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This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019), outlines nine characteristics of a future socialism. It elaborates socialism as a set of processes and institutional arrangements that would open the way to a society that is radically more democratic, more just, and more sustainable than the existing order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles Karl Polanyi, Hungarian economic historian, economic anthropologist, political economist, historical sociologist and social philosopher. Information is provide on the extraordinary theoretical contributions of Polanyi to socialist thought, his attack of market liberalism and the role of government and politics in his analysis of market economies.

In response to Bandelj, Hung, and Streeck, I make three basic points. First, while the initial article focused on definitions of capitalism as a system, the critics prefer to see capitalism as a spirit or a tendency that emphasizes the unlimited pursuit of profit. While we are in agreement that such a tendency is destructive, it is confusing to define capitalism this way when most others are using the term to describe a system that they see as coherent. Second, some of the critics question whether efforts to reign in the capitalist impulse can be successful for very long. I argue that the breakdown of restraints in the post-World War II period can be traced to the end of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates in 1973. This policy shift was neither inevitable nor the result of political agency by financial or corporate interests. Third, the concept of capitalism fails to illuminate key fault lines in contemporary political economies such as the divide between finance and production or between giant firms and small- and medium-sized enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that social scientists should reconsider the analytic value of the term "capitalism." The paper argues that the two most coherent definitions of capitalism are those derived from classical Marxism and from the Worm System theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. Marx and Engels' formulation was basically a genetic theory in which the structure of a mode of production is determined by the mode of surplus extraction. During the course of the 20th century, however, Marxist theorists had to modify this framework and the result has been an uncomfortable hybrid. Wallerstein resolved these tensions by redefining capitalism in terms of the logic of a worm system. However, his argument has difficulty in explaining the consequential variations over time in the specific rules and institutional structures that operate at the global level. The article goes on to argue in favor of Karl Polanyi's concept of market society because it focuses attention on the political governance of market societies at both the national and the global levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most analyses of the US financial crisis of 2007–2009 focus on the proximate causes. This article sees the crisis as a consequence of the decline of a long-term pattern of accumulation in the USA and seeks to outline the requirements for a new period of dynamic economic growth. Drawing on work done by the French Regulation theorists and the US analysts of Social Structures of Accumulation, the paper attempts to describe the types of institutional changes that would be needed to spark a new period of stable economic growth in the USA and in the rest of the world economy. The paper outlines what a green mass consumption economy might involve. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this article is to develop a critique of the post-War international monetary system. It further focuses on post-World War II capitalist world economy. During and after World War II, the U.S. struggled, with eventual success, to impose on the rest of the world an international monetary system with both a high degree of openness and a large measure of special rights and responsibilities for the U.S. During much of the post-War period the existence of an international monetary system with a specific structure was barely recognized in the U.S. However, beginning in the late fifties and continuing through the sixties, the U.S. experienced serious balance of payments deficits that had a devastating impact on the existing international monetary structures. The tendency towards permanent inflation is rooted in the various techniques that post-World War II capitalism has used to avert the periodic crises that characterized the classical business cycle. But a particular country's rate of inflation at a particular time depends on a variety of factors, including the combatitiveness of its working class, the degree of monopoly power in pricing decisions, the level of economic maturity, the politically tolerable level of unemployment, and the political capital of the government in power.

This article examines the principles underlying macroeconomic policy, suggesting caution toward contentions that economic rationality mandates specific policy directions in the U.S. It has become an accepted truth on the political left that the conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan are a necessary response to the needs of the capitalist system. In this argument, cuts in civilian spending and reductions in the living standards of working people and the poor conform to the logic of capital in a period of crisis. This position grows directly out of the theory developed in the 1970s that capitalist states are torn between the conflicting imperatives of legitimation and accumulation. The legitimation versus accumulation argument is a mirror image of conservative arguments about interference with free markets. With growing intensity during the 1970s and early 1980s, conservative economists and publicists advanced the argument that problems of high inflation and slowing productivity growth were the consequence of excessive growth of government. They insisted that deregulation, tax cuts, and the reduction of social spending were necessary to restore the integrity of the free market, so that the conditions for stable economic growth could be restored.

The article discusses the contradictions of the capitalist theory of economy or economic capitalism which are taking place in the U.S., Japan and richer countries of Western Europe as a consequence of their success in expanding wealth. Those contradictions include the growth of pension funds, the introduction of capital-saving technologies that reduce real cost of productive investments, the rising role of depreciation as a component of investment, and the decline in capital scarcity and global interest rates. The author believes that there is a need to find alternatives to Marxian political strategies to address some of the social and economic contradictions for capitalism that Marx anticipated.