Global Governance and Financial Crises
by
Meghnad Desai
and
Yahia Said
Published 12 Nov 2003
Das The Economics and Management of Technological Diversification Edited by John Cantwell, Alfonso Gambardella and Ove Granstrand Before and Beyond EMU Historical lessons and future prospects Edited by Patrick Crowley Fiscal Decentralization Ehtisham Ahmad and Vito Tanzi The Regionalization of Internationalized Innovation Locations for advanced industrial development and disparities in participation Edited by Ulrich Hilpert Gold and the Modern World Economy Edited by MoonJoong Tcha Global Economic Institutions Willem Molle Global Governance and Financial Crises Edited by Meghnad Desai and Yahia Said Global Governance and Financial Crises Edited by Meghnad Desai and Yahia Said First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Meghnad Desai and Yahia Said for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors for their chapters All rights reserved.
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Series. HC59.7.D368 2003 338.542-dc21 ISBN 0-203-71321-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-34284-4 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–30529–2 (Print Edition) 2003046537 Contents List of figures List of tables List of contributors 1 Introduction viii x xi 1 MEGHNAD DESAI AND YAHIA SAID 2 Financial crises and global governance 6 MEGHNAD DESAI 3 Asset price bubbles and monetary policy 19 FRANKLIN ALLEN AND DOUGLAS GALE 4 The International Monetary Fund: past and future 43 MICHEL AGLIETTA 5 Regulating global finance: rival conceptions of world order 70 ANDREW GAMBLE 6 Crises, recovery and reforms in East Asia 83 JOMO KWAME SUNDARAM 7 Mexico, Korea and Brazil: three paths to financial crises 120 GABRIEL PALMA Index 159 Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 Credit and asset prices Optimal risk sharing Consumption without central bank intervention Asset pricing without central bank intervention Reserve positions in the Fund and international reserves IMF quotas and world exports Total liabilities of beneficiary countries in percentage of IMF quotas 4.4 Credit outstandings by type of facilities 6.1 East Asian 4: monthly interest rates, January 1997–May 2000 6.2 East Asian 4: monthly foreign exchange rates, January 1996–June 2000 6.3 (a) Indonesia, Korea, Thailand and Malaysia: annual budget balances, 1996–99; (b) Korea, Thailand and Malaysia: quarterly budget balances, 1997Q1–99Q4 6.A1 (a) Thailand: quarterly merchandise trade balance and reserves, 1997Q1–2000Q1; (b) Indonesia: quarterly merchandise trade balance and reserves, 1997Q1–99Q4; (c) Malaysia: quarterly merchandise trade balance and reserves, 1997Q1–99Q4; (d) Korea: quarterly merchandise trade balance and reserves, 1997Q1–2000Q1 6.A2 (a) Thailand: GDP growth, foreign exchange and interest rate, 1997Q1–2000Q1; (b) Indonesia: GDP growth, foreign exchange and interest rate, 1997Q1–2000Q1; (c) Malaysia: GDP growth, foreign exchange and interest rate, 1997Q1–2000Q1; (d) Korea: GDP growth, foreign exchange and interest rate, 1997Q1–2000Q1 7.1 Latin America and East Asia: aggregate net capital flows before financial liberalisation, and between financial liberalisation and financial crisis 7.2 G7: assets of institutional investors 7.3 Derivatives markets: notional values of outstanding ‘over-thecounter’ interest rate, currency and exchange-traded derivative contracts 27 34 37 38 51 51 54 55 95 96 98 110 111 123 123 124 Figures ix 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 7.15 7.16 7.17 7.18 7.19 7.20 7.21 7.22 7.23 7.24 7.25 7.26 7.27 7.28 East Asia and Latin America: credit to private sector between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crises Latin America and East Asia: domestic real lending rates between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crisis Latin America and East Asia: imports of consumer goods between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crises Latin America and East Asia: annual stock market indices between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crisis Latin America, East Asia, USA and Europe: stock market indices Latin America and East Asia: real estate price indices between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crisis Mexico: investment in residential construction, infrastructure and machinery and equipment South Korea: sectoral surpluses of the corporate, household, public and foreign sectors Mexico: composition of net private capital inflows Korea: composition of net private capital inflows Latin America and East Asia: ratio of short-term debt to total debt between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crisis Latin America and East Asia: ratio of foreign exchange reserves to short-term debt between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crisis Latin America and East Asia: ratio of foreign exchange reserves to M2 between the beginning of financial liberalisation and respective financial crisis Chile: composition of net private capital inflows Chile: net equity securities and other investment Chile: real effective exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves Chile versus Brazil and Thailand: short-term foreign debt Chile: quarterly stock market index Chile: quarterly real estate index Chile: credit to the private sector and real interest rates Malaysia: net private capital inflows Malaysia: composition of net private capital inflows Malaysia: net ‘other’, portfolio investment and ‘errors’ Malaysia: quarterly stock market index Malaysia: quarterly real estate index 125 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 134 135 135 136 141 142 142 144 145 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 Tables 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.A1 6.A2(a) 6.A2(b) 6.A2(c) 6.A2(d) 6.A3(a) 6.A3(b) 6.A3(c) 6.A3(d) Details of the two assets A mean-preserving spread of risky asset returns Credit, risky asset prices and interest rates A mean-preserving spread of financial risk Synopsis of the Fund’s mandate Types of international prudential organization East Asia four: macroeconomic indicators East Asian four: lending by BIS reporting banks by sector Exposure of BIS reporting banks to non-BIS borrowers Maturity distribution of lending by BIS reporting banks to selected Asian economies East Asian four: debt service and short-term debt East Asian four: exchange rates and depreciation against US dollar East Asian four: macroeconomic indicators Thailand: foreign debt indicators Indonesia: foreign debt indicators Malaysia: foreign debt indicators Korea: foreign debt indicators Thailand: loans and advances by commercial banks Indonesia: loans and advances by commercial banks Malaysia: loans and advances by commercial banks Korea: loans and advances by commercial banks 23 24 28 28 58 60 86 87 88 88 90 96 112 114 115 116 117 118 118 119 119 Contributors Michel Aglietta is a senior member of l’Institut Universitaire de France.
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He also worked as a project coordinator with the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly in Prague. Yahia Said specialises in issues of economic transition and security in post-totalitarian societies. His publications include with Meghnad Desai ‘Money and the global civil society: the new anti-capitalist movement’, in Anheier, Glasius and Kaldor (eds), Global Civil Society 2001 (OUP 2001), and with Yash Ghai and Mark Lattimer, Building Democracy in Iraq (Minority Rights Group 2003). 1 Introduction Meghnad Desai and Yahia Said The new century is barely three years old and many of the certainties of the last century are being re-examined. During the last decade of the last century, there was an overwhelming confidence about the economy.
Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One
by
Meghnad Desai
Published 15 Feb 2015
Feinstein, ed., Capitalism, Socialism and Economic Development: Essays in Honour of Maurice Dobb (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1967). See also Meghnad Desai, “Growth Cycles and Inflation in a Model of the Class Struggle,” Journal of Economic Theory (Dec. 1973), republished in The Selected Essays of Meghnad Desai, vol. 1: Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 1995). 4.For a comparison of Hayek and Marx, see Meghnad Desai, “Hayek and Marx,” in E. Feser, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006). 5.Robert Lucas, “Econometric Testing of the Natural Rate Hypothesis,” in O.
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See also Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, with a new epilogue (Penguin, New York, 2008). 7.Financial Services Authority, The Turner Review: A Regulatory Response to the Global Banking Crisis (Financial Services Authority, London, 2009), p. 39. 8.The case for the Keynesians is argued by Robert Skidelsky, Keynes: The Return of the Master (Penguin, London, 2009). 9.Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States 1867–1960 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1963). 10.For the background to the euro, see David Marsh, The Euro: The Battle for the New Global Currency (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009). 7 The Search for an Answer 1.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014), see figure 6.1, p. 200; figure 6.2, p. 201; figure 8.5, p. 291. 2.Meghnad Desai, “An Econometric Model of the Share of Wages in National Income: UK 1855–1965” (1984), republished in The Selected Essays of Meghnad Desai, vol. 1: Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 1995). 3.Andrew Glyn and Robert Sutcliffe, “The Collapse of UK Profits,” New Left Review, 66 (Mar.–Apr. 1971). 4.Gerard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, “The Crisis of the Early 21st Century: Marxian Perspectives,” in R.
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Copyright © 2015 Meghnad Desai All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: sales.press@yale.edu www.yalebooks.com Europe Office: sales@yaleup.co.uk www.yalebooks.co.uk Typeset in Arno Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Control Number: 2015933801 ISBN 978-0-300-21354-6 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS List of Figures Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Unraveling the Threads Part I 1 The Building Blocks 2 Cycles for the Curious 3 New Tools for a New Profession Part II 4 Causing a Stir 5 Declining Fortunes Part III 6 The New Globalization 7 The Search for an Answer Notes Bibliography Index FIGURES 1Marshall’s Cross 2Keynes’s aggregate demand and aggregate supply curves 3Hicks’s version of Keynes 4The Phillips curve 5Friedman’s version of the Phillips curve 6The Goodwin cycle 7Lucas’s version of the Phillips curve 8New classical aggregate demand and aggregate supply PREFACE In July 2007, I was invited by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India to give a talk to a group of Foreign Services Officers on the prospects for the global economy.
Rethinking Islamism: The Ideology of the New Terror
by
Meghnad Desai
Published 25 Apr 2008
R E T H I N K I NG I SL A M I S M ‘MeghnadDesaihasgivenusamuchneededguidetothe complexroleofIslamincurrentgeopoliticalconflicts.Bringing togetherawealthofhistoricalknowledgewithpowerfulinsights intoglobalisation,heshowsthatGlobalIslamisarevolutionary movementinmanywayslikethoseofthetwentiethcentury. Thisisabookthatdeservestobeverywidelyread.’ JG,ProfessorofEuropeanThought attheLondonSchoolofEconomicsandauthorof AlQaedaandWhatItMeansToBeModern(Faber) ‘LikeMaynardKeynes,MeghnadDesaiissomuchmorethan aneconomist.
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R S,ProfessorofPoliticalEconomy attheUniversityofWarwickandauthorof TheWorldAfterCommunism:APolemicforOurTimes RETHINK ING ISLAMISM TheIdeologyoftheNewTerror Publishedinby I.B.Tauris&Co.Ltd SalemRd,London FifthAvenue,NewYork www.ibtauris.com IntheUnitedStatesandCanadadistributedbyPalgraveMacmillan, adivisionofSt.Martin’sPress,FifthAvenue,NewYork, Copyright©MeghnadDesai TherightofMeghnadDesaitobeidentifiedastheauthorofthiswork hasbeenassertedbyhiminaccordancewiththeCopyright, DesignsandPatentsAct, Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orany partthereof,maynotbereproduced,storedinorintroducedintoaretrieval system,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,electronic,mechanical, photocopying,recordingorotherwise,withoutthepriorwrittenpermissionof thepublisher. AfullCIPrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary AfullCIPrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress LibraryofCongresscatalogcard:available TypesetinVanDijckbyilluminati,Grosmont, www.illuminatibooks.co.uk PrintedandboundinGreatBritainby T.J.
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. the message was repeated on anotherArab-Sassaniandirhamstruckatthesameplace,thistime byasupporteroftheUmayyads.’PatriciaCroneandMartinHinds, God’sCaliph,CambridgeUniversityPress,Cambridge,,p.. . ThereisavastliteratureontheRussianRevolution.SeeMeghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of StatistSocialism,Verso,London,. . There are many references. See among others François Furet, The PassingofanIllusion,UniversityofChicagoPress,Chicago,;Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story, Jonathan Cape, London,;StephaneCourtoisetal.
GDP: The World’s Most Powerful Formula and Why It Must Now Change
by
Ehsan Masood
Published 4 Mar 2021
—Gustav Papanek, “The Development Miracle” (1965) Elite universities are usually spoiled for choice when it comes to selecting whom to feature in their alumni magazines. But there’s one University of Cambridge class in particular that would have left any editor of its alumni magazine CAM spoilt for choice. The economics class of 1953 had Meghnad Desai, now Labour member of the UK House of Lords. It had Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, and last but not least, there was Pakistan’s Mahbub ul Haq, who would become his country’s chief economist and later its finance minister. I know a tiny bit of this generation, as it is the generation of my own parents: children of the partition of India and participants in what is still the world’s largest mass migration.
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All but 3 of the 135 countries for which HDI is measured have a higher level compared with 1990. Crucially for the project team’s thesis, those countries recording the biggest gains in life expectancy and education are not necessarily those with the biggest increases in economic growth rates. Meghnad Desai and Richard Jolly both say that few if any members of the project team, with the exception of Haq, anticipated the level of attention the HDI has received; nor could they foresee the effect it would have on countries and how the reports would influence development planning in both good and more questionable ways.
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In particular, they are: Bob Costanza whose 1997 Nature paper, “The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital,” planted a seed for this book, and Herman Daly, who walked me through the birth pangs of ecological economics. I am also grateful to the late Maurice Strong who helped me to reconstruct the 1972 Stockholm environment conference and to Roberto Peccei who spoke movingly about his late father Aurelio. Lord Meghnad Desai, Bill Draper, Sir Richard Jolly and Frances Stewart illuminated the early years of the Human Development Index and Richard especially provided detailed comments on an early draft of the manuscript. Many thanks also go to Dasho Karma Ura who described the making of Gross National Happiness; to Gustav Papanek for his memories as an economic development consultant in 1950s Karachi; and to Lord Nicholas Stern for re-living both the Commission for Africa and the Stern review on the economics of climate change.
How Much Is Enough?: Money and the Good Life
by
Robert Skidelsky
and
Edward Skidelsky
Published 18 Jun 2012
They all encouraged us to break academic cover and come out clearly with our own views. Our warmest thanks go to the following for reading the whole or part of drafts of How Much Is Enough? and, by their comments and criticisms, helping to improve its arguments: Perry Anderson, Tony Bicat, Carmen Callil, Meghnad Desai, Robin Douglass, Pavel Erochkine, Richard Fynes, Peter Pagan, Pranay Sanklecha, Richard Seaford, Augusta Skidelsky, Will Skidelsky and Wu Junqing. We thank Pete Mills and Christian Westerlind Wigstrom of Robert’s Centre for Global Studies for their unstinting help with research and criticism.
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Whereas Lenin saw poor countries as a reservoir for the further exploitation of labor, Luxemburg saw them—together with armaments production—as a vent for extra markets to absorb the surplus of capitalist production over consumption. Whatever one might think about the validity of either explanation, neither points to the collapse of capitalism, rather to its ability to rescue itself from internal crises, notably through globalization. As Marx’s modern commentator Meghnad Desai writes, “Marx fails to come up with a single story about the dynamics of capitalism that in any way predicts—even with various conditions attached—its eventual downfall.”38 Realization that his economics failed to establish the apocalyptic moment is probably why Marx never finished the last two volumes of Das Kapital.
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Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Project Gutenberg (http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/61; accessed January 12, 2012), p. 9. 31. Ibid., p. 9. 32. Ibid., p. 8. 33. Ibid., p. 13. 34. Ibid., p. 9. 35. Karl Marx, “Capital,” in Marx: Collected Writings (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974), pp. 714–15. 36. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 10. 37. Quoted in Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (London: Verso, 2004), p. 95. 38. Ibid., p. 79. 39. Quoted ibid., p. 44. 40. Karl Marx, “The German Ideology,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977; first pub. 1846), p. 169. 41.
Marxian Economic Theory
by
Meghnad Desai
Published 20 May 2013
LECTURES IN ECO~GMfCS - Marxian Economic Theory Meghnad Desai LO/ldO/l School of Ecollomics a/ld Political Scie/lce GRAY-MILLS PUBLISHING LTL IQ Jucr Strcct London S .W. I I © Mr.~/I/I/JJ Drsai First Editi(l" t974 ISBN 0 85641 013 6 (papa) ISBN 0 85641 Oil 8 (dot/,) Printed In Great Britain by Lowe /le Brydone (Printers) Ltd, Haverhill, Suffolk CONTENTS Preface List of algebraic symbols Chapter I IntFoduction II The Role of Value TheoFY in Classical, Neoclassical and MaFxian Economics III UndiffeFentiated and AbstFact LabOUF: An AbstFaction and an HistoFical Process IV CFeation of SUFplus Value as a Social Process V The ThFee CiFcuits of Capital VI Simple RepFoduction and Expanded RepFoduction.
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Many students have advanced my understanding of Marx and taught me to rethink old ideas. I am grateful to E. Akat, Dada Yaffe, Stephen Lord, Peter Nore and Nat Levy among others. Mark Blaug and Gail \-;ilson read the earlier versions and improved it in several ways. I am also grateful to Geraldine Preece, Carol Martin and Arule de Sayrah for typing the earlier versions. Meghnad Desai LondOn SchooZ of Economics, Z97J ii IC} Sale of labour power and p,Jrchase of wage aood. by labourers I} ,i. MP: i {CI W W ;r·_· - - - - - _._._. - - _.- - _.- ./. :: C ~ :C'~M' L . , M --+ : ,,: =p i1 1 , C L_____ - - - - - - - --~-- - ~- -- - - - --~ ---• C+c "~SAo~·t~ , . -----------:--------- ------------ -1-·- _. ------------ } "- /' cClllDDdities for : - p ---+C' ::' --+
The Classical School
by
Callum Williams
Published 19 May 2020
As Angus Maddison, an economist, points out, India also paid for the salaries of colonial administrators. Many of these were extremely high: “the Viceroy received £25,000 a year, and governors £10,000. The starting salary in the engineering service was £420 a year or about sixty times the average income of the Indian labour force.” Meghnad Desai, another economist, reckons that during Naoroji’s time, roughly half of the financial transfers from India to Britain could be considered “unrequited”. Why was that bad for India? According to the Millian–Humean logic, it implied that Indians had to consume fewer imports, resulting in a lower standard of living.
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Though as we will see later in this chapter, that changed. 4. It is also interesting that in the course of coming up with the theory Naoroji embarked on a statistical project the likes of which Sir William Petty would have been proud of. He was the first person, in 1867, to estimate India’s GDP. I am grateful to Meghnad Desai for the insight that the drain could be put instead towards investment. 5. Desai laments the “the nationalist logic [which] saw all foreign trade and not just the classic Home Charges as a ‘drain’ of resources”. Following independence India was to embrace an autarkic style of economic management. 6.
When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom
by
Martin Jacques
Published 12 Nov 2009
Chen Kuan-Hsing read Chapter 8 and has discussed many of the ideas in it with me over the last few years. I, of course, remain solely responsible for the book as it now appears, warts and all. I would like to express my gratitude to Tony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics, and Meghnad Desai, then chairman of the Asia Research Centre, who arranged for me to become a visiting research fellow at the Centre in 2004, a connection which has continued to this day. I am also now a senior visiting fellow at the LSE’s IDEAS, an association for which I would like to thank Michael Cox and Odd Arne Westad.
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Sun Shuyun, The Long March (London: HarperPress, 2006), for an account of this remarkable episode. 78 . Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (London: Penguin, 1998), Chapter 2, and pp. 215-25. 79 . Bin Wong, China Transformed, pp. 164, 170-73. 80 . Cohen, Discovering History in China, p. 135. 81 . Ibid., p. 132. 82 . Meghnad Desai, ‘India and China: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy’, seminar paper, Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics, 2003, p. 5; revised version available to download from www.imf.org. 83 . Cohen, Discovering History in China, p. 132; Bin Wong, China Transformed, p. 200; Lovell, The Great Wall, pp. 219, 242. 84 .
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Geoff Dyer, ‘Russia Fails to Secure Regional Backing’, Financial Times, 28 August 2008; Geoff Dyer, ‘Russia Could Push China Closer to the West’, Financial Times, 27 August 2008; Bobo Lo, ‘Russia, China and the Georgia Dimension’, Centre for European Reform Bulletin, 62 (October/November 2008). 83 . Meghnad Desai, ‘India and China: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy’, seminar paper, Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics, 2003, p. 3; revised version available to download from www.imf.org. 84 . Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (London: Allen Lane, 2005), pp. 161-90, especially p. 164. 85 .
The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World
by
Peter Frankopan
Published 14 Jun 2018
.), ‘The potential socio-economic impact of China Pakistan Economic Corridor’, Asian Development Policy Review 5.4 (2017), pp. 191–8. 142Ankit Panda, ‘Geography’s Curse: India’s Vulnerable “Chicken’s Neck”’, The Diplomat, 8 November 2013. 143India Today, ‘Full-scale India–China war likely soon, Washington will back New Delhi: Meghnad Desai’, 5 August 2017. 144The Hindu, ‘Army prepared for a two and a half front war: General Rawat’, 8 June 2017. 145See Frankopan, Silk Roads, pp. 294ff and above all Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London, 2012). 146First Post, ‘Pakistan seals $5 billion deal to buy eight Chinese attack submarines’, 31 August 2016. 147Christopher Clary and Ankit Panda, ‘Safer at Sea?
Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes
by
Mark Skousen
Published 22 Dec 2006
Marx and his followers have traditionally taken a dim view of the future of capitalism. In the twentieth century, Marxists frequently wrote of the "twilight of capitalism," a favorite book title (William Z. Foster in 1949, Michael Harrington in 1977, and Boris Kagarlitsky in 2000). They all predicted the imminent collapse of the capitalist system. However, Lord Meghnad Desai, an economist at the London School of Economics, recently proposed the startling thesis that Marx would have supported the resurgence of capitalism around the world. The Communist Manifesto spoke eloquently about the "ever growing ... constantly expanding ... rapid" advance of vigorous and vital capitalist forces, reaching beyond natural borders to a world market (1964 [1848], 4).
The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
by
Bhaskar Sunkara
Published 1 Feb 2019
“Hillary Clinton’s 10 Biggest Corporate Donors in the S&P 500,” Forbes, 2016, forbes.com/pictures/emdk45ehhgg/hillary-clintons-10-big/#110cb0c13629. 20. Dana Milbank, “How Schumer and the Democrats Are Preparing to Fight,” Washington Post, December 9, 2016. 21. “Is There a Russian Coup Underway in America? | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann | GQ” (video), December 12, 2016, youtube.com/watch?v=IAFxPXGDH4E. 22. Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (London: Verso, 2002), 251. 23. Julian Glover, “The Party Is Over—This Phrase Has a History,” Guardian, September 29, 2008; Tony Benn, Against the Tide. Diaries 1973–76 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), 301. 24. Eric Hobsbawm, “The Forward March of Labour Halted?”
Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity
by
Stephen D. King
Published 14 Jun 2010
Gilbert), An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993), p. 18. 12. For an attempt to rehabilitate Thomas Malthus, read Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007). 13. From The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For an update on Marx and globalization, see Meghnad Desai’s Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (Verso, London, 2002). 14. Smith is justly famous for his Wealth of Nations, but his earlier Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) provides the moral and legal foundations for all that followed. 15. Booms and busts were also a common feature of late nineteenth-century economic progress. 16.
The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy
by
Diane Coyle
Published 29 Oct 1998
The reason was that the government, under pressure from business, had rushed through legislation that started to chip away at the long-term deal between the corporations and their workers. The pressure of competition meant the companies felt they could no longer afford the literally cradle-to-grave welfare — the housing, health care, schooling and secure employment — they had so far provided to their employees. As the economist and Labour peer Meghnad Desai expressed it in a comment on the Korean unrest: ‘These circus tigers have to get out into the jungle and face some rivalry’.1 Like the welfare states of the industrialised West, these mini-welfare organisations wanted to pass the risks onto the men and women they had so far sheltered. To understand how weightlessness has led to this pass-the-parcel of risk, it is helpful to think about what happened in the last Industrial Revolution, when the building of the railways and introduction of steam-driven travel and telegraphy transformed the geography of production and sales.
The Problem With Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries
by
Kathi Weeks
Published 8 Sep 2011
In Social Theory at Work, edited by Marek Korczynski, Randy Hodson, and Paul Edwards, 424–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leigh, Carol. 1997. “Inventing Sex Work.” In Whores and Other Feminists, edited by Jill Nagle, 225–31. New York: Routledge. Lenin, V. I. 1989. “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government.” In V. I. Lenin, Lenin’s Economic Writings, edited by Meghnad Desai, 221–59. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International. Levitas, Ruth. 1990. The Concept of Utopia. London: Philip Allan. ———. 1997. “Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia.” In Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch, edited by Jamie Owen Daniel and Tom Moylan, 65–79.
Railways & the Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India
by
Christian Wolmar
Published 3 Oct 2018
Kerr, ‘Railway Workshops and Their Labour’, in 27 Down: New Departures in Indian Railway Studies, Orient Longman, 2007, p. 249. 17 Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–18, Inspection Notes, quoted in Kerr, ‘Railway Workshops and Their Labour’, p. 237. 18 Kipling, Among the Railway Folk. 19 Ibid. 20 Quoted in Kerr, Engines of Change, p. 53. 21 Ian Derbyshire, ‘The Building of India’s Railways’, in Ian J. Kerr, Railways in Modern India, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 301. 22 Ibid., p. 301. 23 Mark Tully, ‘A View of the History of Indian Railways’, in Srinivasan, Tiwari and Silas (eds.), p. 235. 24 John Hurd in Dharma Kumar and Meghnad Desai (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 2, c.1751–c.1970, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 751. 25 J. N. Sahni, Indian Railways: One Hundred Years, 1853–1953, Ministry of Railways, 1953, p. 102. 26 Bear, Lines of the Nation, p. 82. 27 Ibid. 28 Kerr, ‘Railway Workshops and Their Labour’, p. 261. 29 Bear, Lines of the Nation, p. 94. 30 Derbyshire, ‘Private and State Enterprise’, p. 303. 31 Bear, Lines of the Nation, p. 96. 7.
The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age
by
James Crabtree
Published 2 Jul 2018
“In India, business still depends on the government. So you need the goodwill of the rulers to make friends with them.” For a time this system worked beautifully for the Andhrapreneurs, underpinning years of breakneck expansion, the results of which are clear to see at almost every major Indian airport. As recently as 2008, Meghnad Desai, an economist at the London School of Economics, wrote: “When you go to China you see new airports and empty highways and the Shanghai maglev. In India, the airports are slums.”42 Yet later that same year GMR opened Hyderabad’s new terminal, delivered under a PPP contract, before unveiling an even grander international terminal in New Delhi in 2010.
Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century
by
Tom Bower
Published 1 Jan 2009
Shares fell, gold hit a record $915 an ounce and reports mentioned “fear in Wall Street and Washington.” The world, sages warned apocalyptically, was on the edge of a new oil shock. Shell, Marathon, ConocoPhillips and Lukoil locked themselves into trading short at prices between $120 and $140. Lord Meghnad Desai, a British economist, noting that $260 billion was invested in commodity markets, mostly in oil, compared with $13 billion five years earlier, wrote that not only speculation was driving up prices. Influenced by the testimony to the Senate on May 20, 2008, of Michael Masters, a former Goldman Sachs fund manager, Desai was convinced the problem was caused by a shortage of crude oil, which would continue unchanged for another 12 months.
Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics
by
Robert Skidelsky
Published 13 Nov 2018
However, as the book progressed I became increasingly drawn to the insights of Karl Polanyi, with his insistence that, to be viable, a market order has to be ‘embedded’ in a framework of rules, policies and institutions. This insight has been somewhat neglected by the dominant school of Anglo-American economics. My debts have accumulated. I would in particular like to thank Spencer Boxer, Gordon Brown, Oliver Bush, Andrea Califano, Tim Congdon, Paul Davidson, Michael Davies, Meghnad Desai, Tommaso Gabellini, Jamie Galbraith, Simone Gasperin, Andy Haldane, Geoffrey Harcourt, Michael Kennedy, David Laidler, Laurie Laybourn Langton, Toby Lewis, Felix Martin, Vladimir Masch, Marcus Miller, George Peden, Atanos Pekanov, Philip Pilkington, Edward Skidelsky, Leanne Stickland, David Sturrock, Thomas Tozer, Christopher Tugendhat, Paul Westbrook and Christian Westerlind Wigstrom.
The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times
by
Giovanni Arrighi
Published 15 Mar 2010
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