The distinction between 'capitalism from above' and 'capitalism from below' is important in the analysis of the agrarian question in poor countries. The 'Prussian path' and the 'American path' are here examined, against existing historical scholarship. Their unfolding, from their earliest roots to the point of final 'agrarian transition' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is considered. The dialectic between social relations and productive forces, mediated as it was by the state, is treated and the implications for capitalist industrialisation scrutinised.

More than 630 million Chinese have escaped poverty since the 1980s, reducing the fraction remaining from 82 to 10 percent of the population. This astonishing decline in poverty, the largest in history, coincided with the rapid growth of a private enterprise economy. Yet private enterprise in China emerged in spite of impediments set up by the Chinese government. How did private enterprise overcome these initial obstacles to become the engine of China’s economic miracle? Where did capitalism come from? Studying over 700 manufacturing firms in the Yangzi region, Victor Nee and Sonja Opper argue that China’s private enterprise economy bubbled up from below. Through trial and error, entrepreneurs devised institutional innovations that enabled them to decouple from the established economic order to start up and grow small, private manufacturing firms. Barriers to entry motivated them to build their own networks of suppliers and distributors, and to develop competitive advantage in self-organized industrial clusters. Close-knit groups of like-minded people participated in the emergence of private enterprise by offering financing and establishing reliable business norms. This rapidly growing private enterprise economy diffused throughout the coastal regions of China and, passing through a series of tipping points, eroded the market share of state-owned firms. Only after this fledgling economy emerged as a dynamic engine of economic growth, wealth creation, and manufacturing jobs did the political elite legitimize it as a way to jump-start China’s market society. Today, this private enterprise economy is one of the greatest success stories in the history of capitalism.

Fifty years after the publication of Eric Wolf’s celebrated Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, and forty years after the publication of his path-breaking Europe and the People Without History, this book offers a much-needed critical assessment and update of Wolf’s contribution to the study of the peasantry and its relationship to capitalism, the state, and imperialism. This book provides a comprehensive evaluation of Wolf’s premises, methodology, and understanding of the peasantry, and its relationship to the rise of capitalism and the modern state. The authors analyse Wolf’s theoretical approach and, by building on his work in Europe and the People Without History especially, argue their own position concerning the dynamics of the peasantry in relation to capitalism, state, class, and imperialism. Further, the text aims to answer the agrarian question more widely, focusing on agrarian society and the political role of the peasantry in contested transitions to capitalism and to modes beyond capitalism. This requires, the authors argue, an analysis of class struggle and of the resources, material and discursive, that different classes can bring to bear on this struggle. Based on well-founded theoretical premises, the book focuses on the contested rise of capitalism in the global North, the development of core–periphery relations in the global political economy, and the place of the peasantry in these dynamics. The book presents case studies of transitions to agrarian capitalism in the British Isles, France, Germany, Japan, and the USA. The book will be of great interest to students and researchers in the areas of peasant studies, rural politics, agrarian studies, development, and political ecology.

Explores class formation and elite struggles in post-communist Central Europe.

Small-scale agricultural producers in the peripheral world are often condescendingly assumed to be a single social class (‘the peasantry’) to be pitted against the state or corporation. This book challenges this rather idealistic view by demonstrating that under current capitalist social relations (competition, efficiency and productivity, and profit maximisation), these agricultural producers have been differentiated into different agrarian classes by exploitation. By comparing two different contexts of local agrarian change in Indonesia—rice cultivation in Java and oil palm in Sumatra—this book exposes the different class locations of the agrarian classes among petty agricultural producers and the class relations between them. These are often inextricably linked to gender, clanship and generational issues. The power of class dynamics crucially shapes how agricultural production in both rice and oil palm is organised. The share received by different agrarian classes from the production site then prominently shapes the different nature of class reproduction for each agrarian class. This analysis demonstrates that the different agrarian classes possess different capacities and responses in their relation to the state or corporations. Any real emancipation attempt in the Indonesian countryside (and beyond) must start from a proper understanding of these class dynamics. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on agrarian change, the political economy of development, rural development and Marxist political economy.

With the onset of Austerity Capitalism and Immiseration Capitalism, and with the increasing commodification, marketisation and privatisation of society and of education, Marxist Theory and Marxist Education Theory have taken on a new urgency. In this collection of essays, written from a classic Marxist perspective, Dave Hill lays bare how the capitalist class in the knowledge industry/academia, use ideological (and repressive) state apparatuses, such as education, to divide, disarm and demoralise critical, Marxist analysis and activism. This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This book utilises a new theoretical approach to understand the dynamics of the peasantry, and peasant resistance, in relation to capitalism, state, class, and imperialism in the global South. In this companion volume to Peasants, Capitalism, and the Work of Eric R. Wolf, the authors further develop their thinking on agrarian transitions to capitalism, the development of imperialism, and the place of the peasantry in these dynamics, with special reference to the global South in an era of politico-ecological crisis. Focusing on the political role of the peasantry in contested transitions to capitalism and to modes of production outside of, and beyond, capitalism, the book contends that an understanding of these dynamics requires an analysis of class struggle and of the resources, material and discursive, that different classes can bring to bear on this struggle. The book focuses on the rise of capitalism in the global South within the context of imperial subordination to the global North, and the place of the peasantry in shaping and resisting these dynamics. The book presents case studies of contested transitions to agrarian capitalism in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and South Asia. It also examines the case of transition to a post-capitalist mode of production in Cuba. The book concludes with an assessment of the nature of capitalism and imperialism within the context of the contemporary politico-ecological crisis, and the potential role of the peasantry as agent of emancipatory change towards social and environmental sustainability. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers in the areas of peasant studies, rural politics, agrarian studies, development, and political ecology.

Planning Theory has a history of common debates about ideas and practices and is rooted in a critical concern for the 'improvement' of human and environmental well-being, particularly as pursued through interventions which seek to shape environmental conditions and place qualities. The second volume in this series covers in detail critical political economy, the turn to diversity and critical pragmatism. It provides an authoritative collection, in an accessible form, of the most important and influential articles and papers along with a detailed introduction by the editors. It offers a unique reference resource for planning scholars, upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate students.

Financial crisis, recession and worsening inequality have long been blamed on a surplus of capital. But the actions that led the latest boom and bust by banks and businesses, households and governments - can better be explained capital's increasing scarcity. Efforts to track it down confirm its disappearance.

Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. Michael Albert would disagree. Realizing Hope offers a speculative vision of a future beyond capitalism - an alternative to the exploitation of human labour, the unchecked destruction of the earth, and the oppression of all for the benefit of the few. Participatory economics - parecon for short - is Albert’s concrete proposal for a classless economy, developed from anarchist principles first introduced by Kropotkin, Bakunin, Pannekoek and others. In this classic text, Albert takes the insights and hopes of parecon and enlarges them to address all key aspects of social life and society - gender, culture, politics, science, technology, journalism, ecology, and others. Realizing Hope provides vision to help us all together conceive a world that might be just over the horizon, a world we can begin building today.