Suchergebnisse

One might think that a crisis brought on by rapacious, unregulated capitalism would have changed a few minds about the fundamental nature of the global economy. One would be wrong. True, there is no lack of anti-capitalist sentiment in the world today, particularly as a crisis brought on by the system's worst excesses continues to ravage the global economy. If anything, people are witnessing an overload of critiques of the horrors of capitalism. Yet no matter how grievous the abuse or how indicative of a larger, more systemic failure, there's a limit to how far these critiques go. Faced with today's explosion of capitalism in China, analysts often ask when political democracy as the "natural" political accompaniment of capitalism will enforce itself. The main victim of the ongoing crisis is thus not capitalism, which appears to be evolving into an even more pervasive and pernicious form, but democracy -- not to mention the left, whose inability to offer a viable global alternative has again been rendered visible to all. Adapted from the source document.

A decade ago, German & Japanese capitalisms were widely held superior in economic performance & closely resembled the US & the UK. Now, the stock market-based, deregulated US/UK model has the upper hand in market competition. Will it force all other societies to conform to its rules? Ronald Dore doubts it. Adapted from the source document.

In the last decade significant changes in capitalism are appearing, it entered a new stage. After the political breakdown of Feudalism in World War 1 a stage of capitalism that aimed at integration of all parts of society was slowly developing. 15 years later the authoritarian regimes of national socialism, Fascism, intermitted the evolution of Integrated Capitalism. Since 1945 it flourished again, though its political governance on a global level in recent decades ran into more and more contradictions. After the deep economic crisis of 2008 a turning point towards authoritarian governance of capitalism – in particular in the USA – is evident. Since this type of new nationalist authoritarian capitalism destroys global integration it is called Disintegrating Capitalism. An immediate consequence of the global contradiction between worldwide interwoven production processes and rivalries between nationalist regimes is a rapidly rising danger of a third World War. The second, more speculative part of the paper explores possible forms, which this WW3 could take on. A conclusion provides some ideas on possibilities to react to war tensions.

In October 2011, in the Center for Comparative Socio-Economic and Socio-Political Studies of IMEMO RAN the meeting of a scientific-theoretical workshop on the subject «"Alternative capitalism" or Alternative to Capitalism?» took place. Problems of conceptual crisis in social sciences and methodology of the modern socio-political changes analysis were in the spotlight. The discussion evolved over two main problems: 1. Knowledge crisis or development crisis? On methodology of the modern socio-political changes analysis and problems of a new social sciences research paradigm development. 2. Capitalism and modernization. Main ideas of presentations by scientists from IMEMO and other scientific institutions are outlined in two issues of the journal (No. 7, 8).