Download or read book Italian Critics of Capitalism written by Lorella Cedroni and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last hundred years the history of capitalism hardly supports the idea of a dynamic equilibrium between democracy and capitalism. The unprecedented triumph of global capitalism and its stronger power of transformation are changing the nature of political community and its institutions, transforming the conditions of democratic politics and governance. The writings collected in this volume present leading statements of theories of democracy and capitalism in Italy starting from Vilfredo Pareto who firstly focused on the transformation of democracy into a plutocracy in which vested interests use the government as a tool for their own profit, until Norberto Bobbio who expressed a strong defence of democracy and a deep critique of capitalism. As Marx, Weber, and Schumpeter-from different perspectives-have pointed out capitalism rather then just an economic mode of organization, is a 'mentality', a 'social logic', a 'form of living', that influences and reshapes political structures, and culture. The globalized economic order is challenging the foundations and political principles upon which liberal democracy is based. Global markets have unleashed economic forces that are becoming too powerful for democratic institutions to control. Even if the formal elements of democracy still survive, the 'government by the people, for the people' is declining; elections, debates, parties, are evacuated, and bypassed by new, less accountable processes.
Download or read book How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty First Century written by Erik Olin Wright and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is wrong with capitalism, and how can we change it? Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values—equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity—can provide both the basis for a critique of capitalism and help to guide us toward a socialist and democratic society. Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into this concise and tightly argued manifesto: analyzing the varieties of anticapitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and an unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible. Included is an afterword by the author’s close friend and collaborator Michael Burawoy.
Download or read book Truthful Report on the Last Chances to Save Capitalism in Italy written by Gianfranco Sanguinetti and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A translation of an infamous prank played at the expense of Italy's ruling class in 1975. Signed by "Censor," this book was actually written by Gianfranco Sanguinetti, a former member of the Situationist International.
Download or read book A Capitalism for the People written by Luigi Zingales and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Italy, University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales witnessed firsthand the consequences of high inflation and unemployment -- paired with rampant nepotism and cronyism -- on a country's economy. This experience profoundly shaped his professional interests, and in 1988 he arrived in the United States, armed with a political passion and the belief that economists should not merely interpret the world, but should change it for the better. In A Capitalism for the People, Zingales makes a forceful, philosophical, and at times personal argument that the roots of American capitalism are dying, and that the result is a drift toward the more corrupt systems found throughout Europe and much of the rest of the world. American capitalism, according to Zingales, grew in a unique incubator that provided it with a distinct flavor of competitiveness, a meritocratic nature that fostered trust in markets and a faith in mobility. Lately, however, that trust has been eroded by a betrayal of our pro-business elites, whose lobbying has come to dictate the market rather than be subject to it, and this betrayal has taken place with the complicity of our intellectual class. Because of this trend, much of the country is questioning -- often with great anger -- whether the system that has for so long buoyed their hopes has now betrayed them once and for all. What we are left with is either anti-market pitchfork populism or pro-business technocratic insularity. Neither of these options presents a way to preserve what the author calls "the lighthouse" of American capitalism. Zingales argues that the way forward is pro-market populism, a fostering of truly free and open competition for the good of the people -- not for the good of big business. Drawing on the historical record of American populism at the turn of the twentieth century, Zingales illustrates how our current circumstances aren't all that different. People in the middle and at the bottom are getting squeezed, while people at the top are only growing richer. The solutions now, as then, are reforms to economic policy that level the playing field. Reforms that may be anti-business (specifically anti-big business), but are squarely pro-market. The question is whether we can once again muster the courage to confront the powers that be.
Download or read book The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy written by Gianfranco Sanguinetti and published by Flatland. This book was released on 1997 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Real Report appeared under the pseudonym 'Censor' when Sanguinetti, a former member of the Situationist International, mailed his brilliant fake to 520 elite Italian industrialists, academics, journalists and politicians in 1975. Posing as a cultured Italian aristocrat and with a sweeping knowledge of history, classical literature, politics and military strategy, 'Censor' sounded like a conservative from another era, an heir to Dante and Machiavelli, counseling his executive peers in response to autonomous workers' strikes that were sweeping the country. Having been deported from France in 1971 and freshly released from jail on false weapons charges, Sanguinetti succeeded in causing a scandal while laying bare the secret machinations of the state and covert manipulation of terrorist groups by the intelligence services. Translated for the first time in English, by Len Bracken, with a translator's preface and appendix.
Download or read book Foretelling the End of Capitalism written by Francesco Boldizzoni and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prophecies about the end of capitalism are as old as capitalism. None of them, so far, has come true. Yet we keep looking into the crystal ball in search of harbingers of doom. Francesco Boldizzoni gets to the root of the very human need to imagine a better world and uncovers the mechanisms by which the same forecasting mistakes are made over and over again. He offers a compelling solution to the puzzle of what is capitalism and why it seems able to survive all sorts of shocks. The global crisis that developed countries faced at the beginning of the twenty-first century has undermined faith in the capitalist market economy bringing once again to the forefront questions about its long-term prospects. Is capitalism on its way out? If not, what should be expected from future crises? Will society be able and willing to bear the social and environmental costs of creative destruction and relentless financialization? These and other questions have lain at the heart of political economy since the age of Karl Marx. Foretelling the End of Capitalism takes us on a journey through two centuries of unfulfilled prophecies to challenge the belief in an immutable destiny"--
Download or read book Supercapitalism written by Robert B. Reich and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's foremost economic and political thinkers comes a vital analysis of our new hypercompetitive and turbo-charged global economy and the effect it is having on American democracy. With his customary wit and insight, Reich shows how widening inequality of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and corporate corruption are merely the logical results of a system in which politicians are more beholden to the influence of business lobbyists than to the voters who elected them. Powerful and thought-provoking, Supercapitalism argues that a clear separation of politics and capitalism will foster an enviroment in which both business and government thrive, by putting capitalism in the service of democracy, and not the other way around.
Download or read book The Future of Capitalism written by Paul Collier and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Gates's Five Books for Summer Reading 2019 From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it. Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of the United States and other Western societies: thriving cities versus rural counties, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now. In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts—economic, social and cultural—with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervor of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself—and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Producing Culture and Capital written by Sylvia Junko Yanagisako and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-17 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on ethnographic and archival research on 38 firms in northern Italy's silk industry, Sylvia Yanagisako illuminates the cultural processes through which sentiments, desires, and commitments motivate and shape capitalist family firms. She shows how flexible specialization is produced through the cultural dynamics of capital accumulation, management succession, firm expansion and diversification and the reproduction and division of firms. In doing so, Yanagisako addresses two gaps in Marx's and Weber's theories of capitalism: the absence of an adequate cultural theory of capitalist motivation and the absence of attention to kinship and gender. By demonstrating that kinship and gender are crucial in structuring capitalist action, this study reveals these two gaps to be different facets of the same omission. A process-oriented approach to class formation and class subjectivity enables the author to incorporate the material and ideological struggles within families into an analysis of class-making and self-making.
Download or read book Critique of Forms of Life written by Rahel Jaeggi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many liberals, the question “Do others live rightly?” feels inappropriate. Liberalism seems to demand a follow-up question: “Who am I to judge?” Peaceful coexistence, in this view, is predicated on restraint from morally evaluating our peers. But Rahel Jaeggi sees the situation differently. Criticizing is not only valid but also useful, she argues. Moral judgment is no error; the error lies in how we go about judging. One way to judge is external, based on universal standards derived from ideas about God or human nature. The other is internal, relying on standards peculiar to a given society. Both approaches have serious flaws and detractors. In Critique of Forms of Life, Jaeggi offers a third way, which she calls “immanent” critique. Inspired by Hegelian social philosophy and engaged with Anglo-American theorists such as John Dewey, Michael Walzer, and Alasdair MacIntyre, immanent critique begins with the recognition that ways of life are inherently normative because they assert their own goodness and rightness. They also have a consistent purpose: to solve basic social problems and advance social goods, most of which are common across cultures. Jaeggi argues that we can judge the validity of a society’s moral claims by evaluating how well the society adapts to crisis—whether it is able to overcome contradictions that arise from within and continue to fulfill its purpose. Jaeggi enlivens her ideas through concrete, contemporary examples. Against both relativistic and absolutist accounts, she shows that rational social critique is possible.
Download or read book Fabricating Transnational Capitalism written by Lisa Rofel and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative collaborative ethnography of Italian-Chinese ventures in the fashion industry, Lisa Rofel and Sylvia J. Yanagisako offer a new methodology for studying transnational capitalism. Drawing on their respective linguistic and regional areas of expertise, Rofel and Yanagisako show how different historical legacies of capital, labor, nation, and kinship are crucial in the formation of global capitalism. Focusing on how Italian fashion is manufactured, distributed, and marketed by Italian-Chinese ventures and how their relationships have been complicated by China's emergence as a market for luxury goods, the authors illuminate the often-overlooked processes that produce transnational capitalism—including privatization, negotiation of labor value, rearrangement of accumulation, reconfiguration of kinship, and outsourcing of inequality. In so doing, Fabricating Transnational Capitalism reveals the crucial role of the state and the shifting power relations between nations in shaping the ideas and practices of the Italian and Chinese partners.
Download or read book Workers and Capital written by Mario Tronti and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic text of Italian workerism available in English for the first time Workers and Capital is universally recognised as the most important work produced by operaismo, a current of political thought emerging in the 1960s that revolutionised the institutional and extra-parliamentary Left in Italy and beyond. In the decade after its first publication in 1966, the debates over Workers and Capital produced new methods of analysis and a new vocabulary for thousands of militants, helping to inform the new forms of workplace, youth, and community struggle. Concepts such as “neocapitalism,” “class composition,” “mass-worker,” “the plan of capital,” “workers’ inquiry” and “co-research” became established as part of the Italian Left’s political lexicon. Five decades since it was first published, Workers and Capital remains a key text in the history of the international workers’ movement, yet only now appears in English translation for the first time. Far from being simply an artefact of the intense political conflicts of the 1960s, Tronti’s work offers extraordinary tools for understanding the powerful shifts in the nature of work and class composition in recent decades.
Download or read book Capitalism on Edge written by Albena Azmanova and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wake of the financial crisis has inspired hopes for dramatic change and stirred visions of capitalism’s terminal collapse. Yet capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. In Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova demonstrates that radical progressive change is still attainable, but it must come from an unexpected direction. Azmanova’s new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form—precarity capitalism—marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. Widespread economic insecurity ails the 99 percent across differences in income, education, and professional occupation; it is the underlying cause of such diverse hardships as work-related stress and chronic unemployment. In response, Azmanova calls for forging a broad alliance of strange bedfellows whose discontent would challenge not only capitalism’s unfair outcomes but also the drive for profit at its core. To achieve this synthesis, progressive forces need to go beyond the old ideological certitudes of, on the left, fighting inequality and, on the right, increasing competition. Azmanova details reforms that would enable a dramatic transformation of the current system without a revolutionary break. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.
Download or read book Postcapitalism written by Paul Mason and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Originally published in 2015 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Great Britain"--Title page verso.
Download or read book The Years of Alienation in Italy written by Alessandra Diazzi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Years of Alienation in Italy offers an interdisciplinary overview of the socio-political, psychological, philosophical, and cultural meanings that the notion of alienation took on in Italy between the 1960s and the 1970s. It addresses alienation as a social condition of estrangement caused by the capitalist system, a pathological state of the mind and an ontological condition of subjectivity. Contributors to the edited volume explore the pervasive influence this multifarious concept had on literature, cinema, architecture, and photography in Italy. The collection also theoretically reassesses the notion of alienation from a novel perspective, employing Italy as a paradigmatic case study in its pioneering role in the revolution of mental health care and factory work during these two decades.
Download or read book Capitalism and State Enterprises in Italy written by Bruno Amoroso and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Capitalism written by Arundhati Roy and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “courageous and clarion” Booker Prize–winner “continues her analysis and documentation of the disastrous consequences of unchecked global capitalism” (Booklist). From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s one hundred richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism have subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation. “A highly readable and characteristically trenchant mapping of early-twenty-first-century India’s impassioned love affair with money, technology, weaponry and the ‘privatization of everything,’ and—because these must not be impeded no matter what—generous doses of state violence.” —The Nation “A vehement broadside against capitalism in general and American cultural imperialism in particular . . . an impassioned manifesto.” —Kirkus Reviews “Roy’s central concern is the effect on her own country, and she shows how Indian politics have taken on the same model, leading to the ghosts of her book’s title: 250,000 farmers have committed suicide, 800 million impoverished and dispossessed Indians, environmental destruction, colonial-like rule in Kashmir, and brutal treatment of activists and journalists. In this dark tale, Roy gives rays of hope that illuminate cracks in the nightmare she evokes.” —Publishers Weekly
