Advanced Capitalist Countries Research Articles

The Heart of the Place: The Resurrection of Locality in an Age of Hyperspace

The focus, orientation and institutional organization of urban and regional policies in advanced capitalist countries has fundamentally changed over the last 15 years. The nature of these instituti...

Classical Social Theory and the French Revolution of 1848

Three of the classic founding fathers of sociology (Comte, Marx and Tocqueville) were contemporary observers of the French Revolution of 1848. In addition, another important theoretical tradition was represented in contemporary observations of 1848 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The present paper summarizes aspects of the views of these theoretically minded observers, notes some points at which more recent historical research suggests revisions to these classical views, and poses three arguments: (1) The revolution of 1848 exerted a direct shaping influence on classical social theory through lessons (some now subject to revision) learned from observation of the revolutionary struggles. (2) The 1848 revolution influenced classical social theory indirectly by contributing to the submergence of the radical French revolutionary tradition (along with utopian socialism) after the defeat of the June insurrectionaires and Bonaparte's coup. (3) Both writers in the classical tradition and current researchers have failed to thematize adequately a basic transformation in effectiveness of national integration, communication and administration which made 1848 in crucial ways much more akin to 1789 than it was direct evidence for the growth of class struggle and the likelihood of further revolution in advanced capitalist countries.

Social Benefits in Advanced Capitalist Countries: A Cross-National Assessment

One of the most striking characteristics of the state in the advanced capitalist democracies is the role it plays in the allocation of disposable income. Government policy has, of course, always influenced income distribution through regulation and the provision of public goods, but redistribution is a by-product of such activity, which seeks primarily to accomplish other ends. In contrast, a distinguishing feature of the modem welfare state is its deliberate effort to ameliorate the distribution of income generated by the market. Contemporary states perform this function in two ways, through tax policy and income transfer programs. These are clearly linked, and a comprehensive study of the redistributive consequences of the welfare state would require an examination of their combined impact. Yet income transfers are important in their own right.' They have, indeed, been among the fastest growing components of government activity and, unsurprisingly in an era of economic constraints, among the most controversial. The sharp differences characteristic of contemporary assessments of income transfer policy follow from divergent interpretations of the causes of inequality and of the government's role in addressing it. Supporters of an active welfare state favor more ambitious public redistributive efforts because they regard poverty and insecurity as structural problems inherent in the operation of the market, and they maintain that a measure of social security should be treated almost as a right of citizenship. Moreover, they contend that an active welfare state need not be achieved at the expense of economic growth; indeed, they see income security and distributive equity as important preconditions of a productive work force. Critics of public welfare programs, on the other hand, are suspicious of wide-ranging government transfers because they view most forms of poverty as reflecting a lack of individual effort, and they argue that welfare programs only exacerbate the problem by creating disincentives for individuals to work and save. They reserve their sharpest criticism for programs aimed at the working-aged poor: these efforts, in their view, foster a dependence on government that erodes the self-reliance necessary for a permanent escape from poverty. But even such programs as pensions and health benefits are subject to criticism, if only because they are seen as diverting resources from a productive private sector to an inherently unproductive public sector.2

The Ambiguous Future of Professional and Technical Workers in Manufacturing: Some Hypotheses

In the current period of dramatic industrial restructunng afflicting virtually all advanced capitalist countries, much attention has focused on the steadily worsening situation of blue collar workers (Blackaby 1979, Frobel, Hein richs & Kreye 1980; Bluestone & Harrison 1982; Massey & Meegan 1982; Massey 1984; Martin & Rowthorn 1986) By contrast, the position of pro fessional and technical workers in manufacturing is perceived as relatively secure if not enhanced by the very same processes of economic restructunng, including the application of new production technologies in traditional sec tors and the rapid growth of new, 'high tech' industries. This security is derived from two main sources which show every sign of strengthening in the near to medium term. First is relative scarcity of supply, which stands to be exacerbated by rapid demand growth for workers in these categories (Leontief & Duchin 1986) Second is a classic skills monopoly which allows these workers considerable autonomy and discretion over their work practices. The combination of high occupational status, high income, and a high level of independence in the workplace means that these workers tend to identify with management rather than labor. Indeed, in some cases they are management. Although they work for salaries and are generally not owners of capital, they provide a good example of what Wright refers to as a contradictory class location (Wnght 1985)

Civil Servant Attitudes Toward Administrative Rules and Procedures: A Comparative Analysis of Brazil and the United States

This study represents an empirical investigation of civil servant orientations toward the regulation of bureaucratic conduct and discretion in a developing country—Brazil—and in an advanced capitalist country—the United States. Survey findings suggest that Brazilian civil servants are far more cautious and more likely to oppose the use of discretion than a comparable sample of American civil servants. Factors such as personal/background characteristics and value orientations were also investigated for their impact upon orientations toward the use of discretion, producing evidence of both common associations and some nation—specific effects.

Public Welfare Expenditure in OECD Countries: Towards a Reconciliation of Inconsistent Findings

In this paper some of the reasons for inconsistent findings on the determinants of welfare expenditure and outcome in the advanced capitalist countries are examined. Particular attention is paid to the work of Harold Wilensky and John Stephens on the grounds that their research illustrates some key methodological and theoretical differences in this field. Several problems of conceptualization and measurement in their work are identified. Hypotheses are derived from their work and tested against data on seventeen OECD countries at five time points from 1960 to 1980. The conclusion is drawn that inconsistent findings in the field derive from different conceptualizations and operationalizations of key terms and, more fundamentally, from different conceptions of the welfare state.

The American Historical Association, Part 2

with Naziism, in part because of the openly acknowledged homosexuality of Ernst Roehm, head of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA), and in part because the left saw the masculinist ideology of the right as homoerotic. The contention of both papers that homosexuals were wrong to see the left as their friends when left-wing parties were the only ones consistently to support the removal of legal restrictions on homosexual behavior seems politically shortsighted and anachronistic. All three sessions raised questions concerning the relationship between the values and ideologies of the left and the existence of cultural contradictions that defy the historical leftist analysis of the centrality of class. Particularly in advanced capitalist countries, these cultural contradictions have required and still require more subtle analysis on the part of the left, particularly with regard to struggles over ethnic and gender issues.

Industrialización y desarrollo: la crisis de los paradigmas

La industrializacion y el desarrollo del Tercer Mundo constituyen, desde hace cuarenta anos, un centro de interes del analisis economico. Sobre el particular predominaron, hasta hace poco tiempo, dos corrientes de pensamiento: para unos, el subdesarrollo era la expresion de un simple retardo; para los otros, era el producto historico de la industrializacion y del desarrollo de los paises capitalistas avanzados. Pero en los ultimos anos las certezas se han debilitado y los cambios que han ocurrido en el Tercer Mundo dejan mal situada la simplicidad de las clasificaciones. Los esquemas tradicionales, liberales o radicales, se ajustan dificilmente a la realidad actual en la que estan presentes, entre otros fenomenos, los nuevos paises industriales; frente a la rigidez de los modelos es necesario revisar los criterios y las condiciones del desarrollo en un plano de modestia, realismo y analisis especificos.

The Office Functions Studies in Advanced Capitalist Countries : The Cases of the United States and Great Britain

The Office Functions Studies in Advanced Capitalist Countries : The Cases of the United States and Great Britain

Perspectives on Marxism in China Today: An Interview with Su Shaozhi

The Cultural Revolution in China from the mid-1960s through the 1970s greatly impaired the study and development of Marxist thought in the most populous country in the world. Ironically, the avowed purpose of the upheaval had been to defend Marxism-Leninism from revisionism, but it was not until the latter part of the 1970s that the leaders of the Communist Party of China recognized that Chinese Marxism was in danger of becoming ossified and irrelevant to many in the country. Marxism as a theoretical system had stagnated because it had not developed through confronting and solving the ongoing problems of socialist construction in China, let alone addressing the developments in Marxist thought in the advanced capitalist countries. Marxism, like the rest of China, had gotten stuck in the dogmatism and formalism of the later years of the Cultural Revolution.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The irreversible welfare state: its recent maturation, its encounter with the economic crisis, and its future prospects.

The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s meant important changes within the Western states: apparatuses of armed forces, bureaucratic ordering, and public transport and communication became institutions of transfer payments to households, and public education, caring and social services. In this article we describe the influence of the current economic crisis on the welfare state. Average yearly growth of social security expenditure continues, but has declined since 1981. Generous systems of social security clearly provide no security against the consequences of the economic crisis, especially unemployment. Public commitment to social security and full employment are largely independent of each other. We describe how, under the surface of welfare state growth, the political relations of force have changed in favor of those social forces advocating fundamental reappraisal of the welfare state over those supporting its maintenance or extension. The resistance to significant changes is so strong, however, that fundamental reconstruction of the welfare state is as yet excluded. We hold that the welfare state is an irreversible major institution of advanced capitalist countries, as long as democracy prevails. The building of a majoritarian anti-welfare state coalition seems impossible for the foreseeable future, but in some countries significant cuts must be expected; we end by specifying some economic and political preconditions for such cuts.

Thatcherism, populist authoritarianism and the search for a new left political strategy

A number of writers from the Left, particularly associated with Marxism Today, have suggested that there has been a shift to more right-wing policies and authoritarian and populist forms of government in advanced capitalist countries and that these can be seen as a response to the current world economic crisis. Fiona Atkins suggests that explanations of the shift towards more authoritarian government must take account of recent changes in economic structures and class relations. In particular she argues that it is necessary to recognise the implications of the increasing internationalisation of capital. By referring to third world examples, the author identifies a number of forms of authoritarian regime. The broader frame of reference indicates that a degree of eurocentrism has limited the understanding of authoritarianism in the current British debate.

Privatization and protective services for the elderly: Some observations on the economics of the aging process

Various analysts of both social control and social welfare policies and practices have identified a major shift in the management of groups such as the mentally ill, the mentally retarded and the mentally infirm elderly in advanced capitalist countries (Emerson, 1981; Lerman, 1982; Scull, 1977, 1981; Warren 1981). Until relatively recently, reliance upon state-operated and financed institutions and services used to lie at the very heart of social control and welfare policies. However, since the early 196Os, the trend has been towards deinstitutionalization and the reprivatization of alternative care and treatment facilities (Lerman, 1982; Scull, 1977, 1981). This general development has been referred to as the “privatization and profitization of social control” (Spitzer & Scull, 1977), and, in the specific context of mental health systems, the ‘recommodification’ of the mental health patient (Scull, 1981). There is a growing interest in the way in which a private sector, social welfare and social control marketplace is being created and how, following a variety of financial initiatives on the part of the state, the incentive to engage in social welfare and social control entrepreneurship has been developed. The goal of this article is to identify and delineate another feature of this general trend. The focus of inquiry will be turned upon one specific group,of persons, who have been affected by the policies of deinstitutionalization and privatization: namely, the mentally infirm elderly. While a policy of reprivatization is unfolding in relation to care and treatment facilities, the reverse trend seems to be forming in relation to the provision of the guardianship and trusteeship (or “conservatorship”) services, which are an important adjunct to the policy of deinstitutionalization. Scull has contended that one notable consequence of deinstitutionalization has been “a much greater involvement of the private sector in spheres

The Regime of Capital

During the last half century the influence of Marxism on the social sciences, as understood and taught in the advanced capitalist countries, has steadily increased. This has happened in two ways—through younger social scientists becoming converted to Marxist ways of thinking and acquiring positions in academia; and through bourgeois social scientists being exposed to Marxist work in these fields and frequently finding aspects of it valuable, or at least worthy of study. History has probably been the discipline most affected. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that most serious work in history nowadays takes for granted the validity of some of the basic tenets of historical materialism—without of course necessarily coming to characteristically Marxist conclusions. Sociology and anthropology have also been much influenced, often in subtle and even unconscious ways. Political science—or, as it is sometimes more appropriately called, "government" or "politics"—has been less affected, and economics least of all.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The present crisis in historical perspective

The present crisis of capitalism differs from that of the 1930s in major ways. Investment has not collapsed, macroeconomic policy has moved away from instead of towards Keynesian ideas, and economic class conflict has played an important role. The rise of class conflict is attributed to structural, political and ideological changes in the advanced capitalist countries, and macroeconomic policy developments are interpreted as a response to the resulting difficulties. Reasons are advanced for the bouyancy of investment spending since 1973.

Corporatism, Public Policy and the Labour Movement: A Comparative Study

This article identifies two dimensions which distinguish corporatism, especially as defined by Philippe Schmitter, from pluralism. Noting that most discussions of corporatism have emphasized one dimension and neglected the second, the article seeks to determine, empirically, whether the two dimensions are as closely associated as the concept suggests. The finding, for the cases studied, is that they are inversely rather than positively correlated. The search for an explanation of why this might be the case leads to two conclusions. First, that the management of labour-capital conflict in advanced capitalist countries has relied less on inter-group and group–state interaction than corporatist theory would suggest. Second, that Schmitter's conceptualization of corporatism is seriously flawed and that other corporatist writers avoid these flaws only at the cost of drastically reducing the concept's distinctiveness from pluralism.

Workers' Earnings and Corporate Economic Structure.

Workers' Earnings and Corporate Economic Structure investigates the role of economic structure in determining employees' earnings and how workplace organization contributes to social inequality. The study focuses on the characteristics of the organization of capital rather than on different management styles or systems. Earnings as a key labor force outcome are examined at both the industry and company levels of economic organization. Comprised of nine chapters, this volume begins with an overview of economic explanations for the diversity of wage labor in advanced capitalist countries, and whether the labor market in the United States is structured by the organizational characteristics of capital. The discussion then turns to the dual economy model of industrial structure; an alternative resource approach to the study of organizational structure and labor segmentation; and enterprise- and industry-level sectoral models of economic structure. Subsequent chapters explore the relationship between the sectoral models and poverty, class position, and racial and gender groups; the ability of the sectoral models to explain workers' earnings and select continuous-variable models of the impact of economic structure on workers' earnings; earnings determination within economic sectors; and the impact of economic structure across class, occupational, and status groups. The final chapter offers concluding thoughts and reflections and integrates the insights derived from the study of industrial structure with themes from the broader field of social stratification. This book will be of interest to economists, sociologists, and workers and industry officials.

Internationalization of Capital and the Semi-Idustrialized Countries: The Case of the Motor Industry

The emergence in recent years of the semi-industrialized countries poses a number of questions for the analysis of the world economy and the internationalization of capital. These include the significance of industrial relocation, the factors underlying industrial growth in the semi-industrialized countries, the role played by transnational corporations and the impact on both the advanced capitalist countries and the semi-industrialized countries themselves. The paper examines these issues in the context of a study of the international motor industry.

The geography of unemployment: the case of Denmark

The geography of unemployment or non-occupied populations shows in Denmark the same pattern as elsewhere in capitalist Europe: total unemployment rates are weaker in the capital region; since the early 1970's, unemployment has increased more in core regions than in outlying areas; female and youth unemployment rates are particularly high in peripherical regions; male unemployment rates are relatively higher in core regions. Danish data allow a precise geographical analysis of segmentations on the labour market, considering both supply and demand. So, S. Illeris studies, for the whole of Denmark, unemployment among young women with a clerical or sales education, among both sexes people with academic education and, inside the Copenhagen area only, among unskilled, middle-aged men. There is no simple pattern for those three labour markets. This conception of the geography of unemployment fits well into those general models which believe that there is no one simple explanation of unemployment in advanced capitalist countries.

Gender Relations in Secondary Schooling

There is abundant evidence that inequality between women and men is a very general feature of Western education systems. Differential treatment and differential outcomes for both staff and students have been extensively documented by research over the past decade.' In the same period, considerable energy has been spent trying to change it. A stock of nonsexist curriculum materials and teaching aids have been produced, and centers have been set up to disseminate them. In Australia, as in other advanced capitalist countries, there is a campaign to end gender stereotypes in career counselling and subject choice, to get more girls into mathematics, science, and traditionally masculine trades and professions. Sexual harassment is being made an issue in schools and colleges. There are equal-opportunity policies in force in some states, and antidiscrimination laws apply, if unevenly, to education. Yet the effect of this activity so far has been slight. The resources devoted to it are, at best, painfully small in comparison to the scale of the problem. In New South Wales, for instance, although the funds for the Non-Sexist Education Unit have been maintained in the last year, only a fraction of one teaching consultant's time per region in the public school system has been allocated for nonsexist curriculum development. Moreover, such slender resources are often under threat, both from ideological attacks by the political Right and from cost-cutting campaigns within the bureaucracy. Furthermore, this work is not always certain of its directions. There is a continuing dilemma about the value of sex-segregated schools or classes. Almost all the educational debate has been about heterosexuals; there is very little serious work on discrimination against homosexuals in the education system. There are problems concerning the mainstream curriculum that are just beginning to emerge; and there are massive, though so far almost undiscussed, problems about how specialists should work with classroom teachers to change sexism in schools. At this point there is a need not only to renew the campaign for resources for countersexist educational work but also to rethink basic ideas. This article is intended as a contribution to that task. It reports research on gender relations in Australian secondary schools and proposes a line of theoretical analysis that bears on some of the dilemmas of current practice.