Absolute Capitalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Foster
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Capitalist Class ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Finance Capital ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Market Relations

Although neoliberalism is widely recognized as the central political-ideological project of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is a term that is seldom uttered by those in power. Behind this particular ruse lies a deeply disturbing, even hellish, reality. Neoliberalism can be defined as an integrated ruling-class political-ideological project, associated with the rise of monopoly-finance capital, the principal strategic aim of which is to embed the state in capitalist market relations. Hence, the state's traditional role in safeguarding social reproduction—if largely on capitalist-class terms—is now reduced solely to one of promoting capitalist reproduction. The goal is nothing less than the creation of an absolute capitalism. All of this serves to heighten the extreme human and ecological destructiveness that characterizes our time.

The End of Neoliberalism?

2011 ◽  
Vol 637 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Comaroff
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The State ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
First Century ◽  
Finance Capital ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

In the wake of the economic “meltdown” of 2008, there arose considerable public debate across the planet over the fates and futures of neoliberalism. Had it reached its “natural” end? What, historically, was likely to become of “it”? How might the crisis in the Euro-American economies of the period transform the relationship between economy and the state? This article addresses these questions. It argues against treating neoliberalism as a common noun, a fully formed, self-sustaining ideological project and makes the case that its adjectival and adverbial capillaries alive, well, and, if in complicated ways, central to the unfolding history of contemporary capitalism. Finally, the article offers a reflection on the ways in which twenty-first-century states have become integral to the workings of finance capital, with important consequences for the conception of political economy.

Transnational Corporate Governance: The State of the Art and Twenty-First-Century Challenges

2021 ◽  
pp. 614-646
Author(s):  
Dionysia Katelouzou ◽  
Peer Zumbansen
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Institutional Investors ◽  
Shareholder Wealth ◽  
Performance Measure ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Access To Health Services ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Shareholder Wealth Maximization ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter explores corporate governance as a transnational regulatory field. Mirroring the rise in importance of the idea of shareholder wealth maximization as a firm’s definitive performance measure, corporate governance became a hotly contested field of competing visions of firms’ institutional and normative infrastructure in search of creating the most advantageous conditions to attract capital in volatile markets. This shift occurred at the same time that regulatory transformations in Western postindustrial societies since the early 1980s had begun to significantly shift public service provision and state-organized frameworks for old-age security guarantees and access to health services. Today’s corporate governance laboratory is a transnational force field, fought over by a host of different state and nonstate actors and also by private actors such as institutional investors. Meanwhile, following the financial crises in 2001, 2008 and 2020 and the simultaneously growing pressure on corporations from human rights, gender equality, and environmental groups, the corporate governance debate again is shifting. This time, a diversity of issues are being discussed under the corporate governance rubric, indicating a more comprehensive engagement with the firm’s purpose and functions and its societal obligations and responsibilities. Given the crucial role of firms as the residual claimants of a wide-ranging retreat of the state from its role in guaranteeing and providing a wide range of social functions, corporate governance is a mirror for the transformation of public and private power, and it has to address the twenty-first-century challenges, including global value chains and the proliferation of institutional investors, unfolding on a planetary scale.

scholarly journals Professionalization and Innovations in Nigerian Public Service: How far the Dream of Success?

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Salami Issa Afegbua
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Made In

Public service accounts for a substantial share of a country’s economic activity. It is designed as an agent of fruitful change and development in the state. The transformation of any society or system depends on the effectiveness and efficiency of its civil service. The article examines the nature of professionalization and innovation in Nigerian public service. It argues that professionalization in the public service is an overarching value that determines how its activities will be carried out. The article note that various attempts have been made in Nigeria to professionalised and encourage innovation in the public service, but these have not bring about the expected changes in the public service. It therefore advocates for professionalization and innovations as panacea to the ills of public service in Nigeria. The article concludes that no public service can meet the challenges of the twenty first century without a stronger commitment to the professionalization of its workforce.

Implications of Marxist State Theory and How They Play Out in Venezuela

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Ellner
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Alliances ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Twenty First Century

The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first-century Venezuela. A relationship exists between each of the theories and three issues facing the Chavista movement: whether the bourgeoisie (or sectors of it) displays a sense of ‘class-consciousness’; the viability of tactical and strategic alliances between the left and groups linked to the capitalist structure; and whether socialism is to be achieved through stages, abrupt revolutionary changes, or ongoing state radicalisation over a period of time. During Poulantzas’s lifetime, his concept of the state as a ‘strategic battlefield’ lent itself to the left’s promotion of ‘strategic alliances’ with parties to its right. The same concept is compatible with the ‘process of change’ in Venezuela, in which autonomous movements play a fundamental role in transforming the old state and the construction of new state structures.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-208
Author(s):  
Conor McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Combinations ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Conclusion restates the book’s four key arguments. Firstly, legal exclusion in various related forms is a tactic of power. Secondly, legal exclusion is an enduring phenomenon, alive and well in disturbing new combinations in the twentieth and twenty-first century West. Thirdly, exclusion from law is a shared concern for the literature of outlawry and the literature of espionage, and hence a key theme in a range of writings about the state and its actions from the Middle Ages to the present day. Finally, the role of literature here is often to offer critique: in offering such critique it shares with law a demand for justice.

Saudi Arabia: Islam and Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism strategy

2019 ◽  
pp. 343-363
Author(s):  
Roel Meijer
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Twenty First Century

Saudi Arabia’s counter-terrorism strategy of the first decade on the twenty first century has been widely acclaimed as highly successful and presented as an example for other Muslim countries. The strategy was developed after the bomb attacks of AlQaida on the Arabian Peninsula in 2003. The program is however deeply religious and is based on the reconversion of terrorists from a Jihadi-Salafism to a quietist and law abiding version of Salafism. The chapter goes into the religious terminology Saudi counter-terrorism program by labelling terrorism as religious “deviation,” radicals as people who have been led by their “passions” and are no longer rational and have diverted form the “middle way”. The article also shows how prominent religious scholars have become deeply involved in the state counter-terrorism program of “intellectual security”.

Sufism and Salafism in the Maghreb

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Ricardo René Larémont
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Twenty First Century

During much of the twentieth century, practitioners of Sufism faced extensive criticism from both the jihadist and the anticolonial Salafi communities, who claimed that Sufi beliefs and practices were heterodox, if not heretical. Even though Sufism had been an indigenous and popular form of religious expression within the region for years, their consistent and heated denunciations of Sufism eventually led to the decline in its practice in the Maghreb. Following this decline, at the end of the twentieth century, political leaders (particularly in Morocco and Algeria) attempted to revive Sufism as a pacifist alternative to jihadi-Salafi beliefs and practices, which they believed encouraged political militancy and threatened the state. This chapter examines societal and state efforts first to discourage Sufism and encourage Salafism during most of the twentieth century, and then to reverse course and try to revive Sufism during the twenty-first century, as an attempt to counter the threat of jihadi Salafism. While there are many Sufi orders in North Africa, this chapter focuses on the larger and more influential orders, including the Shadhiliyya, the Shadhiliyya-Jazuliyya, the Shadhiliyya-Darqawiyya, the Qadiriyya, the Tijaniyya, the Sanusiyya, and the Qadiriyya-Boutchichiyya.

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