Search results for ""Author Paul Zarembka""

Only after World War II did scholars move to theorize the distinction between the core countries at the center of capitalism and peripheral countries, often with an added distinction to include the semi-peripheral. Immanuel Wallerstein's World Systems approach has been particularly important and led the term periphery into common scholarly parlance. Not surprisingly, much work remains to be done to untangle the extreme diversity and complexity of the political economies and resistances against the multidimensional cruelties perpetrated in the world’s many, very different peripheral contexts. Class History and Class Practices in the Periphery of Capitalism addresses this need head-on. A first chapter lays a theoretical groundwork by showing that Marx, in his later life, became aware that historical developments are much more complicated than he originally conceived them to be, and he was not as far away from calling for site-specific analyses. Contributions here carry out just such analyses: they describe specificities for Russia, Portugal, Argentina, and Mexico, offer broader perspectives on post-hegemonic Latin America and Asia, provide detailed analyses of resistances across Africa, and reflect on the deeper meaning of neozapatismo for promoting a shift in the entire terrain of discussion. Rich in theoretical depth and empirical rigor, and supplemented by an out-of-the-archive translation of Karl Katusky's theory of crises, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of political economy and international political economy, and it is of keen interest to anyone working to resist specific capitalist exploitations in their own place and time.

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This volume examines the recent advance of neoliberalism. The volume begins with a very extensive study of the archives of Piero Sraffa, which suggests the importance of Marx's influence on his work. The following chapters address the recent multifaceted advance of neoliberalism, with a focus on three current instances. Firstly, suggesting uneven development as in Rosa Luxemburg. South African multi-billion dollar investments in two fossil-fuel projects have recently cemented debtor relations to the World Bank and the Chinese Development Bank, while generating activist opposition in this era of climate crisis. A second instance focuses on secondary school teachers in England whose work load is not only increasing but also increasingly commodified and judged, a development that represents the penetration of abstract labor and alienation, as in Marx. The third example examines the credit bubbles in Greece, noting them as an example of the progency of fictitious capital. The remaining chapters include a critique of Althusser's interpretation of the Marxist philosophy of science, and a continued discussion regarding the concept of a labor aristocracy, engaging the work of Zak Cope.

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This volume focuses on nationality's efficacy in much of world affairs, and on the background and current issues surrounding global crisis. As one of the most famous Marxist revolutionaries, Rosa Luxemburg vigorously promoted her own conceptions, often opposing Lenin, her contemporary. In this volume, Narihiko Ito offers a much needed, extensive analysis of her position. This is followed by a critique of the current Iranian conjuncture, offered by Farhang Morady. The development of crises in capitalism is addressed both directly and indirectly within the volume. The volume continues with Karen Petersen's analysis of the post-WWII developments of major currencies. Restoring the concept of freedom within the current crisis, Alan Freeman argues the need to extricate French positivism from the Marxism that developed after Marx. Radhika Desai highlights renewed consideration of the major role of consumption demand in Marxist theory and considers implications for the current crisis. Paul Zarembka extends, theoretically and empirically, Marx's analysis of long-term capitalist accumulation and shows that merely 10-15 percent of surplus value has been needed for the accumulation occurring over the past 150 years. The final chapter by Jorgen Sandemose presents a careful argument offering notions of the origins of Marx's Capital. His chapter culminates in an engaging volume that addresses The National Question and the Question of Crisis.

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This volume analyzes two decisive factors that have become embedded in the world spread of capitalism, a shift toward dominance of the financial sector, now entailing massive greed and calling into question whether the 'rules' of capitalism have been broken, and of global wage differentials so deep that recognition of a labor aristocracy cannot be avoided. These chapters are supplemented by two additional showing that gold still regulates the dollar's value, and that unpaid reproductive labor of women adversely affects labor productivity. Analysis of finance engenders discussion of its place in value theory, posed around the rate of profit, and is more complex than often presented. Furthermore, the varying rates of profit at the firm level, not just for financials, are distributed in a manner exhibiting more frequent extreme cases than a Bell-curve would suggest. Implications for incorporation of randomization into political economy are drawn. The final chapters provide evidence that Marx was more correct than Kalecki and Minsky when arguing the lead of profits for investment, and that product innovations can mitigate problems of over-production resulting from process innovations.

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The growing centrality of risk management in pro-market governance raises important questions regarding how risks are produced, and why? Who and what is included in, and excluded from, risk management, and why? And, what is the relationship between the rise of risk management and neoliberalism? Drawing on various political economy approaches, this volume addresses these questions by examining - both analytically and empirically - diverse meanings and practices of risk management across a range of scales and themes ranging from austerity to climate change to housing and debt. The authors investigate the relationship between shifts in contemporary capitalism and the ways in which neoliberal forms of risk management have emerged, been reproduced and normalized, and, transformed historically.

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This work advances geopolitical economy as a new approach to understanding the evolution of the capitalist world order and its 21st century form of multipolarity. Neither can be explained by recently dominant approaches such as U.S. hegemony or globalization: they treat the world economy as a seamless whole in which either no state matters or only one does. Today's BRICs and emerging economies are only the latest instances of state-led or combined development. Such development has a long history of repeatedly challenging the unevenness of capitalism and the international division of labour it created. It is this dialectic of uneven and combined development, not markets or imperialism, which has spread productive capacity around the world. It also ensured that the hegemony of the UK would end and attempts to create that of the US would peter out into multipolarity. Part two of this book paves the way, advancing Geopolitical Economy as a new approach to the study of international relations and international political economy. Following on from the theoretical limitations exposed in Part I, in this volume the analytical limitations are explored.

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This work advances geopolitical economy as a new approach to understanding the evolution of the capitalist world order and its 21st century form of multipolarity. Neither can be explained by recently dominant approaches such as 'U.S. hegemony' or 'globalization': they treat the world economy as a seamless whole in which either no state matters or only one does. Today's 'BRICs' and 'emerging economies' are only the latest instances of state-led or combined development. Such development has a long history of repeatedly challenging the unevenness of capitalism and the international division of labour it created. It is this dialectic of uneven and combined development, not markets or imperialism, which has spread productive capacity around the world. It also ensured that the 'hegemony' of the UK would end and attempts to create that of the US would peter out into multipolarity. This two part volume paves the way, advancing Geopolitical Economy as a new approach to the study of international relations and international political economy. They expose the theoretical limitations of the latter in Part I and the analytical limitations in Part II.

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As a few alert mainstream and corporate economists rediscover the certain elements of Marx's analysis of capitalism, the essays in the first part of this volume demonstrate that they have far to go. To their discredit, mainstream understandings whether of capitalism's growth or of Western capitalism's interrelated long-term stagnation and financialization are derailed precisely by political aversion to, or ignorance of, Marxist categories and analyses. The chapters in the second part extend Marxist insights into assessing the value of the so-called information, or knowledge-based, commodities, and offer a Marxist critique of Lenin, the only world leader who earlier had deeply studied his own country's economy. The part also presents two important works in translation. The first, read in Russian by Marx himself, raises serious questions about the relevance of Hegel in the understanding of Capital and offers its own insightful analysis. The other, by a Marxist collective in the 1970s demonstrates the centrality of politics and the class struggle in the simplistically conceived economic devalorization of constant capital. The final part contains a debate on the merits of positivist Marxism sparked by an article in Volume 26 of this research series.

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This volume of Research in Political Economy sets out to explore three key themes pertinent to the critique of political economy: (1) the disciplinary role of capital under neoliberalism, (2) accumulation and finance, and (3) the life and theories of Rosa Luxemburg. While the sections focus on different aspects of political economy, taken as a whole, they complement each other in striking a balance between concrete and abstract Marxist analyses. The essays in the first section critically examines the more concrete aspects of political economy, such as the changing role of the World Bank vis-a-vis the Third World, the Millennium Challenge Account - a newly forged 'official development compact' put forward by the Bush II administration, the disciplinary strategies tied to labour restructuring in Argentina, the political economy of financial fragility on a global scale, and a cultural critique of the Documenta11. The essays in the second section explore analytically dimensions of Marx's theory of the monetary circuit, Rudolf Hilferding's banking theory, Henryk Grossman's Law of Accumulation, and the evidence surrounding supposed value-price correlations. The articles in the third section of the volume are devoted to the person and theoretical contribution of Rosa Luxemburg, the famous Polish-German theoretician and revolutionary leader.

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