Industrialized Capitalist Countries Research Articles

Socialist Globalization against Capitalist Neocolonialism: The Economic Ideas behind the New International Economic Order

Much globalization scholarship assumes that the United States and other advanced industrialized capitalist countries are the primary agents of globalization. However, when we examine economic globalization more closely and from the perspective of Second- and Third-World institutions, we can see that the Non-Aligned Movement, the Second World, and the Third World more broadly worked hard to create a global economy in the face of active resistance by the United States and other current and former colonial powers, which sought to maintain the economic status quo of the colonial system. This article explores one of the centers of global economic thought and policy for the New International Economic Order (NIEO): the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The Tobin Tax and the Regulation of Capital Movements.

The adoption of the Tobin tax would be an important political act, a break both with the neo-liberal practices which accompany economic globalisation, and with the fatalism which goes along with them. This idea assumes that the level of co-operation which exists between the nations of the world goes well beyond the narrow framework of G3 or G7 summit meetings. The Tobin tax implies that all governments would have to act within their own financial sphere so as to help control the short-term movement of capital. This would ease the pressure on emerging countries, whose own currencies depend on the major currencies. Moreover, there would also be an easing in the level of commercial and financial competition between the industrialised capitalist countries, as such conflicts often include disagreements over current exchange rates. This paper undertakes a further analysis of the Tobin tax, and rebutted the usual criticisms of this idea by certain so-called experts. It shows the merits and the limits of the Tobin Tax.

Democratization and Trade Liberalization in Industrial Capitalist Countries, 1830s to 1930s

Are democracies more likely to pursue free trade than autocracies? Turn-of-the-last-century liberals believed that democracies were more likely to engage in trade than absolutist monarchies (Doyle 1986:1161; Thomson 1966:462). “The majority consists of bread eaters,” wrote the French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1862: 102–3). The argument according to which democracy is less bellicose than autocracy does sometimes rest on the assumption that democracy is more prone to commercial intercourse than autocracy. For a criticism of this line of argument, see Gowa (1995: 519). The electioneering work of the Anti-Corn Law League in Britain in the 1840s confirmed English radicals' belief that the franchise would mitigate corruption and rent seeking. However, subsequent history falsified these expectations. The simultaneous moves of autocratic France toward free trade and of democratic United States toward protection confounded any simple association between regime type and trade policy. No one has found a straightforward relation between democracy and trade. With one recent exception. Geoffrey Garrett and Peter Lange (1995) argue that democracies are quicker to adjust to changes in their economic environment than autocracies because of the popular constraint. The present essay revisits the liberals' insight.

Comparative Environmental Policy: Market‐type Instruments in Industrialized Capitalist Countries

This paper examines experiences of five industrialized capitalist countries in using effluent charges, tradable permits, and subsidies as tools of environmental regulation and compares their programs to economists’models of the market approach. Observed disparity between theory and practice suggests that advantages of the market approach are not as significant as proponents contend. Reasons are identified, and differences in national characteristics of public administration are considered toward explaining differences in how countries have applied market instruments.

Law and custom in Japan: some comparative reflections

En comparaison avec d'autres nations industrielles, le Japon présente des taux de criminalité et de procédures civiles extraordinairement bas. Ce que Ton trouve à l'origine de cette situation peu commune, c'est le sens des responsabilités de groupe ou individuelle, la pesanteur du conformisme et le rôle que jouent conciliation et médiation. En examinant les cinq phases du développement juridique du Japon – les phases chinoise, féodale, ‘féodale centralisée’, celle du droit romain et celle du droit anglo-américain – on peut mieux comprendre certaines contradictions. II en ressort en effet, pour le règlement des conflits, une curieuse interaction entre d'une part un cadre juridique ‘moderne’ et d'autre part une attitude ‘traditionnelle’; aussi voit-on se dégager un intéressant parallèle entre les lois coutumières japonaises et anglaises de la période médiévale.

A Matter of Skill: The Revival of Apprenticeship in Early Twentieth-Century NSW

The survival of apprenticeship in modern Australian industry represents a marked contrast to the institution's virtual disappearance in many other industrial capi talist countries. This article considers one specific historical conjuncture that appears to have figured decisively in the institution's survival in New South Wales, namely, the formative period of state industrial regulation and award making between 1902 and 1914. At the close of the nineteenth century, the custom of formal or indentured apprenticeship had virtually ceased to exist in New South Wales, yet by 1914 it had become compulsory for male juniors in virtually every recognized trade in the state. Drawing on evidence from three key male-dominated trades (carpentry andjoinery, type-composing and engineering), this article pro vides a multifaceted explanation for this dramatic revival. It argues the explana tory inadequacy of each of three main hypotheses on the survival of apprenticeship posited in the existing literature, namely the technicist/onskilling, the deskilling and the social constructionist/reskilling theses. In particular, it challenges the feminist-social constructionist contention that apprenticeship survived as a form of ritual servitude, as an exclusionary device imposed unilaterally on unwilling employers by craft unions and 'captive' industrial tribunals. The case study evidence indicates that the revival owed far less to arbitral imposition than to bilateral negotiation and agreement between unions and organized employers. In this sense, the institution's survival is attributable, in large part, to employers' ongoing need for genuine skill. The main focus of employer resistance was not to the compulsory apprenticeship, but to union attempts to limit apprentice employ ment in those areas of craft production where deskilling had occurred or was occurring. It is only there that compulsory apprenticeship can be said to have amounted to either a union-imposed form of ritual servitude or an employer device for junior labour exploitation.

Social Integration of Salvadoran Refugees

For the past 15 years, tens of thousands of refugees have sought asylum in the industrialized capitalist countries of North America and Europe. In 1990 Germany opened its borders to 19,000 refugees, while 40,000 went to France (Haut conseil a l'integration |HCI~, 1991) and 30,000 to Canada (Ministere des communautes culturelles et de l'immigration du Quebec, 1990). In these countries, legal immigrants are welcome, but refugees generally are not. A large proportion of refugees are never able to obtain legal refugee status. In the context of current social and political difficulties, a large majority of refugees display traits that may make them targets of constant discrimination. Many natives of countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia are discriminated against because of physical features such as skin color, eye shape, and hair type, as well as language, customs, beliefs, political convictions, and working-class origin. Refugees avail themselves of both public and private social services. The demand for services has increased greatly in recent years, and social workers with training in refugee issues are sorely needed. Only a few agencies offer special programs to assist refugees, such as the Toronto Centre for Victims of Torture and the Douglas Hospital in Montreal, which offer programs to help victims of torture and adolescent refugees who have come into Canada alone. In general, social services organizations have developed a systematic approach to working in a multiethnic milieu; however, little thought has been given to specific practice to help refugees. It is essential to analyze in greater depth the characteristics and dynamics involved in the social integration of refugees and to better train social workers and develop programs geared to the needs of refugees, who often find themselves greatly disadvantaged in society. This point of view has led the author to conduct research with a variety of groups, including Salvadoran, Iranian, Ethiopian, Somali, and Lebanese refugees. This article is a summary of a study I conducted with Salvadoran refugees in Canada. My aim was to discover how refugees integrate into the social environment of the host country, as considered from cultural, economic, and political points of view, and ensure their economic, social, emotional, and cultural well-being. Methodology Study and Sample This qualitative study, carried out with 22 Salvadoran refugees (11 men and 11 women) who arrived in Canada between 1984 and 1989 and who came from rural backgrounds, combined an analysis of the literature and an analysis of their life stories. Little literature exists that pertains to the lives of Salvadoran refugees (Jacob & Bertot, 1991; Neuwirth, 1989; Sehl & Naidoo, 1985; Thomson, 1986); therefore, the study is principally based on the information provided by the refugees themselves in response to themes suggested by the author relating to their childhood, adolescence, and adult life; family life; education; work experiences; political experiences; the migration process; the social integration process; and future plans. Questions were asked in Spanish to allow the individual to relate his or her personal story in depth using his or her native language. Study group members had an average age of 23 years and less than 11 years of education. All held casual, low-income jobs (averaging Can$11,000 per year) including driving taxis; working in restaurants, hotels, or as domestics; or working in small- and medium-sized factories, specifically in the textile industry. Seven refugees had resided in the United States for at least a year before coming to Canada. Six had been in Mexico for at least six months, and the others had come to Canada directly from El Salvador. Thirteen participants were refugee claimants, and five had already obtained refugee status. None were living in Canada illegally, because according to Canadian immigration law individuals are allowed to apply for refugee status on arrival. …

Organizing Engineering Work

This article analyzes the organization of engineering work in six industrial capitalist countries. It identifies four major models for the organization of engineering work; the engineering profession did not succeed in achieving professional “closure” in any of the six countries under review. A review of the historical evolution of the organization of engineering work in each of the six countries reveals that engineering has been shaped by a complex interaction among the profession itself, employers, the state, labor, and preindustrial forces. However, none of the national variations on the four models for organizing engineering labor is stable or without internal contradiction because of the ambiguous “intermediate” position of engineers.

Hassan N. Gardezi. Understanding Pakistan: The Colonial Factor in Societal Development. Lahore: Maktaba Fikro-Danish (1991). Pages 162. Price: Rs 99.00.

After almost forty-four years of existence as a sovereign nation, Pakistan still remains an underdeveloped country. This underdevelopment and poverty is not the original state, that is, it is not entirely inherent in the original social and economic structures or cultural traditions of Pakistan; rather this socio-economic retardation of Pakistan is due mainly to the integration of Pakistan's society and economy in the world capitalist system. This integration of a weak and stagnant semi-feudal society with the industrially advanced capitalist societies has gradually resulted in an unequal relationship and an international division of labour, which binds Pakistan as a 'periphery' to the highly developed and industrialized metropolitan 'centres' of capitalism, and in which resources tend to flow from the former to the latter. Hassan N. Gardezi advances this radical hypothesis by characterizing Pakistan's socio-economic formation as 'peripheral' capitalism which is internally ruled by a tiny, but powerful, minority of feudal, capitalist, bureaucratic, and military elites. These ruling elites, says Gardezi, are externally dependent on and subservient to the highly industrialized capitalist countries; and the colonial factor has determined the contours and character of Pakistan's socio-economic system.

The New Technological Revolution and Higher Education

The industrial revolution is a hot topic in the world today. This is a new trend reflecting economic and social changes in industrialized capitalist countries, which is well worth our attention. Despite the profound political and economic reasons contained therein, we can gather the following information: The countries of the West are going from the age of industrialization to the age of information, with priorities on such new industries as microelectronics, bioengineering, oceanographic engineering, and space technology. This is a favorable time for us to review China's economic strategies and technological policies, putting our particular emphasis on opening up intelligence resources, training talented people, developing education, actively utilizing new technology, and promoting the socialist economy, so that China can narrow its gap economically and technologically with developed countries.

Electric power in the Comecon European countries

Less electricity is currently used per person in many Comecon countries than in most industrially developed capitalist countries. In addition, it is used inefficiently, which exacerbates the shortage of electric power in the Comecon countries. In the 1970s and 1980s the proportion of thermal power declined in the Comecon countries as a whole and the proportion of atomic power increased. Electric power in Comecon countries is being developed on the basis of mutual collaboration, but this collaboration has been superficial during the 1980s. Real collaboration has been hampered by the tendency to use resources wastefully, the methods which have developed and the format of the USSR's collaboration with Comecon countries. The Comecon plan for the 1990s, based on the old thinking of the 1980s, has major shortcomings. However, the reform process currently taking place in the socialist countries will have a significant effect on the development of electric power in Comecon countries. Much will depend on more extensive collaboration between Comecon and the industrial capitalist countries.

Socialism and Property

Compared with bourgeois private property, socialist property creates broader opportunities for development of the productive forces, for developing the economic enterprise of millions of people, and for attaining a high quality of life. However, contemporary history has developed otherwise. The capitalist mode of production, which seemed doomed to total disintegration, has in recent decades gained its second wind, has proven capable of carrying out a scientific-technological revolution, of making quite effective use of its results in all spheres of society's life, and of creating a developed social infrastructure. In our country, on the other hand, stagnation and precrisis phenomena have mounted. Coming up with a scientific explanation of this historical paradox requires, in addition to all else, a comparative analysis of the evolution of property relations in the highly industrialized capitalist countries and in the USSR.

Aid from the Federal Republic of Germany to Africa

THE Federal Republic of Germany is one of the major pillars of the group of western industrialised capitalist countries, and this largely determines its rôle in international financial institutions, and its attitudes to the global economic system and market structures. The F.R.G. is second in the world, behind the United States, expressed by its share of the monetary volume of total international trade, but the proportion of exports relative to G.N.P. is much higher than in America and slightly more than in Japan.

Action and law in the Netherlands

As in almost all other industrialised capitalist countries, in the Netherlands, too, the Sixties was a time of the emergence of numerous interest groups, and protest and emancipation movements, all attempting to turn their dissatisfaction with a society which sees its citizens mainly as obedient workers and uncritical consumers into some sort of social change. Although the boundaries are not always crystal clear, it is possible to distinguish social, (anti-)professional and intellectual groups. With regard to the social groups we may distinguish three phases: awareness, the promotion of interests and resistance.

Radicalism or Reformism: The Sources of Working-class Politics

From my work on my doctoral dissertation (Lipset 1950, 1968) down to the present, I have been interested in the problem of “American exceptionalism.” That curious phrase emerged from the debate in the international Communist movement in the 1920s concerning the sources of the weakness of left-wing radical movements in the United States (Draper 1960, pp. 268-72; Lipset 1977a, pp. 107-61). The key question repeatedly raised in this context has been, is America qualitatively different from other industrial capitalist countries? Or, to use Sombart's words, “Why is there no Socialism in the United States?” (Sombart 1976).In a forthcoming book, I evaluate the hypotheses advanced by various writers from Karl Marx onward to explain the absence of an effective socialist party on the American political scene. (For a preliminary formulation, see Lipset 1977b, pp. 31-149, 346-63.) If any of the hypotheses are valid, they should also help to account for the variation among working-class movements in other parts of the world. In this article, therefore, I shall reverse the emphasis from that in my book and look at socialist and working-class movements comparatively, applying elsewhere some of the propositions that have been advanced to explain the American situation.

Basic facts on the bauxite, alumina and aluminium industries

Abstract The charts on the following pages show the geographical distribution of and corporate concentration in the bauxite/aluminium industry. The charts reflect the dominance of transnational corporations in the industry and the position of the «Third World« as a raw material supplier to the processing industries in the industrialized capitalist countries.

Labour market segmentation and workers' careers: the case of the Italian knitwear industry

This paper reports on empirical research into the labour market in the knitwear and ready to-wear industry in the province of JVJodena (Emilia). In particular, it looks at the careers of three categories of workers: homeworkers, those employed on the production lines of larger firms, and artisans.1 Italy, in common with many other industrialised capitalist countries, has witnessed a growing decentralisation of production. This tendency has been differently interpreted but a consensus is emerging that such developments are not evidence of economic backward ness.2 On the contrary, an industrial structure consisting of firms of different size but with a large number of small and even 'microscopic' enterprises is increasingly being recog nised as one possible avenue of economic development. Taking this for granted, the aim of these notes is to investigate the structure of the labour market in a prosperous area typified by economic growth which has the small firm as its base element.

The Cold War and the Superpowers

There are four separate aspects of United States foreign policy that one can always identify. One is the relations that are being constructed, either factual or ideological, with the superpower "enemy"—the Soviet Union and its bloc. Secondly, the set of relations being established with so-called allies—the First World of the industrialized capitalist countries. Thirdly, relations with the usual victims—the Third World countries. And fourthly, there is another class of victim—the domestic population. One significant feature of foreign policy is how it is constructed to deal with the problems posed by the domestic population, particularly if it is insufficiently apathetic or obedient.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.

Conglomerate and oligopolistic power in the 1980s

Abstract Between 1948 and 1980 world trade increased from 52 billion dollars to 2 trillion. The main force behind this dramatic expansion has been transnational corporations from a few industrialized capitalist countries. Frederick F Clairmonte analyses the origins of this process and its consequences for the international division of labour.

Perspectives of Vocational Education in West Germany and Other Capitalist Countries

Based on a dialectical model of correspondences and contradictions within and between education and work, the main functions of vocational education (in the broadest sense, including all kinds of work-relevant learning, both on and off the job) in capitalist countries are examined. Corresponding to the profit interests of private firms, vocational education here contributes to a very high specialization (either theoretical or practical), an abstract achievement orientation (instead of interest in concrete work tasks), hierarchical conformity, low sense of responsibility for other people and for future generations, selfish competition (at the expense of solidary cooperation) and the beliefs of self-worth of the 'winners' and of a lack of self-worth among the 'losers'. To get the opposite results, a closer combination of scientific education and practical training, early job experiences and repeated participation in formal education throughout adult life are required, but also major changes in the occupational system, particularly a substitution of democratic forms of direction and control for rigid hierarchies and by periodical rotation between higher and lower positions. The growing 'over-education' and legitimation crisis in industrialized capitalist countries present contradictions which may only be reconciled by a major change in both areas.