Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Mode Of Production

This book investigates two questions, how did finance become hegemonic in the capitalist system; and what are the social consequences of the rise of finance? We do not dwell on other topics, such as the evolution of the mode of production or the development of class conflict over the longer run. Our theme is not the genesis, history, dynamics, or contradictions of capitalism but, instead, we address the rise of financialization beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. Therefore, we investigate the transnationalization of the circuits and processes of capital accumulation that originated the expansion and financialization of the mechanisms of production, social reproduction, and hegemony, including the ideology, the functioning of the states, and the political decision making. We do not discuss the prevailing neoliberalism as an ideology, although we pay attention to the creation and diffusion of ideas, since we sketch an overview of the process of global restructuring of production and finance leading to the prevalence of the shadow economy....

scholarly journals Equity and the Social Reproduction of Capital

Pólemos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Gearey
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Equity Capital ◽  
Finance Capital ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Mode Of Production ◽  
The Way

Abstract This essay draws on Marxist thinking to argue that equity is essential to the social reproduction of finance capital. Equitable doctrines can be seen as assemblages that define and reproduce the way in which money, people and property relate to each other. Assemblages of equity/capital are ideological complexes – ways of being, thinking and acting that effectively legitimize a particular mode of production. The role that equity plays in the functioning of a regime of profit making is effectively concealed from the student of the subject. Feminist scholars have perhaps been the most successful in drawing attention to the “hidden” patriarchal logic of the subject. However, unless feminist insights are linked to an understanding of the social reproduction of capital, we cannot appreciate how modes of capital accumulation operate under cover of the legitimizing effects of equitable doctrines.

The “laborless fuel”: Landscape, energy transitions and natural gas in the postwar U.S.

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862098712
Author(s):  
Carlo Sica
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Energy Landscapes ◽  
Technological Systems ◽  
Energy Transitions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Landscapes

The dire need for an energy transition to mitigate and reverse global warming is inspiring scholars to reexamine political influences on technological systems. The multi-level perspective of the socio-technical transitions framework acknowledges how technological systems are affected by the social and political landscapes where they are built. Energy landscapes literatures elaborate on the socio-technical transitions framework by explaining how the boundaries of landscapes are negotiated in the context of energy transitions. Energy scholars have found that negotiations over the form and purpose of energy landscapes frequently skew in favor of capital accumulation instead of social reproduction. Studies of landscapes in human geography and labor history have shown how the power imbalance energy scholars observed can be corrected by workers and their communities struggling against business owners and the state. Using archival data, I show how U.S. natural gas legislation in the postwar period was intended to limit coalminers’ demands for landscapes of social reproduction. This point matters because the vulnerabilities of industrial capitalism to energy worker organization could be exploited to push for a just and sustainable energy transition like the Green New Deal.

Capitalist Social Reproduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 320-340
Author(s):  
Martha E. Gimenez
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Abstract Feature

This entry will look at Marx’s theoretical contributions to social reproduction in relationship to critical assessments of his alleged “neglect” of reproduction and to the development of the social sciences, particularly the “radical” social sciences that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and continued to develop ever since. Marx, as well as Engels, offered important insights for understanding social reproduction as an abstract feature of human societies that, however, can only be fully understood in its historically specific context (i.e., in the context of the interface between modes of production and social formations). Social reproduction in the twenty-first century is capitalist social reproduction, inherently contradictory, as successful struggles for the reproduction of the working classes, for example, do not necessarily challenge capitalism. Finally, this article argues that radical social scientists, because they identify the capitalist foundations of the social phenomena they study, have made important contributions to the study of capitalist reproduction.

scholarly journals Growth and agglomeration in the heterogeneous space: a generalized AK approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 1287-1318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raouf Boucekkine ◽  
Giorgio Fabbri ◽  
Salvatore Federico ◽  
Fausto Gozzi
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Optimal Growth ◽  
Asymptotic Distributions ◽  
Inequality Aversion ◽  
Relative Location ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Endogenous Spillovers ◽  
And Diffusion

Abstract We provide an optimal growth spatio-temporal setting with capital accumulation and diffusion across space to study the link between economic growth triggered by capital spatio-temporal dynamics and agglomeration across space. The technology is AK, K being broad capital. The social welfare function is Benthamite. In sharp contrast to the related literature, which considers homogeneous space, we derive optimal location outcomes for any given space distributions for technology and population. Both the transitional spatio-temporal dynamics and the asymptotic spatial distributions are computed in closed form. Concerning the latter, we find, among other results, that: (i) due to inequality aversion, the consumption per capital distribution is much flatter than the distribution of capital per capita; (ii) endogenous spillovers inherent in capital spatio-temporal dynamics occur as capital distribution is much less concentrated than the (pre-specified) technological distribution; (iii) the distance to the center (or to the core) is an essential determinant of the shapes of the asymptotic distributions, that is relative location matters.

Urban Design in Capitalist Society

1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
R J King
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social System ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
System Degeneration ◽  
Fundamental Transformation ◽  
The Aesthetic

Urban design is concerned with the purposive production of urban meaning, through the coordinating design of conjunctures or relationships between spatial elements. It is argued that, in capitalist society, this production of meaning has typically supported shifts in capital accumulation, social reproduction, and legitimation in ways crucial to the reinforcing of dominant interests. Its effect has been to help counteract instability, system ‘degeneration’ (from the standpoint of such interests), and any fundamental transformation of the social system, This effect is termed ‘counteraction 1’. From considerations of urban design as production of values and as a body of practice, it is concluded that an urban design practice that is counteractive to dominant interests is, however, possible (‘counteraction 2’), Such a practice will be characterised by three ‘rules’, relating to the aesthetic program, the discursive penetration of the social context of urban design, and the breaking down of the present autonomisation and obfuscation of design as a domain of social interaction or discourse.

Reading Capital, Reading Historical Capitalisms

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Samir Amin
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Mode Of Production

Marx's Capital presents a rigorous scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production and capitalist society, and how they differ from earlier forms. Volume 1 delves into the heart of the problem. It directly clarifies the meaning of the generalization of commodity exchanges between private property owners (and this characteristic is unique to the modern world of capitalism, even if commodity exchanges had existed earlier), specifically the emergence and dominance of value and abstract social labor.… Volume 2 demonstrates why and how capital accumulation functions, more specifically, why and how accumulation successfully integrates the exploitation of labor in its reproduction and overcomes the effects of the social contradiction that it represents.… Volume 3 of Capital is different. Here Marx moves from the analysis of capitalism in its fundamental aspects (its "ideal average") to that of the historical reality of capitalism.… To move from the reading of Capital (and particularly of volumes 1 and 2) to that of historical capitalisms at successive moments of their deployment has its own requirements, even beyond reading all of Marx and Engels.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

scholarly journals The broken promises of the social investment market

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 980-1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Harvie ◽  
Robert Ogman
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Management Strategy ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social

The United Kingdom is pioneering a new model for the delivery of public services, based around the device of a social investment market. At the heart of this social investment market is an innovative new financial instrument, the social impact bond (SIB). In this paper we argue that the SIB promises (partial) solutions to four aspects of the present multifaceted crisis: the crisis of social reproduction; the crisis of capital accumulation; the fiscal crisis of the state; and the crisis of political legitimacy. In this sense, we conceive the social investment market as a crisis management strategy. We draw on evidence from the world’s first SIB, the Peterborough SIB, launched in 2010, as well as from other SIBs, in order to assess the extent to which the social investment market delivers on its four promises. In doing so, we argue that the crisis of neoliberalism and the social investment market are not only in historical correspondence, but in a relation of causality to one another. In developing this argument, this paper contributes to contemporary theories of neoliberalism by investigating how concrete state developments and societal restructuring is being advanced around the idea of linking marketization with progressive social change. It also supports critical practitioners by offering a theoretical lens to identify the contradictions of this increasingly popular policy approach.

scholarly journals The political economy of state regulation: the case of the British Factory Acts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A Moos
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Incentive Structure ◽  
Marxian Theory ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Coordination Problems ◽  
Social Coordination

Abstract This paper examines the British Factory Acts (enacted 1833–78) to articulate a political economic theory of policy formation. It argues that the British Factory Acts stabilised conditions for both capital accumulation and social reproduction, while perpetuating patriarchal–capitalist relations. Through these Acts, the state intervened in industrial relations to address social coordination problems and overexploitation caused by the incentive structure of firms and households. Overexploitation posed three threats to social reproduction: the deterioration of the health of the working class, the destabilisation of gender norms and patriarchal structures and political mobilisation of the working and middle classes. By conceptualising protective policy as the solution to social coordination problems in the industrial capitalist labour market, this paper builds upon Polanyian insights into the ‘double movement’, with an explicit Marxian theory of exploitation, the classical theory of competition and insights from feminist theories of social reproduction, unwaged labour and the patriarchal–capitalist system.

Mutual dependency: Offshored labour and family organisation in post-socialist Romania

Organization ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 641-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milosz Miszczynski
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Consumer Electronics ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Employment Relations ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Social Reproduction Theory ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Familial Support ◽  
The Social ◽  
Familial Relations

By applying the social reproduction theory, this study proposes a critical conceptualization of the relations between the worker family and offshoring labour in transiting economies. The theoretical foundation of this article underscores that a thorough study of offshoring requires an examination not only of the workplace, worker and employment relations but also of the familial relations within the workers’ households. Based on interviews with workers and their family members, which I conducted in the host community of a consumer electronics facility in Romanian Transylvania, in this article I show how familial support helps to manage limitations that result from the precarious nature of offshoring labour and the transitional realities of the destination countries and how it ultimately serves as a means of achieving greater inter-generational emancipation. The study of familial relations in offshoring’s destination countries provides a better understanding of global labour relations and the way offshoring labour is reproduced in transiting countries. It also shows how the global capitalist system causes tensions with the processes of social reproduction in low-welfare economies, which usually host offshoring investments.

Bringing the City Back In: Space and Place in the Urban History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Mass Communication ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
City Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
The City ◽  
Harsh Reality

Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward sought to understand the social consequences of industrialization by looking at a city. One of the Gilded Age's best-selling books, the Utopian novel magically transported lead character Julian West to a futuristic Boston set in the year 2000 and contrasted that ideal, cooperative world with the harsh reality of individualism-drenched, industrial Boston in 1887. Bellamy's vision of a twenty-first-century city was prescient about technology: it included automation, mass communication, and swift transportation. His social predictions proved less successful. Boston in the year 2000 was populated by Victorian ladies and gentlemen and lacked the cultural variety we associate with contemporary city life.

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