Sugarcane Stalinism: State-Capitalism and Development in Cuba

Capitalism, the state, and the underlying drivers of human development

What are the underlying drivers of human development? This essay argues that long-term human development, in incomes, social conditions, security and so on, is fundamentally driven by capitalist dynamics and state functioning. The big issue is not state versus market, or growth versus equity, or dynamism versus security. It is the jointly determined functioning of both capitalism and the state....

Reinventing State Capitalism

Global Capitalism and Sustainable Development

This paper was prepared as a background paper for the panel on “Global Capitalism and Sustainable Development” in the International Conference on Global Ethos to be held at the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2000. It surveys the major issues involved in defining sustainability, and the relationship thereof to development and the behaviour of capitalist economies. A partic...

‘State Capitalism’ in the Soviet Union

The aim of this paper is to explore the reactions to the Bolshevik Revolution of one group of critics from the left: those who saw it as ushering in a new form of capitalism. The controversy over state capitalism had both theoretical and practical significance. At the analytical level it presented an important test of Marx’s conception of historical materialism, which had been formulated in a l...

A Model of China’s State Capitalism∗

This paper documents a hallmark feature of China’s state capitalism as the state controlling the economy in a vertical economic structure: State-owned enterprises (SOEs) monopolize key industries and markets in the upstream, whereas the downstream industries are largely open to private competition. We develop a general-equilibrium model to show that this unique vertical structure, when combined...