Alternatives to Capitalism or Theories of Political Economy

Alternatives to Capitalism

Author: Jon Elster

The essays in this provocative collection survey and assess institutional arrangements that could be alternatives to capitalism as it exists today. The agreed point of departure among the contributors is that on the one hand, capitalism leads to unemployment, a lack of autonomy in the workplace, and massive income inequalities; while on the other hand, central socialist planning is characterized by underemployment, inefficiency, and bureaucracy. In

Part I, various alternatives are proposed: profit-sharing systems, capitalism combined with some central planning, worker-owned firms in a market economy, or the introduction of the elements of market economy into a centrally planned economy as has occurred recently in Hungary.

Part II provides a theoretical analysis and assessment of these systems.

Table of Contents:

Notes on the contributors;

1. Introduction;

Part I:
2. Internal subcontracting in Hungarian enterprises;
3. Profit-sharing capitalism;
4. The unclearing market;
5. Strong unions or worker control?;
6. The role of central planning under capitalism and market socialism;

Part II:
7. Are freedom and equality compatible?;
8. Self-realisation in work and politics: the Marxist conception of the good life;
9. Public ownership and private property externalities.

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Theories of Political Economy

Author: James A Caporaso

"Political economy" has been the term used for the past 300 years to express the interrelationship between the political and economic affairs of the state. In Theories of Political Economy, James A. Caporaso and David P. Levine explore some of the more important frameworks for understanding the relation between politics and economics, including the classical, Marxian, Keynesian, neoclassical, state-centered, power-centered, and justice-centered. The book emphasizes understanding both the differences among the overall frameworks of the theories and the issues common to them.