Risking Capitalism

This volume examines diverse meanings and practices of risk management ranging from austerity to climate change to housing and debt. The authors investigate the relationship between shifts in contemporary capitalism and the ways in which neoliberal forms of risk management have emerged, been reproduced and normalized, and, transformed historically.

The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism’s future is far from assured. The global financial meltdown of 2008 nearly produced a great depression. Economies in Europe are still teetering. Income inequality, resource depletion, mass migrations from poor to rich countries, religious fundamentalism—these are just a few of the threats to continuing prosperity. How can capitalism be sustained? And who should spearhead the effort? Critics turn to government. In Capitalism at Risk, Harvard Business School professors Joseph Bower, Herman Leonard, and Lynn Paine argue that while governments must play a role, businesses should take the lead. For enterprising companies—whether large multinationals, established regional players, or small start-ups—the current threats to market capitalism present important opportunities. Capitalism at Risk draws on discussions with business leaders around the world to identify ten potential disruptors of the global market system. Presenting examples of companies already making a difference, the authors explain how business must serve both as innovator and activist—developing corporate strategies that effect change at the community, national, and international levels. Filled with rich insights, Capitalism at Risk presents a compelling and constructive vision for the future of market capitalism.

Q. Who should take the lead in fixing market capitalism? A. Business—not government alone. The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. Pandemics, income inequality, resource depletion, mass migrations from poor to rich countries, religious fundamentalism, the misuse of social media, and cyberattacks—these are just a few of the threats to continuing prosperity that we see dominating the headlines every day. How can capitalism be sustained? And who should spearhead the effort? Critics turn to government. In their groundbreaking book, Capitalism at Risk, Harvard Business School professors Joseph Bower, Herman Leonard, and Lynn Paine argue that while robust governments must play a role, leadership by business is essential. For enterprising companies—whether large multinationals, established regional players, or small startups—the current threats to market capitalism present important opportunities. In this updated and expanded edition of Capitalism at Risk, Bower, Leonard, and Paine set forth a renewed and more urgent call to action. With three additional chapters and a new preface, the authors explain how the eleven original disruptors of the global market system clash with the digital age, and they provide lessons on how to take action. Presenting examples of companies already making a difference, Bower, Leonard, and Paine show how business must serve both as innovator and activist—developing corporate strategies that effect change at the community, national, and international levels. Filled with rich insights, this new edition of Capitalism at Risk presents a compelling and constructive vision for the future of market capitalism.

Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk's rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one's own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name "financial services industry." Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system. Amid the nineteenth-century's waning faith in God's providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust chance-world of capitalism. Freaks of Fortuneis one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.

The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. Income inequality, resource depletion, mass migrations from poor to rich countries, religious fundamentalism, the misuse of social media and cyberattacks--these are just a few of the threats to continuing prosperity that we see dominating the headlines every day. How can capitalism be sustained? And who should spearhead the effort? Critics turn to government. In Capitalism at Risk, Harvard Business School professors Joseph Bower, Herman Leonard, and Lynn Paine argue that while governments must play a role, businesses should take the lead. For enterprising companies--whether large multinationals, established regional players, or small start-ups--the current threats to market capitalism present important opportunities. Capitalism at Risk draws on discussions with business leaders around the world to identify twelve potential disruptors of the global market system. Presenting examples of companies already making a difference, the authors explain how business must serve both as innovator and activist--developing corporate strategies that effect change at the community, national, and international levels. Filled with rich insights, Capitalism at Risk presents a compelling and constructive vision for the future of market capitalism.

A counter-blast to the bashing of capitalism and a fresh and bold re-evaluation of the fundamentals that turn genius into hard currency.

A bold extension of Marx's Capital for the twenty-first century: at once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell. As financial markets expand and continue to refashion the world in their own image, the wealth of capitalist societies no longer presents itself, as it did to Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, as a “monstrous collection of commodities.” Instead, it appears as an equally monstrous collection of financial securities, and the critique of political economy must proceed accordingly. But what would it mean to write Capital in the twenty-first century? Are we really to believe that risk, rather than labor, is now regarded as the true fount of economic value? Can it truly be the case that the credit relation—at least in the global North—has replaced the wage relation as the key site of exploitation and political struggle? And finally, if precarity is indeed the name of today's proletarian condition, what possible future does it actually portend, what analysis does it require? Through a series of creative substitutions, in Portfolio Society Ivan Ascherextends Marx's critical project in bold and unexpected ways. Ascher not only explains some of the often mystifying processes of contemporary finance, he also invites us to consider what becomes of capitalism itself in those places where the relation of capital to its own future is now mediated by financial markets. In the end, we may find that much has changed and much has not; relations of domination endure, and mystifications abound, but the devil is in the details, and that is where Ascher directs our attention. At once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell, Portfolio Society succeeds in revealing the potential limits of Capital, while reveling still in its limitless potential.