Book Description
In The Capitalist World-Economy Immanuel Wallerstein focuses on the two central conflicts of capitalism, bourgeois versus proletarian and core versus periphery, in an attempt to describe both the cyclical rhythms and the secular transformations of capitalism, conceived as a singular world-system. The essays include discussions of the relationship of class and ethnonational consciousness, clarification of the meaning of transition from feudalism to capitalism, the utility of the concept of the semi peripheral state, and the relationship of socialist states to the capitalist world-economy. This book is the first in a three volume collection of Wallerstein’s essays. The Politics of World-Economy (1984) elaborates on the role of states, the antisystemic movements and the civilizational project. Geopolitics and Geoculture (1991) analyses both the events leading up to the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and the subsequent process of perestroika in the light of Wallerstein’s own interpretations, and the ways in which the renewed concern with culture is a product of the changing world-system.
Customer Reviews:
a brilliant summary of this important theorist's best work.......1997-06-15
This collection of essays published in the 1970s covers in short and accessible form some of the most important and innovative of Wallerstein's ideas. The first essay is a brilliant exposition of Wallerstein's view that the only way to understand history is to look not at individual nations but at the larger world system in which the nations exist.
There is an essay on ethnicity, class and race which is probably the clearest explanation in the literature for the Marxist view that ethnicity is really determined by class. In Wallerstein's view, the notion of 'people of color' has nothing to do with physical phenotype, but everything to do with the class position within the world-system of the country that person is from. Thus 'pan-Africanism can include the white skinned Arabs of North Africa, but can exclude white skinned Afrikaaners of South Africa.'
Book Description
The preeminent book on Chilean history, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism has been thoroughly updated throughout. Among its many new features are an analysis of the global developments in Chile during the last two decades; a new chapter that focuses specifically on the transition from a military to a civilian government; and extensive coverage of human rights as well as of environmental, economic, and social policies implemented since 1990. Insightful and clearly written, this new edition also includes twenty-six new photos that bring this exciting text to life.
Book Description
The conquest of the Americas inaugurated the slow accumulation of resources and the imperceptible structural transformations that culminated in the Industrial Revolution. From that moment on, capitalism grew and expanded with a dynamism and adaptability that are now all too familiar, profiting from wars and even managing to rebound after a series of devastating economic crises.
In this highly-anticipated revised edition of the 1981 classic, Beaud extends one of the major strengths of the original: the interweaving of social, political, and economic factors in the context of history. At the same time, Beaud's analysis provides a realistic and thorough examination of the developments of capitalism in the last twenty years, including globalization, the accelerating speed of capital transfer, and the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent absorption of its population into the world market. This new edition also offers a completely revised format that integrates diagrams and flow-charts not previously available in the English-language edition.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent work.......2007-06-07
"This clear accessible book does just what its title promises... Writing in a pleasant and nonconfrontational style, Beaud does so using a chronological order without reverting to jargon, and he describes the intellectual as well as the material history of capitalist development ... The book covers the most important elements of the subject and does a good job of pointing readers to additional sources... This reviewer knows of no comparable current work."
-- M. PERELMAN, CHOICE, American Library Association
Mediocre at best.......2006-01-08
I read the recently released second edition in hopes of finding a good general history of capitalism. Regrettably I didn't find it here. Frankly this text fails to rise to the level of a general textbook. For example, the author somehow manages to sum up the English enclosure acts, Cromwellian revolution, 1688 and the French Revolution in around five pages with a brief stopover into French absolutism in the mix!
There is little in the way of recent scholarship here. I also get the feeling that the translation leaves something to be desired.
The author sums it up best himself in the preface to the second editon. Looking back at his authorship he writes, "I was forty-three. I was not worried about the scientific authority-figures of my discipline, nor the reactions of my colleagues, nor my own abilities... now, twenty or more years later, I am no longer sure I would take it on again."
A much better choice is The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View by Ellen Meiksins Wood (Verso Press).
Marx & the maddened minion.......2005-07-26
A book like this couldn't get a better review than a 1 star rating from someone like the reviewer below.
Marxist-Leninist Claptrap.......2004-04-04
I bought this book hoping to fill in some missing pieces in my understanding of European history. I was sorely disappointed.
Michel Beaud's "History of Capitalism" is an orthodox Marxist-Leninist tract, obviously written in the late 1970s, with a more recently-written final chapter tacked on that addresses contemporary concerns in a knee-jerk liberal manner. Despite its author's professed familiarity with "analyses [that] questioned the simplistic certitudes of Marxist dogma," his own book does not.
Every paragraph on every page is devoted to repeating words and phrases that are seldom seen anymore in serious works of history or economics: "surplus labor," "exploitation" "proletariate," "rent in labor," etc. The illustrations, also not updated since the 1970s, look like they came from a high school textbook.
Beaud considers Lenin to be a reliable historian and quotes him as such. Non-Marxist thinkers -- indeed, any credible intellectuals who emerged in the 1980s and 1990s -- rarely appear in this book and are never engaged intellectually. The final chapter is just silly: alarmist environmentalist predictions, denial that the collapse of the USSR tells us anything about the workabililty of socialism, promises that a new "crisis" is around the corner, etc.
Readers looking for a history of capitalism shouldn't waste their time with Beaud, and instead should turn to "The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought," by Jerry Z. Muller. The difference between the two books is tremendous; it is impossible to take Beaud seriously when one has read Muller.
Book Description
"The intellectual history of capitalism finally gets its due in this volume of fresh, arresting essays. This book marks the willingness of a new generation of scholars to open up issues rarely addressed by the labor and business historians who until now have been our leading historians of capitalism."--David A. Hollinger, author of Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism "American Capitalism is an important contribution to our understanding of postwar American thought and culture. It will force historians to revise their pantheon of important thinkers for the period. This book reminds us how, in the postwar era, the triumph of a capitalist worldview remained open to serious questioning and alternatives."--George Cotkin, author of Existential America At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the legitimacy of American capitalism seems unchallenged. The link between open markets, economic growth, and democratic success has become common wisdom, not only among policy makers but for many intellectuals as well. In this instance, however, the past has hardly been prologue to contemporary confidence in the free market. American Capitalism presents thirteen thought-provoking essays that explain how a variety of individuals, many prominent intellectuals but others partisans in the combative world of business and policy, engaged with anxieties about the seismic economic changes in postwar America and, in the process, reconfigured the early twentieth-century ideology that put critique of economic power and privilege at its center. The essays consider a broad spectrum of figures--from C. L. R. James and John Kenneth Galbraith to Peter Drucker and Ayn Rand--and topics ranging from theories of Cold War "convergence" to the rise of the philanthropic Right. They examine how the shift away from political economy at midcentury paved the way for the 1960s and the "culture wars" that followed. Contributors interrogate what was lost and gained when intellectuals moved their focus from political economy to cultural criticism. The volume thereby offers a blueprint for a dramatic reevaluation of how we should think about the trajectory of American intellectual history in twentieth-century United States.
Nelson Lichtenstein is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy. He is the author of Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit and State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, and editor of Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism.
Customer Reviews:
Very strongly recommended for students of political science, economics, and anthropology.......2006-05-07
Expertly compiled and edited by Nelson Lichtenstein (Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and director of the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy), American Capitalism: Social Thought And Political Economy In The Twentieth Century is an impressive and thought-provoking compilation of essays from political and national figures on recent and continuing America social and economic issues. Inclusive of thirteen essays contributed by such influential intellectuals and scholars as Ayn Rand, Kevin Mattson, Juliet Williams, and others, American Capitalism substantially contributes to our knowledge and prediction of the need for reform, as well as ideological constructs applicable to the twenty-first century as capitalist economics continues to remain accepted by most countries as the basis for their social systems and development. For its paradigm-shifting knowledge and scholarship-based comprehension of modern American societal thought and economic theory, American Capitalism is very strongly recommended for students of political science, economics, and anthropology.
Very strongly recommended for students of political science, economics, and anthropology.......2006-05-07
Expertly compiled and edited by Nelson Lichtenstein (Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and director of the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy), American Capitalism: Social Thought And Political Economy In The Twentieth Century is an impressive and thought-provoking compilation of essays from political and national figures on recent and continuing America social and economic issues. Inclusive of thirteen essays contributed by such influential intellectuals and scholars as Ayn Rand, Kevin Mattson, Juliet Williams, and others, American Capitalism substantially contributes to our knowledge and prediction of the need for reform, as well as ideological constructs applicable to the twenty-first century as capitalist economics continues to remain accepted by most countries as the basis for their social systems and development. For its paradigm-shifting knowledge and scholarship-based comprehension of modern American societal thought and economic theory, American Capitalism is very strongly recommended for students of political science, economics, and anthropology.
Book Description
The "modern times" of the early twentieth century saw the rise of the assembly line and the belief that standardization would make the world a better place. Yet along with greater production efficiency came dehumanization, as the division of labor created many jobs requiring mindless repetition rather than conscious involvement with work.
In our own modern times, a comparable revolution has been wrought by information technology. In Our Modern Times, Daniel Cohen traces the roots of this revolution back to the uprisings of 1968, when the youth of the industrialized world rejected the bourgeois values of their parents and the general situation of the workers. Students raised in the anti-establishment culture of the 1960s were able to shatter the world of standardization created by their parents. By the end of the twentieth century, information technology had created decentralized work structures that encouraged autonomy and personal initiative. But with this greater flexibility came the psychic stress and burnout of "24/7." Cohen explores the many ways that the new technology has changed our work and personal lives, our very conceptions of family and community. He argues compellingly that the present era represents a revolution that will be completed only when the importance of human capital is no longer overshadowed by the cost-saving efficiencies demanded by financial capital.
Book Description
Modern capitalism, from neo-liberalism to deregulation, has come to dominate national and international political economy. This major book addresses this convergence and provides a comprehensive overview of the implications for future capitalist diversity. Leading international contributors consider important questions like: + Is the preference for free markets a well-founded response to intensified global competition? + Does this mean that all advanced societies must converge on an imitation of the United States? + What are the implications for the institutional diversity of the advanced economies? + How do we now evaluate the systems and institutions in East Asia? Political Economy and Modern Capitalism provides a practical and wide-ranging analysis of the public policy choices facing governments and business around the world. It will be invaluable reading for students and researchers of political economy, comparative politics, political science, political sociology, public policy, and administration.
Average customer rating:
- What's the impact of historical analysis on China today?
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China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge (Studies in Modern Capitalism)
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Book Description
Until recently, capitalism has been regarded as unique to Europe and as an organic outgrowth of Western civilization. By examining China in these Eurocentric terms, China has been perceived, by Westerners and Asians alike, to be a failed version of the West. The aim of this collaborative project is to examine how the experience of capitalism as a European social formation, and as a world system, has shaped knowledge of China. In addition the volume seeks to establish new foundations on which a theory of Chinese society might be built.
Customer Reviews:
What's the impact of historical analysis on China today?.......2000-02-10
The book is a good read and highly recommended, but there is room to update us on technology's impact on culture and society in China today.
Why did the development of capitalism and technology fail in China? Does it matter? Has the West trumped the deck in favour of itself through selective interpretation of events? China and Historical Capitalism tells us it is more important to look beyond finding reasons in order to find out what actually happened in China after the fork in the road of economic development.
The essays are reflections of current thinking on the 'post-Needham' project by well established scholars using, if I can stretch the terminology, post-marxist analytical tools and language. Joseph Needham, and his lifetime work on Science and Civilisation in China, is, of course, the backdrop for the essays. The chronology of the essays begins with the development of European capitalism and is completed with the identification of a market economy in pre-modern China.
My favorite essay is that of Francesca Bray, "Towards a critical history of non-Western technology." Perhaps it is because I read her book, The Rice Economies of Asia (University of California Press, 1986). But it is also because she is probably one of the more qualified persons to bridge Needham's work with post-Needham work given that she produced Volume VI of Needham's series. Parts of her essay deal with basic definitions of technology, economy and capitalism. In essence it provides clear guideposts to reinterpret Needham's work by showing the development of technology beyond the cut-off period that signals the rise of the West. The following chapter, by R. Bin Wong, goes on to narrate the development of China's market economy, where Europe's economic development is the usual topic of study.
Having experienced the development of the internet over the last half decade, one can't help but look back at the exercises in this book as also partly misguided. The authors state at the beginning that they do not address current economic development in Asia, but instead focus on how capitalism "has been conceived as a European social formation" and how capitalism, "as a world system has shaped knowledge of China." Yet, so often, the assumptions that underlie their uses of terms such as 'capitalism' result in freezing time to suit their needs and to leave the West in a category of cultural and social development that built the world outside into an image of what it wanted to see. They do not to see capitalism and technology as systems that can develop beyond their experience to date. Neither do they consider current (or even recent) interaction between technological development and society in China. Certainly, it is another large topic. But a peak at the issues would help.
Ultimately, the reality they build comes with its own set of distortions. Perhaps its the nature of the beast, but it would be nice to leave the door open and say: "Hey, Needham, Weber and all the social scientists and thinkers pre-Foucault or Pre-Habermas, etc. just had a different set of problems than we have today. ... But we recognize that we are also missing part of the picture. ... and here is where we need to focus next."
(This is short version of the review that excludes chapter summaries)
Charles de Trenck is based in Hong Kong and published "Red Chips and the Globalisation of China's Enterprises" in 1997
Customer Reviews:
New Breakthrough in Dealing Essentialism of All Orders.......2000-03-12
Whenever We think anything, we are actually captive within the models of thought that we did not make but just learning to live with. These models are diehard ones. The empires break down, the universes bang and bang again, but cool and still remain the models of thought. Databases come and go, make place for new ones, but these models do not. We just cope with the new databases within the confines of the old models. And the area that is affected the most by these diehard thought-models is philosophy. Essentialism is, maybe, the clan-chief of all these models. And this book has attacked it with an unparllel ferocity. Not just the attacks, but this book has taught us how to live with and tame down essentialism to suit with the ever-changing universe. In one form or another essentialism goes on remaining. So, let us learn a way how to channelize it into thinking in a timely manner in this postmodern world -- this book has taught us.
Average customer rating:
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Capitalism at War: Industrial Policy and Bureaucracy in France, 1914-1918
John F. Godfrey
Manufacturer: Berg Publishers
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Binding: Hardcover
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Customer Reviews:
How economic growth works........2000-09-22
The author shows that there is no explanation for economic growth nowadays, and therefore no recipes do exist. The wealth of nations may be pushed forward by neoliberalism or by social market economy or by Santa Clause. According to the lay of land all three are in a same way competent...
A brilliantly comparative analysis of the contradictions that beset all the various capitalist models amidst globalization today as well as of the mode of thinking that limits our perspective to choosing among them. A must read for everyone doing work in comparative and international political economy, and for all those concerned with finding a new way forward for labour movements and the left.
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- The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classics)
- The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
- The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America
- The Eurodollar Futures and Options Handbook (Irwin Library of Investment & Finance.)
- The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
- The Hydrogen Economy
- The Investment Think Tank: Theory, Strategy, and Practice For Advisers
- The Last Stand: The War Between Wall Street and Main Street over California's Ancient Redwoods
- The Master Swing Trader: Tools and Techniques to Profit from Outstanding Short-Term Trading Opportunities
- The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
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