Capitalist Mode Of Production Research Articles

Guanxi economics: Confucius meets Lenin, Keynes, and Schumpeter in contemporary China

Th e micro-foundations of the Chinese growth model are analysed within a comprehensive monetary theory of economic development, based on Schumpeter, Keynes, and the contemporary monetary Keynesians. Th e Confucian traditions and the Leninist party power structure are identifi ed as the main specifi c traits of the social formation in contemporary China. In the capitalist mode of production, money sets the stage, and the interplay between private creditors and debtors is bundled into a coherent, dynamic whole by the central bank in the economic sphere and by more or less democratic institutions in the political arena. Combining the reproductive, care-taking traits of socialism with the entrepreneurial dynamism of private property and, above all, with the design and enforcement of overall social and economic coherence through the »vanguard« Communist Party makes an unique and ingenious institutional Chinese set-up. Th e constitutive character of Guânxi – the magic word for trust, confi dence, reliability, righteousness, mutual benefi t and cosmic order – for the working of the whole Chinese economic system is identifi ed and described.

Paleo-Paralysis? Work, Organizations and the Labour Process Debate

Paul Adler addresses the fall from grace of labour process theory by advocating a `paleo Marxist' perspective that would return the study of labour to its classical Marxist lineage. I find that Adler is right to emphasize the contradictions that often lie hidden within contemporary managerial regimes, yet utterly wrong to root them within the capitalist mode of production as such. So heavily deterministic and reductionist a view would, if generalized, deny us any ability to explain why managerial regimes vary across firms, industries and nation-states. Likewise, issues of organization culture, gender and racial inequalities, or worker subjectivity would all quickly vanish from sight. What Adler views as a weakness of the labour process approach — its emphasis on the negotiated nature of the wage-labour relation — in fact constitutes an enduring contribution to the study of work.

Mode of Production versus Mode of Information: Marx, Poster, and an Argument for Anti-Capitalist Praxis1

While postmodernists hurriedly negate any theories affiliated with the Enlightenment, this paper argues that Karl Marx's prescient analyses of the capitalist mode of production are still fruitful for informing transformative politics. Although questions remain as to the efficacy of Marx's work for theorizing history and the role of the subject, we should not let the freedom of Marxism that ensued after his life mar the great importance of his critique of capitalism and commodity fetishism. Mark Poster, critical cultural historian and former self-described existential Marxist, has been one of Marx's most vehement detractors in the last two decades, arguing the need to displace labour as the first analytic of critical theory. While Poster's focus on discursive and informational practices as constitutive of domination supplements Marx's original castigation of capitalism, Poster's work imports postmodernist tautologies. I argue that Poster's mode of information thesis unnecessarily obliterates a focus on modern subject formation processes, suffers from a hi-technological determinism and lacks a theory of struggle, and thus advocate a retrieval of Marx's critique of capitalism vis-à-vis Foucault's ethics of the self as a means of addressing some of the difficulties in Poster's work.

The Material Roots of Rastafarian Marijuana Symbolism

This article explores the relationship between shifting modes of production and the evolution of marijuana symbolism among the early Rastafarians of Jamaica. During slavery, marijuana grew on the island but was probably not recognized. During the shift to indentured labour, black Jamaicans utilized marijuana as a palliative. During the transition to capitalism, marginalized urban Jamaicans sold marijuana and it became a powerful symbol of their peasant past. Finally, once the island had shifted to a predominantly capitalist mode of production and appropriated laws that reinforced capitalist ideology, marijuana became a “holy herb”. This work provides a framework to study the development of religious symbolism and presents an exercise in applying anthropological theory to history. Such an exploration is useful for anthropologists studying ideological systems and ethnobotanists seeking to analyse the dynamic relationships between plants and people based upon changes in material circumstances or shifts in mode of production.

Editorial Introduction

AbstractErnest Mandel theorised the capitalist world economy as an articulated system of capitalist, semi-capitalist and precapitalist relations of production, linked to each other by capitalist relations of exchange and domination by the capitalist world market. This seems to be an interesting starting point for an historically well-founded theory, building on and going beyond Marx's work, of the worldwide expansion of the capitalist mode of production from its origins to the present. In his attempt to formulate his theory, Mandel did not succeed in resolving all difficulties, however. His main works – Marxist Economic Theory and Late Capitalism – show a number of dangling loose ends. The central question is whether these loose ends are merely technical difficulties or whether they reveal fatal flaws in the theory as a whole. In order to come a step closer to answering this question, a conference was organised in Amsterdam, November 2003. This introduction formulates the five, closely interrelated issues that were highlighted at this conference.

Circuits of Capital and Overproduction: A Marxist Analysis of the Present World Economic Crisis

At the present time the world economy continues to struggle amidst its worst slowdown in more than thirty years. Adopting a Marxist perspective, this article argues that these difficulties should be seen as the latest phase of an inherently recurring crisis of overproduction deriving from the capitalist mode of production itself. This is demonstrated through an examination of crises during the interwar and postwar periods and by setting the present crisis within this wider historical context.

The Fine Arts of Distinction: Bourdieu on Society and Art

The most brilliant contemporary theorists of artistic production and consumption in society is Pierre Bourdieu, the late French sociologist. Bourdieu's work represents a departure from the idea that our cultures are straightforwardly determined by the capitalist mode of production.

Exporting or Pulling Down?

This paper hypothesises that public support for the economic and political transformation in east-central Europe in 1989 was fuelled by enthusiasm for the reception of the (west) European Social Model, where the capitalist mode of production was combined with a high degree of social protection. In the first part of the article the author identifies the basic values of and the challenges to the European Social Model. Them he analyses the impact of the European Union on the transformation of east-central European social policy in the 1990s, and concludes that the negotiations concerning the accession of post-communist east-central European countries to the EU hardly contributed to the reception of the core values of the European Social Model in the new member states. Giving an overview of he social situation in the accession countries, the third part of the article calls the reader’s attention to the alarming differences regarding the quality of life between the EU Fifteen and the new member states. In the final part, the author raises questions about the European Union’s capacity to preserve the European Social Model, taking reactions of the members states to post-enlargement fears of social gaps between the east and west of Europe into consideration.

Capitalism and the Oppression of Women: Marx Revisited

Marx's methodology is indispensable for identifying a) the capitalist structural conditions and macro-level processes that are the foundations of the inequality between men and women in capitalist societies; and b) the limits of political and legal changes to end gender inequality. The oppression of women is the visible, observable effect (e.g., in the labor market, in so- cioeconomic stratification, the domestic division of labor, bureau- cratic authority structures, etc.) of underlying relations between men and women determined by the articulation between the capitalist mode of production, and the organization of physical and social reproduction among those who must sell their labor power to survive. Feminism, to remain relevant to the majority of women, must, therefore, acknowledge that most women are working women whose fate, and that of their families, are shaped both by gender oppression and class exploitation.

Tourist-Created Attractions: The Emergence of a Unique Form of Tourist Attraction in Southern New Zealand

While there is considerable diversity in the way that tourist attractions are categorized and described, little or no attention has been paid to attractions that tourists physically create themselves. This paper examines three roadside examples of tourist-created attractions in southern New Zealand: a shoe fence, a bra fence and rock art. The possible motives of tourists in creating these attractions are explored. It is proposed that such attractions support the concept of creative tourism, providing tourists with a unique experience and a greater degree of agency or control within a tourism system that is largely defined in terms of capitalist modes of production and consumption.

Social Theory and the Changing World

Classical sociological theory is usually viewed as an account of the changing world in the long 19th century. It theorizes the great transformation from the agrarian, feudal to the industrial, capitalist mode of production (Marx), from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (Tonnies), from traditional to rational social action (Weber). Like the late medieval theory of transition from nomadic pastoralism to urbanization or civilization by Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), all but one of these theories are structural, and consider social change without direct reference to conscious human intention and motivation. The one exception is Max Weber, who formulated his theory with reference to the (conscious) purpose and meaning of social action, and included consideration of the epochal social change set in motion by the transcendent vision and objectives of the world religions. In a provocatively revealing recent statement, Stephen Turner (2004) considers social theory an autonomous and self-sufficient academic field with its own internal conversation based on a series of commentaries on classical texts. The marriage of social theory and empirical sociology, which was to be consummated in an ever closer approximation to theoretical closure with the accumulation of empirical findings, is, in his view, the result of ‘the great instauration of 1945’. It lasted abnormally long because of the unprecedented expansion of universities and the academic market from 1945 to 1970. But with the retirement of the generation of social scientists produced in this period, ‘the mutual irrelevance of empirical sociology and social theory’ is increasingly evident. Turner (2004: 159) admits, however, that social theory ‘scrutinizes its concepts and considers the world in the light of the problems of applying its concepts in new settings’. My argument, by contrast, is that the lodestars – value-ideas – that guide such conceptual reinterpretation and theorizing also set the

Globalization and the closing of the universe of discourse: the contemporary relevance of Marcuse's “Marxism”1

This paper assumes that there is something in the logic of the capitalist mode of production such that, in the words of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, it “must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere,” giving a “cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.” It assumes, that is, that there is an inherent tendency in capitalism to seek to globalize. Further, it is argued that one can plausibly claim that the capitalist mode of production has succeeded, or is succeeding, in globalizing against the countervailing forces of the managing state and organized labor. It is argued that this development represents, to use Marcuse's words, something like a “closing of the universe of discourse” or a “paralysis of criticism” and the emergence of a “society without opposition,” but in a context, in crucial respects, fundamentally different from that analysed by Marcuse in the 1960s.

Challenge without transformation: refugees, aid and trade in western Tanzania

Through a comparison of two rural Tanzanian districts, this paper traces the effects of a humanitarian influx – the arrival of refugees and international relief – on the economic practices of the host population in one western Tanzanian district (Kasulu). It argues that, despite popular and Government claims to the contrary, there is little evidence that the influx has effected a transformation of citizens' economic lives. While changes in exchange and resource use patterns have occurred in the five years since the influx began, they are not fundamental and many are better attributed to shifts in macro-economic policy than to the refugees, the presence of the relief agencies or the distribution of humanitarian aid. The fact that the influx has not induced a shift towards increased market activity and capitalist modes of production not only challenges government and popular pronouncements, but also reaffirms the resilience of localised modes of production against external market pressures.

Capitalist Exploitation and the Law of Value

Marx's value-theoretic account of capitalist exploitation and his historical account of exploitation by merchant and usurer's capital in Capital appear different. The theoretical and the historical accounts, however, belong to different levels of analysis: the first to the Principles of political economy and the second to the Stage theory of capitalist development. The historical, as distinct from the theoretical, significance of the law of value pertains to the nature of exploitation. There are certain problems in Capital with regard to the manner in which Marx derived the law of value, and to the part entitled “The Transformation of Money into Capital.” Reformulation of these sections helps resolve the issues surrounding Marx's concept of “capitalist exploitation without the capitalist mode of production.”

Commodities and Gifts: Why Commodities Represent More than Market Relations

Abstract: In social science commodities frequently stand for economic rationality and commercial gain, while gifts are presumed to be bearers of moral obligation and social concerns. “Commodity versus gift” often acts as metaphor for “market versus non-market.” From the perspective of Marxist political economy, the binary opposition between commodities and gifts is unwarranted. Analysis of the neglected role of use value in commodity exchange as well as of the relationship between substance and form of commodity value shows that commodities are not pure representatives of market relations. Rather, commodities rest on, and give rise to, non-market relations. Capitalist markets are sites of rational economic give-and-take, but also provide new terrain for trust, commitment, custom, and power among exchange participants. Non-market relations do not shrink inexorably in the capitalist mode of production, but are mobilized to sustain accumulation, especially through the credit system.

What Makes Gentrification 'Gentrification'?

This paper looks at demand issues in gentrification. It takes as its basic proposition that everyone involved in the demand side belongs to the same economic class and therefore possesses the same set of motivations; that 'otherness' in gentrification is something that needs to be problematised rather than assumed. It argues that the presumption of otherness arises because accounts of demand for gentrification begin at the end, from achieved housing situation, and argue back, rather than at the beginning, with means. The motivations of gentrifiers, suburbanites and displacees are the same, a concern for defining and preserving identity in the modern world: what differ between them are the means at the disposal of each group. Concern with identity means taking seriously the importance of fashion in gentrification: gentrifiers and suburbanites are members of different status groups, using housing as status symbols to define and claim membership of those groups. Displacees are just as concerned with the maintenance of their identity, but do not have access to the same amount of resources as gentrifiers. Because the solution to the gentrifiers' identity crisis takes place at the expense of the displacee, gentrification takes on a synecdochal quality: the concerns expressed in struggles over gentrification exemplify the general concern with identity in conditions of modernity, which should be understood as the subjective experience of everyday life within a capitalist mode of production. The context within which these struggles over status take place is nonetheless class-constituted and class-laden. Gentrification and the struggles it engenders should be interpreted as a form of hegemonic practice. Ultimately, it is this that makes gentrification 'gentrification'.

Kant and South African Academic Freedom

The necessity of periodic 'retraining', due to the increasingly rapid change of basic labour skills, now spreads to the domain of intellectual labour; it even creates within the framework of capitalist reforms of the university, marginal tendencies towards permanent part-time study, thereby fulfilling one of Marx's prophecies. But within the limits of the capitalist mode of production, this potential tendency naturally cannot prevail. It is accompanied and stifled by a neutralizing and repressive counter-tendency to make the university and the teaching system as a whole directly 'profitable' (Mandel, 1978: 581).

Culture, Commodity, and Céad Míle Fáilte: U.S. and Irish Tourist Films as a Vision of Ireland

CULTURE, COMMODITY, AND CÉAD MÍLE FÁILTE: U.S. AND IRISH TOURIST FILMS AS A VISION OF IRELAND HARVEY O’BRIEN In 1966, Bord Fáilte, the Irish Tourist Board, sponsored a documentary intended to update the international profile of “The Emerald Isle.” Robert Monks’s 1966 Ireland: The New Convention Country would emphasize the modern facilities available to conference holders and delegates, especially in Dublin city. The film did indeed publicize the hotels, airports, and advanced technical equipment that would expedite such events. But at one point roughly half way through, the voice-over suggested conspiratorially : “Take a day off from your conference: you won’t be missed.” It then proceeded to detail the range of sporting and leisure activities within easy reach of the urban center (neglecting to mention that some of them were over a hundred miles away). It featured images of Quin Abbey, Bunratty Castle, angling on the river Shannon, and rural roads the voice-over claimed were “the most traffic free in Europe.” Many of these were the standard scenes used in the promotion of tourism in Ireland since tourism began, images familiar from paintings, postcards, and photography before the inception of the cinema.1 Modern it may have been, but this was still “friendly, leisurely Ireland” where culture, history, and geography could be reduced to a series of commodities and services malleable and marketable according to the expectations of sponsors and potentially international audiences. THE PARADOXES OF TOURISM Projecting images of the country designed to achieve specific ends, tourist films give perhaps the strongest indication not necessarily of what a country thinks of itself, but of what its cultural industries believe is expected U.S. AND IRISH TOURIST FILMS AS A VISION OF IRELAND 58 1 See Adele M. Dalsimer, ed., Visualizing Ireland: National Identity and the Pictorial Tradition (Boston and London: Faber & Faber, 1993). of it. It should come as little surprise then that when international cinematic representations search for cues in the native culture to guide their own promotional films, they should yield similar results to one another, albeit in films filtered through the sensibilities of their producers. Tourist films are promotional and engage a different set of expectations from those documentaries which attempt to explore the identity of a place and its people in a more introspective manner. Though they may be poetic in style and feature and document some essential characteristics of the land and its inhabitants, their concern is not with the satisfaction of the desire to mimic the forms seen in nature. Instead, as Terry Lovell has observed, they are interested in the creation of a desire to control and commodify reality. In Lovell’s words, “The cultural producer is keenly interested in the proliferation of wants which will lead consumers to seek out the commodities sold to satisfy those wants.”2 He identifies here a central paradox of the tourism industry. Tourism is a definite site of cultural production, both employing and promoting aspects of “culture” to encourage visitors. As T.J.M. Sheehy observed in the Irish film journal Vision (1967) regarding the increase in production of tourist films at that time: “Sponsors of tourist films are not philanthropists. Their interest is tourist publicity. In the films they sponsor they want quality and artistic integrity, but in their approach art, desirable as it may be, takes second place to publicity needs.”3 Yet tourism is not merely the result of a capitalist conspiracy. The desire to travel and visit places of which we have no direct experience has always been central to human behavior, though it was only organized within an industrial infrastructure and a capitalist mode of production in the mid-nineteenth century. Tourism capitalizes on that which already exists: on one hand the desire for new experiences, and on the other the qualities of the place in question. In promoting a particular location, it must draw on the frames of reference familiar to the intended audience. Lovell notes that consumers must seek out “the commodities sold,” not the commodities created to meet the wants. Tourism is tailoring: it matches product to market in a way that engages both the qualities of the place...

Detouring through Korean cinema

The discipline of comparative literature and its emphasis on ethno-linguistic units ‘to be compared’ seems quite inappropriate as a model for approaching the study of a thoroughly industrialized cultural form such as cinema. There is no need even to recall the complicity between comparative literature and comparative religion and that Goethe’s notion of ‘world literature’ gestured towards the alleged universality of Western-Christian values as the yardstick with which to measure the degree of a particular, ‘regional’ literary work’s adherence to a norm deemed to be universal.1Nevertheless, it is precisely the whiff of clerical thinking that attaches to comparative literature that provides a clue as to why the notion of comparative film studies may be worth considering, mutatis mutandis. In the West, the shift from religion and its professionals as the legitimators and enforcers of particular regimes of social power to a more secular notion of ‘universal values’ – a shift accompanied by the gradual transformation of clerics into intellectuals and, now, media practitioners – is the history of the emergence of the ‘public sphere’ challenging and eventually supplanting the court as the legitimate site for the discussion of issues of governance. That is the history underpinning the designation of the peculiar mix of moral philosophy and aesthetics known as ‘literature’ – ‘lit and its crit’, as Tom Nairn once put it – as the training ground for ‘modern’ state legitimators (enforcement duties have been passed on to the military and the police). Given that the force driving this change is the one identified by Karl Marx, that is to say, the gradual elaboration and spread of the capitalist mode of production that set about its triumphal globalization in the second half of the twentieth century, and given that the history of cinema coincides with the industrialization of culture enforced in the West since the closing years of the nineteenth century, it must follow that there is indeed a kind of ‘universalism’ that informs cinema as a cultural form.2

A Critical Guide to Knowledge Society Newspeak: Or, How Not to Take the Great Leap Backward

The advent of the `knowledge society' appears so fascinating to social theorists because the theorists themselves have been finally incorporated into the capitalist mode of production. In postmodern societies, knowledge itself becomes a commodity subject to market forces, rather than an overarching principle of rationalization and legitimation. The article critically surveys the clearest indications of this transition: the requirement of credentials for employment, the development of computerized expert systems and the expansion of intellectual property legislation. Together these trends point to the rise of `knowledge management', which treats knowledge as raw material that needs to be cultivated and pruned, an idea that runs counter to most academic thinking on the nature of knowledge from philosophy to economics. A sign of these changing times is the designation of universities by knowledge managers as `dumb organizations' that mindlessly produce knowledge without any clear organizational goals. This leads the author to revisit the three ways of defining the value of goods in classical political economy - rent, labour, profit - as a foundation for recovering knowledge-producing institutions from the knowledge managers and knowledge society theorists.