Peripheral Capitalism Research Articles

Varieties of peripheral capitalism: on the institutional foundations of economic backwardness*

This paper critically analyses the literature spawned by Peter Hall and David Soskice’s influential book on the varieties of capitalism. It takes as a starting point the critiques within the comparative political economy literature about the supply-side views on economic growth, and the problems with emphasizing the nature of firm behavior as the source of institutional variety. It argues that demand-led growth, as discussed by Post-Keynesian authors, provides an important alternative to the conventional approach to the explanation of varieties of institutional experience. It suggests that understanding the reasons for institutional variety within capitalism requires incorporating the work of Cambridge Keynesians which recovered the work of Classical political economy authors and extended Keynes’s ideas on effective demand to explain the process of accumulation. It also requires incorporating the ideas of Prebisch and the Latin American Structuralists, who analysed the limits to accumulation in peripheral countries. The paper also discusses the limitations of Neo-Kaleckian models of demand-led growth used by some authors in the comparative political economy literature, and it suggests a new taxonomy for ordering varieties of capitalism.

Thirty Years after the Break-up of Yugoslavia

Abstract The contribution sheds a critical light on the thirty years since the break-up of socialist Yugoslavia. It presents three hypotheses for a critical reorientation of the 1989–91 sequence. Firstly, rather than seeing 1989 as the start of the longue durée of a democratic process, for Yugoslavia this trajectory was ‘realised’ as political chaos and ethnic wars in 1991. Secondly, criticising the chronological view of ‘post-socialism’, it posits post-socialism as having already emerged after 1965, marked by market reforms that ‘withered away’ socialism. Thirdly, and specific to the 1990s, in order to facilitate the transition to capitalism, a ‘primitive accumulation’ of memory and a high degree of violence unfolded, which actually dis-accumulated the socialist infrastructure and socialised means of (re)production. The post-Yugoslav transition proved a genuine ‘contribution’ to ‘making our country great again’: ethnically cleansed nation-states on the horizon of European peripheral capitalism. The contribution concludes on an affirmative note, pointing to the slow resurgence of the Left.

“The vision of these monstrous deformities”: Rurality, Peripheral Capitalism, and Narrative Voice in Brazilian Fiction

The article debates the relationship between rurality, modernity, and the the dynamics of capital accumulation, with a particular focus on the Brazilian author Graciliano Ramosʼs novel São Bernardo. The main interest of this study is in exploring what happens when the narrative device of the voluble, domineering first-person narrator that various critics – such as Roberto Schwarz, Franco Moretti, or the members of the WReC – have identified as a frequent device in peripheral literary works – is transposed to Brazil’s own peripheries, its rural hinterlands.

State and unemployment in central capitalism and Brazil: the constitution of unemployment as a public problem and the degree of unemployment protection

This article analyzes the State’s role in facing unemployment, focusing on two related aspects: the constitution of unemployment as a public problem and the development of employment policies. First, to discuss the trends observed in central capitalist countries, this article presents information from the nineteenth century onwards, using consolidated methods in the international debate. Next, the Brazilian trajectory is examined, regarding its welfare system and the low capillarity of wage relations. In Brazil, the emergence of unemployment on public debate only occurred in the second half of the twentieth century, and once constituted, the public socialization of unemployment risks always showed quite reduced indicators. Thus, this article points out the challenges of Brazilian employment policies, considering the distance between their rules, designed to structured labor markets, and the characteristics of labor relations in peripheral capitalism.

Peripheral capitalism of the Visegrad group states – selected issues

The article presents different models of capitalism with special regard to those occurring in the countries of Central and East Europe after 1989. Next the reasons why in the Vysegrad Group countries, among others, the model of capitalism called peripheral, dependent, imitative or hybrid was shaped and got strengthened. A separate subject of reflections is the issue of further economic development.

Social Formation of Peasants-Fishermen under Peripheral Capitalism in West Coastal Indonesia

This article discusses the social formation of peasants-fishermen under peripheral capitalism within the ethnicity and class differentiation of the Minangkabau fishing community in the west coast of Sumatra Island. The research aims to analyze the evidence of social formation in peasant-fishermen situation under the domination of a specific variant of capitalism. Peasant-fishermen in the less developed countries are transformed and subsumed by the capital without being dissolved, albeit their production process now forms an integral part of the capitalist economic system. This research conduct in the village of Tiku Selatan and V Jorong, Tanjung Mutiara Subdistrict, Agam District, West Sumatra Province. This research assesses two fishing villages' household heads using questionnaire surveys and fieldwork through observation, interviews, and secondary data. According to the findings, there are three categories of peasants-fishermen economic and occupational background related to modes of production, ethnicity, and class differentiation.

The Far Right: Formidable but Not Unbeatable

The level of discontent and alienation with neoliberalism was already very high in the Global North before the coronavirus hit, owing to the inability of the established elites to reverse the decline and living standards and skyrocketing inequality in the dreary decade that followed the financial crisis. And in much of the Global South, the chronic crisis of underdevelopment under peripheral capitalism, exacerbated by neoliberal ‘reforms’ since the 1980s, had already shredded the legitimacy of key institutions of globalization. This article seeks to identify key elements in the rise of the far right in the Global North and the Global South and indicates steps that need to be taken to confront the far right.

Propostas do Banco mundial para reformas do setor saúde no Brasil em 2017

Esse ensaio tem como objetivo analisar as recomendações para o setor saúde publicadas pelo Grupo Banco Mundial (BM) no documento ‘Um Ajuste Justo: análise da eficiência e equidade do gasto público no Brasil’, em novembro de 2017. O tema apresenta um recorte temporal atual e relevante para o debate no que tange às possíveis implicações para o Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS). Apresenta-se uma breve contextualização sobre globalização e a influência das instituições de financiamento internacional no capitalismo periférico. Buscou-se situar os estudos que analisaram as propostas do BM ao setor saúde brasileiro para entender a direção das recomendações. A análise do último Relatório denota que a instituição manteve a linha orientada pelos pressupostos neoliberais pró-mercado que converte a saúde em bem de consumo e defende que é possível produzir mais com os mesmos custos em uma gestão e provisão mais eficientes com maior participação do setor privado. No entanto, o documento não aprofunda o debate sobre os convênios do SUS com hospitais privados, tampouco apresenta indicadores de eficiência, além de desconsiderar as heterogeneidades regionais brasileiras. Outra perspectiva mantida pelo BM foi a recomendação de limitar a responsabilidade do Estado como regulador, além de reiterar a necessidade de integração entre sistemas. Por último, refere que a desoneração fiscal das despesas realizadas com gastos privados de saúde aumenta as iniquidades em saúde, pois as isenções tributárias são menos progressivas, aspecto não destacado nos Relatórios anteriores.

Revalorizando el concepto de crisis de Raúl Prebisch

This article offers a review and appraisal of the concept of crisis in the context of the remarkable trajectory and works of argentine economist Raul Prebisch. It argues that the crisis of the 1930s is the foundation of Prebisch’s theoretical proposal on dependency and development in Lat-in America. The crisis of 1929-1930 was the turning point that encour-aged him to revise and reinvent neoclassical economic theory, promote industrialization and import substitution, and, more importantly, to deeply restructure the role of the State in the region. The crisis leads to decision and action, and it implies and orientation towards the future, a new “horizon of expectations.” This horizon throughout the most part of the twentieth century in Latin America was development. The article also puts forward an interpretation of his program at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC/CEPAL), also triggered by the crisis and oriented to the formulation of policies meant to overcome the crisis. Finally, the article shows how through his interactions with CEPAL sociologists, in particular José Medina Echavarría, Prebisch proposes a redefinition of his concept of crisis, shifting from an economic and junctural concept to a structural one: the crisis of peripheral capitalism

Estado e proteção social no Cone Sul da América Latina: um panorama do século XXI

A discussão sobre a proteção social na América Latina deve considerar as características econômicas, sociais e políticas da região, que se constroem e reconstroem historicamente no movimento da sociedade capitalista periférica. Com o objetivo de refletir sobre a relação Estado e proteção social no início do século XXI, este ensaio apresenta um panorama do processo de disputa entre capital e trabalho pelo direcionamento do Estado, por meio da proteção social/desproteção social pública. Apresenta características da sociedade latino-americana e o movimento do Estado no século XXI, entre a ampliação e a retração nos investimentos sociais. Os golpes de Estado são analisados como tentativas de conter avanços sociais e de manter o statu quo, garantindo privilégios de grupos ligados à classe dominante e ao capital financeiro internacional. Por fim, demonstra a necessidade de transformar o formato da proteção social pública no Cone Sul da América para superar os desafios atuais.Palavras-chave: Golpes de Estado. Hierarquias sociais. Pandemia de covid-19.

The rule of law vs the archaization of law (on the specificity of legal form of the dependent peripheral capitalism)

The subject of this research is the phenomenon of archaization of legal form, which is reflected multiple modern legal systems, including the legal system of modern Russia. The author believes that the state of current Russian legal order testifies to the downfall of one of the declared goals of Russia’s policy of the last three decades – establishment of the so-called rule of law; while the general academic theory of law has not yet formulated a precise understanding of the corresponding processes, as fearing to go beyond the scope of certain ideological boundaries, it first and foremost deals with the formally due than with actually essential. Archaization in the legal systems of modern countries is the revival of the forms of law, legal practice and legal consciousness that are inherent to the pre-capitalist societies. The thesis is substantiated that the process of archaization of law and legal form as a whole, should be considered as one of the objectively determined development patterns and functionality of the societies of dependent peripheral capitalism. The article reviews the objective prerequisites for this phenomenon: its conditionality by socioeconomic relations (preservation of the elements of other production methods in terms of peripheral capitalism), inequality in distribution of the key social resources, and specific social-class structure of the corresponding societies. The general definition of archaization of legal form acquires more precise contours when the author turns to the realities of modern Russian legal order.

In search of civil society: From peasant populism to postpeasant illiberalism in provincial Hungary

The need to rebuild civil society was a prominent theme in dissident writings in East-Central Europe in late socialism, but the revival of this concept deserves close scrutiny and local contextualization. This article identifies two currents in Hungarian debates, one focused on addressing problems of backwardness by opening up paths of material embourgeoisement and the other on abstract liberal notions of associational freedom. It then outlines successive transformations of economic and social life in a small Hungarian town where no industry existed prior to socialism and the dominant political forces were populist in the sense of ‘peasantism’. The agrarian and industrial transformations of the socialist decades were undone in the 1990s. In the 2010s, under governments led by Viktor Orbán, it is argued that norms of civility have been threatened by postpeasant illiberalism. If civil society was the gauntlet laid down to social theorists by East-Central Europe in 1989, the challenge posed by this region nowadays is the theorization of incivility and a new brand of populism. It is suggested that these political processes are driven by the collapse of socialist embourgeoisement and the emergence of a new national bourgeoisie under peripheral capitalism, and that some of the moral responsibility for these developments lies with the unwavering intellectual enthusiasts of abstract liberalism.

Film and Malaria: Mário De Andrade and the Politics of Just Looking

In 1927, Brazilian modernist Mário de Andrade encountered in the Amazon a perceptual state provoked by malaria. The malarial gaze was a type of enduring, inactive, and embodied gaze that he imagines as a mode of resistance against capitalist modernity – a trope that finds its way into the critical discourse on national identity. Dialoguing with film theory and queer phenomenology, the article closely reads three scenes of looking in Andrade’s Amazonian photographs and travel notes, in which such a perceptual state is evoked and unravels a processual entanglement between capitalist modernity, the Amazon, and the modernist subject. The article shows how the inactive malarial gaze emerges through a mediated queer experience of the filmic image that gets suppressed in favour of a pure immediacy of the tropics, arguing that at the core of Andrade’s ambivalent politics of looking lies the problem of the impossibility of a “critical” national project. Fleshing out the political potentialities held by perception, the author suggests through Mário de Andrade a film-political constellation to understand the critical stakes of being an inactive spectator in the (geo)politics of extractive, peripheral capitalism.

Rethinking informal labor in peripheral capitalism: the dynamics of surplus, market, and spatiality

ABSTRACT The paper presents a critique of the discourse of precarity that assumes that regulated era labor relations in advanced capitalist economies represent the norm, while ‘irregular work’ represents a historical aberration under capitalist employment. We argue that this approach fails to inform labor theorists in any meaningful way as it conceals the differences in the social relations under which work is performed. The catchall term ‘precarious labor’ makes it difficult to design policies for specific social groups who are non-homogenous in social relations. We propose a Marxian socio-spatial class framework that gives visibility to three key dimensions: 1) the manner in which surpluses are produced, appropriated, and distributed during the labor process; 2) the spatial component of where work is performed, and 3) the degree of market-orientation. Recognizing on the one hand that precarity will always be a ubiquitous feature of capitalist labor markets, and that there are differences within forms of work depending on the social context and location of work on the other, has a number of benefits for contemporary debates. These include a better appreciation of the multiplicity of processes in which labor participates and generates radically new ways of thinking about anti-capitalist resistance across national boundaries.

Colours of a revolution. Post-communist society, global capitalism and the Ukraine crisis

The Ukraine crisis is usually treated either as Russia’s return to the old-style empire-building (the right) or as a clash of two imperialisms (the left). However, the essence of this crisis can be understood only from the dual perspective of the consequences of the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the fate of the modern global capitalism. The most rotten sections of the Soviet bureaucracy moved the society to capitalism. However, this effort could secure only a peripheral (Ukraine) or at best semi-peripheral (Russia) position in the capitalist world-system as a provider of cheap raw materials. Meanwhile, modern capitalism led to world economic crisis. In these conditions, the capital of the core capitalist countries obviously decided to strengthen its control over the periphery, and Russia’s aspirations to secure its domination over the former Soviet space were in the way. To thwart them, Western powers decided to provoke a Ukraine crisis, exploiting Ukrainians’ justified indignation at the backwardness and corruption inherent in their own peripheral capitalism. Hence, a study of the properties of the post-Soviet societies and their place in the world hierarchy is the key to understanding the Ukraine crisis.

OS FLUXOS MIGRATÓRIOS NA ÁFRICA DO SUL E SEUS IMPACTOS NA ÁFRICA AUSTRAL (1960-2000)

O fim da II Guerra Mundial institui uma nova estrutura geopolítica nas relações internacionais, modificando também a dinâmica dessas relações na África Austral, por efeitos da mudança de abordagem que os países europeus tiveram para com os países da região africana e, também, em virtude da aceleração dos processos de libertação dos povos africanos. Tal cenário contribuiu para uma modificação nos processos migratórios dessa época, que ainda apresenta impactos na atual dinâmica das migrações na África do Sul (RAS). A presente pesquisa busca investigar os processos migratórios ocorridos durante o período de 1960 ao início dos anos 2000. Logo, investiga-se sobre a influência da disputa bipolar da Guerra Fria e dos reflexos que o desenvolvimento capitalista periférico da África do Sul teve para os processos de migração do país. Atualmente, esse Estado destaca-se como liderança política e econômica na região, sendo destino de muitas migrações. Todavia, parte desse prestígio apresenta bases ligadas ao violento regime do Apartheid, cujo “desenvolvimento separado” implicou na desigualdade social atualmente encontrada no país, que, por sua vez, impactara na dinâmica das migrações. Desta forma, na busca por facilitar o desenvolver desta investigação e alcançar seus respectivos objetivos, este trabalho estrutura-se em três etapas. A primeira dedica-se a avaliar o contexto sistêmico e os impactos para a região. A seguir, avalia-se os movimentos migratórios na África Austral e suas relações com os movimentos de libertação africanos. Por fim,verifica-se em que medida o final da Guerra Fria afeta os processos migratórios na região. Conclui-se que os movimentos migratórios foram condicionados simultaneamente pelo aumento da pressão hegemônica que se estabelece principalmente a partir dos anos 1970, bem como pelas dinâmicas regionais derivadas da atuação subimperialista da África do Sul no período abordado. Com o final da Guerra Fria, o abandono estratégico por parte das Grandes Potências, permite uma política de aproximação entre os vizinhos, o que abre espaço para maior flexibilidade nas políticas migratórias.

Research Notes on Neoliberal Globalization and Unemployment Since the 1970s and 1980s

Neoliberalism is related in different levels to the force and authoritarianism that the market -and related sectors- are able to mobilize. For neoliberals, democracy is a problem and a historical reality that should be disciplined to satisfy the demands of the market. These research notes raise some elements of discussion about the implementation of the neoliberal program during the 1970s and 1980s concerning the process of capitalist globalization. Both central and peripheral capitalism experienced the intensity of new policies focused on the protection of private companies and individual initiative in different ways. These policies displaced the objectives of full employment and policies of social welfare. This deployment can be observed in societies as different as Chile and Federal Germany from the mid-1970s to the 1980s. The German case demonstrates that democracy can constrain neoliberalism, whereas in Chile the dictatorship played a fundamental role in propagating neoliberal policies.

Теория периферийного капитализма: к вопросу о применимости латиноамериканской модели к странам Прибалтики: опыт междисциплинарного анализа

The relevance of this study of post-Soviet transition lies in the focus on the technically theoretical problems that are nevertheless the key to understanding regional development processes in the East of the Baltic Sea. The research aims to verify the theory of peripheral capitalism as applied to the Baltic States. The first theoretical objective is to draw a distinction between the ideas of modernisation and transformation in a regional context. The second objective is to adjust the theory of peripheral capitalism to smaller states. To study the features of the transformation of economic and political systems in the Baltics, this article conducts comparative analysis. Systemic analysis and the principles of theoretical and empirical analysis are used as well. Building on this work, the study identifies the deficiencies of the theoretical and methodological potential of transition studies. These include claims that the theoretical and methodological potential of transition as applied to post-Socialist and post-Soviet Europe has been completely fulfilled. Geographical differences between Latin America and the Baltic States are so obvious that they eclipse economic similarities between the processes and development models characteristic of the two regions of the world. An analysis of current developments in Latin America makes it possible to forecast the economic and, to a degree, political consequences of the trends that are just emerging in the Baltics. This article seeks to prove the above thesis.

O Plano Brasil sem miséria e a modernização conservadora da política de Assistência Social

O presente trabalho apresenta parte das reflexões da pesquisa de doutorado da autora, que teve por objeto de estudo o movimento de modernização da política de assistência social sob os governos petistas, à luz da crítica marxista do desenvolvimento capitalista dependente e periférico no Brasil. Aqui estão expostos elementos teóricos e empíricos que visam problematizar o intenso processo de regulamentação e institucionalização da política de assistência social, com ênfase nas transformações desencadeadas a partir do aprofundamento da gestão tecnocrática do Plano Brasil sem miséria. São elencados aqui alguns dos principais achados para confirmação da hipótese de pesquisa de que, com o referido Plano, a política de assistência social passa a ser objeto de investimento especial tanto para modernização da sua gestão, quanto para ampliação dos equipamentos sociais, sendo capitalizada para os objetivos do Plano.

Latin American Reflections on Integration Processes: from Theory of Peripheral Capitalism to “Sudamexit”

Integration processes in Latin America and Caribbean basin have been traditionally provoking strong research interest. Over the past decades, Latin American integration has tested plethora of institutional designs, ranging from relatively uniform subregional trade blocs - CACM, LAFTA, etc. to multifunctional partnerships with an identity-forming component, like Unasur or CELAC. This paper is an attempt to show how the Latin American academic community itself analyzes the integration in the “domestic” region. Forming the literature review, the authors, firstly, show how Latin American integrationism has transformed with the successive change of the phases of the “old”, “open” and “post-liberal” regionalism. Despite the fact that the types of integration in each of the periods differ significantly, scientists approach them in quite a similar way. They have been engineering the region socially and have been using such basic concepts as globalización , soberanía and desarrollo . The theory and practice of Latin American integration has always been closely intertwined. Secondly, the authors distinguish three today’s Latin American “big discourses” about integration - political-economic, geopolitical and state-centered. Each of these discourses takes into account the internal and external conditions that led to the post-liberal phase of integration. Third, expert forecasts about the prospects of regional associations against the background of the crisis tendencies of recent years are presented in this paper. Latin American experts agree on the fact that regional integration has entered the new phase, the most important features of which are the globalization slowing down, the complication of inter-American relations due to the “Trump factor”, the decline of left-progressist forces in the region.