Lecture 2 Flashcards
(35 cards)
Why are the institutions of the USA so much more conducive to economic success than those of México, or the rest of Latin America?
- Colonial design: economic intervention was designed to force indigenous people’s living standards down to a subsistence level and thus extract all income in excess of this for Spaniards
- Generated wealth for the Spanish crown, but in turn, made LA the most unequal continent
While economic institutions are critical for determining whether a country is poor or prosperous, what determines what economic institutions a country has to have?
Politics and political institutions
Economies cannot live without…
Political decisions
Extractive institutions?
Growth based on existing technologies; it does not require technological change as such is not sustained. Example: Soviet Union.
Inclusive institutions?
Based on innovation, requires technological change. Example: USA
China, under the Chinese communist party, is determined to have extractive institutions, but
Chinese capitalism is a hybrid system
According to Polanyi, what was the strategy to maintain peace? (100 years of peace stage)
Trade as a mean and equivalent of peace. Haute finance was also used as an instrument to keep the peace.
Why was the gold standard stable?
Lest prone to inflation, because you could use it and it wasn’t possible to print more.
The myth of the free market?
There never was a truly free, self-regulating market system. Governments of today’s industrialized countries took an active role. Western Europe maintained capital restrictions until quite recently, even today protectionism and government interventions are alive and well.
According to Marx and Engels, every class struggle is a political struggle
True
The unification of languages leads to…
Community
The bourgeois has resolved personal worth into exchange value… and has set up a single, unconscionable frredom
Free Trade
Why has the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character?
Because of the extensive use of machinery, he becomes an appendage of the machine.
What did the bourgeoisie created through the exploitation of the world market?
A cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country
Some of the communist proposals
- Abolition of private property
- Non segmentation along national lines
- A heavy progressive income tax
- Free education for all children in public schools
Why did they fail?
They failed to create class consciousness within the workers and their prediction about capitalism ¿?
The creed of the Industrial Revolution was materialistic because:
All human problems could be resolved given an unlimited amount of material commodities
What does a market economy implies?
A self-regulating system of markets, an economy directed by market prices and nothing but market prices
Why is it the myth of the free market?
Previously to our time, no economy has ever existed that, even in principle, was controlled by markets. We can’t assume the functioning of market laws unless a market like this is shown to exist.
Most contemporary (white) feminist political economists view capitalism as…
An institutional order that shapes the culture, polity, economy, through its tendency to prioritize the accumulation of surplus
According to Marx vision, what is surplus value?
When labor itself produces more value than is embodied in the value of labor power. Since the capitalist buys the right to consume labor power, they own the means of production, thus is the first owner of this surplus
This generates…
Class exploitation
Definition of global care chains
Personal links between people across the globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring. A series of responsibilities passed on from one woman to another.
19th century globalization
- New technologies, steamship, railroads, canals, and the telegraph revolutionized international transport and communication: it reduced trade costs and redefined relations of power
- Free market. The governments of the world relaxed the restrictions they placed on trade
- Adoption of the gold standard enabled capital to move internationally without fear of changes in currency values.
- Colonialism and imperialism
