The high-quality academic books, upper-level student texts and journal articles on our Business, Management and Economics list offer fresh perspectives on the economy, the future of work and organisations, and the relationship between business and addressing global social challenges.
The list is home to a number of series including Organizations and Activism and Feminist Perspectives on Work and Organization, all of which are edited by leading scholars from the field, along with our journals in the area: Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, Work in the Global Economy and Global Political Economy.
Business, Management and Economics
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Chapter 12, The ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Critique, deals with critics who wish to reverse globalisation to form areas of self-governing autonomous communities which may run in parallel to post-industrial capitalism. They propose justice and democracy in place of hierarchy and authority. The emphasis is on action, the ‘here and now’, a prefigurative strategy. Discussion includes the ‘occupy’ movements whose objectives are to replace the oppressive forms of capitalism with a democratic symbiotic society based on mutualism and cooperation. Many of these tendencies adopt an ‘exit’ strategy: the objectives are either to replace globalisation with autonomous economic democratic cooperative associations or to coexist with global capitalist forces. Other movements include informal networks and ‘Twitter’ revolutions which enable mobilisation. These movements are considered expressions of social and political discontent that reveal and identify important forms of oppression. Many of these movements are limited to micro changes and present alternatives forms of coexistence to global capitalism.
Policies are proposed as ‘radical humanism’ to eradicate poverty and redress inequality while vanquishing caste and untouchability. On the economic policy side, the chapter recommends intensification of cash and assets transfers and tax policy reform to reduce inequality through higher income tax progressivity, wealth, gift and inheritance taxes, increased taxes on luxuries, use of earmarked taxes for their intended purposes of education and health and tax administration reform to counter tax evasion.
It recommends cutting back bureaucratic hurdles, expanding private-public partnership in the provision of socio-economic services such as hospitals, and encouragement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for services to the very poor.
It recommends perceptible step-up of women’s rights through proportional representation and children’s condition including health and education. It proposes a youth task force to implement compulsory social service by youth in rural and urban sectors following existing global and prior domestic experience, and proposes a framework for services by sector. It urges political reform while pointing out that caste-based politics is unlikely to serve the nation in the long run.
It traces the ongoing work at the United Nations to draw attention to financial transfers of the colonial era and strongly suggests international financial reparations to counter the ramifications of global colonialism.
Global neoliberal capitalism presents the major form of economic coordination and political control in the world economy. The book distinguishes between globalisation and neoliberalism, and explains what global neoliberalism is, why it has appeal, what alternatives have been tried and why they have failed. The rise of neoliberalism is presented as a failure of 20th-century state-led economies to satisfy the aspirations of their citizens under conditions of advanced capitalism. The author provides a sociological understanding of post-industrial society on which different forms of economic and political coordination have to be predicated. He considers in detail both the strengths and weaknesses of social democracy and state socialism, and explains why and how these alternatives either disintegrated or were dismantled. He discusses developments in Great Britain, the post-socialist states of Eastern Europe and the USSR, and China. He distinguishes between globalisation and internationalism and analyses developments within states as well as the shift from a concentric geo-politics to a bi-polar world system. The author identifies key areas where embedded neoliberalism may be faulted. Replacements are considered in terms of alternative forms of capitalism and alternatives economies to capitalism. The book defines the limits and opportunities of four major challenges to global neoliberal capitalism: the reform and democratisation of global capitalist institutions; the strengthening of states against transnational interests; the reversal of globalising tendencies and the introduction of autonomous self-sustaining democratic economies; and proposals for instituting a global form of socialism. The author finally proposes something new: a system of economic and political coordination based on a combination of market socialism and state planning.
Chapter 15, The Challenge of State Capitalisms, considers state capitalism in a generic sense as an economy in which the state plays a major coordinating role in a capitalist economy. Three types of political economy in which the state has a predominant role are distinguished: state socialism, state-capitalism (with a hyphen), and state-controlled capitalism. All three present theoretical alternatives to liberal capitalism. In the light of definitions of these terms, the chapter outlines the ways scholars apply these terms to describe societies. Notably, in what sense, if any, the Soviet Union was, and contemporary China is, state capitalist. Lenin’s notion of ‘state capitalism’ as applied to Russia after the October Revolution is contrasted with later developments. Whereas earlier theoretical approaches emphasised state ownership controlled by a bureaucratic class, as a constituent factor defining state capitalism, more recent discussion has emphasised the form taken by the extraction of surplus value. The discussion highlights whether countries can move from pre-capitalism to socialism missing out the stage of capitalism. In this framework, the debate on political capitalism presented by contemporary China is distinguished from other capitalist societies.
Chapter 10, The Changing Global Class Structure and the Challenge of the Semi-Core, considers the significant shift from national to international economies and the rise and composition of a transnational political class. Governments of nation states lose powers to international organisations and to uncontrollable globalisation processes. States retain important political powers, notably over defining citizenship, raising taxes, and over military matters, including declaration of war. State sovereignty is reconstituted in the context of economics being global whereas electoral politics is focussed at the state level. The dominant classes are global, leading to the formation of a transnational social class significantly different from national capitalist classes. Changes in the economic capacity of states in the international system are illustrated by graphs showing the growth of transnational corporations (TNCs) and the increasing importance of the semi-core countries. The core capitalist states are considered to be no longer hegemonic but challenged by an ascendant semi-core led by China. Sanctions imposed on Russia and China lead to deglobalisation and to the formation of competitive regional blocs between core and semi-core. The current challenge of China presages a power transition.
Few commentators believe the UK government’s policy framework for achieving its target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net zero by 2050 is sufficient. There is a strong case for a carbon or energy tax, but from a social policy perspective such taxes raise distributive concerns. Yet, as this chapter shows, taxation of carbon already exists in the UK in a range of fiscal instruments that affect the cost/price of GHG emissions. These have emerged uncoordinated with little concerted analysis of their distributive impact or the adequacy of benefit payments that mitigate impact. The chapter shows existing UK carbon taxation to be highly regressive with mitigation efforts wholly insufficient, particularly with respect to the lowest-income decile households. What is required, it is suggested, is a re-consideration of domestic energy taxation encompassing the development of fully worked through compensatory mechanisms, including universal services delivering basic needs.
With tax issues high on the political agenda, this broad-based edited collection fills a significant gap in both the tax and social policy literatures. Bringing together disparate debates and based on a wealth of research, it provides a detailed analysis of how tax and social policy interact with each other and the role of taxation as an instrument of social policy influencing redistribution and behaviour.
The book’s 15 chapters guide readers through the key interactions and the challenges posed by the complex interplay of tax and social policies across the main policy domains. Together, they consider the full range of fiscal resources, including much that has remained part of the hidden wiring of taxation. Wealth, consumption, environmental and income taxes are examined, as is the impact of local and indirect as well as direct taxes on individuals, families, communities and societal wellbeing. Each chapter also considers how analyses might be combined and policy options developed for more effective delivery and impact. Individually and conjointly, they raise searching questions about the ways that taxes influence behaviour and how taxation might be used to work in tandem with social policies to tackle structural inequalities.
With its interrogation of existing sources as well as new research, it is essential reading for both social policy and tax analysts and will stimulate debate, policymaking and further research.
Chapter 7, The Conversion of Social democracy to the ‘Third Way’, considers how traditional social democratic parties responded to Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal alternative. Continual electoral failure precipitated the rise of a left-wing type of liberalism, defined in terms of individual rights, diversity promotion and equality of opportunity, a system of values compatible with neoliberalism. Left-wing marginalised class analysis and focussed on the duality of hierarchy and democracy. The chapter turns to an analysis of identity, diversity – which defined the liberal new left, and class – which no longer appealed to the socialist left. The chapter relates how changes in the social structure prompted a shift from class rights to social rights (of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, rights to abortion). A new post-capitalist society had arrived and a convergence took place between right-wing and left-wing forms of neoliberalism. The chapter outlines discussion in academia and the media where the fundamental causes and remedies were identified, and in the Party which focused on the policies and images which would further victory at the ballot box. In place of the dualism between capitalism and socialism, the political antithesis was now defined as being between ‘democracy’ and ‘authoritarianism’. The chapter details how New Labour policy was put into effect by the Party’s leadership under Tony Blair. It concludes with the fall of New Labour and poses the question of whether the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn presages a return to socialist policies.
The tax system is not simply about raising revenues; it is also about distributing favours and picking winners. Many of the ‘penalties’ but also rewards of the tax system over the past few decades have been distributed disproportionately to big business, coinciding with increases in other types of corporate welfare. This chapter focuses on the issue of corporate taxation, but it also looks at how tax shares and tax benefits are distributed unevenly, not just between citizens and corporations but also between different types of business.
Poverty in India is intimately connected with caste, untouchability, colonialism and indentured servitude, inseparable from the international experience of slavery and race.
Focusing on historical and modern practices, this book goes beyond traditional economic approaches to poverty and demonstrates its genesis in exclusion, isolation, domination and extraction resulting in the removal of human and economic rights. Examining cash and assets transfers and enhancement of women’s rights, primary health and education, it scrutinizes inadequacies in compensatory policies for redressing the balance.
This is an original interdisciplinary contribution that offers bold domestic and international policies anchored in human radicalism to eradicate poverty.
