Tag Archives: capitalism

 Martin Wolf writes that successful leftism “must recognise the crucial role of incentives in shaping human behaviour.” This is correct. I’m not sure, though, that it is a big argument against Corbynism. This is because actually-existing capitalism itself contains many dysfunctional incentives – ones that constrain innovation and encourage rent-seeking - and Corbynism offer the hope of reducing some of these. I would say that there is a tendency in capitalism (economic liberalism) toward...

Income inequality has been rising so rapidly in the United States and around the world that it threatens to make economic growth less durable, according to research from the International Monetary Fund. "While strong economic growth is necessary for economic development, it is not always sufficient," four IMF economists write in a new blog. "Inequality has risen in several advanced economies and remains stubbornly high in many that are still developing," they added. "This worries...

"The rent is too damn high." The problem with capitalism is rent extraction owing to market power resulting from effects of social, political and economic asymmetry. Neoclassical economics models capitalism (economic liberalism) in terms of perfect competition. This is not only an ideal, but also it is an unreachable ideal owing to institutional arrangements, on one hand, and asymmetry resulting from history and culture. In addition, government is inextricably bound up in the economy...

Communist Party members should study contemporary capitalism but must never deviate from Marxism, Chinese President Xi Jinping said... “If we deviate from or abandon Marxism, our party would lose its soul and direction,” Xi said. “On the fundamental issue of upholding the guiding role of Marxism, we must maintain unswerving resolve, never wavering at any time or under any circumstances.”Xi said the party should better integrate the basic tenets of Marxism with the “reality of contemporary...

Read these two posts together. Art brings up an interesting issue. Why can capitalism not survive in a no-growth world? Because that's how we set it up. If we set it up differently, it would work differently. If we designed economic policy for a no-growth world, we could live in a no-growth world. You see it in economic models all the time. We're almost there now, actually. We live in an almost-no-growth world, right? And yes, things are not very good. And even I have been calling for (or...

Theresa May’s speech this morning was trailed as a defence of free market capitalism. If that’s what it was, it failed because she failed to answer the big questions.... Stumbling and MumblingDucking questions about capitalism Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Critique of David Harvey's reading of Das Kapital.Michael Roberts BlogCapital.150 part two: the economic reason for madnessMichael Roberts

Marx's capital (Volume 1) was published September 14, 1867, exactly 150 years ago. Below a few links to posts on Marx written over the years.What makes capitalism capitalism? (on the definitions of capitalism as a mode of production) Sraffa and Marxism or the Labor Theory of Value, what is it good for? (on the labor theory of value) Was Marx right? Nice of you to ask, but... (on common misconceptions about Marx)A Note on the Concept of Vulgar Economics (an important idea, often...

All these studies have one thing in common: they demonstrate that reflection on power relationships and property, which for a moment was thought to have been annihilated after the Soviet disaster, in reality is only beginning. Europe and France must take their rightful place. The magic work — "power." Le blog de Thomas Piketty — EnglishRe-thinking the capital code Thomas Piketty | Professor at EHESS and at the Paris School of Economics

An inconvenient truth — history. However, capitalism, alone or chiefly, cannot be blamed. Historical development is a dialectical process with many inputs and a variety of factors that "could have been different." But they weren't different for a variety of reasons, some economic, some social, and some political , that occurred with bourgeois liberalization. The transition away from monarchy and feudalism influenced historical events not only through individual choices but also shaped it...