Bøger af Martin Hart-Landsberg

"Korean unification is one of the most important issues on the international agenda today. Hart-Landsberg's broad-ranging inquiry develops a perspective that is rarely heard, and that merits careful attention. It is a valuable contribution to a debate that should not be delayed."--Noam Chomsky

"Globalization," surely one of the most used and abused buzzwordsof recent decades, describes a phenomenon that is typicallyconsidered to be a neutral and inevitable expansion of marketforces across the planet. Nearly all economists, politicians, businessleaders, and mainstream journalists view globalization as thenatural result of economic development, and a beneficial one atthat. But, as noted economist Martin Hart-Landsberg argues, thisperception does not match the reality of globalization. The rise oftransnational corporations and their global production chains wasthe result of intentional and political acts, decisions made at thehighest levels of power. Their aim - to increase profits by seekingthe cheapest sources of labor and raw materials - was facilitatedthrough policy-making at the national and international levels, andwas largely successful. But workers in every nation have paid thecosts, in the form of increased inequality and poverty, the destructionof social welfare provisions and labor unions, and an erraticglobal economy prone to bubbles, busts, and crises.This book examines the historical record of globalization and restoresagency to the capitalists, policy-makers, and politicians whoworked to craft a regime of world-wide exploitation. It demolishestheir neoliberal ideology - already on shaky ground after the 2008financial crisis - and picks apart the record of trade agreementslike NAFTA and institutions like the WTO. But, crucially, Hart-Landsberg also discusses alternatives to capitalist globalization, looking to examples such as South America's Bolivarian Alliancefor the Americas (ALBA) for clues on how to build an internationaleconomy based on solidarity, social development, and shared prosperity.

China is the fastest-growing economy in the world today. For many on the left, the Chinese economy seems to provide an alternative model of development to that of neoliberal globalization. Although it is a disputed question whether the Chinese economy can be still described as socialist, there is no doubting the importance for the global project of socialism of accurately interpreting and soberly assessing its real prospects.China and Socialism argues that market reforms in China are leading inexorably toward a capitalist and foreign-dominated development path, with enormous social and politcal costs, both domestically and internationally. The rapid economic growth that accompanied these market reforms have not been due to efficiency gains, but rather to deliberate erosion of the infrastructure that made possible a remarkable degree of equality. The transition to the market has been based on rising unemployment, intensified exploitation, declining health and education services, exploding government debt, and unstable prices. At the same time, China's economic transformation has intensified the contradictions of capitalist development in other countries, especially in East Asia. Far from being a model that is replicable in other Third World countries, China today is a reminder of the need for socialism to be built from the grassroots up, through class struggle and international solidarity.

China is the fastest-growing economy in the world today. For many on the left, the Chinese economy seems to provide an alternative model of development to that of neoliberal globalization. Although it is a disputed question whether the Chinese economy can be still described as socialist, there is no doubting the importance for the global project of socialism of accurately interpreting and soberly assessing its real prospects. China and Socialism argues that market reforms in China are leading inexorably toward a capitalist and foreign-dominated development path, with enormous social and political costs, both domestically and internationally. The rapid economic growth that accompanied these market reforms have not been due to efficiency gains, but rather to deliberate erosion of the infrastructure that made possible a remarkable degree of equality. The transition to the market has been based on rising unemployment, intensified exploitation, declining health and education services, exploding government debt, and unstable prices. At the same time, China's economic transformation has intensified the contradictions of capitalist development in other countries, especially in East Asia. Far from being a model that is replicable in other Third World countries. China today is a reminder of the need for socialism to be built from the grassroots up, through class struggle and international solidarity.

Bringing together work by international scholars, this title provides an analysis of the trajectory of Korea's political economy from a distinctly Marxist perspective. It aims to differentiate the Marxian approach to the political economy of Korean development from the left Keynesian, social democratic approach that dominates the literature.