Contradictions Of Capitalism Research Articles

Virtue and Markets

This essay proposes an interdisciplinary framework for teaching markets and morals by exploring the linkages between political economy, civil society, and culture. Free markets in capitalist mixed economies shape, and are shaped by, political institutions of representative democracy, the vibrancy of civil society, and the values, norms, and beliefs embedded in culture. The major challenge for liberal society and free markets is to reconcile individual and group interests with the common good. The cultural contradictions of capitalism reflect the inadequacy of commercial virtues to sustain a liberal society. External constraints of law and institutional checks and balances in all spheres need to be conjoined with internalized moral constraints of a well-ordered individual conscience. This, in turn, requires a normative order which transcends radically the selfishness of individual and group interests, thus preserving liberty and democracy while enhancing economic efficiency and the social beneficence of free markets. The essay thus confirms Alexis de Tocqueville's notion of the interdependence of liberty, morality, and faith.

THE CULTURAL CONTRADICTIONS OF SOCIALISM

While no one has yet announced the death of capitalism, reports of its imminent demise have been as numerous as they have been exaggerated. Such reports have usually been bolstered by thoughtful analyses of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, which was expected to come sliding—if not crashing—down under the weight of its own inconsistencies. Leaving aside Karl Marx's own predictions, twentieth-century analysts as diverse as Joseph Schumpeter, Daniel Bell, and Jurgen Habermas have asserted that the contradictions of capitalism could only mean that its days were numbered. Alas, all that has been established by these analyses is that predictive failure is no impediment to market success: either the consumer's demand for such theories of capitalism's failures is naturally robust, or supply continues to generate its own demand.

"The Perfect Enemy": Clinton, the Contradictions of Capitalism, and Slaying the Sin Within

Bill Clinton can be seen as a perfect embodiment of the contradictory tensions in capitalist ideology between production and consumption that were described by the sociologist Daniel Bell in 1976. Kenneth Burke's scapegoat paradigm explains why Clinton, as representative of this central flaw in capitalism, was marked for vehement attack and ultimate casting out. Examining the House Managers' choice of Clinton as scapegoat illuminates the danger inherent in any attempt to construct an ideologically consistent Order such as "the rule of law" and thereby seize the high moral ground.

The sopranos and genre transformation: Ideological negotiation in the gangster film

The Sopranos is a major reworking of the gangster genre, which both conceals and exposes capitalist contradictions in re‐examining the cultural myths on which the genre is based. While The Sopranos incorporates many elements of the traditional gangster genre, it also transforms that genre in response to major social changes occurring in American society in the late 1980s and 1990s: pervasive corporate corruption and political scandal, loss of faith in national business and political leaders, widening income gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans, decline in the patriarchal authority of the father, growing concern about childhood abuse and dysfunction in the family, reliance on drugs and psychotherapy to treat deviant social behavior, and increase and normalization of violence in society. This essay argues that an ideological negotiation occurs in The Sopranos between the new social and political realities of American work and family life that are represented in the series and the traditional conventions of the gangster genre and the family melodrama. This interaction gives rise to alternative and contradictory readings of the narrative.

New Economy…Same Irrational Economy

What can we say about the assertion that there is a "New Economy"? That depends on what we mean by this term. It is nonsense to claim, and few do any more, that the business cycle has been eliminated or that the contradictions of capitalism have been resolved. In 2000 we witnessed a massacre of technology and Internet stocks ending what many considered the country's biggest financial mania of the past hundred years. The NASDAQ lost over half of its value, a paper loss of 3.33 trillion dollars, the equivalent of a third of the houses in the United States sliding into the ocean, as one Wall Street wag tells us. While only a few months ago, all we heard about was the magic of the market and that crises are the result of bad government policies, whether "crony" capitalism or simply failure to make information available to markets in a full and timely fashion, and that the new information technology now makes markets even more efficient; all of this talk is now shown to be the usual exaggeration we find in the up stage of most long expansions. As in the past it disappears as the economy weakens. Indeed as inventories pile up the nature of capitalism becomes clear to even the financial press and the politicians.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.

Viral Art — strategies for a new democracy

Contemporary visual art practice includes a strand of ecological and environmentalist work, developed independently in Europe and the USA, one aspect of which is the development of practical solutions to industrial pollution, another the use of shock tactics to draw attention to the green agenda and the underlying contradictions of capitalism which produce environmental destruction. Amongst artists in this field are Mel Chin (USA) and the London-based group PLATFORM. The essay looks at aspects of their work, and argues that the viral-like approach of which both Chin and PLATFORM write offers a realizable prospect for radical social change — change in which art has the role of agency.

Capital Against Nature

James O'Connor's theory of the ‘second contradiction of capitalism’ is a pioneering attempt to reconcile Marxism with environmentalism, and other social movements. This article analyses O'Connor's theory, and finds both serious flaws and startling innovations. While rejecting the overall frame work of a ‘second contradiction’ as proposed by O'Connor, it seeks to combine his most valuable insiqhts with a renewed emphasis on class, in order to develop an alternative approach to a Marxist understanding of environmental crisis.

Ecosocialism and feminism: Deep materialism and the contradictions of capitalism

This essay presents a view of ecological socialism that draws on and applies materialist and ecological feminist thought. Materialist ecofeminists argue that the subordination of women and the degradation of the natural world are historically and materially related. In making the case that the relationship between humanity and the natural world is gendered, we deploy a Marxian-type dialectical framework. We also explore the contemporary contradictions of capitalism that a materialist feminism reveals or highlights and stress that any ecological socialist theory that isn't backed by a materialist feminist analysis will be weak in theory and practice.

STATE DEVOLUTION, URBAN REGIMES, AND THE PRODUCTION OF GEOGRAPHIC SCALE: THE CASE OF NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY

Regime theory attempts to understand the complexity of governance in an era of public-private cooperation. Yet because it is an explicit attempt to avoid the economism of past state theory, it struggles to understand how regimes become agents of capitalism. This study examines the process of regime formation in New Brunswick, New Jersey, by focusing on how its activities have become increasingly motivated by the expansion-exclusion dialectic of capitalism during the last 25 years. The regime's immersion into the contradictions of capitalism has transformed it into an active producer of geographic scale, and in so doing necessitated certain forms of social exclusion. Understanding urban regimes as such has become increasingly important in the context of federal-state devolution. [Key words: scale, regime theory, devolution, economic restructuring, state restructuring.]

Political Ecology and the Second Contradiction of Capitalism

Political Ecology and the Second Contradiction of Capitalism

Contradictions of Capitalism as a World System

Contradictions of Capitalism as a World System

Introduction To “Contradictions of Capitalism as a World System”

Introduction To “Contradictions of Capitalism as a World System”

The Cultural Contradictions of Daniel Bell

In 'The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism," Daniel Bell has done an excellent job of defining and summarizing the attributes of the new sensibility, the postmodernist and antirationalist "psychedelic" culture that is actionist, anti-establishment, experimental, and obsessed with continuous change. Even better, he has elucidated the cultural and intellectual trends and movements which over the past two hundred years have led to the apparent dominance of the new culture. In fact he has done such an excellent job of proving the cumulative power of the trend that we fail to see, on the basis of his evidence, why the new culture did not predominate in the 1950s instead of in the late sixties, and why its impact was so sudden, shocking, and discontinuous. On the basis of the overwhelming evidence Bell cites, the growth in salience of the new culture ought to have been continuous and should have appeared in a slowly evolving way. Moreover, if all these factors have been operating for so long, the new culture should not have come as such a surprise to so many people. To come directly to the point, we suspect that Bell is guilty of providing an overdetermination of causation, of providing enough causes to explain half a dozen cultural revolutions but no specific causes for the one that did occur. Moreover, we will argue that his central theme, the freeing of culture from its socioeconomic base, is not a cause for the current cultural revolu tion, which in fact did not occur as Bell describes it. To state it differently, Bell's central argument that culture is now free from its socioeconomic base is, at best, only partially true. Indeed the major ways that culture still

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. By Eva Illouz. University of California Press, 1997. 386 pp. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $17.95

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. By Eva Illouz. University of California Press, 1997. 386 pp. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $17.95

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Eva Illouz

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Eva Illouz

Book ReviewsConsuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. By Eva Illouz. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Pp xv+371. $45.00 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).

Book Reviews<i>Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism</i>. By Eva Illouz. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Pp xv+371. $45.00 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

The second contradiction of capitalism and Karl Polanyi's the great transformation*

The second contradiction of capitalism and Karl Polanyi's the great transformation*

Book Reviews : The Contradiction of Capitalism in the Search for Democracy

Book Reviews : The Contradiction of Capitalism in the Search for Democracy