodification’ of objects as well as human subjects. Andy Warhol’s famous paintings of Marilyn Monroe are held up as a prominent example of postmodern art. The individual is fragmented and multi-imaged, reflecting the fragmented and multi-tasked features of production in late capitalism. (See Jameson 1991 for more on this.)

All of these categories, summarized in Box 1.3, point to the fact that while capitalism has essential constant features, it has also changed con siderably over time. Capitalism is at once a conceptual system and at the same time a dynamic historical process. The periodization of capitalism into the various phases discussed in this chapter represents different ways of emphasizing some of the more important changes that have taken place over time. In Chapters 4 – 7, I will return to these themes and discuss how capitalism has varied over time and space in the twentieth century. In Chapters 4, 5 and 6, in particular, the approach I will take is based on the proposition that capitalism is best analysed in its national contexts; the foregoing discussion should alert the reader to the fact that this is not an uncontested proposition.

Fordism: The organization of production following the logic of mass production with assembly line production and blue collar workers. Usually identified with the 1945–1970 period which was also characterized by mass consumption i.e. the widespread consumption of the mass produced goods.

Post-Fordism: A production system which is based on filling niche markets and based on just-in-time production. Often operates with a set of core technicians and workers and a secondary, temporary, labour force.

1. By dominant activity – from merchant to industrial to financial capitalism.

2. By the nature of the market – from competitive to monopoly capitalism.

3. By firm ownership – from owner to managerial capitalism.

4. By technology and social regulation – mass production (Fordism) to flexible production (post-Fordism).

5. By technology and culture – mass production (modern) to consumerist late capitalism (postmodern).

Before analysing further the historical process, in Chapters 2 and 3, I will consider capitalism at the abstract and normative levels: just what does an economic and social system based on the institutions of private property, the market and the profit motive mean for us?

2

Capitalism as a system: ‘natural’ and ‘free’

Introduction

‘Free trade is about freedom’ pronounced Robert Zoellick, then US Trade Representative (and since 2007 the President of the World Bank) in November 2002. (See Sheridan and Lewis (2002: 1).) Coming just over a year after 9/11, his remark was intended to highlight the values of ‘openness’ and ‘freedom’, values that ‘terrorists are trying to destroy’. By linking together free trade – the unrestricted movement of goods and operation of markets – with freedom, Zoellick was using for contemporary purposes a long-standing claim made by supporters of capitalism. The claim is that capitalism means freedom and global capitalism will bring global freedom. Why and how such a claim is made is set out in this chapter.

Advocates of ‘free market’ capitalism regard it as a system, at the abstract level, which is ‘natural’ and which constitutes an integral part of human ‘freedom’. The interpretation of the market, one of the fundamental defining characteristics of capitalism, as a site of freedom, and upon which Zoellick drew, can readily be traced back to eigtheenth-century writer Adam Smith (1976), widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of economics and best known for his support of a free market system (Box 2.1). Analysis of his work can guide us through some complex issues and provide links with more recent authors.

Adam Smith, born in Scotland, is often invoked as the source of ideas about the beneficial workings of the market. He was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow when he wrote his most famous book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Published in 1776, the book is widely viewed as a free market manifesto.

The book argues that an economic system based on competitive markets is best suited to human nature and provides the best route to material advancement. The market should be used wherever possible. Smith not only advocated free trade but also the payment of teachers by the popularity of their classes. Competition, for Smith, was always necessary – even among religions. Unregulated markets were the best way to provide this competition. Government restrictions on markets should be limited to a few special cases.

While Smith’s pro-market views have become widely known, he was actually a bit more complicated. He also wrote a book entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) which argued that fellow-feeling, rather than self-interest, was a dominant human trait. In the Wealth of Nations he argued that no society could be happy if the bulk of the population did not share in its prosperity, and he viewed business people as frequently seeking to take advantage of consumers. Ironically, given his views on free trade and taxes, he ended his life working for the Board of Customs in Edinburgh.

Adam Smith: Markets are Natural for Humans … But Not for Dogs

The act of market exchange was, for Smith, ‘natural’ in the sense that it was based upon a propensity which was found in all humans and, more strongly, only in humans. That is, for Smith, market exchange was a central defining characteristic of our own humanness. The question ‘what distinguishes humans as humans?’ was a well-debated topic at the end of the eighteenth century. For some, the answer to this lay in the ability of humans to communicate and to develop language. For Smith, the answer was to be found in humans’ ability to enter into exchange.

Smith (1976: 25) refers to this as ‘the propensity to truck, barter and exchange’, in other words, to trade. This propensity, Smith (1976: 25–26) tells us, ‘is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavors to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This, however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.’

From this view, important implications arise. Firstly, market exchange, being based on a natural propensity, is common to all people and all places. The ‘market’ is a universal institution arising from an innate ‘propensity’ within human beings. Attempts to limit exchange are regarded as both futile and oppressive. They are futile in that they attempt to deny human nature and, as such, will ultimately fail. Thus, attempts to limit the operations of the market in many countries, such as those which occurred in the countries of the former communist bloc, simply resulted in the rise of ‘black’ or ‘grey’ market activity; that is, in market exchange which was not officially sanctioned by the state. Attempts to suppress the market in any significant degree could not work in the long run, since human nature would always find an avenue to escape the shackles of any state-imposed restrictions. The contemporary relevance of this view is not only that economic systems which seek to radically limit the operations of the market are doomed to failure because human ingenuity, propelled by the ‘propensity to truck, barter, and exchange’, will overcome such limitations. This position also implies that the transition to a market system can be achieved reasonably quickly, since markets will ‘naturally’ and spontaneously develop. For example, the ‘transition to capitalism’ in the former Soviet bloc could possibly be a short one if a supportive enabling environment was quickly established.

The second implication of Smith’s argument is that limits on market exchange are limits on human freedom. If our humanity is expressed and defined by our ability to enter into exchange relationships with others, then any attempts to limit these exchanges are therefore attempts to limit our humanity.

This implication was taken up more fully in the works of Chicago, and Nobel Prize-winning, economist Milton Friedman (Box 2.2).

Milton Friedman’s best-known contribution is as a ‘monetarist’. According to this theory, governments cannot permanently reduce unemployment by intervening in the economy. All they are likely to do is to cause inflation. Governments should therefore focus on controlling inflation; once they have done this, competitive markets will bring about full employment. This view, known as ‘The Chicago School’ view after the name of the University where Friedman taught for 30 years, was influential around the world, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Friedman’s contributions led to the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976.

Friedman has also been a tireless advocate of capitalism as the best economic system. His two most famous books on the subject, co-authored with Rose Friedman, are Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and Free to Choose (1980). They argue that market capitalism promotes human freedom and that government interventions to promote equality – through rent controls and minimum wages, for example – produce less equitable outcomes than market processes as well as infringing upon freedom.

Milton Friedman on Markets, Freedom and Alka Seltzer

Individuals in a market system are, in the Friedmans’ words, ‘free to choose’. And the more areas over which choice can be made, the freer we are as individuals. Government interventions in the market are seen as restricting freedom. As the Friedmans argued, ‘a citizen of the United States who under the laws of various states is not free to follow the occupation of his own choosing unless he can get a license for it, is … being deprived of an essential part of his freedom. So is the man who would like to exchange some of his goods with, say, a Swiss for a watch but is prevented from doing so by a quota. So also is the Californian who was thrown in jail for selling Alka Seltzer at a price below that set by the manufacturer under so-called “fair trade” laws. So also is the farmer who cannot grow the amount of wheat he wants. And so on.’ (1962: 9) As a general rule, therefore, any exchange which is voluntary and informed should be permitted to take place; if it is not, it is limiting our freedom.

This position, that free markets constitute human freedom and that all forms of voluntary exchange should not only be tolerated but encouraged, has found resonance in many policies introduced by conservative governments throughout the world. For example, the assault on the welfare state under the Thatcher government in the UK was as much an assault at the ideological level, based on the freedom-enhancing claims of ‘the market’, as it was because of inherent problems of the welfare state. (See Hall (1988).) Part of the argument against the welfare state was that it unfairly restricted the ability of individuals to purchase goods (especially in the areas of health and education). Freedom was thereby reduced.

Are there exceptions to this rule? If ‘goods’ such as pornography, guns, drugs, human organs, private armies and nuclear weapons are not freely available for sale, is freedom reduced? Advocates of the ‘free market’ have had difficulty with this question. In theory, the libertarian tradition points to wider rather than restricted markets. In practice, all capitalist societies have had to struggle with the question of whether unrestricted markets should be permitted or whether a public interest, over and above the market, should be invoked. National defence is widely accepted as a legitimate reason for market restriction but in other areas, involving individual choices, opinion is more divided and market-restricting laws have varied between countries and over time. For example, the market for guns varies by country, and various regulations determine which guns and which owners are legal. Drugs have varied through time in their legality. It should be remembered that the ‘opium wars’ of the 1840s were fought by Britain to ensure that British traders had the right to sell opium to the Chinese. To ensure that such rights were enforced Britain took administrative control of Hong Kong for 150 years. Pornography, and what constitutes pornography, has also had a chequered legal history.

More from Adam Smith: Markets Feed us Because of Self-Interest

A third implication of Smith’s analysis is that the motive for entering into exchange is self-interest. I enter into exchange because I value more highly that which I can obtain from you than that which I currently possess, and vice versa. Exchange is therefore based upon self-interest. This is summed up in Smith’s (1976: 26–27) famous statement that ‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest’. That is, the baker does not sell me bread because s/he wants to remove my hunger but because s/he wishes to make a profit. Market interactions, which have increasingly dominated human interactions, are based on self-interest. A society which functions on the basis of self-interest might be regarded as anything from slightly unseemly to downright immoral and inhuman. For Smith, and subsequent supporters of capitalism, however, it is no such thing; it arises from human propensities and many benefits spring from it. The profit motive is ‘natural’.

For Smith, the propensity to exchange (based on self-interest) permitted the division of labour – because I am willing to enter into exchange, I do not need to produce all that I need but can specialize and exchange my surplus production for yours. And it was this specialization and division of labour which allowed countries to greatly increase their productivity and to raise general living standards. Furthermore, the self-interested actions of individuals produced the growth that benefited all: the ‘Invisible Hand’ at work. The ‘Invisible Hand’ metaphor used by Smith is a very powerful one; it is based on the argument that the self-interested actions of individuals lead, not to chaos, but to order and to socially desirable outcomes. Prosperity and social progress is brought about, not by the deliberate interventions of policy-makers seeking to promote social welfare, but as the unintended outcome of decentralized decisions driven by self-interest.

Invisible Hand: A metaphor used by Adam Smith to illustrate how society’s best interests were best served by all individuals pursuing their own self-interest.

This analysis leads to a simple but powerful conclusion: capitalism is a system capable of maximizing social welfare while minimizing government intervention. If the market is left to operate freely then this will lead to better, albeit unintended, social outcomes than even the best-intentioned interventions of governments seeking to impose their preferred outcomes. And government interventions are often very far from best-intentioned. This conclusion, of the social welfare maximizing properties of markets, relies on these markets being competitive markets. It is not surprising that writers such as the Friedmans (1962) attribute monopolies to restrictions placed upon the market by government regulations rather than by the workings of the market itself. In the absence of government ownership and government restrictions, capitalist markets are presumed to be overwhelmingly competitive.

Smith, Friedman and their followers believe that markets and profit-making are ‘natural’. Furthermore, the operation of markets constitutes an important component of human freedom. But is self-interest enough to keep society together? Where do ‘values’ come from? For some of capitalism’s supporters, self-interest is sufficient and individual preferences and values are seen as innate. For others, ‘values’ need to be reinforced by non-market moral compasses provided by religious and/or ‘family’ values, for example. Politically, these differences are expressed in contemporary societies in the tensions between the libertarian and the socially conservative Right. Both are pro-capitalist, but they differ on the need for extra-market social institutions to guide human behaviour. In the market sphere, however, both sides agree that self-interest is natural and desirable.

Is Private Property ‘Natural’ as Well?

Smith’s previously cited quotation concerning the difference between dogs and humans (1976: 25–26) implies the strict linkage of markets with private property. His statement ‘this is mine, that yours’ implies that goods are owned by individuals. Markets and private property go together. However, this is a much more difficult position to sustain historically; and the philosophical or moral case for private property is difficult to sustain as well.

Private property can be defended on the basis of its justness and/or its utility. In terms of its justness, there is a well-established argument that individuals should, morally, own the fruits of their own labour. John Locke, for example, writing in the late 1600s argued (1960: 328) that, with respect to an individual, ‘the labour of his body, and the work of his hands we may say, are properly his’. Likewise, Smith (1976: 138) argued that ‘the property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable’. Present-day arguments that the creators of knowledge products/processes deserve to be protected through intellectual property rights rely on essentially the same appeal.

Intellectual property rights: The protection of private property in the ownership of ideas and the inventions and products which may arise from them.

The utility of private property typically rests on the argument that private property, as an institution, has shown itself to support the market system and that this has proved to be the most effective way of raising general living standards. The stronger version of this is that private property has proven itself necessary to support the market system. This necessity relies on the proposition that in order to be an entrepreneur, a risk-taker, the shaker and mover of the capitalist system, individuals must be secure in the knowledge that they will enjoy the benefits of their entrepreneurship or risk-taking. Such security and incentives can only be provided by the right to private property.

Private property can be supported, therefore, on the grounds of its justness and of its utility. Nevertheless, upholding private property rights remains controversial in some circumstances. For example, in the name of private property, homeless people are evicted from unoccupied, but privately owned, buildings. Teenagers may not freely copy (download) music but, since life itself can be owned, scientists can copy (clone) a sheep and seeds can be patented and privately owned. Countries which at some point in their histories underwent revolutions are not admitted back into international forums until they have agreed to pay for any ‘illegally’ seized assets. Furthermore, whatever the merit of the justness and utility claims, the rise of private property as empirical matter, that is historically, has seldom, if ever, been the result of such theoretical niceties; force and theft have been the historical rule by which rights to private property have been established.

The problematic defence of the institution of private property has meant that, as an ideology, ‘the market’ or ‘the free market’ have often been used as metaphors for capitalism. This conveniently neglects private property, the other essential pillar of capitalism. The right to private property as an overriding, uninfringeable, right is much harder to sell than the notion that ‘the market’ should be allowed to operate as it offers freedom of choice to consumers. (On this point, see also Jameson (1991: 266).) Proponents are therefore typically much more comfortable defending the ‘free market’ economy than the ‘private property’ economy.

The State as Impartial Rule Enforcer

The protection of private property gives rise to the need for the state. Otherwise, there would be something of a dilemma here: if capitalism is natural, and government intervention so bad, why is a state needed? One way to give a clear answer to this is with the use of a sporting analogy. In a chapter on the ‘free market’ economy and entitled ‘The only natural economy’, Stanford University’s John McMillan (2002: 13) argues that ‘a typical market is born and grows like football. It evolves spontaneously, driven by its participants. It can operate with little or no formal structure – but only up to a point. To reach a degree of sophistication, its procedures need to be clarified and an authority given the power to enforce them. Only when the informal rules are supplemented by some formal rules can a market reach its full potential, with transactions being conducted efficiently and complex dealings being feasible. An absolutely free market is like folk football, a free-for-all brawl. A real market is like American football, an ordered brawl.’

The American football analogy highlights a number of points. Capitalist markets are seen as natural and as arising ‘spontaneously’. However, the state is needed after a certain point to enable capitalism to flourish because rules, and an enforcer of those rules, is needed. This is the role that the state should play under capitalism: as an enforcer of the rules of private property. The state is part of the game but is not an active player; rather the state plays the role of referee, ensuring that there is fair competition between the contestants. The football analogy also sums up an important claim for capitalism: whoever wins does so because of a combination of good skill, hard work and good luck. These are the attributes which are rewarded under capitalism – not class privilege, for example. The state is therefore a neutral referee of a fair competitive game, although its function is also to ensure that it is football that is being played and that one side does not suddenly decide that cricket would be more to its liking and force the other side to play that.

This provides a minimal but absolutely essential role for the state to play. To the defence of private property, through contract enforcement, we should also add national defence. As the Friedmans (1962: 2) argue, ‘the scope of government must be limited. Its major function must be to protect our freedom both from the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow-citizens: to preserve law and order to enforce voluntary contracts, to foster competitive markets’. To this list, many would also add the enforcement (although not necessarily the provision) of compulsory education.

Some States are Better Rule Enforcers than Others – And so Sometimes Capitalism Fails

The importance of a state-run, well-functioning legal system is therefore critical to the successful operation of a capitalist system. Indeed, Hernando de Soto (2000), working at the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru, has argued that it is the ability of Western societies to develop well-established and widely respected legal systems for the enforcement of contracts and the protection of private property that has led capitalism in the West to be so successful but a failure in the rest of the world. It is the absence of domestic legal structures and mores in the developing world that explains why capitalism has failed to produce there the standards of living that are enjoyed in the West. The vast majority of the poor, he argues, have assets but these assets are unable to form the basis of a successful capitalist economy because of the absence of a functioning legal framework; the capitalist system includes a set of norms and rules which enable it to function effectively.

Philosophically, therefore, advocates of capitalism argue that it is both natural and free. However, a state is needed to act as the referee, the enforcer of the rules of the game, rather than as an active participant making the plays.

Capitalism is Also the Most Economically Productive System

Implicit in much of the argument so far of the philosophical justification of capitalism as an abstract system, is the argument that such a system also happens to be economically desirable. That is, to the philosophical argument that capitalism is capable of delivering human freedom must be added a pragmatic argument that capitalism is a system which is not only capable of, but is also the best suited to, delivering material benefits. This pragmatic argument receives wider support and is accepted by many as the justification for capitalism, even if they do not embrace all of the philosophical arguments with enthusiasm.

As a practical matter, it is argued that the capitalist market system best solves the ‘coordination problem’ and, secondly, that it best provides the incentives for innovation and technological progress. The coordination problem is simply this: how can the production and consumption decisions of millions of agents be organized so that the outcome is desirable rather than chaotic? The coordination problem is resolved in capitalism by the use of markets. Markets – the interactions of buyers and sellers – determine prices which permit goods to be sold for all those willing to offer their goods for sale at the market price and all purchasers willing to pay the market price to buy the goods. In this way, markets, by establishing prices, allow voluntary exchange to coordinate the economy.

Coordination problem: The problem of how to decide which resources should be used to produce which goods and for which people.

Central to the claim that this process is desirable, in the sense that it solves the problem well, is the proposition that markets lead to equilibrium. That is, both individual markets and the economy as a whole have a tendency to equilibrium. Capitalist markets are seen as robust and self-adjusting; equilibrium can be expected if the market is allowed to operate freely. Disequilibrium in individual markets – meaning an imbalance between supply and demand – is restored through a change in price. This may be obvious in the case of many goods. However, Friedman (1953) also famously argued that the same mechanism can be relied upon in markets, such as the foreign exchange market, where fluctuations are often the norm. In such cases, the price mechanism should again be allowed to work and the actions of speculators are argued, in general, to be ‘stabilizing rather than the reverse’ (1953: 175).

The main problems which arise at the level of the economy as a whole – inflation and unemployment, for example – are viewed as being primarily the result of destabilizing government policies: excess money creation in the case of inflation, and institutional frictions such as minimum wages and pro-trade union bargaining legislation in the case of unemployment. Provided that governments adhere to strict monetary discipline and encourage flexibility in all other markets, the capitalist system can be expected to perform well. This has been the central policy position of proponents of capitalism and has been enshrined in the policy advice given by international organizations, such as the IMF and the World Bank, to all comers. The basic argument here is that the capitalist system is inherently self-adjusting and stable and although this belief has been shaken by the Global Financial Crisis it has not been decisively rejected even if a bit more regulation of financial markets is now accepted as needed.

For much of the early post-1945 period, capitalism’s claim to solve the coordination problem more efficiently than other economic systems looked suspect as the Soviet Union posted impressive growth rates and seemed to be catching up with the West. Here, planners solved the coordination problem. Government officials, armed with input–output tables, sought to track and organize the flow of goods and services through the economy. As long as computers could be made powerful enough, the planners argued, the increasing complexity of the economy could be handled. As it happened, it could not be handled and the demise of the centrally planned system from the mid-1980s onwards led to the reassertion that only the market could solve the coordination problem in complex economies. Planning proved to be unable to ensure that, for example, the desired number of size 4, red shoes with white laces was available in stores across the country. Only the decentralized market, equipped with profit incentives, could ensure that it was in everyone’s self-interest that this was achieved. In fact, the centrally planned system often found it difficult to ensure that basic goods such as bread and meat were available, let alone the latest styles in fashion footwear.

Only capitalism produces the goods people want, it is argued. Furthermore, if the objective of production is to maximize profits, then it is in producers’ interests to use the lowest cost combination of inputs and to use them as efficiently as possible. Allocating inputs as well as final goods is therefore best coordinated by the millions of individual decisions of producers and consumers rather than attempted by the supposedly all-knowing economic bureaucracy which characterized state socialism.

The second part of the claim that capitalism is a superior economic system in terms of its ability to produce goods for the mass of the population rests on its capacity for innovation. That is, the production of new goods, and of new ways of producing existing goods, requires an incentive. Capitalism provides this through the existence of private profits and encourages ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ in individuals.

Capitalism – The Most Economically Productive System and Therefore the ‘End of History’

These economic strengths of the capitalist system are argued by writers such as Fukuyama (1992) to demonstrate that capitalism is likely to be the preferred system of economic organization for all countries, both for advanced industrial (or core or developed) countries and for developing

Advanced industrial countries: The group of countries in Western Europe, North America and Japan who have reached industrial maturity and relatively high levels of per capita income.

(or Third World) countries. And, as a result, the capitalist economy is the ‘end of history’ in the sense that the major economic problems are solved with this type of economy. Although some improvements can always be made, they do not involve a change of system (Box 2.3).

Propelled to the status of international guru as a result of a 1989 article ‘The end of history’, Fukuyama argued that communism was finished and that Western liberal capitalism had won the Cold War. The book that was written on the same subject, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), was an international best-seller and appeared in 20 foreign editions. Its story – that capitalism had won and that there would be no more changes to the social system – caught the triumphalist mood of capitalism perfectly.

The argument relied on a reading of human nature – of what history had shown that humans wanted. In a subsequent book, Fukuyama argued that capitalism also needed people to develop high levels of ‘trust’ for capitalism to achieve its potential. In another work, entitled Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002), he argues that biotechnology may undermine society, since the possibilities for human cloning now threaten the existence of ‘human nature’. Fukuyama supports an international ban on human cloning, even if voluntary exchange would otherwise occur. Without a ban, one of the assumptions of liberal democracy, that every individual is born equal, would be violated. McMillan’s ‘ordered brawl’ would be unfair if one team was a genetically engineered ‘super-race’. This work of Fukuyama’s illustrates some of the problems that pro-capitalist supporters have in justifying the ‘rule of the market’ in all cases.

In arguing for this controversial thesis, Fukuyama (1992) appeals to many of the arguments presented above. Material advancement is driven by technology – ‘modern natural science’ in Fukuyama’s words. Humans have shown themselves to desire greater material well-being and, despite sporadic attempts to limit or even reject technological progress and material advance, the general historical trend and the preference of the majority of the world’s population has been for increased material well-being and technological change. Modern industrial societies require the coordination of millions of individuals and the setting of billions of market prices. While the centrally planned Soviet-style system was able to perform well when faced with a primitive industrial economy, it proved itself unable to cope with the complex demands of the types of post-industrial economies which exist in present-day advanced countries. Neither could its centralized system generate the levels of technology and innovation that the decentralized, free market system could, with its set of incentives and its absence of constraints. It is only the decentralized, capitalist market mechanism that has proved capable of doing this. Capitalism, therefore, will emerge as the dominant system for advanced countries. As Fukuyama argues (1992: 96–97), ‘the unfolding of technologically driven economic modernization creates strong incentives for developed countries to accept the basic terms of the universal capitalist culture, by permitting a substantial degree of economic competition and letting prices be determined by market mechanisms. No other path toward full economic modernity has proven to be viable.’

In developing countries, less concerned with the complexities posed in advanced economies and more concerned with achieving a structural change in the economy towards industry, it might be thought that the state and economic planning would play a larger role. However, here Fukuyama again appeals to the empirical evidence and argues that the economic success of East Asian countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia – some of the countries of the so-called ‘East Asian miracle’ – prove that capitalism is the best system for achieving economic advancement in developing countries. Here, according to Fukuyama’s interpretation, countries with few natural resources and whose only initial economic advantage was an abundant supply of relatively well-educated, low-paid workers, have seen dramatic increases in living standards as a result of freeing markets and integrating into the global capitalist economy. On this interpretation of the East Asian experience, what developing countries need is more, not less, capitalism.(Other interpretations of the East Asian style of capitalism are reviewed in Chapter 5.)

Developing countries: Those countries which are still at relatively low levels of per capita income and which usually still have significant employment in agriculture.

East Asian miracle: Term used to describe the high economic growth records of countries in East Asia from the 1960s onwards.

This reasoning leads Fukuyama to foresee ‘the creation of a universal consumer culture based on liberal economic principles, for the Third World as well as the First and the Second. The enormously productive and dynamic economic world created by advancing technology and the rational organization of labour has a tremendous homogenizing power. It is capable of linking different societies around the world to one another physically through the creation of global markets, and of creating parallel economic aspirations and practices in a host of diverse societies. The attractive power of this world creates a very strong predisposition for all human societies to participate in it, while success in this participation requires the adoption of the principles of economic liberalism’ (1992: 108).

All peoples and countries are driven to capitalism; it represents the end point of the human struggle for material advancement. But if capitalism, based on the institutions of the market and private property, and motivated by the desire for profits, is here to stay as Fukuyama suggests, and if this provides us with an essential component of human freedom, what else can we expect? What does capitalism, defined as a form of economic organization in this way, imply about the political sphere, about social justice, about the environment? What can be deduced, if anything, about the wider characteristics of the capitalist system?

Does Capitalism Lead to Democracy?

Does capitalism, as an economic form of organization, lead to specific political forms of organization? This question has usually been asked in terms of the relationship between capitalism and democracy; in short, does the economic freedom attributed to capitalism also translate to political freedom in the form of democracy?

When framing this question, political freedom is usually defined as the ability to hold any political views without prejudice (provided that they do not do injury to others), to free association, and to vote. The relationship between capitalism and democracy has typically been premised on this definition of political freedom. It should be noted, however, that ‘democracy’ is a contested term and is capable of being defined in a number of ways. The definition of political freedom provided above, and incorporating democratic elections, is typically referred to as procedural or representative democracy. Substantive democracy, however, refers to a wider set of practices, including social rights (for genders, groups and classes), which translate into an equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities. This definition of democracy may also include the exercise of democracy in the workplace (or economic democracy). Typically, substantive and economic democracy are not the topics of analysis, and the relationship between capitalism and representative democracy has occupied the bulk of debate.

Representative democracy: The process of electing leaders by voting. Also called procedural democracy.

Substantive democracy: A society in which citizens are active in the political system (including through voting) and have equality of access to goods and services (through effective redistribution policies for example) and guarantees of rights.

Economic democracy: Occurs when employees are included in work-place decisions and have some control over the company.

Historically, capitalism has coexisted with a variety of political forms. It has coexisted with military regimes in much of the developing world (witness regimes in Nigeria, Thailand, South Korea and Pakistan, for example), with absolute monarchies (witness the Saudi Arabian oil kingdom, for example), with fascist regimes (if one is willing to include them as capitalist countries as discussed in Chapter 1), with other forms of authoritarian regime (including China if one is willing to describe it as capitalist) and with procedural or representative democracies. Given this array of political forms found in capitalist countries, an association between economic form and political form would seem to be unlikely.

Despite this, it is frequently asserted that capitalism and democracy go together. Why? One explanation is based on two empirical regularities: firstly, that the advanced capitalist countries tend to have political systems which are based upon procedural/representative democracy (and, indeed, all 34 current members of the OECD are characterized in this way) and thus economic growth might be expected to produce democracy. Secondly, representative democracies, in the modern era, have been established only in capitalist societies. The freedom to vote, freedom of speech and free association have only been found in capitalist societies, an empirical regularity suggestive of underlying causal mechanisms.

OECD: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Formed in 1960 by the 18 richest capitalist countries. Now expanded to 34 countries including some from the former Soviet bloc as well as some emerging economies.

The association between capitalism and democracy is also partly based on the theoretical proposition that dispersed economic power, in the form of millions of individual economic agents, is the best bulwark against the possibility of governments abusing their power (see the Friedmans 1962). If governments are large, they are able to impose their views on the majority by threatening to withhold means of livelihoods (or worse) and thereby coerce individuals. When governments become all-encompassing, they become totalitarian states. The market provides alternative means of livelihood for individuals and thereby enables them to retain their political independence. To allow government to take a larger role is, in Friedrich von Hayek’s (1944) language, the ‘road to serfdom’. The choice Hayek (Box 2.4) offers us is between totalitarian serfdom and capitalist liberty.

This argument suggests simply that capitalist economies are necessary for the exercise of political democracy. Can a stronger case be made, namely, that there are historical forces at work which make capitalism a sufficient condition for the establishment of democracy?

In this context, a special role has been assigned to the middle class. The central proposition is that if a property-owning, trading middle class emerges then its interest will be for the expansion of the market and the non-arbitrary exercise of power. That is, a functioning capitalist market system requires the ‘rule of law’ rather than the ‘rule of men’. The wealth and influence of the middle class will eventually lead to the transition to a system (a number of means are possible, violent and non-violent) in which the rule of law and checks and balances on the arbitrary exercise of power through representative assemblies is established. This argument has been put to the test recently following the spectacular growth in East and Southeast Asian countries since 1960. The issue is whether the emerging middle class has been the driving force towards political liberalization in these countries. The counter-argument is that the middle classes of the successful Asian countries (including China) have not been interested in wider systemic political change but have been happy to accept a more inclusive form of authoritarianism in which their interests have been recognized and served. Certainly, capitalism in these

Born in Austria, Friedrich von Hayek developed the view that society and the economy are complex evolutionary systems. As such, they cannot, except at great cost, be ‘planned’. The ‘fatal conceit’ of socialist and totalitarian regimes is to believe that they can consciously plan society and the economy. They offer human-designed utopias but end up delivering only human-imposed ‘serfdom’.

Individuals are at the centre of Hayek’s work. Each individual makes plans and has knowledge and information. The knowledge and information which individuals and firms in the economy possess can best be utilized in a free market capitalist economy. Only here will prices be established in markets which best reflect the preferences of millions (and billions) of consumers and firms. Central ministries simply cannot know all of the information needed to run an economy and inefficiency is bound to result in government-run economies. Decentralized systems with individuals free to express their preferences best solve the coordination problem.

More broadly, individuals are best able to realize their potential as human beings when they are free to express their thoughts and preferences in ‘open societies’, that is, societies in which governments are constrained and individual liberty is guaranteed. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty (1960) sets out the principles for how such a society could be governed.

countries has brought some political realignment, but it is by no means clear that genuine democracies have been the outcome.

The proposition that a prosperous middle class will be a force for democratic change nevertheless holds sway in many quarters and not only provides a historical account of how capitalism led to political freedoms but also provides a guide to foreign policy. That is, it is frequently advocated that increasing trade with, for example, authoritarian China or revolutionary Iran is the best way of fostering democratization in those countries. By supporting the emergence and consolidation of a middle class through trade, it is hoped that the process of democratization will be advanced.

Others are more sceptical of a causal relationship. For example, Fukuyama, who regarded the capitalist economy as the ‘end of history’, argued that this historical end point would be accompanied by liberal (or representative) democracy. But there is no causal connection between the two. On this, Fukuyama is clear: ‘there is no economically necessary reason why advanced industrialization should produce political liberty’ (1992: xv).

Fukuyama does not believe that capitalism causes political liberty. Instead, it is a separate force, the desire for recognition, that brings about political liberty. He argues that all political systems which do not recognize citizens as equals lack the legitimacy which will enable them to endure. Eventually, they will be replaced by a political system that duly accords equality to all – and representative democracy with equal rights for all citizens is the only system that can provide this in the modern world. For Fukuyama, this is the lesson of the past 200 years as the scope of political liberty has, as a long-run trend, increased around the world. The Arab Spring of 2011 would seem to add weight to this argument where authoritarian regimes have been challenged, and in some cases overthrown, by their citizens wanting a democratic form of government.

There has certainly been a long-run upward trend in the proportion of the world’s population living in democratic societies. The 1990s marked a milestone in this respect with over half of the world’s countries being ‘democracies’ – a historical first. (See Ferguson (2001: 9).) The democratic content of much of the ‘democratic transition’ of the 1990s is certainly open to doubt. In some cases, elections have demonstrably been neither free nor fair (for example, Zimbabwe), in others political leaders have been found guilty of corruption (for example, Mexico and South Korea) and in others the military have quickly reversed the trend (for example, Peru and Pakistan). The prospects for lasting democratic outcomes from the Arab Spring remain in the balance.

In his latest book, The Origins of Political Order (2011), Fukuyama traces political order up to the French Revolution, restating from prehuman times the argument that democratic government is a long but uneven historical process with relapses and different paths possible. He argues that representative democracy was an historical accident rather than an inevitability; nevertheless, having emerged, it is likely to attract all peoples in the long run.

The relationship between economic growth, globalization and democracy continues to be the subject of enquiry and debate. However, regardless of any correlations, it is still contested, even among capitalism’s supporters, whether this is underpinned by a causal relationship between capitalism and democracy as the above discussion illustrates. The argument that ‘capitalism necessarily brings political freedom’ remains unproved.

Capitalism as Equal and Just

Can we expect capitalist societies to be ‘equal’ and ‘just’? Its advocates portray capitalism as the triumph of the individual. The individuals in this account are not gendered or differentiated by race, religion or, for that matter, time. That is, capitalism is seen as a system equally appropriate to all people and all times. Each individual can, and indeed wishes to, advance their material interests and claim their individual freedom by participating voluntarily in the capitalist market system. Each person has an equal right to that freedom; equality here is equality to participate in the market. A further claim is that a competitive capitalist market is, to use Hayek’s (1944) word, ‘blind’. That is, when we buy goods we do not know who made them; we are unable to discriminate on the basis of our prejudices and, as a result, the market system is capable of delivering a non-discriminatory society in which many beliefs can be held because the means of discriminating between people are absent in the ‘blind’ market process. The market, in the views of the Friedmans (1962) and fellow conservatives, is the friend of ‘minorities’ and their best defence against discrimination.

Economically, capitalism is most unlikely to lead to equal, or even roughly equal, levels of income. It is not equality of outcomes that capitalism offers. If redress is desired then taxation is necessary. However, the more strident advocates of liberal capitalism have argued that this should be limited. In their view poverty alleviation, where poverty is narrowly defined, may be a legitimate function of government but income redistribution is not. This is because to redistribute income is to seek an equality of outcomes which infringes upon the rights of individuals to the fruits of their labour (a justification for private property which goes back to Locke in the seventeenth century). If incomes are unequally distributed then this is because some individuals work harder and/or consumers value their services more highly than those of others. Thus, to protect the right to earn the fruits of one’s own labour and to permit the allocative function of a labour market, inequalities in outcomes should be regarded as both just and necessary.

There are three taxation methods: proportional taxation means that each person pays the same proportion of their income in tax. Progressive taxation occurs when higher-income groups pay a higher percentage of their income in tax than other income groups. Regressive taxation occurs when the poor pay a higher percentage of their income in tax than other income groups.

Progressive taxation: Occurs when the rich pay a greater percentage of their income in tax than the poor.

Regressive taxation: Occurs when the poor pay a greater percentage of their income in tax than the rich.

If taxation is required, then a case has been made for proportional rather than progressive taxation. This case relies again on a combination of moral and practical reasons. The moral reason is that it is unjust for a majority to impose rates of taxation on a minority which it is unwilling to bear itself. In Hayek’s (1960) view, this is precisely what progressive taxation does. The practical arguments are that high rates of taxation discourage work by the most productive members of the economy and act as a restraint on entrepreneurship.

These arguments, while largely regarded as ill-founded, and even extreme, in the advanced capitalist countries in the decades after 1945, have recently found more resonance as a more conservative ideology has taken hold. For example, rates of taxation on high income earners have been cut substantially in many of the advanced capitalist economies in order, it is argued, to provide incentives for the rich to work harder. There have been proposals in some countries for ‘flat taxes’, i.e. for a proportional income tax rate (and even for lump sum taxes, such as the UK tried with a poll tax). Certainly, the direction in which taxes have been moving in the advanced capitalist countries since the mid-1980s has been away from progressive income taxes and towards more regressive sales taxes (like GST and VAT) where the poor pay higher proportions of their incomes in taxes than the rich. Such a trend has been promoted as both desirable and necessary for the improvement of the workings of the capitalist system.

Capitalism as a Friend of the Environment

Proponents argue that capitalism, and the latest phase, global capitalism, will contribute to meeting environmental objectives. The argument is that capitalism, being a profit-motivated system, will ensure that goods are produced using the minimum level of inputs necessary. This includes minimizing the use of natural resources. Free trade and environmental sustainability are compatible goals on this reading; if production can be organized globally then this will lead to increased ‘efficiency’ in the use of natural resources, as they will be sourced from where they are most abundant, a relative abundance which will be reflected in a lower price. Enabling firms to seek resources on the global market will lead to their being conserved in places where they are scarce.

One of the main environmental problems, the ‘tragedy of the commons’, is caused, according to proponents of capitalism, precisely by the absence of private property and the market. The ‘tragedy of the commons’ refers to tragedies such as the depletion of fish stocks and of the ozone layer. They are tragedies because these resources are treated as ‘commons’, that is, owned by everyone and so not really owned by anyone. Since they are owned by no one, there is no incentive to conserve them. If I don’t catch the fish then someone else will – if I decide not to fish then it will make no difference to fish stocks. So I might as well fish. The proposed solution is to establish secure private property rights in all resources – including endangered species – which will

Tragedy of the commons: The overuse of resources caused by their common ownership; individuals use the resources to the maximum in the present and have no incentive to conserve for the future since they cannot be sure they will benefit from saving them for later.

provide private owners with the incentives to conserve resources and use them at the ‘optimal’ rate. Furthermore, it is argued, markets will solve the problem of running out of particular resources since their scarcity will cause their prices to rise and induce the development of new products, synthetic rubber replacing natural rubber being but one example. Market signals, in the form of prices, therefore act to deter consumption of scarce resources and provide the incentive for innovation to find alternative sources or substitute resources. Establishing functioning markets for natural resources, such as water, is the key to their conservation.

This is also the preferred response to what the Stern Review prepared for the UK government in 2006 called the greatest ‘market failure’ of all, namely, climate change. The Review, along with many others, calls for the introduction and widespread international use of carbon pricing whether through carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems. The argument is that the use of fossil fuels must reflect their true costs to society and so creating the correct market prices for them is crucial both to reduce their use and spur the development of alternatives. The market system, while failing now because the ozone layer has not been priced, can effectively lead to desired changes in human behaviour if the true costs of pollution are reflected in products’ prices. A British Conservative MP and former editor of The Ecologist summarized the argument when he wrote that ‘the market is blind to the value of the environment; but the market is a powerful force for change, and the challenge is to price the environment into our accounting system so that pollution becomes a liability, not an externality.’ (See Goldsmith (2007).)

The response to a ‘market failure’ is therefore to introduce the market in areas in which it is now absent. Of course, some free enterprise institutes, such as the Cato Institute in the US for example, are apt to believe that the problem of climate change is greatly exaggerated and that, what change there is, is unlikely to be human induced.

To conclude this chapter, let us recap the main arguments made by the proponents of capitalism. Capitalism is a natural economic system in that it is based on the institution of the market, an institution which comes ‘naturally’ to humans and which arises ‘spontaneously’ in all human societies. The market enables us to express our humanity (Smith) and provides us with a source of freedom (the Friedmans). To restrict the operations of the market therefore constitutes oppression. The profit motive provides capitalism with the incentives for dynamism, a dynamism which allows (competitive) capitalism to allocate resources efficiently in the short run and to maximize growth in the long run. Both the market and the profit motive require the institution of private property for their successful operation, an institution which can be justified morally and pragmatically. Indeed, the pragmatic argument for capitalism – it works better than other economic forms of organization – is widely held. The essential elements of the case for capitalism, as summarized, have remained basically unchanged since Smith was writing in the eighteenth century.

In addition to these properties, capitalism is also associated with political democracy, although whether this association is the result of a causal relationship is open to dispute. Capitalism, it is argued, makes for a just society in that it provides the basis for non-discrimination and provides protection for ‘minorities’ through the ‘blindness’ of the market. One of the functions of the minimal state is to uphold private property rights and to enforce voluntary contracts; another is to alleviate poverty, although the more conservative supporters of capitalism regard income redistribution as both morally and practically misguided. By providing incentives for minimizing the use of natural resources, and by markets sending price signals of scarcity, environmental objectives are best met with a capitalist system; where markets are currently blind to our detriment they can be made to see.

One of the characteristics of any analysis of capitalism is that it generates passion. That passion is evident in the normative assessments made of capitalism by its supporters. It is also evident in the assessments of its critics, and there are a host of reasons why capitalism can be seen as anything but ‘natural’ and ‘free’, as Chapter 3 will explain.

3

Capitalism as a system: ‘unjust’ and ‘unstable’

Introduction

For critics, capitalism, far from representing the ‘triumph of the individual’ as the pro-capitalist writers surveyed in the previous chapter argue, represents ‘triumph over the individual’. According to a whole range of critics, capitalism subverts the individual’s needs and aspirations to the demands of an economic system which is controlled by, and works in the interests of, a few. It is individuals – and the natural environment – which continually adjust to the demands of a profit-driven system and not the other way round. Capitalism does not ‘free’ individuals but constrains the majority to work according to the dictates of a system over which it has no control.

For some critics this means that capitalism, as an economic system, must be reformed, managed or controlled to keep its destructive powers in check. The range of the market, the inviolable right to private property and the profit motive must all be harnessed, and sometimes restrained, by conscious intervention to promote the social good. For other, more radical, critics, it means that capitalism must be replaced by a different type of economic system, one which is not premised on the dominance of the market, private property and the profit motive.

To reformist and radical critics alike the capitalist system is unjust and unstable. To this, recent critics have added the charge that it is unsustainable, not just socially because of the inequality which it generates, but also environmentally.

Unjust and Unstable: Keynes and Reformist Critics

Reformist critics argue that capitalism needs extensive regulation in the areas of both distribution and production. In terms of distribution, the outcomes of capitalism are seen as inequitable and as requiring a massive redistribution of resources within and between countries in order to achieve just social outcomes. In terms of production, the problem with capitalism is perceived as one of instability, causing large changes in economic conditions for the majority of the population. Policies fashioned after the views of John Maynard Keynes to stabilize the inherent volatility of capitalist production are typically seen as a solution to this.

As an example of the inequalities found in contemporary capitalism, consider the indicators presented by reformist critic Stephen Haseler (2000: xi): ‘some estimates calculate that the world’s three richest people possess “assets worth more than the combined gross domestic product of all of the least-developed countries”, and others point out that the wealthiest 500 people own as much wealth as half of the population of the globe, and 500 hundred [sic] or so transnational corporations account for 80 per cent of world trade (and over 70 per cent of investment).’

These gross, even obscene, inequalities lead Haseler to describe the world we are living in as one of ‘super-rich capitalism’ although it is, of course, super-rich only for the very few. What is more, Haseler’s analysis of who is rich leads him to conclude (2000: xii) that ‘in today’s global capitalism, rewards often tend to be higher for doing nothing, or next to nothing – accruing and using capital through inheritances – than for the hard work of securing skills in order to work for a living’.

This observation is not, however, one that has just arisen ‘in today’s global capitalism’. Indeed, since industrial capitalism arose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, socialists have been pointing to the scale of capitalist inequality. For example, socialist reformers of the mid-nineteenth century, including well-respected economists such as John Stuart Mill, all viewed the central problem of capitalism as the inverse relationship between work and rewards. These critics observed that those who did the hardest work received the least reward, while those who did not labour lived in affluence. Work and rewards in capitalist societies were inversely related! (For further discussion, see Heilbroner (2000: 120).) The solutions proposed by socialists such as John Stuart Mill were inheritance taxes designed to eliminate family wealth and high taxes on non-labour (or ‘unearned’) income. These policies were adopted to various degrees by social democratic governments throughout Western Europe in the last half of the twentieth century. While the agenda for many governments now is for tax cuts to restore ‘incentives’ and ‘fairness’ to the tax system, it was not always thus.

Some of the capitalist–philanthropist–visionaries of the nineteenth century, such as Robert Owen with his New Lanark mills and Titus Salt with his Yorkshire mills, believed that workers would respond to better conditions by improving themselves. They provided their own prescriptions for an alternative society which departed from the Dickensian conditions then prevalent in industrializing Britain and now often repeated in industrializing Asia and elsewhere. In the contemporary period, capitalist–philanthropist–visionaries such as Anita Roddick who founded The Body Shop, practised good corporate ethics and supported fair trade. She even left her estate to charity. But the problem of massive inequality in the rewards under capitalism remains, taxation and alternative business practices notwithstanding.

In terms of instability, capitalism has historically seen periods of growth and recession and, occasionally, depression. Periods of recession and depression have typically been blamed by the supporters of capitalism on the misguided actions of either the government or associations such as trade unions which have prevented labour markets from being sufficiently ‘flexible’. As we saw in the previous chapter, capitalism is seen by its adherents as being self-regulating and free markets as being self-equilibrating.

Keynes, writing in the 1930s, challenged the underlying proposition of most economists of the time that the capitalist system was inherently stable and that price and wage flexibility would ensure that any disequilibria were temporary and self-correcting (Box 3.1).

The capitalist system was inherently unstable, according to Keynes. Workers’ wage demands did not fluctuate greatly, yet the volume of employment did; the reason for unemployment could not therefore be that workers were demanding too much and that wages needed to be reduced, as orthodox theory in the 1930s required. For Keynes, the source of instability had to be found elsewhere. He identified the volatility of investment as the key cause of instability under capitalism. This instability arose because investment decisions were based on entrepreneurs’ ‘animal spirits’ (1973: 161). As such, these spirits were presumably ‘natural’ but their result was that capitalism was based on spirits which inevitably produced instability. Investment decisions by firms were based on expectations of the future, expectations which were premised on what Keynes (1973: 148) termed ‘the state of confidence’. Business confidence could easily be affected by political events on the other side of the world. And if business confidence fell then investment would be postponed or scrapped and, as a result, the demand for labour would fall and unemployment would rise. The unconstrained workings of the capitalist economy would therefore produce continual swings in the level of employment matching the swings in entrepreneurs’ confidence about the future and reflected in their investment spending.

Animal spirits: A term used by Keynes to highlight the fact that market actors, especially entrepreneurs and investors, are driven by psychology, confidence and emotion.

An interventionist state capable of counteracting the volatilities of private investment decisions and stabilizing the economy to ensure full employment was needed in Keynes’s view. It was the task of government, therefore, to adjust its own spending levels and use the instruments at its disposal – such as monetary and fiscal policy – to stabilize the capitalist economy in the face

Keynes was one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. Born into privilege, he went from Eton to King’s College, Cambridge and on to the British Civil Service where he served in the India Office. He went back to Cambridge as an academic but returned to the civil service with the Treasury during the First World War. Keynes attended the Versailles Peace Conference in 1918 but later resigned in protest at the unfairness of the reparations payments imposed upon Germany. A prolific author, Keynes soon afterwards published The Economic Consequences of the Peace in which he criticized the post-First World War settlement. His most famous book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was published in 1936. Coming at a time when much of the world was suffering from the grip of the Great Depression, the book criticized prevailing policies aimed at reducing wages as the way of increasing employment levels. Keynes’s ideas transformed economic thinking throughout much of the world and a whole branch of economics, Keynesian economics, was developed in the post-1945 period. Keynes himself led the British delegation to the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 which sought to provide a stable framework for post-1945 growth, a framework which included setting up the IMF and the World Bank.

Not only an economist, Keynes was also a member of the literary ‘Bloomsbury Group’ and a chair of the British Arts Council.

of fluctuating private investment levels. Many governments in the advanced capitalist countries accepted this as their role, even duty, for three decades after 1945. Capitalism was the preferred economic system, but it was one which needed to be managed by an interventionist state in order to minimize the costs that it otherwise inevitably imposed upon society, most notably in the form of unemployment.

New forms of instability have emerged and ‘casino capitalism’ (as Strange (1986) called it) is what we have today. Or so its critics say, referring to the gambling mentality that leads to wild swings in the values of stock markets and currencies. In the wake of these wild swings, the lives of workers and ordinary people are disrupted and damaged, as the Asian crisis in 1997 and then the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 demonstrated. To prevent the destabilizing excesses of international financial markets, various proposals have been made to tame the markets. The most famous of these is the ‘Tobin tax’ (Box 3.2).

Casino capitalism: Term used to describe the speculative nature of con temporary capitalism, especially in the financial sector.

A tax on international currency transactions designed to prevent speculative capital flows. Named after its proponent, Nobel Prizewinning economist James Tobin, the idea is that the tax would be set high enough to deter speculators from moving ‘hot money’ around the world at short notice and would therefore reduce the threat of the type of currency crises that engulfed Asia in 1997, Brazil in 1998 and Argentina in 2001. The tax would be low enough that longer-term investment flows would not be deterred. A taxation rate in the order of 0.25 per cent (that is, 25 cents per $100) is typically suggested. Some economists are sceptical whether this would be high enough to deter speculation. Many in power argue that the tax wouldn’t work unless all countries agreed to introduce it; and since all won’t agree, the tax is not feasible. Nevertheless, many social activists have taken up the cause, arguing that it would prevent destabilization arising from international capital flows and provide anywhere from $100 billion to $300 billion a year in tax revenue which could be used to reduce world poverty and to address world environmental problems.

These critiques of the inequality and instability arising from capitalism have pointed to the need for strong state interventions in the ‘free market’ to correct these outcomes. A more radical conclusion – that of replacing capitalism with an alternative form of economic organization – has been advanced by those influenced by the Marxist analysis of capitalism.

Unjust and Unstable: Marx and Radical Critics

For Karl Marx (Box 3.3), the logic of capitalism as a system, premised on the need to generate private profits, produced a system that was both dynamic and capable of enormous productivity but one which was also rooted in class antagonism, inequality, inhumanity and crises. It was a system which represented a specific historic phase (and therefore not a timeless ‘natural’ system) and one which would not last forever (as ‘the end of history’).

Workers entered the labour market with nothing to sell but their ‘hides’ and, as a result, received ‘a hiding’ (Marx 1954: 176). Marx argued that

Authors of The Communist Manifesto in 1848, Marx and Engels exhorted the workers of the world to unite. Why? Because they had nothing to lose but their chains: the chains of ‘wage slavery’ under which they sold their labour ‘freely’ but still ended up chained to a system over which they had no control and which did not serve their interests. The underlying theoretical analysis of this and the political struggles resulting from it filled their life’s work. Marx, a journalist as well as a scholarly writer, was born in Trier, Germany but moved between Bonn, Paris and Brussels before settling in London in 1849. Working in poverty for much of his life, he wrote prolifically. His major analysis of the economic workings of the capitalist system, Das Kapital [Capital], appeared in three volumes, although only one of them, Volume 1 published in 1867, did so in his lifetime. His friend, collaborator and financial supporter, Friedrich Engels, published the two final volumes after Marx’s death.

Engels, the son of a Lancashire textile manufacturer, worked with Marx to develop the theory of ‘historical materialism’. This theory argued that it was the economic base of society which determined its political, social and ideological character. Ideas did not exist independently but were a function of the economic organization of society. Capitalism produced its own social character and its own ideology, ‘bourgeois ideology’. This ideology typically portrayed the interests of capitalists as everyone’s interests or as the ‘national interest’. It also promoted as ‘freedom’ the workings of an oppressive system. Engels also published much on his own, including the important The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845 which still stands as an important essay in social history. His Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State published in 1884 is an important work on gender relations under capitalism.

Marx and Engels were only marginally influential in their own time, but as socialist and communist revolutions swept much of the world in the twentieth century, at one time around one-third of the world’s population was living in states which called themselves ‘Marxist’. Few of these states were actually faithful to many of Marx’s ideas.

capitalism was based on exactly this – the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. Although it might appear that the buyers and sellers of labour met ‘equally’ in the marketplace and entered ‘freely’ into contracts with each other for mutual gain, this masked the reality of the capitalist system. The capitalists had a monopoly of the means of production (firms) while workers had only their capacity to work to sell. This was the basis of capitalist production: capitalists who owned firms hired workers who owned only their own labour, and the former sought to use the labour that they hired to make a profit for themselves.

Capitalist production was characterized by a central antagonism: the interests of workers and capitalists were diametrically opposed. It was in the interests of the workers to work as little as possible for as much reward as possible, and it was in the interests of the capitalists to extract as much effort as possible from workers while paying them as little as possible.

It is for this reason that workplaces contain a variety of ‘monitoring devices’ from clocking-in machines, line managers and supervisors, time and motion studies, to the whole battery of ‘human resource management’ techniques, which are necessary to ensure that the worker works for as long as, and as intensely as, the capitalist owners of the firm can enforce. Sweatshops around the world, often associated with the garment industry from China to New York, offer classic examples of this without having to recall the factory system of the nineteenth century described by Marx and Dickens. But the basic dynamics are applicable to all other capitalist industries from manu facturing to services. The interests of employers are to have employees work as intensely as possible and to have as few restrictions on ‘management prerogatives’ as possible. The employees, meanwhile, have interests in resisting the control of their lives by their employers.

To advance their interests, employers not only rely on the ‘sticks’ described as ‘monitoring devices’ above, but may also rely on a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy, with many grades in the workforce which encourage workers to pursue individual career advancement (rather than common causes), as well as on ‘carrots’ such as incentive pay and productivity bonuses. Workers are brought together to perform economic functions in capitalist firms, but employers devise methods designed to prevent them from acting together politically as a class. Such a system inevitably produces tensions and conflict within the firm and within the wider political arena. As I will show in Chapter 5, one of the major ways in which capitalist societies differ is precisely in the ways in which they have sought to manage these conflicts between capital and labour.

Capitalism is a structure of ‘unfreedom’. Workers are not, as in the Friedmans’ analysis, ‘free to choose’ but are destined only to fill roles as wage earners; workers, having only their capacity to labour to sell, have no choice but to sell it. The capitalist system does not work for their benefit but workers are incorporated into it as essential, yet expendable, elements. The individual does not matter in the capitalist system; he or she can be hired and fired as necessary. The individual’s concerns, material or otherwise, are of interest to the capitalist only to the extent that they impinge upon the employee’s capacity to labour. All that matters is that workers, as a class, are available to meet the requirements of profit-seeking production when, if, and how required. The worker, under capitalism, is needed to sell his or her capacity to labour.

The Importance of Labour – Or Why Workers are Alienated But Apes Aren’t

Workers are robbed of their humanity by being forced to sell their capacity to labour. The defining characteristic of humans was not, as Smith had argued, their ‘propensity to truck, barter and exchange’ but their capacity to labour. Responding to the Darwinian agenda, Engels (1962) argued, in an essay entitled ‘The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man’, that the evolutionary jump occurred with the ability to labour. The conditions under which we labour therefore define our humanity. In the capitalist system, it is precisely the control over our labour which is given up when entering into wage contracts with the capitalist. The capacity to labour now becomes the property of the capitalist – the product of the worker’s labour owned by another. Workers are ‘alienated’ from the product of their own labour. For workers, the capitalist system is both alienating – losing control of their labour and the root of their humanity – and exploiting, serving the interests of the capitalist class rather than their own (Box 3.4).

Capitalism’s message to its workers, as emblazoned on placards at anti-globalization protests, is to ‘work, consume, be silent, die’. Faced with this message, and being alienated from their labour, many seek meaning and identity through other activities such as religion (the ‘opium of the masses’ in Marx’s phrase), consumerism, drugs or sport. The pursuit of personal freedom and human solidarity is denied by capitalist control of the economic organization of society and so has to be found outside the production arena. Some argue that cyberspace offers a new arena for the exercise of radical democracy and escape from capitalist control. However, critics argue that corporate ownership of the internet makes this a mistaken dream. For example, Aune (2001: 163) writes: ‘if personal computing and the Internet promise individual empowerment, more meaningful work, and greater democracy, these promises are unlikely to be fulfilled fully under capitalism as we know it’. (See also Margolis and Moreno-Riano (2009).)

The theme of alienation under capitalism, and the ways in which capitalism robs us of our humanity, is a recurrent one. For example, Australian political economist Frank Stilwell (2000) argues that four types of alienation can be identified in contemporary capitalist societies. The first he terms ‘economic alienation’ and this refers to the alienation of the employee in the workplace as discussed by Marx but still relevant today. Despite the increases in wages and material possessions which have accrued to workers in many capitalist countries, we appear to be no happier in submitting to capitalist imperatives in controlling our work. Contemporary capitalism encourages us to find happiness as consumers, but at work alienation continues and we should expect no more than to be subjected to the demands of the bottom-line. And compliance with these demands is being increasingly enforced. For example, economist David Gordon (1996) documented how US corporations in the 1980s and 1990s, far from becoming ‘lean and mean’, became ‘fat and mean’ as the ratio of managers and supervisors to production workers rose in order to exert more control over how work was performed even as corporate downsizing was taking place. The ability of employees to control their labour, or to exercise democracy in the workplace, is strictly limited in capitalist firms.

To this economic alienation, Stilwell (2000: 93) adds three other types: (i) environmental alienation, as evidenced by the subjugation of Nature to the requirements of production, with the result that we feel alienated from our natural environment; (ii) social alienation, as evidenced by the process of marginalization or social exclusion in which a significant part of the expendable working class becomes further and further removed from the mainstream of society; and (iii) political alienation, as evidenced by growing apathy among voters and cynicism towards political processes which seem not to reflect individuals’ interests or concerns and where the voices of the majorities seem to be seldom heard. The term ‘democratic deficit’ is now widely used to describe the political state of many democracies; in the 2008 election which elected President Obama in the world’s leading capitalist country the voter turnout was 56.8%.

What is needed, therefore, is a radical change in the economic organization of society so that human liberation is a possibility. The choice that Marx presented us with is between capitalist barbarism and socialist civilization. This choice is presented to us today as the choice between global capitalism and democracy. (See The Socialist Register (1999) and Hertz (2003).) Global capitalism, promoted as the handmaiden of representative democracy by its supporters, is seen as the nemesis of substantive democracy by its critics.

Capitalism’s Contradiction: Poverty Amidst Plenty

At the same time that capitalism alienates the individual, the material benefits which it brings are not available to all. This goes beyond simply the income and wealth inequalities highlighted by reformist critics. It also appears, Marx pointed out, as a central contradiction of capitalism in that it permits the existence of excess capacity at the same time as there are unmet social needs. Capitalism is simply unable to put resources to their full use, even where demonstrable needs exist, because resources are deployed for the pursuit of private profit and not for the satisfaction of social needs. As a result, unemployed construction workers coexist with homeless people. This point was also made by Keynes. For him the solution was for the government to intervene and provide an additional source of effective demand. For Marx, the solution was to replace the profit-centred economic system.

Some parts of the world produce huge food surpluses and farms go bankrupt while hundreds of millions in other parts of the world are chronically undernourished; according to the United Nations one in four children in the developing world are underweight (and nearly one in two in Southern Asia). (Millennium Development Goals Report (UNDP 2010).) Furthermore, in the US, the richest country that the world has ever seen, 2009 figures show that 46 per cent of children below the age of six grow up living in or near poverty (NCCP 2010). Capitalism is unable to address these contradictions; its inner logic of profit-making makes the logic of using resources to meet social needs unworkable.

According to one analyst of capitalism, ‘when it comes to catering to the wants and desires of every individual, no matter how trivial those wants seem to others, no system does it even half so well’ (Thurow 1996: 1). This assessment tells only half the story. It is true that in responding to consumers’ material wants, wherever they come from, for the majority of the population in most countries the capitalist system performs this function reasonably well, and particularly well for wealthy individuals with trivial desires. However, it fails miserably to fill the needs of those who have no demand because they have no income. The rise of homelessness on the streets of every Western city in the past 30 years and the permanence of food banks demonstrate that capitalism is failing to meet many people’s daily wants even in relatively rich societies. At the global level, the UNDP rightly notes that ‘the death of millions of children from preventable causes each year is unacceptable’ (UNDP 2010). Entirely non-trivial wants and desires are not being met by a capitalist world system which cannot match production for profit with distribution for needs.

The latest example of this contradiction is found with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The UN estimates that almost 60 million people have been infected with HIV worldwide and that 25 million have died from HIV-related causes. However, ensuring that the 33 million people living with HIV in 2008 receive appropriate treatment has proven difficult. (UNAIDS Global Facts and Figures 09). Progress has only been made thanks to a decade and a half long fight by governments and non-government organizations to force large pharmaceutical companies to reduce their prices for the necessary drugs and by encouraging the development of cheaper ‘generic’ products (this encouragement often coming by governments indicating that they would not enforce patent rights). The struggle over AIDS medication provides a dramatic example of the contradiction of capitalism. On one side are the private property patent rights of multinational corporations in the world’s most profitable industry. On the other side are literally the lives of millions of the world’s poor, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the two sides cannot, under the logic of capitalism, meet because as Dr Harvey Bale Jr, of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Associations, stated, ‘there is no marketplace to speak of in the poor world’. And if there are no profits to be made, the needs of millions go unmet unless governments and non-government organizations can mount successful campaigns to circumvent the logic of the market. (See www.avert.org/generic.htm for details of these campaigns.)

The AIDS example simply provides further evidence of how the logic of capitalism operates: if you have money, capitalism is likely to provide you with many material choices, including some of the most trivial ones; if you lack money, then free-market capitalism will leave you without any choices at all even for your most basic needs, including life itself.

According to analyses based on the work of Marx, therefore, capitalism is unjust in that it leads to distributional outcomes which do not take account of social need but which are bound by the logic of profit-making. The vast majority of individuals, who make up the ranks of the wage-earners, are denied their humanity by a system which separates them from their work and also leads to political, social and environmental alienation. The system is also regarded as unstable.

Capitalism and Crises

Capitalism is seen as crisis-ridden and leading towards monopoly. Crisis here means a crisis for the capitalist class; and this occurs when profits fall to levels unacceptable to capitalists. One cause of crisis can be seen in the workings of the business cycle. In the boom period of the cycle, profit expectations are high and investment is high. The demand for labour is high and as a result unemployment falls and wages start to be bid up. However, after a while, the rise in wages eats into capitalist profits and creates a ‘crisis’, that is a crisis of profitability. This is ‘solved’ by capitalists reducing their investment levels, with the result that growth falls and unemployment increases until workers are disciplined to accept lower wages; at this point profit expectations pick up and the whole cycle is repeated. Unemployment therefore plays an important role in the capitalist economy by weakening the bargaining power of labour; it is not an accidental or unfortunate by-product but an inevitable feature of capitalism. Another important part of the process involved in the business cycle as outlined above is that, in the crisis period, firm restructuring takes place in order to create the conditions for renewed profitability. This restructuring takes the form of mergers and acquisitions with the result that monopolies, far from being an aberration caused by government policy as Friedman asserts, are another integral and inevitable feature of capitalism.

Crisis: Occurs when profits fall and growth is adversely affected. Can be caused by many factors and have different forms, for example, financial crisis or exchange rate crisis.

In the recent phase of capitalism, with finance capital dominant and sometimes described as a period of ‘financialization’, it is financial crises which have become more prevalent. Here ‘paper booms’ occur and when the bubbles burst a crisis, such as the Global Financial Crisis, ensues as profits disappear.

Finance capital: The financial institutions and investors who seek to make profits from the purchase and sale of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, derivatives and currencies. The process is sometimes called financialization and financial capitalism is sometimes described as an advanced stage of capitalism.

Bubbles: Increases in the prices of assets, such as stocks and housing, which are based on speculation. When the bubble bursts, as it did for example in Japan in the late 1980s, the economy often suffers heavily.

Capitalism as Anti-Nature

Recent critics of capitalism have added to the list of its inadequacies environmental destruction and ecological unsustainability (Carter 2001). There are two arguments which are relevant here.

The first argument views capitalism as a mode of thinking based upon the eighteenth-century Enlightenment tradition of human mastery over Nature. It is a system premised on the desirability of industrialization with its emphasis on a human-centred, rather than an ecology-centred, view of the world. It is a system which focuses on the use of resources in pursuit of economic growth, assuming that these resources are limitless. On this reading, capitalism is one of the most prominent systems of economic organization, but only one of many (state socialism being another) which promote the non-sustainable use of the Earth’s resources.

A second strand of ecologist thinking, associated with eco-socialists, argues that capitalism has specific characteristics that make it inimical to environmental sustainability (rather than being just one among several economic systems that equally share this trait). According to this view, it is the driving force of profits and the need to expand, together with capitalism’s maldistribution of world income, that produce widespread poverty in developing countries, which is to blame for environmental destruction. Monoculture farming practices, genetically modified foods, the destruction of virgin habitats, pollution, and poverty-induced land degradation can all be laid at the door of capitalism’s insatiable desire for profits. Capitalism, proclaimed as ‘natural’ by its proponents, is in fact ‘anti-Nature’.

Some environmentalists argue that our task is to stop viewing Nature as a resource to be used in the pursuit of profit but to rethink Nature as a ‘trust’. Expressed in different terms, the task is to ‘de-commodify’ Nature. The concept of a ‘commodity’ is central to Marx’s analysis of capitalism. A commodity is simply any product that is produced for sale on the market. Under capitalism labour becomes a commodity, something that is sold on the market. And this is true for a wide range of products; capitalism is therefore a process of ‘commodification’, of producing goods (and images) for sale on the market driven by the profit motive. More recently, the process of commodification has driven capitalism to explore new forms of commodities with the ownership of life itself, in the form of genes and biotechnology, now on the agenda. Natural resources such as water are now entering commodity production. Capitalism is therefore seen as a relentless process of commodification, leading to the marketization of ever more aspects of human existence as the search for profits, the driving force of capitalism, must be satisfied in new ways. Nature has not been exempt from this process; Nature, although not produced for the market, nevertheless becomes treated under capitalism as if it were a commodity, as something to be owned privately and used profitably. It is a specific feature of capitalist societies to treat Nature as a commodity, a feature which is not found in other societies such as many indigenous societies, for example. For many of the latter, Nature has always been a ‘trust’.

De-commodify: The process by which some resources, goods or services are removed from the sphere of the market.

Recent radical analyses blame our ecological ills firmly on capitalism’s need for unending growth even when faced with finite environmental limits. Harvey (2010) argues that capitalism requires a 3 per cent annual growth and this situation inevitably runs up against Nature’s limits. This theme is explored more fully in a recent contribution by Foster et al. (2010) in which they argue that capitalism is, by its own logic, a system which must continually expand. This leads to a ‘rift’ between human societies and the natural world in which they live. This ‘rift’ can be partially solved by a ‘shift’ to different technologies and resource uses for a time; however, they argue, we have now reached the point where the ‘rift’ has reached a planetary scale. The only way out is to replace capitalism with a new social system, a replacement which they speculate may be led by an ‘environmental proletariat’ in low sea-level locations at most risk from climate change. The authors refute the arguments of those who think that extending market processes – carbon taxes and the like – will enable capitalism to effectively avoid an ecological catastrophe; the logic of capitalism, they argue, is simply too strong to permit this.

To conclude the review of the critics of capitalism, I will examine two issues considered in the last chapter where the implications of capitalism for social equality and the characteristics of the political system were analysed. The first issue questions why, if capitalism is blind and treats everyone equally, there are significant gender inequalities in capitalist societies. The second issue is how reformist and radical critics view the role of the state.

Capitalism and Gender Inequality

Women in capitalist societies typically do more household labour, are more likely to be living in poverty, are more likely to be in low-paying jobs, have less wealth and are under-represented in positions of power. In many countries, they face discrimination in the labour market as well as various degrees of abuse, including sexual abuse, in the workplace and in the household. Why should this be the case? Is this because of something inherent in the workings of capitalism?

These questions have attracted considerable attention from feminist scholars. While there has been no consensus on the relationship between patriarchy (a system of male dominance) and the specific features of capitalism, a few central questions and propositions will be outlined here.

Patriarchy: A social system in which women do not have the same life opportunities as men.

The view that women’s subordinate position in society can be attributed to capitalism can be traced back to Engels. He argued, in his essay on The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1972), that the onset of capitalism destroyed a pre-capitalist period of sexual equality and resulted in the ‘domestic slavery’ of the wife. The argument he made was that in pre-capitalist societies, there was a division of labour based on sex in which the female was primarily responsible for child rearing and for the running of the household, much of which was performed communally, while the male took primary responsibility for food procurement and trading. However, although men and women had ‘separate spheres’, they were ‘equal’ since the activities which were performed by each were equally valued in terms of their usefulness for household survival. With the onset of capitalism, however, private property arose and this was appropriated by men who had primary responsibility for market-based activity. With this appropriation of private property and the private accumulation of wealth by men, they were placed in a dominant position within the household and within society, with ‘women’s work’ in the home now being less valued. In short, the capitalist system is a gendered system which neither recognizes nor counts women’s work. Subsequent feminist analysis has documented and analysed how women have historically been denied access to private property and have been excluded from market activities; women have a quite different relationship to capitalism than men as a result.

According to this analysis, patriarchy arose from the central features of capitalism. For others, however, the experience of women’s oppression in non-capitalist societies, including the former socialist countries, has demonstrated that patriarchy and capitalism are separate processes. Indeed, capitalism can be seen as a system which has historically broken down some of the forces of patriarchy (Sharp and Broomhill 1988). Capitalism has increasingly brought women into the labour force and given them some forms of economic independence through wage-earning possibilities. In this sense, capitalism can be seen as progressive in that it has increased women’s economic independence and, if earning income in the market is related to power relations within the household, then it has reduced gender inequality.

That said, however, it is also clear that capitalism assigns to women particular roles both inside and outside the paid labour market. Women still perform the major portion of household labour regardless of their participation in the paid labour market and are still found segregated in the workplace in predominantly low-paid positions and occupations. This is as true, for example, for secretarial work, child-care centres, and the nursing profession in Western countries as it is for electronics assembly workers in Asia. While all of these jobs are ‘skilful’, the social construction of ‘skill’ has meant that these are jobs in which skill is not well rewarded, whereas the skills found in more traditional male employments (such as road construction, engineering and medical surgery) are better rewarded.

Part of the complexity in explaining women’s subordinate position derives not simply from establishing the relationships between patriarchy and capitalism, but also because the role of women in capitalist economies has changed over time. In Western countries, women’s traditional role in raising the family and taking care of the household led to the ideology of the ‘male breadwinner’. Women’s contributions to the household as ‘unpaid domestic labour’ were theorized as important for capitalism since they provided the next generation of workers but without being paid directly for it. Women were brought into the workforce either to fill gaps left by men in areas such as cleaning and nursing or in times of national emergency such as in munitions factories in wartime. But this was still uncommon and women in Western societies were primarily homemakers.

Domestic labour: Work performed within the household without financial reward.

From the 1970s onwards, however, when multinational firms began more systematically moving production to developing countries in order to take advantage of lower labour costs, they displayed a preference for employing the so-called ‘nimble fingers’ of the unorganized pool of young, unmarried (or, more accurately, pre-married) female workers (Elson and Pearson 1981). Furthermore, in the West, real wages have been stagnant for close to three decades and the only way that household incomes have been able to increase is by women increasingly entering the labour force. Women now have significantly higher labour market participation rates than in the pre-1970 period and there has been what some commentators have referred to as the ‘feminization’ of the global labour force (Standing 1989). No longer excluded from the capitalist labour market, women are now very much part of it. It is only in the former Soviet bloc, where the destruction and restructuring of industry in those countries’ transition to capitalism has been occurring, that women’s presence in the labour force is being significantly reduced.

As this transformation has occurred, and as women have increasingly entered the paid labour market, capitalism is faced with a problem in how to ‘care’ for its societies’ members. Leading feminist scholar Nancy Folbre (2001) has argued that in the past caring was performed in capitalist (and other) economies by women who were assigned the ‘duty’ of caring by patriarchal rules and norms which defined what was ‘women’s work’. However, as contemporary capitalism has drawn more and more women into the labour force, capitalism now confronts a crisis of caring. She raises the questions ‘Is it possible for capitalist societies to be caring societies?’ and ‘Who will do the caring, and on what basis?’

Part of the answer is to be found in the emergence of a ‘global caring chain’ according to feminist sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild (2000). She argues that the market for one type of care, mothering, in the US used to be predominantly nationally based, typically on class and race lines, with black women in the South, Mexican–American women in the Southwest and Asian–American women in the West, caring for middle-class white children. Now, the pattern has become increasingly globalized with women from the Philippines or Jamaica, for example, migrating to the US to work as nannies in order to send remittances back to their families and children in their home country. The ‘caring chain’ has become global; as Hochschild notes (2000: 131), ‘one of the common forms of such a chain is: (1) an older daughter from a poor family who cares for her siblings while (2) her mother works as a nanny caring for the children of a migrating nanny who, in turn, (3) cares for the child of a family in a rich country’. In this way, care is being globalized, with middle-class kids in advanced countries receiving the care and attention of Third World nannies who have left their own children behind. Are we witnessing, Hochschild (2000: 135) asks us, a situation where ‘First world countries such as the United States [are] importing maternal love as they have imported copper, zinc, gold and other ores from Third World countries in the past’?

The emergence of global care chains points to the dynamism of the system and how it attempts to ‘solve’ the need for caring. Even here, though, left unresolved is who cares for poorer members of societies? Capitalism is unable to provide a solution to this problem, with the result that, especially in their most free-market incarnations, capitalist societies are witnessing increasing social malaise. Responses have included unenlightened attempts to recapture the past by pushing women back into the home ‘where they belong’. Only single mothers living on social security or welfare are exempt as they are increasingly told that they do not belong in the home but must stop caring for their young children and obtain work. More enlightened responses, such as extending parental and maternal paid leaves, have been adopted in some countries. However, the central question remains: how will capitalist societies organize for the care of their members? And what will the implications be for women? It is these types of questions which cause so much difficulty for the proponents of capitalism whose lens is entirely that of the market. While they view the market as a site of ‘economic freedom’, they fail to locate ‘the market’ within the wider context of human activity which includes non-market activity. This is important for women because they have been seen as being primarily responsible for much of the non-market activity, a responsibility which necessarily affects how they participate in the market sphere. It is important for us all as we all have interests in ensuring that society is caring.

The Capitalist State: To be Captured or Replaced?

The discussion of gender inequality under capitalism raises interesting questions concerning the role of the state. Is it an institution which can be ‘captured’ to advance the interests of women? For many writers the answer is clearly ‘yes’. Laws and policies such as those on non-discrimination, equal pay and maternity benefits, for example, all represent ways in which the state can be used to protect and advance the interests of women.

The same can be said of workers who can gain through industrial relations legislation, the regulation of working hours, workplace safety and conditions and unemployment benefits, for example. More generally, the institutional apparatus of the state has been seen by a wide variety of authors and political parties as a means to manage capitalism, maintaining its essential economic dynamism but modifying and ameliorating its negative social outcomes. Keynesian macroeconomic policy was discussed above as a way of controlling the instability of capitalism. The welfare state, with its array of economic supports, is aimed at overcoming the economic insecurity experienced by workers and vulnerable groups. In an important way, the welfare state weakens the link between labour market participation and standard of living with the result that labour is, at least partly, ‘de-commodified’. The taxation system can be used as a powerful instrument of income redistribution, while state provision of education can enhance social mobility and provide equality of opportunity. These policies have been central to a range of social democratic and left parties in the post-war period. Social democratic governments in Scandinavia have gone further and pursued policies which have attempted to permanently institutionalize labour’s involvement in the running of the economy and have required capitalists to act in accordance with wider social objectives, including full employment. The ways in which capital–labour relations have been mediated by the state is a major theme of the historically focused Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of this book.

For reformist critics of capitalism, capturing the state offers the possibility of managing capitalism to produce more economically and socially desirable outcomes. For radical critics, however, the state under capitalism is not a vehicle which can bring long-term social transformation. Scepticism over the claims for the state’s transformative role arises from an analysis of both its general and specific actions, actions which demonstrate the state’s role in upholding capitalism.

In some countries, this may be all too clear. For example, in strife-torn West Papua, US-owned mining company Freeport Indonesia pays the Indonesian military to provide security for its gold and copper mining operations (Powell 2003: 19). This provides a good example of how ruling elites in many developing countries use the power of the state to protect the interests of private capital. Radical sociologist James Petras (2002: 464) has made the same point with respect to Latin America when he refers to the ‘servile peon presidents of the continent serving the [interests of the US] empire’. Furthermore, critics of capitalism also point out that there is no necessary reason for capitalism to lead to representative democracy; in many parts of the world, the interests of capitalists are well served by repressive states. In China, the alliance between local governments and foreign capital is one of the main barriers to improve the working conditions of migrant workers.

But what of democratic states? Can they be effectively captured? To analyse these questions, consider the state in Western Europe. In general terms, the origins of the modern European state can be traced back to the transformations which led to the rising capitalist class ‘capturing’ the state from the landed aristocratic class and (in some cases) the monarchy. Michel Beaud (2001: 42) describes this process as follows: ‘when the bourgeoisie felt itself strong enough to dominate the world market, it abandoned mercantilist theses in favor of the virtues of free trade. When it felt strong enough to confront absolutism, it both armed itself with the new ideas of freedom and free consent (thereby gaining petty bourgeois and popular support) and allied itself with the enlightened layers of the nobility (which wanted to quiet rumblings of peasant uprisings and popular discontent).’

In the specific case of France, Beaud argues (2001: 67) that ‘the main aspirations of the bourgeoisie were attained in the revolution of 1789: the abolition of privileges, the dismantling of the corporative order of guild wardenships, the abolishment of the privileges of trading companies, and the suppression of mining company monopolies. The king was swept away in the great whirlwind of revolution.’ Within two years, however, laws were passed which labelled as ‘riots’ any meetings by workers organized to discuss their common interests. As Beaud (2001: 67) continues, ‘its victory against the nobility appearing to be assured, the bourgeoisie was already protecting itself against the working classes’.

Governments throughout the capitalist world enacted similar legislation designed to open up business to new entrants and to enhance profitability by suppressing workers’ organizations. Could a state, fashioned in this way to support the interests of capitalists against other classes, be ‘captured’ again by the long struggles for trade union recognition and for universal suffrage? If this is the case, then the explanation for the rise of democracy with capitalism is not to be found in the role played by the middle class, as capitalism’s supporters often suggest. Rather, the struggles to extend the franchise were undertaken by ordinary men and women, the workers in the system, seeking to advance their interests. The battle for the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ was a hard-fought one, based on the struggles and protests of workers’ organizations and feminist groups. But is the democratic capitalist state capable of advancing the interests of the mass of the population? Is it capable of transforming itself into something else?

This question can be addressed at the practical level. Critics point to the private wealth needed to run for election, particularly in the US, where all attempts at reforming ‘campaign finance’ seem to have very little effect and mainstream political life favours those of independent wealth and with generous corporate backers. But there is a more important theoretical level at which the question should also be addressed. At the general level, the modern state is seen as owing its primary allegiance to the survival of capitalism; there may be some scope for gains, even large gains in some historical periods, for ordinary citizens, but ultimately the state’s function is to preserve capitalism. Particularly during times of crisis, therefore, the state can be expected to act in favour of capital and against labour in restructuring social relations and the organization of society in ways which permit capitalism – and the conditions for profit-making – to survive. The state is not the impartial referee; it is the enforcer of capitalists’ interests.

Whose interests governments ultimately serve is illustrated by their responses to the Global Financial Crisis. Billions have been provided in loans for bank bailouts; the banks have been saved and the bankers continue to make their bonuses while those who were not to blame for the crisis have found themselves having their homes foreclosured.

The Capitalist State and Education: Enforcing the Rules of American Football or Those of the Treadmill?

The ambiguity of the capitalist state can be seen by examining the education system. The education system is typically regarded by reformist social democrats as well as by capitalism’s proponents as a critical vehicle for social mobility and for minimizing the importance of class structures in determining personal advancement. Radical critics view it as playing a much less liberating role and as an important part in supporting the capitalist system. Consider, for example, the arguments of US radical critics Samuel Bowles and Herb Gintis. In their book, Schooling in Capitalist America (1976), they argued that the education system must be seen within the larger context of the ‘people production process’ which ‘in the workplace and in schools … is dominated by the imperatives of profit and domination rather than human need. The unavoidable necessity of growing up and getting a job in the United States forces us all to become less than we could be: less free, less secure, in short less happy’ (1976: 53–54). The education system contributes to this restriction on freedom by harnessing schools to produce the skills required by the capitalist labour market, by reinforcing fragmentation in the workforce by streaming and other status groups within the classroom, and by reinforcing the ideology that life’s rewards are a function of individual efforts rather than class structures. As a result, they argue that the education system in the US has been relatively successful in meeting the goal of maintaining social stability but has not fared well in promoting personal development or social equity (Bowles and Gintis 1988: 235–236).

Their arguments are reinforced by the recent emphasis on education as a way of preparing everyone to ‘compete’ in the global economy. The stress on the need for education and retraining has been pushed by governments of all political persuasions, and perhaps more strongly by centre-left parties, which have seen expanding education and (re)training programmes as key components of their interventionism. This strategy is based on the assumption that the primary reason for unemployment is the mismatch between workers’ skills and the needs of the ‘new economy’ rather than an overall lack of jobs. It also presupposes that all individuals and countries can successfully pursue the same policy. But at the country level, the whole point of the strategy is to attract mobile capital by the availability of highly skilled local labour. If other countries are playing the same game then success is far from guaranteed. The proliferation of call centres and business process outsourcing in countries like India and the Philippines, for example, where highly educated labour is available at a fraction of the cost of that in advanced countries, suggests that competition between states will inevitably lead to winners and losers.

Business process outsourcing: The range of activities including call centres, computer assistance, banking services, and legal briefs which have been relocated to parts of the world, most notably India and the Philippines, where labour costs are lower.

The strategy of increasing education and skill levels for individuals and countries works only for as long as you are one step ahead of the competition (and have no concern for the well-being of those who are ‘less competitive’). The education example indicates that a more appropriate sporting analogy for global capitalism is not McMillan’s American football (McMillan 2002) but the treadmill as suggested by David Coates. He argues (2000: 254), in an analogy as applicable to individuals as it is to nation states, that ‘you cannot get off the treadmill simply by running faster. All you can do by that mechanism is temporarily pass others, until they respond by running faster too, with the long-term consequence of having the whole field increase their speed just to stand still. The victor in such a race is not the runner, but the treadmill.’

Just as individuals now need degrees to obtain jobs which were available to school leavers 20 years ago, so countries must provide ever more educated workforces to keep attracting the same amount of foreign investment; it is the employers and the multinationals who gain from this. And it is the capitalist states’ education and retraining policies for a ‘competitive’ world which are aiding them. Furthermore, it is the capitalist state’s ultimate role as the guarantor of capitalism that leads to high levels of political alienation; governments cannot respond to the genuine needs and aspirations of their populations because they are constrained by supporting an economic system which prevents these needs and aspirations being met.

For radical critics, what is required is not a managed capitalism with the capitalist state smoothing capitalism’s rough edges where possible but enforcing its logic when necessary. Rather, a radical social transformation is needed to bring about an alternative system of economic organization which empowers individuals and societies – an alternative based on individual liberty, collective solidarity and substantive democracy; an alternative to the subjugation of individuals and societies to the rapacious demands of capitalism. This is a quite different normative assessment of capitalism, as an abstract system, to that presented in Chapter 2.

In Chapters 4, 5 and 6, I will turn my focus to examining capitalism historically.

4

Empire and crises 1870–1945

Capitalism Unfolds

By the mid-eighteenth century, the economic and political organization of the world had been steadily and brutally transformed during the previous three centuries. Trade and mercantile activities had established a market interlinking parts of the world. The search for the sea passage to the Orient, facilitated by the changes in ship-building design and the invention of the compass, resulted in the ‘age of discovery’ as adventurers from Europe – Vasco da Gama, John Cabot, James Cook and Christopher Columbus among others – ‘discovered’ the Americas and the Pacific, plundering wealth as they went, destroying indigenous populations, and boosting the European nobility’s material wealth in the process. Robbins (2002: 73) reports that ‘in all, it is estimated that 95–98 per cent of the indigenous population of the Americas died as a consequence of European contact’ through military combat, slavery and, most importantly, desease. The great trading companies, such as the British (and the Dutch) East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, were granted state monopolies in return for planting the flag in foreign lands. Africa provided the slaves for the new European colonies in the Americas.

British East India Company: Granted a royal monopoly in 1600, the company went on to control and administer much of India. The India Act of 1858 transferred its powers to the British Crown.

It was against this historical backdrop that the process of capitalist industrialization began in Britain before spreading to continental Europe and North America. In Britain, an urban proletariat had been created by the enclosure movement – the removal of peasants from the land – and the factory system had emerged as a result of combining the productive power of labour with new inventions from the spinning jenny to steam power. Feudal structures broke down and the capitalist class was instrumental in shaping the state and state policy in its interests from extending the franchise, to regulations on commerce and the repression of workers’ attempts to organize.

In 1848, Europe was gripped by revolution as workers fought back, but capitalism survived and expanded further. By 1870, Britain stood pre-eminent, producing one-third of the world’s manufactured goods and accounting for one-quarter of world trade. Over the next 40 years both of these figures were to be roughly halved as other countries, in Europe but also the US, gained in relative economic strength (Kennedy 1983a: 92). The dynamics of this changing hierarchy were not, however, to be smooth politically or economically.

The Curse of Capitalism: Late Nineteenth-Century Crises

From 1873 until 1890, European countries experienced a prolonged depression. This led to social unrest and was accompanied by various financial crises across the capitalist world involving stock market crashes and bank failures. Michel Beaud (2001: 136–137) provides the following examples: the 1873 Vienna stock exchange crash which was followed by bank failures in Austria and Germany; the 1882 stock exchange crash in Lyons followed by bank failures in France; the ‘railroad panic’ in the US in 1884 and the associated bank failures, bankruptcies and wage reductions; the bankruptcy in 1889 of the Metals Company in France (and the company responsible for building the Panama Canal) and an ensuing stock exchange panic; the suspension of payments in 1890 by Baring Bros bank in England and the Bank of England’s subsequent intervention to limit the banking panic; and the 1893 collapse in the stock prices for railroads in the US and the failure of 491 banks.

Capitalism’s expansion during the mid- to late-nineteenth century was accompanied by persistent cycles and crises which spread internationally among the rising capitalist powers. The response to this period of rapid technological change but also instability, illustrated by the instability of financial markets, was for industries to form cartels to protect themselves from market competition. These cartels were based on an alliance between industrial and financial interests. It was with this rise of ‘finance capital’ that states extended their imperial ambitions as a way of supporting their own cartels’ business interests.

Overseas Expansion as the Response to Crises

All of the leading political economists of the period, from establishment figures such as John Stuart Mill to radical critics such as Vladimir Lenin, viewed capitalist economies as being subject to a falling rate of profit. It was seen as ‘natural’, therefore, for capitalist economies to seek outlets overseas for capital investment where more profitable opportunities could be found. The result during this period was a rapid rise in the export of capital in search of new markets and new resources. The extension of Empire was viewed as an outcome of the workings of capitalism, even if it was enthusiastically proposed by some but criticized by others. As the historian D.K. Fieldhouse (1981: 2–3) points out, for some writers, such as Lenin, imperialism was seen as an inevitable outcome of the phase of monopoly capitalism, while for others Empire was seen as more of a choice, rather than an imperative, in which at least some countries could be described as ‘reluctant imperialists’. Whether it was through reluctant choice or inevitability, imperialism was one of the historical outcomes of capitalism in this period.

China had been opened up by Britain’s gunboat diplomacy in the 1840s, and in the 1850s the US had forced Japan to open its ports to Western commerce; India had already been brought under British jurisdiction in the late eighteenth century. In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, the outlet for European powers searching for profitable markets and resources was primarily focused on Africa and Southeast Asia. Here, imperialism took the specific form of ‘colonialism’ (Box 4.1).

The phenomenon of ‘colonialism’ differentiates the period 1870–1945 from other episodes of Empire which had relied on the settling of lands by European inhabitants who sought to make ‘their’ new countries resemble the old ones as much as possible, or on mechanisms for informal rule which relied on existing political structures, and the elites within them, to deliver the required benefits to the imperial powers (Fieldhouse 1981).

During this period the major imperial powers, principally Britain and France although also joined by Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the US and Japan, drew and redrew the maps of the world, literally through treaties and violently through war and conquest both with each other and with native populations. European and US national capitalisms, rooted in states and supported by them, searched the globe for markets and resources and incorporated larger and larger geographical areas in support of the insatiable pursuit of profit. As they did so, capitalism(s) emerged in the colonized countries as production was increasingly centred on international firms, and those serving them, on the basis of private property, the pursuit of profit and the employment of wage labour.

The expansion of the orbit of capitalism during this period, the conquest of new lands, the increase in capital flows and the rising economic interdependencies have led some writers to view this period of capitalist imperialism as a late nineteenth-century version of ‘globalization’.

As the historian Niall Ferguson (2001: 6) notes, the result of this ‘globalization by force’ was that ‘a small number of European countries governed an inordinately large amount of the rest of the world. On the eve of the First

Imperialism refers to a process in which the interests of dominant countries are imposed on those of dominated countries. The polities and economies of the dominated countries are systematically restructured to serve the interests of the dominating countries. There are a broad range of mechanisms which can be used to foster imperialism and support empires. These mechanisms may be military threats and actions or the imposition of particular international ‘rules of the game’ which benefit some countries. For example, it is common for left critics to refer to ‘free trade imperialism’ – meaning the use of trade rules to benefit dominant countries. In all cases, imperialism refers to the use of state power to protect and promote the economic interests of its firms.

The motives for imperialism are often derived from the nature of capitalism. That is, imperialism results from the pursuit of profit on a worldwide scale. This was most famously argued in Lenin’s classic, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1916. Others have viewed militarism, nationalism and racism, not capitalism per se, as the motives for imperialism.

Colonialism is one specific form of imperialism which describes the situation in which the imperial power directly administers the dominated country. As Fieldhouse (1981: 311) explains, colonialism ‘attempts to describe what proved to be a brief period and transient condition that was experienced by most parts of Africa, and much of South-east Asia and the Pacific, during the period 1870–1945 … Under colonialism a dependent society was totally controlled by the imperial power. Its government was in the hands of officials of the imperial state, its social, legal, educational, cultural and even religious life was moulded by alien hands and its economy was structured to meet the needs of European capitalism … Thus colonialism was merely one stage in the evolution of international relationships in the modern world whose central theme was the subordination of all countries to the needs of advanced capitalism.’

World War, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany – which between them accounted for around 0.9 per cent of the world’s land surface and 7.5 per cent of its population – ruled in the region of 33 per cent of the rest of the world’s area and 27 per cent of its people. All of Australasia, nearly all of Polynesia, 90 per cent of Africa and 56 per cent of Asia were under some form of European rule. And although only 27 per cent of the American continent – mainly Canada – found itself in the same condition, nearly all the rest had been ruled from Europe at one time or another in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.’

As capitalism spread throughout the world during this period on the basis of colonial conquest, it did so, particularly in the British case, under the ideologies of ‘free trade’ and ‘civilization’. While private property was established and markets were opened up by colonial invasions, the prevailing economic orthodoxy was one of ‘free trade’. In the 1840s, Britain officially adopted free trade as its policy, arguing that all countries should open their borders to trade with the world’s first and, at the time, leading industrial nation. This ideology was followed by the Dutch and Belgian imperialists, but various degrees of protectionism remained in the other colonial trading systems (Fieldhouse 1981: 56–57).

The benefits of free trade for all countries had been theorized by English political economist David Ricardo in the 1820s, but while Britain subsequently adopted this policy as its official policy, it was also accompanied by the belief that Empire was a good vehicle for economic advancement. And while the colonies could trade with whom they wished on a free trade basis, they were still colonies, ruled by a foreign power and open to its investors. ‘Free trade’ meant opening up other countries’ markets. To this economic agenda was added the arrogance of Western societies’ belief in their own cultural and racial superiority so that Empire, rather than simply being viewed as a response to domestic economic problems, was often portrayed as a glorious ‘civilizing’ mission. The ideals of capitalist democracy and the realities of capitalist imperialism sat uneasily together. The French Empire, for example, as Fieldhouse (1981: 36) has argued, was premised on direct rule and assimilation to French culture. But ‘a republic which believed in equality and representative government’ (Fieldhouse 1981: 37) allowed its colonial inhabitants only limited political freedoms.

Furthermore, while Britain preached free trade (and practised colonialism), other countries such as Germany and the US, pursuing industrialization after Britain, adopted policies which were more protectionist in nature. They relied on a variety of tariffs and controls to protect their own fledgling industries from competition from their more mature British competitors. According to the nineteenth-century German economist Friedrich List (1966), countries which were ‘late industrializers’ required more extensive state involvement and direction in order to counteract the advantages enjoyed by the early industrializer. This became, as we will see in Chapter 5, an article of faith for the East and Southeast Asian ‘late, late industrializers’ after 1945.

The economic rivalries between the main capitalist powers produced political rivalries as states built empires. As the historian Eric Hobsbawm has written (1994: 29), ‘In the Age of Empire, politics and economics had fused. International political rivalry was modelled on economic growth and competition, but the characteristic feature of this was precisely that it had no limit. The ‘natural frontiers’ of Standard Oil, the Deutsche Bank or the De Beers Diamond Company were at the end of the universe, or rather at the limits of their capacity to expand.’ International political rivalries led to war – the Great War of 1914–1918 (Box 4.2).

While some empires collapsed as a result of the First World War, others did not. By 1921, the British Empire was larger than ever. As one historian has commented, ‘in this system there lived some 450 million people, over one quarter of the human race. No contemporary empire, no previous empire, no subsequent empire could compare with this.’ (Kennedy 1983b: 199). In the next quarter-century, however, the capitalist world was to change again and experience another world war.

The relationship between capitalism and war has long been a point of fierce debate between capitalism’s supporters and radical critics. For the critics, capitalism’s pursuit of profit leads firms to seek out profits everywhere. Supported by their states, this leads to rivalries between capitalist states. Containing these rivalries in peaceful ways is liable to periodic breakdown when rivalries are high, when particular markets or resources of high economic or strategic importance are at stake or when local interests threaten imperial control. In any of these situations, capitalist countries, especially imperial powers, may resort to war as a way of defending their interests. The US-led war in Iraq – a ‘war for oil’ in the view of critics – is but the latest example.

Capitalism’s supporters reject this argument and argue that capitalist states, especially democratic ones, have a predisposition to be peaceful. Aggressive territorial expansionism is more typically due to nationalism and not the result of capitalism. In fact, capitalism, by increasing trade and economic interdependence between countries, is more likely to encourage the non-violent settling of disputes. Furthermore, capitalist democracies have historically not fought each other; wars have been between capitalist democracies and totalitarian regimes (capitalist and socialist).

The end of the First World War brought prosperity to some countries, particularly the US, where the rich celebrated the ‘roaring twenties’ in style. By 1929, national income in the US was over 40 per cent higher than it had been in 1919 and the US now accounted for nearly half of the world’s industrial output (Parker 2002: 2). The technological breakthrough of the internal combustion engine introduced a new consumer good – the automobile – which was to transform production methods, consumption patterns and the urban and rural landscapes of most countries for the rest of the century. Electricity generation increased and capitalism was characterized by what economist Joseph Schumpeter called waves of ‘creative destruction’ – with the creativity of new technologies and products being accompanied by the destruction of other industries and processes. In short, capitalism was seen as a dynamic but unstable economic system.

Other countries, especially the countries of Europe, did not share in the dynamism and prosperity the US experienced during the 1920s. In Europe, the exhaustion of the First World War led to slower, halting and varied recoveries. Germany, weighed down with war reparations payments, was hard hit, with mounting unemployment after 1925. Britain also struggled. In fact, in Britain unemployment was over 10 per cent of the workforce for all of the 1920s (Clavin 2000: 75). Then came the 1930s.

The Curse of Capitalism: The Great Depression of the 1930s

The instability of the capitalist system was illustrated in all its force by the Great Depression of the 1930s. The US stock market had been rising spectacularly during the late 1920s, more than doubling its level between 1925 and 1929, as the economy boomed. However, the bubble well and truly burst with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Over the next few years, bank failures and financial panics occurred throughout the major capitalist economies, and the international payments system broke down as country after country, including Britain and the US, were forced to abandon the Gold Standard. Deflation was passed from country to country as tariffs were raised, exchange rates were competitively devalued, and governments grimly stuck to their ‘sound finance’, balanced budget policies.

Gold standard: A mechanism used for the automatic correction of balance of payments deficits and surpluses between countries. Widely used in its pure form between 1870 and 1914. In the post-1945 period most countries settled their international payments in US dollars but this was fixed to the value of gold and so the gold standard continued in a modified form. The link between the US dollar and gold was unilaterally ended by President Nixon in 1971.

The standard prescriptions – that the market would correct itself – were followed but with no reward. In the US, the excesses of the 1920s were seen as the cause of the Great Depression of the 1930s. For this reason, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised President Hoover to ‘liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate’ (Parker 2002: 9). The effect of this would be to ‘purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.’ (ibid.). As Parker dryly notes, ‘Hoover apparently followed this advice as the Depression wore on’ (Parker 2002: 9). Meanwhile, unemployment in the US went from just over 3 per cent of the workforce in 1929 to over 25 per cent in 1933. And those who were not officially unemployed but were on the farms fared just as badly. In Germany, as Clavin (2000: 117) points out, ‘Bruning became known as the “Hunger Chancellor” because he raised unemployment contributions, cut civil servants’ pay and reduced the amount of taxation transferred by the central government to the state and local level.’

A decade of economic misery followed for millions across the world as nations sought refuge in trade within their own borders (or extended borders including their colonial empires), as investment dried up in the face of excess capacity and low expectations of profit, and as international financial flows plummeted. The unemployed were told that they were responsible for their own situation for demanding wages which were too high.

The Human Cost: Riding the Rails, Searching for Work and the Crime of Vagrancy

Men were left to scour the country in search of non-existent jobs. ‘Riding the rails’ became a way of life for single men in North America, until the state, regarding this mobile army of the unemployed as too dangerous for stability, outlawed the practice. In Canada, the single unemployed were given basic rations in return for military-supervised work. Personal accounts of the Depression tell of the suffering. Louis Banks described his experience in the US: ‘I was in a chain gang in Georgia. I had to pick cotton four months, just for hoboin’ on a train. Just for vag.’ (Terkel 1970: 41). When he had served his sentence he was given 35 cents for his four months’ work. Charles Graham recalls his days during the Depression in South Shields, UK: ‘Usually we had a slice a bread in the morning. For dinner a penn’orth of each, that’s a penn’orth of fish and a penn’orth of chips; and probably a couple slices of bread at night. That was the staple diet of the average person … I was a prisoner of war for two-and-a-half years and I think I got through it pretty easy because it was similar in a sense. We weren’t entitled to school dinners. There was people in a much worse plight than we.’ (Gray 1985: 91–92). Jimmy Buckley recalls returning from his honeymoon to find his new life shattered by the sign ‘THIS MILL HAS CLOSED DOWN INDEFINITELY’. He explains: ‘It was awful going out every morning looking for work. It was fruitless. I used to go six or seven miles each morning on my bicycle and there’d be nothing. My mill never opened again. Spinning just died out.’ (Gray 1985: 154–155). Half a world away, the cotton mills of India were also closing. And, as Rothermund (1992: 79–80) points out, Indian peasant farmers were faced with ruin as agricultural prices fell by a half within a few months but their debts and rent payments remained unchanged. Land was forcibly sold and tenancies were ended.

While working-class men were searching for non-existent work, the experiences of working-class women during the Depression were mixed. For example, economic historian Patricia Clavin (2000: 113) notes that ‘in some countries new legislation was enacted to force women from the workplace. Steps taken in the Weimar Republic [of Germany] to discriminate against so-called ‘double earners’, married women whose husbands were expected to bring in a ‘family wage’, is a good example. At the same time, there are also cases where employers preferred to sack the males and keep their female workers because they were cheaper.’ The complex interactions between capitalism and patriarchy led to women experiencing the Depression in a variety of ways.

Despite the prevailing economic orthodoxy and political ideology which sought to cast the blame for the Depression at the feet of the workers and which therefore sought to cut their wages, it was a blame which many refused to accept. Strikes, including general strikes and frequently violent, were common in many capitalist countries during the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s as workers acted in solidarity to oppose employers cutting their wages and to press governments to accept some responsibility for the economic malaise in the countries which they governed.

National Responses to the Depression: Swedish Social Democracy, The ‘New Deal’ In the us and the Spread of Fascism in Europe

The ‘New Deal’ was launched by President Roosevelt in the US, and in Sweden the social democratic welfare state was launched as a political project in the 1930s. At any rate, the philosophy of government’s role in the economy was beginning to change but only slowly. Indeed, as Garside (1993: 5) observes, ‘the balance of interest group power in Britain was not fundamentally shaken by the Depression, permitting policy to be Treasury-dominated down to 1938 and beyond’. The ideas of Keynes, the major intellectual opponent of ‘the Treasury view’ that there was ‘no alternative’ to conservative economic policies, were to be more important in shaping post-1945 policy than they were in the interwar years.

New Deal: The set of policies introduced in the US in the 1930s by Franklin Roosevelt which acknowledged that an activist government was needed to combat the Great Depression and that the market would not be able to solve the problem without government intervention.

Treasury view: The position taken by the UK Treasury in the 1930s that unemployment was caused by wages being too inflexible in the downward direction and not by a lack of aggregate demand.

Elsewhere in Europe, other forms of national programmes to deal with the Depression emerged. The failure of the capitalist powers to repair the international apparatus governing their economic relations led increasingly to the adoption of national solutions. While the limited welfarism of Roosevelt was adopted in the US, Franco, Hitler and Mussolini led Spain, Germany and Italy respectively down the path to fascism. Japan followed the latter route too. In these countries trade unions were banned, labour was subordinated to the needs of large corporations and, to varying degrees, the autonomy of big business was challenged by the state. The Great Depression inevitably spread its economic and political turmoil beyond the capitalist core. As Hobsbawm (1994: 104) notes, in Latin America ‘twelve countries changed government or regime in 1930–31, ten of them by military coup’. In India, Gandhi’s nationalist movement gained strength.

None of the national programmes of the capitalist core met with sustained economic success. In Clavin’s view (2000: 168), ‘in 1937 the world economy turned down once more and, had it not been for war preparations, a new depression would have engulfed the European economy at the end of the decade’. A second Great Depression among the capitalist powers was therefore averted but only by a militarism which culminated in another ‘Great War’ which was fought at staggering human costs. Some 57 million, or 2.4 per cent of the world’s population, are estimated to have died in the Second World War (Ferguson 2001: 9).

The heaviest cost, in terms of lost lives, was borne by the Soviet Union. This new actor on the international stage signalled a dramatic reverse in the global reach of capitalism. The uninterrupted global expansion of capitalism, in evidence from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, had begun to be challenged. For the first time, as the result of the Russian revolution in 1917, a significant part of the European landmass was removed from capitalism’s orbit, a trend which was to be evident worldwide after 1945. A state socialist alternative to the ravages of capitalism appeared to be viable.

That alternatives to capitalism were sought is easy to understand in view of the history of capitalism reviewed in this chapter. ‘Actually existing capitalism’ bore little resemblance to the ‘natural and free’ system theorized by its proponents. Markets and private property were not ‘naturally’ developed in many parts of the world but were forced upon foreign lands as a result of imperial ambitions. The pursuit of profit led to territorial expansion and national rivalries in the period up to 1914. Capitalist rivalries led to an imperial war. For some critics, it was war that was a ‘natural’ outcome of capitalism. If capitalism resulted in ‘freedom’, it did so for the large private firms supporting the Empire and not for the millions of colonial subjects. And for many workers in the 1930s, their only ‘freedom’ was the freedom to get on their bikes and look for work; they were not free, however, to look by train.

The picture of capitalism as an unjust and unstable system finds much compelling support. Capitalism during this whole period was plagued by instability. Financial crises and bank failures were routine events. Economic hardship was a way of life for many, even in the capitalist heartlands of Europe and North America. Some made spectacular fortunes as the Carnegies, the Fords and the Rockefellers testify. But even the middle class did well at the expense of the misery of the unemployed. As David Rossman, a psychiatrist in the US, remembers, ‘you could get the most wonderful kind of help for a pittance. People would work for next to nothing. That’s when people were peddling apples and bread lines were forming all over the city.’ (Terkel 1970: 80). The apple peddlers were subject to continual economic insecurity amid rudimentary welfare systems and were viewed as the architects of their own demise. Messianic fascist leaders promised order out of chaos but delivered only intolerance, brutality and, finally, carnage.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the traumas of the first half of the twentieth century led the major capitalist victors, the US and the UK, to design an institutional framework for the post-1945 world aimed at ensuring that the destructive and disruptive tendencies of capitalism would be effectively banished. The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 set up the post-war capitalist world’s international order. This agreement sought to provide national governments with the tools necessary to pursue policies of full employment domestically and to create the international institutions capable of ensuring that adjustments between countries were handled effectively and fairly. There would be no repeats of the beggar-thy-neighbour policies of the 1930s and no retreats into autarchy or competing regional blocs. This was to be a well-regulated international system, underwritten by, and based upon the power of, the world’s leading capitalist power, the US. Within this framework, national policies to reduce economic insecurity could be implemented. For this reason, while trade flows were facilitated and encouraged, capital flows between countries were regulated to permit national governments some autonomy in setting and meeting their own national policy objectives.

Bretton Woods Agreement: Signed in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the agreement put in place an international financial and economic architecture designed to promote post-war growth and economic stability. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund were established as part of this.

Beggar-thy-neighbour policies: Policies which countries use, such as exchange rate devaluations, to try to keep their economies competitive at the expense of others. Often used to describe the policies adopted by countries in the 1930s.

Two international financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or World Bank), were set up. The IMF was charged with ensuring that countries experiencing short-term balance of payments problems could obtain sufficient liquidity to enable them to take necessary corrective measures without undue hardship. And the World Bank was set up to provide long-term credit for financing economic development, focused initially on the reconstruction of war-torn Europe but soon afterwards on the capitalist developing countries.

Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the history of capitalism in the pre-1945 period, the capitalist system went through a remarkable metamorphosis and the two decades following the end of the Second World War were ones of unprecedented prosperity and stability in capitalist countries. A reformed capitalism, based on Keynesianism, offered a more humane and stable capitalism in sharp contrast to its pre-1945 incarnation. How the next half-century of capitalism unfolded is the subject of the following two chapters.

5

Post-1945 capitalism: variations across countries

National Capitalisms

Acoherent set of institutions and mechanisms were set up after 1945 to regulate capitalism at the international level. This still left substantial room, however, for a number of distinct varieties of national capitalism. In part, this was because the initial design of the Bretton Woods system, with its restrictions on international capital flows, allowed considerable scope for economic policy autonomy at the national level. But the existence of national varieties of capitalism goes well beyond this scope for policy autonomy and reflects wider and more profound differences in the practice of capitalism around the world.

Variations in national capitalisms, in general, can be attributed to the fact that economies are path-dependent, that is, they have histories which shape the decisions which are made and the institutions which arise, in any particular time period. These histories include the strength of various classes, the national experiences which countries have been through and the challenges which they face. ‘Markets’ do not exist in institutional vacuums but, as sociologists such as Karl Polanyi (1944) have argued, are ‘embedded’ in social structures. How markets operate depends, therefore, on how national capitalist economies have been forged and evolved.

Furthermore, many of the actors in capitalist economies – governments, firms and associations – function in ways which do not rely on ‘the market’. Boyer and Hollingsworth (1997: 433), for example, two authors who stress the social and institutional framework within which economic activity takes place, argue that ‘some of the most competitive firms, regions, and nations are based on mechanisms of economic coordination that are totally different from pure market mechanisms’. These methods of coordination range from internal hierarchies in case of the firms, to high levels of trust and cooperation (or social capital) for regions and nations, and to market-guiding government intervention at the national level. They all point to the need to consider the wider social, political and organizational structures within which capitalist profit-making takes place.

In the post-1945 period national capitalisms also varied because of the different specific challenges which they faced. The defeated countries of Japan and Germany faced a different set of challenges than the victorious powers. The Allied occupation of Japan in the immediate post-war period led to the adoption of a new constitution. Germany’s fear of a repeat of the hyper-inflation of the early 1930s was reflected in a strong role for a conservative Bundesbank. The history of colonialism in the Third World led to nationalist movements in the post-1945 period, movements which sought independence and national control over their economies.

Bundesbank: Germany’s central bank which developed a reputation in the post-1945 period for its inflation-fighting ability.

Of course, capitalist countries also faced many similar challenges. For example, it was clear in all of the advanced core capitalist countries that new institutional arrangements would be required to ensure that the demands of a stronger labour movement could be accommodated. Capitalism would need to be reformed to address labour’s calls for greater economic security and a fairer distribution of income. In the core countries, the power of the organized working class and the extension of the franchise, while growing throughout the century, had by the end of the Second World War become sufficiently widespread that it was necessary for labour to be more fully incorporated into economic decision-making. Labour, at least in the core countries, had become a political force which could no longer be ignored or suppressed.

All capitalist countries were also left with the legacy of the devastation of the previous 50 years, a legacy which brought a determination and general acceptance of the need to find a more humane operational basis for capitalism. This was based not only on the experience of the 1930s but also on a necessity to meet the challenge posed by a rising Soviet Union offering a non-capitalist alternative. But the institutions which emerged in the face of these common challenges showed considerable variation between countries. A number of national capitalisms became evident as each country addressed the historical legacies and post-war challenges in different ways.

Most of the analyses of different varieties of national capitalism have focused on the core capitalist countries, especially on the US, UK, Germany, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. I follow this convention here and first summarize the types of capitalism, drawing primarily on these countries. These varieties of capitalism are sometimes referred to as ‘models’ of capitalism. This points to the fact that these national capitalisms can be seen as coherent sets of institutions which can be theorized at the abstract level. Following the overview of the versions or ‘models’ of capitalism found in the core capitalist countries, I will also briefly discuss some of the other varieties of capitalism which have been found outside of the capitalist core.

How Capitalisms Differ: State–Capital–Labour Relations

National capitalisms can be differentiated by the nature of the relations between the main agents in the economy, namely, the state, capital (itself sometimes divided between finance and industry) and labour. That is, national capitalisms can be differentiated by the ways in which state–capital–labour relations are organized. In some analyses, the distinctions between capitalisms are analysed in terms of variations in ‘state–market’ relations, where the market referred to here consists of the actions of businesses and, with less frequency, the actions of labour.

Consider first, state–capital (or state–business) relations. These relations vary depending on the role assigned to the state in managing the economy. One model is for the state to be responsible for the macroeconomy but to play no direct or guiding role in the decisions taken by firms as to how much they should invest or in what fields to invest. A different approach is for the government to play a much larger direct or indirect role in ensuring adequate levels of private investment and perhaps playing a role in the allocation of that investment to certain key industrial sectors, such as the microelectronics or heavy industry sectors, for example.

Secondly, how should capital–labour relations be managed? One model is for the state to provide the legal framework within which firms and trade unions must operate but, having provided this, to play little further role in determining the outcome of wage bargaining. In this approach, wage bargaining takes place in a decentralized fashion with the outcomes determined by the relative strengths of firms and unions in particular industries. A different approach is for the state, as well as providing a legal framework for the conduct of industrial relations, to take an active role in determining the level of wage settlements in the economy. This approach relies upon the government, employers and trade unions negotiating at the national level about what the economy can afford, how much will be distributed as wages and profits, and how much the government will provide in terms of welfare state provisions or the ‘social wage’. Often referred to as ‘corporatism’, this model relies on a more cooperative, less antagonistic, form of capitalism. ‘Corporatism’ is a tricky concept and, like capitalism, can be found in a number of different guises. As well as the cooperative form, outlined here, in which the state interacts with independent capital and labour organizations, it can also occur in an authoritarian form where the state dominates the other two agents. This ‘authoritarian corporatism’ has characterized a number of countries in Latin America and East Asia. Corporatism also points to a further way of distinguishing between national capitalisms – on the basis of the extent and forms of welfare states. A final ‘model’ is for the state to

Social wage: A measure of citizen’s well-being which includes their income from work and the value of public services which they receive.

actively impose forms of labour organization, and roles for trade unions, which seek to control the power of organized labour.

A further issue relating to capital–labour relations concerns how training is organized and who is responsible for it. If labour is, or is encouraged to be, mobile between firms, then any individual firm has little incentive to incur the cost of training workers. If it does so, it will pay the costs of training but the worker may subsequently be poached by other firms who are able to offer higher wages precisely because they do not incur training costs themselves. In such a situation, firms are penalized if they provide training and the level of investment in workers in the economy is likely to be low. In this case, the state may step in to provide the training that firms would like but are unlikely to provide themselves. In other economies, workers may, through various incentives and mechanisms, be encouraged to stay with firms for a long period, perhaps even a lifetime of employment. In these circumstances, it is much more obviously in the firms’ interests to provide worker training.

A third factor differentiating national capitalisms concerns the ways in which industry is financed. In this context, a distinction is typically made between stock market and bank based systems of industrial financing. In stock market based systems, firms raise their external funds through the issue of equities as well as through bank loans. Stock markets are therefore used as an intermediary between savers (individuals and institutional investors) and borrowers (the firms). The expected profitability of the firm is reflected in the stock market price and the manager of the firm is required to maximize profits in order to maximize the returns to shareholders. In this way, it is argued that stock markets discipline firm executives to act in the interests of the shareholders (rather than in their own interests); if they don’t, share prices will fall and shareholders may replace the existing executives with more competent or profit-oriented executives. If executives are not utilizing the firm’s resources efficiently, they also run the threat of being taken over by other firms who see an opportunity to reorganize production and increase profits. In theory, this is the role that stock markets play in capitalist economies.

Critics of the stock market based financial system argue that shareholders actually have very little oversight over firm executives; the latter frequently get huge salaries and bonuses despite the poor performance of their firms. Critics also argue that this system leads to ‘short-termism’ where firm executives have to focus on short-term share prices and takeover threats to the detriment of long-run strategic planning and investment. The latter, it is argued, is best realized in a bank based financial system in which banks are the main lenders to firms. Banks, the argument runs, can use their expertise to better evaluate firm investment plans and, by developing long-term relationships with firms often including a seat on the firm’s board, can provide long-term support for soundly managed firms. Opponents of this system argue that it can lead to bank–business relations becoming too close with the result that independent financial decisions are compromised, and that this model tends to disadvantage new firms entering the market.

Given these dimensions over which national capitalisms may vary, summarized in Box 5.1, it is common to find a number of different types of capitalism identified among the major capitalist countries. Typically, between two and four varieties of capitalism are identified, with the membership of each variety depending on the precise features of capitalism under investigation.

Here, I distinguish between three broad types of capitalism. It should be remembered that these types are generalizations which seek to capture the basic features of particular countries, although important differences are still likely to remain even between countries which are members of the same type. The three types are the Anglo-American (or laissez-faire or liberal) model, the northern European (or corporatist) model, and the Japanese (or developmentalist) model.

Developmentalism: An orientation by government elites favouring broad material progress and active intervention to promote this (as opposed to predatory self-enrichment).

1. In state–capital relations by the degree to which governments (or state agencies) directly intervene or guide investment decisions.

2. In state–capital–labour relations by the degree to which governments are involved in wage determination.

3. In state–labour relations by the extent and form of the welfare state (or the social wage).

4. In state–labour relations by the degree of state control over labour organizations and trade unions.

5. In state–capital–labour relations in terms of who provides training.

6. In industry–finance relations in terms of the relative importance of banks and stock markets in financing firms’ investment.

The Anglo-American Model: Decentralized Wage Bargaining and Stock Markets

The Anglo-American model, based on the experience and institutional frameworks of capitalism in the US and the UK, has the following characteristics. It is a decentralized system in which wage bargaining is conducted without the direct intervention of the state. Capital–labour relations are conceived in basically adversarial terms and strikes are a normal part of industrial bargaining. The state provides, and often changes, the legal framework within which bargaining takes place. The changes in the legal framework may be intended to strengthen the bargaining hand of one of the agents, capital or labour, at the expense of the other and, as a result, may be resisted from time to time by those disadvantaged. Labour markets are relatively ‘thick’ in the sense that workers may move relatively freely between firms. Long-term contracts are relatively uncommon, with firms more likely to adjust to changes in demand by laying off workers, and firm investment in worker training is relatively low. This model is also characterized by a relatively high reliance on stock markets as financial intermediaries. The welfare state does not enter as part of an explicit bargain over a ‘social wage’ but has a more residual form, especially in the US, where it has been designed to serve as a protection against poverty and as a safety net rather than as a more extensive vehicle aimed at promoting egalitarian outcomes. In the UK the welfare state played a more extensive role, especially in the 1945–1979 period; the US has been much closer to a low tax–low welfare state model. This Anglo-American model of capitalism gives a large coordinating role to markets and assigns a relatively small direct role to the state.

The Northern European or Corporatist Model: Consensus Decision-Making and a Large Welfare State

The northern European or corporatist model is typically attributed to countries such as Germany, Sweden and Norway and sometimes includes other countries such as Denmark and Belgium. These countries have developed a form of capitalism in which wage bargaining takes place at the national level typically between representatives of capital, labour and the state. The national bargaining framework also covers welfare state services and income distribution objectives. This is a high tax–high welfare state model. Tripartite committees, between capital, labour and the state, form an important part of the overall policy framework. Workplace industrial relations have attempted to follow a more cooperative path, and industrial democracy, including having workers’ representatives on company boards, has been given a higher profile in this model. Relations between employer and employee have been more stable, based on longer-term commitments and institutionalized through employment protection. Finance is primarily bank-based with long-term relationships established between banks and firms to whom they lend. Thus, this model is characterized by ‘patient capital’ and ‘patient labour’, to use German economist Wolfgang Streeck’s (2001) terms. The compromise between capital and labour under this form of capitalism therefore differs substantially from the arrangements which characterize the Anglo-American model of capitalism. In the European corporatist model, capital and labour appear more as partners with the state in national economic planning. In the Anglo-American model, the state takes a back seat and independent capital and labour organizations confront each other in more adversarial terms.

An aside on varieties of welfare states

The classification of countries into different ‘varieties’ changes depending on the issue being examined. I have classified countries according to state– capital–labour relations. In work focusing on the welfare state, however, Esping-Andersen (1990) proposes a division between liberal welfare states (as found in the US and UK, for example), conservative/corporativistic welfare states (such as that found in Germany) and social democratic welfare states (as found in Norway and Sweden). In my analysis I have collapsed the latter two categories into one, since I am working at a more general level than a focus on the welfare state.

It is also worth noting that forms of the welfare state, since they influence the ways in which individuals and households relate to ‘the market’, have implications for gender relations. Feminist analysis has differentiated between Esping-Andersen’s ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’ on the basis of their implications for women. Ray Broomhill and Rhonda Sharp (2003) neatly summarize the implications in the following way. The liberal welfare state promotes a ‘dual breadwinner–female carer’ gender contract in which women are expected to contribute to family income but to remain as primary care givers. In the conservative welfare state, policies have been structured to promote a ‘male breadwinner–female carer’ gender contract in which more support is given to women to remain within the household. In the social democratic welfare state, a ‘dual breadwinner–state carer’ gender contract has emerged in which policies are designed to permit a more equal sharing of work responsibilities but with substantial publicly funded caring. Varieties of welfare state, therefore, have important implications for gender relations.

Japanese (Or East Asian) Developmental Capitalism: Guiding the Market and Controlling Labour

Corporatism finds resonance with the experience of the third variety of capitalism, national developmental capitalism, which is associated with the Japanese model. Here too, bank based finance dominates, with the keiretsu model – one bank with a set of client enterprises – being the preferred model for organizing the financing of investment. Long-term relationships between banks and firms are mirrored by long-term relationships between firms – such as suppliers with their purchasers – and between firms with their employees. Indeed, until very recently, ‘lifetime employment’ was the norm for large Japanese firms. Under these circumstances, labour mobility between firms was low and loyalty to the company was high. While these characteristics of the Japanese system demonstrate a commonality with the corporatist countries of northern Europe, other parts of the Japanese institutional framework depart from the northern European experience. This is particularly the case with respect to the role of labour. In Japan, trade unions were set up in 1945 under allied occupation, and a period of brutal and bloody strikes occurred during the next 15 years, culminating in the miners’ strike of 1960. This was something of a watershed in Japanese industrial relations and after that a more consensual approach to industrial relations was implemented. In this system, unions were enterprise unions, that is, formed to represent the workers in one firm. This reduced the power of organized labour as a national force and led to a changed system of industrial relations in which company interests and worker interests were increasingly seen as overlapping.

Keiretsu: The Japanese industrial system of multiple conglomerates organized around a bank.

The company formed a ‘mini-society’ with workers increasingly identifying with ‘their’ firm. A more egalitarian structure was encouraged with differences between shop floor workers and executives minimized (at least compared to the Anglo-American model). Pay scales reflected seniority as individuals were rewarded for length of service with the firm. Union leaders frequently became members of the management. It should be noted, however, that this structure was only relevant for large companies in Japan. In the small business sector, these practices were not found and a much less ‘cooperative’ framework existed here.

While the Japanese model has some important similarities with the northern European corporatist countries in terms of the more consensual approach taken to economic management and industrial relations, there were also some distinctive characteristics. These distinctive characteristics can also be found in other areas. For example, the welfare state is much smaller in Japan than in European countries. Welfare provision is more likely to be provided and organized at the family or company level than at the state level. Women’s participation in the workforce is lower than in many other OECD countries and the gender wage-gap, that is, the difference between the average wages of men and women, is typically higher than those found elsewhere.

Gender wage gap: The difference between the average wages of men and women. Women’s average wage is usually presented as a percentage of the male average wage.

Japan is also distinctive in the extent to which government agencies influenced the investment decisions of private corporations. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) has been singled out by many authors for its key role in guiding the investment of Japanese companies into microelectronics and computers in the 1960s and 1970s. State policies towards foreign direct investment, international trade, finance and technology acquisition were all critical in building up Japan’s own industrial base, protecting it from foreign competitors and fostering its entry into global markets.

It is this state-led development strategy, characterized by state control or influence over finance, technology and trade, which has led to the identification of a ‘Japanese model of capitalist development’ followed by Japan in the decades following the end of the Second World War and then adopted by other East Asian economies such as Taiwan and South Korea from the mid-1960s. In line with the writings of Friedrich List and the earlier experience of Germany and the US, these ‘late, late industrializers’ relied on a model of capitalism which involved a greater role for the state. This interpretation of the characteristics of capitalist development in key East Asian countries provides an alternative to that of Fukuyama (1992) outlined in Chapter 2. State–capital relations were such that in the case of South Korea, for example, economist Alice Amsden (1989) has argued that the giant South Korean firms (or chaebols such as Samsung and Hyundai) were disciplined by state agencies. These firms would receive financial support from the state-controlled banking system only if they met export (or other) targets set by the government. This Japanese or East Asian developmentalist model also relied on a form of state–labour relations which was inimical to the existence of independent trade unions for a significant part of the period of capitalist industrialization. The limited role of the welfare state, greater reliance on the family, and more unequal conditions of work for women were also common throughout the East Asian countries.

Chaebol: Large, conglomerate, family-owned firms found in South Korea.

These three varieties of capitalism – Anglo-American, northern European and Japanese or East Asia developmentalist – have received considerable attention. These varieties describe capitalism in some, but not all, of the core capitalist countries. France, for example, does not fit neatly into any of these three varieties, and would constitute a fourth variety of national capitalism based on relatively high levels of state planning but with less well-developed corporatist institutions than the northern European countries.

National Varieties of Capitalism as Rivals

One question which is frequently asked is ‘Which variety of capitalism performs best?’ ‘Best’ is typically defined in terms of securing economic growth, full employment and distributional equity. This is a difficult question because describing institutional structures and measuring economic outcomes is easier to do than to establish causal relationships between them. Furthermore, the relative performance of the different types of capitalist model has also varied over time. In the 1960s, the 1970s and much of the 1980s, the growth of the Japanese, German and Scandinavian countries pointed to the superiority of these models. Faced with the turbulent decade of the 1970s when oil prices rose twice, it was argued that the corporatist countries were better able to adjust to these shocks because they had the institutional mechanisms in place which enabled societies to respond in relatively non-conflictual ways. In contrast, the UK was unable to effectively respond to the crises with its decentralized system of wage bargaining and its antagonistic industrial relations system. The US was argued to be in continual relative decline, with Japan, especially, increasingly challenging its economic predominance. Particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was common to find books and articles on the Japanese ‘challenge’, or more colourfully ‘threat’, to the US and on predictions of economic ‘battles’ and ‘wars’ between the US and Japan. During this period, too, there was much talk of a coming ‘Pacific century’ in which the centre of gravity of global capitalism would shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific or from the US to Asia. In short, the varieties of national capitalism were interpreted not simply as being interesting institutional frameworks for analysis but as rival capitalisms.

For much of the post-war period it seemed, therefore, that the corporatist or Japanese models would predominate in this struggle between rival forms of capitalism. However, in the 1990s, the relative performance of the US and UK provided a counter to this prediction. In the 1990s, the US economy enjoyed its longest post-war boom and the UK shed its label of being the ‘sick man of Europe’. In contrast, Japan entered a decade-long slump and European growth rates slowed as the centralized wage bargaining system and extensive welfare state provision were seen as detrimental to economic and social ‘flexibility’. The Anglo-American model seemed to perform better in the 1990s and became the most influential internationally until the subprime mortgage and ensuing Global Financial Crisis changed all that. The changes in the performance of national capitalisms over time are explored further in the next chapter.

Varieties of Capitalism: A Matter of Choice or History?

Can a country choose to adopt the institutional framework of a different type of capitalism or are there historical and cultural constraints which limit the degree of choice? Certainly, popular commentators such as Will Hutton (2002), in arguing for Britain to become more similar to the northern European model, and less like the US, believe that institutional frameworks are transfer able and adaptation is possible. Indeed, there have been a number of examples in the post-1945 period of countries attempting to adopt the institutional features of other models. For example, ‘Japanese-style’ industrial relations have been introduced into ‘Anglo-American’ settings, especially in the automobile industry. As another example, at the state level, Australia finds most resonance with the Anglo-American model but in the 1980s the Australian Labor Party introduced an ‘Accord’ as a way of promoting more corporatist frameworks into the predominantly Anglo-American institutional setting. This experiment was problematic in that, lacking the deeper institutional foundations of corporatist countries, it often involved wage restraint on the part of labour but with little corresponding restraint on business (other than some form of ‘price restraint’). More often than not it collapsed into an unworkable ‘incomes policy’ rather than being a genuine tool of social reform which changed the balance of power between capital, state and labour (Stilwell 2000: Chapter 11). The same could be said of the ‘Social Contract’ introduced by the British Labour Party in the 1970s.

The difficulties of transplanting the features of one variety of capitalism into another would not come as a surprise to those who point to the long historical roots of national capitalisms. They suggest a more cautious approach to the question of transferability. For example, the more interventionist, market constraining, variants of capitalism found in Germany and Japan have been argued to owe their origins to the industrialization process in these countries in the late nineteenth century. In the German case, Gerhard Lehmbruch (2001) argues that responses to the financial crises of the 1870s resulted in a sharing of state–private responsibilities which laid the basis for the subsequent development of corporatism. The importance of history is reinforced by Philip Manow (2001) who argues that the welfare state in Germany was developed in the late nineteenth century as a way of extending benefits to influential groups so as to secure their commitment to the dominant system in the absence of political democracy. The welfare state was subsequently expanded on more universalist principles in the post-1945 period.

Manow (2001) further argues that the enterprise-based welfare system developed in Japan also dates from the late nineteenth century and resulted from the same pressures to provide benefits to key constituencies in the absence of political democracy. In the Anglo-American cases, welfare states were more a response to the rising power of labour and class struggle ‘from below’ rather than from ‘top-down’ conservative reformers trying to engineer social peace and cooperation as in the German and Japanese cases (see Streeck 2001: 13). All of the core capitalist countries have therefore been faced with how to contain the social divisions and insecurities which have arisen with the expansion of the market. This containment, a ‘counter movement’ for society’s self-protection as Polanyi (1944) terms it, was sometimes instigated by the ruling elites and in other cases arose as a result of the struggles of organized labour and their political representatives. These examples, by illustrating that state–capital–labour relations have evolved over decades (and even centuries) within specific national contexts, suggest that the scope for ‘model choice’ may be constrained in important ways. The prospects for a ‘convergence’ of national capitalisms under the forces of globalization are discussed further in Chapter 7.

Varieties of Capitalism: Asia, China, Russia and Latin America

Capitalism varies between the core capitalist countries, between non-core countries, and between the core and non-core countries. The state-led developmental capitalism of some of the countries of East Asia such as South Korea can also be seen as a form of ‘authoritarian capitalism’, given the suppression of independent labour movements which has characterized the growth process in these countries. This variety of capitalism is not, however, the only way in which ‘Asian’ capitalism has been described. Another popular interpretation places the emphasis on the role of ‘networks’, particularly networks among the overseas Chinese diaspora. According to this interpretation, a unique brand of ‘Asian’ or ‘Chinese’ capitalism can be identified which relies heavily on personal relations and personal networks. ‘Markets’, as arm’s-length transactions between buyers and sellers who typically do not know each other, are less important in this model than personal contacts between participants who may be known to each other or connected through kinship or ethnicities. These personal relations build levels of trust between agents in the economy which enable them to engage in transactions even where the security of private property or transparent regulation of the market is absent. Because of the role of kinship relations in these networks, and the role of the Chinese family-run business as the unit of production, this model is also sometimes referred to as being a ‘familial capitalism’ and has been used to describe capitalism across East and Southeast Asia.

Authoritarian capitalism: A description of capitalism where it operates in countries with repressive governments which typically seek to deny labour many rights.

In China itself, the term ‘Red Capitalism’ has often been invoked. This highlights the role that Communist Party cadres have played in the running of the country’s enterprises and fostering links with foreign investors. Here, the networks between government officials and business managers are especially dense (and susceptible to corruption) and state – capital relations interwined. Governments, at national and local levels, have a developmentalist orientation similar to other East Asian capitalist states. Also in common with the ‘East Asian model’, at least in its initial phases in Japan and South Korea for example, independent labour organizations are suppressed with the state-sponsored official trade union (the All China Federation of Trade Unions) acting more as a controller of, rather than a vehicle for, labour. The enormous social divisions between rural and urban residents and between rich and poor which have accompanied China’s transition to capitalism are being addressed in a ‘top down’ manner by the ruling Party, especially since the mid-2000s when the new Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao leadership assumed power. A whole series of policies have been introduced into the countryside (such as the abolition of agricultural taxes) and in urban areas (such as the Labour Contract Law of 2008) aimed at quelling widespread rural and urban unrest. The underlying form of Chinese capitalism though, with state and capital intertwined and labour controlled, remains unchanged.

As a further variant, consider the capitalism that has emerged in Russia since the fall of communism. Here, the transition to capitalism occurred rapidly with the fall of Gorbachev in 1991. In came the IMF and Western economic advisors who proposed ‘shock therapy’ to rapidly break the psychology of central planning and dependency on the state and to promote the ‘spontaneous’ formation of markets. This, together with mass privatization, was to be the basis for capitalism. Bertram Silverman and Murray Yanowitch (2000: 128), in their study of the ‘New Russia’, have argued that ‘unlike other capitalist countries, Russia started its transition to a modern market system as a state-controlled industrial economy and not as an economy characterized by early unbridled capitalism. Rather than humanizing an already existing capitalist system by increasing the role of government, trade unions, and other voluntary associations, Russia needed to dismantle its state-controlled economy and replace it with a modern mixed economy.’ However, in the process of dismantling state control, the reforms destroyed institutional government structures and resulted in ‘the disintegration of the social order’ (Silverman and Yanowitch 2000: 130). The state apparatus was weakened to the point where it could not operate as an effective check on business – indeed it became subservient to its aims and was easily corrupted as the lines between private and public spheres became increasingly blurred. The result was therefore a transition to what has been referred to earlier as ‘gangster capitalism’ with businesses able to operate largely above the law. The result for the Russian people was growing poverty so that anywhere from 30 to 50 per cent of the population were now reported to be living below the poverty line (with women disproportionately represented), for the decade after the fall of Communism. This has subsequently fallen to around 15–20 per cent by 2010 but huge inequalities between the new rich capitalist elite (Russia has over 50 billionaires) and ordinary people still exist as do growing social problems, and plummeting male life expectancy (which fell to under 60 in the mid-2000s (Indexmundi.com)). The Russian people have also had to cope with a collapse in output worse than that experienced in Western Europe in the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Russian ‘model’ of capitalism, therefore, has blurred the lines between state and capital and largely excluded labour altogether as a political force. Russia, as a major exporter of oil and natural gas, has benefitted economically from the global commodities boom in the late 2000s but its institutional structure remains the same.

In Latin America, differentiating models of capitalism is more problematic than in the core capitalist countries. For one thing, as John Sheahan (2002: 25) notes, in Latin America ‘countries change their versions of capitalism more frequently, and more radically, than European countries do’. Furthermore, the political landscape is more complex, with military and/or authoritarian rule commonplace over the past half-century notwithstanding the more recent resurgence of democratic government. As Sheahan argues (2002: 48), ‘Latin American capitalists have not been consistent enthusiasts for democracy. Nor have North American investors in the region.’

Nevertheless, Sheahan suggests that two types of capitalism can be identified, although each has three sub-versions. The two broad versions are termed ‘liberal capitalism’ (which corresponds most closely to the Anglo-American version discussed above) and a more ‘activist’ version which stresses a greater economic role for the state in fostering development. Although there are some exceptions, the role of labour in Latin American capitalism is generally much weaker than in the core countries and is often repressed. One variant of the activist model allows for a more inclusionary political economy which typically provides greater opportunities for education than in other versions. The instability of regimes in the region has meant that many countries have, during the post-war period, experimented with several versions of capitalism, switching between liberal and activist versions and their sub-variants.

In Latin America, at least, governments have viewed alternative models of capitalism as policy choices. There remains some commonality between most of the experiments, however, in that patterns of landholding and income distribution are highly unequal and political power has remained concentrated in the hands of those closely allied to the holders of economic power, whether domestic or international. And of course, these holders of power have limited the policy choices to alternative models of capitalism. Models based on socialism have often come to an abrupt end, such as in the case of Allende’s Chile which resulted in the 1973 military coup. Other recent attempts at instituting some kind of socialist path are those by Chavez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia. Across the continent, poverty remains high, and in 2010 approximately 30 per cent of Latin America’s population was living on less than $4 a day. (World Bank 2010: 5). Poverty on this measure has fallen from an average of over 40 per cent in the 1994–2004 period as a result of increased economic growth and the adoption of pro-poor policies in some of the largest countries such as Brazil.

State–capital relations in both Russia and, for most of the postwar period, much of Latin America can be characterized, therefore, as the state being the servant of the capital (and far removed from the imagined ‘impartial umpire’ of the ‘ordered brawl’). It is not surprising to find many instances of corruption here as political leaders sought to enrich themselves in the process of ensuring that private firms were provided with a ‘favourable business environment’. In other countries outside the core – the Philippines under Marcos and Zaïre (the Congo) under Mobutu come readily to mind – the state was powerful enough to enrich its leaders at the expense of the businesses that fed it, with the result that the ‘predatory’ state drove the economy into decline.

There is much talk today about the need for ‘good governance’. Central elements in how countries are governed are the relationships between state, capital and labour. Many relationships are possible, with the result that some capitalisms are more humane and more productive than others. For example, some major gains for labour have been made in some states and in some periods, especially in the northern European corporatist countries during the period from 1945 to, say, 1990. Outside the core countries, capitalist countries are typically more repressive towards labour, more unequal in their outcomes and less democratic in their polities than their counterparts in the core. As capitalism has evolved in many parts of the world under the aegis of imperialism and colonialism, it has been less amenable to the types of progressive social policies which have been demanded and achieved in many Western capitalist societies. The ability of organized labour to play the same role in developing countries that it has played in most of the core capitalist countries is constrained by its relatively small size (with a large part of the labour force in the agricultural and informal sectors) as well as by the frequency of state repression. The relations between state, capital and labour are rooted in history and while some changes in institutional structures are always possible, and frequently desirable, the scope for such changes is nevertheless constrained by historical factors. Changes in institutional structures do occur, however, as the capitalist revolution in the countries of the former Soviet bloc demonstrate.

The varieties of capitalism are not immune to historical change either. They have been presented here in a static way, designed to highlight their differences. Of course, none of the varieties of capitalism have gone unaltered over the past half century and more. They have all been faced with pressures for change from domestic and international sources. The next chapter analyses the changes in the nature of capitalism since 1945.

6

Post-1945 capitalism: variations over time

Introduction

Capitalism is an ever-changing system. The period since 1945 is no exception. Just as state–capital–labour relations differ between countries, so they vary over time for capitalist countries taken as a whole. Broadly speaking, the period since the end of the Second World War can be divided into three main periods. From 1945 to approximately 1970, the capitalist economies experienced a period of historically rapid growth based on the Bretton Woods agreement which set out the international architecture of the post-war capitalist order and on Keynesianism domestically. This period has been described as a ‘golden age’ in which state, capital and labour combined to produce historically impressive economic results. The policies governing capitalist economies in this period were broadly consistent with those advocated by capitalism’s reformist critics outlined in Chapter 3. The 1970s can be seen as a decade of turmoil and crises as firms and states sought to find new ways of restoring profitability in the face of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods order and the failure of Keynesianism to deal effectively with the oil price shocks. The period since 1980 has witnessed the concerted attempt to find ‘free market’ solutions to this profitability crisis, solutions based on giving more power to capital. This is reflected in the ideological ascendancy of what has been called ‘market fundamentalism’ or ‘neoliberalism’: in short, the ascendancy of ideas and policies based on the view that capitalism is a system ‘natural and free’ as outlined in Chapter 2. The appeal of these policies has been called into question by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

Golden age: The period between 1945 and 73 when capitalism experienced high and widespread economic growth with living standards rising in many countries.

Neoliberalism: A set of ideas premised on the need to allow the market to play the dominant role in society and to reduce the role of government.

1945–70: The ‘Golden Age’ … Hot Economies, Warm Capital–Labour Relations, and the Cold War

At the end of the Second World War, the capitalist countries of Europe which had dominated the globe during the previous three centuries had been severely weakened. The United States now assumed unrivalled leadership of the capitalist bloc. Such was the devastation in Europe that it is estimated that the US accounted for about half of all world industrial output in 1945. The task was to reconstruct capitalist economies and societies in the face of the immediate history of the devastation of two world wars and the Great Depression and the contemporary threat of state socialism, a threat both militarily and ideologically. The historical legacy was addressed through the Bretton Woods agreement. The threat of socialism was also addressed globally – from exposing the communists in Hollywood, to the Cold War in partitioned Europe and to the support for anti-communist regimes (of varying degrees of unpleasantness) in the decolonizing ‘Third World’.

The task of reconstruction was a tall order. In the 1950s and 1960s, capitalist economies responded by posting their most successful economic results of the century. It was in this period, which economists have sometimes dubbed ‘the golden age’, that generalized living standards increased rapidly in the core capitalist countries. Economic growth was high in a large part of the capitalist developing world, although many of the benefits did not reach the poor. In the core countries, it was in this period that the availability of mass consumer goods expanded and when the spectre of mass unemployment was banished. Certainly economic growth and productivity growth in this period were high by historical standards. It is also true, as Stilwell (2000: 111) notes, ‘that this may have been a relatively “golden age” in the economy, with full employment as the norm, but it was also a period when social values were strongly shaped by the politics of the cold war, sexism, racism, and censorship’. So, without getting too carried away with nostalgia for the ‘golden age’, it is still important to understand the conditions under which capitalism – of whatever national variety – recovered from a half-century of devastation and instability to perform so well.

The institutional building block of the capitalist system at the international level was the Bretton Woods system (Box 6.1).

Keynesian ‘demand management’ policies were used to smooth the business cycle, with government spending acting as a counter-cyclical stabilizer. That is, when unemployment was increasing, the government would spend more, thereby injecting more demand into the system. If, on the other hand, the economy was running at beyond full employment and inflation was

This system is named after the conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. It was here that Harry Dexter White, representing the US, and John Maynard Keynes, representing the UK, drew up their blueprint for international post-war stability. This was premised on the belief that the response of the victorious powers to those defeated after the First World War had been punitive and had resulted in social and economic instability. This time, post-war economies and societies were to be reconstructed within an institutional context designed to promote stability. The IBRD (World Bank) was to provide long-term subsidized finance to meet long-term development objectives. A second institution, the IMF, was established to assist countries experiencing short-term balance of payments problems. The Bretton Woods system set up a series of fixed exchange rates with the US dollar as the anchor currency. The US dollar became both a national and an international currency. In order to avoid the competitive devaluations which bedevilled the capitalist economies in the 1930s, exchange rates were to be fixed to the US dollar at rates which would be changed only if it became clear that ‘economic fundamentals’ required some adjustment of these rates. To overcome short-term imbalances, the IMF would provide deficit countries with the liquidity that they required while they undertook the necessary adjustments to their economies. It was the expectation that the burden of adjustment would not fall solely on deficit countries; those running balance of payments surpluses too would be required to make adjustments as well. With external stability organized in this way, internal stability was the responsibility of national governments pursuing the policies required to provide full employment. The Bretton Woods system allowed international trade to expand while at the same time enabling national governments to exercise autonomy in their pursuit of domestic goals.

increasing, then the government would run a surplus and reduce the level of demand in the economy. In this way, Keynesianism offered policy-makers the tools with which to provide capitalist economies with the stability which they had so evidently lacked in the inter-war period. In order to enhance national economic policy autonomy, national economies were given some insulation from potentially destabilizing flows of international capital by the use of capital controls. That is, the threat posed to national policies by the flight of capital was significantly lessened by clipping the wings of capital. The stabilization of the capitalist system was premised on giving the state more responsibility and power at the expense of capital, especially of finance capital.

It was in this period too that the welfare state expanded to provide col lective insurance against the insecurities of working life under capitalism. In important ways, as indicated in Chapter 3, the welfare state resulted in the, at least partial, ‘de-commodification’ of labour. That is, rewards which individuals received from the economic system no longer depended strictly on their ability to sell their labour on the market. If jobs were not available, through no fault of the individual, then the state would act as the collective insurer and provide individuals with income until jobs were again available. As well as playing this collective insurance role, in many countries the state’s role expanded as functions such as health and education were taken out of the private sector and made widely available through state provision. (The US was a laggard in this respect and state provision of health care for uninsured Americans had to wait until the election of President Obama.) As both a means of increasing the productivity of the national economy and a means of ensuring that the benefits of economic growth were more equally shared, the state’s role in the provision of health and education expanded.

The result of these policies was that in the 1950s and 1960s capitalist countries in the core grew at historically unprecedented rates, secured levels of employment which had never previously been achieved for such a long period and had institutional mechanisms in place, such as the welfare state and progressive taxation, which ensured that income inequality generally decreased over the period. This combination of investment by capital based on an expanding mass market, full employment for labour with expanding welfare state services and restrained wage demands, and an interventionist role for the state has often been described as constituting a ‘capital–labour accord’, a ‘capital–labour compromise’, a ‘capital–labour settlement’ or a ‘post-war settlement’. This was most obviously the case in the European corporatist countries but it was also evident in the other varieties of capitalism. How long this settlement could last is a matter of conjecture; by the end of the 1960s there were already evident tensions between capital and labour.

In any event, while the internal economic stability of capitalist economies in the core achieved by this ‘settlement’ provided for a ‘golden age’, the political instability of the global face-off between capitalism and state socialism was taking its toll, not only in human lives but also in the ability of the system to continue unchanged. While living standards rose impressively in the capitalist West, they also did so in the Soviet Union during this period. Unlikely as it may seem now, the question then was not if, but when, the Soviet Union would catch up with the US as an economic power. Stalin’s forced industrialization path, purchased at high human cost, seemed to be capable of matching the West economically. The fact that the Soviet Union won the race to put the first person in space seemed to confirm this. And the state socialist system was attracting new converts.

After the nineteenth century had seen the uninterrupted (although not unchallenged or peaceful) expansion of the geographical reach of capitalism as more and more countries were integrated into empires and trading relations, the twentieth century saw an increasing diminution of its geographical scope. The Russian revolution in 1917 was followed by the establishment of the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe as a result of the 1945 Yalta conference. Mao’s victory in China in 1949 and Castro’s in Cuba a decade later saw state socialist regimes established there. Later, African countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen and Mozambique would be added to the list.

In Asia, following the stalemate in Northeast Asia in Korea in the early 1950s, the US was in no mood to let Vietnam go the same way and Southeast Asia became the new battleground. The Vietnam War, in addition to its human cost, seriously compromised the ability of the US dollar to act as both a national currency and the international anchor currency. In the end, the economic strains imposed by the war led to these dual roles being incompatible, and the US was forced to make the dollar inconvertible against gold and to depreciate its value. The Bretton Woods system was effectively over and the 1970s were to confront capitalist countries with a new set of problems – and instabilities.

Before coming to these, a few words are necessary on capitalism outside the core, in the Third World, in those developing countries which remained in the capitalist camp by popular choice or by the support given by the West (especially the US) to anti-communist dictators.

The ‘Golden Age’ in the South: Postcolonial Capitalist States Seek Modernity and Industrialization

Developing countries shared in the growth of the post-1945 international economy, although mainly on the basis of the export of primary commodities. Along with the expansion of world trade, international transfers in the form of foreign aid also increased. Politically, aid served the purpose of providing an incentive for developing countries to stay within the capitalist camp and tied their interests to those of the donors. Economically, aid was regarded as necessary to kick-start their economies so that they too could pursue the path to capitalist riches. Walter Rostow’s (1960) influential book, The Stages of Economic Growth, pointedly subtitled A Non-Communist Manifesto, provided the arguments. Countries, he argued, all went through the same stages. The key for developing countries was to break out of their ‘traditional’ stage and embark on the process of ‘modernization’, a process requiring a sufficiently high investable surplus to permit growth to take place. Also required was the replacement of ‘traditional’ with ‘modern’ institutions and ways of thinking – that is, institutions and ways of thinking favourable to market expansion and capitalist accumulation. In this, Rostow was following the well-worn path of arguing that the ‘enabling environment’ for capitalism needed to be created just as it had been in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe (and, subsequently, in 1990s Russia). Foreign aid could help supplement investment funds so that the stage of ‘take-off’ could be reached. ‘Modern’ cultures and institutions could be stimulated by allowing foreign firms to operate and thereby ‘transfer technology’, and by removing social and cultural constraints to the ‘spirit of capitalism’. The ‘market’ needed to be unleashed so that it could play the same (‘spontaneous’) role that it had done in the core countries.

Not all developing countries were convinced of the wisdom of this free-market approach which seemed to limit national aspirations by confining them to be producers of primary commodities for the industrialized West. This resembled the colonial trade, which fitted uneasily with post-colonial aspirations. Developing countries which had rejected the Soviet state socialist path to industrialization were nevertheless unimpressed by free-trade doctrines. Instead a significant number of them, especially in Latin America and East Asia, attempted to overcome their ‘dependent’ status by an industrialization strategy which involved substantial state intervention in the economy. This became associated with the ‘import substitution’ industrialization strategy, pioneered by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America, whereby countries sought to produce domestically the manufactured goods which they currently imported. To assist in this process, high tariff barriers were put in place to prevent competition from imports. Thus, in Brazil, for example, automobile manufacturing started in this way. The firms producing for this domestic developing country market were typically multinational corporations, which, deterred from selling directly by high tariffs, set up production behind the tariff walls. Developing countries, in return, sought to regulate the activities of the multinationals by stipulating, for example, how much they had to purchase from local suppliers and how much profit they could repatriate. Capitalist development was again seen as a national project in which states regulated capital in the ‘national interest’. Of course, the interests of some were better served than others in this process.

In general, the developing countries’ economies grew at sustained and high rates during the 1950s and, somewhat less impressively, during the 1960s. Many social indicators such as life expectancy and child mortality also showed dramatic improvement. However, politically, many were under the grips of nationalist authoritarian regimes, often kept in power by Western backers. Nationalism and nation-building often provided a framework for the suppression of labour and minority rights. The agenda of developing countries – to use their post-colonial political independence to increase their economic independence through industrialization – was only partly successful. This led to calls in the 1970s by developing countries for the establishment of a New International Economic Order. Central to this order were a commitment to a fairer distribution of world income to be achieved through mechanisms such as increased foreign aid, controls over multinationals to ensure that there was a transfer of technology, and the stabilization of volatile international commodity prices. Even in the ‘golden age’ of capitalism, world income inequality appeared as a constant concern and focus for discontent.

New International Economic Order (NIEO): The call made by developing countries in the 1970s for a fairer world economic system which included greater technology transfer and higher levels of foreign aid.

The 1970s: Oil Shocks the System … and Keynesian Policy Responses

The countries in the capitalist core were soon to be too concerned about the disruption to their own economic order to worry too much about the demands of developing countries. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system came just as the international economy was faced with its biggest economic shock since 1945 in the form of the tripling of the price of oil in 1973. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) used its market power to raise the price of oil and to keep the price there by agreements among its members to restrict output. This resulted in a huge increase in the flow of resources to the various Middle Eastern sheikdoms and authoritarianisms which produced the vast majority of the world’s oil at the time. The industrialized countries of the capitalist core responded to the 1973 oil price shock by attempting to restrict short-term oil consumption through mechanisms such as rationing, bans on Sunday driving, and lower speed limits. Medium-term measures were introduced, such as increasing the supply of oil from other sources (such as the North Sea), switching to the use of other power sources (nuclear, coal and natural gas) and encouraging greater fuel efficiency, especially for automobiles.

OPEC: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Formed in 1960 and now consisting of 12 members, mainly from the Middle East, OPEC acts as a cartel.

In terms of economic policy, the response by core capitalist states was generally to try to maintain levels of employment and to run balance of payments deficits rather than engage in draconian cuts in spending. However, the outcome was ‘stagflation’ – a combination of a stagnating economy and high inflation. The Keynesian demand management policies which had been so successful in fine-tuning economies in the 1950s and 1960s were premised on the assumption that economies would be faced with either inflation or unemployment. Now, the core capitalist economies were increasingly threatened with both, with the result that Keynesian-style policies were cast into serious doubt. Capital–labour tensions rose across the core capitalist countries, although the more consensual corporatist countries were better able to contain them. In the absence of the two pillars of the post-1945 ‘golden age’, namely, the Bretton Woods international order and Keynesian policies domestically, capitalist states’ responses through the 1970s became increasingly bereft of a coherent set of ideas. A general ‘muddling through’ pragmatism proved unable to restore growth and profitability.

A New International Division of Labour: The Lure of Cheap Labour in the South

Large firms began to significantly shift manufacturing production overseas. The crisis of profitability led multinational firms to expand their sphere of production in the search for lower labour costs. Developing countries had long been integrated into the international capitalist economy on the basis of supplying the raw materials for industrial country production, as we saw in Chapter 4. The mining, oil and agribusiness multinationals were the major players in these markets. Developing country markets too were opened up to the manufactured goods of core countries. In the 1960s, as noted, production by manufacturing multinationals in and for developing country markets was encouraged by the high tariff policies used by developing countries at the time.

Now, however, a new international division of labour was created in which developing countries became the source of low-cost labour for manufacturing firms selling their products primarily in core country markets. Everything from clothing to electronics shifted to developing country production sites in response to lower labour costs. The flip side of this was a process of ‘deindustrialization’ in the core countries as many ‘traditional’ industries disappeared from their geographical and economic landscapes.

New international division of labour: Describes the shift of manufacturing production to low cost developing countries in the 1970s and afterwards.

The 1980s and 1990s: The Rise of Neoliberalism … Capital Strikes Back

Over the course of these two decades there would be a complete reformulation of the ways of governing capitalist economies. The elections of Reagan and Thatcher, following the morass of economic policy in the 1970s and aggravated by a further oil price increase in 1979, ushered in an era of unprecedented ideological assault on the central tenets of post-1945 economic management and social policy at both the domestic and international levels. The ‘post-1945 settlement’ which characterized the ‘golden age’ involved a greater role for the state in the economy and an acceptance of its responsibility for full employment and social equity. This was the case in the Anglo-American version of capitalism and even more obviously the case in the northern European corporatist countries. The market fundamentalist or neoliberal revolution of the 1980s, spearheaded in the Anglo-American world, sought to tear up the settlement. The state was reconceptualized as less interventionist and less responsible for economic outcomes. Labour was weakened both by reducing the power of trade unions and by eliminating the ‘generosity’ of the welfare state. Capital was freed from its regulatory constraints. The ‘Keynesian moment’ had lasted for more than two decades but it was now decisively over. In terms of the discussion in Chapter 3, the capitalist state acted as it needed to do in order to create the conditions intended to restore profitability and the continued viability of the capitalist system.

The basic tenets of ‘neoliberal’ ideology and policies (Box 6.2) will be familiar to most, especially those who have lived in the UK or the US since the 1980s, although their influence is clearly evident elsewhere. What may

Neoliberalism describes the view that markets are the best way of organizing production and that state intervention is to be generally minimized. For this reason, neoliberalism is sometimes also referred to as ‘market fundamentalism’. It is based on the premise that capitalism works best when capitalists are able to operate with only limited restrictions placed upon them. This is exactly what was argued by capitalism’s supporters as surveyed in Chapter 2. Adam Smith was an economic liberal; the return to ascendancy of views similar to his today marks a neo liberalism. The prefix ‘neo’, meaning new, has more to do with the new context and new time within which the policies associated with neoliberalism (free trade and privatization, for example) are being introduced than anything particularly new about the views and policies which it represents. The term ‘neoliberalism’ is used widely today, especially among its critics. It can be thought of as shorthand for the arguments for capitalism as a system which is ‘natural’ and ‘free’.

be unfamiliar to younger readers is the extent to which these ideas and policies were once highly controversial and had to fight for dominance. Their ascendancy has become so widespread that it is difficult to grasp now that there was a time when they were not.

Attack inflation. Don’t worry about unemployment …

One of the major changes which occurred in this period was the repudiation of the state’s responsibility to provide full employment. In the UK this responsibility was enshrined in the post-war Beveridge Report but by the 1980s its vision of the state’s responsibility was under sustained assault. Part of the assault was waged by the rehabilitation of ‘monetarism’, and in particular the theories of Milton Friedman, as a theory of economic management in the UK under Thatcher and, a little later, by ‘supply side economics’ in the US under Reagan. While there are some important differences between the two at the level of theory, the policy implications were broadly overlapping in terms of their common desires to reduce the size of the state sector in the economy, allow capital to operate more freely, and reduce other impediments to market ‘flexibility’. Since monetarism is now largely discredited as a theory of economic management and is not the official policy of any of the core capitalist states, it is difficult to imagine now the credence given to its high priests in the 1980s. Under their influence, the key concern of the government became inflation, with full employment being downgraded and then disappearing as an explicit state responsibility. This shift in economic policy focus was gradually accepted in just about all of the core capitalist countries.

Beveridge Report: Report prepared for the UK government in 1942 by William Beveridge. It argued for an expansion of the role of the state in the provision of a wide range of social goods, including responsibility for full employment, and formed the basis for the post-1945 expansion of the welfare state.

Monetarism: The proposition that inflation could be controlled by controlling the money supply. Associated with Milton Friedman and extended to the proposition that the government’s main economic responsibility was inflation control (and not the level of unemployment).

Supply-side economics: The proposition that economic growth output can be stimulated by cutting taxes, and thereby increasing work incentives, especially for the rich.

… or the unemployed …

Unemployment came to be – or rather reverted to being – regarded as more of a personal failing than a failure of the capitalist system. Individuals were either not skilled enough, had the wrong skills, or were insufficiently enterprising in their search for work. As the monetarist experiment caused a recession which sent interest rates and unemployment sharply upwards, and greatly increased the numbers of long-term unemployed (i.e. those unemployed for more than a year), the ideological battle turned to portraying these consequences not as policy failures but as individual failings and as an unfortunate but necessary part of the process of ‘short-term pain for long-term gain’. In short, many of the arguments used in the 1930s returned.

With unemployment viewed in this way, the agenda was opened for a redefining of the welfare state. Its success in ‘de-commodifying labour’, that is, in removing from labour the absolute necessity of market participation, was seen as problematic and as being too beneficial for individuals. There has been a general move towards the resurrection of Victorian distinctions of the ‘deserving and undeserving poor’ with the object of policy being to reduce the generosity of the system to the (ever-expanding) latter category. Conditions of eligibility for welfare state payments have been continually tightened and the value and length of unemployment benefits reduced. In general, to use Thatcher’s words, the welfare state was re-theorized as the ‘nanny state’, clearly not one appropriate for ‘free’ individuals.

The view of the welfare state as an agency for collective insurance against the vagaries of capitalist instability and as an agent for social mobility was repudiated. In its place the welfare state was increasingly portrayed as a stifler of individual initiative, a form of unwelcome ‘dependency’ on the state, a disincentive to greater geographical mobility, and a site of bureaucracy and economic inefficiency which needed to operate on market lines. In short, the welfare state was the enemy of the ‘enterprise culture’ which the neoliberal revolution sought to promote to solve capitalism’s problems.

This, of course, also had implications for gender relations. As explained in Chapter 5, the Anglo-American version of the welfare state envisaged a ‘dual breadwinner, female carer’ gender contract. With the rise of family breakdowns and the increase in single-parent (predominantly female-headed) households, this contract was obviously in need of revision. In its meanest form, this has led to the emergence of a ‘single breadwinner, single carer’ model in which single mothers are required to work in order to be eligible to continue to receive other forms of welfare payments but are still responsible for the care of their children. The child’s age at which the requirement for single mothers to work starts has been progressively reduced. While this policy of requiring single mothers to leave their children and to work (often for minimum wages), a policy common throughout much of North America, can only be described as mean and counterproductive, its widespread implementation shows the power of the ideological message that single mothers need to be ‘rescued from welfare dependency’.

… make those employed more ‘flexible’ …

The refashioning of the welfare state was also justified by the need to encourage labour market ‘flexibility’. The need for such flexibility arose in part, it was argued, because of the demands of the technological revolution under way and was usually associated with the information, computer and telecommunications industries. This revolution has transformed the ways in which industries operate, with the ability to send information around the globe at minimal cost being but one example. In this new information age, workers need to be capable of performing multiple tasks, and firms need to be able to rely on permanent workers but also to be able to contract out employment where necessary. The shift towards ‘post-Fordist’ production methods required flexible labour markets. To the extent that welfare states reduced flexibility, then they too needed to be reformed.

The whole thrust of labour market ‘deregulation’ was to make labour markets more responsive to changing industry needs. What was at stake here, though, was not simply an issue of responsiveness but the reshaping of the power relations between capital and labour in the workplace. ‘Deregulation’ usually involved removing some forms of protection for workers and giving employers more power to change the timing and conditions of work. Labour market deregulation placed additional strains on women performing the dual functions of breadwinner and carer, whether in one- or two-parent households. Trade unions were directly targeted for reduced power. This came about through changing the legislation which governed their activities, from election and strike procedures to the closed shop and secondary picketing in the UK, to the support for union-free states in the US. The defeat of the year-long miners’ strike in the UK in the early 1980s also marked a turning point in the power of organized labour, a group that Thatcher had termed ‘the enemy within’.

… and remove restrictions on capital

At the same time as labour was being restricted in these ways, capital was being freed of many of the regulatory constraints of the state. This was most obviously the case for finance capital. In the post-1945 period, capital controls were considered a normal part of the economic armoury of states wishing to pursue national objectives such as full employment. Financial markets were subject to the control of nation states. In the neoliberal agenda, financial markets were seen as important mechanisms for ensuring that investment funds were allocated to the most profitable projects; state regulations which hampered the flow of financial resources were therefore sources of inefficiency. States embarked on a policy of financial market liberalization (witness London’s and Tokyo’s ‘Big Bangs’) which enabled finance capital (in the form of equity funds, for example) to search the globe for the highest returns. The same opportunities were offered to multinational companies as I will discuss shortly.

Another way in which the opportunities for capital were increased was through a systematic policy of opening up new markets to private businesses. This was not simply a question of geographical scope but also of removing activities from the public sphere back into the private sphere. This policy – now widely known as privatization – sought to restore to private business key areas of economic activity, from telecommunications to transport to energy. These privatizations were carried out throughout many parts of the capitalist core, although again most enthusiastically in the Anglo-American part. The sale of public (or nationalized) industries was relatively easily and quickly accomplished. More recent attempts to extend the example into education and, especially, healthcare have met with more protracted resistance from citizens unwilling to put back into the market sphere that which has been operated according to a different set of principles and priorities over the past half-century. Continuing debates over ‘public–private partnerships’ in many countries indicate that this issue is far from settled.

To further support the restoration of capital’s dominance in the economy, neoliberalism’s supporters also argued for supply-side economics: in order to flourish, the ‘culture of enterprise’ needed the state not only to remove direct regulations on its activities but also to stop penalizing, through taxation, its successes. Rates of taxation on high income earners and ‘risk-taking’ investors were greatly reduced. In the US the tax reductions given to the rich reached obscene proportions during the 1980s and 1990s, with each new President seemingly intent on outdoing his predecessor in extending tax ‘relief’ to the rich. The result of labour market deregulation on the one hand, which removed from low-paid workers some basic protections, and tax cuts for the rich on the other, resulted in a reversal of inequality trends. After two decades of falling income inequality across the capitalist core, income inequality since 1980 has increased again in many countries. As MIT economist Lester Thurow (1996: 21) explains in the case of the US, ‘in the decade of the 1980s, all the gains in male earnings went to the top 20 percent of the workforce and an amazing 64 percent accrued to the top 1 percent’. And while inequality increased, a large part of the workforce was faced with falling real wages (i.e. wages adjusted for what they can purchase). Again, as Thurow (1996: 24) explains, ‘from 1973 to 1994, America’s real per capita GNP rose 33 percent, yet real hourly wages fell 14 percent and real weekly wages 19 percent for nonsupervisory workers (those males and females who do not boss anyone else). By the end of 1994 real wages were back to where they had been in the late 1950s.’

While many large corporations escaped the inconvenience of paying taxation altogether, food banks became a permanent feature of advanced capitalist societies (especially in North America, despite its large agricultural surpluses) and homelessness spread from the US to all of the major cities of the capitalist core as the holes in welfare state safety nets became increasingly large. According to Thurow (1996: 29) ‘homelessness began in the United States in the late 1970s. Initially the rest of the industrial world saw ‘homelessness’ as a phenomenon peculiar to an inadequate American social safety net. But homelessness has now spread throughout the industrial world.’ The addiction to cutting taxes on the richest continued in the 2000s with capital gains and income taxes reduced further. Levels of income inequality in the US returned to those last seen in the 1930s; in the 2000s, the share of total income going to the top 10 per cent of income earners increased to between 45 and 50 per cent just as it had done in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1942–1982 period this share averaged less than 35 per cent. Between 1982 and 1997 the share rose from 35 to 45 per cent. (See Saez (2010: Figure 1).) For much of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the pressures were for ‘flat taxes’ based on the view that the rich should pay no greater proportion of their income to the state than the poor. Then, everyone will be treated ‘equally’ and enterprise will not be punished; Hayek’s view of ‘just’ taxation will have prevailed.

The rise of neoliberalism, therefore, was premised on the need to find a way out of the impasse of the stagflation and the rising tensions between capital and labour which threatened profitability across the core capitalist economies in the 1970s. The resulting move to strengthen capital, weaken labour and reduce the direct role of the state in the economy (although maintaining its critical disciplining role) indicated the nature of the neoliberal response. The faith in the market as a method of economic coordination was accompanied by an ideological assault on the main tenets of the Keynesian-inspired post-1945 settlement which underpinned the ‘golden age’. This assault included a rejection of the state as a vehicle for progressive social transformation and a stress on the need to increase the ‘liberty’ of the individual against the incursions of the state. Such liberty was to be realized through the market.

The ideological case for neoliberalism was critical to its ascendancy because its economic results were unimpressive. Of course, some did get rich, most notably those who were already rich. Fortunes were made on stock markets and in real estate. The high-tech sector temporarily boomed. Media barons rejoiced as they expanded their empires. Bank profits continued their inexorable rise. The rest were left to deal with increasing inequality, increasing economic insecurity and growth rates that remained much below their ‘golden age’ levels. The ideological case was much more successful, therefore, than its associated economic policies. In addition, there was a systematic attempt to fashion a ‘popular capitalism’ in which a ‘property-owning democracy’, i.e. one in which voters all had economic interests in the maintenance of the capitalist system, was promoted through the sale of public housing at great discount in the UK and through mass privatizations and preferential share purchases here and elsewhere. But perhaps the most important factor was the constant explicit and implicit appeal to ‘trickle down’ economics, that is, the argument that the interests of the rich and the poor are strongly inter dependent. It is the rich who employ the poor and so without the prosperity of the former, the lot of the latter would be even worse. This also represents a return to Victorian thinking with its implied stress on hierarchy and deference.

The ideological preeminence of neoliberalism and its policy revolution were, as already noted, followed most clearly in the Anglo-American cases. However, the ramifications were felt worldwide and many of the policies outlined above were followed, at least in part, in many countries. This compromised the other varieties of capitalism which were described in the last chapter. For example, as David Coates (2000: 100) argues, the removal of capital controls in Sweden in 1985 led to a large export of capital by Swedish firms. The result was a sharp reduction in ‘the willingness of Swedish capital to tolerate the costs and constraints imposed upon it hitherto by the power of Swedish labour’ (2000: 100–101). In the 1990s, the Swedish model was in crisis in no small part because of the increased power obtained by capital in the wake of ‘globalization’. Thurow (1996: 5) is more blunt in arguing that ‘while the social welfare state [i.e. the northern European corporatist model] did not collapse, it has essentially gone broke’. Blairite visions of a ‘Third Way’ accepted the ideological premises of neoliberalism and only tinkered with its details; it was, in former Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley’s apt description, no more than ‘benevolent Thatcherism’ (Hattersley 2004). For Wolfgang Streeck (2001: 38), the changes brought by neoliberalism ‘would seem to amount not just to another wave of economic liberalization, but to a perhaps permanent dismantling of collective capacity to resist liberalization’, a dismantling which has already significantly reduced the non-liberal (or interventionist) character of German and Japanese capitalism. The need for intervention in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis will be discussed shortly but, before coming to this, it is important to note that the ascendancy of neoliberal economic ideology and policy after 1980 were felt fully in developing countries as well.

Neoliberalism in the South: Open Those Doors, be ‘Market Friendly’!

The rise of neoliberalism in the core countries was matched by the changing intellectual attitudes of the World Bank and the IMF and was reflected in their shift to ‘conditionality’ lending as a response to the international debt crisis of the early 1980s. The onset of monetarism in the core countries drove interest rates up and induced a recession which slowed developing country exports. For the developing countries this meant that their debt payments went up just as their ability to earn the foreign exchange to pay them went down; the result was an international debt crisis in which many countries faced the prospect of default without more borrowing from the IMF. The latter was therefore called upon but made its lending conditional on economic reforms in the borrowing countries. These conditions, embodied in IMF stabilization policies and World Bank structural adjustment programmes (Box 6.3), were drawn from the neoliberal textbook. The package of reforms was later included in the more embracing term, the ‘Washington Consensus’ (a term coined by John Williamson in 1989) which referred to the ten components of neoliberal orthodoxy on which the Washington DC-based IMF and World Bank agreed were necessary (but not always sufficient) to restore economic health to the developing world. The Washington Consensus has been declared dead several times most recently in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Structural adjustment programmes: Policies designed by the World Bank to restore economic health to developing countries by a systematic liberalization of their economies.

Washington consensus: The set of policies implemented by the World Bank and the IMF in developing countries premised on the need to liberalize their economies.

These are programmes which developing countries must implement in return for receiving loans from the IMF and World Bank. Although they are designed to address the problems of individual countries, they are based on a common set of ‘reforms’. Applied to dozens of countries in all regions of the world outside the capitalist core, the standard reforms included reducing the size of government, opening borders to trade and foreign investment, privatization and encouraging integration into the global economy. This often means removing price subsidies on food and energy, reducing public expenditure, removing import controls and eliminating restrictions on foreign firms. When introduced, the reforms have often provoked popular riots. Critics argue that the effect of the programmes has been to increase poverty.

The use of structural adjustment programmes, introduced in the early 1980s and used widely since, represents the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies on developing countries. This neoliberalism was embraced with some enthusiasm by ruling elites in many Latin American countries and in some transition economies in the former Soviet bloc, was begrudgingly accepted in many Southeast Asian countries (although not without some resistance) and was imposed amid institutional collapse in many sub-Saharan African countries.

This change in development strategy required both finance and technology; in short, it required the rehabilitation of the multinational corporation. As part of the new ‘market friendly’ approach to development advocated by the World Bank, requirements placed upon multinationals were reduced as developing countries sought to attract increasing amounts of scarce global foreign direct investment to their shores. From the Caribbean to Mauritius to China, multinationals were courted as the harbingers of development. And just as developing countries were courting foreign direct investment, multinationals themselves were searching for lower-cost production sites. Developing countries turned to what has been variously termed ‘export-led growth’, ‘foreign direct investment-led growth’ or, because of the labour force employed in many of the manufacturing zones around the world, ‘female-led growth’. Flushed with this embrace of foreign private capital, developing countries also began liberalizing capital accounts, allowing free currency convertibility and opening ‘emerging’ bond and equity markets to foreign purchasers. The new international division of labour based on the production of labour-intensive manufactures in developing countries can be dated from the mid-1970s as a response to the profitability crisis in industrial countries. However, the largest increases in private capital flows were not to come for another decade.

By the mid-1980s the building blocks were in place for an explosion in international financial flows: deregulation of financial markets in the US and UK under the ideology of neoliberalism, a search by multinationals for cheaper production sites overseas, and market-opening by many developing countries. Added to this, in the period 1989–91 another 400 million people were brought into the ambit of global capitalism as state socialism collapsed in Russia and Eastern Europe. The result was a dramatic increase in global capital flows. And with the greater flows came greater financial turmoil.

Global Turbulence: Financial Crises in the 1990s

The 1990s witnessed a spate of financial crises throughout the world and ushered in a decade of what has been termed ‘global turbulence’. The Japanese stock market ‘bubble’ of the late 1980s burst and the stock market fell precipitously; the Nikkei Index was no higher in 2006 than it was in 1986 and Japan has been stuck in a protracted and seemingly unsolvable recession since 1990. In 1992, the European exchange rate mechanism fell apart after speculators believed that existing exchange rates could no longer be sustained. Britain and Italy were forced to leave the system. Sweden increased short-term interest rates to 500 per cent to try, in vain, to protect its currency. In 1994, Mexico became the next case. Mexico had turned to neoliberalism as the solution to its economic ills in the late 1980s and had introduced a programme of rapid trade liberalization, privatization and deregulation. International investors liked what they saw and capital flowed into the country. Entry into NAFTA on 1 January 1994 cemented these policy reforms. Quite unexpectedly, however, by the end of that year Mexico found itself embroiled in a currency crisis which saw the peso devalued by 50 per cent, GNP fall by 6 per cent and the financial system left in ruins.

NAFTA: North American Free Trade Agreement. Signed between the US, Canada and Mexico in 1994.

GNP: Gross National Product, the measure of the value a country’s annual output.

In 1997–98 it was Asia’s turn. Starting in Thailand in July 1997, currencies throughout the region came under attack by speculators who felt that devaluations were inevitable and did not want to be caught as the last person holding a devalued currency. Financial crises swept the region, with country after country – with the notable exception of Malaysia – turning to the IMF for assistance. By the time the dust had settled, the IMF had instituted the largest bailout in its history with a US$54 billion loan to South Korea. Indonesia received US$40 billion, Thailand US$17.2 billion and the Philippines US$1 billion. To many observers, including former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, the IMF conditions attached to its ‘rescue package’ made the situation in these countries even worse. The application of standard neoliberal principles – cutting government spending, opening up the economy further to foreign investment – drove the economies further into recession. Then came further crises in Russia and Brazil in 1998 and in Argentina in 2001. Suddenly, the 1990s looked like the 1870s (reviewed in Chapter 4) with their constant financial crises.

‘Crony Capitalism’ Blamed for the Asian Crises

In analysing these financial crises, many neoliberal commentators pointed not to the endemic speculation in financial markets as the cause of global turbulence but to the policies of the crisis-affected countries themselves. For example, in the Asian case, the blame was placed on the form of capitalism which prevailed in the region and which was subsequently dubbed ‘crony capitalism’. The problem was, the argument went, that governments and businesses were too close in their relationships and, as a result, businesses borrowed too much and invested too riskily on the assumption that their friends in the government would bail them out if they erred; in short, if successful the business would reap the private profit, and if unsuccessful the government would pay the public cost.

For some, therefore, the financial crisis pointed to the end of the ‘Asian developmental model’ (outlined in the last chapter) and the triumph of what then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called ‘Market Capitalism’ (or the Anglo-American model). According to Greenspan’s (1998) analysis, ‘the [Asian] crises have their roots in the endeavor of some East Asian countries to open up their economies to world competition, while still mandating a significant proportion of their output through government directives…. Partial planning of the sort practiced by some East Asian countries can look very successful for a time … But there are limits to this process as economies mature … Eventually and inevitably, however, such a regime leads to establish facilities that produce goods and services that domestic consumers and export customers apparently no longer want…. [A]s a consequence of the experience of the last half century, market capitalism has clearly become ascendant, at least for now.’

Remove the plank from your own eye, Mr Greenspan!

One suspects that Alan Greenspan’s temporal qualifier ‘at least for now’ was intended to last more than the three years between his assessment of the failings of East Asian capitalism and the collapse of US company Enron amid a scandal that rocked the foundations of ‘market capitalism’ in late 2001. The ‘crony capitalism’ of East Asian developmental capitalism appeared in a new guise in US-style market capitalism. Only here, it was not the government and businesses that were too close but businesses and their auditors. After initiating a report to unravel the tangled web of corporate practice surrounding Enron, US Senate Finance Committee Chair Charles Grassley said ‘The report reads like a conspiracy novel, with some of the nation’s finest banks, accounting firms and attorneys working together to prop up the biggest corporate farce of this century.’ (Teather 2003). The bankruptcy of WorldCom followed shortly after the Enron collapse, again amid accusations of corporate wrongdoings.

Lessons Not Learned: The Global Financial Crisis of 2008

The Anglo-American version of capitalism appeared triumphant. Capitalism, in general, had won the Cold War by the end of the 1980s. By the end of the 1990s, it appeared that its Anglo-American version had triumphed over its East Asian developmentalist rival. The embarrassments of Enron and WorldCom were viewed by those in power as temporary aberrations in an otherwise sound system. The case for neoliberal deregulation in the US and around the world was made with increased assuredness. The banks, hedge funds, insurance funds and investment banks which were the main beneficiaries of the financial deregulation were a powerful lobby group in this respect. Not all were convinced though and even some of capitalism’s free market supporters warned against the excesses of the ‘Wall Street-Treasury Complex’ (Bhagwati 2007). However, the warnings were not heeded and what has been demonstrated to be the Achilles heel of capitalism over many centuries, financial crisis, occurred again and this time its epicentre was in the US, capitalism’s heartland.

The folly of underregulating financial institutions and markets became fully apparent as the global recession, triggered by the sub-prime crisis in the US in 2008, unfolded. The failure of US regulators to adequately oversee its lending institutions has had disastrous consequences. The global integration of financial markets meant that stock markets and banks in all major countries were affected by the US crisis. Many financial institutions have gone bankrupt, including prestigious names such as Lehman Brothers, others have been taken over by governments such as mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in the US and Northern Rock in the UK; others were put on life support by the injection of vast quantities of public money. Many remain financially fragile and the consequence of weak financial institutions has now engulfed many weaker economies such as Iceland and Greece and indeed threatens the entire eurozone. Even the US is not immune and rumours of it defaulting on its debts have begun to circulate.

In testimony before Congress in 2008, Alan Greenspan who, as the former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, had the responsibility to ensure the effective regulation of the US financial system admitted that ‘those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief’ (Andrews 2008). Doubtless also in shock were the one in twenty-five American home owners who found their mortgages foreclosed (Taub 2009).

The extent of the financial crisis and the global recession which followed it, the incredulity of its underregulating architects combined with their previous triumphalism, the scale of government intervention and the rekindled interest in regulation, shifted the terrain in favour of some form of ‘post-neoliberalism.’ Capitalism had undergone many changes over the postwar period; with the global financial crisis the pendulum began to swing again away from the ascendancy of the belief in the efficacy of unfettered markets and back towards the recognition of the need for greater regulation to restrain the system’s instabilities. Governments were also embarrassed into admitting that the richest, especially the bankers and financiers, should share some of the pain even if they were timid in putting this into action. The Occupy movement has sought to embolden them.

The global spread of the financial crisis reinforced the fact that twenty-first century capitalism is global in character, its constituent parts increasingly intertwined although still capable of exhibiting variation and producing different outcomes as countries such as China and India emerged from the crisis more quickly and more strongly than those in capitalism’s core. I analyse the complex nature and dynamics of ‘global capitalism’ in the next chapter.

7

Global capitalism

All The World’s a Stage …

Capitalism’s reach is global (again). Many developing countries have become more integrated into the global economy as a result of their liberalization policies. This includes China which has dramatically ‘opened up’ its economy since 1978 and which is now the world’s largest exporter of goods and the second largest importer. India has become a major location for business process outsourcing. The former Soviet bloc is now a distant memory as Russia and other countries have undergone 20 years of capitalist reconstruction. All the world has become a capitalist stage. We have entered a new period of ‘globalization’.

‘Global issues’ have emerged everywhere. Environmental problems such as global warming have highlighted the interdependencies between countries. The language of human rights has been globalized so that countries are increasingly held to account to universal norms, with the activities of the International Court of Criminal Justice one reflection of this. Health problems have become global, with the spread of HIV/AIDS and SARs providing examples of how viruses are no respecters of national borders. So too the borders of nation states have become more porous to the flow of drugs, to money laundering and financial crime, and to terrorism. Health, justice and the environment are no longer exclusively national concerns but have become increasingly globalized issues.

The global reach of goods and services means that it is possible to travel the world staying in identical hotels, eating in identical restaurants, consuming identical soft drinks and wearing identical fashion wear, so that the illusion can be created that the traveller has never left ‘home’. The global dominance of brand names and the promotion of homogeneous wants through advertising have created a global consumer culture.

Important economic institutions, and the protests against their policies, are now increasingly global. Annual meetings of international bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank as well as of the G8 heads of state attract ‘anti-globalization’ protests. The meetings of the world’s business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Summit in Davos are countered by meetings of ‘anti-globalizers’ at the World Social Forum. Opposition to the war in Iraq was organized through ‘global marches’.

G8: The Group of Eight leading countries (US, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia) which meets regularly to discuss ways to govern the global economy. More recently co-existing with the G20 which consists of the G8 plus other important countries such as China and India.

World Economic Summit: An annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, to exchange ideas on how to best manage and promote the global capitalist economy.

World Social Forum: An annual meeting of political activists, scholars and NGOs to exchange views on how best to construct an alternative to contemporary capitalist globalization.

While all of these trends are evident, and ‘globalization’ may appear obvious, interpreting these trends is a highly contested area. For this reason, authors offer us an ‘understanding’ of, the ‘capturing’ of, and even the ‘truth’ about, the ‘enigma’ of ‘globalization’. (See Schaeffer (2002), Friedman (2000), Mittelman and Othman (2001), Legrain (2002) and Went (2002), respectively.)

To see why interpreting ‘globalization’ is controversial, the ‘naming’ problem must again be confronted. ‘Globalization’, to use the most widespread term, is simply a pseudonym for global capitalism. The questions that must be asked are how, and to what extent, does contemporary capitalism – global capitalism – represent a new phase of capitalism? Is it new at all? If so, in what ways? And what are the implications?

Four main answers can be found to these questions. They are distinguished here on the basis of their view of the relationship between ‘states’ and ‘markets’. The concept of the ‘market’ is problematic because it is a term which hides what is really important, namely, the identity of the actors in that market. ‘Markets’ do not exist independently of human action but are, of course, mechanisms through which humans interact. ‘Markets’, therefore, refer to the interactions of individuals and human organizations. Under capitalism, the markets are populated by private firms and, in the labour market, by workers.

… but only capital is free to move across it

When it comes to the debates over globalization, the labour market as a global market is, in general, of little importance. Certainly, the global sex trade, Internet brides and migrating workers are significant and, in some cases, very significant. There is also an illegal trade in ‘people smuggling’. But, in many ways, labour is less globally mobile after the first decade of the twenty-first century than it has been at many other points during the past two centuries; certainly the mass migrations of the nineteenth century have no contemporary parallel. In fact the markets for labour remain predominantly national markets. (An important exception is the European Union where the labour market is a regional one. The internal EU migration has, however, taken place within a context of the rise of anti-immigration political parties and sentiments across Europe.) If workers, particularly low-skilled workers from developing countries, seek to increase their earnings by migrating to richer countries, they are usually denounced as ‘economic migrants’ and sent packing. However, if firms, particularly large firms from core countries, seek to increase their earnings by migrating to lower-cost countries, they are usually welcomed with open arms as ‘foreign investors’. Thus, when we talk about the power of ‘the market’ vis-à-vis the state in the context of contemporary globalization, we are really talking about the power of private firms and their ability to act subject to increasingly fewer controls by national governments; this is the context for the debate over the extent, and merits, of global capitalism.

Are Nation States Still Important Actors?

The four main views are differentiated by their assessments of the relative power of states and markets in global capitalism. The first view I will call the ‘globalization weakens the nation state’ view. The nation state as an actor plays only a supporting role and is in danger of being shunted off-stage altogether. The second I call the ‘globaloney’ or ‘states are still powerful’ view: the state is still a leading actor. The third is the ‘some states are still powerful’ or the ‘new imperialism’ view, in which some actors have usurped the roles of others. The final view is the ‘regionalism is more important’ view. In order to understand the play, a closer look at the changes to the stage is needed.

I will review each of these interpretations of global capitalism. One of the constant features of capitalism, evident throughout the history surveyed in this book, is its capacity to generate opposition. This has, historically, come from organizations formed by workers. New groups have more recently been evident, as environmental, anti-poverty and indigenous groups testify, to name only some. Contemporary opposition to ‘global capitalism’ takes a multitude of forms, many of which are premised on different assessments of the key characteristics of global capitalism. In analysing the four views of global capitalism presented here, I will also explore the implications of these views for the basis of opposition to this capitalism.

I The ‘Globalization Weakens the Nation State’ View

The most well-known of the four views, it finds expression in the popular media as well as from politicians and from various think-tanks from both ends of the political spectrum. According to this view, the twenty-first century is marked by an inexorable process of globalization driven by technological change. The global economy is seen as being formed by the activities of global firms which are able to operate globally because the information and telecommunications revolution allows them to possess, process and transmit huge quantities of information at very low cost and at very high speed. As an example of this revolution, the UNDP (1999: 28) provides the following figures for the average cost of processing information: in 1960, it cost US$75 per million operations; in 1990 it cost less than one hundredth of a cent. This has led to a dramatic change in the way in which businesses operate. They have ‘gone global’. The period before 1985, say, was one in which national economies were linked together; now there are genuinely global firms, production and markets. Automobiles assembled from parts made in tens of countries and sold by corporations with annual sales larger than the national incomes of many states provide one of the more obvious examples. For example, on the basis of this type of comparison, in 2009, General Election was larger than Chile, Toyota, Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobile were larger than Malaysia, Norway and Argentina respectively.

As a general description of the contours of the ‘new’ global economy, this sketch would be acceptable to many supporters and opponents of globalization. After this, however, a sharp divergence of views would emerge about the implications and desirability of this agreed new ‘global reality’.

All hail a twenty-first century utopia?

For supporters of globalization, the new global economy offers the prospect of rising living standards for all, through increased trade and the international diffusion of technology, and of the consolidation of democratic institutions. The interpretation offered here is that an open global economy offers the poorer countries the opportunity to ‘catch up’ with the richer countries. Access to the technology embodied in the goods purchased from advanced countries, and the technology which open borders bring with the multinational corporation, are the main channels through which the appealing possibilities of ‘catch-up’ occur.

Since technology is identified as the key to the emergence of the new global economy, the spread of technology is seen as the key to successful participation in this economy. The ‘digital divide’, which separates regions and countries between those in which the new technology is fully operational and those where it is not, needs to be bridged and closed. What national governments must do, therefore, is maximize the flow of technology into their countries. The policies required to do this are preferably a package of trade and investment liberalization measures, security of property rights including intellectual property rights, low taxes on profits in order to encourage firms to operate in one particular jurisdiction rather than another, and a ready, subsidized, and low-taxed supply of highly trained workers. Any country which can offer this package would do very well in the new global economy.

The implication of this is that firms, mobile capital, have new power as the much sought-after providers of success in the global economy. International agreements, such as free-trade agreements, world trade liberalization and multinational investment agreements, are seen as providing the international architecture necessary to encourage the greatest spread of the benefits of global firms. These types of agreements tie the hands of national governments in many ways, ways which are viewed as beneficial by the supporters of globalization because they prevent interventionist politicians from interfering with the surest path to economic advancement. With ‘capital friendly’ national governments and ‘capital friendly’ international agreements, globalization is seen as delivering greater economic efficiency and higher levels of material well-being to all who participate. Capital is stronger, the state is weaker, but all benefit.

Supporters of globalization claim not only that all can prosper by participation in the global economy but that poor countries will benefit more than others. As a result, global income inequality is expected to decline. The argument here is that countries at lower levels of per capita income have the opportunity to grow faster than richer countries because they have a greater distance to go – and hence can increase productivity faster – to reach the technological frontier. This is ‘can’ – not ‘must’ – because this outcome is conditional on countries adopting the ‘appropriate’ set of ‘capital friendly’ policies. If this condition is met, then the prospects for increasing world equality are argued to be high. Consider, for example, the views of prominent Chicago economist Robert Lucas. He argues (2000: 116) that ‘ideas can be imitated and resources can and do flow to places where they earn the highest returns. Until perhaps 200 years ago, these forces sufficed to maintain a rough equality of incomes across societies (not, of course, within societies) around the world. The industrial revolution overrode these forces for equality for an amazing two centuries: That is why we call it a “revolution”. But they [the forces of equality] have reasserted themselves in the last half of the 20th century, and I think the restoration of inter-society income equality will be one of the major economic events of the century to come.’ By 2100, Lucas muses, we could all be ‘equally rich and growing’.

Per capita income: National income per head or average income in a country

By implementing the same ‘capital friendly’ set of policies, individual states are likely to become more similar, i.e. to converge in their institutions, and national differences are likely to be lessened. Since the policy package has most resemblance to the Anglo-American model of economic management, all countries will converge to this model. Furthermore, the power of global markets ensures that those countries which do not adopt this set of policies and converge to this model are brought to account. This is particularly the case with financial markets which are seen as acting as a warning siren that governments are pursuing policies which are inimical to growth; private investors lose confidence and withdraw their funds, causing a financial crisis. But the crisis is the result of misguided government policy; the markets are merely the messengers. This was the view taken by some of the Asian financial crisis; the markets raised the alarm about ‘crony capitalism’. Instead of states regulating markets, markets now discipline states.

The Global Financial Crisis has taken much of the shine off of this picture of the role played by financial markets. But even if ‘finance capital’ has now a tarnished image, the transformative powers of the global spread of digital capitalism are still hailed. Thomas Friedman’s (2005) metaphor that the world has become ‘flat’, the playing field leveled by the advent of the information and telecommunications revolution which has made production possible anywhere on the globe, has led to the rise of China and India as production sites, and has brought billions of new consumers into the global economy, remains a popular account of the ‘new’ global economy. Industrial capitalism spread wealth among the few, the core countries, whereas digital capitalism has the potential to spread wealth among the many, the rest of the world. The role of nation states in this new non-hierarchical ‘flat’ world, is to adapt to the forces and potential and the technological juggernaut that is global capitalism.

For the supporters of globalization, the global capitalist economy is not only the best route to economic prosperity but also the most powerful way to foster the spread of political freedom and democracy. See Huntley (1998) and Wolf (2005).

Or, beware the ‘privatization of everything’?

For its opponents, global capitalism presents us not with a new utopia but with a new catastrophe, economically, socially, politically, culturally and environmentally. The rise of corporate power, and the increasing inability of nation states to control their activities as corporations become ‘stateless’, present opponents with a frightening scenario for the twenty-first century. The drive for profits by global corporations opens up more and more areas of life to corporate or market control. The ‘capitalist system’ has a seemingly infinite ability to expand into all areas of life. In the last chapter the ‘re-commodification’ of health and education were given as examples of how the market is being reintroduced into critical areas in many core capitalist countries.

Everything becomes subsumed to the logic of private production for profit, according to opponents. Even forms of rebellion against capitalism, such as punk clothing or grunge music, soon become harnessed to the needs of the capitalist fashion and music industries. In the language of international trade agreements, ‘culture’ becomes ‘cultural industries’ and therefore subject to the predations of Hollywood and the media empires. Even countries attempt to ‘brand’ themselves, as Peter van Ham (2001) puts it. According to him, ‘Singapore and Ireland are no longer merely countries one finds in an atlas. They have become “brand states”, with geographical and political settings that seem trivial compared to their emotional resonance among an increasingly global audience of consumers. A brand is best described as a customer’s idea about a product; the “brand state” comprises the outside world’s ideas about a particular country’ (van Ham 2001: 2). In the harsh world of attracting foreign investment and maintaining political influence, therefore, it is necessary for states to develop a good ‘brand image’. ‘Public spaces’ from classrooms to toilets increasingly become ‘privatized spaces’ and legitimate sites for advertising (see Klein 2000). The continual assault on public space – in other words, its privatization – together with the established marketing principle that ‘sex sells’, means that until there is ‘a cleavage on every corner’ promoting all manner of goods, the relentless commodification of space will continue.

It is not only the privatization of space that is characteristic of this new phase of global capitalism. The privatization of life – its ownership by private firms – is also occurring. Vandana Shiva (2000: 118) argues that ‘with globalization, life itself has emerged as the ultimate commodity. Planet Earth is being replaced by Life Inc. in the world of free trade and deregulated commerce. Through patents and genetic engineering, new colonies are being carved out. The land, the forests, the rivers, the oceans and the atmosphere have all been colonized, eroded and polluted. Capital now has to look for new colonies to invade and exploit for its further accumulation. These new colonies are, in my view, the interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants and animals.’ As a result, global corporations – Life Sciences corporations – are patenting life itself and seeking to control everything from the genetically modified food we eat to the medicine we take to the way we look.

As technology and the modern corporation combine to dominate the world, and as the ability of states to regulate them and protect citizens declines, what outcomes can we expect? Lucas’s vision of an equally ‘growing and rich’ world is no more than a cruel dream to opponents of globalization. They argue that, for individuals everywhere, it means greater economic insecurity as firms are increasingly able to dictate the terms on which employment is offered. It means the rise of contract labour, part-time work and shift work for those in core capitalist countries. Workers lose more and more control over their lives as the demands of the corporations for whom they work become both more stringent and less resistible. It means a flaunting of basic labour rights in developing countries as a ‘race to the bottom’ occurs as countries compete with each other to offer global corporations the most obedient and low-paid workforces. Globalization has led to an ‘assault’ on China’s workers (Chan 2001).

And it means increasing inequality within and between countries. Core capitalist countries experience rising income inequality and governments become concerned with how to counter ‘social exclusion’, the alienation of a significant part of the population from the mainstream of political and economic life. Newly capitalist Russia now has one of the highest levels of income inequality of any country, with the richest one-fifth of the population receiving over 50 per cent of total national income and the poorest one-fifth receiving 5–6 per cent (see IndexMundi). China is not far behind. On a global scale the richest 20 per cent of the world’s population receive 70–80 per cent of global income (depending on which measure is used) while the world’s poorest 20 per cent receive just 1–2 per cent of global income (Ortiz and Cummins 2011: vii). Global inequality has increased over time and although there is some evidence that this trend has been slightly reversed in the 2000s it is still estimated that, at current rates of change, it would take 800 years for the poorest billion of the world’s population to receive 10 per cent of world income (Ortiz and Cummins 2011: vii). This income inequality is matched by new patterns of environmental inequality. Globalization has led, according to Shiva (2000), to an ‘environmental apartheid’, with resources going from the developing countries to the rich core countries but with polluting industries making the trek in the opposite direction.

Opponents point to the economic insecurity caused by global financial markets as another prominent feature of this new stage of capitalism. The financial crises surveyed in the last chapter have wreaked havoc in many countries, both core and developing, over the past two decades, bringing down governments, businesses and individuals in their wake. Markets are not seen as enhancing democracy but as destroying the ability of national governments to make independent policy choices. Even before the latest global financial crisis, global financial markets were being described as a ‘wrecking ball’ for many societies; and this is even according to one of the chief wreckers, international speculator George Soros (1998), who argued that capitalism itself would be jeopardized unless a solution was found to the current situation in which ‘global markets’ hold the upper hand over weakened states.

The resistance, and alternative, to a global capitalism interpreted in this way has focused primarily on the need to control global corporations and to regulate global markets using global institutions. Thus, policies aimed at introducing codes of conduct for corporations, for international labour standards, for international environmental standards and for taxes and regulation on international financial firms and speculators, are all premised on the need to limit the power of corporations to play states off against each other and to reclaim at the international level the regulatory role which states used to have. Global capitalism, and its promoting institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, need to be opposed by a global

World Trade Organization (WTO): Established in 1995, it serves to facilitate the free movement of goods and investment through promoting and enforcing international trade agreements.

civil society implementing new forms of global regulation through global institutions. An alternative ‘progressive globalization’ is needed, it is advocated, to replace the present runaway global capitalism.

II The ‘Globaloney’ or ‘States are Still Powerful’ View

Far too much credence has been given to ‘globalization’ according to this second interpretation. As an empirical matter, it is argued that the vast majority of production and investment – around 90 per cent – remain national in character. Firms and consumers are much more likely to trade with and purchase from fellow nationals than with foreigners. Furthermore, the share of government spending in the national incomes of the core capitalist economies shows no sign of being reduced (despite the best efforts of neoliberal governments such as those of Thatcher and Reagan to achieve this outcome). Adherents to this view also point to the fact that international markets, including financial markets, are now only just reaching the levels of integration which they attained in the late nineteenth century. What globalization there is, therefore, is hardly new. The political economist Robert Wade (1996: 60), paraphrasing Mark Twain, argued a decade a half ago that ‘reports of the death of the national economy are greatly exaggerated’. The way in which ‘global’ firms, from banks to auto companies, quickly sought national government bailouts in the wake of the global financial crisis shows that the ‘national’ is still very much alive and well.

According to this interpretation then, national economies are still the basic economic units of the global economy, economic activity remains deeply embedded in national structures, and states remain powerful economic actors. Even the conservative-minded flagship weekly The Economist (7 October 1995:15) agreed with this and described the idea of the ‘powerless state’ as a ‘myth’. This point was also eloquently made by the economist John Helliwell (1998: 118) when he argued that the global economy was really ‘a patchwork of national economies, stitched together by threads of trade and investment that are much weaker than the economic fabric of nations.’ Globalization, he thought, was ‘overrated’ (2008).1 See The Economist, ‘The myth of the powerless state’, 7 October 1995, p. 15.

If it is the case that ‘globalization’ is in fact ‘globaloney’, then why is there so much talk about it? One explanation is that it is simply an intellectual fad, a populist catchphrase that has caught the popular imagination but which is likely to become redundant when the next fad comes along. Other fads – the ‘leisure society’, the ‘peace dividend’, for example – can be given as other popular concepts which have failed to stand the test of time. But this is not the only explanation for the prevalence of ‘globalization-speak’.

A more sophisticated explanation suggests that while the case for globalization may not be terribly compelling empirically, its real purpose is to serve as an ideological weapon of the corporations and the neoliberal agenda. That is, what is occurring is not so much globalization, a technologically driven process, but global ism, an ideology. (See Fligstein (2001: 221) who defines ideology as ‘a set of ideas that reflect a point of view’.) This ideology is based on the neoliberal view that markets and firms should play the dominant role in the organization of capitalist economies and that states should play limited roles. The purpose of this ideology has been to get citizens to accept that ‘there is no alternative’ and to promote what popular commentator Linda McQuaig (1998) has called a ‘cult of impotence’. Governments could be more powerful if they wished but the ideological onslaught of neoliberalism, surveyed in the last chapter, has found in globalization a powerful and convenient argument that corporations must be allowed to have more power and that states must adjust to the imperatives of the global economy. It is for this reason, as an ideological tool to make citizens accept a restructuring of their working lives and a restructuring of the public services which they have claimed in the post-1945 period, that globalization has found such resonance amongst global elites. It serves the interests of the corporations and of the rich for everyone to believe that there is nothing that can be done to restrain the ability of corporations to have greater freedom to operate around the globe.

And while state elites, especially of the neoliberal persuasion, and corporations have been successful in persuading the doubters of the ‘inevitability’ of globalization, they have also been actively dismantling the power of the state by liberalizing markets in order to give credence to that very ‘inevitability’!

Opponents of globalization who follow this interpretation tend to focus on the continued possibilities for national governments to control the course of events and to improve the lot of their citizens. A high level of national autonomy is still possible in the twenty-first century if the state can be captured by those willing to dispel the myths of neoliberalism and globalism, to regain some of the powers of the state given away to capital, and to use them for renewed progressive national projects. A ‘progressive nationalism’ is needed.

III The ‘Some States are Still Powerful’ or ‘New Imperialism’ View

A third view of globalization is that while it has weakened some states, it has enhanced the power of others and deliberately so. It is argued that the most powerful core capitalist countries, particularly the US, have used globalization as way of expanding their global power and the profitability of their corporations. Globalization – or the global spread of capitalism – is a project being carried out by core capitalist states in support of the interests of the capitalist system as a whole and multinational corporations in particular.

As radical critic Humphrey McQueen (2001: 210) has argued, ‘one of the few certainties about globalisation is that it is most often Americanisation. Its logic does not require the United States to be borderless, only everybody else.’ This is the key point in this interpretation of globalization. It is a process which weakens only some states – the weakest. They either have forced on them, or have their neoliberal leaders willingly embrace, the market liberalization measures and privatizations which give greater reign to foreign capital. Meanwhile, the core states’ positions are enhanced by the opening of more and more areas of economic activity in other countries to their firms. Globalization is therefore characterized by advanced capitalist states, financial capital (such as banks and investment funds) and multinational corporations acting in concert to open up markets overseas. These characteristics recall late nineteenth-century capitalism, that is, a period of imperialism.

The concept of ‘imperialism’ suffers from the ‘non-naming syndrome’ even more than capitalism. Acceptable in academic treatise on the nineteenth century, its association with Lenin’s analysis has made it a term only rarely used to describe the policies of the world’s only superpower in twenty-first century global capitalism. For McQueen (2001: 197), therefore, the term ‘globalization’ is seen as a ‘public-relations gloss’. The purpose of this gloss is to present ‘monopolising capitals as the outcomes of ineluctable forces of nature, rather than of contestable social practices, [which] helps corporations to elude the hostility sparked by the word “imperialism”’ (ibid.).

To see through this gloss and understand its workings, ‘globalization’ needs to be ‘unmasked’, according to radical sociologists James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer (2001). For them, the argument that globalization is ‘inevitable’, and the result of the types of technological developments discussed in the ‘globalization weakens the nation state’ view, is fundamentally misleading. While accepting that technological change has taken place, they reject the claims that it is of such a large nature that it has of necessity revolutionized production methods. Indeed, the empirical evidence which they present points to the absence of any great technological breakthrough in productivity over the past few decades.

Globalization, for Petras and Veltmeyer, is not a technological imperative but a project of the ruling class to advance its interests. ‘Euro-American imperialism’ describes a process in which the power of the US state and of leading European states is used to support the interests of the 37,000 multinational corporations in opening up world markets through trade and investment liberalization and privatization programmes.

‘Free trade’ is again the banner under which imperial powers seek to open up the economies of others. And just as imperialism in the late nineteenth century encompassed not just the economic and political spheres but also domination by the imperial powers’ cultures and values, so too does imperialism in the twenty-first century. And, of course, the willingness of imperial powers to use military force to ensure this domination is also common to both periods. Thus, globalization appears not as an objective description of what must ‘inevitably’ happen, but as the political project of imperialism.

Viewed in this way, the response to globalization cannot be to ‘make globalization work for everyone’ – or a ‘progressive globalization’ – as some have argued, since globalization, interpreted as imperialism, is a specifically designed project to benefit the capitalist class at the expense of everyone else. In short, ‘globalization’ is aimed at, and relies upon, subjecting the mass of the world to the demands of corporations from the core capitalist countries. As such, opposition to ‘globalization’ must take the form of class resistance, both nationally and internationally, to the power of imperialist states and their corporations. What is required, therefore, is a strategy to move to a post-imperialist, socialist alternative for the twenty-first century.

While radical critics of capitalism propose a renewal of socialism to provide an alternative future, there are other forms that ‘anti-imperialism’ has taken. In some countries, such as France and Japan, there have been mild forms of opposition to some of the ‘cultural imperialism’ of the US, although this has typically not questioned the system of ‘capitalist imperialism’ which might underlie it. More strident opposition has come from some Islamic countries and movements. ‘Anti-imperialism’ is pursued by violent means by some, most spectacularly in the case of September 11. There has been a recent surge in books about the ‘clash of civilizations’, the ‘clash of fundamentalisms’, and ‘McWorld versus Jihad’ which set out the conflicts between American (or Western) power and values and Islamic resistance to it (see Huntingdon (2002), Tariq Ali (2003) and Barber (1996) respectively). However, much of this resistance is better described as anti-American and even anti-modern rather than anti-capitalist.

IV The ‘Regionalism is More Important’ View

The world is changing. But what are emerging are regional economic and political activities and structures rather than global activities and structures. The final interpretation presented here argues that regionalism is a more accurate description of the changes under way than globalization.

The view that contemporary capitalism is best described as regional rather than global rests on the strong regional biases to trade and investment flows as well as on the regional supranational political structures which have been put in place. In terms of the former, while world trade and investment have expanded rapidly over the past two decades, there remains a strong regional bias in these flows. Regional economic integration agreements, for example, have increased dramatically over the past couple of decades.

The major regional blocs are Europe, the Americas and East Asia. European trade and investment has greatly increased as a result of the creation of the European Union, while intra-Asian and intra-Americas trade are also the dominant features of flows in these regions. Approximately 60 per cent of all trade in Europe is with other European countries, while intra-East Asian trade and intra-Americas trade are both approximately 30 per cent of total trade. Furthermore, while the Americas form a dollar zone, the euro is now Europe’s currency and regional monetary cooperation has begun in East Asia. To this evidence of economic integration must be added the political dimensions most evident in Europe with the European Union and the European Parliament. There are no comparable bodies in other regions. The North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 between the US, Canada and Mexico and the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas do point to the existence of a regional project, but its supranational political structure is currently very limited. In Asia, the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which was formed in 1967, created a free-trade area in 1992 and have now entered an agreement with China. The ASEAN countries have also joined with China, Japan and South Korea in putting in place mechanisms to assist each other in the event of another financial crisis similar to that which shook the region in 1997.

ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Originally formed in 1967 with six member states it now has ten.

Interpreting contemporary capitalism as regional in character has led to questions about the nature of this regionalism. One question has been to examine the relationship between regionalism and globalization. Are they competing or complementary processes? This has typically been analysed in economic terms with the question being whether regional blocs are ‘stumbling blocs’ or ‘building blocs’ for the global economy. The fear of those who interpret regional arrangements as ‘stumbling blocs’ is that we will witness a return to the insularity of the 1930s where imperial trading blocs were formed in an attempt to avoid the transmission of volatility from other regions. This fear finds expression in the descriptions of the EU and the NAFTA as creating ‘Fortress Europe’ and ‘Fortress North America’. For others, however, the ‘new regionalism’ of the 1990s and 2000s is characterized by its ‘openness’ and its potential to spur greater global integration. On this reading, regionalism is part of the process of creating the global economy.

A further issue has been whether we are seeing the emergence of regional varieties of capitalism which have, in some important ways, succeeded the national varieties which were surveyed in Chapter 5. The issue here is whether we can identify in the Americas a US-style neoliberal capitalism being formed in contrast to a more social democratic, corporatist European model and a more limited, more networked East Asian version.

Competition between capitalist states has also been an historically important analytical issue. As discussed in Chapter 3 some argue that inter-imperialist rivalries caused the First World War. In Chapter 5 the 1980s rivalries between Japan and the US were discussed. Now the ‘Post-American world’, as Zakaria (2009) calls it, is premised on the rise of China and other emerging states such as India. In fact, the ‘new regionalism’ is a world populated by emerging mega-states, most notably the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and regional blocs (such as the EU and North America). It is this more fractured, multi-polar configuration that best describes the contemporary world, with all its challenges for cooperative governance, rather than the idea of a ‘seamless global economy’.

BRICs: Acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Coined to highlight the growing importance and influence of these countries in the global economy.

As the Curtain Falls: What Drama is Unfolding on the Capitalist World Stage?

‘Globalization’ has been interpreted in different ways and ‘anti-globalization’ has taken many forms. But underlying all of these differences is the central debate with which we started this book. For globalization is still capitalism, although there is legitimate room to debate exactly how global it really is.

And global capitalism is still subject to the two differing assessments of capitalism which were presented in Chapters 2 and 3. For some, global capitalism is a ‘natural’ evolution and offers the prospect of global ‘freedom’. With capital-friendly policies, our drama can have a happy ending with humankind marching off into the sunset of global capitalist democracy. For critics, however, global capitalism merely intensifies and spreads further the ‘injustice’ and the ‘instability’. Unless the dictates of capital are tamed (for the reformists) or abandoned and replaced (for the radicals), the drama can only end as a tragedy.

Thinking about capitalism historically shows how global capitalism has arisen and what features might be new about it. Thinking about capitalism analytically demonstrates that ‘globalization’ is still capitalism. Thinking about capitalism normatively still leaves judgements to be made.

In judging global capitalism, I am reminded of Keynes’s 1931 review of a book by Hayek. In his review, Keynes (1972: 252) wrote that Hayek’s ideas provided ‘an extraordinary example of how, starting with a simple mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam’.

This strikes me as an apt description of the characterization of capitalism as ‘natural and free’. Markets in health which dictate that individuals who can pay will live and those who cannot will die are not ‘natural’. Markets in food which deliver gastronomic delights to the rich and undernourishment for the poor are not ‘natural’. ‘Human nature’ does not dictate that these out comes must prevail and human societies do not have to be organized in this way or human institutions work in this way. Markets are indeed ‘blind’, as Hayek argued, but not in the way he suggested; rather they are blind to poverty, to environmental destruction and to inequality. Individuals who must give control of their labour to others are not ‘free’. Individuals in the richer countries whose well-being depends on not losing their jobs, or on a family member not losing theirs, are not ‘free’. Individuals in poorer countries whose well-being depends upon the price of their labour, or upon the price of what they produce not collapsing, or upon not being evicted from their land, are not ‘free’. We can – and should – all be freer, and more human, than this.

Starting from the simple mistake that private property, the pursuit of profits and markets are the route to human freedom, the proponents of capitalism logically and remorselessly deduce that the relentless pursuit of profits, the ever greater accumulation of private property and the ever-expanding scope of the market – phenomena which characterize the contemporary phase of global capitalism – must enhance our freedom. They are more likely to lead us to Bedlam.

Part 2

Documents

Document 1 Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand

In this selection from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations , he uses the metaphor of the invisible hand to show private self-interest leads to the best outcome for society. The investor in this quote prefers to invest domestically rather than overseas because of the lower risks involved. By maximizing his own return, the investor is maximizing society’s income, which is just the sum of all individual incomes. Allowing people to act in their own self-interest in the market is, Smith argues, the best way to promote the public good. This is better than relying on those who purport to act in the public interest.

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of every society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

Source: Adam Smith (1976), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 456.

Document 2 Friedman on Economic Freedom and Political Freedom

The case for the capitalist system made by Milton Friedman is that only it provides economic freedom, meaning the ability to freely choose what to buy and sell, and political freedom. In the latter case, however, capitalism may be the only system that can deliver political freedom but this is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. Note the emphasis in the quote on the virtues of ‘competitive capitalism’ and the ‘free market’.

It is widely believed that politics and economics are separate and largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem and material welfare an economic problem; and that any kind of political arrangements can be combined with any kind of economic arrangements … The thesis of this chapter is that such a view is a delusion, that there is an intimate connection between economics and politics, that only certain arrangements are possible and that, in particular, a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

The first of these roles of economic freedom needs special emphasis because intellectuals in particular have a strong bias against regarding this aspect of freedom as important. They tend to express contempt for what they regard as material aspects of life, and to regard their own pursuit of allegedly higher values as on a different plane of significance and as deserving of special attention. For most citizens of the country, however, if not for the intellectual, the direct importance of economic freedom is at least comparable in significance to the indirect importance of economic freedom as a means to political freedom….

The citizen of the United States who is compelled by law to devote something like 10 per cent of his income to the purchase of a particular kind of retirement contract, administered by the government, is being deprived of a corresponding part of his personal freedom. How strongly this deprivation may be felt and its closeness to the deprivation of religious freedom, which all would regard as ‘civil’ or ‘political’ rather than ‘economic’, were dramatized by an episode involving a group of farmers of the Amish sect. On grounds of principle, this group regarded compulsory federal old age programs as an infringement of their personal individual freedom and refused to pay taxes or accept benefits. As a result, some of their livestock were sold by auction in order to satisfy claims for social security levies. True, the number of citizens who regard compulsory old age insurance as a deprivation of freedom may be few, but the believer in freedom has never counted noses….

Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.

Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity.

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.

History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition….

Historical evidence by itself can never be convincing. Perhaps it was sheer coincidence that the expansion of freedom occurred at the same time as the development of capitalist and market institutions. Why should there be a connection? What are the logical links between economic and political freedom?….

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals – the technique of the market place.

The possibility of co-ordination through voluntary co-operation rests on the elementary – yet frequently denied – proposition that both parties to an economic transaction benefit from it, provided the transaction is bilaterally voluntary and informed.

Exchange can therefore bring about co-ordination without coercion. A working model of a society organized through voluntary exchange is a free private enterprise exchange economy – what we have been calling competitive capitalism….

So long as effective freedom of exchange is maintained, the central feature of the market organization of economic activity is that it prevents one person from interfering with another in respect of most of his activities. The consumer is protected from coercion by the seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can deal. The seller is protected from coercion by the consumer because of other consumers to whom he can sell. The employee is protected from coercion by the employer because of other employers for whom he can work, and so on. And the market does this impersonally and without centralized authority.

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the ‘rules of the game’ and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on. What the market does is to reduce greatly the range of issues that must be decided through political means, and thereby to minimize the extent to which government need participate directly in the game. The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity. It is, in political terms, a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what colorthe majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.

It is this feature of the market that we refer to when we say that the market provides economic freedom. But this characteristic also has implications that go far beyond the narrowly economic. Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated – a system of checks and balances. By removing the organization of economic activity from the control of political authority, the market eliminates this source of coercive power. It enables economic strength to be a check to political power rather than a reinforcement….

One feature of a free society is surely the freedom of individuals to advocate and propagandize openly for a radical change in the structure of the society so long as the advocacy is restricted to persuasion and does not include force or other forms of coercion. It is a mark of the political freedom of a capitalist society that men can openly advocate and work for socialism. Equally, political freedom in a socialist society would require that men be free to advocate the introduction of capitalism. How could the freedom to advocate capitalism be preserved and protected in a socialist society?

In order for men to advocate anything, they must in the first place be able to earn a living. This already raises a problem in a socialist society, since all jobs are under the direct control of political authorities. It would take an act of self-denial whose difficulty is underlined by experience in the United States after World War II with the problem of ‘security’ among Federal employees, for a socialist government to permit its employees to advocate policies directly contrary to official doctrine.

But let us suppose this act of self-denial to be achieved. For advocacy of capitalism to mean anything, the proponents must be able to finance their cause – to hold public meetings, publish pamphlets, buy radio time, issue newspapers and magazines, and so on. How could they raise the funds? There might and probably would be men in the socialist society with large incomes, perhaps even large capital sums in the form of government bonds and the like, but these would of necessity be high public officials. It is possible to conceive of a minor socialist official retaining his job although openly advocating capitalism. It strains credulity to imagine the socialist top brass financing such ‘subversive’ activities….

In a capitalist society, it is only necessary to convince a few wealthy people to get funds to launch any idea, however strange, and there are many such persons, many independent foci of support. And, indeed, it is not even necessary to persuade people or financial institutions with available funds of the soundness of the ideas to be propagated. It is only necessary to persuade them that the propagation can be financially successful; that the newspaper or magazine or book or other venture will be profitable. The competitive publisher, for example, cannot afford to publish only writing with which he personally agrees; his touchstone must be the likelihood that the market will be large enough to yield a satisfactory return on his investment.

Source: Excerpts from Milton Friedman (1962), Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Chapter 1, ‘The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom,’ pp. 7–17.

Document 3 Marx and Engels on Capitalism and Class Conflict

In these excerpts from The Communist Manifesto , Marx and Engels analyse the rise of capitalism as a specific historical system which, like all previous ones, is based on class conflict. In capitalism, this conflict is between the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the proletariat (workers), a conflict which the latter is destined to win. The capitalist system is seen as having enormous potential productive power, as it spreads across the globe, but which it is ultimately unable to realize because its internal contradictions continually result in crises.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat….

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation….

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed….

… The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market….

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product….

What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Source: Excerpts from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1. These excerpts taken from http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

Document 4 Capitalism and Class Conflict in China Today

The class conflict between capitalists and workers is evident today in capitalist China as shown in this account of a strike at a German electronics plant in southern China in 2007.

German factory strike in 2007

Factory X is a German funded enterprise which produces batteries, power cords and other components for mobile phones. Since setting up in 1993, it has expanded into two large plants at two industrial towns in Shenzhen. It employed about 8000 workers, of which 80% were women aged between 18 and 30. The wage level in Factory X was comparatively high in the town. The minimum hourly wage rate was basically observed and social insurance was provided for all of the workers. The factory operated two shifts. The day shift is from 7:00am to 6:30pm with a one-hour lunch break, while the night shift is from 7:00pm to 6:45am with a 45-minute mid-night break. Ordinary workers usually work six days per week and their monthly salary is from 1000 to 1400 yuan (approximately US$ 150–200).

In this factory, production workers are called yuan gong, employees, while others, including managers, supervisors, engineers, technicians, office clerks, are collectively called zhi yuan, staff. Most of the workers, yuan gong, live in the factory-provided dormitories where 8 or 12 workers share a room. 30 yuan is deducted from wages as rent. The factory pays an accommodation subsidy from 200 to 300 yuan per month to zhi yuan to rent private rooms outside of the factory.

In July 2005, when the minimum wage rate in Shenzhen was raised to 580 yuan, the factory adjusted the salary accordingly. The minimum wage was further increased to 700 yuan in 2006. Workers in Factory X also got a pay rise accordingly. After two years’ consecutive pay rises, however, the factory steadily began to increase the work quotas of the production line and units. If workers could not finish the quota unilaterally set by the management for the 11 daily working hours, they are ‘requested’ to perform extra work the next day without payment. The practice created conflict between experienced, and hence more efficient, workers and the inexperienced, as well as between the front line supervisors, who announced the new quota and forced their subordinates to work faster, and the production workers. Therefore, ‘too exhausted’ rather than ‘low pay’ was the most common cause of discontent in the factory. Many workers quit the factory after a few months or a year, but most of them were not permitted to do so and there was always a long queue of those who had applied to leave. For those without proper ‘permission’, the factory would confiscate their salary and they were prohibited from returning to the factory for employment for six months.

A special ‘rationalization reform’ was also made to lower the wage costs of the zhi yuan by restricting their overtime working hours in March 2007. From July, the maximum overtime hours of zhi yuan was set at 72 per month. They would not get extra pay for any hours worked beyond that level. The impact for front line supervisors was that they had to take care of more lines when other supervisors were on leave. For technicians, a smaller number was on duty in each shop.

The immediate cause of the strike was due to the wage policy of the city government. As mentioned, the city had significantly raised the minimum wage rate in July 2005 and 2006, and workers generally expected a similar pay rise in July 2007, but the government finally decided not to raise the legal minimum rate but maintained it at 700 yuan. A strike was immediately sparked on the second day after the workers got their July pay slip in August.

Collective Action for a Reasonable Wage

Workers got their pay slips on Thursday, August 16th. Workers’ salaries had not been raised. Furthermore, technicians and supervisors found their incomes were severely reduced due to the overtime restrictions. For example, one of the technicians, whose salary was always well over 2000 yuan, only received 1400 yuan. On the Friday evening, when the managers (who only work during the day) had left the factory, a public letter was posted on the notice board of all of the workshops.

The letter was issued in the name of all of the Factory X workers and entitled ‘Voices from zhi yuan and yuan gong’. It began by pointing out that the management had attempted to lower their salary from the end of 2006, and now their income had been reduced by 50% from the same period last year, while work quotas and living costs had doubled. ‘We have reasonable demands’, the letter stated:

1. To adjust our current wage standard. We all know the market wage standard now, and thus demand it should be adjusted to the following ways: yuan gong, 1500 yuan or more; second level zhi yuan, 2000 yuan or more; third level zhi yuan, 2500 yuan or more; fourth level zhi yuan, 3000 yuan or more; the above does not include any subsidy.

2. To raise the accommodation and food subsidy for living outside.

3. To improve welfare conditions, provide reasonable allowances for high temperature, toxic, outdoor and occupational disease-prone posts and regular occupational disease and body checks.

4. To provide night shift subsidy and snack allowance for those working on the night shift.

5. The company should buy unemployment, maternity, medical care and all of the other insurances requested by the labour law.

6. To solve the hygiene problem of drinking water.

7. To improve the reasonability of overtime work.

8. The trade union should function appropriately and its core members should invite the grass roots yuan gong to participate in it.

The letter ended up stating that the workers requested that the company answer these demands in written form and that they would not accept an oral reply from anybody, including the company CEO. News began to circulate among the workers that the technicians would start a strike soon.

After more and more workers, mostly young women, joined in, the technicians then led the crowd onto a crossroads in the industrial town. It was not a busy road and not many cars came, several policemen just stood by the workers peacefully. ‘One policeman even told us that it was useless to stay there and we should go to the major national road’, a worker said. Half an hour later, the mass walked out to the national highway and occupied one half of the main road. Hundreds of security forces, including patrol police, military police, transport police and local government security guards, came followed by labour bureau officers, the town Party general-secretary and the factory managers. The local party head, labour bureau representative and top manager spoke to the strikers with amplifiers and asked them to go back to the factory for negotiation. Officers said that it was illegal to stand there and that anything could be discussed in the factory while the manager asked the workers to elect their representatives. Some of the workers responded that ‘we are all representatives’ or ‘we have no representatives’.

One of the significant features of this strike was that it also happened almost simultaneously at the subsidiary factory in a different town. This strike was soon spread out to other factories around the industrial town. It had a significant knock-on effect on other factories in the same community and in the same business group. In our observation, the strike wave from 2003 to 2007 at least partially accounted for the dramatic rise of the legal minimum wage rate and the local state’s improved labour law inspections. Moreover, it was a breakthrough that organizers in factory X were able to coordinate workers in two factories to stage a strike together in order to enhance their bargaining power. The strike resulted in an increase of 10% wage to the technicians and supervisors and 5% to the production workers.

Source: Pun Ngai, Chris King, Chi Chan and Jenny Chan (2010) ‘The role of the state, labour policy and migrant workers’ struggles in globalized China,’ Global Labour Journal: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, pp. 139–141.

Available at: http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/vol1/iss1/8

Document 5 Keynes on Casino Capitalism

One of Keynes’s major criticisms of the failings of the capitalist system was that it failed to generate sufficient levels of investment to guarantee full employment. One of the reasons for this was that investment decisions were made on the basis of the state of confidence and not on long term calculations. This was particularly the case for the stock market about which Keynes was particularly scathing as an institution responsible for raising and allocating a country’s investment funds. He concluded that the government would increasingly have to take over this role itself.

But the Stock Exchange revalues many investments every day and the revaluations give a frequent opportunity to the individual (though not to the community as a whole) to revise his commitments. It is as though a farmer, having tapped his barometer after breakfast, could decide to remove his capital from the farming business between 10 and 11 in the morning and reconsider whether he should return to it later in the week. But the daily revaluations of the Stock Exchange, though they are primarily made to facilitate transfers of old investments between one individual and another, inevitably exert a decisive influence on the rate of current investment. For there is no sense in building up a new enterprise at a cost greater than that at which a similar existing enterprise can be purchased; whilst there is an inducement to spend on a new project what may seem an extravagant sum, if it can be floated off on the Stock Exchange at an immediate profit. Thus certain classes of investment are governed by the average expectation of those who deal on the Stock Exchange as revealed in the price of shares, rather than by the genuine expectations of the professional entrepreneur. How then are these highly significant daily, even hourly, revaluations of existing investments carried out in practice?

In practice we have tacitly agreed, as a rule, to fall back on what is, in truth, a convention. The essence of this convention – though it does not, of course, work out quite so simply – lies in assuming that the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely, except in so far as we have specific reasons to expect a change. This does not mean that we really believe that the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely. We know from extensive experience that this is most unlikely. The actual results of an investment over a long term of years very seldom agree with the initial expectation. Nor can we rationalise our behaviour by arguing that to a man in a state of ignorance errors in either direction are equally probable, so that there remains a mean actuarial expectation based on equi-probabilities. For it can easily be shown that the assumption of arithmetically equal probabilities based on a state of ignorance leads to absurdities. We are assuming, in effect, that the existing market valuation, however arrived at, is uniquely correct in relation to our existing knowledge of the facts which will influence the yield of the investment, and that it will only change in proportion to changes in this knowledge; though, philosophically speaking, it cannot be uniquely correct, since our existing knowledge does not provide a sufficient basis for a calculated mathematical expectation. In point of fact, all sorts of considerations enter into the market valuation which are in no way relevant to the prospective yield.

Nevertheless the above conventional method of calculation will be compatible with a considerable measure of continuity and stability in our affairs, so long as we can rely on the maintenance of the convention … But it is not surprising that a convention, in an absolute view of things so arbitrary, should have its weak points. It is its precariousness which creates no small part of our contemporary problem of securing sufficient investment….

Thus the professional investor is forced to concern himself with the anticipation of impending changes, in the news or in the atmosphere, of the kind by which experience shows that the mass psychology of the market is most influenced. This is the inevitable result of investment markets organised with a view to so-called ‘liquidity’. Of the maxims of orthodox finance none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine that it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions to concentrate their resources upon the holding of ‘liquid’ securities. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole. The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelop our future. The actual, private object of the most skilled investment to-day is ‘to beat the gun’, as the Americans so well express it, to outwit the crowd, and to pass the bad, or depreciating, half-crown to the other fellow.

This battle of wits to anticipate the basis of conventional valuation a few months hence, rather than the prospective yield of an investment over a long term of years, does not even require gulls amongst the public to feed the maws of the professional; – it can be played by professionals amongst themselves. Nor is it necessary that anyone should keep his simple faith in the conventional basis of valuation having any genuine long-term validity. For it is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs – a pastime in which he is victor who says Snap neither too soon nor too late, who passed the Old Maid to his neighbour before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music stops. These games can be played with zest and enjoyment, though all the players know that it is the Old Maid which is circulating, or that when the music stops some of the players will find themselves unseated.

Or, to change the metaphor slightly, professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees….

These considerations should not lie beyond the purview of the economist. But they must be relegated to their right perspective. If I may be allowed to appropriate the term speculation for the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market, and the term enterprise for the activity of forecasting the prospective yield of assets over their whole life, it is by no means always the case that speculation predominates over enterprise. As the organisation of investment markets improves, the risk of the predominance of speculation does, however, increase. In one of the greatest investment markets in the world, namely, New York, the influence of speculation (in the above sense) is enormous. Even outside the field of finance, Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be; and this national weakness finds its nemesis in the stock market. It is rare, one is told, for an American to invest, as many Englishmen still do, ‘for income’; and he will not readily purchase an investment except in the hope of capital appreciation. This is only another way of saying that, when he purchases an investment, the American is attaching his hopes, not so much to its prospective yield, as to a favourable change in the conventional basis of valuation, i.e. that he is, in the above sense, a speculator. Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism – which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object….

Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than on a mathematical expectation, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits – of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities. Enterprise only pretends to itself to be mainly actuated by the statements in its own prospectus, however candid and sincere. Only a little more than an expedition to the South Pole, is it based on an exact calculation of benefits to come. Thus if the animal spirits are dimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend on nothing but a mathematical expectation, enterprise will fade and die; – though fears of loss may have a basis no more reasonable than hopes of profit had before….

For my own part I am now somewhat sceptical of the success of a merely monetary policy directed towards influencing the rate of interest. I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organising investment; since it seems likely that the fluctuations in the market estimation of the marginal efficiency of different types of capital, calculated on the principles I have described above, will be too great to be offset by any practicable changes in the rate of interest.

Source: J.M. Keynes (1973), The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The Royal Economic Society, excerpts from pp. 151–164 (italics in original).

Document 6 The Formation of the Bretton Woods Institutions

Following the economic, political and social disasters of the first half of the twentieth century in the capitalist countries, a new international architecture was proposed for the post-1945 period. This architecture, known as the Bretton Woods Agreement, included the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development which has subsequently became known as the World Bank.

United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods. Summary of Agreements. July 22, 1944

This Conference at Bretton Woods, representing nearly all the peoples of the world, has considered matters of international money and finance which are important for peace and prosperity. The Conference has agreed on the problems needing attention, the measures which should be taken, and the forms of international cooperation or organization which are required. The agreements reached on these large and complex matters are without precedent in the history of international economic relations.

I The international monetary fund

Since foreign trade affects the standard of life of every people, all countries have a vital interest in the system of exchange of national currencies and the regulations and conditions which govern its working. Because these monetary transactions are international exchanges, the nations must agree on the basic rules which govern the exchanges if the system is to work smoothly. When they do not agree, and when single nations and small groups of nations attempt by special and different regulations of the foreign exchanges to gain trade advantages, the result is instability, a reduced volume of foreign trade, and damage to national economies. This course of action is likely to lead to economic warfare and to endanger the world’s peace.

The Conference has therefore agreed that broad international action is necessary to maintain an international monetary system which will promote foreign trade. The nations should consult and agree on international monetary changes which affect each other. They should outlaw practices which are agreed to be harmful to world prosperity, and they should assist each other to overcome short-term exchange difficulties.

The Conference has agreed that the nations here represented should establish for these purposes a permanent international body, The International Monetary Fund, with powers and resources adequate to perform the tasks assigned to it. Agreement has been reached concerning these powers and resources and the additional obligations which the member countries should undertake. Draft Articles of Agreement on these points have been prepared.

II The international bank for reconstruction and development

It is in the interest of all nations that post-war reconstruction should be rapid. Likewise, the development of the resources of particular regions is in the general economic interest. Programs of reconstruction and development will speed economic progress everywhere, will aid political stability and foster peace.

The Conference has agreed that expanded international investment is essential to provide a portion of the capital necessary for reconstruction and development.

The Conference has further agreed that the nations should cooperate to increase the volume of foreign investment for these purposes, made through normal business channels. It is especially important that the nations should cooperate to share the risks of such foreign investment, since the benefits are general.

The Conference has agreed that the nations should establish a permanent international body to perform these functions, to be called The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It has been agreed that the Bank should assist in providing capital through normal channels at reasonable rates of interest and for long periods for projects which will raise the productivity of the borrowing country. There is agreement that the Bank should guarantee loans made by others and that through their subscriptions of capital in all countries should share with the borrowing country in guaranteeing such loans. The Conference has agreed on the powers and resources which the Bank must have and on the obligations which the member countries must assume, and has prepared draft Articles of Agreement accordingly.

The Conference has recommended that in carrying out the policies of the institutions here proposed special consideration should be given to the needs of countries which have suffered from enemy occupation and hostilities.

The proposals formulated at the Conference for the establishment of the Fund and the Bank are now submitted, in accordance with the terms of the invitation, for consideration of the governments and people of the countries represented.

Source: Pamphlet No. 4, Pillars of Peace (May 1946), Documents Pertaining To American Interest In Establishing A Lasting World Peace: January 1941 to February 1946.

Published by the Book Department, Army Information School, Carlisle Barracks, PA. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1944/440722a.html

Document 7 The Washington Concensus

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were the key institutions which became known, in the 1980s, as part of the Washington Consensus. This term, coined by John Williamson, summarized the policy prescriptions of the institutions in the wake of the ascendancy of neoliberalism. In this quotation from 2003 Williamson lists the ten policies which he identified as constituting the Consensus and adds his own commentary on how they have fared in practice.

1. Fiscal Discipline. This was in the context of a region where almost all countries had run large deficits that led to balance of payments crises and high inflation that hit mainly the poor because the rich could park their money abroad.

2. Reordering Public Expenditure Priorities. This suggested switching expenditure in a progrowth and propoor way, from things like non-merit subsidies to basic health and education and infrastructure. It did not call for all the burden of achieving fiscal discipline to be placed on expenditure cuts; on the contrary, the intention was to be strictly neutral about the desirable size of the public sector, an issue on which even a hopeless consensus-seeker like me did not imagine that the battle had been resolved with the end of history that was being promulgated at the time.

3. Tax Reform. The aim was a tax system that would combine a broad tax base with moderate marginal tax rates.

4. Liberalizing Interest Rates. In retrospect I wish I had formulated this in a broader way as financial liberalization, stressed that views differed on how fast it should be achieved, and – especially – recognized the importance of accompanying financial liberalization with prudential supervision.

5. A Competitive Exchange Rate. I fear I indulged in wishful thinking in asserting that there was a consensus in favor of ensuring that the exchange rate would be competitive, which pretty much implies an intermediate regime; in fact Washington was already beginning to edge toward the two-corner doctrine which holds that a country must either fix firmly or else it must float ‘cleanly’.

6. Trade Liberalization. I acknowledged that there was a difference of view about how fast trade should be liberalized, but everyone agreed that was the appropriate direction in which to move.

7. Liberalization of Inward Foreign Direct Investment. I specifically did not include comprehensive capital account liberalization, because I did not believe that did or should command a consensus in Washington.

8. Privatization. As noted already, this was the one area in which what originated as a neoliberal idea had won broad acceptance. We have since been made very conscious that it matters a lot how privatization is done: it can be a highly corrupt process that transfers assets to a privileged elite for a fraction of their true value, but the evidence is that it brings benefits (especially in terms of improved service coverage) when done properly, and the privatized enterprise either sells into a competitive market or is properly regulated.

9. Deregulation. This focused specifically on easing barriers to entry and exit, not on abolishing regulations designed for safety or environmental reasons, or to govern prices in a non-competitive industry.

10. Property Rights. This was primarily about providing the informal sector with the ability to gain property rights at acceptable cost (inspired by Hernando de Soto’s analysis).

Source: John Williamson (2004), ‘A Short History of the Washington Consensus’, paper commissioned by Fundación CIDOB for a conference ‘From the Washington Consensus towards a new Global Governance,’ Barcelona, September 24–25. citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.145.3639.pdf

Document 8 Wolf’s Cry for More Globalization Not Less

Having set out what he calls the ‘ten commandments of globalization’, Martin Wolf, a columnist with The Financial Times, concludes that the world needs more global capitalism not less. There is still plenty of scope for its expansion he argues if politics can be improved. He finishes with a Hayekian flourish appealing to the moral superiority of the ‘open society’.

The view that states and markets are in opposition to one another is the obverse of the truth. The world needs more globalization, not less. But we will only have more and better globalization if we have better states. Above all, we must recognize that inequality and persistent poverty are the consequences not of the still limited integration of the world’s economy but of its political fragmentation. If we wish to make our world a better place, we must look not at the failures of the market economy, but at the hypocrisy, greed and stupidity that so often mars our politics, in both developing and developed countries.

The sight of the affluent young of the west wishing to protect the poor of the world from the processes that delivered their own remarkable prosperity is depressing. So, too, is the return of all the old anti-capitalist clichés is as if the collapse of Soviet communism had never happened. We must, and can, make the world a better place to live in. But we will do so only by ignoring these siren voices. The open society has, as always, its enemies both within and without. Our time is no exception. We owe it to posterity to ensure that they do not triumph.

Source: Martin Wolf (2004), Why Globalization Works, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, p. 320.

Document 9 World Social Forum Charter of Principles

The anti-globalization movement holds a high profile forum every year to seek alternatives to the current form of globalization. Reproduced below are its founding principles. While specifying opposition to ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘imperialism’ note that it prefers to use the term ‘domination of the world by capital’ rather than ‘global capitalism’ thereby leaving open to interpretation whether capitalism needs to be reformed or replaced.

The committee of Brazilian organizations that conceived of, and organized, the first World Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre from January 25th to 30th, 2001, after evaluating the results of that Forum and the expectations it raised, consider it necessary and legitimate to draw up a Charter of Principles to guide the continued pursuit of that initiative. While the principles contained in this Charter – to be respected by all those who wish to take part in the process and to organize new editions of the World Social Forum – are a consolidation of the decisions that presided over the holding of the Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success, they extend the reach of those decisions and define orientations that flow from their logic.

1. The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.

2. The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto Alegre that ‘another world is possible’, it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events supporting it.

3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have an international dimension.

4. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations interests, with the complicity of national governments. They are designed to ensure that globalization in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in world history. This will respect universal human rights, and those of all citizens – men and women – of all nations and the environment and will rest on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.

5. The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of civil society from all the countries in the world, but it does not intend to be a body representing world civil society.

6. The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf of the World Social Forum as a body. No-one, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its participants. The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or proposals for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body. It thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the participants in its meetings, nor does it intend to constitute the only option for interrelation and action by the organizations and movements that participate in it.

7. Nonetheless, organizations or groups of organizations that participate in the Forums meetings must be assured the right, during such meetings, to deliberate on declarations or actions they may decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other participants. The World Social Forum undertakes to circulate such decisions widely by the means at its disposal, without directing, hierarchizing, censuring or restricting them, but as deliberations of the organizations or groups of organizations that made the decisions.

8. The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralized fashion, interrelates organizations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build another world.

9. The World Social Forum will always be a forum open to pluralism and to the diversity of activities and ways of engaging of the organizations and movements that decide to participate in it, as well as the diversity of genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and physical capacities, providing they abide by this Charter of Principles. Neither party representations nor military organizations shall participate in the Forum. Government leaders and members of legislatures who accept the commitments of this Charter may be invited to participate in a personal capacity.

10. The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy, development and history and to the use of violence as a means of social control by the State. It upholds respect for Human Rights, the practices of real democracy, participatory democracy, peaceful relations, in equality and solidarity, among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples, and condemns all forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another.

11. As a forum for debate, the World Social Forum is a movement of ideas that prompts reflection, and the transparent circulation of the results of that reflection, on the mechanisms and instruments of domination by capital, on means and actions to resist and overcome that domination, and on the alternatives proposed to solve the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally destructive dimensions is creating internationally and within countries.

12. As a framework for the exchange of experiences, the World Social Forum encourages understanding and mutual recognition among its participant organizations and movements, and places special value on the exchange among them, particularly on all that society is building to centre economic activity and political action on meeting the needs of people and respecting nature, in the present and for future generations.

13. As a context for interrelations, the World Social Forum seeks to strengthen and create new national and international links among organizations and movements of society, that – in both public and private life – will increase the capacity for non-violent social resistance to the process of dehumanization the world is undergoing and to the violence used by the State, and reinforce the humanizing measures being taken by the action of these movements and organizations.

14. The World Social Forum is a process that encourages its participant organizations and movements to situate their actions, from the local level to the national level and seeking active participation in international contexts, as issues of planetary citizenship, and to introduce onto the global agenda the change-inducing practices that they are experimenting in building a new world in solidarity.

Approved and adopted in São Paulo, on April 9, 2001, by the organizations that make up the World Social Forum Organizing Committee, approved with modifications by the World Social Forum International Council on June 10, 2001.

Source: http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2

Guide to further reading

Conceptualizing capitalism

For those interested in a short overview of the history of capitalism and some of the debates surrounding it, Michel Beaud’s, A History of Capitalism 1500–2000, New York: Monthly Review Press, fifth edition, 2001 is a brilliant starting point. The world systems perspective can be found in Immanuel Wallerstein’s essay ‘The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: Concepts of comparative analysis’ in his edited collection The Capitalist World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

The links between religion and the rise of capitalism were explored by Ralph Tawney in his classic Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, as well as by Weber (1976). Religious and/or cultural explanations for capitalism’s emergence and growth have also been common more recently, only now it has been the ‘Confucian’ ethic for hard work – rather than the ‘Protestant ethic’ – that has been the centre of attention and that has been used to help explain the rise of Japan and other East Asian countries in the past half century. See, for example, the essays exploring this issue in Tai Hung-chao’s edited collection, Confucianism and Economic Development: An Oriental Alternative?, Washington DC: Washington Institute Press, 1989. Whether these religious and cultural explanations for capitalism’s emergence and growth are really satisfactory is open to doubt; why, for example, was the influence of Confucianism important after, say, 1960 in Taiwan and South Korea but not before?

For a contribution by the Regulation school see, for example, Alain Lipietz, Towards a New Economic Order: Postfordism, Ecology and Democracy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. For the postmodern analysis of late capitalism, Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: Duke University Press, 1991, is a superb, but at times difficult, book. For Marxist analysis of the stage of monopoly capitalism, a classic work here is Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.

Capitalism as ‘natural’ and ‘free’

For an examination of the different types of democracy, see Adam Przeworski’s Sustainable Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. The debate on the relationship between capitalism and democracy has received widespread attention. A classic in the field is Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. This book argues that there is no universal trend towards democracy. Instead, the paths towards democracy, fascism and communism are dependent upon historical conditions. See also Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992. The implications of globalization for democracy are explored in Ronaldo Munck and Barry Gills (eds), Globalization and Democracy, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, volume 581, 2002. For the debate on capitalism and democracy in developing countries see, for example, Paul Cammack, Capitalism and Democracy in the Third World, London: Leicester University Press, 1997. For the specifics of southeast Asia, see Garry Rodan, Kevin Hewison and Richard Robison (eds), The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Conflict, Crises and Change, London: Oxford University Press, 2001. For data on the rise of democracy over the past 200 years, see the Polity IV Project at their website (http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity).

The case for market approaches to environmental problems is set out in Richard Sandor, Eric Bettelheim and Ian Swingland, ‘An overview of a free-market approach to climate change and conservation’, in Ian Swingland (ed.), Capturing Carbon and Conserving Biodiversity: The Market Approach, London: Earthscan, 2003.

Capitalism as ‘unjust’ and ‘unstable’

The extent of global inequalities is neatly summarized in Bob Sutcliffe’s 100 Ways of Seeing an Unequal World, London: Zed Books, 2001. Also useful are reports by United Nations agencies such as UNICEF, UNDP and UNIFEM. Most of their publications are available on their websites.

For the life and thought of many reformers and radicals, including John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, see chapters in Robert Heilbroner’s very readable The Worldly Philosophers, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

The case for a Tobin-style tax is reviewed in Alex Michalos’s Good Taxes: The Case for Taxing Foreign Currency Exchange and Other Financial Transactions, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. For an analysis of how tax cuts have favoured the rich as a result of their successful lobbying for rewriting tax rules and for the argument that taxes on them, including inheritance taxes, should be increased see Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, The Trouble with Billionaires, Toronto: Viking Canada, 2010.

For a good review of the debates over capitalism and the environment, see Neil Carter, The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism and Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. For an environmentalist position on Nature as a ‘trust’ see, for example, Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

The impacts of capitalism on gender and race are discussed for the US in Teresa Amott and Julia Mattaei, Race, Gender and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the United States, South End Press, 1996. For Australia, see Rhonda Sharp and Ray Broomhill, Short Changed: Women and Economic Policies, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988. For analysis of the impacts of global capitalism on women in developing countries see, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds), Global Women: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002. See also Lourdes Beneria, Gender, Development and Globalization, London: Routledge, 2003.

For more on the training and education debates from radical perspectives, see Thomas Dunk, Stephen McBride and Randle W. Nelsen (eds), The Training Trap: Ideology, Training and the Labour Market, Society for Socialist Studies and Fernwood Press, 1995–1996. More recent analysis of Gordon’s ‘fat and mean’ argument can be found in Kevin T. Leicht, David Brady, ‘Testing the Fat and Mean Thesis’, in David Brady (ed.) Comparing European Workers Part A (Research in the Sociology of Work, Volume 22), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2011, pp.141–168.

For the debates over the possibilities for democracy as a result of the Internet see Martin Margolis and Gerson Moreno-Riano, The Prospect of Internet Democracy, Farnham: Ashgate Publishers, 2009.

The role of the capitalist state is analysed in Bob Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State, London: Polity Press, 2002. The annual publication The Socialist Register, edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, contains lively and informative radical perspectives on contemporary capitalism.

Empire and crises 1870–1945

For a good introduction to radical theories of imperialism see Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey, New York: Routledge, 1990. D.K. Fieldhouse’s Colonialism 1870–1945: An Introduction provides an excellent account of the subject. For the role of imperialism in spreading capitalism to developing countries, see Bill Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism, London: Verso, 1980. Gordon Martel’s, The Origins of the First World War, London: Longman, 1996, provides an accessible and lucid discussion of the pre-1914 period and, within this historical context, outlines the various positions on relationships between imperialism, nationalism and war.

The relationships between free trade and Empire were complex in late nineteenth-century Britain. Some free traders hoped that free trade would lead to the dissolution of Empire, while anti-free traders argued that imperial preferences be used to protect the Empire from unfair competition by other non-free-trading imperial powers. The official policy for much of this period, however, was free trade and Empire. The various positions are set out well in Jim Tomlinson, Problems of British Economic Policy, 1870–1945, London: Methuen, 1981, Chapter 3.

There are many excellent histories of the period. I like Eric Hobsbawm’s companion volumes The Age of Empire 1875–1914, London: Cardinal, 1989 and Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991, London: Michael Joseph, 1994. The latter places a good deal of emphasis on the rivalry between capitalism and (Soviet) socialism. For the 1930s, Patricia Clavin’s The Great Depression in Europe 1929–1939, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, provides a thorough economic history. Personal accounts of the Depression can be found in Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1970 and Nigel Gray, The Worst of Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression in Britain, Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1985. George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, London: Secker and Warburg, 1998, is also worth reading to get a sense of the period.

Variations in capitalism across countries

For a comprehensive review of the main varieties of capitalism discussed in this chapter, together with an assessment of their relative performances, see David Coates, Models of Capitalism: Growth and Stagnation in the Modern Era, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000.

The differences between British and Japanese industrial relations systems is discussed in the classic, but now dated, work by Ronald Dore, British Factory – Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. For an excellent account of capital–labour relations in postwar Japan, see John Price, Japan Works: Power and Paradox in Postwar Industrial Relations, Ithaca, NY: ILR/Cornell University Press, 1991. For the ways in which other countries in East Asia adopted developmentalist institutions and structures, see Gordon White (ed.), Developmental States in East Asia, London: Macmillan, 1988. For the role of MITI in Japanese economic development, see Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy 1925–1975, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982.

For differences in welfare state systems, an influential book is Gosta Esping-Andersen’s The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

For analysis of China’s capitalist transition see, for example, Christopher McNally, ‘China’s Capitalist Transition: The Making of a New Variety of Capitalism,’ in Comparative Social Research (Special Issue on Capitalisms Compared, Lars Mjosset and Tommy H. Clausen, eds). vol. 24, 2007, pp. 177–203. See also the essays on China in Paul Bowles and John Harriss (eds), Globalization and Labour in China and India: Impacts and Responses, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010.

The damaging effects of IMF policies on Russia are documented by Joseph Stiglitz, a recent former chief economist at the World Bank, in Globalization and its Discontents, London: Norton, 2002. The inequalities arising under Russian capitalism are analysed in Bertram Silverman and Murray Yanowitch, New Rich, New Poor, New Russia: Winners and Losers on the Russian Road to Capitalism, second edition, Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2000. For capitalist models and their applicability to Latin America, see Evelyn Huber (ed.), Models of Capitalism: Lessons for Latin America, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State Press, 2002.

Variations in capitalism over time

The operation of the Bretton Woods system is covered in many introductory books on post-1945 economic history. A more specialized treatment is given in Peter Kenen, The International Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. The ‘golden age’ in the core capitalist countries is discussed in Stephen Marglin and Juliet Schor’s edited collection, The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Surendra Patel’s ‘In tribute to the golden age of the South’s development’, World Development, May 1992 (vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 767–771) argues for such an age in the South as well, although he extends the time frame for this age up to 1980 and even, in some respects, up to 1990. The details of the calls for a New International Economic Order are analysed by a range of authors in Jagdish Bhagwati’s edited volume, The New International Economic Order and the North–South Debate, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.

For an analysis of the ways in which states removed the regulations on capital as a result of the rise of neoliberalism, see Eric Helleiner’s insightful book, States and the Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. For a discussion of the accompanying changes in labour markets and the rise of ‘labour market flexibility’, see Jamie Peck, Work-Place: The Social Regulation of Labor Markets, New York: Guilford Press, 1996. The economic results of the neo-liberal period are compared with those of the ‘golden age’ in David Coates, Models of Capitalism: Growth and Stagnation in the Modern Era, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000.

The prescription that developing countries should adopt ‘market friendly’ policies is set out in the World Bank’s World Development Report 1991, Oxford: Oxford University Press. The ways in which theorizing about development in the South has changed over the postwar period are explained well in Colin Leys’s The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. The effects of IMF and World Bank policies, through structural adjustment programmes, have been analysed by many authors. For a critical view see Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty: The Impact of IMF and World Bank Reforms, London: Zed Press, 1997.

For an overview of the Asian crisis, and of the competing explanations for it, see Brian MacLean, Paul Bowles and Osvaldo Croci, ‘East Asian crises and regional economic integration’, in A. Rugman and G. Boyd (eds), Deepening Integration in the Pacific Economies: Corporate Alliances, Contestable Markets and Free Trade, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1999. See also Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents, London: Norton, 2002. For a discussion of various policies designed to prevent repeats of the 1990s financial crises, see Barry Eichengreen’s Financial Crises and What To Do About Them, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

There has been a spate of books published in the wake of various corporate collapses and scandals. Two worth reading are Peter Fusaro and Ross Miller, What Went Wrong at Enron, New York: Wiley, 2002 and Lynne Jeter, Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at WorldCom, New York: Wiley, 2003.

There are numerous books on the Global Financial Crisis. For the official blow-by-blow account see The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, Authorized Edition: Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, New York: Public Affairs, 2011. For a Keynesian interpretation see Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the Global Economy, W.W. Norton, 2010. For a Marxist interpretation see John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, New York: Monthly Review, 2009. For a discussion of ‘post-neoliberalism’, see the Special Issue of Development Dialogue, number 51, January 2009 on the theme ‘Postneoliberalism – A Beginning Debate’.

Global capitalism

There are shelves full of books on globalization. One of the best general introductions is Jan Aarte Scholte’s Globalization: A Critical Introduction, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2005. Kenichi Ohmae’s book The Borderless World, London: Collins, 1990 has already become a classic for its vision of the demise of the nation state. Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, continues the tradition and adds the twist that countries are now on a level playing field when it comes to competing in the global economy because capital is able to operate anywhere. Friedman’s sequel Hot, Flat and Crowded, New York: Picador, 2009, examines how global capitalism can, and should, be made environmentally sustainable.

A version of the ‘new imperialism’ position is given in Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, Global Capitalism and American Empire, London: Merlin Press, 2004. See also David Harvey, The New Imperialism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. For a critical non-Marxist view see Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. A sceptical view on globalization (and more supportive of the regional interpretation) is offered by Paul Hirst, Grahame Thompson and Simon Bromley, Globalization In Question, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009.

The four interpretations of globalization are discussed in more detail in Paul Bowles, ‘Globalisation and Neoliberalism: A Taxonomy and Some Implications for Anti-globalisation’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 2005, pp. 67–87.

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Index

alienation of labour 45–7

Amsden, Alice 79

animal spirits 40

Anglo-American model 75–6

anti-globalization 1, 45, 107, 117

Arrighi, Giovanni 12

Asian 1997/8 crises 41, 103–4, 111

Aune, J.A. 45

Australia 81

Bale Jr, H. 48

Beaud, Michel 10, 56, 60, 142

Blair, Tony 100

Bowles, Samuel 57

Boyer, Robert 71

brands 5, 13, 106

states as 112

Bretton Woods system 41, 71, 86, 92

establishment of 69, 87–9

BRICs 119

Broomhill, Ray 77

business cycle 49

capital–labour relations 55, 73–4, 76–7

capitalism

definition 8–12

expansion of 60–5

opacity of 4–5

periodization of 12–16

as self-adjusting 26

variations across countries 2, 71–85

variations over time 2, 9–12, 86–105

ways of thinking about 3–6

see also global capitalism

caring work 53–4

casino capitalism 41

China 5, 12, 31, 32, 44, 61, 82, 83, 105, 111, 112, 113, 118, 119

class conflict 42, 44–5

Clavin, Patricia 66, 67, 68

Coates, David 58, 100

Cold War era 87

Columbus, Christopher 11, 59

colonialism 13, 61–5, 72

competitive capitalism 11, 36

consumerism 15, 45, 106

coordination problem 26, 32

corporate capitalism 13, 111

corporatist model 73, 75, 76, 77

crises 49, 60, 102–3

Asian 41, 103–4, 111

criticisms of capitalism 38–58

Marxist 42–9

crony capitalism 4, 103–4, 111

culture, commodification of 15

de Soto, Hernando xv, 25

democracy 30–33, 55–57, 111

democratization process 32–33

depression, 1930s 65–66, 67–68

developing countries 29, 85, 90–92

and cheap labour 93, 102

effect of neoliberalism 100–102

developmentalist model 75, 77–79

division of labour 18–19

new international 93, 102

East Asia 29, 79, 82–83, 103–4

Eastern Europe 11

education 55, 57–59, 89, 98, 111

Empire and expansion of capitalism 60–65

‘end of history’ 27–30

Engels, Friedrich xvi, 43, 45, 51

Enron collapse 104

enterprise culture 96, 98

environmental issues 35–36, 37, 106

destruction 35–36, 49–51, 112, 120

environmental apartheid 113

production of ignorance 5

equality and justice 34–35, 36

Esping-Andersen, Gosta 77

fascism 9, 30, 67–68

Ferguson, Niall 33, 61–63

feudalism 10, 11

Fieldhouse, D.K. 61, 63

financial capitalism 12–13, 15, 111

financial crises 60, 65, 102–105

Folbre, Nancy 53

Fordism to post-Fordism 14, 15

Foster, Jonn Bellamy et al. 50

France 56, 63, 79

free market see market

free trade 17, 63, 118

freedom, capitalism as 17–22, 119–20

Friedman, Milton xv, 9, 20–21, 22, 26, 34, 36, 95

on role of state 25, 31, 49

Friedman, Thomas 111

Fukuyama, Francis, xv, 27–30, 32–33, 79

Galbraith, J.K. xv, 13

Garside, W.R. 67

gender inequality 51–54, 96

Germany 72, 76–77, 81

Gintis, Herb 57

global capitalism 1, 7, 35, 106–20

as Americanization 116, 117

commodification of life 112

and democracy 110–111

as globalism 115

injustice and instability 119–20

and nation states 106–119

new imperialism view 115–17

as wrecking ball 113

Global Financial Crisis 1, 41, 57, 80, 86, 104–5, 111

globalization see global capitalism

golden age 87–92

Gorbachev, Mikhail 83

Gordon, David 46

Grassley, Charles 104

Greenspan, Alan xv, 103–104, 105

Hartmann, Thom 13

Harvey, David 4, 50

Haseler, Stephen 39

Hattersley, Roy 100

Hayek, F. von 31, 32, 34–35, 119–20

health care 89, 98, 111

Helliwell, John 114

historical materialism 43

history of capitalism

19th century 60–2

1920s 97–8

1930s depression 65–7

1945–70 and Cold War 87–92

1980s and 1990s 93–101

1990s financial crises 102–3

and imperialism 61–5

post-1945 72, 86

pre-1945 alternatives 65

HIV/AIDS medication 48

Hobsbawm, Eric 64, 67

Hochschild, A.R. 53–4

Hollingsworth, J.R. 71

homelessness 48, 98

Hoover, President 65

Huntley, J. 111

Hutton, Will 86–7

ICT and production 14, 15

IMF 1, 11, 69, 88, 103, 113

conditionality 100–1

imperialism 13, 61–5, 116–7

income redistribution 34–5, 37, 55

India 58, 105, 111

industrial capitalism 12–3, 15

industrial financing 74–5, 76, 78

industrial revolution 59

inequalities 38–58, 98, 110, 113

innovation 27, 29

instability 40–2, 99–100, 103–5

intellectual property rights 23, 109

international agreements 110

investment, volatility of 40–1

‘Invisible Hand’ 22

Iraq war 64, 107

Jameson, Frederic 4, 8, 15

Japan 72, 75, 77–9, 80, 81, 118

Keynes, J.M./policies xv, 67, 88, 92–3

and instability 38–42, 87–89

Klein, Naomi 5, 13, 112

labour 93, 107

decommodified 55, 89, 95

labour market 51, 97, 98

feminization of 53

flexibility 96–7

laissez-faire capitalism 4, 75

late capitalism 15

Latin America 55, 68, 91

capitalism 84–5

legal system, role of 25, 31, 76

Lehmbruch, G. 81

Lenin, V.I. xv, 13, 60, 61, 62, 116

List, Friedrich xvi, 63, 79

Locke, John xvi, 23, 34

Lucas, Robert 110, 112

McMillan, John 24, 58

McQuaig, Linda 115

McQueen, Humphrey 116

managerial capitalism 13, 15

Manow, Philip 81

markets 9–10, 18–22, 26–7, 29, 71

as blind 34, 37, 120

as human freedom 17–21

as natural 18–21, 22, 37, 120

need for restraint 38

and public interest 21

Marx, Karl/Marxism xvi, 4, 6, 42–8

mass production 14, 15

Mellon, Andrew 65

merchant capitalism 12, 15

migrant workers 107

Mill, J.S. 39, 60

models of capitalism 73–5

monetarism 20, 95

monopoly capitalism 13, 15, 49, 61

multinationals 13, 15, 39, 91, 101

power of 115, 117

NAFTA 118

nation states and global capitalism 108–11

national capitalisms 71–5, 79–80

constraints on choice of 80–2, 85

differentiating factors 73–5

natural, capitalism as 17, 18–9, 120

natural resources 35, 37, 49–50, 112

neoliberalism 86, 93–102, 115

and capital liberalization 97–8

and increasing inequality 98–9

and welfare state 95–6, 99

worldwide ramifications 100

New International Economic Order 92

Occupy movement 1, 105

oil price shocks 1970s 86, 92–3

origins of capitalism 9–12

Owen, Robert 39

owner capitalism 14, 15

Parker, R.E. 66

patriarchy 51, 52, 67

Petras, James 55, 116–7

philanthropists 39–40

planned economies 27, 29, 32

Polanyi, Karl xvi, 71, 81

political freedom 30–3

postmodern culture 15

poverty 34, 37, 47–8, 101

private property 23–4, 25, 35, 38, 51–2

medical patents 48

privatization 97, 99, 111–2

production and technology 14, 15

productivity of capitalism 25–7

profit motive 8, 36, 38, 48

legitimising of 10, 12

as natural 22

Protestant ethic 11

Reagan, Ronald 93, 95, 114

recession 40

regionalism 117–9

Regulation school 14

religion 11, 45

resistance movements 1, 45, 107, 108, 117, 119

Ricardo, David xvi, 63

Roddick, Anita 40

Roosevelt, F.D. xvi, 67

Rostow, Walter 90

Rothermund, D. 67

Russia 4, 11, 83–4, 85, 113

Scandinavia 55, 72

Schumpeter, Joseph 65

self-interest 21–2

Sharp, Rhonda. 77

Sheahan, John 84

Shiva, Vandana xvi, 5, 112, 113

Silverman, B. 83

Smith, Adam xvi, 6, 18–9, 21–2, 36, 37, 94

social needs 48

social welfare and markets 22

Soros, George 113

Southeast Asian economies 31, 90

Soviet Union 27, 68, 72, 89–90

stagflation 92

state 31, 57–8

intervention in markets 20–1, 22

role of 24, 34, 36–7, 57, 76

in golden age 87–9

Japan 77–8

and neoliberalism 93–5

as rule enforcer 24–5

stabilization role 40–2

upholding capitalism 55–7

state socialism 11, 27, 68, 89–90

state–capital–labour relations 73–5

Stern Review 36

Stiglitz, Joseph 103

Stilwell, Frank 46, 87

stock markets 41, 74–5

Streeck, Wolfgang 77, 81, 100

structural adjustment programmes 101

sweatshops 44

Sweden 100

taxation 34–5, 39, 54

technology 14, 15, 108, 109

Thatcher, M. 21, 93, 95, 96, 97, 114

Thurow, Lester 9, 47, 98

Tobin, James/tax xvi, 42

trade unions 97

tragedy of the commons 35–6

training workers 74

unemployment 26, 47, 49, 95–6

van Ham, Peter 112

Veltmeyer, Henry 116–7

Wade, Robert 114

wage bargaining 73, 75–7

Wallerstein, Immanuel xvii, 10, 15

war and imperialism 64

Weber, Max xvii, 11

welfare states 68, 73, 76, 77, 81–2

and Anglo-American model 76

and corporatist model 4, 76–7

decommodifying labour 55, 89

in golden age 87–9

Japanese model 78–9

and neoliberalism 95–6, 99

varieties of 77

White, Harry Dexter 88

women 67, 78, 79, 95–6

working class 10, 42, 43, 44

World Bank 1, 69, 88, 100–2, 113

world systems theory 9–10, 11

Yanowitch, M. 83

Zakaria, Fareed 119

Zoellick, Robert 17

Plate 1 In 1834, the six Topuddle Martyrs were sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia. They were convicted of taking an ‘unlawful oath’ to form a trade union. Their sentence sparked protests across Britain and marks an important point in labour’s opposition to unrestrained capitalism

Source: The Tolpuddle Martyrs Memorial Trust

Plate 2 Unemployed workers walk the streets in the U.S. in the 1930s advertising their skills

Source: Getty Images

Plate 3 The age of mass consumption in the U.S. as post-1945 ‘Golden Age’ capitalism flourishes

Source: Photofest Digital

Plate 4 Japanese construction company workers doing their morning exercises thereby illustrating one of the variations in national varieties of capitalism

Source: Science Photo Library Ltd

Plate 5 Anti-globalisation protesters take to the streets in Seattle in 1999 at a World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting

Source: Michael McGuerty

Plate 6 Lehman Brothers Investment Bank, whose bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history with debts of over $600 billion, was at the epicentre of the Global Financial Crisis

Source: Getty Images

Plate 7 The new technologically-driven digital global capitalist economy opens up opportunities for all according to global capitalism’s advocates

Source: Getty Images

Plate 8 Migrant workers in China looking for work with their skills advertised on the pieces of paper. For global capitalism’s critics, the new phase of capitalism looks much like the old

Source: Reuters/Nil Elias