Book Description

Book Description

This book offers an essential short course on American economic development over these years. ... Read more

Book Description

"A brilliant interpretive synthesis" -Choice

The conquest of the Americas inaugurated the slow accumulation of resources and the imperceptible structural transformations that culminated in the Industrial Revolution. From that moment on, capitalism grew and expanded with a dynamism and adaptability that are now all too familiar, profiting from wars and even managing to rebound after a series of devastating economic crises.

In this highly-anticipated revised edition of the 1981 classic, Beaud extends one of the major strengths of the original: the interweaving of social, political, and economic factors in the context of history. At the same time, Beaud's analysis provides a realistic and thorough examination of the developments of capitalism in the last twenty years, including globalization, the accelerating speed of capital transfer, and the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent absorption of its population into the world market. This new edition also offers a completely revised format that integrates diagrams and flow-charts not previously available in the English-language edition. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Marxist-Leninist Claptrap
I bought this book hoping to fill in some missing pieces in my understanding of European history. I was sorely disappointed.

Michel Beaud's "History of Capitalism" is an orthodox Marxist-Leninist tract, obviously written in the late 1970s, with a more recently-written final chapter tacked on that addresses contemporary concerns in a knee-jerk liberal manner. Despite its author's professed familiarity with "analyses [that] questioned the simplistic certitudes of Marxist dogma," his own book does not.

Every paragraph on every page is devoted to repeating words and phrases that are seldom seen anymore in serious works of history or economics: "surplus labor," "exploitation" "proletariate," "rent in labor," etc. The illustrations, also not updated since the 1970s, look like they came from a high school textbook.

Beaud considers Lenin to be a reliable historian and quotes him as such. Non-Marxist thinkers -- indeed, any credible intellectuals who emerged in the 1980s and 1990s -- rarely appear in this book and are never engaged intellectually. The final chapter is just silly: alarmist environmentalist predictions, denial that the collapse of the USSR tells us anything about the workabililty of socialism, promises that a new "crisis" is around the corner, etc.

Readers looking for a history of capitalism shouldn't waste their time with Beaud, and instead should turn to "The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought," by Jerry Z. Muller. The difference between the two books is tremendous; it is impossible to take Beaud seriously when one has read Muller. ... Read more

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In today's vernacular, Marx "outed" capitalism well over a century ago, but his explanation has been both ignored and misinterpreted by not only his detractors but also by many socialists and even a considerable number of Marxists as well. Today we are experiencing the full impact and suffering the repercussions of capitalism's inherent need to become, more than ever before, a fully internationalized and integrated system of socio-economic control and domination--the global system that many commentators have suddenly remembered Marx and Engels (1848) presciently forecasted in the Communist Manifesto. ... Read more

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The founding fathers vision of democracy was transformed into a one dollar, one vote democracy. Wall Street and corporations own all the money and thus all the votes. A clash of civilizations is promoted as a scapegoat for capitalisms systemic failure ... Read more

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With much of Europe plagued by high levels of unemployment, it became the conventional wisdom in the 1990s that deregulated labor markets - the "American Model" - were a necessary condition for good employment performance. Leading policy and banking institutions like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank and many mainstream economists strongly advocated reforms that would fundamentally transform the economies of many developed countries by limiting union strength, reducing wages and raising inequality, increasing job insecurity (and perhaps decreasing efficiency) by repealing employment protection laws and sharply scale back unemployment and social welfare benefits. Fighting Unemployment provides a critical assessment of this free market orthodoxy. Through both cross-country statistical analyses and country case studies, leading economists from seven North American and European countries argue that the accepted view has greatly exaggerated the extent to which the unemployment problem can be blamed on welfare state institutions, that there is no simple tradeoff between unemployment and wage inequality, and that the justification for dismantling the welfare state to fight unemployment rests perhaps more on free market ideology than on the empirical evidence. The larger message of this book is that many labor market models - ranging from the relatively free markets of the U.S. to the much more regulated markets of Scandinavia - are compatible with low unemployment, but strong labor market institutions are required to limit the incidence of very low wages, high earnings inequality, and excessive job insecurity. ... Read more

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A deep gap is growing between the promises of the new global capitalism and the reality of the social breakdown, inequality, insecurity, spiritual emptiness, and environmental destruction left in its wake. What went wrong, and why?

Beginning in the 1960s, social, economic, and political observers expressed concern over the role of multination-al corporations. As the global economy has evolved, it is the transnational corporation that provokes apprehension. Increasingly, concentrations of economic, social, and political power are being held by a few strong companies. Corporate Rule shows how devastating these effects have been to both the planet and the majority of its inhabitants.

This hard-hitting title examines all aspects of corporate rule and the underlying ideology which serves corporate interests. In particular, it examines its main control mechanisms: trade agreements, the media, and the popular culture, naming corporate rule a form of tyranny no different than the tyrannies of dictators, monarchs, or the church.

Though a searing indictment of an unjust international economic order, it is also a guide to the average person on how to understand and address the enormous challenges of our time. The book argues that the most promising alternative is a world of healthy market economies that function as extensions of healthy local ecosystems to meet the needs of people and communities.

Millions of people are acting to reclaim their political and economic power from these elitist forces, challenging the status quo, saying _no_ to the myth that global capital-ism is not only inevitable, but necessary. At this critical time in history, Model believes that if we truly want to meet our future needs, we must intentionally build a radical new post-corporate world that will sustain our community.

David Model teaches political science at Seneca College, King City, Ontario. He is the author of People Before Profits (Captus Press).

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Reviews (4)

A powerful shift
I agree with the main statement of the authors that today those who earn their living from work are coming out losers: shrinking wage growth, problematic pension and healthcare insurance coverage, decline in health and safety protection.
Keynes' ultimate nightmare has arrived: industrial capitalism has been replaced by financial capitalism.
This is reflected in corporate as well as governmental policies.
To hide actual tendencies corporate America has invented newspeak: displacement for firing or re-engineering for big lay-offs.
The workers are not only laid off, but even their Social Security System is privatized, offering huge management fees to financial institutions.
The policies of the Fed are purely financial, because bankers as creditors don't want te be paid back by inflated notes. It secures also an environment of high real intrest rates. But when the financial sector gets in trouble, it asks the government (all the tax payers) to step in, e.g. the bailout of the savings and loan industry.
The authors castigate rightly supply-side economics as a policy of lowering tax rates for the rich and at the same time as a money-raising vehicle for the GOP.
They show clearly that small businesses are not the cornerstone of job creation.
The position of the US work force is also beleaguered by powerful trends in world capitalism with the rise of India and China and their cheap labour force.
The authors prescribe sensible measures to reverse the trend: public investment (infrastructure), improved education and research and development.
But I don't believe that these measures can stop the immensely powerful shift that is taken place from the US/European markets to Asia. Ultimately, the economic world centre will be replaced by a new one, probably China.
A very revealing and necessary book. Not to be missed.

Missing the point
The authors have got their premise correct, but in my opinion miss the point in their conclusion. Many of the chapters (especially the one on Bangalore) do not really come to grips with the point of the argument. The title is about the triumph of "Capital" and the betrayal of "Work", a tantalizing title and a true statement in this age. They failed to expand their argument and prove their point.

Very involving and with sound logic to support conclusions
This book takes economics out of abstract textbook equations and applies it to government, culture,etc.The book makes good use of statistics,for things like concentration of wealth among different income levels and the average wage increases through the years of all kinds of education levels.It is explained why cultural differences can make one country more competitive in one area than another, and other ways in which culture impacts economics and vice versa.For example, Indians are credited with drawing corporations with their close family ties:there's usually someone to watch over the kids while Mommy or Daddy takes another shift, and there's no day-care expenses or parents taking time off to be with a sick child. Finally,it's not too technical and it's a whole lot more interesting than some economic material I've digested.

In the late 20th century, big money holds all the cards.
A great primer on the post-coldwar economy where the balance of power has shifted dramatically in favor of capital over labor. Wolman and Colamosca contend that the mobility of capital (in contrast to labor), has lead to a shifting of the balance of power between capital and labor. The "average worker", including many of our best and brightest, will continue to see their plight worsen as the nation as a whole prospers. A very readable if not distressing account of the consequences of our world view where the market-gods reign supreme. ... Read more

Book Description

Documents the ways in which Mexican liberals, radicals, and conservatives all employed market rhetoric to establish their political identities and map out their courses of action, showing how the market became an emblem linked to the identity of each group. By focusing on these rhetorical contests, Weiner offers a new perspective on social mobilization in late nineteenth-century Mexico as it also explores the related field of Porfirian economic culture and thought. ... Read more

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That capitalism, as structured, is efficient is only a belief imposed, through the educational system, for centuries to protect wealth and power. Democratic-cooperative capitalism, as we propose, increases economic efficiency equal to the invention of money, the printing press, and electricity. ... Read more

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This is the story of America's most famous street, Wall Street. No other place is so inextricably linked to the nation's history, the development of capitalism and the dramatic highs and lows of the financial markets. No other place has provoked such mythology, or has been the subject of so many dreams and illusions.

Howard Watchel's book provides a fascinating account of the origins of this famous street. Exploring its development through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he charts its dramatic transformation, offering a window on the past that helps us understand how it became the center of world finance that we see today. Drawing on original archive research, and illustrated throughout with photographs, "Street of Dreams - Boulevard of Broken Hearts" is lively and informative narrative that reads not only as a popular history of one of America's great icons, but also as a critical assessment of Wall Street's role in the political, economic and cultural evolution of the country in the nineteenth century.

Watchel looks at the key characters -- both better-known and lesser-known -- who shaped the course of Wall Street's early years; he traces its wider social history and its physical development and architecture; he focuses on the New York Stock Exchange as the most important institution on the street, including a wider history of banking houses and competing exchanges; he explores how Wall Street has influenced politics, and how it has been shaped by larger political forces around it; and he examines its love-hate relationship with two other streets -- Pennsylvania Avenue and Main Street -- the forces of government and the people of America. ... Read more

Book Description

The advent of economic neoliberalism in the 1980s triggered a shift in the world economy. In the three decades following World War II, now considered a golden age of capitalism, economic growth was high and income inequality decreasing. But in the mid-1970s this social compact was broken as the world economy entered the stagflation crisis, following a decline in the profitability of capital. This crisis opened a new phase of stagnating growth and wages, and unemployment. Interest rates as well as dividend flows rose, and income inequality widened.

Economists Grard Dumnil and Dominique Lvy show that, despite free market platitudes, neoliberalism was a planned effort by financial interests against the postwar Keynesian compromise. The cluster of neoliberal policies--including privatization, liberalization of world trade, and reduction in state welfare benefits--is an expression of the power of finance in the world economy.

The sequence of events initiated by neoliberalism was not unprecedented. In the late nineteenth century, when economic conditions were similar to those of the 1970s, a structural crisis led to the first financial hegemony culminating in the speculative boom of the late 1920s. The authors argue persuasively for stabilizing the world economy before we run headlong into another economic disaster.

Book Description

The essays in this volume assess the strength and impact of market liberal or libertarian political theory, which, broadly conceived, advocates a more carefully circumscribed role for the state and a greater reliance on the ability of individuals and voluntary, private-sector institutions to confront social problems.They offer insights into the limits of government, develop market-oriented solutions to pressing social problems, and explore some defects in traditional libertarian theory and practice. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Cutting-edge analysis of various public policy issues
Problems of Market Liberalism first appeared as the summer 1998 issue of the journal Social Philosophy and Policy. It is good that such valuable issues are made available to the public, for the quality of this journal over its comparatively short life span has been high, and the present volume is certainly no exception.

Overall, the volume stands on the cutting edge in its combination of academically responsible yet generally down-to-earth analyses. There's plenty to make one think, and plenty to equip the aspiring libertarian with intellectual weapons of a badly needed kind. By all means, read it. It won't be a quick read--it's high-density material--but it will repay the effort. ... Read more

Book Description

"Greed is Good." Is this the best argument to be made on behalf of human aspirations and the free market? Acquisitivity uproots the "greed is good" philosophy, showing it to be both wrong and largely irrelevent in defining human nature and the dynamics of economic progress.

The author looks behind Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to examine the origin and purpose of human conduct in the free market. The result is a purely conceived natural mechanism centered in each individual for efficient allocation of resources to the most productive and innovative person. Society is the indirect beneficiary.

Acquistivity brings Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations to the Twenty-First Century where the acquisitive energy of every individual can ride the Internet. The stock markets, business, education and, hopefully, governments will never be the same again. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Read this book!
Wayne Jett's brilliant book A General Theory of Acquisitivity: On Human Nature, Productivity and Survival (Writer's Digest/iUniverse) should be read by everyone who is interested in how economics affect real life.Jett, a self-taught economist like his mentor Jude Wanniski, the architect of Reaganomics, shows how man's natural inclination to acquire underlies the principles of supply side economics.I thoroughly enjoyed Jett's thoughtful command of a wide array of issues.Read this book! ... Read more