Articles & Blogs Critiquing / Reinventing Capitalism

Hand-picked for you from around the web + original content published just on the Moral Markets site

Capitalism on Edge; How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia – New on Our Bookshelf

Azmanova’s new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form—precarity capitalism—marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.

Renewing the Welfare State; The Right Mix of Ensuring Jobs, Income and Services

Over the last year the welfare state has been at the core of public debates. One idea in particular, namely unconditional universal basic income, has gotten a lot of attention. In my report, written as part of the Future Markets Consultation, I argue that a combination of extended basic services, a job guarantee and benefits as rights is a better solution. This option does not stimulate market individualism, but strengthens social cohesion, as these solutions are based on the reciprocal principle of enabling everyone to contribute to and benefit from the common good.

Laissez-Concurrencer!

The 21st century presents challenges that the European market economy seems unable to resolve, sowing dissatisfaction and opening the door for populists and authoritarian forces. To address these challenges, we must change our conception of the market economy and its relation to the state. Free markets will not miraculously solve or even address pressing issues. Instead of free markets, we must ensure competitive markets; instead of a value-free economy, we must embrace a normative economy that explicitly directs competitive markets towards the issues most pressing to European citizens.

Nominated essay in the category young scholars of the Future Markets Consultation essay contest

A New Rule Book for a New Transition

It appears that humanity’s industrial period, with all the benefits it has brought, is tilting out of stability (if there ever was one), and that a new transition, a new order, must take its place. We must, then, wonder: what will this new rule book entail? If all economics are economics of transition, then what does this transition need? What can it keep from its predecessors and what must it shed? This essay will analyze these questions as relating to three different components of the economy: the existence of a common goal, the role of labor, and the value of freedom.

Winner in the category master students of the Future Markets Consultation essay contest.

Moving Forward and Finding Balance in a Dynamic System

We must place current developments in perspective. Rightly pointed out by some, climate change is the much bigger wave that lies behind Covid and that approaches faster than many care to admit. The parallels between dangerous climate change and the above-described flaws in our financial and economic system are plain. In fact, climate change and a flawed economic system might not even be two separate problems.

Nominated essay in the category master students of the Future Markets Consultation essay contest

Towards the Wellbeing Economy: Implications for Public, Environmental and Financial Policy

There is a growing recognition that our economy has to be fundamentally. In the new paradigm that is starting to emerge, the well-being of people and the planet is put at the center of the economy and society is organized more democratically. In this way, it concerns both a shift ideas and in power. Besides exploring what this paradigm shift entails for the economy in general, our report takes a closer look at the following three fields: (1) the public sector, (2) environmental policy and (3) the financial sector.

The Reset of Capitalism (in Europe)

We need a ‘Great Reset’ or ‘Great Reallocation’ of capitalism in which European capital is being invested in European companies, and vice versa, European companies being financed with European capital; these investment decisions resulting from a dialogue between the European wealthy and European entrepreneurs; and this process being maximally supported and promoted by national and European laws and regulations. This idea was not born from gloomy nationalism or anti-globalism, but from the conviction that a better balance is needed between global and local, between place of production and place of consumption, between mobile wealth and immobile labor, between large-scale politics and small communities, between freedom and responsibility, between short- and long-term. A viewpoint for the Future Markets Consultation submitted by Dutch think tank Socires.

The Future of Europe’s Capitalism – Podcast with Dirk Bezemer

In this podcast Annick van Rinsum speaks with Dirk Bezemer, professor of Economics, member of the Sustainable Finance Lab, and author of the book Een Land van Kleine Buffers [‘A Country of Small Buffers’, in Dutch]. They talk about the difference between the Rhinelandic and the Anglo-Saxon capitalist models and their effect on socio-economic outcomes, about whether there is a uniquely European capitalism at the world stage and the need to(re-)define it, and about the role of economists as social scientist to address the challenges that the future brings. This episode of the podcast series by Pakhuis de Zwijger forms the closure of a series of online dialogues that we organized with them over the past couple of months on the future of capitalism in Europe.

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