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"This third volume in Christian Fuchs's Media, Communication and Society book series illuminates what it means to live in an age of digital capitalism, analysing its various aspects, and engaging with a variety of critical thinkers whose theories and approaches enable a critical understanding of digital capitalism for media and communication. Each chapter focuses on a particular dimension of digital capitalism or a critical theorist whose work helps us to illuminate how digital capitalism works. Subjects covered include: digital positivism, administrative big data analytics, the role and relations of patriarchy, slavery, and racism in the context of digital labour; digital alienation, the role of social media in the capitalist crisis, the relationship of imperialism and digital labour, alternatives such as trade unions and class struggles in the digital age, platform co-operatives, digital commons, and public service Internet platforms. It also considers specific examples, including the digital labour of Foxconn and Pegatron workers, software engineers at Google and online freelancers, and considers the political economy of targeted-advertising based Internet platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Instagram. Digital Capitalism illuminates how digital capitalist society's economy, politics, and culture work and interact, making it essential reading for both students and researchers in media, culture and communication studies and related disciplines"--

As the global financial crisis emanating from the United States shuts down world markets, can globalization survive? Will the resurgent intrusion of the state—and thus politics—into the market lead to protectionism and collapse, as was the case in the early 20th century? Or will the new interconnectivity of climate change and mutual economic dependence—especially between China and the US—deepen global links?The former mayor of Shanghai, legendary Nobel economist Paul Samuelson and Third Way guru Anthony Giddens ponder those questions in this section.

The paper combines a broad theoretical framework of comparable capitalism with the insights from new economic sociology and new institutional economics to understand and assess mechanisms of China's evolution. During the last three decades China's economic system has undergone a great transformation from communism to some form of state-led capitalism. The evolutionary approach that balanced the interests of economic and political actors led to the gradual introduction of a capitalist institutional framework, but also preserved the immense role of the Communist Party. In the course of the reforms, former direct control over the economy has been replaced by more discretionary measures like corporate governance (which conserved the extensive patronage system), and Party affiliation (which allowed for political penetration of the private sector). Supplying examples of mounting economic waste, I argue that China's present variety of capitalism is hardly an optimal solution, and the further development will strictly depend on state and Party withdrawal from economic contorl.

The systemic anticulture of capitalism / Russell Hardin -- Tocqueville and the spirit of American capitalism / Richard Swedberg -- Income inequality and the Protestant ethic / Robert H. Frank -- On politicized capitalism / Victor Nee and Sonja Opper -- Law, economy, and globalization : Max Weber and how international financial institutions understand law / Bruce G. Carruthers and Terence C. Halliday -- The social construction of corruption / Mark Granovetter -- The role of spiritual capital in economic behavior / Barnaby Marsh -- Political economy and religion in the spirit of Max Weber / Robert J. Barro and Rachel M. McCleary -- Beyond Weber / Michael Novak -- The collective dynamics of belief / Duncan J. Watts -- Analytical individualism and the explanation of macrosocial change / Ronald Jepperson and John W. Meyer -- Bootstrapping development : rethinking the role of public intervention in promoting growth / Charles F. Sabel

The author revisits the theory of print capitalism & the origins of nationalism as explained in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. Anderson, by reducing Marxism & liberal theory to a perspective, elided the sharp disconnection between Marxism & liberalism. This elision effectively permitted the operation of a theoretical discrepancy, which formed the foundation of Anderson's theory of nationalism. This allowed the substitution of non-Marxist concepts of capitalism for the Marxist & permitted capital to represent the capitalist mode of production. In this essay, the author develops his argument by examining the relationship between print capitalism & the demise of the Latin language, nationalism & the consumption of the print commodity, & the role of Christopher Plantin as an early print capitalist. 11 References. A. Funderburg

A review essay on books by (1) G. A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) & (2) Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).

As we struggle with the legacy of the crisis and with the prospect of accelerating environmental degradation, it is time to ask not what we can do for capitalism but what capitalism can do for us, as citizens of a democratic society. In Civic Capitalism, Colin Hay and Anthony Payne build on their influential analysis of the crisis of the Anglo-liberal growth model to set out a coherent account of the steps required to build an alternative that is more sustainable socially, economically and environmentally. They argue that it is time to move on from the Anglo-liberal model of capitalism whose f.

Die Herausbildung staatlich durchdrungener Marktökonomien in großen Schwellenländern wie Brasilien, China oder Indien ist ein mehr als überfälliger Anlass, den Westzentrismus der aktuellen Krisendiskussionsowie der Literatur zu den "Varieties of Capitalism" zu verlassen und sich mit den Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden des Kapitalismus in diesen Ländern zu beschäftigen. Wir sprechen hierbei vom Staatskapitalismus 3.0, also einer dritten Welle des Staatskapitalismus mit ihren länderbezogenen Variationen. Dieser in den Themenschwerpunkt einführende Beitrag gibt erstens einen Überblick über die historischen Wellen des Staatskapitalismus. Zweitens werden die weiteren Beiträge des Schwerpunktes vorgestellt und in den Kontext der dritten Welle des Staatskapitalismus gestellt. Schließlich folgen drittens einige Implikationen für die gegenwärtige Kapitalismusforschung, die aus der Untersuchung von politischen Ökonomien jenseits der OECD-Welt zu ziehen sind.

The root causes of societal problems in a developing capitalist country are investigated in the case the role played by the Regime of the Islamic Republic in suppressing the working-class movement for the last 26 years. The neoliberal measures of privatization & open door policies prescribed by the IMF & World Bank (WB) have resulted in a higher degree of concentration of wealth in the hands of a small economic elite connected to the regime. The economic policies of the Ahmadinejad regime claims to generate stability for capital investment by allocating state shares to the "people", who are individual capitalists closely connected to politicians. The economic policies are asserted to be undertaken mainly to keep the economy afloat for the sake of saving the existing political order, & are further supported by mouthpieces in the media. The socialist goal of moving beyond capitalism finds obstacles in every regime, as long as capitalism dominates the economic relations in society & produces class divide & exploitation. Iran exemplifies the consequences of the destructive crony capitalism that suppresses opposition & independent organizations in labor, women, youth & student movements. The author's vision of a true socialist democratic Iran will consciously serve to establish equality justice & non-exploited social relationships. J. Harwell

We are currently experiencing a new world order -- termed here, "vampire capitalism" -- a strategy of growth through redistribution that is based not on the productive capacities of the US, but on its powers of coercion, military force, & political & ideological domination. At a time when economic efficiency & technological innovation are eclipsing military & political domination as forms of control, the US is alone among the developed countries of the world in its emphasis on military intervention, or coerced extraction. One contribution to the development of vampire capitalism is the military-industrial complex's need to justify its existence in the post-cold war world. Vampire capitalism's strategy is to neutralize three forces that oppose US elites: rival capitalist forces, eg, Japan & Germany; the domestic working class; & developing nations dependent on US aid. To counter vampire capitalism, radical reforms must be undertaken, including a reformulation of international codes of corporate conduct, environmental standards, & labor rights. 3 Illustrations, 4 References. W. Howard

Adventure Capitalism satirizes the misconceptions or prejudgements of the complex systems of economic and culture commerce between the United States and Mexico. What starts for our protagonist James Peterson as a simple attempt to get into the best business school in the country ends up showing him corruption of the interwoven institutions that make up the world he wanted to join, and pits his economic values against reality.Two main views on international capitalism are presented within the screenplay. Juana champions the Neo-Marxist view that core nations use their vast capital to develop peripheral economies in a way that makes them dependent on technologies that can only be provided by the core states. James and other Americans of the film trumpet the all-inclusive ideal of free-market capitalism. Both opinions are partially right and partially wrong. In a global economy, self-sufficiency is neither necessary nor desirable, yet completely free trade is utter chaos––where cut-throat tactics are the only means for success. The idea of free-trade celebrated by American politicians is hypocritically undermined by our government's attempts to give our industries every possible advantage, as illustrated through Earthworld Planet Connections and the interdependent corporations and institutions it collaborates with. A with many of our major institutions, financial or otherwise, it is not a part of a sustainable, reciprocal system, but one strung together by the personal connections of the top executives, who, in lieu of true development and innovation, attempt to gain monopolizing positions or to contrive the rules of the system to make success a simple formulaic task. They are not adding value, but merely creating that illusion.James and Juana's search for a source of home grown wealth in a fictional impoverished town in southern Mexico inevitably leads them to the marijuana industry. The War on Drugs, which is often reported as a rare meeting ground of both nation's interest, seems by all sensible measures to be ...

The French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1864 that "the cleverest ruse of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist!" I will argue here that this is directly applicable to today's neoliberals, whose devil's ruse is to pretend they do not exist. Although neoliberalism is widely recognised as the central political-ideological project of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is a term that is seldom uttered by those in power. In 2005, the New York Times went so far as to make neoliberalism's nonexistence official by running an article entitled "Neoliberalism? It Doesn't Exist." Behind this particular devil's ruse lies a deeply disturbing, even hellish, reality. Neoliberalism can be defined as an integrated ruling-class political-ideological project, associated with the rise of monopoly-finance capital, the principal strategic aim of which is to embed the state in capitalist market relations. Hence, the state's traditional role in safeguarding social reproduction—if largely on capitalist-class terms—is now reduced solely to one of promoting capitalist reproduction. The goal is nothing less than the creation of an absolute capitalism. All of this serves to heighten the extreme human and ecological destructiveness that characterises our time.