Capitalism

921.qxd 9/25/2006 1:10 PM Page 1 Batch number: 1 CIRCULATED Date: SEEN BY DESK EDITOR: REVISE NEEDED Initial: Date: APPROVED FOR PRESS BY DESK EDITOR Initial: Date: Back board: ❑ ISBN ❑ Barcode LEARNING TO TEACH IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL Edited by Susan Capel, Marileaskand Tony Turner CHECKLIST (must be completed before press) (Please cross through any items that are not applicable) Front board: Spine: ❑ Title ❑ Title ❑ Subtitle ❑ Subtitle ❑ Author/edited by ❑ Author/edited by ❑ Series title ❑ Extra logo if required ❑ Extra logo if required General: ❑ Book size ❑ Type fit on spine Capitalism Victor D. Lippit ISBN 978-0-415-36392-1 ,!7IA4B Routledge frontiers of political economy www.routledge.com ï an informa business PC4 Royal Demy B-format Spine back edge Victor Lippit’s Capitalism taps the vast literatures of both radical and Marxian political economy to produce a provocative new assessment of contemporary capitalism as a global system. This is first-rate work—sophisticated in its scholarship yet also clear, direct, and generally accessible in its message. It teaches as well as persuades. It provokes in the best sense of rousing readers to think urgently— and without the currently fashionable self-delusions of capitalist triumphalism—about one of the central problems of our times. Professionals, lay readers, and college students can all benefit from this fine new contribution. Richard D. Wolff, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts In Capitalism Victor Lippit provides us with a wide-ranging and thoughtprovoking analysis of the long-term trajectory of the global capitalist economic system. His concluding chapter on future scenarios is must reading for everyone concerned about building an alternative economic system that will be both viable and humane. Thomas E. Weisskopf, Professor of Economics, University of Michigan The capitalist economic system is a dominant force shaping the lives of all of us on the planet, as well as the ecological life of the planet itself. Victor Lippit presents an eloquent, sweeping, and insightful perspective on the capitalist system today and its likely evolution over the coming historical epoch. Capitalism, the book, offers a much-needed jolt of reality about capitalism, the system, as it proceeds through the twenty-first century. Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst Capitalism Capitalism is the dominant mode of production, distribution, and exchange in the world today. Since its true emergence in the sixteenth century, capitalism has contributed to a rapid acceleration of living standards in the industrialized world. As it spreads to China and other lessdeveloped countries, it appears likely to play a comparable role elsewhere as well. Its impact, however, is not entirely beneficent, as growing prosperity has been accompanied by various manifestations of acute social injustice and environmental degradation. This book explores the contradictions of capitalism, its internal dynamics, and the forces that have shaped its evolution over time. In doing so, it considers the principal forms that capitalism has assumed—the AngloAmerican free-market kind that has reached its apogee in the United States; state-directed capitalism as exemplified in such countries as Japan and South Korea; and the welfare-state capitalism that has characterized capitalist development in continental Europe. The contemporary forces of globalization and technological change affect each of these forms of capitalism differently. Whatever form it assumes, the capitalist system is shown to have survived by overcoming it