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Showing posts with the label productivity

Britain’s Model of ‘Extractive Capitalism’

A liberal summary of the political economy of Britain  “Britain has been a  high-inequality, high-poverty nation  for most of the last 200 years, with significant consequences for life chances, social resilience, and economic strength. With the exception of the immediate post-war era, the struggles for share over the last 200 years have been won by the richest and most affluent sections of society, often with the compliance of the state. Under extraction, economic activity becomes detached from new wealth creation, with the boost to profitability and rising corporate surpluses of recent times used to reward executives and investors rather than boost productivity.” *** Unsurprisingly, not a single mention of Britain’s ‘extractive’ capitalism within its functioning as imperialist state, analysing the British economy in isolation of the global economy and global sociology. (e.g. defeat and weakening of social forces/struggle at home and abroad,‘neoliberalism’ as a global form of capitalis

Migrant Workers in Britain

Some call it exploitation. Others call it meeting target and productivity. “We have borrowed a lot of money to come here, we passed long distance, left our relatives, not to get this. We came to work but we can’t work, earn money, we can’t save money and help our families. Sometimes there is a feeling that we can’t prove anything, that no one will help us.”   Low-paid migrant workers ‘trapped’ on Britain’s farms

Love Your Work And Be Happy

Just as the Protestant work ethic can be construed as an ideology propagated by the bourgeoisie and inculcated into the working classes, the current discourse of love and happiness at work undoubtedly finds its greatest resonance within the professional and managerial classes. But just as the work ethic in the U.S. today circulates widely in the culture — as well as among employers, public officials, and policymakers — as an unquestioned value, the mandate to love our work and be happy with it is arguably becoming increasingly hegemonic as a cultural script and normative ideal. How do we make ourselves happy and in love with our job? Here is a typical response: add new responsibilities, get more involved, learn additional skills, add qualifications, and upgrade your game (Hannon 2015, 22, 152-153). Happiness at work, “a mindset that allows you to maximize performance and achieve your potential,” is, as is often repeated, “strongly related to productivity” (Pryce-Jones 2010, 4, 10).

UK

"Get Brexit done" has won! Related: The UK is more regionally divided than any comparable advanced economy. Our analysis finds stark regional differences in productivity, income, unemployment, health and politics. We are not the only country to have regional divides, but our regional inequalities in productivity, income and health are far worse than in any comparable country.  

Blaming Corruption

For decades the dominant view in academia and outside academia has been blaming corruption for the ills and problems in the MENA region. Up until the 1970s, cultural factors had blamed been for the failures of the region to develop. Cultural factors were also used to explain China's underdevelopment from a capitalist perspective. It's been convenient for the centres of powers in the West and the international institutions to dessiminate such a view so that the structural roots and the form of capitalism (rentier economies) as well as imperialist domination is masked and not questioned. I am glad to see that an opinion on bloomberg , a hardly Marxist website, that is sceptical of that dominant view. One thus has to think of the class structure in the MENA region, the lack of the political will to pursue a development path based on productivity and acquire the technology to be able to compete globally in a world where technological know-how and markets are monopolised by a h
This is a very interesting publication by Oxford. Michael Roberts has reviewed some chapters with a focus on profitability, crises and financialisation. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx
"The report presented by GFC,  Financing Investment: Interim report,  provides us with a meticulous investigation of the failure of British capitalism to invest productively to deliver better productivity, incomes and employment.  The report exposes the failure of the UK banks to direct lending into productive sectors instead into speculative financial and unproductive property assets.  Thus, UK productivity performance is extremely poor, R&D spending is low and innovation is limited." Labour's interim report pn the UK economy
UK Economists are warning that this decade is set to be the worst in more than 200 years for British pay packets . (FT)