His remonstrations were enjoined by Robert Merton, who reproached me for the false imputation that mistakes capitalism for industrialism. He was criticising an essay I had written in 1982 about the industrial sociology of his recently deceased student Alvin Gouldner. I claimed that Gouldner’s classic text, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, missed the specifically capitalist character of indus...

Western societies have developed into a historically new stage in the evolution of capitalism, one which is characterized by corporations exercising monopolistic power and sustaining demand by advertising through the media. While this theme has been emphasized e.g., by J. A. Schumpeter in Business Cycles; A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, chapter III,...

Historically, colonies in the strict sense of “settlements” had existed long before the advent of global capitalism; the English word colony is derived from the ancient Latin term colonia, denoting an outpost or settlement. However, colonialism as a principle of imperial statecraft and an effective strategy of capitalist expansion that involved sustained appropriation of the resources of other ...

Japan is now one of the leading industrial capitalist countries in the world. It is widely held to be an economic miracle, emerging twice to dominate Asia. Yet this miracle has been achieved without leading to those two banes of almost all other advanced industrial societies, high and rising crime rates and an epidemic of civil litigation. If, as Haley suggests, 'Japan's success in reducing cri...

This paper argues that the relation between marxism and feminism has, in all the forms it has so far taken, been an unequal one . While both marxist method and feminist analysis are necessary to an understanding of capitalist societies, and of the position of women within them, in fact feminism has consistently been subordinated . The paper presents a challenge to both marxist and radical femin...

This thesis addresses the paradox of capitalist market reform being introduced by a politically undefeated communist state in China. It does so by developing an historical account of the Chinese polity’s relationship with the modern world. Chapter one offers a critique of existing explanations; these tend to focus narrowly on the immediate circumstances surrounding the decision to reform and th...

A doctrine with roots in eighteenth century thought, liberalism emerged in the nineteenth century as the prevailing ideology of Western capitalist societies and democracies. Philosophically, liberalism consists of a commitment to the ideals of equality, liberty, individuality, and rationality. However, liberals have divided over their social and political implications. Some liberals have believ...