Royal Capitalism

Royal Capitalism PDF Author: Puangchon Unchanam
Publisher:
ISBN: 0299326004
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
"Classical theorists once predicted that monarchy must eventually give way to capitalism. But is monarchy really dead--an archaic institution from the feudal past? In Royal Capitalism: The Monarchy, Wealth, and Social Classes in Thailand, Puangchon Unchanam examines one particularly successful monarchy: that of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej or Rama IX, whose seven-decade reign not only survived but thrived amid the country's transition to industrial capitalism. Indeed, the Thai crown's active role in national politics, the market economy, and popular culture has made it not only the dominant institution in the kingdom, but also the wealthiest monarchy in the world today. Tracing Rama IX's reign (1946-2016), Puangchon shows how the Thai crown was transformed into a 'bourgeois monarchy,' distinctive in several key ways. Rather than representing only royal and religious values, the monarchy rebranded itself by embracing the traditional middle-class ethic of hard work, frugality, and self-sufficiency. Rather than only relying upon coercion, the crown sought political legitimacy. And rather than simply controlling national assets, the crown became the country's major broker, connecting business elites, patronizing their industries, and partnering with giant corporations. Thanks to these distinctive features that it has recently embodied, the Thai monarchy enjoys hegemonic status in the capitalist state, preeminent status in the market, and popular support from the urban bourgeoisie"

Royal Capitalism

Royal Capitalism PDF Author: Puangchon Unchanam
Publisher:
ISBN: 0299326004
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
"Classical theorists once predicted that monarchy must eventually give way to capitalism. But is monarchy really dead--an archaic institution from the feudal past? In Royal Capitalism: The Monarchy, Wealth, and Social Classes in Thailand, Puangchon Unchanam examines one particularly successful monarchy: that of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej or Rama IX, whose seven-decade reign not only survived but thrived amid the country's transition to industrial capitalism. Indeed, the Thai crown's active role in national politics, the market economy, and popular culture has made it not only the dominant institution in the kingdom, but also the wealthiest monarchy in the world today. Tracing Rama IX's reign (1946-2016), Puangchon shows how the Thai crown was transformed into a 'bourgeois monarchy,' distinctive in several key ways. Rather than representing only royal and religious values, the monarchy rebranded itself by embracing the traditional middle-class ethic of hard work, frugality, and self-sufficiency. Rather than only relying upon coercion, the crown sought political legitimacy. And rather than simply controlling national assets, the crown became the country's major broker, connecting business elites, patronizing their industries, and partnering with giant corporations. Thanks to these distinctive features that it has recently embodied, the Thai monarchy enjoys hegemonic status in the capitalist state, preeminent status in the market, and popular support from the urban bourgeoisie"

Natural Capitalism

Natural Capitalism PDF Author: Paul Hawken
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316031534
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book

Book Description
There are no more reespected voices in the environmental movement than these authors, true counselors on the direction of twenty-first-century business. With hundreds of thousands of books sold worldwide, they have set the agenda for rational, ecologically sound industrial development. In this inspiring book they define a superior & sustainable form of capitalism based on a system that radically raises the productivity of nature's dwindling resources. Natural Capitalism shows how cutting-edge businesses are increasing their earnings, boosting growth, reducing costs, enhancing competitiveness, & restoring the earth by harnessing a new design mentality. The authors offer dozens of examples of businesses that are making fourfold or even tenfold gains in efficiency, from self-heating & self-cooling buildings to 200-miles-per-gallon cars, while ensuring that workers aren't downsized out of their jobs. This practical blueprint shows how making resources more productive will create the next industrial revolution

23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism

23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism PDF Author: Ha-Joon Chang
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608193586
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book

Book Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "For anyone who wants to understand capitalism not as economists or politicians have pictured it but as it actually operates, this book will be invaluable."-Observer (UK) If you've wondered how we did not see the economic collapse coming, Ha-Joon Chang knows the answer: We didn't ask what they didn't tell us about capitalism. This is a lighthearted book with a serious purpose: to question the assumptions behind the dogma and sheer hype that the dominant school of neoliberal economists-the apostles of the freemarket-have spun since the Age of Reagan. Chang, the author of the international bestseller Bad Samaritans, is one of the world's most respected economists, a voice of sanity-and wit-in the tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz. 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism equips readers with an understanding of how global capitalism works-and doesn't. In his final chapter, "How to Rebuild the World," Chang offers a vision of how we can shape capitalism to humane ends, instead of becoming slaves of the market.

Working towards the Monarchy

Working towards the Monarchy PDF Author: Serhat Ünaldi
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824855727
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
In the twilight years of Thailand's ailing King Bhumibol, battles between royalists and their red shirt opponents are increasing, and the tectonic shifts that lie beneath Thailand's decade-old political crisis have become increasingly apparent. Serhat Ünaldi's Working towards the Monarchy sheds new light on recent developments with its bold analysis of urban space in downtown Bangkok: buildings, the author finds, are abstractions of the complexities that shape Thailand's transformation. Most criticism of the political role of the Thai monarchy—its deep involvement in Thailand's uneven capitalist development, Bhumibol's endorsement of military coups and his silent acquiescence to political violence—has focused on the role of individuals: the king, the royal family, or privy councilors. Ünaldi departs from such limited intentionalist approaches to show instead just how deeply enmeshed the monarchy is in Thai society as a whole. He demonstrates how and why Thais from all walks of life drew on royal charisma to advance their individual aims, in effect "working towards the monarchy." Ünaldi's sociological analysis of urban space reveals how buildings and spaces have been constructed for political and economic ends, particularly to shore up the monarchy. For several decades the architecture in central Bangkok has helped protect the charisma of the monarchy, which dominates landholdings and investments in the area. Because the sacred aura of the royal family legitimized capitalist expansion and consumerism, it was defended and enhanced by those Bangkokians who profited from it. Yet politically and geographically marginalized Thais failed to benefit from this royalist-led capitalist development and eventually found a new leader, business tycoon-cum-politician Thaksin Shinawatra. When Thaksin's followers turned against royal charisma and attacked the architecture that represented and supported it, movement away from royal charismatic authority became a real possibility for the first time. By combining sociology, political science, architecture, and anthropology, Working towards the Monarchy offers a unique interdisciplinary approach. It will interest scholars and generalists alike, particularly those involved in the comparative study of monarchies.

Keynes Against Capitalism

Keynes Against Capitalism PDF Author: James Crotty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429877064
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Get Book

Book Description
Keynes is one of the most important and influential economists who ever lived. It is almost universally believed that Keynes wrote his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, to save capitalism from the socialist, communist, and fascist forces that were rising up during the Great Depression era. This book argues that this was not the case with respect to socialism. Tracing the evolution of Keynes’s views on policy from WWI until his death in 1946, Crotty argues that virtually all post-WWII "Keynesian" economists misinterpreted crucial parts of Keynes’s economic theory, misunderstood many of his policy views, and failed to realize that his overarching political objective was not to save British capitalism, but rather to replace it with Liberal Socialism. This book shows how Keynes’s Liberal Socialism began to take shape in his mind in the mid-1920s, evolved into a more concrete institutional form over the next decade or so, and was laid out in detail in his work on postwar economic planning at Britain’s Treasury during WWII. Finally, it explains how The General Theory provided the rigorous economic theoretical foundation needed to support his case against capitalism in support of Liberal Socialism. Offering an original and highly informative exposition of Keynes’s work, this book should be of great interest to teachers and students of economics. It should also appeal to a general audience interested in the role the most important economist of the 20th century played in developing the case against capitalism and in support of Liberal Socialism. Keynes Against Capitalism is especially relevant in the context of today’s global economic and political crises.

Rentier Capitalism

Rentier Capitalism PDF Author: Brett Christophers
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788739744
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Get Book

Book Description
How did Britain’s economy become a bastion of inequality? In this landmark book, the author of The New Enclosure provides a forensic examination and sweeping critique of early-twenty-first-century capitalism. Brett Christophers styles this as ‘rentier capitalism’, in which ownership of key types of scarce assets—such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, or digital platforms—is all-important and dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals: rentiers. If a small elite owns today’s economy, everybody else foots the bill. Nowhere is this divergence starker, Christophers shows, than in the United Kingdom, where the prototypical ills of rentier capitalism—vast inequalities combined with entrenched economic stagnation—are on full display and have led the country inexorably to the precipice of Brexit. With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers’ examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this insidious economic phenomenon but to overcome it. Frequently invoked but never previously analysed and illuminated in all its depth and variety, rentier capitalism is here laid bare for the first time.

Capitalism Magic Thailand

Capitalism Magic Thailand PDF Author: Peter A Jackson
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9814951978
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Get Book

Book Description
By studying intersections among new cults of wealth, ritually empowered amulets and professional spirit mediumship—which have emerged together in Thailand’s dynamic religious field in recent decades—Capitalism Magic Thailand explores the conditions under which global modernity produces new varieties of enchantment. Bruno Latour’s account of modernity as a condition fractured between rationalizing ideology and hybridizing practice is expanded to explain the apparent paradox of new forms of magical ritual emerging alongside religious fundamentalism across a wide range of Asian societies. In Thailand, novel and increasingly popular varieties of ritual now form a symbolic complex in which originally distinct cults centred on Indian deities, Chinese gods and Thai religious and royal figures have merged in commercial spaces and media sites to sacralize the market and wealth production. Emerging within popular culture, this complex of cults of wealth, amulets and spirit mediumship is supported by all levels of Thai society, including those at the acme of economic and political power. New theoretical frameworks are presented in analyses that challenge the view that magic is a residue of premodernity, placing the dramatic transformations of cultic ritual centre stage in modern Thai history. It is concluded that modern enchantment arises at the confluence of three processes: neoliberal capitalism’s production of occult economies, the auraticizing effects of technologies of mass mediatization, and the performative force of ritual in religious fields where practice takes precedence over doctrine.

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism PDF Author: John McMurtry
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745313474
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book

Book Description
In this bold new look at the recent uncontrolled spread of global capitalism, John McMurtry, professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph, develops the metaphor of modern capitalism as a cancer. Its invasive growth, he argues, threatens to break down our society's immune system and--if not soon restrained--could reverse all the progress that has been made toward social equity and stability. On every continent, in every state, there are indicators of profound economic and environmental collapse. From the lands of indigenous communities to the currency markets of Asia, from the ocean floors to the ozone layer, the collapse is all-encompassing and deep-reaching. John McMurtry traces the causes of this global disorder back to the mutating assumptions of market theory that now govern the world’s economy. He diagnoses the malaise as a pathologist would a biological cancer, tracking the delinked circuits of the global system’s monetised growth as a carcinogenic disorder at the social level of life-organization. In the wide-lensed tradition of Adam Smith, Marx and Keynes, McMurtry cuts across academic disciplines and boundaries to penetrate the inner logic of the system’s problems. Far from pessimistic, he argues that the way out of the global crisis is to be found in an evolving substructure of history which provides a common ground of resolution across ethnic and national divisions. Reaching beyond conventional textbooks, this fascinating study offers a new paradigm which is accessible to intelligent citizens the world over.

Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy

Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy PDF Author: William H. Janeway
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108680380
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Get Book

Book Description
Legendary economist Hyman Minsky identified author William H. Janeway as a 'theorist-practitioner' of financial economics; this book is an expression of that double life. Interweaving his unique professional perspective with political and financial history, Janeway narrates the dynamics of the innovation economy from the standpoint of a seasoned practitioner of venture capital, operating on the frontier where innovative technology transforms the market economy. In this fully revised and updated edition, Janeway explains how state investment in national goals enables the innovation process and why financial bubbles accelerate and amplify its impact. Now, the digital revolution, sponsored by the state and funded by speculation, has matured to attack the authority, and even the legitimacy, of governments. The populist response in the west, especially in the United States, opens the door for China to seize leadership of the innovation economy from America.

Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games

Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games PDF Author: Jules Boykoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135938334
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book

Book Description
The Olympic Games have become the world’s greatest media and marketing event—a global celebration of exceptional athletics gilded with corporate cash. Huge corporations vie for association with the "Olympic Image" in the hope of gaining a worldwide marketing audience of billions. In this provocative critical study of the contemporary Olympics, Jules Boykoff argues that the Games have become a massive planned economy designed to shield the rich from risk while providing them with a spectacle to treasure. Placing political economy at the center of the analysis, and drawing on interdisciplinary research in sociology, politics, geography, history, and economics, Boykoff develops an innovative theory of "celebration capitalism", the manipulation of state actors as partners that drives us towards public–private partnerships in which the public pays and the private profits. He argues that the Athens Games in 2004 marked the full emergence of celebration capitalism, with London 2012 representing its quintessential expression, characterized by a state of exception, unfettered commercialism, repression of dissent, questionable sustainability claims, and the complicity of the mainstream media. Controversial, challenging, and forthright, this book opens up a fascinating new avenue for understanding the contemporary Olympics in the context of global capitalist society. It is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the Olympic Games, the relationship between sport and society, or global politics and culture.