WORLD REVIEW OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Volume 10 • Number 4 • Winter 2019
All articles below are read and used under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY License) (see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited.
The Contribution of the “School of New Marxist Economics” to China’s Socialist Market Economy
Yang Zhang
1. Articles
The Recurrence of Long Cycles: Theories, Stylized Facts and Figures
Lefteris Tsoulfidis and Aris Papageorgiou
Abstract:
Basic innovations and their diffusion, the expansion or contraction of the level of economic activity and the volume of international trade, rising sovereign debts and their defaults, conflicts and the outbreak of wars, are some of the major phenomena appearing during the downswing or upswing phases of long cycles. In this article, we examine the extent to which these phenomena constitute stylized facts of the different phases of long cycles which recur quite regularly in the turbulent economic history of capitalism. The main argument of this paper is that the evolution of long cycles is a result of the long-run movement of profitability. During the downswing of a long cycle, falling profitability induces innovation investment and the associated with it “creative destruction” of the capital stock that eventually set the stage for the upswing phase of a new long cycle.
Miguel Ángel Rivera Ríos, José Benjamín Lujano López and Josué García Veiga
Abstract: Global capitalism has entered a long downswing that started with the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008. A debate has been opened about the causes of this slowdown, the prospect of a recovery and the role played by technology. The first point to observe is the character of the preceding long upswing. We argue that Fifth Kondratiev upswing was unstable and shortens by several weaknesses in the institutional framework. Given that weakness digital technology spread unevenly across even in the US economy, and the impact on productivity was limited. A huge excess of capital was the results of that forces mainly after 2000, driving the global economy to the financial crisis and then to global recession that still persist, in spite of the lender of last resort. At this point the prospects of recovery depend on the extension of digitization to a new level often called Artificial Intelligence. However, this new level of digitization will imply a deep impact on social relations in general and specifically in labor relations. A disturbing feature of the present time is the role played by digital monopolies that control the passage to AI. The only way to counteract that power is by a new social pact at global level.
Keywords: technological change, economic growth, productivity, digital monopolies
Specter of Globalization: Marx, Gramsci and Disjointed Time
Cyrus Bina
Abstract: This paper aims to combine a critique of political economy with that of transnational polity in a unified theoretical foundation. It begins by (1) exploring the development of capitalism into stages, (2) showing that this should necessarily lead to globalization, and (3) validating that in the epoch of globalization no hierarchical interstate (hegemonic or not) political order may stand a chance for survival. These highly abstract theoretical queries, on the one hand, follow Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism, and on the other hand obtain further theoretical and historical concretization in Antonio gramsci’s hegemony, before their realization at observable levels via the rise and fall of the postwar Pax Americana (1945–1979). Marx’s “conquest of mode of production” and gramsci’s hegemony set the context for a synthetic approach to the rise and fall of American power. Finally, the force of globalization is the arbiter of time, despite the declining power syndrome, in this disjointed polity.
2. WAPE 2019 Forum: Class, State and Nation in the Twenty-First Century
Opening Speech at the Fourteenth Forum of the World Association for Political Economy
Enfu Cheng
Winners of the World Marxian Economics Award (2019)
Acceptance Speech for the World Marxian Economics Award (I) (pp. 528-530)
Zuyao Yu
Acceptance Speech for the World Marxian Economics Award (II): Marxism, Science and Economics (pp. 531-543)
David Laibman
Acceptance Speech for the World Marxian Economics Award (III) (pp. 544-549)
Utsa Patnaik
Winners of the Distinguished Achievement Award of World Political Economy of the Twenty-First Century (2019) (pp. 550-551)
Xiaoqin Ding and Yixuan Wang
3. Information
WAPE Membership Information (pp. 563-564)
Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 565-566)