is capitalism dead?
Over at Organizations and Markets, Nicolai Foss posted links to a series of videos by Sidney Winter, a leading figure in evolutionary economics and strategic management, discussing the crisis (together with Alice Rivlin, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve), inflation, and economic cassandras. The videos are interesting, and spurred some debate on Organizations and Markets on how to create robust regulatory systems and the role ideology might play in the process. My favorite video provides an ironic, pragmatic take on the many deaths of capitalism (and its resurrection):
I concur with his last comment: “Capitalism is dead […] It will be resurrected again […] We have an opportunity now to design some economic institutions that do make better sense. As we try to approach that task it would really be helpful if we just stopped using all these ideological labels, realizing what a complex world we now live in, and how badly we need carefully designed institutions to promote our economic welfare,” but can we really step out of our ideological worldviews?
First, who knew Sid Winter was so fashionable. I love his beard (I am, in general, a big fan of all things beardy). The C.Everett Coop beard suits him. Kudos.
And Kudos for bringing this to our attention. I’ve been going back to Polanyi a bit lately (reference my comments on Teppo’s post re: Adler/Heckscher’s take on communities). I have no idea what he (or Alice Rivlin for that matter) think of Polanyi, but given the tumultuous times we’re in, its hard not to peruse his thoughts right now.
As a result, I hope to take up the question of whether we can step out of ideological views in a future post I’ve been working on on moral arguments underlying different ideas for what the next ‘capitalism’ should look like.
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Sean Safford
June 10, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Hmm…maybe we should all start posting our comments as youtube videos :) not sure this will make organization theory more or less popular!
Look forward to reading your future post on this topic.
Btw, Nicolai Foss must have predicted (economists are good at this prediction thing) your reference to Polany, and just posted a (rather negative) review of a recent paper in geography on the pre-history of neoliberalism with extensive references to Polany (and the Austrian School):
http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2009/06/10/mises-and-hayek-in-progress-in-human-geography/
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Fabrizio Ferraro
June 10, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I will address Nicolai’s point at a time and place of my own choosing (likely sometime before 9am tomorrow)
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Sean Safford
June 10, 2009 at 7:38 pm
“is capitalism dead?”
Another question might be, which capitalism is dead? Certainly that version of capitalism (the sub-prime one) that allowed zero-down financing/no-stated-income, the one that anticipated that the housing market will forever appreciate aggressively, etc.
Or another question might be, was it capitalism that we were experimenting with, or something else? Some economists would disagree (particularly heterodox ones). And — well, this one’s a bit unfair to just throw into the comments, though Sean’s post undoubtedly will solve/touch on the matter — what is capitalism?
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tf
June 10, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Hi
What IS capitalism? I’ll tell ya….
You DO see the pyramid scheme symbol on the back of the USA one dollar bill, right? You DO see the servitude infestation in capitalism, right? And do you see the “pay up or lose your wellbeing” Chicago mob-like felony extortion widespread within capitalism? Do you see the “join or starve” felony extortion done to the 18 year olds… by this ugly competer’s church called capitalism? See how forcing competer’s religions onto 18 year olds… kills membership in the cooperator’s church (Christianity/socialism)?? Do you understand that AmWay (American Way) (New World Order) got “the exclusive” (legal tender) on the TYPE of survival coupons (money) accepted in supply depots (stores) and leverages 18 year olds into the organization via that felony activity as well? (It puts AmWay-coupon slaving requirements called price tags… on all the survival goods). Do you understand how farmyard pyramids work… from your childhood?? Remember?? Upper 1/3 are “heads in the clouds” while the kids on the bottom ALWAYS GET HURT from the weight of the world’s knees in their backs? Still with me? Do you see anything illegal, immoral, or just plain sick… in any of this pyramid scheme’s activities?
Us American Christian socialists are still patiently awaiting the natural fall of the pyramid-o-servitude, or the busting of the free marketeers felony… by the USA Dept of Justice. Us Christians are VERY CLOSE to issuing a cease and desist order until the servitude and inequality goes away… which means it turns into a commune. Commune is a word we LOVE when used in the word “community”… but its one the caps HATE when used in the term “commune-ism”. Go fig. PROGRAMMED!!
Do a Google IMAGE SEARCH for ‘pyramid of capitalist’ to see a full color picture made way back in 1911, when capitalism was first discovered to be a con/sham instigated by the Free Masons/Illuminati. Folks sure bought into the thing… hook, line, and sinker just the same. The caps didn’t even check if a string was attached! Now THAT’S easy fishing, eh?
Time to level the felony pyramid scheme called capitalism. Abolish economies and ownershipism worldwide, and hurry. Economies just cause rat-racing, and rat-racing causes felony pyramiding. BUST IT, America! Look to the USA military supply/survival system… (and the USA public library system) for socialism and morals done right. Equal, owner-less, money-less, bill-less, timecard-less, and concerned with growth of value-criteria OTHER THAN money-value. Quit doing monetary discrimination immediately, and make it illegal. There are MANY measurement criteria of “value”… not just dollars. Try morals, efficiency, discrimination-levels, repairability, etc etc. Economies are cancerous tumors, and to cheer for their growth… is just insane. Profiting causes inflation, so if caps LIKE inflation, and if they LIKE a terrible time in afterlife when they meet the planet’s ORIGINAL OWNER before caps tried to squat it all with ownershipism, then keep it up with the felony pyramiding. I dare you. While us Christians are finally bulldozing that pyramid scheme back to level, lets make servitude and “join or starve” (get a job or die) illegal in the USA, and lets level the architecture seen in USA courtrooms, too. Right now, USA courtrooms are church simulators or “fear chambers”, by special design. Sick.
Isn’t that back-of-the-dollar pyramid… a Columbian freemason symbol? And WHERE is the USA gov located? District of Columbia? (Not even part of the USA!). How much more blatant can ya get? The “Fed” runs a pyramid scheme called the free marketeers. If you’re using the “federal reserve note” certificates, or using no-other-living-thing-on-the-planet entitles of ownership, you’re bought into a servitude/slavery con/sham… called capitalism. Pyramiding 101.
Larry “Wingnut” Wendlandt
MaStars – Mothers Against Stuff That Ain’t Right
(anti-capitalism-ists)
Bessemer MI USA
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Wingnut
June 11, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Another interpretation of the current crisis that is increasingly shared in Germany is that coordinated capitalism is dead – wheather or not we prefer coordinated capitalism or rather liberal capitalism: Institutions such as industry wide collective bargaining are in decline and have been since they were installed 60 years ago with the foundation of the German republic and the idea of “social market economy”. All of the institutions at the core of the German “social market economy” (coordinated capitalism) have been in decline over the past several decades. Industrywide collective bargaining is shrinking, more exeptions are allowed, both organized capital and organized labor have lost membership, social policy referring to social solidarity in case of old age and sickness is weakened or deliberately re-designed as to ‘activate’ unemployed people and thereby hide the true level of unemployment in the official statistics, balance budgets and cut taxes. Both public budget and public debt are on the rise, public debt in relation to GDP has reached more than 60 per cent. And finally, the network of cross-shareholdings and multiple ties of capital and interlocking directorates that we refer to as Deutschland AG (“Germany Inc.”) has been in decline for more than a decade (Streeck 2009, “Re-Forming Capitalism. Institutional Change in the German Political Economy”) . So, in Germany, there is a strong sentiment that there is more capitalism than ever, that Germany is in the process of leaving coordinated capitalism behind and picking up some things from ‘liberal capitalism’; this view finds its opposition in the conservative perspective that the fiscal state is ‘too fat’ and should get smaller. And because Germany is at the beginning of the election campaign for the Bundestag of 2009 I expect this debate to get much more heated as we approach September 27, 2009.
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Tina
June 13, 2009 at 1:48 pm