More than thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the critique of state socialism is still used to deny alternatives to capitalism, irrespective of global capitalist ecological and social devastation. There is seemingly nothing worthwhile salvaging from decades of state socialist experiences. As the climate crisis deepens, Engel-Di Mauro argues that we need to re-evaluate the environmental practices and policies of state socialism, especially as they had more environmentally beneficial than destructive effects. Rather than dismissing state socialism's heritage out of hand, we should reclaim it for contemporary eco-socialist ends. By means of a comparative and multiple-scaled approach, Engel-Di Mauro points to highly diverse and environmentally constructive state socialist experiences. Taking the reader from the USSR to China and Cuba, this is a fiery and contentious look at what worked, what didn't, and how we can move towards an eco-socialist future.

This volume assesses the achievements and limitations of a new set of non-state or multistakeholder institutions that are concerned with improving the social and environmental record of business, and holding corporations to account. It does so from a perspective that aims to address two limitations that often characterize this field of inquiry. First, fragmentation: articles or books typically focus on one or a handful of cases. Second, the development dimension: what does such regulation imply for developing countries and subaltern groups in terms of well-being, empowerment and sustainability? This volume examines more than 20 initiatives or institutions associated with different regulatory and development approaches, including the business-friendly corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda, corporate accountability and fair trade or social economy.

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The role of religion in development work has long been a neglected issue in the Western academic tradition. Religion and Development: Nordic Perspectives on Involvement in Africa is part of a recent wave of publications trying to bring more colors into the traditional black-and-white picture of religion and development as two separate analytical entities. Through the voices of experts in a variety of fields, from theology and development studies to social anthropology and global studies, this book sheds particular light on Nordic involvement in Africa. The relationship between North and South is explored through historical approaches and recent analysis, bringing relevant fieldwork and new case studies into the discussion. Numerous and varied sub-Saharan regions are presented in the book, and all the chapters take different approaches to how the North-South relationship has affected the development of the African continent for better or for worse. The contributors all argue that in order to understand development work in an era of global change, religion has to be an important part of the discussion.

Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism proposes a strikingly original thesis-that capitalism first emerged in Arabia, not in late medieval Italian city states as is commonly assumed. Early Islam made a seminal but largely unrecognized contribution to the history of economic thought; it is the only religion founded by an entrepreneur. Descending from an elite dynasty of religious, civil, and commercial leaders, Muhammad was a successful businessman before founding Islam. As such, the new religion had much to say on trade, consumer protection, business ethics, and property. As Islam rapidly spread across the region so did the economic teachings of early Islam, which eventually made their way to Europe. Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism demonstrates how Islamic institutions and business practices were adopted and adapted in Venice and Genoa. These financial innovations include the invention of the corporation, business management techniques, commercial arithmetic, and monetary reform. There were other Islamic institutions assimilated in Europe: charities, the waqf, inspired trusts, and institutions of higher learning; the madrasas were models for the oldest colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As such, it can be rightfully said that these essential aspects of capitalist thought all have Islamic roots.

This insightful book examines the necessary conditions for the successful initiation and consolidation of unpopular economic reforms. Drawing on the burgeoning literature in the area of policy reform, it features a comparative analysis of fiscal reform in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic at different stages of the post-communist transformation. This analysis demonstrates that a significant number of the national differences in fiscal reform can be attributed to differences in political constraints. It also reveals that these very constraints change in the course of transformation and have become increasingly similar to the 'standard' restrictions which exist in the traditional EU and OECD countries. This in-depth analysis of the changing role of political determinants in post-communist fiscal reform will strongly appeal to economists and political scientists interested in the political economy of policy reform, post-communist economic transformation and the role of international organizations (IMF, EU) in shaping domestic policy-making. Policy analysts interested in fiscal reform in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic will also find much to interest them in this book.

In The Implosion of Capitalism world-renowned political economist Samir Amin connects the key events of our times - financial crisis, Eurozone implosion, the emerging BRIC nations and the rise of political Islam - identifying them as symptoms of a profound systemic crisis. In light of these major crises and tensions, Amin updates and modifies the classical definitions of social classes, political parties, social movements and ideology. In doing so he exposes the reality of monopoly capitalism in its contemporary global form. In a bravura conclusion, Amin argues that the current capitalist system is not viable and that implosion is unavoidable. The Implosion of Capitalism makes clear the stark choices facing humanity - and the urgent need for a more humane global order.

States of Crisis and Post-Capitalist Scenarios engages with the crisis of our capitalist world, with a view to explaining its origins, unravelling its symptoms, and demystifying the anodyne corrective solutions so far proposed. At the same time, it endorses the necessity for utopian interventions aimed at drastically rethinking our social order. Organised around the themes of economy and politics; critical theory; and culture in order to offer an impressive range of thematic perspectives and critical angles, the book delves into the most pressing of today's quandaries by combining stringent critical analysis with creative foresight. A rigorous examination of the current crisis of late-capitalist society, States of Crisis and Post-Capitalist Scenarios develops paradigms that promise to rekindle the desire to move beyond capitalism towards a different social order. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences with particular interests in social and political theory, contemporary philosophy and the crises faced by the current capitalist order.

'Walden Bello is the world's leading no-nonsense revolutionary.' - Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine In this eye-opening and often scathing book, Walden Bello provides a forensic dissection of contemporary capitalism's multiple crises. Trenchant but constructive, Bello's analysis of the collapse of the global real economy, covering such issues as the Wall Street meltdown, the disintegration of the Greek economy, and the rise of China, emphasizes the ever more pressing need to engage in a radical process of deglobalization towards a decentralized, pluralistic world system. Only then will we be able to construct a fairer and more equitable society. A stirring call to arms for all those interested in global economic justice.

The Freedom of Peaceful Action is the first installment of the trilogy The Nature of Liberty, which makes an ethical philosophic case for individual liberty and the free market against calls for greater government regulation and control. The trilogy makes a purely secular and nonreligious ethical case for the individual's rights to life, liberty, private property, and the pursuit of happiness as championed by the U.S. Founding Fathers. Inspired by such philosophic defenders of free enterprise as John Locke, Herbert Spencer, and Ayn Rand, The Nature of Liberty shows that such individual rights are not imaginary or simply assertions, but are institutions of great practical value, making prosperity and happiness possible to the degree that society recognizes them. The trilogy demonstrates the beneficence of the individual-rights approach by citing important findings in the emerging science of evolutionary psychology. Although the conclusions of evolutionary psychology have been long considered to be at odds with the philosophies of individual liberty and free markets, The Nature of Liberty presents a reconciliation that reveals their ultimate compatibility, as various important findings of evolutionary psychology, being logically applied, confirm much of what philosophic defenders of liberty have been saying for centuries. Moreover, proceeding from the viewpoint of Rand, this work argues that the structure of society most conducive to practical human well-being is commensurately the most moral and humane approach as well. The trilogy's first installment, The Freedom of Peaceful Action, focuses on the secular, philosophic foundation for a society based on individual rights. Starting from a defense of the efficacy of observational reason against criticisms from Immanuel Kant and Karl Popper, it demonstrates how a philosophic position of individual liberty and free markets is the logical result of the consistent application of human reason to observing human nature. This installment demonstrates that any political system that wishes for its citizens to thrive must take human nature into account, and that an accounting of human nature reveals that a system of maximum liberty and property protection is the one must conducive to peace and human well-being.

How should a principled nation which believes in the benefits of mutually beneficial trade respond to the predations of mercantilist trading partners and imbalanced trade? Many argue that the response should be to do little or nothing. Balanced Trade argues that achieving the full benefits of international trade requires an effective response. Although trade deficits provide short-term gains in consumption, these are combined with long-term losses in consumption, innovation, investment, employment and power. Furthermore, market mechanisms do not correct trade imbalances that result from mercantilism, nor do they compensate for the long term shift in production and consumption towards the mercantilist. Balancing trade can make important short run and long run contributions to economic stability and prosperity. In America today, despite the growing evidence that imbalanced free trade is not working, many American economists remain adamant in their promotion of free trade. They are also quick to label actions taken to balance trade as protectionism. The political system has also failed to effectively address the problem of imbalanced trade, and the Federal Reserve has often exacerbated rather than addressed the challenge. We show that the classical economic arguments against mercantilism do not justify doing nothing. Effectively responding to imbalanced trade and mercantilism requires careful selection of strategy in order to achieve multiple objectives: balancing trade while maintaining the benefits of international trade, avoiding unnecessary inefficiencies, and maintaining compliance with international law. One of the best options is the Scaled Tariff. By targeting countries with which the United States has a large current account deficit, the Scaled Tariff would efficiently, legally, and effectively balance trade. It would be applied to all imported goods from trade surplus countries that have had a sizable trade surplus with the United States over the most recent four economic quarters.The tariff rate would be designed to take in a portion (e.g. 50%) of the bilateral trade deficit (goods plus services) as revenue. No particular product is protected; the scaled tariff simply changes the terms of trade between the two countries, much as currency devaluation would change the terms of trade with all countries.

The failure of command central planning in the twentieth century has led to a general disillusionment within the socialist movement worldwide. Some alternatives to capitalism have been proposed since the end of the Cold War, but none has offered an alternative form of economic calculation. This book explains how modern information technology may be used to implement a new method of economic calculation that could bring an end to capitalism and make socialism possible. In this book, the author critically examines a number of socialist proposals that have been put forward since the end of the Cold War. It is shown that although these proposals have many merits, their inability effectively to incorporate the benefits of information technology into their models has limited their ability to solve the problem of socialist construction. The final section of the book proposes an entirely new model of socialist development, based on a "needs profile" that makes it possible to convert the needs of large numbers of people into data that can be used as a guide for resource allocation. This analysis makes it possible to rethink and carefully specify the conditions necessary for the abolition of capital and consequently the requirements for socialist revolution and, ultimately, communist society. Information Technology and Socialist Construction will be of interest to students and scholars of political economy, the history of economic thought, labour economics and industrial economics.

Large multinational corporations shape our lives to an enormous extent. How is the growth, power, and significance of big business to be explained and understood? Focusing on the issues of ownership, control, and class formation, Corporate Business and Capitalist Classes explores the implications of changes in the nature of big business, which affect both the businesses themselves, and the economic and political milieu in which these multinationals operate. Up-to-date empirical evidence is reviewed in a wide-ranging comparative framework that covers Britain and the United States, Germany, France, Japan, and many other societies, including emerging forms of capitalism in China and Russia. Unlike other specialist texts in the area, Corporate Business and Capitalist Classes relates its concerns to issues of social stratification and class structure. The first and second editions of the book (under the title Corportations, Classes and Capitalism) were enthusiastically received, and the present edition reviews new theoretical ideas and empirical evidence that has emerged in the ten years since the second edition appeared. The text has been completely re-written and re-structured, and it relates its concerns to contemporary debates over `disorganized capitalism' and post-industrialism.

The Corporation is a major vehicle of business activity worldwide. It incurs social costs and generates benefits that continually change - hence, whether it still provides a net benefit to society is contestable. Evidence-based observations of the last decade of corporate sagas and the role of accounting and auditing, suggests a serious rethink is needed about how commerce is pursued and, in particular, whether the current corporate form has passed its use-by-date. The authors of this new book - including internationally renowned accounting scholars - argue that the two major governance tools of accounting and auditing require major makeovers. Beginning by analyzing the global sweep of deregulation that corporations experienced since 2000, the authors go on to discuss the various scandals and crises that characterized the subsequent period, culminating in yet more calls for further deregulation. Having thoroughly assessed the status quo, they provide a series of urgent recommendations for reforms designed to bring the corporation back to the real world and restore its purpose. This book will be of great interest to students and academics across accounting, business, law and finance, especially more advanced students at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The Corporation is a major vehicle of business activity worldwide. It incurs social costs and generates benefits that continually change - hence, whether it still provides a net benefit to society is contestable. Evidence-based observations of the last decade of corporate sagas and the role of accounting and auditing, suggests a serious rethink is needed about how commerce is pursued and, in particular, whether the current corporate form has passed its use-by-date. The authors of this new book - including internationally renowned accounting scholars - argue that the two major governance tools of accounting and auditing require major makeovers. Beginning by analyzing the global sweep of deregulation that corporations experienced since 2000, the authors go on to discuss the various scandals and crises that characterized the subsequent period, culminating in yet more calls for further deregulation. Having thoroughly assessed the status quo, they provide a series of urgent recommendations for reforms designed to bring the corporation back to the real world and restore its purpose. This book will be of great interest to students and academics across accounting, business, law and finance, especially more advanced students at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Explores capitalism’s role in creating the current state of climate emergency Over the last 11,700 years, during which human civilization developed, the earth has existed within what geologists refer to as the Holocene Epoch. Now science is telling us that the Holocene Epoch in the geological time scale ended, replaced by a new more dangerous Anthropocene Epoch, which began around 1950. The Anthropocene Epoch is characterized by an “anthropogenic rift” in the biological cycles of the Earth System, marking a changed reality in which human activities are now the main geological force impacting the earth as a whole, generating at the same time an existential crisis for the world’s population. What caused this massive shift in the history of the earth? In this comprehensive study, John Bellamy Foster tells us that a globalized system of capital accumulation has induced humanity to foul its own nest. The result is a planetary emergency that threatens all present and future generations, throwing into question the continuation of civilization and ultimately the very survival of humanity itself. Only by addressing the social aspects of the current planetary emergency, exploring the theoretical, historical, and practical dimensions of the capitalism’s alteration of the planetary environment, is it possible to develop the ecological and social resources for a new journey of hope.

While colonial imposition of the Canadian legal order has undermined Indigenous law, creating gaps and sometimes distortions, Indigenous peoples have taken up the challenge of rebuilding their laws, governance, and economies. Indigenous conceptions of land and property are central to this project. Creating Indigenous Property identifies how contemporary Indigenous conceptions of property are rooted in and informed by their societally specific norms, meanings, and ethics. Through detailed analysis, the authors illustrate that unexamined and unresolved contradictions between the historic and the present have created powerful competing versions of Indigenous law, legal authorities, and practices that reverberate through Indigenous communities. They have identified the contradictions and conflicts within Indigenous communities about relationships to land and non-human life forms, about responsibilities to one another, about environmental decisions, and about wealth distribution. Creating Indigenous Property contributes to identifying the way that Indigenous discourses, processes, and institutions can empower the use of Indigenous law. The book explores different questions generated by these dynamics, including: Where is the public/private divide in Indigenous and Canadian law, and why should it matter? How do land and property shape local economies? Whose voices are heard in debates over property and why are certain voices missing? How does gender matter to the conceptualization of property and the Indigenous legal imagination? What is the role and promise of Indigenous law in negotiating new relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada? In grappling with these questions, readers will join the authors in exploring the conditions under which Canadian and Indigenous legal orders can productively co-exist.

The economic theories of Karl Marx and his disciples continue to be anthologized in books of literary theory and criticism and taught in humanities classrooms to the exclusion of other, competing economic paradigms. Marxism is collectivist, predictable, monolithic, impersonal, linear, reductive - in short, wholly inadequate as an instrument for good in an era when we know better than to reduce the variety of human experience to simplistic formulae. A person's creative and intellectual energies are never completely the products of culture or class. People are rational agents who choose between different courses of action based on their reason, knowledge, and experience. A person's choices affect lives, circumstances, and communities. Even literary scholars who reject pure Marxism are still motivated by it, because nearly all economic literary theory derives from Marxism or advocates for vast economic interventionism as a solution to social problems. Such interventionism, however, has a track-record of mass murder, war, taxation, colonization, pollution, imprisonment, espionage, and enslavement - things most scholars of imaginative literature deplore. Yet most scholars of imaginative literature remain interventionists. Literature and Liberty offers these scholars an alternative economic paradigm, one that over the course of human history has eliminated more generic bads than any other system. It argues that free market or libertarian literary theory is more humane than any variety of Marxism or interventionism. Just as Marxist historiography can be identified in the use of structuralism and materialist literary theory, so should free-market libertarianism be identifiable in all sorts of literary theory. Literature and Liberty disrupts the near monopolistic control of economic ideas in literary studies and offers a new mode of thinking for those who believe that arts and literature should play a role in discussions about law, politics, government, and economics. Drawing from authors as wide-ranging as Emerson, Shakespeare, E.M. Forster, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry Hazlitt, and Mark Twain, Literature and Liberty is a significant contribution to libertarianism and literary studies.

This work remains one of the all-time classics of 20th-century intellectual thought. For over half a century, it has inspired politicians and thinkers around the world, and has had a crucial impact on our political and cultural history. Hayek argues that, while socialist ideals may be tempting, they cannot be accomplished except by means that few would approve of. Addressing economics, fascism, history, socialism and the Holocaust, Hayek unwraps the trappings of socialist ideology. He reveals to the world that little can result from such ideas except oppression and tyranny. Today, more than 50 years on, Hayek's warnings are just as valid as when "The Road to Serfdom" was first published.

This book examines federalism and functionalism - two fundamental, yet largely forgotten, theories of international integration. Following the recent outbreak of the war in Ukraine, policy practitioners and scholars have been in search of a deeper understanding of the likely causes of the conflict and its consequences for the European security architecture. Various theories have been deployed to this end, but international and European integration theory remains conspicuously absent. The author shows how the core tenets of integration theories developed after World War I, particularly how they viewed territoriality and geopolitical boundaries, remain as relevant today as they were almost 100 years ago.

Rethink climate, resilience, and sustainability for your organization In Future Ready: Your Organization’s Guide to Rethinking Climate, Resilience, and Sustainability, a team of business leaders with deep expertise in engineering, planning, finance, project, program implementation and advisory consulting perspective delivers an essential guide for executives, managers, and other business and infrastructure organization leaders to set and implement a resilience, sustainability and ESG strategy in complex project and operating environments. Through practical examples and proven insights, readers will learn to proactively engage with stakeholders, successfully plan, implement, and measure the impacts of their initiatives, and effectively communicate the results. In the book, the authors draw on hundreds of completed projects across a full range of client organizations, markets, sectors, and scales to equip readers with unprecedented insights and the behind-the-scenes work that went into making the projects successful. The authors also include: Strategies for identifying, cataloguing, and reporting risks—from the operational to the physical and transactional—as well as explanations of how climate risk scenarios can reveal hidden opportunities and unexpected vulnerabilities A Future Ready mindset and the specific examples of organizational sustainability and climate adaptation commitments and the paths companies have taken to meet their goals Critical questions that leaders must ask of themselves and their organizations before they begin a climate, resilience, and/or sustainability initiative A must-read guide for executives, board members, ESG professionals, and other business and infrastructure organization leaders, Future Ready belongs in the hands of anyone who finds themselves responsible for helping an organization achieve their environmental, social, and governance goals.

Sustainable development is the central challenge of the 21st Century. How can human civilization continue to develop without destroying the natural systems on which it depends?Environmentalists tell us that capitalism is the problem because it feeds our self-interest. They tell us that we have to restrain ourselves and only consume what the Earth can sustain. Or governments must tell us what we can and cannot buy. This book uses the science of complex systems to explain why governments cannot deliver sustainability or happiness and how self-interest can be used to make society sustainable. Capitalism won the Cold War; until the Great Recession of 2008, it seemed to be the perfect system. But more of us are unhappy even as it has ravaged the planet. The central problem is the paradigm on which our social systems are founded that more (consumption, production, possessions) is always better. Based on research from political economy, philosophy, and psychology, this book shows that the problem is not self-interest. We are unhappy because we have been taught that our interests are material and that buying 'stuff' will make us happy. Yet, social pressure to consume only prevents us from satisfying our basic psychological needs and fully enjoying life. For that we need to pursue our personal well-being. Because this also reduces our material consumption, environmental sustainability comes from each of us knowing what's truly good for our selves. Even without the constant economic growth that harms the planet and damages our lives, capitalism also is sustainable. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of sustainability;civil societyactivists and social entrepreneurs; thought leaders and policymakers. .

The volume focuses on the socio-political aspects of economic transformations in the Eastern European Socialist countries. Particular emphasis is laid on the problem of interrelations between the plan and the market and between economic incentives and social consumption. The volume also examines economic and political factors in the wider political context, particularly looking at the question of democratization within industry and politics.

This title discusses the treatment of urban and regional issues by Marx, Engels and other early Marxists, and examines recent controversies in these areas.

This study of economic reforms throughout Eastern Europe covers the history of attempts at decentralization. The book: * Describes the centralized model and compares its requirements with the realities of socialist countries * Discusses the economic policies of the post-Stalinist period * Examines the origin of the reforms which began in 1956, culminating in the Soviet economic reform of 1965 and the rehabilitation of profit. Countries covered include the former USSR, the former East Germany and Hungary.

In this book, Kalyan Sanyal reviews the traditional notion of capitalism and propounds an original theory of capitalist development in the post-colonial context. In order to substantiate his theory, concepts such as primitive accumulation, governmentality and post-colonial capitalist formation are discussed in detail. Analyzing critical questions from a third world perspective such as: Will the integration into the global capitalist network bring to the third world new economic opportunities? Will this capitalist network make the third world countries an easy prey for predatory multinational corporations? The end result is a discourse, drawing on Marx and Foucault, which envisages the post-colonial capitalist formation, albeit in an entirely different light, in the era of globalization.