Author: Erald Kolasi
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1685900925
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
A comprehensive blueprint for a new post-capitalist order—which values our collective future over immediate economic gains The fate of all economic systems is written in the energy flows they obtain from the natural world. Our collective humanity very much depends on nature—for joy, for comfort, and for sheer survival. In his prescient new book, The Physics of Capitalism, Erald Kolasi explores the deep ecological physics of human existence by developing a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between economic systems and the wider natural world. Nature is full of complex and dynamic systems that are constantly interacting with our societies. The collective physical interactions of the natural world guide and forge many fundamental features of human societies and civilizations. Humanity does not exist on a magical pedestal above the rest of reality; we are just one slice in a grand continuum of physical systems that interact, combine, and transform over time. We too belong to the natural world. And it’s this critical fact that controls the long-term fate of our economies and civilizations. Among all the living organisms that have called this blue marble home, humans are a very recent species. In that short period of time, we have managed to become one of the most dominant life forms in the history of the planet, creating powerful civilizations with elaborate cultures, large populations, and extensive trade networks. We have been nomads and farmers, scientists and lawyers, nurses and doctors, welders and blacksmiths. Our achievements are both astonishing and unprecedented, but they also carry great risks. Throughout history, economic growth has depended heavily on people converting more energy from their natural environments and concentrating the resulting energy flows towards the application of specific tasks. The economic and demographic growth of human civilization over the last ten thousand years has profoundly impacted natural ecosystems throughout the planet, triggering major instabilities across the biosphere that threaten to reverberate on civilization and to destabilize its long-term trajectory. Swamped with multiple ecological challenges of historic proportions, global civilization now stands at a critical tipping point that deserves closer scrutiny. If we are to have any hope of addressing the difficult challenges we face, then we must begin by understanding them and appreciating their complexity. And then, we must act. This book offers a comprehensive blueprint for our collective future, pointing the way to a new post-capitalist order that can provide long-term viability and stability for human civilization on a global scale.
Author: Paul Collier
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062748661
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Bill Gates's Five Books for Summer Reading 2019 From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it. Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of the United States and other Western societies: thriving cities versus rural counties, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now. In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts—economic, social and cultural—with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervor of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself—and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the twentieth century.
Author: George Gilder
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
ISBN: 1621570274
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Ronald Reagan’s most-quoted living author—George Gilder—is back with an all-new paradigm-shifting theory of capitalism that will upturn conventional wisdom, just when our economy desperately needs a new direction. America’s struggling economy needs a better philosophy than the college student's lament: "I can't be out of money, I still have checks in my checkbook!" We’ve tried a government spending spree, and we’ve learned it doesn’t work. Now is the time to rededicate our country to the pursuit of free market capitalism, before we’re buried under a mound of debt and unfunded entitlements. But how do we navigate between government spending that's too big to sustain and financial institutions that are "too big to fail?" In Knowledge and Power, George Gilder proposes a bold new theory on how capitalism produces wealth and how our economy can regain its vitality and its growth. Gilder breaks away from the supply-side model of economics to present a new economic paradigm: the epic conflict between the knowledge of entrepreneurs on one side, and the blunt power of government on the other. The knowledge of entrepreneurs, and their freedom to share and use that knowledge, are the sparks that light up the economy and set its gears in motion. The power of government to regulate, stifle, manipulate, subsidize or suppress knowledge and ideas is the inertia that slows those gears down, or keeps them from turning at all. One of the twentieth century’s defining economic minds has returned with a new philosophy to carry us into the twenty-first. Knowledge and Power is a must-read for fiscal conservatives, business owners, CEOs, investors, and anyone interested in propelling America’s economy to future success.
Author: Gérard Duménil
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745337531
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
An innovative Marxist analysis of capitalism's transition to a new mode of production: 'Managerialism'
Author: Anwar Shaikh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199390657
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1019
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Book Description
Orthodox economics operates within a hypothesized world of perfect competition in which perfect consumers and firms act to bring about supposedly optimal outcomes. The discrepancies between this model and the reality it claims to address are then attributed to particular imperfections in reality itself. Most heterodox economists seize on this fact and insist that the world is characterized by imperfect competition. But this only ties them to the notion of perfect competition, which remains as their point of departure and base of comparison. There is no imperfection without perfection. In Capitalism, Anwar Shaikh takes a different approach. He demonstrates that most of the central propositions of economic analysis can be derived without any reference to standard devices such as hyperrationality, optimization, perfect competition, perfect information, representative agents, or so-called rational expectations. This perspective allows him to look afresh at virtually all the elements of economic analysis: the laws of demand and supply, the determination of wage and profit rates, technological change, relative prices, interest rates, bond and equity prices, exchange rates, terms and balance of trade, growth, unemployment, inflation, and long booms culminating in recurrent general crises. In every case, Shaikh's innovative theory is applied to modern empirical patterns and contrasted with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Post-Keynesian approaches to the same issues. Shaikh's object of analysis is the economics of capitalism, and he explores the subject in this expansive light. This is how the classical economists, as well as Keynes and Kalecki, approached the issue. Anyone interested in capitalism and economics in general can gain a wealth of knowledge from this ground-breaking text.
Author: Michel Henry
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472526082
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 138
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Book Description
Both a unique witness of transformative events in the late 20th century, and a prescient analysis of our present economic crises from a major French philosopher, Michel Henry's From Communism to Capitalism adds an important economic dimension to his earlier social critique. It begins by tracing the collapse of communist regimes back to their failure to implement Marx's original insights into the irreplaceable value of the living individual. Henry goes on to apply this same criticism to the surviving capitalist economic systems, portending their eventual and inevitable collapse. The influence of Michel Henry's radical revision of phenomenological thought is only now beginning to be felt in full force, and this edition is the first English translation of his major engagement with socio-economic questions. From Communism to Capitalism reinterprets politics and economics in light of the failure of socialism and the pervasiveness of global capitalism, and Henry subjects both to critique on the basis of his own philosophy of life. His notion of the individual is one that, as subjective affect, subtends both Marxist collectivism and liberalism simultaneously. In addition to providing a crucial economic elaboration of Henry's influential social critiques, this work provides a context for understanding the 2008 financial shock and offers important insights into the political motivations behind the 'Arab spring'.
Author: Richard Westra
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367610432
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
"Various strains of heterodox economics have sought, and largely failed, to dismount orthodoxy from its dominant position. This book critiques the criticizers, explaining why heterodox economics challenges have faltered, and then presents a coherent alternative paradigm of its own. This simultaneously exposes the vacuousness of neoclassical economics, the limitations of heterodox critique and the subverting of Karl Marx's revolutionary economic thought by his own disciples. The book draws in particular on two key intellectual traditions in making its arguments: critical realism and Marxism. From the refounding of critical realist philosophy of science in the hands of Roy Bhaskar, emphasis is placed upon the position that the ontological nature of the object of study determines the form of its possible science. However, in their theoretical constructions, neither orthodox economics nor heterodox economics problematize the unique ontology of capitalism to the detriment of knowledge about the social world. The book maintains that a century of misthinking over Marx's corpus has resulted in a missed opportunity to construct a paradigmatic alternative to orthodox economics. Drawing upon the tradition of the Japanese Uno approach to Marxism, and supported by Bhaskar's development of critical realism as underlaborer for science, the book defends Marx's writing in his monumental Capital as founding an economic science adequate to its ontological object of study. It then elaborates upon how Marxian economic theory exposes the hidden scourges of capitalism and what is required to unleash the potential of this theory for comprehensive analysis of capitalist vicissitudes, the study of economic life in precapitalist societies, and the design of a desperately needed postcapitalist social order. Broadening its appeal as it sets out to reclaim Marx's revolutionary legacy, this original volume critically traverses writings in mainstream and heterodox economics, cutting edge philosophy of science, Marxian political economy and introduces readers to a reconstruction of Marx's Capital engineered in Japan. This provocative book is essential reading for everyone interested in heterodox economics, critical realism, Marxian economics and critiques of capitalism. Richard Westra is University Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Opole and Research Coordinator at the Science and Technology Park, Opole, Poland. He has previously taught at universities in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Canada, The Bahamas and is international Adjunct Professor of the Center for Macau Studies, University of Macau"--
Author: Dennis C. Mueller
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195391179
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 574
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Book Description
The financial crisis that began in 2008 and its lingering aftermath have caused many intellectuals and politicians to question the virtues of capitalist systems. The 19 original essays in this handbook, written by leading scholars from Asia, North America, and Europe, analyze both the strengths and weaknesses of capitalist systems. The volume opens with essays on the historical and legal origins of capitalism. These are followed by chapters describing the nature, institutions, and advantages of capitalism: entrepreneurship, innovation, property rights, contracts, capital markets, and the modern corporation. The next set of chapters discusses the problems that can arise in capitalist systems including monopoly, principal agent problems, financial bubbles, excessive managerial compensation, and empire building through wealth-destroying mergers. Two subsequent essays examine in detail the properties of the "Asian model" of capitalism as exemplified by Japan and South Korea, and capitalist systems where ownership and control are largely separated as in the United States and United Kingdom. The handbook concludes with an essay on capitalism in the 21st century by Nobel Prize winner Edmund Phelps.
Author: Anne Case
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691217068
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class Deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism are rising dramatically in the United States, claiming hundreds of thousands of American lives. Anne Case and Angus Deaton explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. This critically important book paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline, and provides solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.
Author: Emmanuel D. Farjoun
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030933210
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
This book presents a probabilistic approach to studying the fundamental role of labor in capitalist economies and develops a non-deterministic theoretical framework for the foundations of political economy. By applying the framework to real-world data, the authors offer new insights into the dynamics of growth, wages, and accumulation in capitalist development around the globe. The book demonstrates that a probabilistic political economy based on labor inputs enables us to describe central organizing principles in modern capitalism. Starting from a few basic assumptions, it shows that the working time of employees is the main regulating variable for determining strict numerical limits on the rate of economic growth, the range of wages, and the pace of accumulation under the present global economic system. This book will appeal to anyone interested in how the capitalist mode of production works and its inherent limitations; in particular, it will be useful to scholars and students of Marxian economics. “Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshé Machover, follow up their pathbreaking work on the application of statistical physics methods to political economy in this book with David Zachariah, in which they develop methods for making educated and structured estimates of stylized facts applicable to capitalist economies. There’s a lot for economists and anyone interested in the political economy of capitalism to learn from their reasoning on these issues, including their novel and challenging suggestion of bounds on the rates of increase of use-value productivity of labor, and on the range of variation of the wage share.” Duncan K. Foley, Leo Model Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research
