Tipping Point For Advanced Capitalism

Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism is a pathbreaking study of the changing class makeup of the Canadian, other G7 and Nordic labour forces since the 1980s, documenting especially the rise of non-managerial professional employees. The book provides unprecedented tracking of the links between employment classes and higher levels of class consciousness, including the often hidden political consciousness of corporate capitalists as well as the extent of oppositional and revolutionary consciousness among non-managerial workers. The large differences exposed between class conscious capitalists and these non-managerial workers on issues of poverty reduction and global warming reveal the strategic roles these key class agents play in actions to defend or transform advanced capitalism. The most concerted evidence-based study to bring class back into grasping the intimately linked ecological, economic and political crises we now face.

Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism is a pathbreaking study of the changing class makeup of the Canadian, other G7 and Nordic labour forces since the 1980s, documenting especially the rise of non-managerial professional employees. The book provides unprecedented tracking of the links between employment classes and higher levels of class consciousness, including the often hidden political consciousness of corporate capitalists as well as the extent of oppositional and revolutionary consciousness among non-managerial workers. The large differences exposed between class conscious capitalists and these non-managerial workers on issues of poverty reduction and global warming reveal the strategic roles these key class agents play in actions to defend or transform advanced capitalism. The most concerted evidence-based study to bring class back into grasping the intimately linked ecological, economic and political crises we now face.

This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.

This book sketches the history of political forces in modern India. It begins defining these political categories of left, right and far-right with the usual reference to French Revolution (for want of an indigenous equivalent), and discusses movement of forces towards left, or towards the right from the balance of socio-political forces or status quo at a point of time in India. It recalls historical facts, uses chronological order for clarity and leaders’ names and political parties, their world view and ideas of nation, social groups they represented, and their movements. It progresses by reopening only a few windows to modern Indian history and looks at periods like, the 1920-30s, and 1970-80s, when there were significant movements and consolidation of socio-political forces to the right and far right. At the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a series of policy proposals, legislations to nationalize assets and launch direct attacks on poverty that marked a sharp turn to the leftist ideology in Delhi (the central government of the time). Following these, a coalition of mostly right-wing forces rose to challenge the government at the centre and succeeded. This occurred in the context of heated Cold War geopolitics. Taylor and Francis does not sell or distribute the print editions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

How design can transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism: a framework, theoretical grounding, and practical principles. The designed things, experiences, and symbols that we use to perceive, understand, and perform our everyday lives are much more than just props. They directly shape how we live. In Design after Capitalism, Matthew Wizinsky argues that the world of industrial capitalism that gave birth to modern design has been dramatically transformed. Design today needs to reorient itself toward deliberate transitions of everyday politics, social relations, and economies. Looking at design through the lens of political economy, Wizinsky calls for the field to transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism—to combine design entrepreneurship with social empowerment in order to facilitate new ways of producing those things, symbols, and experiences that make up everyday life. After analyzing the parallel histories of capitalism and design, Wizinsky offers some historical examples of anticapitalist, noncapitalist, and postcapitalist models of design practice. These range from the British Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth century to contemporary practices of growing furniture or biotextiles and automated forms of production. Drawing on insights from sociology, philosophy, economics, political science, history, environmental and sustainability studies, and critical theory—fields not usually seen as central to design—he lays out core principles for postcapitalist design; offers strategies for applying these principles to the three layers of project, practice, and discipline; and provides a set of practical guidelines for designers to use as a starting point. The work of postcapitalist design can start today, Wizinsky says—with the next project.

Democratic capitalism in developed countries has been facing an unprecedented crisis since 2008. Its political manageability is declining sharply. Both democracy and capitalism now involve crucial risks that are significantly more serious than those observed in earlier periods. The notion of policy regimes has gained new significance in analysing the possibilities for a post-neoliberal alternative. Policy innovations directed towards an economic breakthrough require both political leadership and a new economic theory. The processes of political decision making have become quite distant from the public realm, and a limited number of economic and political elites exert influence on public policy. This book examines, from a policy regime perspective, how developed countries attempt to achieve such a breakthrough at critical junctures triggered by economic crises. It initially assesses the nature of the present crisis and identifies the actors involved. Thereafter, it provides an analytical definition of a crisis, stressing that most crises contain within them the potential to be turned into an opportunity. Finally, it presents a new analytical design in which we can incorporate today’s more globalized and fluid context.

Where has capitalism gone wrong? Why are advanced capitalist economies so sick, and why do conventional policy solutions--such as reduced taxes and increased money supply--produce only wider income disparity and inequality? We are now living in a new world in which a majority of people enjoys the highest living standard in history, acquiring more and more goods and services as necessary luxuries. But as Kozo Yamamura shows, despite our apparent lust for gourmet food and designer clothes, for larger homes, the latest gadgets, and exotic vacations, demand for these goods actually grows slowly, so relying on them to reinvigorate our economies will not succeed. With Too Much Stuff, Yamamura upends conventional capitalist wisdom to provide a new approach. He calls for increased tax-funded demand to address a range of societal needs--such as environmental concerns, social safety nets, infrastructure, and better education and housing for all. By addressing these needs, argues Yamamura, we can also take huge steps toward reducing the growing wealth gap that threatens global democracy. Both solutions-oriented and accessibly written, this book draws on fascinating case studies from the United States, Japan, and Germany, as well as convincing evidence from across the Western world, to suggest practical steps forward that we can all understand and support. Too Much Stuff boldly challenges the economic orthodoxy and, in so doing, challenges us to think outside the box for the betterment of all.