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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Economic history
'A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for . . . a new generation of feminists' Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist societies was transformed into a set of predictable and controllable mechanisms. It Is a study of indigenous traditions crushed, of the enclosure of women's reproductive powers within the nuclear family, and of how our modern world was forged in blood. 'Rewarding . . . allows us to better understand the intimate relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation state and the transition from feudalism to capitalism' Guardian
Bernie Sanders' socialist advocacy in the United States, communist China's economic successes and a Marxist revival are inspiring many to muse about improved strategies for building superior socialist futures. Socialist Economic Systems provides an objective record of socialism's promises and performance 1820-2022, identifies a feasible path forward and provides a rigorous analytic framework for the comparison of economic systems. The book opens by surveying pre-industrial utopias from Plato to Thomas More, and libertarian communal designs for superior living. It plumbs all aspects of the revolutionary and democratic socialist political movements that emerged after 1870 and considers the comparative economic, political and social performance of the USSR and others from the Bolshevik Revolution onwards. The book also provides case studies for all revolutionary Marxist-Leninist regimes, and supplementary discussions of Mondragon cooperatives, Israeli kibbutzim, Nordic corporatism, and European democratic socialism. It investigates the theoretical and practical complexities of command-planning, reform communism, market communism, worker economic management and egalitarianism. It examines communism as an engine of economic growth, and a mechanism for improving people's quality of existence, including living standards, labor self-governance, egalitarianism, social justice, and prevention of crimes against humanity before addressing the perennial question of what needs to be done next. A suggested path forward is elaborated drawing lessons from the warts-and-all historical performance of socialist economies 1917-2022 and failed socialist prophesy. The evidence indicates that the key to 21st century socialism success lies in empowering workers of all descriptions to govern democratically for their mutual protection and welfare without the extraneous imposition of priorities imposed by other movements. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in Socialism, political economy, comparative economic systems and political and social history.
While marriages were supposed to be celebrated publicly by priests,
in churches where the parties were known, many couples had reasons
-- among them parental disapproval, religious nonconformity,
property considerations and previous entanglements -- to marry in
other ways. Nor was this difficult where there was no unified
marriage code, where a simple exchange of vows might constitute a
valid marriage, and where unbeneficed priests were prepared to
perform the ceremony in return for a drink.
Exploring the interplay of politics and commerce in one of the most dynamic periods of British history, this book traces the fortunes of the India and Eastern Trading Company Limited, established in 1906 to finance a jute plantation in Assam, north-east India. In a watershed period for commercial culture, as family capitalism and industrial economics gave way to a predominance of speculative investment and the marketing of ideas, analysis of this London-registered company and its international management forms a lens through which to view the broader socio-political and economic environment of the late-Victorian period to the interwar. Mapping the eclectic bonds that created a network of association between a multinational cast of merchants, company promoters, mining engineers, politicians and industrialists, reveals the multiplicity of strands which coalesced to create one share company. By examining their responses to the opportunities created by colonialism: to enabling legislations and set-backs, to competition and collaboration, internationalism versus rising nationalism, an important era in British history is examined from an entirely fresh perspective. The history of the India and Eastern Trading Company Limited is a tale of cloaked agendas, of land speculation under the guise of colonial agriculture, of German and Russian interests embedded in British-empire prospects, which exposes the intrigues of some of the most infamous imperialists of the era; figures who were the subject of intense academic scrutiny throughout the twentieth century and remain at the forefront of impassioned debate in the twenty first.
Adam Smith's contribution to economics is well recognised, yet scholars have recently been exploring anew the multidisciplinary nature of his works. The Adam Smith Review is a rigorously refereed annual review that provides a unique forum for interdisciplinary debate on all aspects of Adam Smith's works, his place in history, and the significance of his writings to the modern world. It is aimed at facilitating debate among scholars working across the humanities and social sciences, thus emulating the reach of the Enlightenment world which Smith helped to shape. This twelfth volume brings together leading scholars from across several disciplines and contributes to two particular themes. First, there is a focus on Adam Smith's moral and political philosophy, exploring how Smith's approach finds expression in both abstract philosophy and practical judgment. Second, there is a focus on epistemology, economics, and law, with innovative interpretations of Smithian theories.
Providing a thorough examination of distributive justice, Distributive Justice and Taxation presents and discusses different theories of what constitutes a just society, and how goods should be distributed in such a society. The distribution of goods in society has direct and serious consequences on the lives of the people. There are therefore important questions to be asked regarding the justice of that distribution: Is it just that some people inherit large fortunes while others inherit nothing? Do rich people have additional access to political power because of their wealth? If so, is that just? And should the ambition for economic policies be to combat poverty, or to reduce inequality? This book explores these questions and a number of others through the analysis of related theories, spanning from strong egalitarian theories on the left to right-wing libertarianism. The chapters also explicitly examine the case of taxation - one of the most important and controversial measures of distribution of goods in society. Placing emphasis on the case of Norway and using data from both the UK and USA as a point of comparison, the work details and explores the key features of the tax system. It concludes by presenting and evaluating arguments for and against taxes such as income tax, wealth tax, and inheritance tax. This book is essential reading for those interested in distributive justice, as well as students and scholars of philosophy, law, political science, and economics.
The figure of the entrepreneur has become a relevant factor that explains the process of growth and economic development. Rising unemployment rates have generated among institutional and private agents, a significant interest in promoting entrepreneurship as a formula to eradicate this social scourge of unemployment. Active policies that favor business culture and initiative are being promoted in all areas. In the university world, academic research has multiplied the work on entrepreneurship, a term that includes a triple meaning: the figure of the entrepreneur, the business function and the creation of companies. This versatile meaning must be based on a consistent theory about the company and the entrepreneur. This book presents specific cases of companies and entrepreneurs that have had their role throughout the history of Spain. The intention is to show the techniques and learning acquired by those agents, which have allowed a considerable advance in the knowledge of the structure and business development. This book brings together the research carried out by its authors with primary sources and makes it accessible to a wide audience-Spanish and Latin American-and will be of value to researchers, academics, and students with an interest in Spanish entrepreneurship, business, and management history.
Anders Chydenius (1729 - 1803) was a contemporary of Adam Smith and a leading classical liberal in Nordic history. Chydenius wrote a remarkable essay containing a very clear exposition of the basic principles of economic liberalism and there can be very little doubt that it would have been a paper of great international fame if it had been published in English at the time he wrote it. In the essay Chydenius comes very close to expressing the famous Smithian metaphor of the invisible hand. This volume brings together Chydenius' contributions to the history of economic thought for the first time. With a biography from Juha Manninen and editorial contributions from academics such as Gustav Bjorkstrand and Bo Lindberg, Routledge are proud to present this valuable work which will doubtless be of great interest to historians of economic thought across the globe.
This major new book offers a comparative survey of management, labour and productivity politics in twentieth century Europe. The authors detailed assessments of industrial and political campaigns to raise productivity growth in Britain, Germany and Sweden during this century. Ranging from explorations of the high politics of the nation state and the impact of the Marshall plan on the European countries, to careful assessments of the productivity struggles which took place in the coal mining and metal working industries of modern Europe, each of these essays provides a rich context for understanding the rise and fall of the social democratic project in the reconstruction of Western Europe. The contributors critically assess claims that workers' participation in economic decision-making was a natural feature of modern production, while also emphasising the significance of economic reforms which were enacted in the post-war years. Management, Labour and Industrial Politics in Modern Europe offers a deeper understanding of the performance of the European economies and the politics of reconstruction by combining an analysis of state initiatives with an examination of the strategies pursued by management and labour in the key sectors of European industry in these decades.
"China and Global Capitalism" is a historical and conceptual analysis of China's position and positioning in the world. Reviewing relevant debates, Lin Chun clarifies the evolving relationship between China and global capitalism, past, present, and possible future, and offers a critical reflection on received knowledge about China and the resulting expectations and recommendations for its development, which are largely dependent on the standardization of capitalist trajectories. Against the historical and international background of China's revolutionary, socialist, and post-socialist transformations, this book assesses the logic and crises of capitalist integration. It asks whether a renewed Chinese social model is still feasible as an alternative with potentially universal implications to the eco-socioeconomic impasse of standard modernization. Rejecting both economically and culturally deterministic approaches, the book argues for the centrality of transformative politics.
This book provides a contemporary assessment of Marx's theory of
money. This theory is often praised as one of Marx's greatest
achievements, especially when compared with either classical or
neoclassical economics. On the other hand, Marx's theory of money
has also been severely criticized, especially that is seems to
require that money be a produced commodity. The contributors to the
volume provide a wide-ranging and in-depth appraisal of the
strengths and weaknesses of Marx's theory of money, compared to
other theories of money.
Financial news today is front-page news. Americans are showered daily with stories about the stock market, the savings and loan scandal, banking catastrophes, trade imbalances, government deficits, inflation, international financial crises, unemployment, poverty, urban plight, junk bonds, and taxes. This book provides a handy reference for those who want to locate information about issues and events in American economic history. The volume includes concise essays on more than 1,200 topics. Numerous entries provide biographies of prominent businessmen and businesswomen, union leaders, intellectuals, politicians, and government officials. Others cover historical events, legislation, economic terms, labor unions, corporations, interest groups, elections, and economic institutions. The work also includes a chronology of major events in U.S. economic history and a selective bibliography. Cross-references and a subject index are also provided. The work will be valuable to reference librarians in schools, colleges, and public libraries and to individuals teaching economics, economic history and American history.
A study of the American economy from 1929 to 1989 through the analysis of national income statisitics and other data, this book reaches important conclusions regarding the causes of unemployment, the relation of inflation to the stock of liquid assets and the budget deficit, the proportion of the population in poverty, the gap between interest and profit rates, the relation of productivity to income. These conclusions are discussed using graphs and diagrams extensively. By the editor of The Economics of Human Betterment.
The twentieth century has been popularly seen as "the American Century," as publisher Henry Luce dubbed it, a long period in which the United States had amassed the economic resources, the political and military strength, and the moral prestige to assume global leadership. By century's end, the trajectory of American politics, the sense of ever waxing federal power, and the nation's place in the world seemed less assured. Americans of many stripes came to contest the standard narratives of nation building and international hegemony that generations of historians dutifully charted. In this volume, a group of distinguished junior and senior historians-including John McGreevy, James Campbell, Elizabeth Borgwardt, Eric Rauchway, Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, and James Kloppenberg- revisit and revise many of the chestnuts of American political history. First and foremost, the contributors challenge the teleological view of the inexorable transformation of the United States into a modern nation. To be sure, chain stores replaced mom-and-pop businesses, interstate highways knit together once isolated regions, national media shaped debate from coast-to coast, and the IRS, the EPA, the Federal Reserve, the Social Security Administration and other instruments of national power became daily presences in the lives of ordinary Americans. But the local and the parochial did not inexorably give way to the national and eventually to global integration. Instead, the contributors to this volume illustrate the ongoing dialectic between centrifugal and centripetal forces in the development of the twentieth century United States. The essays analyze a host of ways in which local places are drawn into a wider polity and culture. At the same time, they reveal how national and international structures and ideas repeatedly create new kinds of local movements and local energies. The authors also challenge the tendency to view American politics as a series of conflicts between liberalism and conservatism, which Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. and Jr. codified as the idea that American national politics routinely experienced roughly fifteen year periods of liberal reform followed by similar intervals of conservative reaction. For generations, American political history remained the story of reform, the rise and fall, triumphs and setbacks of successive waves of reformers-Jacksonian Democrats and abolitionists, Populists and Progressives, New Dealers and Great Society poverty warriors-and, recently, equally rich scholarship has explored the origins and development of American conservatism. The contributors do not treat the left and right as separate phenomena, as the dominant forces of different eras. Instead they assert the liberal and the conservative are always and essentially intertwined, mutually constituted and mutually constituting. Modern American liberalism operates amid tenacious, recurring forces that shape and delimit the landscape of social reform and political action just as conservatives layered their efforts over the cumulative achievements of twentieth century liberalism, necessarily accommodating themselves to shifts in the instruments of government, social mores and popular culture. These essays also unravel a third traditional polarity in twentieth century U.S. history, the apparent divide between foreign policy and domestic politics. Notwithstanding its proud anti-colonial heritage and its enduring skepticism about foreign entanglements, the United States has been and remains a robustly international (if not imperial) nation. The authors in this volume-with many formative figures in the ongoing internationalization of American history represented among them-demonstrate that international connections (not only in the realm of diplomacy but also in matters of migration, commerce, and culture) have transformed domestic life in myriad ways and, in turn, that the American presence in the world has been shaped by its distinctive domestic political culture. Blurring the boundaries between political, cultural, and economic history, this collective volume aims to raise penetrating questions and challenge readers' understanding of the broader narrative of twentieth-century U.S. history.
Poverty still persists in today's low-income countries despite decades of international aid, and extensive research on the determinants of growth and development. The book argues that meeting this challenge requires a holistic understanding of the context-specific factors that influence economic behavior and structures in poor countries. "Contextual Development Economics" approaches this task by offering a methodology that allows analysing the dynamic interrelations between economic, cultural and historical determinants of economic life in low-income countries. The book starts with an empirical inquiry into the economic characteristics of low-income countries that create the context by which the specific forms of organising economic activity in these countries are determined. It then looks at how different generations of development economists sought to explain economic realities in low-income countries from the 1940s through today. The book finally synthesises the results from this empirical and methodological analysis with insights from an inquiry into contributions of the German Historical School, from which it borrows the concept of the economic style as a methodological alternative to the universal and hence often irrelevant models of mainstream development economics. This book offers a promising perspective for the future of development economics that will be of interest to researchers and development practitioners alike. It will also be relevant for academics and students with an interest in applications of the method and concepts of the Historical School to contemporary problems.
Read the voices of the past to connect with the present. Kishlansky presents a well-balanced selection of readings that integrate coverage of social, economic, religious and cultural history within a traditional, political framework. Sources of the West includes documents on political theory, philosophy, imaginative literature and social history as well as constitutional documents, all of which raise significant issues for classroom discussions or lectures. By reading the voices of the past, readers can connect them to the present and learn to understand and respect other cultures while thinking critically about history. Note: MySearchLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MySearchLab at no extra charge, please visit www.MySearchLab.com or use ISBN: 9780205098569.
This book provides the most comprehensive history of German migration to North America for the period 1709 to 1920 than has been done before. Employing state-of-the-art methodological and statistical techniques, the book has two objectives. First he explores how the recruitment and shipping markets for immigrants were set up, determining what the voyage was like in terms of the health outcomes for the passengers, and identifying the characteristics of the immigrants in terms of family, age, and occupational compositions and educational attainments. Secondly he details how immigrant servitude worked, by identifying how important it was to passenger financing, how shippers profited from carrying immigrant servants, how the labor auction treated immigrant servants, and when and why this method of financing passage to America came to an end.
This description of real-world models and interpretive perspectives on Soviet economic and political theory and practice from 1917 through 1991 encompasses War Communism, New Economic Policy, Stalinism, and the reforms and debates of Krushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev. The work focuses on political economy as contrasted with pure economy, and it is organized on a more or less historical basis. The work demonstrates the forces that led to the disintegration of the Soviet state.
This monograph is the first book-length study of foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia during both the late colonial period and in the contemporary period. It examines the leading Southeast Asian countries receiving foreign investment this century. The arrival of today's Asian investors, from Japan and the four Asian NICs, is described after a brief discussion of the transitionary period of warfare, decolonization and assertion of newly independent states. Special attention is given to the impact of foreign investment on the economic development of the host country.
Barnett presents the first in-depth analysis in English of the pioneer of long cycle analysis, N.D. Kondratiev (1892-1938), who was a key policy adviser to the Soviet government in the early part of the 1920s. Kondratiev developed a market-led industrialization strategy for the USSR, in direct opposition to Stalin's centrally-planned industrialization programme, and was the director of the Conjuncture Institute, a centre for the study of business cycles and forecasting between 1920 and 1928. It was within the Conjuncture Institute that Kondratiev developed his analysis of long cycles. Barnett covers all aspects of Kondratiev's work.
This book is a comparative study of organized crime groups from
five different parts of the world: Europe; North America; Central
America/South America/Caribbean basin; Africa; and Asia/Western
Pacific. Each part contains two case studies and a shorter essay, a
vignette. From Europe the case studies focus on the Italian mafias
and the Russian mafia; the vignette, on the Albanian mafia. From
North America the case studies highlight the US Mafia and the
Mexican drug cartels; the vignette, organized crime in Canada. From
Central America/South America/Caribbean basin the case studies
concentrate on the Colombian drug cartels and gangs of the
Caribbean; the vignette, on organized crime in Cuba. From Africa
the case studies examine resource wars and Somali piracy; the
vignette, relations among international drugs trafficking,
organized crime, and terrorism in North and West Africa. And from
Asia/Western Pacific the case studies spotlight the Chinese Triads
and Japanese Yakuza; the vignette, relations among international
drugs trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism in Written in non-specialist language, An Economic History of Organized Crime provides an original overview of a crucial problem of our times: the growing scourge of global organized crime. This book can be read with profit by the general public, but it also has value for academic specialists and professionals in law enforcement.
The principal themes pursued in this book emerge from the great transformation that the Latin American and the Caribbean economies experienced in the aftermath of both the foreign debt crisis of 1982 and the macroeconomic stabilisation policies that vividly and painfully produced the so-called "lost decade" of the 1980s. Latin America implemented an economic liberalisation process during the late 1980s and the 1990s. The main policy reforms involved in that course can be summarized as privatization of state owned firms, trade openness, deregulation of the foreign direct investment (FDI) regime and fiscal discipline. Latin American countries have also embarked in regional trade agreements, the most important ones being Mercosur and the North American Free trade Agreement (NAFTA). This book compares results from the experience of North-South and South-South moulds of integration. Thus, the impacts of these policies on growth, development, technological progress, poverty and inequality are analysed. Orthodox and heterodox economic policies and theories are discussed along with relevant empirical evidence with a view to assess, on the one hand, the relative merits of the various policy reforms applied by different countries in the region, and on the other, the experience of integration into the global economy. There are thirteen chapters in this collection linked in varying ways to the series of economic reforms introduced in the region in the last decades. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, students and policymakers interested in the study of economic development in emerging economies and in particular in Latin America.
First published in 1986, 1987 and 1990, this three volume reissue covers the life and times of leading economic theorist, Alfred Marshall - one of the founders of neoclassical economics. David Reisman's incisive and comprehensive study divides Marshall's work into three key areas: economics, progress and politics, and moral principles. The author deals with everything from Marshall's magnum opus Principles of Economics through to his contribution to the progressive evolution in Victorian politics; and finally the way in which his background and upbringing influenced his highly moral approach to economic theory.
First published in 1986, The Economics of Alfred Marshall is concerned with the theories of demand, supply, market structure and income distribution which the celebrated author of the Principles of Economics developed while standing on the shoulders of giants. It is thus concerned with hidden assumptions, institutional constraints, tentative conclusions and blurred distinctions; for these are an integral part of the contribution of an economist who warned against spurious over-simplification of that which is inherently complex. The economics of Alfred Marshall appears easy when in fact it is fraught with difficulties. The Economics of Alfred Marshall seeks to explain Marshalla (TM)s theories in detail and to evaluate them in depth. The book attempts in that way to help the reader to gain a deeper understanding of an influential thinker whose insights, however difficult, continue to shed a great deal of light on the nature and workings of the economic system.
First published in 1938 this Routledge Revival is a reissue of the autobiography of influential economist J. A. Hobson. A comprehensive work, it details many aspects of his life including his background, influences, ethical principles, philosophy and religion. In a life which spanned great social, political and economic change - not least that brought about in the aftermath of the first world war - Hobson's humanist economic philosophy had a lasting impact upon economic and sociological thought. |
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