Understandings of Food Insecurity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Considering Practitioners’ Perspectives in a Neoliberal Context Using Q Methodology

Food insecurity in advanced capitalist nations has persisted over decades despite excess food production, welfare systems, and charitable responses. This research examines the perspectives of practitioners who engage with food insecurity in Aotearoa New Zealand using a Q methodology study to synthesise and characterise three typical subjective positions. Consensus across the three positions includes the state’s responsibility for the food security of citizens, while points of contention include the role of poverty as a cause of food insecurity and the significance of a human right to food. The research contributes to research into food insecurity in advanced capitalist nations by identifying areas of consensus and contention among food insecurity practitioners, identifying the significance of children and moral failure in perceptions of food insecurity, and comparing practitioners’ perspectives to existing approaches to researching food insecurity in advanced capitalist nations.

Anke Hassel, Bruno Palier (ur.): Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies − How Have Growth Regimes Evolved?

This extensive book is the result of longer ones research that began in 2014 and considers the main economic challenges facing advanced industrial democracies faced since the early 1990s and government responses on them. There are three clearly defined goals of the book: First, expand our understanding of how political economy has changed since the 1970s; second, to analyze the contribution of governments to these changes, looking at their growth strategies and third, to shed light on and analyze the role of reforms social policy systems in these transformations. In short, this book also shows gives a general understanding of the evolution of the regime growth in the advanced capitalist OECD countries.

Democracy and Capitalism

The welfare state is at the centre of a long-standing debate about the relationship between capitalism and democracy. One view holds that democracy and capitalism are in tension with each other, and that footloose capital undermine redistribution; another view holds that democracy and capitalism are complements, and that democracy compensates for inequalities in the distribution of property and income. This chapter provides a critical review of the literature on advanced democracies and capitalism, and how the two coexist and co-evolve. It explores several topics: (a) approaches to the study of democratic redistribution and how democratic institutions shape distributive outcomes; (b) the relationship between democracy and capitalism, and in particular whether democracy is constrained by footloose capital; and (c) the historical origins and co-evolution of advanced capitalist democracies.

Die Entwicklung des „Steuerstaates“: Ursprung, Aufstieg und Ende eines finanzwirtschaftlichen Fortschrittsparadigmas

For decades, the Schumpeterian tax state was considered the central paradigm of Fiscal Sociology. However, it increasingly fails to meet many of the conceptual challenges of contemporary public finance. To demonstrate this, the paper undertakes a double re-contextualization of the discourse on public finance. Its development is traced back to evolutionary thinking, which Joseph Schumpeter updated around 1918. However, and following the rise of democratic capitalism after 1945, thinking about the tax state became intertwined with economic control. Its socio-political specifics were marginalized. Since the Great Recession of 2008/2009 and widening fiscal crises in advanced capitalist economies, this discursive narrowing has again become the subject of political and economic controversies.

Marxism

Marx provided the vision of revolution invoked by communist leaders as they sought to come to power. But he assumed this would happen in advanced capitalist countries, not in peasant-feudal societies. Ambiguities within Marxist theory led to a diversity of Marxisms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most notably among the so-called Economists, Orthodox Marxists, and Leninists.

A Monograph on Theoretical Understanding of the Contradictions of Vested Interests and Underdevelopment in Peripheral Social Formation

This paper focuses on theoretical understanding of the contradictions of vested interests and the underdevelopment in the peripheral social formations; having as its raison d'être, to explore the possible ways by which the vested interests of a particular social group or class has contributed in shaping the underdevelopment of the periphery in the global economy –with inferences from a sub-Saharan African country, Nigeria (with empirical-based evidences); and moving forward, to find ways to counteract or mitigate these contradictions for the amelioration of the human condition in the periphery. Thus, the paper achieves its objectives by adopting a qualitative descriptive method of analysis, investigating the contradictions of the vested interests of both the neo-colonial elite in the Periphery and the capitalists of the Center (advanced capitalist nations), with an admixture of "Dependency Perspective" in its exploration. A theoretical framework, Marxian Ideology, was employed to help for a better epistemic understanding of the dynamics of vested interests aided by helpful extrapolations in its analysis. In the final analysis, the paper made some findings. A few of these include, 1) that the ruling class of the peripheral nations, especially in Africa (typically, Nigeria) has the culture of diverting national wealth for own personal interest. 2) That every moment of domination precipitates moments of resistance by the subjugated class, hence revolutions and instability are endemic in any polity fraught with vested interests of the dominant class. 3) That the peripheral nations have remained underdeveloped due to the selfish interests of both the peripheral ruling class (the puppets of the capitalist of the Center) and the advanced capitalist nations. The paper therefore recommends: that the peripheral social formations should pursue serious independent policies of social justice along egalitarian lines as well as economic and political self-reliance –e.g. state incentives for local industrialists and integrating and strengthening the domestic productive base to attain a self-reliant articulated economy. 2) There is need for total commitment to democratic ethos or permissiveness including popular-empowerment in every aspect for the amelioration of the human condition; among others. Received: 2 May 2021 / Accepted: 15 June 2021 / Published: 8 July 2021

Labour market disadvantage or poor health upon arrival? An examination of the native–immigrant gap in early retirement on a disability pension

Non-Western immigrants in Scandinavia have a higher risk of early retirement on a disability pension than natives, but the reasons are unclear. One theory is that increased demands for standardization, efficiency and productivity in advanced capitalist labour markets, such as the Scandinavian market, cause expulsion of the weakest and least qualified individuals from the labour market, including a disproportionate share of non-Western immigrants. Another theory is that non-Western immigrants already have poorer health than natives upon arrival in Scandinavia. This article examines the extent to which the native–immigrant gap in early retirement on a disability pension is explained by non-Western immigrants’ disadvantaged position in the labour market when pre-existing health differences are controlled for. To this end, we draw on Danish register data, including all disability pensions granted in 2003–2012 to natives and non-Western immigrants who arrived in Denmark in 1998. Our results suggest that a minor proportion of the native–immigrant gap in disability pensions is explained by non-Western immigrants’ health upon arrival, whereas the vast majority of the gap is explained by non-Western immigrants’ disadvantaged position in the labour market.

Lenin’s ideas on revolution: Are they still relevant today?

Lenin provided the intellectual foundation of Bolshevik political practice. He combined political economy, geopolitics, political organisation and a sociology of social structure to form an innovative revolutionary praxis. The Bolshevik seizure of power and subsequent Soviet economic and political development became a model for revolutionary socialist parties, notably in China. The author contends that he had an over-optimistic prediction for the disintegration of monopoly capitalism and only a partial analysis of the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries. Consequently, expected socialist revolutions have not occurred in the advanced capitalist countries. When the preconditions for revolution are absent, a complementary dimension to Lenin is the endorsement of reform and participation in capitalist regimes. The dismantling of the Soviet Union and the eastern European communist regimes in the late twentieth century, and the reversion to private property and competitive market relations, delivered a mortal blow to the communist system. Today, Lenin’s political approach requires a redefinition of countervailing forces and class alliances and a shift of focus from the semi-periphery to the ‘strongest links’ in the capitalist chain. The author considers that a ‘return to Lenin’ is not to adopt his policies, but a prompt to reinvent a socialist political and economic vision derived from Marx’s analysis of capitalism.