Download or read book Capitalism v Democracy written by Timothy Kuhner and published by Stanford Law Books. This book was released on 2014-06-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As 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.
Download or read book Democratic Capitalism at the Crossroads written by Carles Boix and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An 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.
Download or read book Capitalism and Democracy written by Thomas A. Spragens, Jr. and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 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.
Download or read book Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy written by S.M. Amadae and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-10-15 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a fascinating biography of a foundational theory, Amadae reveals not only how the ideological battles of the Cold War shaped ideas but also how those ideas may today be undermining the very notion of individual liberty they were created to defend.
Download or read book Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism written by Robert Kuttner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Download or read book Capitalism and Social Democracy written by Adam Przeworski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-12-26 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not to repeat past mistakes: the sudden resurgence of a sympathetic interest in social democracy is a response to the urgent need to draw lessons from the history of the socialist movement. After several decades of analyses worthy of an ostrich, some rudimentary facts are being finally admitted. Social democracy has been the prevalent manner of organization of workers under democratic capitalism. Reformist parties have enjoyed the support of workers.
Download or read book Democracy Against Capitalism written by Ellen Meiksins Wood and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of “postmodern” fragmentation, “difference,” and con-tingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject it to critique. In this book she sets out to renew the critical program of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democracy in both the ancient and modern world, examining its relation to capitalism, and raising questions about how democracy might go beyond the limits imposed on it.
Download or read book Clientelism Capitalism and Democracy written by Didi Kuo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States and Britain, capitalists organized in opposition to clientelism and demanded programmatic parties and institutional reforms.
Download or read book Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies written by Jodi Dean and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-02 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies is an impassioned call for the realization of a progressive left politics in the United States. Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean takes the left to task for its capitulations to conservatives and its failure to take responsibility for the extensive neoliberalization implemented during the Clinton presidency. She argues that the left’s ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined by the ascendance of “communicative capitalism,” a constellation of consumerism, the privileging of the self over group interests, and the embrace of the language of victimization. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason. Dean’s critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to an analysis of the fantasy of free trade underlying neoliberalism, and from an examination of new theories of sovereignty advanced by politicians and left academics to a look at the changing meanings of “evil” in the speeches of U.S. presidents since the mid-twentieth century. She emphasizes the futility of a politics enacted by individuals determined not to offend anyone, and she examines questions of truth, knowledge, and power in relation to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Dean insists that any reestablishment of a vital and purposeful left politics will require shedding the mantle of victimization, confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy, and mobilizing different terms to represent political strategies and goals.
Download or read book Social Democratic Capitalism written by Lane Kenworthy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the configuration of institutions and policies most conducive to human flourishing? The historical and comparative evidence from the world's rich democratic countries suggests that the answer is capitalism, a democratic political system, good elementary and secondary schooling, a big welfare state, employment-conducive public services, and moderate regulation of product and labor markets. This set of policies and institutions, which sociologist Lane Kenworthy calls social democratic capitalism, improves living standards for the least well-off, enhances economic security, and very likely boosts equality of opportunity. And it does so without sacrificing the many other things we want in a good society, from liberty to economic growth and much more. While the Nordic nations have been social democratic capitalism's chief practitioners, there is good reason to think other affluent countries, including the United States, will move in this direction in coming decades.
Download or read book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism written by Shoshana Zuboff and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 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.
Download or read book Democracy at Work written by Richard Wolff and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, 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
Download or read book Digital Disconnect written by Robert W. McChesney and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrants 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.
Download or read book Woke Capitalism written by Carl Rhodes and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book delves into the corporate takeover of public morality, or ‘woke capitalism’. Discussing the political causes that it has adopted, and the social causes that it has not, it argues that this extension of capitalism has negative implications for democracy’s future.
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 Democracy and Prosperity written by Torben Iversen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a widespread view that democracy and the advanced nation-state are in crisis, weakened by globalization and undermined by global capitalism, in turn explaining rising inequality and mounting populism. This book, written by two of the world's leading political economists, argues this view is wrong: advanced democracies are resilient, and their enduring historical relationship with capitalism has been mutually beneficial. For all the chaos and upheaval over the past century--major wars, economic crises, massive social change, and technological revolutions--Torben Iversen and David Soskice show how democratic states continuously reinvent their economies through massive public investment in research and education, by imposing competitive product markets and cooperation in the workplace, and by securing macroeconomic discipline as the preconditions for innovation and the promotion of the advanced sectors of the economy. Critically, this investment has generated vast numbers of well-paying jobs for the middle classes and their children, focusing the aims of aspirational families, and in turn providing electoral support for parties. Gains at the top have also been shared with the middle (though not the bottom) through a large welfare state. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom on globalization, advanced capitalism is neither footloose nor unconstrained: it thrives under democracy precisely because it cannot subvert it. Populism, inequality, and poverty are indeed great scourges of our time, but these are failures of democracy and must be solved by democracy.
Download or read book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism written by Michael Novak and published by . This book was released on 2015-05-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 30 years after the release of his ground-breaking work, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak returns to answer the question of what gives rise to democratic capitalism - that intricate blend of commerce and rule of law that encourages peace and global trade. This essay is vital to understanding the intangible environment that best inspires human flourishing, as it discovers capitalism's essence, and uncovers what truly fosters creativity.Novak articulates how democratic capitalism works toward creating, not just consuming, wealth, along with encouraging ambition, discipline, and mutual benefit. He explains how critics fail to consider the interaction between the system and the role that economic, political, and moral liberties play in comprehensive human flourishing.This new and exciting work enlivens the connection between the Bible and democratic capitalism by showcasing how seamlessly the dynamic polity fits with the imperatives of human capacity and drive.
