VARIETIES OF CAPITALISM

Varieties of capitalism

Varieties of capitalism

Introduction

Capitalism is a political, social and economic environment in which corporations and wealthy few control the property, including capital assets (land, factories, money, and shares of stock, bonds). Capitalism differs from previous economic system, the feudal system, for the purchase of labor in exchange for a wage and not by the direct labor that was obtained by way of custom, task or duty (close to slavery) in feudalism. It differs from socialism largely by the predominance of private property, in contrast to the social ownership of production elements. In capitalism, the price mechanism used as a supposed sign that allocates resources among incompatible uses. The different forms of capital depend on, among others, the degree to which they use the price mechanism, the degree of competitive markets and the level of government involvement in the economy.

To define capitalism it is necessary to define its basic principles, since there is no consensus on its definition. Generally, capitalism considered an economic system in which private property plays a pivotal role (Boyer, 2006, pp.890). This is the first of the basic principles of capitalism. It also includes the freedom of enterprise and choice, self-interest as a dominant motivation, competition, the importance of the price system or market and a reduced role of government. On private property, capitalism requires that resources should be in the hands of businesses and individuals. In this way, individuals provided with the use, employment and control of the resources they use in their productive work. As a result, of the above, individuals may use the resources as they see fit.

Background of Capitalism Approach

The Thatcherite (and post-Thatcherite) right to propagate the idea that there is no alternative to the neoliberal programme. But the victory of capitalist realism secured in the UK when the Labour Party capitulated to this view, and accepted, as the price of power, that 'business interests, narrowly conceived, would be henceforth be allowed to organise the shape and direction of the entire culture'.4 But perhaps it would be more accurate to record that, rather than simply capitulating to Thatcherite capitalist realism, it was the Labour Party itself that first introduced capitalist realism to the UK (Boyer, 2006, pp.890).

The Labour Party's acquiescence in capitalist realism cannot of course be construed as an absolute error: it was a consequence of the disintegration of the left's old power base in the face of the post-Fordist restructuring of capitalism. The features of this - globahsation; the displacement of manufacturing by computerisation; the casualisation of labour; the intensification of consumer culture - are now so familiar that they, too, have receded into a taken-for-granted background. This is what constitutes the background for the ostensibly post-political and uncontestable reality' that capitalist realism relies upon. The privatisation of stress is a perfect capture system, elegant in its brutal efficiency. Capital makes the worker ill, and then multinational pharmaceutical companies sell them drugs to make them better. The social and political causation of distress is neatly sidestepped at ...