The Political Economy of State Capitalism

1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Gidengil

AbstractPaul Kellogg has called on Canadian political economists to break decisively with dependency theory, arguing that Nikolai Bukharin's insights can provide the key to retheorizing Canada as an unqualifiedly advanced capitalist economy. This comment first questions Kellogg's assumption that left-nationalist dependency theorists were ascribing nationalist motivations to capital investment and then goes on to illustrate that the case for Carroll's internationalist thesis is not as strong as Kellogg supposes. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of Bukharin's emphasis on state capitalism and the nationalization of capitalist interests in the light of Canada's current strategy of market-led continentalism. Finally, the argument is made that capitalist laws of motion can provide only a starting point for understanding the political economy of Canada.


2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. McNally

This article provides an analysis of policy initiatives aimed at rebalancing China's political economy, especially those contained in the twelfth Five-Year Plan and other recent pronouncements. The objective is to generate a conceptual examination of these policy measures, thereby highlighting their basic intent and purpose. The analysis shows that the Chinese leadership intends to pursue policies that can centralize, standardize and regulate the political economy under continued state guidance. Due to the considerable political obstacles that Chinese policymakers face in rebalancing the political economy, a more state-centric approach is seen as necessary. China is therefore pursuing a policy package of refurbishing state capitalism. While a degree of liberalization is likely to be undertaken, the major thrust is one of revamping, restructuring and, ultimately, strengthening state control and guidance over the political economy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 030981682110222
Author(s):  
Luke Telford ◽  
Daniel Briggs

Drawing on 25 qualitative interviews, this paper attends to and critiques neoliberalism to demonstrate how management’s enforcement of targets and the expectancy to overwork in various workplaces corrodes the relationship between managers and employees. First, the paper briefly charts how the shift from post-war Keynesian welfare state capitalism to neoliberalism in the global north placed renewed emphasis on maximising profitability, and what this meant for working methods and innovations that managers now use to make an organisation more efficient. This is often regarded as ‘management practices’. It then connects management practices to the political economy and therefore sheds further empirical light on how management practices under neoliberalism impact adversely on workers, generating psychological distress, instability, pressure and a negative working environment. The paper closes with a discussion of how managers potentially perform an ideological function, directing workers’ attention away from neoliberalism and cementing capitalist realism; the negative ideological belief that there is no alternative to the current political economy.


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