State Capitalism Contentious Politics And Large Scale Social Change

Through a careful analysis of the former Soviet Union and China, and South Asian societies of India and the Phillippines, this volume examines the creation of a state capitalism, its roll in economic development, and its impact on social change.

In a dazzling new interpretation of four hundred years of modern French history, Charles Tilly focuses not on kings and courtiers but on the common people of village and farm buffeted by the inexorable advance of large-scale capitalism and the consolidation of a powerful nation-state. Tilly, author of The Vendée and many other books, chooses the contention of the masses as his medium in painting this vivid picture of the people's growing ability and willingness to fight injustice, challenge exploitation, and claim their own place in the hierarchy of power. Contention is not necessarily disorder. The more we look at contention, says Tilly, the more we discover order created by the rooting of collective action in everyday social life through a continuous process of signaling, negotiation, and struggle. In seventeenth-century France, ordinary people did not know how to demonstrate, rally, or strike, but they had standard procedures for expelling a tax collector, undermining a corrupt official, and shaming moral offenders. By the end of the eighteenth century, French people were experimenting with delegations, public meetings, and popular justice. Through the nineteenth century, with the growth of an industrial proletariat, they developed an extensive repertoire of strikes, demonstrations, and direct attacks on landlords and capitalists, as well as conflicts setting worker against worker. In the twentieth century, scenarios of protest expanded to even larger-scale forms such as mass meetings, electoral campaigns, and broad-based social movements. Rather than arguing these developments in the abstract, The Contentious French provides lively descriptions of real events, with pauses to make sense of their patterns. The result is a view of politics with the common struggle for power at its core and the changing structure of power as its envelope. The Contentious French is bound to be controversial, and therefore required reading for specialists in European history, social movements, and collective action. Its fresh approach will also appeal to students and general readers.

During the second half of the twentieth century the countries of East Asia saw one of the most remarkable transformations in human history, from relatively poor societies to global powerhouses of accumulation, proletarianisation and mega-urbanisation. This volume features Marxist scholars from East Asia and Europe who are pioneering a new approach to this transformation using the theory of state capitalism. The essays analyse the histories of countries on either side of the Cold War divide within the broader framework of twentieth century global capitalist expansion, while at the same time offering a sophisticated critique of Developmental State Theory. Contributors are: Tobias ten Brink, Gareth Dale, Jeong Seongjin, Michael Haynes, Kim Ha-young, Kim Yong-uk, Lee Jeong-goo, and Owen Miller

This book explores the legal implications of China’s state-directed economic model for the existing international economic order. It first reveals the close links between the market and the state in contemporary China by profiling an emerging triple role of the state in the economy. It then explores how the domestic legal system underpins the distinctive market-state relationship, before analysing whether essential norms of international economic law, which bracket the international economic order, are able to adapt to China’s innovative market-state relationship. The book argues that the international economic order is inherently limited since it tends to adhere to an orthodox dichotomy, with a clear boundary between the market and the state. It also suggests that China’s new state-market relationship has challenged the dichotomy – the state does not intend to eliminate the functioning of the market but, conversely, utilises a market mechanism and makes itself more integrated into the market. Lastly the book proposes a fresh perspective to comprehend the ‘market-state’ question, which does not to take for granted that all market-state relationships are mutually exclusive.

This book argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. It does so via a transdisciplinary approach that draws on case studies from Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Contributors illustrate and explain the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of dominance and subordination, such as gender and ethnicity as part of a wider project to revitalise class analysis in the study of development problems and experiences. Class is conceived as arising out of exploitative social relations of production, but is formulated through and expressed by multiple determinations. By illuminating the diversity of social formations, this book illustrates the depth and complexity present in Marx’s method. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This balanced study offers an essential comparative analysis of worldwide income inequality. Charles F. Andrain argues that the globalization of income inequality explains contemporary political life in the United States as well as in other parts of the world. To fully understand global income distribution, we need to grasp how historical changes affect these trends, why social movements stage protests against the growing income gap, and how a comparative approach best explains income differences. Andrain’s tightly written interdisciplinary study stresses the impact of this problem on political life and social change in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The comparative evidence probes the full dynamics of this controversial issue and its consequences for society as a whole.

This fascinating study uses qualitative and quantitative data and insights from interviews with judges, lawyers, government officials, entrepreneurs, bankers, consultants, and academics in China and abroad, to provide a new perspective on the problems that have hindered the implementation of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law in China, and recent attempts at reform. The analysis provides unique insights into China's business world and its interaction with the judicial and political system in China. In addition, the book also provides important information about how the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law affects foreign companies, agencies and governments that are active in China. The author draws on empirical data, decided cases and her experience of how the law and surrounding practices deal with foreign stakeholders whose interests are affected by corporate bankruptcy in China. The book will improve understanding of how China's corporate bankruptcy law has been used in practice, what has limited its practical effectiveness, whether it is desirable for the law to be used more readily in China, and the possible options for its reform.

In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, the prominent theorist Georgi Derleugian has gathered together a quintet of eminent macrosociologists to assess whether the capitalist system can survive.