Paul Auerbach’s Socialist Optimism offers an alternative political economy for the twenty-first century. Present-day capitalism has generated growing inequality of income and wealth, persistent high levels of unemployment and ever-diminishing prospects for young people. But in the absence of a positive vision of how society and the economy might develop in the future, the present... Continue Reading →
The new monopoly capital literature asserts that competition in the US economy has declined over the last few decades, resulting in deteriorating consumer welfare, economic stagnation and increasing income inequality. These claims of a pervasive growth of monopoly are questionable, emerging from aggregative statistical tests of mainstream static theory without the necessary case study complements,... Continue Reading →
Widespread uneasiness has emerged concerning a perceived slowdown in productivity growth. The discussion here raises issues surrounding the evidence presented (‘trend growth in US total factor productivity’) and the policy presumptions that appear to follow from this evidence. The question is then raised – is our destiny really tied to inexorable movements in productivity and... Continue Reading →
The exchange between John Rawls and Robert Nozick is widely used as a basis for discussions surrounding equality by economists and other interested parties. The implicit context of this debate, however, is one in which all aspects of the identity of members of society remain unaltered in the process of social transformation, in which case... Continue Reading →
Capitalist enterprise has existed in some form since ancient times, but the globalization and dominance of capitalism as a system began in the 1860s when, in different forms and supported by different political forces, states all over the world developed their modern political frameworks: the unifications of Italy and Germany, the establishment of a republic... Continue Reading →
Professor Nuti is one of the great scholars and teachers of our generation in the study of comparative economic systems and the economics of socialism. The texts below consist of his recent lecture at a EACES Conference in Warsaw ‘The Rise, Fall and Future of Socialism’ and an earlier text ‘The Rise and Fall of... Continue Reading →
The authors of the classic work The Making of Global Capitalism offer in The Socialist Challenge Today a succinct socialist case for transcending capitalism ‘as necessary to realize the collective, democratic, egalitarian and ecological aspirations of humanity’. Most important will be ‘to foster the development of strategic and practical capacities to democratically transform state structures... Continue Reading →
Socialist Optimism 