Between Marx and Foucault: Blending Critical Epistemologies in the Study of Neoliberalism

Robin Shoemaker, The Peasants of El Dorado: Conflict and Contradiction in a Peruvian Frontier Settlement, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981. Pp. 265; £13.75. This review article considers the way a recent study analyses a colonisation settlement in a coffee growing area located on the Eastern sub‐tropical forest area of Peru during the post‐reform era. It is argued that the study ignores both the presence within this ‘community ‘ of class division and antagonism together with their determinants, the process of capital accumulation. By misunderstanding the nature of debt bondage, it fails to recognise the crucial contribution of this relation to the process of indigenous capital accumulation in a context where labour is scarce.

In the present paper, the endogenous theory of time preference is extended to analyze those processes of capital accumulation and changes in environmental quality that are dynamically optimum with respect to the intertemporal preference ordering of the representative individual of the society in question. The analysis is carried out within the conceptual framework of the dynamic analysis of environmental quality, as has been developed by a number of economists for specific cases of the fisheries and forestry commons. The duality principles on intertemporal preference ordering and capital accumulation are extended to the situation where processes of capital accumulation are subject to the Penrose effect, which exhibit the marginal decrease in the effect of investment in private and social overhead capital upon the rate at which capital is accumulated. The dynamically optimum time-path of economic activities is characterized by the proportionality of two systems of imputed, or efficient, prices, one associated with the given intertemporal ordering and another associated with processes of accumulation of private and social overhead capital. It is particularly shown that the dynamically optimality of the processes of capital accumulation involving both private and social overhead capital is characterized by the conditions that are identical with those involving private capital, with the role of social overhead capital only indirectly exhibited.

This chapter explores the nature of medical work through the lens of a case study of the history of the medical profession, focusing specifically on the labour of doctors. It begins with an analysis of the emergence of the medical profession and its differentiation from more traditional forms of healthcare. It goes on to explore the role of the Medical Registration Act in providing a basis for the professionalization of medicine, and the contribution which the founding of the NHS in 1946 made to this process. It shows the impact on medical work of the rise of human rights narratives, and how these narratives have been harnessed by neoliberal governments with a view to facilitating drives to depress costs. While it shows that the integration of medical labour within processes of capital accumulation has necessarily constrained the capacity for the former to respond to the problem of ill health, it suggests that recent changes in the legal framework governing the NHS, and the work of the medical profession, have exacerbated this problem. This is so, not least because it has exposed the medical profession to social and economic risks, doing so in a way that has the potential to undermine the autonomy that is integral to their work, and to fostering public trust.

This paper seeks to develop the principal concerns of the state-corporate crime literature by drawing connections between two incidents that occurred 15 months apart: the sinking of the oil tanker the Prestige in Galicia in November 2002 and the killing of 24 Chinese migrant workers at Morecambe Bay in the North West of England in February 2004. It begins by introducing the key features of the two cases, before exploring how they might be described and understood as state-corporate crimes. It then identifies a tendency within the literature to analyse state-corporate crimes as ‘moments of rupture’ in the regulatory relationship. Seeking to move beyond such ‘moments of rupture’, the paper argues for an understanding of regulatory relationships as part of a broader regime of permission that seeks the smooth and uninterrupted accumulation of capital. It thus identifies the ‘process’ that must be analysed as a process of capital accumulation. This process is illustrated by focussing on the spheres of production and distribution in this story of capital accumulation. In the course of describing the complex ‘regime of permission’, the paper uncovers a structure of impunity that generally enables the most powerful architects and beneficiaries of state-corporate crime to sustain a process of capital accumulation.

The process of capitalist accumulation is one of crisis and boom, uneven development and the insatiable greed for the surplus labor of one class by another class. In backward countries the essence of capitalist accumulation is no different than in advanced countries. But due to the low development of the forces and relations of production in the former, the manifestations of the basic laws of motion of capitalism may differ from the forms assumed in the advanced countries. A particular aspect which assumes great import in backward countries is the ownership of capital, whether it is local or foreign. Some writers are obsessed with this phenomenon of the world of appearances, and in their obsession never discover that the uneven development that characterizes countries of the capitalist world is a consequence of the capitalist mode of production itself, not the result of who owns capital. This obsession with form is the delight of the petty bourgeoisie, which in every country tends to see the thwarting of its pathetic hopes to rise out of its class to be the result of foreign domination and conspiracies, the dirty tricks of imperialists. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of accumulation in the manufacturing sector of Peru, and in so doing, to explore the role of foreign capital in that process. But before we can deal with the process of accumulation in Peru, it is necessary to lay to rest certain myths that plague the analysis of backwardness; namely, the complementary pseudo-scientific theses that capitalist development in backward countries is blocked by (a) the lack of an internal market and (b) the extraction of surplus, which eliminates the source of accumulation. These theses are, of course, the heart of the dependency school of analysis. We deal with the latter in section II, and in section III briefly develop an analysis which places the limits to capitalist development in the sphere of production, the barriers to the production of surplus value inherent in a backward economy. In section IV, we analyze Peru, emphasizing the role of centralization, the organic composition of capital and the wage in

Gender peculiarities of the process of human capital accumulation in national scale have been analysed. Factors which hinder multiplying the volumes of human capital of the nation have been indicated. The ways of diminishing of these factors and reduction of their influence on the process of human capital accumulation have been offered.

It is a well-known fact that one of the most important determinants of growth is private investment. But in the developing country context of widespread poverty, the effects of initial conditions on the process of capital accumulation have seldom been investigated. This paper highlights heterogeneity in the process of capital accumulation across different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and derives a formal specification of investment functions in the primary, industry, and service sectors in the region using a variation of the combined Tobin's Q Theory and the neoclassical models of investment. The results highlight a more rapid accumulation of capital in the relatively high income subpanel and a widening public-private capital accumulation gap. A functional specification points to the significance of aggregate profitability shocks, the financing cost of investment, and public capital stock in estimating the growth rate of private capital accumulation. These results are supported empirically, as highlighted by the relatively small absolute deviation between actual and predicted value distributions.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics has been conferred to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (AJR) who empirically tried to discover the reasons why some countries are rich and others are poor. They demonstrated a link between social institutions and economic prosperity. In AJR, we actually see two types of economies – failed institutions and successful institutions. In Arthus Lewis’ model, the institutional set up was implicit, but it was explicit in AJR. But, the process of capital accumulation and growth that was so fundamental to Lewis is not discussed in AJR. Thus, we can view them as emphasizing two different aspects of development – the capital accumulation process (Lewis) and the socio-political set up (AJR). The Lewis model assumes the flow of labour from the informal to the formal sector, creating wealth and capital accumulation in one sector while the other sector remains stagnant. This view of Lewis can well capture the process of colonial extraction and exploitation from one area to another. It is a clear pointer to the fields untraced by AJR. This again links the two.

The process of capital accumulation is a, if not the, principal motor of modern history and constitutes the central problem examined in this book. Yet capital accumulation, and its treatment here, poses a number of fundamental theoretical and therefore also empirical questions that remain largely unresolved. These questions fall into four related categories: (1) primitive, primary, and capitalist capital accumulation; (2) the unequal structure and relations of production, circulation, and realization in capital accumulation; (3) uneven transformation of capital accumulation through stages, cycles, and crises; and (4) unending class struggle in capital accumulation, through the state, war, and revolution. Insofar as one single and continuous process of capital accumulation has existed in this world for several centuries, this heuristic division of the problem into unequal structure, uneven process, and so on is necessarily arbitrary. The structural inequality and temporal unevenness of capital accumulation, on the other hand, are inherent to capitalism.KeywordsEighteenth CenturyCapital AccumulationSixteenth CenturyWage LaborFifteenth CenturyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Entrepreneurship research has concentrated almost exclusively on small organizations and the firm as the unit of analysis. As a result, researchers have overlooked the real wealth-creating activities of established business owners. Current work does not pay enough attention to ownership patterns and the accumulation, control, and transmission of capital, which should be central questions in a free enterprise, capitalist economy. Argues that small and medium-sized enterprises are part of the process of wealth creation and capital accumulation, which is entrepreneur based and operates at all scales. Underlying most research to date are four assumptions: the firm (rather than the entrepreneur) is the unit of definition and analysis, the differences between large and small firms are paramount; starting and growing firms is the best way to conceptualize wealth and job creation; and starting firms is separate from firm growth. The thesis herein is that the process of wealth creation and capital accumulation is entrepreneur- rather than organization-based, and that the process and all stakeholders should be the focus of study. Research into multiple business owners (portfolio entrepreneurs) in Scotland in 1994-95 was designed to establish the contribution of existing business to new firm creation. Of 7,316 new companies, 45 percent had directors of other companies; people starting new companies are significantly associated with activities of existing businesses; and a substantial number of new firms interlock with existing companies, forming clusters. While individual firms in a cluster may not grow, the cluster does. Diversification may be a growth and survival strategy. Starting and growing new firms may be a form of capital accumulation. Focus at the level of small firms overlooks the political and social aspect of business: the issues of who owns and controls, gains and loses power and jobs, and how capital is structured. The new awareness will provide better answers and make clearer the real contributions of entrepreneurs to the economy, as well as the implications of taxation and regulation. (TNM)

Moebius (1996) is the first cinematographic production of the “Universidad del Cine” of Buenos Aires. It is the collective project of forty-five film students under the general direction of Gustavo Mosquera. The film narrates the mysterious disappearance of a subway train along the last addition to its underground network: the “línea perimetral.” In search for answers, a topologist named Daniel Pratt initiates an allegorical journey into Moebius, a subway trajectory that is timeless but includes all times. This article explores the role of Moebius' subway as a metaphor to understand the urban. Drawing from Buenos Aires' urban history this filmic analysis ties the Subte to Buenos Aires' processes of capital accumulation and unveils the fissures of its modern spaces.

Significant public administration reforms was made in 2000’s in Turkey. The diversity and intensity of the reforms creates difficulties to analyze the reasons of the change in public sector. The aim of this study is describing the transformation of public administration associate with the capital accumulation. The dynamic nature of the capital accumulation process and the reform process requires holistic and relational analyze. Therefore, this study tried to explain the transformation of public administration through a conceptual mechanism. Changes in capital accumulation is associated with changes in public administration by the concept of coordination. And coordination requires new institutional regulations. The laws which brings significant changes in the public administration affects the capital accumulation process and the effects of changes in the public administration and the mutual process of accumulation were analyzed. The transformation of public services are explained with the concept of commodification and commercialization. Differences between these two concepts have been explained. Thus, the coordination requirement of the capital accumulation process and the public administration reform process is established with each other. Finally we tried to obtain important tools to analyze the effects of new reforms in public administration on the capitalist social relations continuity

Цель: в работе рассматриваются процессы непрерывного погашения кредита и непрерывного накопления капитала под непрерывный простой процент. Решается задача максимизации накопленной суммы на прямолинейных траекториях с ограничением общей суммы вкладов. Подобная задача − минимизации суммы платежей при погашении кредита – решалась в статье [9] на более широком классе траекторий. Обнаруживаются связи между процессами погашения кредита и накопления капитала. Обсуждение: особенностью работы является то, что процессы накопления и погашения рассматриваются как непрерывные, что облегчает их исследование с помощью простых и сложных непрерывных ставок. Кроме того, как и в предыдущих работах, предполагается, что деньги имеют как временную, так и безвременную стоимость. Результаты: показано, что обе задачи могут быть представлены в виде задач линейного программирования и могут решаться также и симплекс-методом. Для обеих задач строятся двойственные по отношению к ним. Выясняется экономический смысл их решений. Как показывают примеры, результаты работы могут быть легко переведены в практическую плоскость.

Capital accumulation for Marx is promoted by competition, which compels individual capitalists to invest and accumulate in order to survive. In addition, those firms which grow faster will benefit from economies of scale and increasing returns through an expansion of their market share and subsequent higher profits. However, the process of capital accumulation does not proceed in a smooth and orderly manner because when expected profits are low, capitalists halt the process of investment and accumulation and hence precipitate a general crisis involving unsold goods and high unemployment. Therefore, accumulation is a cyclical process in which forces unique to capitalism work to reassert the cycle of accumulation and investment. As unemployment rises, the real wage falls and profits rise, leading to a new cycle of accumulation and investment. The dynamic nature of the capitalist mode of production is identified with several elements that are inherent to the system and Marx shows how the system itself involves the capitalist imperative to accumulate and the competitive process leads to the requirement to innovate and to introduce labour-saving techniques into the production process. This ensures the rising productivity of labour and therefore economic growth. However, this dynamic brings with it the seeds of its own destruction, and Marx is able to illustrate why the very success of the capitalist mode of production will lead to its eventual demise as this success is based upon conflict and contradiction.

Entrepreneurial human capital accumulation and the growth of rural businesses: a four-country survey in mountainous and lagging areas of the European union