Social structures of accumulation Research Papers

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- Social structures of accumulation

Reseña del libro de David Kotz publicado por Harvard University Press en el año 2015

- by Mariano Arana
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- American Studies, History of Capitalism, Neoliberalism, Heterodox Economics

Both the supporters and distractors of 'social movements–judicial activism nexus' project litigation strategies as the greatest challenge to neoliberal transformation in India. This fieldwork-based study on shrimp cultivation in Chilika Lake shows otherwise. By historically situating the developments in Chilika, it shows that in case of unpopular economic policies during the neoliberal period, the judiciary and other state agencies follow a revolving-door strategy and continuously externalise the problematic of resource conflicts by creating a regime of blame-avoidance. This regime nullifies the unity of the communities fighting dis-possession by reducing the social movements to immediate livelihood concerns of the masses.

- by lalatendu kesari das
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- Political Sociology, Social Movements, Fisheries, Agrarian Change

This paper is a draft version of the theoretical elaboration for a comparative analysis of social structures of accumulation (SSA) developed out of a critical engagement with the tradition of SSA theory and the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach. The discussion is drawn out of the manuscript on the rise of transnational capitalism in the postsocialist economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Comments are welcome.

In this article, the Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA) theory is used to situate Transnational Labor Regulation (TLR) in a historically accurate and socially relevant context, account for global labor market segmentation, developments in trade relations, patterns of consumption, and-significantly-aversion to any form of labor regulation. Total subsumption of labor under capital is a feature of the current SSA, wherein facets of human existence are increasingly commodified. Within this context, regulation is marginalized and replaced by "labor governance" and stakeholder approaches, with a prospect of regimes where labor standards and workplace protections would no longer be a legal right but absorbed into corporate governance processes and managed as technical standards. Could the International Labor Organization (ILO) assist such an endeavor and called upon to draft corporate governance rules for supply chain management? Furthermore, theoretical, methodological and policy propositions are explored in this paper. Theoretically, macro-level SSA analyses can be complemented at the micro-level by the intersectionality discourse, to scatter the monistic level of analysis "worker." Methodologically, various approaches for doing research "from below" are reviewed. Our policy proposition centers on examining how labor regulation clauses could be incorporated to English (private) common law that governs supply chain relations.

E tanulmányban Barbara és John Ehrenreich az Egyesült Államokban a második világháború után kiteljesedő középosztályosodási folyamatra keresett marxista magyarázatot. Az eredetileg 1977-ben megjelent elemzés ezt az osztályszerkezeti kérdést egy politikai probléma megoldásával kapcsolja össze. A korabeli radikális baloldalt legnagyobbrészt olyanok népesítették be, akik magukat „középosztálybelinek” gondolták. Hogyan értelmezhető e képzett politikai aktivisták osztályhelyzete és milyen viszonyban állnak a tőkés, illetve a munkásosztállyal?

- by Márk Áron Éber
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- Class, Sociology of the Middle Classes, History of Middle Classes, Social Class
- by Christian Garland
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- Critical Theory, European History, Modern History, Intellectual History

A world social structure of accumulation (SSA) is forming based on global segmentation of labor, financialization, and a neoliberal trade regime. Unlike its Fordist era counterpart, this SSA lacks a corresponding regime for consumption because it has outsourced production to low-wage authoritarian regions. This is resulting in inadequate purchasing power within developed nations for whom global production is intended, raising the potential of global crisis. In fact, these emerging structures may implode before any significant accumulation occurs when the US consumer debt bubble that has been fueling consumption bursts. The article concludes that the emerging system is intensifying class contradictions embedded in private property relations that will lead to intensified downturns. Therefore, the only structural solution is not reform but fundamental reorganization of socioeconomic relations. However, this requires a new transnational labor-activist movement willing to challenge the legitimacy of capitalism with radical counter-ideology and militant direct action.

- by John Asimakopoulos
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- Critical Theory, Political Economy, Globalization, Anarchism

Financialization describes an increase in the size and importance of the FIRE sector relative to the overall economy and of “the increasing role of Financialization has becme central to the Global Neoliberal social structure of accumulation as inequality has grown and the surplus appropriated by the top one percnet of the 1% has found an outlet not in investment for the production of goods and services but in speculation in financial assets creating bubbles which are followed by their collapse and economic crises. Government and central bank rescues have reestablished the standing of financial institutions, encouraging them to again take great risks on the implied assurance they will be bailed out yet again creating what has been called the Doom Loop. The growth of the financial sector, its increased power over the real economy, has slowed growth as mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, and stock buybacks grew as money managers came to dominate American capitalism. This paper examines the misleading analyses of mainstream macroeconomics and financial economics and offers an alternative explanation of 21st-century American capitalism.

- by William K. Tabb
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- Finance, Political Economy, International Political Economy, Financialization

The economic and political crisis of the 1970s undermined the postwar social structures of accumulation (SSA) and gave rise to the current globalized, neoliberal, financialized (GNF) SSA. Under GNF, we have witnessed the explosion of the precariat and the reemergence of simpler forms of labor control characteristic of earlier SSAs. This article discusses the response of the labor movement, broadly defined, to these changes, including the rise of worker centers, worker ownership, campaigns for increased state regulation, and cross-border organizing. Finally, it raises the question of whether the current national labor federation can act as an incubator for the experimentation and structural changes necessary for the labor movement to meet the challenges of the GNF-SSA. JEL Classification: J50, J51, J54, J58

- by Kimberly Christensen
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- Labor Movements, Social structures of accumulation

Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA) theory has made few inroads in developing accounts of social, economic, and institutional transformation in Eastern Europe since the systemic collapse of state socialism in the region. There have been no significant efforts to apply theoretical insights from SSA theory to the study of the constitution and transformation of Eastern European capitalism since the historic demise of the Soviet-led economic bloc in 1989-91. This chapter argues that SSA theory has much to offer towards a critical understanding of the social and political dynamics of East European capitalism, particularly in the intersection between domestic class interests, heightened processes of neoliberal globalization in the 1990s and 2000s, and the key episodes of economic contraction and expansion experienced by East European economies through three decades of capitalist development.

Profound institutional transformation is a necessary corollary to the ongoing systemic crisis of neoliberal capitalism. This paper considers together the works of the Social Structures of Accumulation theory and those of Ernesto Laclau in the light of the current systemic crises, in order to illuminate some under-theorized issues regarding institutional change. Combining the former’s attention to the internal requirements of the accumulation process with the latter’s discursive approach to hegemony, it is argued, turns to be a promising route to apprehend the subtleties of deep institutional transformation. In particular, issues regarding the recognition of the heterogeneity of struggles un SSA theory, together with its understanding of the political struggle in times of SSA decay, will be re-casted in new light.

Against the background of ongoing global crisis of capitalism, the article reflects on the most important and intriguing contributions of the French Regulation School within the Marxist tradition to critical international political economy. In particular, it examines and critiques the respective theses of principal regulationists—Aglietta, Lipietz, and Boyer—about capitalist stability, contradictions, dynamics, and relations. Aglietta’s limited conception of crises and contradictions is scrutinised by proposing a framework of agential-structural interrelations—specifically, the interactions between class struggle and market-dependence—in understanding capitalist relations and proc- esses. Lipietz’s level of analysis on ‘national’ capitalism is questioned with a comprehension of the global character and universalising tendencies of capitalism. And Boyer’s reading of finance-led growth as the new regime of accumulation is explored with an argument to put more significance on reproduction than regulation and to bring back production and its interaction with the system of exchange in the analysis of capitalist development. The conclusion proposes a synthesis of regulation approach and the concepts from classical Marxism to better capture the specificities of contemporary capitalist development.

- by Bonn Juego
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- International Relations Theory, Marxism, International Political Economy, Capitalism
- by Michael Gillespie
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- Poverty, Consumer Debt, Capital Accumulation, Social structures of accumulation

This paper argues for the need to recast Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA) debates regarding the relevance of contradictions other than that between capital and labor, as well as regarding the terms of the political struggle in times of SSA decay, in the light of the concepts of overdetermination and hegemony. To that extent, it introduces the notions of “necessary social peace for surplus-value extraction” and “accumulation of unsatisfied demands over the accumulation process.”

- by Pedro M Rey-Araujo
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- Political Economy, Neoliberalism, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony

- by lalatendu das
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- Agrarian Change, Indian Politics, Organised Crime, Livelihood

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