"Capitalism -- Marx and Beyond" examines the current bourgeoisie capitalism. Capitalism is addressed as a unique concrete historically reality. This mode of production inherits traditional pre modern ...social forms that are cultivated as national identities. National sentiments are expressed as honor of possessions that are identified through diverse "we" and preserved as "our values". Capitalism transforms and modifies such pre modern heritages into an undistinguishable mix of both modern and pre modern social forms. Focus in this book will be on the unique material features of capitalism. Attention will be provided to the works of Karl Marx, particularly the second volume of Capital, where Marx apparently got stuck. His deadlock indicates a serious deficit associated with investigations of accumulation and innovation. Innovation and accumulation will, in this book, be linked to uncertainty and reoccurring crises that signify the incapacities of the capitalist system to operate as a viable mode of production. In the theory of value, Marx places human social labor in a unique historical position, where social labor is applied together with previously produced means in order to deliver new output. Anarchism and the insufficiency to provide necessary and appropriate output causes disturbances and crises. Several critical examinations of selected views on crises, uncertainties and dysfunctions of capitalism are offered. Selected strategies based on monetary solutions and financial instruments aim to regenerate balance. Rather than gaining a balance, reoccurring disruptive circumstances are assumed to be the normal state of affairs. Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel and The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity from 1984 draws attention to a strategy based on a system of flexible specialization accompanying the introduction of Information and Communication Technology. Their second historical divide associated with the new production strategy is critically examined. Thomas Piketty and his Capital in the Twenty-First Century from 2014 emphasizes capital, wealth distribution and inequality. A critical account of the concept of capital is a paramount assignment in the critical investigations into his contribution. Marx is offered another chance through the critical investigations of some basic concepts introduced by David Harvey in A Companion to Marx's Capital, Volume 2 from 2013. Harvey's emphasis on the role of credit and finance are critically investigated and justifies an alternative return to Marx. A renewed interpretation of Marx corresponds with his assumption that a balanced and stable economy is an illusion. Capitalism has to accumulate and create the necessary flexibility in order to reproduce. On the other hand, this system of accumulation is anarchic, arbitrary and contradictory. Identification of sources for flexibility and accumulation becomes a deadlock for Marx. Innovation is insufficiently accounted for in his analysis. A serious deficit with his whole position emerges that paves the way for an alternative beyond Marx. The alternative beyond Marx draws attention to a wider context of the critical investigations. Some philosophical implications concerning the concepts of freedom, independence, determinism and randomness are touched upon. Implications for the much-debated concepts of basis and superstructure are addressed. The consequences for the future possibility for the human species to cope with crises and other aspects of our destiny are sketched.
This article analyzes the aging of a figure of labor: the male Korean office manager. In contrast to its normative heyday in late 20th century East Asia, the figure of the older manager has become a ...devalued and deviant figure in contemporary Korea. Based on ethnography of a Korean white-collar workplace, I argue that the older male manager has emerged as a "figure of alterity" that seems to permeate all aspects of Korean company life. By attuning to the ways this figure is observed and discussed in different areas, from narration to policy, I show how their negative presence can be cited to justify new office reforms. Younger managers shape their own office identities in contrast to older figures and formal office policies emerge as the foil of managerial stereotypes. An "old" spirit of capitalism, embodied in a personified figure, is just as central in articulating and differentiating models of capitalist subjectivity and institutional identity as a new one.
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El poder local es uno de los escenarios en los que mejor se pueden observar los vínculos entre el tejido empresarial, los negocios y la política. En 1877, un año después de la llegada al poder como ...gobernador provisorio de Lorenzo Latorre, tiene lugar una reunión que afianzará aún más su poder autoritario en Uruguay. En ella intervienen miembros de lo más selecto del país, con participación directa en el poder local montevideano: la Junta Económica Administrativa. A partir de la consulta de fuentes notariales y protocolos comerciales, así como de otras procedentes de la propia institución analizada, se identificarán quiénes fueron dichos individuos y cuáles fueron sus relaciones con la política municipal, la empresa y los negocios en el militarismo uruguayo.
Texto original: Yannis Stavrakakis, “Symbolic Authority, Fantasmatic Enjoyment and the Spirits of Capitalism: Genealogies of Mutual Engagement”, en Lacan and Organization, eds. Carl Cederström y ...Casper Hoedemaekers (Londres: MayFlyBooks, 2010), 59-100.
Traducción a cargo de Liliana Betancourt. Candidata a Magister en Psicoanálisis y Cultura, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
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An easy way of observing and predicting changes in the structure and behavior of any free-market economy is to track changes in its circular flow model of economic activity. Using book titles as a ...literature review in combinations with a few classics, I describe how the circular flows of free -market economies evolved from little, gentle, and now nearly powerless government role, culminating in super-duper capitalism. First the evolution generated great wealth and income, and of late also increasing inequality. Processes like globalization that allowed for economic convergence also spurred enormous tensions. The resulting stresses and strains are responsible for unpopular populism and nationalism. The doughnut economic model provides a reasonable framework for explaining what we observe. It shows a decline in the social foundations of human rights, made worse by breaches in the “planetary boundaries” both of which squeeze the livable space ever more tightly like a boa-constrictor suffocating its prey. In this paper I do not go as far as measuring my observations, but the directions for policy and future research have clearly been established. Regarding the latter, one may want to examine how COVID19 has shocked into scurrying towards a delusion of a system that was already slouching towards an illusion. It turns out that the illusion is not a new prediction. In his critique of Marx and rationalization of Kondratieff’s waves (K-waves) Schumpeter predicted that capitalism as an innovation is not immune to the “gale of creative destruction.”
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