Destruction Of Capital Research Articles

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND CALCULATION

The merits and demerits of what we call ‘capitalism’ have been a source of much attention since Adam Smith wrote his seminal treatise on the salutary effects of free commerce and before. We consider the criticisms of the capitalist system as stated most prominently by Karl Marx, and we evaluate Marx's proposed solution to the evils of capitalism – specifically, socialism. We also explore the contributions of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek to the debate about whether Marx's proposed alternative was really an alternative. Mises and Hayek provide powerful critiques of Marx's socialist vision by addressing the problem of economic calculation and the inability of central authorities to acquire knowledge diffused and distributed across an entire society. We question whether Marx offered a solution and then consider more recent attacks on capitalism and its alleged destruction of cultural capital. The theoretical contributions of Mises and Hayek are supported by recent empirical contributions suggesting that liberal political economy is robust.

The Long Term Educational Cost of War: Evidence from Landmine Contamination in Cambodia

The economic impact of war may be visible in the long run and particularly through its impact on human capital. This paper uses unique district level data on landmine contamination intensity in Cambodia combined with survey data on individuals to evaluate the long-run impact of Cambodia's 30 years of war (1970–1998) on education levels and earnings. These effects are identified using difference-in-differences (DD) and instrumental variables (IV) estimators. In the DD framework I exploit two sources of variation in an individual's exposure to the conflict: age in 1970 and landmine contamination intensity in the district of residence. The IV specification uses the distance to the Thai border as an exogenous source of variation in landmine contamination intensity. The most conservative result indicates that individuals who were too young to have attended school before the start of the war received on average 0.5 less years of education. And, immediately after the war there was no visible effect on earnings. The effects are therefore overall weak. I argue that the destruction of physical capital may be what contributes to drive down the returns to education in Cambodia post-war. The estimates reported may be very conservative due to both error in our measure of conflict intensity and possible selection bias in the placement of prosperous regions.

Creative Class, Creative Economy, and the Wisdom Society as a Solution to their Controversy

The paper briefly introduces the notion of creativity, linking the concepts of creative class and the related creative economy that are considered by Florida (2002) and his followers as the driving force of the current social and economic development. The concept of creative economy and its quantification in form of the Creative Class Index 3T or the Euro-Creativity Index were submitted to strong critique.The critics overturn some key issues of the concept of creative class with an indication that the creative people give priority in choosing the work from the place; and there is no or almost nil correlation of a perceptual representation of the persons of homosexual orientation and the high-tech growth which confirms the opinion that the assertion about higher creativity of homosexual persons is a myth only. The purpose of the article is the examination of propriety of the concept of creative class and its quantification at one hand, and the rightfulness of their critique at the other. The analysis of the axiology of the concept of creative class is the method of examination. From point of view of axiology probably the most significant characteristic of the creative class is its accompanying destruction of thee social capital of creative people and it substitution of the creative capital. The rise of creative class takes place in parallel with the implosion of values at which basis our Jewish-Christian civilization is established. To this Florida expresses rather vague attitude by a statement that all socio-cultural changes that accompany the rise of the creative class will have no favorable impact on society.Florida (2009) labeled creativity as a basic human law, furthermore, he announced the need for a new live style in which the quality of life will increase and people become better men. The concept of creativity as an instrument of urban planning evolved into a left-liberal ideology with elements of social engineering that is the most important finding of the axiological analysis. The second finding is the need to accept the meaning of creativity. By implication of the two findings there arises a proposal for wisdom as a new driving force of social and economic development. The conclusion is the contribution is a requirement for formulation of the concept of wisdom society that is currently likely absent in the academic world, and the statement that if the West will not create the wisdom society, it will lose the raison d'etre of its existence.

The Future of the Commons

Current thinking about the problem of how to manage common resources still dwells on arguments either in favor of or against enclosure, coming primarily from contemporary political and scholarly debate about the enclosure of the early modern agrarian English commons. Many considerations of the enclosure of the commons, however, have so far failed to account for a number of variables. For instance, the sensible management of common resources on a local scale may not function at all on a global one. Protecting forest biodiversity in areas populated by at-risk indigenous populations may call for trading off the protection of one commons for another. And commons also can be exclusionary, or can involve resources that are not scarce, such as intellectual property. In this essay, David Harvey argues that the real problem demanding our attention is private property, not the commons itself. The capitalist commons is being continuously enclosed, but it is also being continuously produced. To fulfill our common interests, we need to look to the powers of collective labor to address capitalism's destruction of land and labor resources.

Causes and Consequences of Fragility in Africa: The Experience of the Greater Lakes Region

This article identifies the consequences of fragility in African states but with more focus on countries in the Greater Lakes region. Such countries constitute a development challenge given their enormous needs and difficulties associated with implementation of recovery and development programmes. Although there is no universally agreed definition of fragility, this study pays much attention to both national conflicts and those with a regional bearing. Given the scale and frequency of these conflicts, Africa has witnessed the destruction of institutions, infrastructures and systems which have impacted negatively on the growth of economies. The article reviews the causes and analyses the consequences of fragility and the conclusions are that the causes range from historical perspectives, social to economic. Similarly, the consequences not only include the destruction of human capital, institutions and infrastructures, but also the erosion of good governance and accountability. This article also emphasises the principles for engagement in the stabilisation, recovery and development programmes, but most important is the reorganisation of capacity constraints and political will as well as aligning interventions with local priorities and systems. The article concludes that provision of recovery and development programmes should be integrated within the local programmes for ownership and sustainability in such engagements and financing mechanisms should be aligned within the existing framework for efficiency and effectiveness.

Credit and Banking in a DSGE Model of the Euro Area

This paper studies the role of credit supply factors in business cycle fluctuations using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with financial frictions enriched with an imperfectly competitive banking sector. Banks issue collateralized loans to both households and firms, obtain funding via deposits, and accumulate capital out of retained earnings. Loan margins depend on the banks' capital‐to‐assets ratio and on the degree of interest rate stickiness. Balance‐sheet constraints establish a link between the business cycle, which affects bank profits and thus capital, and the supply and cost of loans. The model is estimated with Bayesian techniques using data for the euro area. The analysis delivers the following results. First, the banking sector and, in particular, sticky rates attenuate the effects of monetary policy shocks, while financial intermediation increases the propagation of supply shocks. Second, shocks originating in the banking sector explain the largest share of the contraction of economic activity in 2008, while macroeconomic shocks played a limited role. Third, an unexpected destruction of bank capital may have substantial effects on the economy.

Credit and Banking in a DSGE Model of the Euro Area

This paper studies the role of credit-supply factors in business cycle fluctuations. For this purpose, we introduce an imperfectly competitive banking sector into a DSGE model with financial frictions. Banks issue collateralized loans to both households and firms, obtain funding via deposits and accumulate capital from retained earnings. Margins charged on loans depend on bank capital-to-assets ratios and on the degree of interest rate stickiness. Bank balance-sheet constraints establish a link between the business cycle, which affects bank profits and thus capital, and the supply and cost of loans. The model is estimated with Bayesian techniques using data for the euro area. The analysis delivers the following results. First, the existence of a banking sector partially attenuates the effects of demand shocks, while it helps propagate supply shocks. Second, shocks originating in the banking sector explain the largest share of the fall of output in 2008 in the euro area, while macroeconomic shocks played a limited role. Third, an unexpected destruction of bank capital has a substantial impact on the real economy and particularly on investment.

From the Little Tree, Half a Block Toward the Lake: Popular Geography and Symbolic Discontent in Post‐Sandinista Managua

Abstract: The inhabitants of Managua, Nicaragua have a sophisticated, often bitingly ironic, popular geography that they use to navigate the city. The Nicaraguan capital has been destroyed twice by earthquakes, ravaged by war, left to decay for lack of funds, transformed by the creative destruction of speculative capitalism and subjected to a series of ideological impositions. Few people know the official names of streets, and recent governments have not had the ability to put up signs. So a supple system of popular geography dominates, resisting and ridiculing attempts to impose an official order, and adapting to change while preserving a bottom‐up sense of memory, history and place. Drawing on Allan Pred's classic account of popular geography in late nineteenth century Stockholm, I use Managua's language of spatial orientation as a window into peripheral modernity and the politics of everyday life.

“There Ain’t No Bond in Town Like There Used to Be”: The Destruction of Social Capital in the West Virginia Coalfields1

There is a paucity of research focusing on the circumstances that cause or contribute to a decline in social capital within communities. Furthermore, relatively few researchers employ qualitative methods in their studies of social capital, despite the multidimensional and many‐layered nature of this concept, characteristics that make social capital well suited for qualitative analysis. To address these two gaps in social capital research, I explore the mechanisms that have led to a depletion of social capital in the southern coal‐producing region of West Virginia. I examine whether the coal industry, which has caused bitter conflicts among residents over environmental degradation and union loyalties, has also undermined social capital in the region. My principal data include 40 semi‐structured, face‐to‐face interviews with randomly selected individuals in a coal‐mining town and a demographically similar non‐coal‐mining town in West Virginia. I analyze the experiences of residents in each town, assessing the qualitative differences in community and personal life associated with social capital. I find that the loss of social capital in the coal‐mining community has arisen through a combination of depopulation and the community‐wide conflict that arose when an anti‐union coal company bought out the union coal mine at which many in the community worked, challenging the union identity so engrained in this region.

中国大陆改革开放新词语 Zhongguo dalu gaige kaifang xin ciyu (A glossary of new political terms of the People's Republic of China in the post-reform era) (review)

Reviewed by: 中国大陆改革开放新词语 Zhongguo dalu gaige kaifang xin ciyu (A glossary of new political terms of the People's Republic of China in the post-reform era) Jing Li (bio) Li Gucheng (Li Kwok-sing) , compiler. 中国大陆改革开放新词语 Zhongguo dalu gaige kaifang xin ciyu (A glossary of new political terms of the People's Republic of China in the post-reform era). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2006. lxvii, 634 pp. $39.00, ISBN 962-996-258-6. The Chinese love set phrases. This may have something to do with their character-based language, which gravitates toward succinctness in expression. Another factor is the Chinese emphasis on conventions and tradition—once authoritative ideas are formed, they are widely shared and quickly spread in society. Thus, the use of correct terminology is particularly important in Chinese life. Confucius famously declared that, for one to speak properly, he must first "rectify names" (正名), an effort we may generalize to mean getting any significant concepts right. As China went through drastic transformation in the modern age, new terms and phrases depicting changing conditions in the country appeared in large numbers, gaining broad currency. This is the case with China under Mao, and it is the case with China in the Reform Era. For those who intend to learn about China in the past thirty years by looking at official jargon and popular lingo, Li's book is a good source. After combing through official documents, leading periodicals, as well as reference works, the author selected 1,295 Chinese expressions from the period to present, with explanations of their meanings and origins. The result is a collage that well illustrates the dynamic life of China from 1978 to 2005. One cannot miss the key phrases that mark the crucial political changes China experienced during the period. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping was just initiating his reform, any Chinese who paid attention to larger events in the country must have heard or read the declaration Shi jian shi jian yan zhen li de wei yi biao zhun—"Practice is the sole criterion to determine truth." Obscurely philosophical at first glance, the idea was a lethal weapon in the hands of Chinese reformists at the time, who used it to compel Maoist hardliners to acknowledge the terrible failure of Mao's Great Cultural Revolution. The reformers won this round of the combat, but the road ahead of them was far from smooth. In the middle of the 1980s, Deng was using the expression "One hand strong, the other weak"—Yi shou ying, yi shou ruan—to criticize Chinese officials who succeeded with economic reform but overlooked the important task of maintaining political and ideological control over the country. The conflict between the new economy and old politics was, however, too severe for Deng and the Communist Party to resolve. The quandary soon led to the turmoil that culminated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis. Having barely survived the troubles of 1989, Chinese leaders continued their quest for ways to rationalize their contradictory policies, putting forward terminologies [End Page 230] that became new watchwords of the country. For General Secretary Jiang Zemin, the key concept was san ge dai biao—literally "three represents"—the idea that the Chinese Communist Party represents the productive force, progressive culture, and fundamental interests of the Chinese people. Again, the seemingly bland expression denotes a supremely critical endeavor—the legitimization of the Communist Party that now heads a largely capitalist economy, where, even by the furthest stretch of reason, the Party could no longer simply claim that it is the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat bent on the destruction of capitalism. In the same spirit, when Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin to lead the Chinese Communist Party, he offered the country catchphrases such as he xie she hui ("harmonious society") and ke xue fa zhan ("scientific development"). These ideas have one thing in common: they avoid the unpleasant dissection of Chinese society in terms of classes or interest groups and instead emphasize a common bond among all Chinese. China has certainly come a long way from the Mao era, when a popular saying was Jie ji dou zheng, yi...

The aftermath of organizational restructuring

PurposeThis study seeks to examine the association of employee's evaluation of organizational restructuring with the destruction of old social capital, development of new social capital, and the mediating role of perceived organizational support (POS).Design/methodology/approachData were used from 419 teachers of Dutch secondary schools using hierarchical regression analyses.FindingsResults show that more positive employees' evaluation of the organizational restructuring are less likely to remain relying on old social capital resources, and score higher on development of new social capital. Moreover, POS mediated the association of employee's evaluation of the organizational restructuring with old and new social capital.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research, utilizing longitudinal designs and experiments that better lend it to causal inferences, are needed to examine relationships between organizational restructuring, POS, and social capital.Originality/valueThe results of this study provide a first step toward outlining the importance of organizational restructuring for social capital theory and how employees cope with transition to different work units. In organizations, having a shared language and narratives may allow team members to more easily integrate knowledge and provide better support to one another. Moreover, a common perspective and understanding among team members may allow employees members to anticipate the behavior of other members, thus promoting organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

Vanguards of the New Negro: African American Veterans and Post-World War I Racial Militancy

On 28 July 1919 African American war veteran Harry Haywood, only three months removed from service in United States Army, found himself in midst of a maelstrom of violence and destruction on par with what he had experienced on battlefields of France. The previous day, simmering tensions between black and white residents of Chicago reached a boiling point following stoning and subsequent drowning of young Eugene Williams who had dared to challenge color-line at Lake Michigan's 29th Street beach. As he returned to city following his latest run as a waiter on Michigan Central Railroad, Haywood, formerly a soldier in highly decorated 8th Illinois National Guard (370th Infantry Regiment), learned of riot and feared worst. A white coworker validated his anxiety, cautioning him against entering southside of city because, There's a big race riot going on out there, and already this morning, a couple of colored soldiers were killed coming in unsuspectingly. While most likely rumor, warning punctuated Haywood's disillusionment with facade of American democracy stemming from his battles with systemic racism of U.S. Army and deepened his resolve to actively resist brewing assault on Chicago's black community. After briefly reuniting with his family, Haywood immediately went to 8th Illinois Armory and met with fellow veterans of regiment to prepare a military style defense of their neighborhood from Irish rioters. Stocked with a cache of 1903 Springfield rifles and a browning sub-machine gun procured from armory, Haywood and his comrades established positions in an apartment overlooking 51st Street, and stood ready to utilize their military training in anticipation of an impending evening attack. Haywood recalled similar actions taken throughout South's Black Belt by other groups of African American veterans. (1) Although no ambush occurred, Chicago race riot indelibly transformed Haywood's racial and political consciousness. As he wrote in his autobiography, the war and riots of 'Red Summer' of 1919 left me bitter and frustrated. I felt that I could never again adjust to situation of Black inequality. The warlike nature of American race relations in aftermath of World War I prompted many black veterans to question meaning of their service and seek new strategies for achieving racial justice. After a period of intellectual self-discovery, Haywood joined radical African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a secret paramilitary organization founded by Cyril Briggs, editor of The Crusader, and committed to defense of black people, liberation of Africa, and destruction of global capitalism. Upon its dissolution, he became a member of Communist Party and emerged as one of its most influential black leaders. Racially enlightened and deeply politicized as a result of their experiences, African American veterans like Haywood represented and embodied New Negro of post-World War I era. (2) This essay examines how activism and racial militancy of black veterans fundamentally shaped historical development and ideological diversity of New Negro movement. The New Negro movement, rooted in political consciousness and collective racial identity of black people in communities throughout United States and African Diaspora more broadly, was a product of domestic and global upheavals of World War I and its aftermath. While etymology of term dates to post-Reconstruction era, when a new generation of African Americans sought to distance themselves from slavery and its legacy, vast social, political, and demographic transformations brought about by global conflict made New Negro of war and postwar periods substantively distinct from previous historical epochs. Scholars have examined various factors that gave rise to New Negro, which included black migration, international revolutionary movements, most notably in Russia and Ireland, growth of a radical black press, emergence of a host of new racially militant political organizations, and most significantly a spirit of defiance stemming from disillusioning experience of black support for and military participation in war. …

Why are Plant Deaths Countercyclical: Reallocation Timing or Fragility?

Because plant deaths destroy specific capital with large local economic impacts and potentially important macroeconmic effects, understanding the causes of deaths and, in particular, why they are concentrated in cyclical downturns, is important. The reallocationtiming hypothesis posits that plants suffering adverse permanent demand/productivity shocks delay shutdowns until cyclical downturns when plant capacity is less valuable, while the fragility hypothesis posits that shutdowns occur in downturns because the option value of maintaining the plant through low profitability periods is too small. I show that the effect that a plant’s specific capital has on the timing of plant deaths differs across these two hypotheses and then use this insight to test the hypotheses’ relative importance. I find that fragility is the dominant cause of the countercyclical behavior of plant deaths. This suggests that the endogenous destruction of capital is likely an important amplification and propagation mechanism for cyclical shocks and that stabilization policies have the benefit of reduced capital destruction.

The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital. Entrepreneurship, Co‐operative Movements and Institutions by G.H.L. SVENDSEN & G.T. SVENDSEN

The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital. Entrepreneurship, Co‐operative Movements and Institutions by G.H.L. SVENDSEN & G.T. SVENDSEN

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Annual Meeting

We draw on the experience of the major combatant countries in World War I to analyse the role of economic factors in determining the outcome of the war and the effects of the war on subsequent economic performance. We demonstrate that the degree of mobilisation for war can be explained largely by differences in the level of development of each country, leaving little room for other factors that feature prominently in narrative accounts, such as national differences in war preparations, war leadership, military organisation and morale. We analyse the effects of the war on subsequent growth performance in terms of the scale of destruction of physical and human capital. Although there was some rebound after the war, it was not enough to undo the negative effects of the capital destruction and the damage to the international institutional framework caused by the war.

Why are Plant Deaths Countercyclical: Reallocation Timing or Fragility?

Because plant deaths destroy specific capital with large local economic impacts and potentially important macroeconomic effects, understanding the causes of deaths and, in particular, why they are concentrated in cyclical downturns, is important. The reallocation-timing hypothesis posits that plants suffering adverse permanent demand/productivity shocks delay shutdowns until cyclical downturns when plant capacity is less valuable, while the fragility hypothesis posits that shutdowns occur in downturns because the option value of maintaining the plant through weak demand periods is too low. I show that the effect that a plant's specific capital has on the timing of plant deaths differs across these two hypotheses and then use this insight to test the hypotheses' relative importance. I find that fragility is the dominant cause of the countercyclical behavior of plant deaths. This suggests that the endogenous destruction of capital is likely an important amplification and propagation mech

Family firms amidst the creative destruction of capitalism

ABSTRACTIn terms of anthropology's past interests, the study of family firms seems a “natural” way into the ethnography of contemporary capitalism. True, but as Sylvia Yanagisako's rich and sensitive study demonstrates, this is so by productively frustrating central ideas in anthropology like “culture” and “kinship” without resolution in alternative concepts.

Academic Knowledge Mismanagement and the Destruction of Social Capital in Communities

Academic Knowledge Mismanagement and the Destruction of Social Capital in Communities

Zwischen Kultur und Kalkül? Vertrauen und Sozialkapital im Kontext der neoinstitutionalistischen Wende

Trust and social capital work in social networks as informal institutions, favouring cooperation between the participants of such social interaction. However, the increasing use of both terms has been accompanied by vanishing conceptual and theoretical precision. In order to counterbalance this development this article tries to clarify some of the major puzzles connected with both terms. First, we embed trust and social capital within the institutionalist turn in political science. Second however, we demonstrate that trust and social capital have been modelled from at least two perspectives: sociological institutionalism and economic institutionalism. Furthermore, attempts of combining those approaches have lead to decreasing theoretical consistency. Finally, we propose that economic institutionalism is theoretically and empirically more fruitful to explain the creation and destruction of social capital.

Imagining Architecture II: ?Treasure Storehouses? and Constructions of Asante Regional Hegemony

British colonial destruction of the Asante capital of Kumasi, Ghana-including the Asantehene's palace, rebuilt as a military fort on the site of a ceremonial gathering ground-profoundly altered the city's spatial organization, as well as the Asante social and political order. In the century that followed the colonial occupation of Kumasi, however, the reconfiguration of the fort as a museum of military and cultural history, and the transformation of other structures within the architectural order of the redesigned capital, shifted the city's architectural focus from colonial authority to the Asante legacy of regional hegemony. This article situates the Kumasi Fort Museum and the treasure storehouses of the Ghana National Cultural Center and Manhiya Palace Museum within the architectural history of Kumasi, and examines how the capital displays distinctive constructions of Asante imperial hierarchy.