Why Capitalism?

Neoliberalism 4.0: The Rise of Illiberal Capitalism; Comment on “How Neoliberalism Is Shaping the Supply of Unhealthy Commodities and What This Means for NCD Prevention”

Neoliberal logic and institutional lethargy may well explain part of the reason why governments pay little attention to how their economic and development policies negatively affect health outcomes associated with the global diffusion of unhealthy commodities. In calling attention to this the authors encourage health advocates to consider strategies other than just regu...

Twentieth-century Political Economy: a Brief History of Global Capitalism

Modern capitalism emerged in the early nineteenth century in western Europe and the European offshoots of the Americas and Oceania. Recognizing the unparalleled dynamism of the new socio-economic system, Marx and Engels predicted in 1848 that capitalism would spread to the entire world. By the end of the twentieth century, that prediction was confirmed: capitalism had indeed become global, but ...

Turning Modes of Production inside Out: Or, Why Capitalism Is a Transformation of Slavery

Varieties of Capitalism

Scholarship on varieties of capitalism (VofC) explores the ways in which the institutions structuring the political economy affect patterns of economic performance or policy making and the distribution of well-being. Contesting the claim that there is one best route to superior economic performance, a number of schemas have been proposed to explain why countries have often been able to secure s...

Why the Net is not a Public Sphere

What is the relation between the idea of the public sphere and computer-mediated interaction? I argue that the notion of the public sphere is not only inapplicable to the Net, but also and more importantly, that it is damaging to practices of democracy under conditions of contemporary technoculture, conditions Manuel Castells theorizes as capitalism in the information mode of development and wh...