A Japanese Approach To Stages Of Capitalist Development

This book uses the levels of analysis approach first developed by Japanese political economist Kozo Uno to theorize stages of capitalist development. Stage theory is understood as a mid-range theory informed both by the theory of a purely capitalist society and by historical analysis. The four stages of mercantilism, liberalism, imperialism, and consumerism are theorized according to an abstract type of capital accumulation, which is understood broadly to include mutually supporting economic, ideological, legal, and political practices.

This book offers a novel treatment of one of the most important and long-standing research agendas in critical political economy: the theorizing of stages of capitalist development. Albritton advances the work of Japanese economist, Kozo Uno, to explore capital accumulation and its ideological, legal and political supports, not only in the stages of mercantilism, liberalism and imperialism, but also in the post-World War II capitalist stage of consumerism. The power of Albritton’s adoption of this Japanese approach resides in the crisp clarity it achieves over the way stage theorizing of capitalism draws on both economic theory and historical analysis. In the new, fully revised edition, written with Richard Westra, two new chapters are added. One meticulously examines the tendencies of capitalism euphemized as globalization and financialization which followed the crisis of the stage of consumerism. The other deals with current threats to civilization posed by burgeoning militarism, environmental destruction and climate apocalypse. The concluding chapter argues for the necessity of major social change to ensure a liveable future for humanity. The book will be of interest to researchers and students of political economy and the history of economic thought, as well as a wider audience interested in the transformation and crises of capitalism.

Kozo Uno influenced a whole generation of marxian political economists in post World War II Japan. Thomas Sekine worked closely with Uno in Japan and later came to York University in Toronto, where he introduced Uno's ideas to Canadian scholars. Sekine has significantly enlarged and refined Uno's work, and in the process has influenced scholars in both Japan and Canada. This anthology is a collection of essays in marxian political economy by scholars who have been influenced by Sekine's particular appropriation of Uno's ideas.

This book is devoted to analyzing contemporary capitalism both in Japan and in the world economy by using the theoretical framework of the French régulation theory and by revisiting the theory of civil society in postwar Japan. The Japanese theory of civil society proposed unique thinking about “freedom and equality” and “human rights” in the postwar era but could not help to come up with effective concepts for an economic analysis of that capitalism of the period. On the other hand, the régulation theory born in the 1970s is well known by its definition of postwar capitalism as Fordism, based on the elaboration of a new conceptual framework, but it soon proved unable to directly explain Japan’s experience by that central concept of Fordism. Inspired by consideration of Japanese civil society and also by the regulationist framework, the author has forged new analytical concepts such as “companyism” to understand Japanese capitalism including the recent “lost decades”, and he elaborates more carefully the concepts of “growth regime” and “institutional change” to grasp the dynamics of the world economy including today’s neoliberal trend. The original benefits of the book consist in 1) reviving a Japanese theory of civil society in the postwar period, 2) applying the régulation theory to the analysis of contemporary Japan, and 3) offering theoretical reflections on the conception of the world economy. Consequently, the author pays special attention to the relationship between the political and the economic as well as regulationist tools and the theory of civil society’s perspective. The principal message of the book is that capitalism or the market economy must be supported by a sound civil society.

From the 1960s to the 1990s the ground-breaking Japanese economists Kozo Uno and Thomas Sekine developed a masterful reconfiguration of Marxist economics. The most well-known aspect of which is the levels of analysis approach to the study of capitalism. Written in Japanese, the Uno-Sekine approach to Marx's work is little understood in West. John Bell seeks to correct this, explaining how problematic elements of Marxian Political Economy such as the law of value and the law of relative surplus population can be solved by using a more rigourous dialectical analysis. Bell's clear and accessible synthesis provides economists with the tools to interrogate capitalism in a more powerful way than ever before.

A collection of critical Marxian analyses by Japanese economists assessing aspects of the Japanese economy. Considered to be an important contribution to Japanese economic literature, these opinions on Japanese capitalism have not been available in Engish until now.