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Notes
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1. In response to a request by colleagues and friends at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw, this paper aims to synthesize views regarding the transformations of the present form of society and their implications on the traditional Socialist thinking that I have expressed in previous works over the last two decades, including The associative economy: insights beyond the welfare state and into post-capitalism (2000).
2. Marx (1859, Preface). This vision was completely opposed to the subsequent crazy (Stalinist) idea of the possibility of building Socialism within a pre-capitalist society and – moreover – in a country only!
3. With a certain intention I use the word preferred by a lucid Socialist political writer, Leon Trotsky, in describing the deformation of Soviet Socialist society (La révolution trahie, 1936), for defining all kinds of negative evolutions of countries intentionally and nominally termed ‘Socialist’ without the presence of the historical, economic, and cultural conditions for the advancement of bourgeois democracy. Trotsky, who was personally swept away by the Soviet experience and tried to deny its fatality in Marxist terms, had demonstrated in his pre-Bolshevik writings a greater lucidity of Marxist thinking. In Results and perspectives (1906), Trotsky develops his ‘theory of permanent revolution’ in much more conscious terms of the inexistence of a working proletariat in Russia; this theory was more formally expressed in The permanent revolution (1930).
4. For an acute and expansive analysis of the different perspectives we can outline for achieving in the years to come (I hope within this century) an unavoidable cosmopolitan regime in its different forms, I suggest the recent book of Daniele Archibugi (incidentally, my son) on a Global commonwealth and a cosmopolitan democracy (2008).
5. Important points of reference are Hobson (Citation1894, Citation1935), Hilferding (Citation1910), Schumpeter (Citation1942), Dobb (Citation1937, Citation1945, Citation1958), Kalecki (Citation1954, Citation1972) and, more recently, Thurow (Citation1996).
6. The Schumpeter book was written during World War II and published in a revised and corrected version only in 1954. It was written during a historical phase in which it was already clear how Capitalism, in its managerial and bureaucratic forms, had caught on in its own way, in fascist and communist countries, without giving a chance to a ‘Socialist’ solution. People spoke a lot about ‘state Capitalism’ and on more or less ‘corporative’ forms in fascist countries, and equally on state Capitalism about the Soviet Union. For an update on the different ways of intending Capitalism, I recommend works by Heilbroner (Citation1985, Citation1993).
7. Prior to this period, not even the wealthiest classic entrepreneurs could meet the financial requirements of Capitalist-scale production.
8. Beyond the obligatory reference to the pioneering inquiry on the structure of American corporations by Berle and Means (Citation1932) and to the inferences about the changing nature of Capitalism that many authors subsequently believed drawing from Burnham (Citation1941) to Berle (Citation1954), and Berle and Harbrecht Citation1960) and Means (Citation1962), I would suggest reading two works of Marris (Citation1964), and Marris and Wood Citation1971). Beyond Burnham, Berle and Means, I would also include Galbraith (Citation1967) and Ruffolo (Citation1967) [unfortunately available only in Italian]) among the most effective analysts of such processes. And, in terms of great popularization, the effectiveness of many writings from Drucker (Citation1967, Citation1993), whom one should define until the 1980s – paraphrasing Marx – as the ‘Pindare’ of neo-Capitalism and who, from the 1990s, till his recent death, had become the Pindar of the non-profit system, which is the antithesis of traditional concepts of ‘Capitalism’, at least if counterposed to the idea of Socialism.
9. Basic works on this argument include Chamberlin (Citation1933) and Robinson (Citation1933).
10. For a full evaluation of the role and growing problems in big corporate Capitalism or managerial Capitalism, which we have named ‘neo-Capitalism’, an excellent source is Ruffolo (Citation1967). It is now a common and uncontroversial opinion that neo-Capitalism has characterized the evolution of advanced society in the contemporary world. We now have to ask ourselves how much and how fast this ‘new’ Capitalism is once again changing. Those who introduced the notion of ‘late Capitalism’ in analyses of economic cycles – for instance, Mandel (Citation1975) and Wallerstein (Citation1996) – seem to share this opinion. However, we must also think about whether these transformations can still be justifiably termed ‘Capitalism’ – a matter which depends on definitions used. In any case, those who have studied Capitalism (as I defined it in the beginning of this paper) in the past have postulated that it will come to an end sooner or later, if not only as a result of policies targeted to its voluntary elimination, and substituted with a socio-economic system that corresponds to what has long been identified with the term ‘Socialism’. Leaving aside for the moment the other parallel issue concerning the question ‘which Socialism?’ (which implies by itself a world of arguments), let us limit ourselves to that Socialism that will be borne from the evolutive transformation of liberal-democratic society and not from its demolition, and therefore based on its integration toward greater egalitarianism, social justice, and control of government activities – i.e. a greater social democracy.
11. Galbraith (Citation1958, Citation1967).
12. Mandel dedicated a book, The late capitalism (1975), to this topic. Further and more recent analysis has been done by Thurov (1996) and the well-known stock-broker and intelligent economist George Soros (Citation1998) who wrote the extremely meaningful The crisis of global capitalism.
13. Even here a flood of (low-quality) books have been released, among which I recommend Jencks (Citation1992) for further insight.
14. I cannot suggest, frankly, a better survey of these structural changes than my own work, The associative economy (2000).
15. From the overwhelming amount of literature on this matter I would choose Touraine (Citation1969) and Bell (Citation1973), Bell and Kristol 1973Bell and Kristol Citation1979). Concerning the implications on economic theory, see the writings of Block (Citation1985, Citation1987, Citation1990), which were anticipated by Block and Hirschhorn (Citation1979).
16. You can find more on this point in the writings of Heilbroner (Citation1985, Citation1993).
17. As already mentioned, Drucker transformed himself from the ‘Pindar’ of neo-Capitalism, into the ‘prompter’ of post-Capitalism (see Drucker 1993); afterwards, in the last phase of his personal evolution before death, he gave his name to a great foundation for the ‘third sector’, in a show of favor for the development of the non-profit economy. I have discussed the most meaningful and innovative contents of this transformation of Capitalism in my recent book, The associative economy (2000).
18. For these four factors, I refer again to the arguments of my The associative economy (2000).
19. The development of a kind of ‘associative economy’ as characteristic of structural change toward a new social formation is analyzed in my book, The associative economy (2000).
20. An acute analysis of the nature of reformist social-democracy was made, some time ago, by the Greek economist and (later political) socialist A. Papandreu (1972).
21. To quote another dictum used in describing the US federal ‘Reinventing Government’ program.
22. Interestingly, this change, with the movement termed ‘reinventing government’, is emerging first in the USA – a country traditionally opposed to centralized and authoritarian planning. Even if such vision was outlined in Roosevelt's New Deal in the midst of the managerial revolution, it has been systematically set aside by successive administrations thanks to opposition from neo-Capitalist powers.
23. Von Hayek (1804, 1955).
24. de Condorcet (1993).
25. Fourier (1971).