The Acceleration of Privatization: Understanding State, Power Bloc, and Capital Accumulation in Turkey

This essay seeks to explain the constitutive role that space-time plays in the dynamics of capital accumulation. Through a close reading of David Harvey's work, I show that time and space work together in ways particular to the capitalist mode of producing, distributing, selling, consuming and disposing of commodities. This does not, I argue, mean that space-time is reducible to capital accumulation — there are, to be sure, other forms of space-time that are relatively autonomous from the now dominant mode of production. My aim is not to provide a definitive account of space-time tout court but, instead, to show both the organic connection between space and time within capitalism specifically as well as the necessary — rather than simply contingent — role that space-time plays in the dynamics of accumulation. My argument is that capitalist space is inconceivable in abstraction from capitalism's temporal compulsions, and that space-time functions as a concrete abstraction that internalizes the whole gamut of contradictions that Marx identified over a century ago. The essay makes its analytical contribution by surveying previous Marxist and non-Marxist contributions to understanding space and time in the social sciences, en route to a close reading of Harvey's Limits to Capital. The political implications of paying careful attention to capitalist space-time are explored by counter-posing Harvey's work with Doreen Massey's recent writings about spatio-temporality.

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the nature and dynamics of capital accumulation in the rubber and iron ore sectors of Liberia. In other words, how is capital accumulated in Liberia’s rubber and iron ore sectors? In order to address this research question, the chapter is divided into four major parts. First is the examination of the peripheral capitalist Liberian state as the crucible for capital accumulation. Second, the capital accumulation processes in Liberia are deciphered for the purpose of locating the major actors that are involved in capital accumulation there. Third, the chapter analyzes the sectoral accumulation of capital by examining the major actors in the rubber and iron ore sectors. Finally, the study draws several major conclusions.

Foreign aid, domestic capital accumulation, and foreign borrowing

We quantitatively investigate the macroeconomic effects of natural disasters using a standard RBC model with a focus on their impact on capital accumulation. Natural disasters can have ambiguous effects on domestic capital accumulation, through their two opposing effects on households’ incentives for domestic capital accumulation. On the one hand, natural disasters hurt domestic capital accumulation due to their destructive nature. On the other hand, a high natural disaster risk leads households to increase precautionary savings, which can increase the long-run capital stock when it is invested domestically. Our quantitative results show that in a closed economy, the long-run capital stock exhibits a “U” shape with respect to the intensity of natural disasters, and that in a small open economy, the long-run capital stock monotonically decreases with respect to the intensity of natural disasters. This result can provide an explanation to Skidmore, M., and H. Toya. 2002. “Do Natural Disasters Promote Long-Run Growth?” Economic Inquiry 40 (4): 664–87 puzzling empirical finding: Lack of observed negative long-run relationship between natural disasters and long-run capital stock/economic output. Moreover, in the event study analysis on the short-run macroeconomic dynamics during the natural disaster crises, we find that households’ capital flight can exacerbate output costs of the natural disasters. This finding is also in line with Noy, I. 2009. “The Macroeconomic Consequences of Disasters.” Journal of Development Economics 88 (2): 221–31 puzzling finding that capital market openness adversely affects the short-run output cost of natural disasters.

The rise of the platform economy marks the latest phase in the ongoing digital revolution Indeed, the platform is to this digital era what the factory was to the industrial era, both a symbol and an organizing mechanism Gernot Grabher and Jonas Konig (2020) used Karl Polanyi's analysis of what he termed the “great transformation” to frame the rise of platform economy The platform economy is remarkable as it confirms Polanyi's (and Marx's before him) insight that the reach of the market is based upon increased commodification as it has been able to reach into ever more parts of social life We introduced the term “platform economy” in 2015 because we recognized that the digital platforms were changing the dynamics of capitalist accumulation - an analysis framed by regulationist school of political economy The intuition was that the socio-technical innovation of digital online platforms was the critical fulcrum for an economic restructuring that would rewire the flows of data and ultimately money and power The firms we have termed the “mega-platforms”, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, have become the most valuable and powerful firms in the world Importantly, the reach of these platforms is global and yet local and personal Moreover, this platform power has only been reinforced during the COVID-19 pandemic Copyright © 2021 Martin F Kenney, John Zysman, Dafna Bearson

This paper presents a model of capital accumulation for a large number of heterogeneous producer–consumer agents in an exchange space in which interactions depend on agents’ positions. Agents in the exchange space are subject to both attractive and repulsive forces: exchanges drive agents closer, but crowd out more distant agents. The formalism used in this paper was developed earlier by the authors and is based on statistical field theory. It allows the analytical treatment of economic models with an arbitrary number of agents, while preserving the system’s interactions and microeconomic features of the individual level. Our results show that the dynamics of capital accumulation and the agents’ positions in the exchange space are correlated. Interactions in the exchange space induce phases within the system that depend on the relative strength of the repulsive force. When the repulsive force is strong, the system is in a phase of regulated exchanges. An initial central position both favours and fastens capital accumulation in average, and high levels of initial capital drive agents towards the centre. Yet, this phase displays mild competition and a broad-based although slow improvement in exchange terms. In this phase, random shocks can redistribute capital and initiate a virtuous circle of capital accumulation. When the repulsive force is low, a phase of deregulated exchanges emerges, in which capital distribution is less homogeneous and competition among agents harshens. Increased mobility accelerates capital accumulation for high initial capital producers, whereas low initial capital producers are now evicted from the exchange space as their prices and revenues deteriorate. Thus, a threshold effect appears. Above a certain level of initial capital, agents benefit from and remain in a central position. Below this level, they remain at the periphery of the exchange space.

Uneven Development endeavours to derive a theory of uneven geographical development by putting in motion a ‘historical dialogue’ between Marx's critical theorisation of capitalism and the geograhical reality of capitalism at the close of the twentieth century, and by theorising the relations between material nature and the spatial dynamics of capitalist accumulation. The result, however, is a theory of uneven development predicated on a logical rather than a historical conception of capitalism, which furthermore supersedes the question of the production of nature in conceptualising the spatial dynamics of (contemporary) capitalism. This article argues for a re-theorisation of uneven geographical development that considers the production of nature, namely extractive industry, as a point of departure in theorising the spatial dynamics of contemporary capitalist accumulation, focusing briefly on the concentration and centralisation of capital.

Capital accumulation with tangible assets

This paper examines the effect of land market liberalization on the dynamics of capital accumulation. It is shown that the land market liberalization, which is accompanied with the transfer of agricultural technology, may not always offer a “win‐win” outcome for developed and developing countries. Improved agricultural productivity generates a growth enhancing externality. However, land market liberalization affects the balance between the equalizing force of the diminishing returns technology and the un‐equalizing force of the low income elasticity of the agricultural commodity demand. As a result, land market liberalization accompanied with the transfer of agricultural productivity, may not always guarantee a “win‐win” outcome for developed and developing countries. If improvement of agricultural productivity is insignificant then land market liberalization can cause “win‐lose” situation for developed and developing countries. This result suggests that one should be very careful in a policy proposal designed to foster the process of development through foreign land ownership. It is important to recognize that apart from benefits, foreign land ownership also creates a disadvantage for capital accumulation and causes the magnification of the world income inequality.JEL classificationF43, O11, R14

This paper examines the welfare consequences of liberalizing capital markets in the presence of increasing returns driven by externalities in knowledge and capital accumulation. Using a revealed preference argument in a continuous-time infinite horizon model, this paper shows that the opening of capital markets can result in welfare deterioration if foreign interest rates are high and capital outflows are likely. Does opening capital markets improve welfare? A simple reinterpretation of the static theory of gains-from-trade in an intertemporal framework leads us to answer in the affirmative. Opening up capital markets should result in welfare gains by exploiting the possibility of international borrowing and lending at world interest rates different from autarky rates. Despite the theoretical prediction, most countries have been imposing various restrictions on international capital transactions. Besides difficulties in managing exchange regimes arising from massive short-term capital movements with free capital mobility, growth oriented economies are also concerned about possible adverse effects of capital flight on domestic capital accumulation. When the outside world offers higher returns to capital than domestic markets, domestic savings may go abroad to finance foreign capital accumulation instead of domestic accumulation. However, if no distortion exists in the market mechanism, the cost of decreased domestic capital accumulation and slower growth must be more than offset by the benefit of increased capital income from abroad. The defense of capital controls on the grounds of loss in domestic production when capital outflows are likely after liberalization can be justified only when there is a substantial amount of external economies associated with containing knowledge and capital within the border. External economies from scale of operation, knowledge creation, and physical or human capital accumulation have received renewed attention, and have become one of the building blocks in endogenous growth models. (See, for example, Romer 1986 and 1987, Lucas 1988, and Grossman and Helpman 1990.) In these models, an individual production unit has the standard neoclassical technology but spillovers of external exonomies from the aggregate stock of knowledge and capital make the economy as a whole exhibit scale economies and prevent the marginal product of capital from falling below the subjective discount rate, sustaining unbounded

This article develops a dependent economy model of determination of employment and asset prices that integrates the roles of relative prices, expectations and dynamics of capital accumulation. In this model, money wage is rigid which leads to persistence of unemployment. Labour and capital are used as factors of production in the traded sector while the non-traded sector uses labour and imported intermediate inputs. The article examines macroeconomic implications of selective economic reforms for asset price dynamics, growth and employment. The discussion of comparative static exercises shows that not only the effects of different policies are ambiguous but also the short-run and the long-run effects are qualitatively different. For example, tariff liberalization causes the short-run expansions of both traded and non-traded sectors but overtime it may depress the capital stock leading to contraction of both the sectors and an increase in unemployment. The broad message of this article is that the design of macroeconomic policy should not be purely based on considerations of the short-run effects of policy changes. JEL: E22, F13, F41

The dynamics of capital accumulation in an overlapping generations model

The article discusses François Quesnay’s dynamics of capital accumulation. First, we analyze the notion of bon prix to highlight the central analytical role played by profits in Quesnay’s growth dynamics. This leads us to challenge Ronald Meek’s interpretation ([1962] 2003) and to (re)propose Peter Groenewegen’s suggestion (1974 and 1983) that profits are not included in the net product for policy reasons. We also show that profits display features resembling a stable income component such as supervision wages (see Marx [1863] 1963). Second, we contest Steven Pressman’s argument (1994, pp. 143–154) that Quesnay missed the distinction between nominal and real variables by modeling how the farmers’ monetary interest (and profit) initiates the capital accumulation process (see Vaggi 1985), which over time leads to an increase of the (physical) surplus rate and thus of the net product in real terms.

If Proudhonism in the 19th century was, as Marx argued, a petty bourgeois ideology, this paper argues that the new communism of the commons propounded by Badiou, Hardt and Negri and Žižek is a 21st century avatar of it. It speaks not for what Poulantzas called the ‘traditional petty bourgeoisie’, as Proudhon did, but for the ‘new petty bourgeoisie’ of ‘non-productive wage-earners’, which has also lately styled itself the ‘creative class.’ A failure to comprehend the dynamics of capitalist accumulation and a general antipathy to any general organization of labour in society, and thus to any serious politics, are common to both. In addition, the paper shows that the protection of the cultural commons, the core of the project, is but a programme aiming for the continued reproduction of the creative class within capitalism. It is also prey to a series of misunderstandings - of the concept of the commons itself, of contemporary capitalism whose dynamics forms the backdrop of their project and key economic and political ideas of Marx whose authority they seek to attach to their project. This is a pre-print of an article published in the journal International Critical Thought (c) 2011 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The article is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21598282.2011.584163

This paper aims to describe and highlight the key issues of farm capital structures, the dynamics of investments and accumulation of farm capital, and the financial leverage and borrowing rates on farms in selected European countries. Data collected from the Farm Account Data Network (FADN) suggest that the European farming sector uses quite different farm business strategies, capabilities to generate capital revenues, and segmented agricultural loan market regimes. Such diverse business strategies have substantial, and perhaps more substantial than expected, implications for the financial leverage and performance of farms. As an illustration, the financial risks clearly increased in the Danish agricultural sector with loan rates following an upward sloping trend in 2006; the first sign of the forthcoming financial crisis that may also severely hit highly leveraged agricultural firms. By using standard measures for farm assets and lending rates, we reveal that countries adopt different approaches to evaluating agricultural assets, or the agricultural asset markets simply differ substantially depending on the country in question. This has implications for most of the financial indicators. In those countries that have seen rapidly increasing asset prices at the margin, which were revised accordingly in the accounting systems for the whole stock of assets, firm values increased significantly, even though the firms had been disinvesting. If there is an asset price bubble and it bursts, there may be serious knock-on effects for some countries. The large variation in leverage positions and their substantial decrease over time raises new issues to be addressed in more analytical studies.