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Starting from the two correct positions that, compared to the form of capitalism that preceded it, neoliberal capitalism has generally been more harmful to working people, and that in it finance plays a greater role in both scale and scope, some political economists argue that in neoliberalism financial capital is parasitic on nonfinancial (or "productive," or "industrial") capital. The central argument of this article is that, to the contrary, financial capital serves all capital through the various ways that it allows for neoliberalism to increase its appropriation of surplus value. To concretely support this position, the article considers a particular financial relation, debt, and indicates seven specific ways debt expansion facilitates neoliberalism's pursuit of increased appropriation of surplus value. Secondarily, this article rejects any stated or implied policy implications from the parasitic financial capital thesis that present "productive capitalism" as the desirable alternative to the deleterious effects of financialized capitalism. JEL Classification : G00, G51, H63 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the Kaleckian profit and profit rate in U.S. business cycles. Kalecki emphasized the critical role played by investment in the determination of profit. The alternative mechanisms that he operationalized in his discussion of profit generation usually played an insignificant role then. However, since Kalecki developed his framework for profit and its determinants, the U.S. economy has gone through some significant transformations, specifically with the neoliberal turn beginning in the early 1980s. We consider some of these changes under the new corporate governance system and shareholder-value ideology, and discuss the role they play in relation to Kaleckian profit generation. We also discuss the components of the profit, as distinct from its determinants, to discuss how the allocation of the profit within the capitalist class influences Kaleckian profit generation. Finally, we compute the determinants and the components of the Kaleckian profit rate in the post-WWII U.S. business cycles to empirically observe the influence of the neoliberal turn on the Kaleckian profit generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major transformations of existing social orders require a broad belief: it is possible to build a viable alternative that addresses the major problems of the existing society. Social discussions involving a multitude of "mid-level concrete" models, or "previsions," of such a viable alternative combine with the existing social discontent to create such social beliefs. The broad concept of "socialism" designates an organization of society and its production that does not involve some group of people living off their appropriation of part of the production of the rest of society. This paper presents some of the elements of a prefigurative conceptualization called Protagonistic Planned Socialism, which belongs to the Democratic Planned Socialism family of models. Its central elements are protagonistic collective self-determination of the operation of all the institutions of society by its members, consciously socially planned social production, and social labor processes that support and promote human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'new solution' to the transformation problem in Marx's labor theory of value rests on treating two aspects differently than in the traditional formulation: net value is used instead of gross value to avoid double counting, and the division of new value into variable capital and surplus value is determined at the point of production by the wages paid to the workers, instead of by the bundle of goods they subsequently select with their consumption decision. Campbell [Review of Radical Political Economics 29 (3) (1997) 59] developed a simple but formal presentation of the first of these issues. This paper addresses as the other crucial issue in the new solution approach, the issue of determining variable capital and surplus value. The role of the money wage in the process is highlighted. Comparison to the treatment of these issues in the traditional formulation is included for the purpose of better understanding the nature of the new solution. JEL classification: E11; D46 Keywords: Surplus value; New solution

After the end of the Cold War, the number of books and articles written about Russia dropped greatly, with writing on its economy falling particularly sharply. How Russian workers perceive their wages relative to countries they compare themselves with is one important component of their contentment and perception of well-being, which play such important roles in determining a country's political economy and economic development. This article draws on Russian statistical sources to add to the meager English-language empirical literature on Russian wages. Statically, it presents their level and inequality relative to the natural comparison countries. Dynamically, it presents their growth, and changes in inequality. The conclusion summarizes the seriously problematic situation of wages in Russia, and presents two political economic conclusions these empirical results suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Weisskopfian approach has dominated empirical studies of the US rate of profit for the last thirty-five years. Forty-five years earlier, Michal Kalecki developed a different frame suitable for empirical profit rate studies, which had the potential to give different, but complementary, insight into the profit rate analysis based on the Weisskopfian approach. This paper first presents a development of the Kaleckian frame. It then applies this frame to the US economy and presents some preliminary empirical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maintains that after a decade as a poster-child for neoliberal growth, (1) Turkey has definitely fallen from its former impressive growth performance, (2) the cause is exactly the rupture of its foreign capital-led growth model, just as its fragility critics warned, and (3) given the state of both external and internal economic and political factors, there is very little chance of Turkey returning to its strong growth over the next several years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the aspects of the relation of Cuba's economic reforms to the project of building socialism. It focuses on the economic effects of various norms with debated issue in Cuba. It mentions that the supporters of Cuba's started building socialism fear, and updating process in capitalism.

The article reviews the 43rd edition of the journal "Cuban Studies" edited by Alejandro de la Fuente.

Despite a decade of strong growth, mainstream economists and financial markets have recently escalated their discussion of Turkey's economic ‘fragility’. Contrary to their focus on ‘excessive current account deficits’, the key to understanding Turkey's condition is the foreign capital inflows that facilitate and promote these deficits, and the extent of hot money in the inflows. This paper documents this central fragility and its current explosion. It also contributes to the debate with a detailed economic and operational definition of hot money in Turkey, not present in the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A significant number of left political economists hold that the U.S. Great Recession and subsequent lethargic performance are a crisis of over-capacity that resulted from over-investment. Kotz (2011, 2013) has recently attempted to provide empirical support for this position. Despite sharing an understanding of the crisis very similar to his, the authors find in this paper that a careful examination of his evidence does not support considering this to be a crisis of over-investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant number of left political economists hold that the U.S. Great Recession and subsequent lethargic performance are a crisis of over-capacity that resulted from over-investment. Kotz (2011, 2013) has recently attempted to provide empirical support for this position. Despite sharing an understanding of the crisis very similar to his, the authors find in this paper that a careful examination of his evidence does not support considering this to be a crisis of over-investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work contributes to the almost nonexistent literature on the profit rate of the financial sector. It updates the single study to include financial variables to cover the past decade, compares this profit rate to the (almost unpublished) Weisskopf and NIPA financial profit rates, compares the financial and nonfinancial sector rates, and details the procedure to construct the profit rate in the financial sector including relevant financial variables which capitalists consider to make profit-rate decisions.JEL Classification: B50, E11 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a case study of a particularly important and well known experiment in participatory economic democracy, participatory budgeting (PB) in Porto Alegre under the Workers’ Party. Its intention is to draw both positive and negative lessons from this experience. There are three fundamental parts to the paper. The first part sets the frame for understanding this experiment by reviewing several relevant considerations of participatory democracy in general, and then describing the institutional structure of Porto Alegre’s PB. The second part is an empirical investigation for this case of three central issues in participatory economic democracy: participation, the nature of choices, and the resulting redistribution. A third part considers a number of limitations of the PB process as it occurred in Porto Alegre from the perspective of economic democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Independent of whatever other advantages it might have for the workers, worker ownership has repeatedly demonstrated in the real world that it is no guarantee for worker participation in management. The participation of workers in management as a first step toward worker self-management requires institutions and practices that will both allow such participation and promote it. This paper considers, in the frame of four standard issues in worker self-management, six specific institutions and practices common to the collection of co-ops that constitute the Mondragón complex that have generated meaningful worker participation in management in this large corporation.JEL classification: J54, L29, M19 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This chapter will address (only) one issue from the 1960s substantivist/ formalist debate, the treatment of choice. The substantivists rejected the economic universality of the neoclassical axioms of choice under scarcity and the isolated and selfish nature of the choice process. A common formalist response was that their model based on these axioms could be modified to include whatever specific conditions economic choice was being made under. This chapter rejects that claim, based on a consideration not included in the debate. It is argued that the mathematical structure of the standard formal neoclassical model prevents it from incorporating the substantivist criticisms, and that to modify it in accord with these criticisms would necessarily result in a model that is outside the neoclassical approach to economic decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since socialism as a logically consistent system will both produce and require human beings with different consciousness, behavior and capabilities than those produced and required by capitalism, one has a chicken-and-egg dilemma for a transition to socialism. Particularly important is the obfuscation of the social cooperative nature of human production (and hence existence) behind both the ideology and reality of competition and markets. This article considers a transition to socialism from this perspective. Sections II and III consider the end points of a transition, capitalism and socialism, in regards to these issues of markets, competition, consciousness, cooperation and abilities. Section IV discusses the central issue in a transition. Section V poses the conundrum presented in the opening of this abstract. Finally, sections VI and VII present two examples from today's world that are argued to offer processes of resolution to the dilemma, one from industry and one from civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1979, Tom Weisskopf found that the crucial late-expansion period of the business cycle, in which the output continues to expand but the profit rate begins to fall, was best explained for his 1949-1975 U.S. data as a result of increasing real wage gains higher than real productivity gains. This led to a profit share decrease that was the primary cause of the cyclical decline in the profit rate. In this work, we extend Weisskopf's analysis through 2001 and find an important change. Although the fall in the profit share continued to be the key to the fall in the profit rate, unfavorable shifts under neoliberalism in price ratios replaced his earlier (real) wage squeeze. This result is consistent with and supports the generally accepted economic stylized fact of decreased power of workers under neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]