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Author: Kellee S. Tsai
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 292
ISBN-13: 9780801473265
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFocusing on the activities and aspirations of the private entrepreneurs who are driving China's economic growth.
Author: Kellee S. Tsai
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2011-06-15
Total Pages: 436
ISBN-13: 0801462355
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOver the past three decades, China has undergone a historic transformation. Once illegal, its private business sector now comprises 30 million businesses employing more than 200 million people and accounting for half of China's Gross Domestic Product. Yet despite the optimistic predictions of political observers and global business leaders, the triumph of capitalism has not led to substantial democratic reforms. In Capitalism without Democracy, Kellee S. Tsai focuses on the activities and aspirations of the private entrepreneurs who are driving China's economic growth. The famous images from 1989 of China's new capitalists supporting the students in Tiananmen Square are, Tsai finds, outdated and misleading. Chinese entrepreneurs are not agitating for democracy. Most are working eighteen-hour days to stay in business, while others are saving for their one child's education or planning to leave the country. Many are Communist Party members. "Remarkably," Tsai writes, "most entrepreneurs feel that the system generally works for them." She regards the quotidian activities of Chinese entrepreneurs as subtler and possibly more effective than voting, lobbying, and protesting in the streets. Indeed, major reforms in China's formal institutions have enhanced the private sector's legitimacy and security in the absence of mobilization by business owners. In discreet collaboration with local officials, entrepreneurs have created a range of adaptive informal institutions, which in turn, have fundamentally altered China's political and regulatory landscape. Based on years of research, hundreds of field interviews, and a sweeping nationwide survey of private entrepreneurs funded by the National Science Foundation, Capitalism without Democracy explodes the conventional wisdom about the relationship between economic liberalism and political freedom.
Author: Robert Kuttner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-04-10
Total Pages: 323
ISBN-13: 0393609960
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“Democracy is no longer writing the rules for capitalism; instead it is the other way around. With his deep insight and wide learning, Kuttner is among our best guides for understanding how we reached this point and what’s at stake if we stay on our current path.”—Heather McGhee, president of Demos With a new Afterword In the past few decades, the wages of most workers have stagnated, even as productivity increased. Social supports have been cut, while corporations have achieved record profits. What is going on? According to Robert Kuttner, global capitalism is to blame. By limiting workers’ rights, liberating bankers, and allowing corporations to evade taxation, raw capitalism strikes at the very foundation of a healthy democracy. Capitalism should serve democracy and not the other way around. One result of this misunderstanding is the large number of disillusioned voters who supported the faux populism of Donald Trump. Charting a plan for bold action based on political precedent, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? is essential reading for anyone eager to reverse the decline of democracy in the West.
Author: Thomas A. Spragens, Jr.
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Published: 2021-03-01
Total Pages: 319
ISBN-13: 0268200157
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book serves as an introduction to the ongoing political debate about the relationship of capitalism and democracy. In recent years, the ideological battles between advocates of free markets and minimal government, on the one hand, and adherents of greater democratic equality and some form of the welfare state, on the other hand, have returned in full force. Anyone who wants to make sense of contemporary American politics and policy battles needs to have some understanding of the divergent beliefs and goals that animate this debate. In Capitalism and Democracy, Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., examines the opposing sides of the free market versus welfare state debate through the lenses of political economy, moral philosophy, and political theory. He asks: Do unchecked markets maximize prosperity, or do they at times produce wasteful and damaging outcomes? Are market distributions morally appropriate, or does fairness require some form of redistribution? Would a society of free markets and minimal government be the best kind of society possible, or would it have serious problems? After leading the reader through a series of thought experiments designed to compare and clarify the thought processes and beliefs held by supporters of each side, Spragens explains why there are no definitive answers to these questions. He concludes, however, that some answers are better than others, and he explains why his own judgement is that a vigorous free marketplace provides great benefits to a democratic society, both economically and politically, but that it also requires regulation and supplementation by collective action for a society to maximize prosperity, to mitigate some of the unfairness of the human condition, and to be faithful to important democratic purposes and ideals. This engaging and accessible book will interest students and scholars of political economy, democratic theory, and theories of social justice. It will also appeal to general readers who are seeking greater clarity and understanding of contemporary debates about government's role in the economy.
Author: Shoshana Zuboff
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2019-01-15
Total Pages: 658
ISBN-13: 1610395700
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.
Author: Timothy Kuhner
Publisher: Stanford Law Books
Published: 2014-06-25
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780804780667
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs of the latest national elections, it costs approximately $1 billion to become president, $10 million to become a Senator, and $1 million to become a Member of the House. High-priced campaigns, an elite class of donors and spenders, superPACs, and increasing corporate political power have become the new normal in American politics. In Capitalism v. Democracy, Timothy Kuhner explains how these conditions have corrupted American democracy, turning it into a system of rule that favors the wealthy and marginalizes ordinary citizens. Kuhner maintains that these conditions have corrupted capitalism as well, routing economic competition through political channels and allowing politically powerful companies to evade market forces. The Supreme Court has brought about both forms of corruption by striking down campaign finance reforms that limited the role of money in politics. Exposing the extreme economic worldview that pollutes constitutional interpretation, Kuhner shows how the Court became the architect of American plutocracy. Capitalism v. Democracy offers the key to understanding why corporations are now citizens, money is political speech, limits on corporate spending are a form of censorship, democracy is a free market, and political equality and democratic integrity are unconstitutional constraints on money in politics. Supreme Court opinions have dictated these conditions in the name of the Constitution, as though the Constitution itself required the privatization of democracy. Kuhner explores the reasons behind these opinions, reveals that they form a blueprint for free market democracy, and demonstrates that this design corrupts both politics and markets. He argues that nothing short of a constitutional amendment can set the necessary boundaries between capitalism and democracy.
Author: Robert W. McChesney
Publisher: New Press, The
Published: 2013-03-05
Total Pages: 319
ISBN-13: 1595588914
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCelebrants and skeptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the Internet's effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss and dystopian hell. But according to Robert W. McChesney, arguments on both sides fail to address the relationship between economic power and the digital world. McChesney's award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy skewered the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. In Digital Disconnect McChesney returns to this provocative thesis in light of the advances of the digital age, incorporating capitalism into the heart of his analysis. He argues that the sharp decline in the enforcement of antitrust violations, the increase in patents on digital technology and proprietary systems, and other policies and massive indirect subsidies have made the Internet a place of numbing commercialism. A small handful of monopolies now dominate the political economy, from Google, which garners an astonishing 97 percent share of the mobile search market, to Microsoft, whose operating system is used by over 90 percent of the world's computers. This capitalistic colonization of the Internet has spurred the collapse of credible journalism, and made the Internet an unparalleled apparatus for government and corporate surveillance, and a disturbingly anti-democratic force. In Digital Disconnect Robert McChesney offers a groundbreaking analysis and critique of the Internet, urging us to reclaim the democratizing potential of the digital revolution while we still can.
Author: Gar Alperovitz
Publisher: Democracy Collaborative Pres
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 373
ISBN-13: 0984785701
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAmerica Beyond Capitalism is a book whose time has come. Gar Alperovitz's expert diagnosis of the long-term structural crisis of the American economic and political system is accompanied by detailed, practical answers to the problems we face as a society. Unlike many books that reserve a few pages of a concluding chapter to offer generalized, tentative solutions, Alperovitz marshals years of research into emerging "new economy" strategies to present a comprehensive picture of practical bottom-up efforts currently underway in thousands of communities across the United States. All democratize wealth and empower communities, not corporations: worker-ownership, cooperatives, community land trusts, social enterprises, along with many supporting municipal, state and longer term federal strategies as well. America Beyond Capitalism is a call to arms, an eminently practical roadmap for laying foundations to change a faltering system that increasingly fails to sustain the great American values of equality, liberty and meaningful democracy.
Author: Carles Boix
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-05-28
Total Pages: 269
ISBN-13: 0691190984
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn incisive history of the changing relationship between democracy and capitalism The twentieth century witnessed the triumph of democratic capitalism in the industrialized West, with widespread popular support for both free markets and representative elections. Today, that political consensus appears to be breaking down, disrupted by polarization and income inequality, widespread dissatisfaction with democratic institutions, and insurgent populism. Tracing the history of democratic capitalism over the past two centuries, Carles Boix explains how we got here—and where we could be headed. Boix looks at three defining stages of capitalism, each originating in a distinct time and place with its unique political challenges, structure of production and employment, and relationship with democracy. He begins in nineteenth-century Manchester, where factory owners employed unskilled laborers at low wages, generating rampant inequality and a restrictive electoral franchise. He then moves to Detroit in the early 1900s, where the invention of the modern assembly line shifted labor demand to skilled blue-collar workers. Boix shows how growing wages, declining inequality, and an expanding middle class enabled democratic capitalism to flourish. Today, however, the information revolution that began in Silicon Valley in the 1970s is benefitting the highly educated at the expense of the traditional working class, jobs are going offshore, and inequality has risen sharply, making many wonder whether democracy and capitalism are still compatible. Essential reading for these uncertain times, Democratic Capitalism at the Crossroads proposes sensible policy solutions that can help harness the unruly forces of capitalism to preserve democracy and meet the challenges that lie ahead.
Author: Richard Wolff
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2012-10-02
Total Pages: 221
ISBN-13: 1608462579
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat, and who, are we working for? A thoughtful assessment on our current society from “probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist” (The New York Times). Capitalism as a system has spawned deepening economic crisis alongside its bought-and-paid-for political establishment. Neither serves the needs of our society. Whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve. One key cause for this intolerable state of affairs is the lack of genuine democracy in our economy as well as in our politics. The solution requires the institution of genuine economic democracy, starting with workers managing their own workplaces, as the basis for a genuine political democracy. Here Richard D. Wolff lays out a hopeful and concrete vision of how to make that possible, addressing the many people who have concluded economic inequality and politics as usual can no longer be tolerated and are looking for a concrete program of action. “Wolff’s constructive and innovative ideas suggest new and promising foundations for much more authentic democracy and sustainable and equitable development, ideas that can be implemented directly and carried forward. A very valuable contribution in troubled times.” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hope and Prospects
