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This contribution examines Sismondi's money, banking and credit theories and explores his public debt analysis (1803–1838) to connect the instability of market economy with his vision of the social contract. A detailed analysis is offered of the evolution in Sismondi's opinion on the nature of money and the banking system, and the part it plays in his trade cycle theory. Sismondi's monetary thought is then contextualised with a discussion of his policy-mix in relation to the Napoleonic war financing in Continental Europe. Connections with the upcoming flood of literature in England on the bullion controversy are also offered. Remarks are then suggested on the progressive emergence of an "art of public borrowing" according to which the people who provide the money also control the government. Finally, some reflections are proposed on the explicit connection established by Sismondi between budget deficits, the (ab-)use of inconvertible paper money and the partial collapse of the social contract initiated by banks and the governments using it. The entrenched instability of a market economy (discussed in an earlier article) is reinforced by the banking/credit system that works along similar line than any wealth-producing firm. Hence, thanks to the financial system, wealth does grow faster but at the expense of social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Condition of the Working Class in England (hereafter, CWCE) by Friedrich Engels is a masterpiece of urban research not only for its explicit descriptions of the living and working conditions of members of the Victorian-era working class and their effects on health but also its insights into the sources of these conditions through a political economy analysis. For Engels, the capitalist economic system, with the support of the state apparatus, prematurely sickened and killed men, women and children in its unrestrained pursuit of profits. Our reading of CWCE in 2023 concludes that Engels identified virtually every social determinant of health now found in contemporary discourse with his insights into how their quality and distribution shape health clearly relevant to present-day Canada. Revisiting CWCE directs our attention to how the same economic and political forces that sickened and killed members of the English working class in 1845 now do so in present-day Canada. Engels's insights also suggest means of responding to these forces. We place these findings within Derrida's concept of spectre and Rainey and Hanson's concept of trace to show how ideas from the past can inform the present., (© 2023 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

Investment in capital, new technology, and agricultural techniques has not been considered an endeavor worthwhile in a medieval economy because of a lack of strong property rights and no incentive on the part of lords and barons to lend money to or grant rights to peasant farmers. Therefore, the medieval economy and standards of living at that time often have been characterized as non-dynamic and static due to insufficient investment in innovative techniques and technology. Paul Baran's concept of the economic surplus is applied to investment patterns during the late medieval, mercantile, and early capitalist stages of economic growth in England and the UK. This paper uses Zhun Xu's Baran Ratio concept to try to develop general trends to demonstrate and reinforce other historical accounts of these times that a productive and sufficient level of public and private investment out of accumulated capital income, taxation, and rents does not have a real impact on economic per capita growth until around the 1600 s in Britain. This would also be about the time of capitalism's ascent as the dominant economic system in England. Even then, dramatic increases in investment and economic growth do not appear until the late 18th Century when investment more consistently becomes more than one hundred percent of the level of the domestic economic surplus and takes in government spending. The types of investment, threshold amounts of investment out of profits and rents along with government spending seem to matter when it comes to a growth path raising GDP per capita and national income per capita to higher levels. Although much of this knowledge perhaps is embodied in current historical accounts, the Baran Ratio nicely summarizes and illustrates the importance of levels of investment to economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 52 qualitative interviews with working-class individuals, this paper explores the social and economic decline of a coastal locale referred to as High Town in Teesside in the North East of England. First, the paper outlines how the locality expanded as a popular seaside resort under capitalism's post-war period. It then assesses how the seaside existed together with industrial work, offering stable employment opportunities, economic security and a sense of community. Next, the article documents the shift to neoliberalism in the 1980s, specifically the decline of High Town's seaside resort, the deindustrialization process and therefore the 2015 closure of High Town's steelworks. It explicates how this exacerbated the locale's economic decline through the loss of industrial work's 'job for life', its diminishing popularity as a coastal area and the further deterioration of the town centre. The paper concludes by suggesting that High Town has lost its raison d'être under neoliberalism and faces difficulties in revival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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E. P. Thompson's classic article "Time and Work-Discipline in Industrial Capitalism," gives an incomplete picture of the transition to the time consciousness in industrial capitalism. This is for two reasons. First, by not understanding time logics of pre-industrial societies and viewing such logics as "irregular," Thompson was unable to understand how wages were paid, and workers disciplined in a culture that used seasonally variable temporal hours in pre-industrial England. Second, with regard to industrialism, Thompson did not recognize the effects on labor of credit and a huge capital influx from the sugar trade on the emergence of manufacturing in England in the 18th century. By documenting the issues of changing ways of relating time to wage, seasonality, place, and finance, this paper argues that the increased year-round availability of capital combined with the alienation of workers from the seasonality of time in specific locations drove the shift from daywork to clock-measured wages during the Industrial Revolution, and that the adoption of clock time was a response to confusion over how day wages could be made uniform over different latitudes and during different times of year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]