A History of Capitalist Transformation – A Critique of Liberal-capitalist Reforms

Blurb

A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms highlights how, since the recent financial crises, the expression 'liberal reform' has entered common parlance as an evocative image of austerity and economic malaise, especially for the working classes and a segment of the middle class. But what exactly does 'liberal reform' refer to? The research analyzes the historical origins of liberal-capitalist reformism using a critical approach, starting with the origins of the Industrial Revolution.The book demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms was to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy by imposing, both directly and indirectly, the adoption of rules, institutions, attitudes, and procedures amenable to economic and political interests of capitalist élites and hegemonic states - Britain first, the United States later - between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. As such, the reforms became an active tool used to promote social-economical-financial institutions, norms, and lifestyles typical of a liberal-capitalist economic order which locates some of its founding values in capital accumulation, profit-seeking, and social transformation.This book will be of significant interest to readers on capitalism, political economy, the history of the global economy, and British history.

Comment from our editors:

Since the recent financial crises, the word "reform" has entered common parlance as an evocative image of austerity and economic malaise, especially for the working classes and a portion of the middle class. But what exactly does that term refer to? (Neo)liberal reformism is nothing more than a tool stemming from a clear ideological substratum, behind which precise class interests and well-defined political and cultural values lie. It is a functional instrument aimed at promoting socio-economic-financial institutions, norms, and lifestyles typical of a (neo)liberal economic order, which sees capital accumulation, profit-seeking, and social transformation as some of its founding values. (Neo)liberal reforms aim to increasingly anchor nation-states to a set of rules to allow greater fluidity of capital and simplify social structure transformation to facilitate the accumulation-led process. These rules enable foreign capital to find the same norms of employment, exploitation, and investment as those within their homelands, i.e., in the hegemonic State that dominates and controls the international market in a given historical period. It is, in fact, the harmonization of various regulatory systems with that of the British hegemonic power in the 19th century, and subsequently the American in the 20th – but also the German within the European Union – within the legislative space of the capitalist market. At the same time, it allows domestic capital to find an outlet externally and more excellent employment opportunities in higher-yielding sectors.