From the Introduction: This book challenges the conventional wisdom about classical political economy and the rise of capitalism. It is written in the conviction that modern interpretations of political economy have suffered terribly from acceptance of the prevailing liberal view of the origins and development of capitalist society. By the liberal account, capitalism emerged out of the centuries-old competitive activities of merchants and manufacturers in rational pursuit of their individual economic self-interest. Over time, this account claims, the persistent activity of these classes developed new forms of wealth and productive resources and new intellectual and cultural habits, which eroded the existing structure of society. The rise of capitalism is thus explained in terms of the rise to prominence of the most productive, rational, and progressive social groups—merchants and manufacturers. Not surprisingly, classical political economy came to be seen as an intellectual reflection of the ascendance of merchants and manufacturers and as a theoretical justification of their interests and activities. This book argues that capitalism was the product of an immense transformation in the social relationships of landed society and that this fact is crucial to understanding the development of classical political economy. Without a radical transformation of the agrarian economy, the activities of merchants and manufacturers would have remained strictly confined. By no inexorable logic of their own were mercantile and industrial activities capable of fundamentally transforming the essential relations of precapitalist society. Rather, the changes in agrarian economy, which drove rural producers from their land, forced them onto the labour market as wage labourers for their means of subsistence, and refashioned farming as an economic activity based upon the production of agricultural commodities for profit on the market, established the essential relations of modern capitalism. In what follows, these processes are described in terms of the emergence of agrarian capitalism. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

Problems associated with cronyism, corporatism, and policies that favor the elite over the masses have received increasing attention in recent years. Political Capitalism explains that what people often view as the result of corruption and unethical behavior are symptoms of a distinct system of political economy. The symptoms of political capitalism are often viewed as the result of government intervention in a market economy, or as attributes of a capitalist economy itself. Randall G. Holcombe combines well-established theories in economics and the social sciences to show that political capitalism is not a mixed economy, or government intervention in a market economy, or some intermediate step between capitalism and socialism. After developing the economic theory of political capitalism, Holcombe goes on to explain how changes in political ideology have facilitated the growth of political capitalism, and what can be done to redirect public policy back toward the public interest.

This book promotes an in-depth understanding of the key mechanisms that govern the functioning of capitalist economies, pursuing a Classical Political Economics approach to do so. It explores central theoretical issues addressed by the classical economists Smith and Ricardo, as well as Marx, while also operationalizing more recent theoretical developments inspired by the works of Sraffa and other modern classical economists, using actual data from major economies. On the basis of this approach, the book subsequently provides alternative explanations for various microeconomic issues such as the determination of equilibrium prices and their movement induced by changes in income distribution; the dynamics of competition of firms within and between industries; the law of tendential equalization of interindustry profit rates; and international exchanges and transfers of value; as well as macroeconomic issues concerning capital accumulation and cyclical economic growth. Given its scope, the book will benefit all researchers, students, and policymakers seeking new explanations for observed phenomena and interested in the mechanisms that give rise to surface economic categories, such as prices, profits, the unemployment rate, interest rates, and long economic cycles.

DIVRethinks the history of classical political economy by assessing the Marxian idea of “primitive accumulation,” the process by which a propertyless working class is created./div

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Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.

This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;