Search results for ""author makoto itoh""

Marxist economic thought has had a long and distinguished history in Japan, dating back to the First World War. When interest in Marxist theory was virtually nonexistent in the United States, rival schools of thought in Japan emerged, and brilliant debates took place on Marx’s Capital and on capitalism as it was developing in Japan. Forty years ago, Makoto Itoh’s Value and Crisis began to chronicle these Japanese contributions to Marxist theory, discussing in particular views on Marx’s theories of value and crisis, and problems of Marx’s theory of market value. Now, in a second edition of his book, Itoh deepens his study Marx’s theories of value and crisis, as an essential reference point from which to analyze the multiple crises that have arisen during the past four decades of neoliberalism. One contribution of the original Value and Crisis was to bridge Japan and the world in the field of Marxian political economy. Itoh’s second edition demonstrates an even wider-ranging familiarity with major schools of Marxist thought, summarizing and assessing viewpoints of such theorists as Hilferding, Bauer, Kautsky, Bukharin, Luxemburg, Grossman, Sweezy, the Japanese Marxist Kozo Uno, together with the relevant parts of Capital and a section on the 1930’s Great Depression. Given today’s current emergencies of world capitalism and socialism, says Itoh, we need to work together to resolve new global problems, articulating new issues of Marx’s theories of value and crisis. The promise of Marx’s theories has not waned. If anything – given the failure of Soviet-style socialism and the catastrophe of neoliberalism – it grows daily.

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For much of the twentieth century, rivalry existed between centrally planned and capitalist solutions to the problems of economic stability and growth. This changed in the 1990s. In that same decade, the period of rapid growth of the Japanese economy came to an end and by the close of the century, the American model of capitalism was seen as the only possible option.Modern capitalism has achieved spectacular rates of innovation and growth but the system is still menaced by financial crises and economic recessions. Furthermore, there is an unacknowledged diversity of capitalist systems. Contributors to this volume argue that to understand capitalism in evolution, this diversity of systems and approaches must be taken into account and their individual evolutions analysed.This book represents a major understanding of the evolution of capitalism in the twenty first century and brings together a distinguished group of experts with perspectives from America, Europe and Japan.

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