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11. First Hundred Days Plan

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
The Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board prepared the following analysis and recommendations in the spirit of our founding members, America’s foremost business leaders during World War II, who came together to solve our nation’s crucial postwar economic and social challenges. Similarly, business leaders today, hand-in-hand with policymakers and the American public, must provide a thoughtful response to the COVID-19 crisis and restore confidence in capitalism and our democratic institutions. CED respectfully offers its nonpartisan analysis and recommendations for the first 100 days of the new administration to build a stronger, more resilient, and more responsive economy that provides opportunity and prosperity for all Americans. The objective is to overcome the public health challenge, safely reopen the economy, and get our nation on a path to high levels of employment, production, and consumption—to put our country back to work safely, making capitalism benefit all Americans.
Topic:
Employment, Capitalism, Economy, Public Health, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

12. CoronaShock and Socialism

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
In late December 2019, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in central China’s Hubei Province detected cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause. In the first few days of January 2020, Chinese authorities were regularly informing the World Health Organisation (WHO) as well as other major countries and regions with close ties to China’s mainland, such as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan about the outbreak. On 5 January, the WHO released its first briefing on a ‘pneumonia of unknown cause’ in Wuhan. Little was known about the virus, neither how to properly understand it nor whether transmission could occur between humans. The genome sequence for the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was published by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) on 12 January. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a leading Chinese pulmonologist who is advising the Chinese government on this pandemic, confirmed human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on 20 January. As soon as it was clear that this virus could be transmitted between humans, the Chinese authorities acted. Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, was shut down, the scientific establishment in China – and its collaborators around the world – went to work to understand the virus and the disease (COVID-19), and medical personnel in China rushed to be trained and to help break the chain of the infection. Inside Wuhan, the neighbourhood committees, which include members of a range of other associations, Communist Party cadres, and volunteers of all kinds, hastened to assist with temperature checks, food and medicine distribution, and assistance in hospitals. After ten weeks in lockdown, Wuhan opened once more on 8 April. On 15 May, the authorities started to test all the residents of Wuhan once again in order to protect public health and to resume social and economic activities (China shared the results of this test to aid with studies on the feasibility of the herd immunity theory). On 30 January, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). From its Geneva headquarters, the WHO sent up a flare which effectively read: a highly contagious virus has been detected that requires stringent measures of tests, physical distance, and aggressive sanitation. At this point, in the aftermath of 20 January, a gulf opened between the capitalist states and the socialist states. Our analysis shows four main areas of differentiation between the socialist and capitalist approach to the virus. The socialist approach is based on: Science-based government action Public sector production of essential materials Public action mobilised to facilitate social life Internationalism In the capitalist states (such as the United States, Brazil, and India), the governments have instead operated in a hallucinatory manner, pretending that the virus is either not real or not contagious and hoping that some extraneous factor would protect their citizens from its dangers. For-profit sector firms have failed to provide the necessary equipment, while public action has been hard to galvanise in atomised societies that lack the habit of organisation and struggle. Finally, to cover up their incompetence, the ruling political class in these states has resorted to stigmatisation and jingoism, using – in this case – the lethal combination of racism and anti-communism to blame China. In this report, we look at three countries (Cuba, Venezuela, and Vietnam) as well as one state (Kerala, India) to investigate how these socialist parts of the world have been able to handle the virus more effectively.
Topic:
Governance, Capitalism, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Socialism
Political Geography:
India, Asia, Brazil, Vietnam, South America, Cuba, Caribbean, Venezuela, North America, and United States of America

13. Innovation and Precarity Workplace Discourse in Twenty-First Century Capitalism

Author:
Sidney Rothstein
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper analyzes discourse in the workplace in order to explain puzzling patterns of pre- carity in twenty-first century capitalism. Tech workers’ central role in digital transformation endows them with labor market power reflected by their high wages, but during economic downturns, when demand for their skills decreases, even they are vulnerable to downsizing. Comparing workers’ responses to downsizing at two sites of an American tech firm, this paper shows how management disempowers workers by framing the employment relation- ship in a financial discourse. Disposing workers to believe that their jobs are threatened by market forces beyond their control, rather than by managers’ decisions, this financial dis- course undermines labor’s established power resources by persuading workers that mobiliz- ing will be ineffective in protecting their jobs. Relying on detailed case study evidence, this paper demonstrates the importance of discourse to explaining variation in worker power. It argues that the workplace should play a larger role in comparative political economy, par- ticularly in explaining labor market outcomes related to digital transformation.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Hegemony, Capitalism, and Discourse
Political Geography:
United States and North America

14. The Boom and the Busts: Mendocino County’s Agricultural Revolution

Author:
Charlie Harris and Christopher McKenna
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
California’s Mendocino County is a single-industry economy. Arriving in the sixties, marijuana cultivation gained a momentum in Mendocino that local government eventually began perceive as unstoppable, fi lling an economic void once occupied by lumber and fi shing. Remote, permissive, boasting near-perfect outdoor growing conditions and conveniently situated between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon – two cities with something of a reputation for the consumption (and nationwide distribution) of marijuana. This convergence of assets, along with the benefi t of timing, have led Mendocino County to draw growers – whether seasoned professionals or hopeful amateurs – from all over the world.
Topic:
Agriculture, Capitalism, Economy, and Industry
Political Geography:
California, North America, and United States of America

15. American Radical Economists in Mao’s China: From Hopes to Disillusionment

Author:
Isabella M. Weber and Gregor Semieniuk
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
American radical economists in the 1960s perceived China under Maoism as an important experiment in creating a new society, aspects of which they hoped could serve as a model for the developing world. But the knowledge of ‘actually existing Maoism’ was very limited due to the mutual isolation between China and the US. This paper analyses the First Friendship Delegation of American Radical Political Economists (FFDARPE) to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, consisting mainly of Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) members, which was the first visit of a group of American economists to China since 1949. Based on interviews with trip participants as well as archival and published material, this paper studies what we can learn about the engagement with Maoism by American radical economists from their dialogues with Chinese hosts, from their on-the-ground observations, and their reflection upon return. We show how the visitors’ own ideas conflicted and intersected with their perception of the Maoist practice on gender relations; workers’ management and life in the communes. We also shed light on the diverging conceptions of the role for economic expertise between URPE and late Maoism. As the first in-depth study on the FFDARPE we provide rich empirical insights into an ice-breaking event in the larger process of normalization in the Sino- U.S relations, that ultimately led to the disillusionment of the Left with China.
Topic:
Radicalization, Capitalism, Economic Theory, Transition, and Socialism
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

16. Lending a Hand: How Small Black Businesses Supported the Civil Rights Movement

Author:
Louis A. Ferleger and Matthew Lavallee
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
A large literature has detailed the seminal roles played in the Civil Rights Movement by activists, new political organizations, churches, and philanthropies. But black-owned businesses also provided a behind-the-scenes foundation for the movement’s success. Many black-owned businesses operated across the South because they provided goods and services to black customers who could not attain them from white businesses because of segregation. These small business owners very often played roles in civic matters that their counterparts in larger firms did not. Their civic participation and support contributed far more to the potential for political progress than scholars have recognized. Some accounts of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example, underestimate the significance of the role played by Montgomery’s community of black-owned businesses, from taxis to pharmacies. Examples from the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi also illustrate the importance of local small businesses: black business owners were on the front lines, resisting strong pressures from the white community. This paper analyzes these episodes and places them in the context of black-owned businesses in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, albeit descriptively given the unevenness and unavailability of standardized statistics. It also traces the debates over “Black Capitalism” and how the decline of segregation led to dramatic reorganizations of black businesses.
Topic:
Political Economy, Capitalism, Business, History, Civil Rights, African Americans, Martin Luther King, and Jr.
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

17. The American Dual Economy: Race, Globalization, and the Politics of Exclusion

Author:
Peter Temin
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
I describe the American economy in the twenty-first century as a dual economy in the spirit of W. Arthur Lewis. Similar to the subsistence and capitalist economies characterized by Lewis, I distinguish a low-wage sector and a FTE (Finance, Technology, and Electronics) sector. The transition from the low-wage to the FTE sector is through education, which is becoming increasingly difficult for members of the low-wage sector because the FTE sector has largely abandoned the American tradition of quality public schools and universities. Policy debates about public education and other policies that serve the low-wage sector often characterize members of the low-wage sector as black even though the low-wage sector is largely white. This model of a modern dual economy explains difficulties in many current policy debates, including education, healthcare, criminal justice, infrastructure and household debts.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Globalization, Race, Capitalism, Exclusion, and Public Service
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

18. The Citizen, Power and Democracy in Europe's crisis

Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Vaclav Havel Library
Abstract:
The first conference – entitled The Citizen, Power and Democracy in Europe’s crisis – will take place in Prague on 21 and 22 February 2014. The Prague Václav Havel European Dialogues begins with two panel discussions: Europe and the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism and Reinventing the European Project. Evening Conversation: What Europe? What Democracy? will follow. Saturday’s programme will open with a session entitled Europe and the Limits of Civil Society. From consensus to a conflict-driven policy?, while a subsequent discussion, Federalism: The American vs. The European Way, will bring the first ever Václav Havel European Dialogues to a conclusion.
Topic:
Civil Society, Politics, Democracy, Capitalism, and Federalism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and North America