American-style Capitalism Research Articles

Joseph M. McFadden, Barbed Wire from Invention to Monopoly: The Story of American Style Capitalism in the Gilded Age

Joseph M. McFadden, Barbed Wire from Invention to Monopoly: The Story of American Style Capitalism in the Gilded Age

Legacies of the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia: An Introduction

ABSTRACT This article introduces the pieces collected in this special issue on the legacies of the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia. Linking to the Journal of Contemporary Asia’s 50th Anniversary volume, it examines the origins and conflicts associated with the Cold War in Asia. In this special issue, the authors collectively examine the enduring legacies for the region of US engagements that established a set of politically authoritarian regimes trumpeting anti-communism while promoting American-style capitalism. While the path-dependence of this historical moment has not by itself bequeathed Asia’s current crop of authoritarian governments, the authors argue that the current situation cannot be fully understood without reference to Cold War legacies. This introductory article contextualises the pieces in the special issue by providing a broad overview of the variety of Cold War political and economic legacies for the region. It concludes by noting the importance of the kinds of detailed, critical, theoretically informed and empirically rich research that Journal of Contemporary Asia has encouraged since its inception.

Rehabilitating Corporate Purpose

In this essay, I address how the ascendance of the theory of shareholder value maximization into the central consciousness of public corporations and its canonization as the only legitimate expression of corporate purpose has contributed to both a widening breach between American-style capitalism and justice and increased alienation of the public from capitalism as a system of economic governance. Despite the vast academic literature and many management testimonials advocating a broader conception of corporate purpose — one that addresses the interests of firms’ multiple constituencies and the well-being of their employees, customers, and operating environment — shareholder value maximization remains the de facto expression of corporate purpose and guide for decision making for most publicly owned firms in the United States (and the United Kingdom). I argue that narrowing the compatibility gap between capitalism and justice and reversing declining public trust in contemporary capitalism requires a very different conception of corporate purpose — one reflecting established moral and economic principles that challenge those underlying the shareholder value maximization doctrine. To this end, I start by discussing the vulnerability of contemporary capitalism, which is largely rooted in the social and moral disengagement of firms operating under this doctrine. I then explain how the emergence of the doctrine over the past four decades has led to this social and moral disengagement, what the theoretical underpinnings of the shareholder value maximization doctrine are, how this doctrine has become so deeply ingrained in our capitalist system, and the conceptual and practical problems presented by this doctrine and related theory of the firm. Next, I propose an alternate, principle-based guideline for corporate purpose that blends Aristotle’s theory of reciprocal justice with considerations of corporate purpose, along with Chester Barnard’s compatible theory of business organizations as cooperative systems. Aristotle stresses the ethicality of cooperation in transactional settings; Barnard stresses the efficiencies and adaptive benefits flowing from cooperation. Both see utility in truly reciprocal, cooperative relationships, which is not a priority in a shareholder value maximization regime. This alternative approach — referred to as ethical reciprocity — not only provides the basis for a rebuttal of the shareholder-primacy doctrine based on principles of justice and economic efficiency, but also offers a practical guideline for balancing the interests of shareholders and other corporate constituencies in the conduct of everyday business affairs. After presenting ethical reciprocity as a justice-sensitive guideline for corporate purpose, I turn to two practical questions related to its implementation: (a) whether “reciprocity practitioners” can compete in a world dominated by shareholder value maximizers, and (b) if so, what asset holders and asset managers, corporate directors, and educators can do — and, in some instances, are currently doing — to foster increased attention to both the principle and spirit of ethical reciprocity in the definition and pursuit of corporate purpose.

Critical Criminology in the Life and Work of Eugene Victor Debs

The American socialist, Eugene Debs, made a profound impact on American politics during the first half of the twentieth century. Although socialism and the public’s knowledge of Debs have waned since then, we argue, in this paper, that Debs, his writings and his life’s work are relevant to criminology—particularly critical criminology—yet neglected during the formative development of critical criminology. In this paper, we describe Debs’ biography and politics. We document his first-hand experiences with the legal system (including incarceration), his consistent critiques of capitalism and his written and spoken texts that empirically link American-style capitalism and its captains to US politics. Last, we describe Debs’ only published book on prisons and prison life and its unfortunate omission from the criminological canon yet argue that Debs’ life and written and spoken word remain central to social justice.

Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give, and What It Means for Our Economic Well-Being

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Rethinking Development Economics

Twelve years ago, when I was chief economist of the World Bank, I suggested that the major challenge to development economics was learning the lessons of the previous several decades: a small group of countries, mostly in Asia, but a few in other regions, had had phenomenal success, beyond anything that had been anticipated by economists; while many other countries had experienced slow growth, or even worse, stagnation and decline—inconsistent with the standard models in economics which predicted convergence. The successful countries had followed policies that were markedly different from those of the Washington Consensus, though they shared some elements in common; those policies had not brought high growth, stability, or poverty reduction. Shortly after I left the World Bank, the crisis in Argentina—which had been held up as the poster child of the country that had followed Washington Consensus policies—reinforced the doubts about that strategy. The global financial crisis, too, has cast doubt over the neoclassical paradigm in advanced industrial countries, and rightly so. Much of development economics had been viewed as asking how developing countries could successfully transition toward the kinds of market-oriented policy frameworks that came to be called “American style capitalism.” The debate was not about the goal, but the path to that goal, with some advocating “shock therapy,” while others focused on pacing and sequencing—a more gradualist tack. The global financial crisis has now raised questions about that model even for developed countries. In this short essay, I want to argue that the long-term experiences in growth and stability of both developed and less developed countries, as well as the deeper theoretical understanding of the strengths and limitations of market economies, provide support for a “new structural” approach to development—an approach

Each One Teach One

Scholars of adult basic literacy curricular materials have argued that the skill-based, deficit-oriented approach of many such materials denies the interests and motivations of adult learners. Exploring why these kinds of curricular materials are prevalent in adult basic literacy education, this article focuses on the case of ProLiteracy, a nongovernmental adult basic literacy organization that grew out of missionary Frank Laubach's work in the 1930s to convert illiterate adults to Christianity and a belief in American-style capitalism. This article argues that the legacy of Laubach's evangelism continues to affect adult literacy instruction in the United States today, through the content of many of the materials in the ProLiteracy catalogue, as well as through the volunteer-based one-to-one tutoring model's positioning of low-literacy adults.

The West's financial crisis

Western governments have recently taken exceptional measures to prevent the disintegration of their financial systems following a collapse in banking confidence. Whether these will be sufficient to quell extreme turbulence in money and stock markets is not yet clear. Predictions that the crisis will herald the end of American-style capitalism seem exaggerated. However, signs of a major economic downturn resulting from the financial crisis are already evident.

High Anxiety in the Andes: The Real Story Behind Venezuela's Woes

The rise to power of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is often seen as evidence of an impending backlash against globalization, American-style capitalism, corruption, and poverty. Chávez's fiery antiglobalization rhetoric, his strong alliance with Fidel Castro, his outreach to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghaddafi, his anti-Americanism, and his sympathetic overtures to Colombia's guerrillas and other insurgent groups in Latin America have gained the world's attention. To many, the case of Venezuela epitomizes the popular reaction to a prolonged concentration of power among a small oligarchy of corrupt politicians and their business allies. To others, Venezuela is the victim of a mysterious syndrome afflicting the countries of the Andean region. Mostly, however, the situation in Venezuela is cited as an early-warning signal of a worldwide backlash against liberal democracy, market reforms, and globalization.

Globalization without Environmental Crisis: The Divorce of Two Discourses in U.S. Culture

Globalization without Environmental Crisis: The Divorce of Two Discourses in U.S. Culture Frederick Buell (bio) One Today, most people in the U.S. would accept that globalization is one of the key features of our era—and that the world has been compressed and grown smaller, that contemporary travel and communications have put distant cultures in relationship with each other, that economic relationships are now global, that significant events and conditions in one location of the globe affect events and conditions in other others. Most, I believe, would go so far as to accept that there is, these days, no “outside” to this system of global relationships—that there is, at last a comprehensive and inclusive world system in place. Some aspects of what students of globalization have asserted for several decades has, in short, become mainstream common knowledge. Serious globalization theory further seeks to conceptualize these relationships. It sees the global system alternatively, I believe, through the lens of narratives of expansion (as a new phase of capitalism or neo-imperialism now incorporating the whole world) and the elaboration of an ever more complexly relational system (as in the application of complexity theory to global relationships and exchanges). As a narrative of expansion, globalization represents, for many, a further stage in the domination of the world by capitalism, or by neo-imperial Americanization, depending on one’s viewpoint. This is a state in which organized capitalism has given way to disorganized or late capitalism, and/or one in which transnational corporations have risen to global power and are rapidly imposing American-style capitalism and consumerism on even resistant local communities around the globe—a process has been popularly described as McDonaldization vs. McJihad. The process may upgrade and rapidly postmodernize some parts of the world; other parts, it may downgrade, even plunge into chaos. But [End Page 45] versions of this chaos often also have a kind of postmodern façade, in their representation in the first world; Robert Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy represents contemporary Africa and elsewhere as a postmodern heart of darkness of ethnic strife and environmental deterioration. According to this view, we are now in a time when the last local places have been, to use Fredric Jameson’s term, “penetrated” and hooked up to the global system (Jameson 49). As a narrative of complexification or intensification, globalization also means that the world has increasingly constructed itself as a complex system—one in which the identities of the parts and the shape of the whole are continuously constructed and restructured in dynamic relationship with each other. From this viewpoint, globalization is a complex process that goes on within societies at a vast number of specific sites, even more than it is imposed by a monolithic force from without, as identities, attitudes, and events in different parts of the world are continuously formed and reformed in relationship to each other. Specific practices helping to globalize societies from within come on all scales and are dazzlingly various. A large variety of social practices, from accounting systems to conventions of popular photography and popular fiction change in response to each other; subnational entities like individuals, cities, and locally based NGOs establish global relationships, yoking them to faraway places sometimes as significantly as to their next door neighbors; and cultural identities are more and more formed with reference to global polyculturalism, and less in relation to centered local identities. Contemporary globalization is, in this reading, a new phase in a system that has bootstrapped itself into existence over time—something that has attracted a number of analysts, from Wallerstein to Appadurai, to catastrophe, chaos, and complexity theories. We’re now in a phase where global interactiveness has become more significantly decentered and much more overt than before, no longer managed so restrictively and ideologically obscured by bordered nation-states and national economies. Most scholarly conceptualizations of globalization today weave these two models together in some way, and they also share an additional feature. The more sophisticated they are, the more they make it clear that contemporary globalization is not a qualitatively new era, but a continuation of a process of globalization that goes back centuries—either to older...

Global Advertising's Failure in Bulgaria

In the early 1990s people in emerging markets were thrilled to be showered with a confetti of colorful western advertising images. But, in those exhilarating early post-wall years, ads were not immediately recognized as ads by a world that had been visually deprived of commercial aesthetics since the time of Stalin, and thus their function as marketing tools was initially disabled. Western ads were first viewed as symbols of a conquering political and economic system, later utilized as tools, and eventually found their place as signifiers within a pre-existing cultural context. These misinterpretations of post-Cold War western advertising images had at least two causes: a lack of disposable capital in post-Soviet Eastern and the inability of western corporations to imagine the dynamics of a non-consumerist society as they launched their first global marketing plans in this new territory. While western Europe's conversion to American-style capitalism had been aided by the laying of a groundwork for the basis of consumerism through government funds after WWII, in Eastern in the early 1990s this work was left to the private sectorwith results that were not what had been hoped for by the corporations which were involved, nor particularly helpful to the economic development of Eastern European itself. Meanwhile, the advertising images left behind in the postWall campaigns have found new functions, at least in Bulgaria. Eurolines, the continental version of Greyhound, boldly advertises in its brochures that it offers Europe au Quotidien. If you don't mind spending four days immobile in one of their cramped plush seats, this private bus service can show you the highways of between locations as far-flung as Galway and Istanbul. My Eurolines ticket would take me from Paris across Germany, Hungary, Serbia, then dip into the northern section of Kosovo before stopping in Sofia. My travel agent said that if I got to their depot an hour early I might even get a window seat. Only one other Eurolines bus was leaving the morning I arrived. It was going to EuroDisney.

France and the New World Order, 1940–1947

Using a number of archive sources concentrating on the Occupation years and the period just after the Liberation, this article throws light on the contribution of France to the ‘New World Order’, a concept normally thought of as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘Anglo-American’. Even in defeat, those looking forward to the reconstruction of France in the postwar period considered a number of approaches as to how a French state-oriented system would work in a world which would supposedly be dominated by American-style liberal capitalism.

American-Style Capitalism and Income Disparity: The Challenge of Social Anarchy

With regard to its outward manifestations, the American variant of capitalism seems healthy and vibrant. The contemporary economic indicators are essentially positive: 1. unemployment is falling, 2. inflation is low and essentially stable, 3. profits are generally high, 4. industrial production is close to capacity, and 5. future expectations by both consumers and producers are optimistic. But, on the other hand, the social indicators that describe the quality of contemporary life are almost universally morbid and depressing. By far the most significant emerging outcome inequities in the U.S. pertains to the widening economic disparity among the population. Because the US has always been among the extreme examples of consumer-driven capitalism, it is questionable how long it can maintain social order when increasing numbers of persons are left out of the banquet while a few are allowed to gorge.

Government Elites and Amakudari in Japan, 1963-1992

Amakudari (descent from heaven), the process by which top ministry bureaucrats retire to senior management positions in private enterprises, is pivotal to the overall strategic planning and coordination of the Japanese economy. Several authors have speculated on the changing nature and future directions of this important institution. The examination of data from 1963 to 1992 reveals a complex causal dynamic underlying the pattern of amakudari placements. In addition, there appears to be evidence for the institutionalization of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) penetration of the economy. MoF has shown a continuous rise in amakudari placements and a dominant position over other ministries for almost the entire observation period. Japan and the United States have often been juxtaposed as portraying different forms of capitalist society. Japan is characterized as the societal or state, or the network society with a system of relational capitalism, as compared to American-style capitalism that is more oriented to the market, with the state as an administrative appendage.' The relationship between the Japanese state and economy are depicted as mutually interdepen-

Transition Shock: Can the East Get There from Here?

After sudden political liberalization, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union seem poised to abandon administrative-command planning and embrace market socialism (which stops somewhere short of American-style capitalism). However, using the Soviet Union as a case in point, careful analysis of all plausible transition paths from the current system to Westernstyle markets suggests that prospects for success are dim. The revolution of rising expectations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe sparked by Gorbachev's program of political liberalization is on a collision course with the immediate possibilities for fundamental economic change. The East is likely to be politically unstable for a long period, nor can the West alter this situation with massive foreign assistance because the Eastern nations cannot utilize the credits effectively. The Western business community therefore must be very constrained in its expectations about progress in the East and should approach the issues of private investment and governmental aid accordingly.