Li Lianbo: Latest Developments and Insights in International Political Economy Research
This article aims to systematically sort through the progress of research in foreign political economy in 2019, summarize the characteristics and causes of research in that year, and analyze its implications for reference. It should be noted that, in order to truthfully reflect the state of foreign research, this article does not adopt the practice of first determining a framework and then searching for necessary literature; rather, it categorizes and filters papers published throughout the entire year of 2019 in nearly twenty relevant foreign journals. These journals include Review of Radical Political Economics, Monthly Review, Science & Society, Critical Sociology, Critique, Cambridge Journal of Economics, New Left Review, New Political Economy, Rethinking Marxism, International Critical Thought, Radical Philosophy, Capital & Class, The Japanese Political Economy, Journal of International Political Economy, Socialism and Democracy, Economy and Society, and Socio-Economic Review. While this approach may overlook many articles, its advantage lies in its ability to objectively reflect the state of foreign research and avoid subjectively delimiting the scope of foreign studies.
I. General Theory Research
1. The contemporary value of Marxist political economy Samir Amin argued that without Marx, it is impossible to profoundly understand the contemporary world. Marx’s primary work, Capital, provides a scientific analysis of capitalist society and how it fundamentally differs from earlier social formations. Marx pointed out that capitalism has always been global and would inevitably conquer the entire world. This view inspired Amin to propose the theory of uneven development. The internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production make the outbreak of systemic economic crises inevitable. Faced with crisis, social transformation may lead toward revolution or toward decay. Amin believed that Marx never viewed capitalism merely as a new mode of production, but instead examined all dimensions of contemporary capitalist society, arguing that the law of value not only regulates capital accumulation but also governs all aspects of modern civilization. This unique perspective allowed Marx to provide the first scientific analysis of the relationship between social relations and anthropology. From this perspective, Marx had already incorporated "ecology" into his analysis, a fact only rediscovered a century later. Marx also led us to realize that communism is not a new and more advanced mode of production, but a higher stage of human civilization, though the road to socialism remains long.
In recent years, mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times and the Financial Times have published articles commemorating the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, declaring that "Marx was right" and "Marx is more important than ever." Savvas Matsas argues that the reason the bourgeois mainstream media, which has always viewed Marx as an enemy, is now heaping praise upon him is that the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 proved Marx's prediction: that capitalism possesses an inherent tendency toward self-destruction. Marx’s opponents have acknowledged his foresight, but the primary reason is the historical failure of bourgeois economics rather than a genuine understanding of Marx and the internal contradictions and limits of the capitalist mode of production he revealed. Ten years later, the global capitalist crisis has not ended; it continues to threaten the world with new and more destructive economic, political, and geopolitical explosions. Bourgeois economics is not only unable to explain the past but also fails to understand the present. In this context, liberal economists who have sensed the danger have been forced to admit Marx's profound analysis of capitalism, recognizing that Marx's diagnosis of capitalism has been empirically proven.
Based on recently published works by Marx, Ben Fine has re-examined the contemporary value of Marx's theory of ground rent. Fine argues that Marx's theory of ground rent remains of significant contemporary value for several reasons. First, from the perspectives of method, concept, and theory, Marx's theory of ground rent is an indispensable part of his political economy as a whole. Specifically, Marx's approach to examining the problem of ground rent through the organic composition of capital is consistent with his labor process theory, the theory of relative surplus value, the theory of the transformation of value into prices of production, and the theory of the falling rate of profit. Second, Marx's theory of ground rent is not a general theory applicable to all situations. Third, economic and social reproduction and restructuring under neoliberalism are directly or indirectly underpinned by financialization, in which land ownership plays a vital role. Fine believes that Marx's theory of landed property is more than a technical explanation of the quantity of rent based on arbitrary assumptions with limited applicability. On the contrary, on the basis of the theory of value, it can help us understand how contemporary forms of accumulation are attached to the financialization of land, commodities, and services, and how they underpin economic, social, and physical reproduction—the latter affecting all aspects of life from the environment to our daily existence.
2. Research methods of Marxist political economy Through a textual analysis of the Grundrisse (full title: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy), Paul Stasi re-examines the relationship between Marx and Hegel. Stasi points out that capital holds the same significance for Marx as the World Spirit [1] does for Hegel. The way Marx turned Hegel "upside down" was by showing how the unfolding logic of capital creates a series of real-world determinations and forms various spheres of human activity. By examining Marx's research methodology, Stasi traces several threads of thought in the Grundrisse. Stasi argues that Marx's understanding of the concept of "surplus" underwent a dialectical transformation—from surplus value to surplus labor and then to the leisure time that allows for the critique of capital—demonstrating how the unfolding of capital’s internal laws produces both the conditions for real-world impoverishment and the potential for liberation. Stasi notes that the Grundrisse consists of notebooks on some core concepts of Capital, primarily the concepts of abstract labor and socially necessary labor time, which were not fully elaborated in the Grundrisse. At the same time, it is clear that the Grundrisse is full of profound insights and is generally consistent with Marx's mature works. The Grundrisse is deeply influenced by Hegel, whereas many of Marx's mature works tend to erase these traces.
Richard Westra argues that Critical Realism, founded by Roy Bhaskar, can greatly inspire Marxist research. However, the core principles of Bhaskar's theory have not been fully absorbed by Marxist scholars interested in Critical Realism. If these principles are properly understood, we find it necessary to reconstruct Marx's texts on a foundation different from traditional forms. Westra believes that three main scientific principles proposed by Bhaskar are of significant reference to Marxism: the restoration of ontology in theoretical construction, the view of social science as a genuine scientific endeavor (capital-S science), and the elaboration of "retroduction" [2] as a strategy for scientific discovery. Westra examines these three principles in relation to three long-standing and interconnected problems in Marxist research: the first is the intelligibility of economic theory, the second is the rationale for the dialectical structure of Capital, and the third is the social scientific implications of the "cognitive sequence" in Marxism. Westra argues that the Uno School [3] in Japanese Marxist research conforms to Bhaskar's basic scientific criteria in its reconstruction of Marxism, thereby enhancing the scientific nature of Marx's work.
Over the past thirty years, with the revival of critical theory, academic views on Nietzsche have changed; in particular, some left-wing scholars have begun to take an appreciative stance toward him. In this context, the journal Critical Sociology published a set of papers discussing the relationship between Nietzsche's views and Marxism, as well as the possibility of combining the two. Stanley Aronowitz argues that the reason for the renewed interest in Nietzsche is that critical theory in the 1960s was rarely optimistic, but starting in the 1970s, scholars wanted to restore hope, and Nietzsche's optimism could provide hope for some Marxists and other critical theorists. For example, Ernst Bloch was one of the first critical theorists to pay attention to Nietzsche, expounding a philosophy of hope in his The Principle of Hope. Ishay Landa argues that Marx and Nietzsche share much in common in their understanding of the problems of modernity; Nietzsche was not primarily concerned with moral and cultural issues, and Marx did not focus solely on the economic base. Nietzsche's entire concept of culture was based on the keen insight that the economic base plays an indispensable role in supporting all culture. Conversely, Marx was deeply concerned with the fate of civilization. In this respect, the views of Marx and Nietzsche are consistent. Their disagreement lies in their different social perspectives: Marx foresaw the disappearance of class antagonism in a future society, while Nietzsche resolutely opposed such an outcome. Landa believes that only by combining Marx's concept of the "social individual" [4] with Nietzsche's description of the "Last Man" [5] can their meanings be accurately understood. Gary Yeritsian interprets Nietzsche's thought from the perspective of an "artistic critique" of capitalism and links it to Nietzsche-influenced left-wing movements. Yeritsian questions the approach of orthodox Marxists such as Lukács and Mehring, who viewed Nietzsche as a reactionary apologist for imperialism and capitalism. Yeritsian points out that while Nietzsche's political philosophy is undoubtedly elitist and anti-democratic, Nietzsche's opposition to industrial discipline and standardization, and his support for the struggle against universal alienation, link him closely to the emancipatory impulses of artistic critique.
II. Research on Classic Theories of Political Economy
1. Research on value theory and exploitation theory From the mid-1960s to the late 1990s, the number of people in the United States imprisoned in jails and penitentiaries or under mandatory parole or probation increased from less than 800,000 to over 7 million. Mark Jay argues that this mass incarceration was intended from the start to control, stigmatize, and exploit the poorest segments of the working class. To this day, the U.S. criminal justice system continues to target the poorest, with private forces attempting to influence prison reform movements and profiting from mass incarceration. Specifically, corporations profit mainly through three ways: first, private contractors who obtain government contracts cut operating costs to the extreme; second, they profit by charging user fees, payment of which is often a condition for an inmate’s release; the third mode of profiting is more direct but also very significant—mass incarceration forces the poor to accept low wages, low status, and precarious work. Mass incarceration demonstrates that increasing institutional pressure forces the poor and working class to face a choice: either accept exploitation by capital—accepting deteriorating, low-income jobs, paying high user fees, and submitting to constant surveillance—or be locked away in prison.
Exploitation usually refers to the exploitation of person by person—that is, one individual exploiting another through a specific transaction. Gabriel Wollner attempts to move away from this individualistic transactional paradigm to discuss "anonymous exploitation."
Wallner argues that a compelling concept of exploitation must satisfy five conditions: it must accurately describe and successfully distinguish between exploitative and non-exploitative transactions; provide a reasonable account of the injustice of exploitation; reasonably distinguish between the exploiter and the exploited; use this concept of exploitation to identify the sources of and solutions to exploitation; and provide a basic explanation for at least some real social phenomena. However, in certain circumstances, we cannot identify the exploiter or the exploited. Specifically, Wallner believes three types of anonymous exploitation exist: first, non-individual exploitation, where the exploiter, the exploited, or both are collective actors; second, non-subjective exploitation, where the exploiter, the exploited, or both are non-subjective groups; and third, structural exploitation, which is produced by exploitative structures. Wallner argues that non-individual, non-subjective, and structural exploitation are real, independent, and non-mysterious phenomena; to overlook their significance is to turn a blind eye to important cases of exploitation.
Tamar Diana Wilson attempts to integrate the homeless into Marx and Engels' class theory and the concept of the superstructure. Wilson argues that capitalism not only turns the proletariat into a commodity, but the objects of commodification also include the homeless, the precariously employed, and the unemployed. However, they are generally not commodities within the chain of production, but commodities of the capitalist system as a whole. In capitalist society, the homeless are an oppressed and exploited class. While the homeless are sometimes exploited as the lowest stratum of the surplus population identified by Marx, in most cases they are commodified and exploited through ideological, political, and legal means. They are controlled by what Althusser called the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus. The homeless do not compete with the working class and are forced to accept low wages and precarious work. They are bound by the imperialism of medicine, psychiatry, and social work, as various ideological state apparatuses claim homelessness is a problem of individual behavior while completely ignoring that capitalism is its root source.
Andrea Ricci, building upon Marx’s labor theory of value and the theory of ground rent in Volume III of Capital, constructs a theoretical model for analyzing unequal exchange. Ricci argues that value transfer arises from the contradictory character of socially necessary labor, which allows for discrepancies between two methods of measuring value—value in production and value in circulation. Under conditions of structural imbalance between supply and demand, strictly speaking, unequal exchange manifests in the form of differential rent—owing to differences in the level of industrial specialization—and absolute rent—owing to differences in capital and labor income. The former depends on the discrepancy between market prices of production and market values, leading to inter-industry value transfers. The latter depends on the discrepancy between market prices and market prices of production, leading to intra-industry value transfers. Furthermore, there are inter-industry value transfers caused by differences in the organic composition of capital, as well as broader unequal exchange arising from discrepancies between international prices of production and market values. Ricci measured international value transfers between 1995 and 2007, finding that both the absolute and relative amounts of international value transfer increased, flowing from developing countries and emerging economies toward the core regions of the capitalist world. This indicates that unequal exchange continues to play a vital role in the contemporary capitalist global economy.
2. Research on the Theory of Capital Accumulation
Over the past forty years, the process of capital accumulation in the world capitalist system has undergone a major shift, moving from an emphasis on stimulating the expansion of production to an emphasis on the redistribution of surplus value. This shift has led Marxist scholars to re-examine the concept of "primitive accumulation." Daniel Bin argues that a process of dispossession similar to primitive accumulation still exists today; capitalism cannot continue to exist without acquiring additional means of production and incorporating more labor power into the accumulation process. To understand the relationship between dispossession and capital accumulation, Bin discusses three distinctions: first, whether dispossession can generate capital accumulation; second, whether capitalism is viewed as an abstract construct or a historical system; and third, whether the analysis remains at the global or local level. At the level of actually existing world capitalism, expansionary dispossession has allowed capitalism to achieve the complete proletarianization of direct producers and the full capitalization of the means of subsistence and production. Bin points out that the shift from the creation of surplus value to its redistribution indicates that capitalism has met its own limits, and the dispossession of the means of subsistence and production in late capitalism indicates that the system’s days are numbered [6].
David M. Kotz and Deepankar Basu, proceeding from Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) theory, provide an explanation for the current stagnation of US economic growth. They argue that the reason for this stagnation is that the neoliberal SSA, rather than continuing to promote normal accumulation, has instead hindered it. Kotz and Basu explain how the neoliberal SSA shifted from promoting to hindering capital accumulation, leading to economic stagnation. Specifically, the neoliberal SSA promoted long-term stable accumulation and economic expansion through three aspects: first, income inequality between capital and labor as well as across different households; second, the increasing engagement of the financial sector in speculative and high-risk activities; and third, massive asset bubbles. However, the three trends generated by these growth mechanisms rendered it unsustainable in the long run—household debt-to-income ratios continued to rise, financial sector debt-to-income ratios also rose, and toxic financial assets spread throughout the financial system. Kotz and Basu argue that after the financial collapse, it is no longer possible to promote accumulation through another bubble; the neoliberal SSA can no longer facilitate long-term capital accumulation and economic expansion. Only by establishing a new, regulated SSA in which the government plays an active role can normal capital accumulation and economic expansion be restored. In another article, Kotz analyzes the new round of expansion in the United States starting in the summer of 2009 from the perspectives of changes in the rate of profit, its determinants, and the role of aggregate demand, revealing which factors suppressed the crisis tendency. The study found that after the 2009 plunge, the profit rate of the US non-financial corporate sector recovered in 2012–2013, with the increase in the output-capital ratio being the primary reason; the profit rate fell again in 2013–2016, mainly due to a decline in the profit share; and the profit rate recovered slightly in 2017 because a small rise in the output-capital ratio outweighed a slight decline in the profit share. Analysis of the main components of aggregate demand shows that a substantial increase in consumption expenditure played a major role in prolonging this expansion, yet this increase was not supported by asset bubbles but by the rapid growth of disposable income. Kotz notes that neoliberal capitalism is mired in a structural crisis, yet there are currently no signs that a new viable institutional structure will emerge for US capitalism.
Lefteris Tsoulfidis and Dimitris Paitaridis argue that the 2007 Great Recession in the United States was a classic crisis involving a falling rate of profit, as the increase in the value composition of capital completely outpaced the growth rate of surplus value. Within a growth-accounting framework, they analyze the relationship between the value composition of capital, the material composition of capital, and the rate of surplus value. The study found that from 1964 to 2016, the average annual growth rates of the value composition of capital, the rate of surplus value, and the material composition of capital were 1.5%, 1.02%, and 0.99% respectively, leading to a decline in the profit rate. The evolution of the profit rate and the total volume of real profit in the US since the 1980s indicates that 2007 was the tipping point where profits stagnated and began to decline. The US and the world economy entered a new stage after 2007, strikingly similar to the late 1960s. In short, the decline in the net profit rate was the cause of the outbreak of the 2007 Great Recession, and this decline was mainly caused by the increase in the value composition of capital, the latter reflecting changes in the technical composition of capital. Simultaneously, the increase in unproductive activities and related unproductive expenditures further exacerbated the falling rate of profit.
3. Research on Social Reproduction Theory
Silvia Federici discusses the history of social reproduction theory and the challenges it currently faces. Federici first criticizes the view that links social reproduction analysis exclusively to a radical position, arguing that discussing social reproduction issues does not inherently mean adopting a Marxist or radical stance; it was the theorists and activists advocating for "wages for housework" in the 1970s that made the discussion of social reproduction "revolutionary" because they discovered a realm of massive exploitation. Federici points out that feminists currently face the arduous task of deeply analyzing the severe crisis of social reproduction facing the whole world today. We do not need to prove that reproductive work is non-"productive," as many scholars have already offered profound critiques of this view. If one denies the productivity of women’s unpaid labor, one assumes that a large portion of the population has nothing to do with capital accumulation, thereby making it impossible to declare that the wealth produced by capitalism is also the fruit of their labor. Federici notes that while many feminists in the 1970s and today reject the "wages for housework" movement, they have offered no alternative choices aside from making moderate demands for government-provided childcare and for men to share housework.
Alessandra Mezzadri argues that only by viewing social reproduction activities and spheres as value-creating can we deepen our understanding of contemporary capitalist labor relations; simultaneously, we need to incorporate informal and informalized labor into the discussion of the relationship between social reproduction and value creation. Mezzadri argues that social reproduction activities and spheres promote value production activities through three channels. First, by directly strengthening the control over labor to increase the rate of exploitation—for example, through the "dormitory labor regime," social reproduction becomes highly individualized and incorporated into the value creation process. Second, by absorbing the reproductive costs externalized by capital, it effectively forms a subsidy to capital. Third, through the fragmentation and decomposition of the labor process on a global scale, it expands the process of the formal subsumption of labor, enabling social reproduction activities and spheres to directly create value. The army of home-based workers undertaking massive processing tasks indicates that the formal subsumption of labor still plays a role in the value production process. This makes production and social reproduction difficult to distinguish, as they overlap in time and are both subject to the law of value. Mezzadri points out that incorporating the sphere of social reproduction into value-creating activities theoretically forms a complete understanding of the capitalist mode of production and politically provides a broad basis for organizing all labor struggles.
Kirstin Munro...
...elaborated a model of production and reproduction in capitalist society, arguing that production is carried out by households, capitalist firms, and governments. The production process of each sector requires necessary inputs from the other sectors; it is precisely the interdependence between households, capitalist firms, and governments in these production processes that leads to the reproduction of capitalist society as a whole. According to this model, the proportions of various inputs required for household production are variable, and working-class households are able to vary three types of inputs within their household production process: unpaid labor, commodities purchased with wage income, and government inputs. Munro points out that this systemic model of capitalist production demonstrates that households and household production must be linked to the production and reproduction of capitalist society; it is impossible to decouple the reproduction of labor power from the reproduction of capitalist society as a whole. At the same time, a redistribution of wealth and power in favor of the working class cannot change the underlying production process; it can only change the proportion of these inputs. Therefore, the goal of the working class struggle must be the fundamental transformation of the production and reproduction processes of capitalist society, rather than a mere redistribution of costs and benefits.
4. Research on Financial Capital and Theories of Imperialism
John Bellamy Foster argues that the globalization of production and finance since the mid-1970s has created a more generalized form of monopoly capitalism, and that contemporary imperialism has entered a stage of "late imperialism." Late imperialism refers to the current stage of monopoly-finance capital and stagnation, characterized by the continuous decline of U.S. hegemony, intensifying global conflict, and the increasing threat to the ecological foundations of civilization and life itself. Compared to the past, the goals pursued by imperialism today are more aggressive and unrestrained. The United States pursues total dominance in military, technological, financial, and even energy spheres. Neo-fascist tendencies have re-emerged as the final "lifeline" for monopoly-finance capital. Foster believes that late imperialism represents the historical end of the capitalist world order; it portends either a global catastrophe or the beginning of a new revolution. Broad human struggle must be based on the sustained revolutionary resistance of the working class and the people of the Global South, with the primary objective of overthrowing imperialism as the global manifestation of capitalism.
Samir Amin argued that contemporary capitalism is a capitalism of generalized monopolies, where monopolies tightly control the global production system and all enterprises are integrated into networks of monopoly control. This generalized monopoly dominates the world economy and constitutes a new stage of imperialism. Amin pointed out that the current process of capital accumulation is dominated by the requirement to maximize monopoly rent or imperialist rent. These profits are primarily captured by the plutocracy that controls oligopolistic groups and cannot be used for productive investment, which is the root cause of financialization. Correspondingly, the political system of contemporary capitalism has turned into a plutocracy, where the plutocrats have become the ruling class and the status of the middle class has changed. In peripheral capitalist countries, the old ruling classes have been replaced by speculators who extract profits through their links with global capitalism. The decentralization of production has dispersed the proletariat more widely, thereby weakening its solidarity. Amin noted that the value system of bourgeois civilization is disappearing, replaced by a system devoid of any value standards—a dramatic change that signals the end of bourgeois civilization.
In recent years, a new international division of labor linked to global commodity chains or global value chains has emerged, leading many leftist scholars to question whether imperialism still exists. Intan Suwandi argues that to understand the imperialist character of the world economy, one must delve into the "hidden abodes of production" [7] in the Global South to uncover the exploitative relations therein. Suwandi proposed an analytical framework of labor-value commodity chains, attempting to integrate global exploitation into the framework of the labor theory of value to reveal the exploitative relations behind the veil of globalized production. The labor-value commodity chain framework compares differences in unit labor costs across different countries, allowing us to see the exploitative relations behind complex global commodity chains. Global capital searches the world for regions with low unit labor costs to obtain maximum profit. Data on unit labor costs in different countries indicate that countries highly integrated into labor-value chains often have very low unit labor costs, meaning these countries have not only low wages but also high labor productivity. Therefore, organizing labor-value commodity chains globally means extracting surplus value by exploiting workers in the Global South. Suwandi believes that labor-value commodity chains possess imperialist characteristics, as transnational monopoly giants take full advantage of differences in unit labor costs within an imperialist system to achieve the exploitation of workers globally. In another article, Suwandi et al. argue that while the global commodity chain analytical framework describes the complexity of globalized production to some extent, it does not touch upon the essence of exploitation and labor-capital relations behind it. In reality, global commodity chains dominated by monopoly-finance capital are a new imperialist international division of labor. Suwandi et al. point out that the intensification of inequality on a global scale is the inevitable product of the new imperialist exploitation system. Only through an analysis of labor-value commodity chains can the essence of globalized monopoly-finance capital be truly revealed, the power structures behind neoliberal globalization be clarified, the changing class relations and forms of struggle worldwide be grasped, and an effective critical analysis of contemporary global political and economic realities be conducted.
5. Research on Ecological Marxism
Foster et al. argue that the root of the ecological crisis in the Anthropocene is the inherent drive of capitalist accumulation for infinite expansion, which destroys the healthy metabolic relationship between humans and the environment. However, explaining current environmental problems from this perspective alone is insufficient; they must be analyzed from the perspective of the imperialist world system or global capitalism, examining the structure of accumulation on a world scale and the mutual competition between nation-states. From the perspectives of imperialist rent, monopoly-finance capital, material footprints, the plunder of the oceans, energy imperialism, and water imperialism, Foster et al. reveal the catastrophic impact of imperialism on the Earth's ecosystem in the era of the Anthropocene. Compared to Northern countries, Southern countries are more vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change. However, the response of Northern countries to climate deterioration is to analyze how the vulnerability of the South creates new global security problems and to consider how to use these issues to strengthen imperial hegemony—the most obvious example being the U.S. energy dominance strategy. Foster et al. point out that ecological revolution cannot be carried out under the current crisis without incorporating resistance to imperialism. Therefore, the global ecological movement is a movement to unite all oppressed people. In the past two years, several protests against climate change have broken out worldwide. Foster points out that these movements indicate that the environmental struggle in developed capitalist countries has shifted from a previous framework of general climate action toward more radical climate justice and eco-socialist movements. Foster analyzed in detail the origins, propositions, and shortcomings of the Green New Deal, criticizing the mitigation measures advocated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The "Green New Deal Resolution" released in February 2019 proposed promoting a just economic transition and achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions in the United States through a decade of national mobilization. Foster believes that the contradiction of this radical version of the Green New Deal lies in its continued emphasis on economic growth and capital accumulation, with almost no mention of the direct preservation of resources or the reduction of total consumption; under the dominance of monopoly-finance capital, it tends toward Green Keynesianism. The climate change mitigation strategies proposed by the IPCC are dominated by the relations of capital accumulation and neoclassical economics; the mitigation models it proposes suggest that so-called market efficiency and non-existent technical solutions are the only way out. In another article, Foster et al. argue that Marx's concept of "expropriation" is extremely important for understanding historical capitalism. Late capitalism and late imperialism increasingly use equal exchange to mask their systems of plunder; the bloody expropriation of land, labor, and human bodies globally continues to form the boundary conditions of capitalism today. Foster et al. point out that a historical materialist method combining exploitation and expropriation can provide a broader perspective for understanding various contradictions and conflicts within capitalism. In the capitalist system, expropriation creates a brand-new internal drive for exploitation, and exploitation in turn generates the need for broader expropriation, thereby expanding the boundaries of capitalism. Thus, the dialectic of exploitation and expropriation in capitalism forms a vicious circle linked to the logic of capital accumulation. In the 21st century, the dialectic of exploitation and expropriation will continue to exist and undermine the foundations of the planet and life itself; the only way out is toward eco-socialism.
Ianan Gus argues that in addition to devastating climate change, microbiology must also be incorporated into our understanding of the Anthropocene, defining the era by incurable epidemics. Antibiotic resistance has caused a global health crisis; drug-resistant bacterial infections are now the third leading cause of death in the United States, estimated to cause 162,000 deaths annually. The antibiotic resistance crisis is caused by two factors: on the one hand, the amazing adaptive capacity of bacteria, and on the other, the primary concern of pharmaceutical companies for sales and profits. The more widely a drug is used, the more severe the resistance becomes. However, to cope with falling antibiotic prices, pharmaceutical companies, on the one hand, vigorously promote antibiotics through advertising and other means for any conceivable disease, and on the other hand, strive to develop different rather than better antibiotics in order to obtain monopoly prices. Furthermore, massive amounts of antibiotics are used on livestock, and the resulting drug-resistant bacteria also infect humans, further exacerbating the risk of resistance. Gus points out that solving the problem of antibiotic resistance requires a global collaborative effort to liberate public health from the hands of profit-oriented large corporations, raising it to the same status as other ecological crises of the Anthropocene.
III. Research on Contemporary Capitalism
1. Critique of Neoliberalism
David Jaffee discusses the crisis of the current neoliberal Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) and the possibility of establishing a new SSA within the theoretical framework of the Social Structure of Accumulation. Jaffee argues that capital accumulation depends on the co-existence of productive capacity and consumption capacity—the former usually associated with the supply side and the latter with the demand side. The 2008 global financial crisis was a demand-side crisis caused by a massive imbalance between productive and consumption capacities, intensifying inequality, and financialization. Jaffee points out that although there seems to be a cyclical dynamic between crises of productive and consumption capacity, there is no reason to assume that the swing of this crisis trend and movements resisting capitalist hegemony will necessarily occur at the current stage. In the neoliberal phase, the possibility of generating a new SSA capable of transforming American capital through traditional political channels has declined sharply. Legislators in both the Democratic and Republican parties have been captured by neoliberal ideology, and democracy continues to deteriorate. Beyond political obstacles, two reinforcing structural features of the U.S. neoliberal capitalist economy—financialization and global value chains—also hinder the establishment of a new SSA.
Foster argues that neoliberalism is a comprehensive political-ideological project of the ruling class, linked to the rise of monopoly-finance capital, with the primary strategic goal of integrating the state into capitalist market relations. Neoliberalism intends to create an "absolute capitalism"...
...resulting in the severe destruction of humanity and ecology in our era. Foster points out that neoliberalism is by no means laissez-faire, but rather a form of comprehensive state intervention. It represents a new mode of combining the state and the market, whereby the social reproduction activities of the state are increasingly subordinated to capitalist reproduction. Governments can no longer effectively control all sectors, including central banks and primary monetary policy mechanisms, upon which financial capital now exerts significant influence. "Absolute capitalism" possesses five prominent contradictions—economic, political, imperialist, social reproduction, and environmental—which demonstrate its systemic failure. Foster argues that the absolute capitalism promoted by neoliberalism has accelerated the global pace toward exterminism and destructivism; the only available choice for humanity is a long-term ecological revolution leading toward 21st-century ecosocialism.
Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik argue that contemporary neoliberalism has entered a dead end, primarily for two reasons: first, the trend of global overproduction; and second, the bursting of asset price bubbles formed to resist this trend, which has plunged the global economy into crisis. Specifically, neoliberalism's dead end has at least four important implications: first, compared to the 1990s and early 2000s, the world economy is tormented by high unemployment; second, for Third World economies, the era of export-oriented growth has essentially ended; third, many Third World countries are on the verge of facing severe balance-of-payments difficulties; and fourth, the global resurgence of fascism. They contend that in the current era of fascist resurgence, war will not break out between major powers; instead, we face a long-standing and "muted" [8] form of fascism that will not collapse of its own accord but must be terminated by the struggle of the working class. Facing the resistance of people in the Third World, imperialism will respond in at least four ways: capital flight, trade sanctions, the implementation of so-called "Latin American-style democracy" or parliamentary coups, and recourse to economic warfare and eventually military warfare.
Jack Rasmus analyzed the recovery and prospects of American neoliberalism following the 2008 global financial crisis. The global financial crisis threw neoliberalism into crisis, and Obama was elected President of the United States as the best candidate to save it. Rasmus argues that from the perspective of the broader historical evolution of neoliberal policy, the development of neoliberalism during the Obama period fell into crisis. Trump’s election in 2016 was a response to Obama’s inability to revive neoliberalism; Trump attempted to revive the neoliberal policy regime in a more aggressive form of "Neoliberalism 2.0." The policies implemented by Trump successfully restored several core features of neoliberalism, such as further expanding tax cuts, increasing military spending, drastically cutting social program expenditures, increasing budget deficits, and promoting deregulation. Trump's practice during this period suggests that a more vicious and aggressive Neoliberalism 2.0 is emerging, causing severe negative impacts on workers, the middle class, and foreign capitalist competitors. Whether the Trump version of neoliberalism can ultimately succeed remains to be verified in the coming years.
2. Research into Financialization and Income Distribution
Eckhard Hein argues that the institutional shift in mature capitalist economies caused by financialization and its crises is inextricably linked to the reappearance of stagnationist trends in contemporary capitalism. Hein identifies three demand and growth regimes in finance-dominated capitalism. Between 1997 and 2007, prior to the crisis, the US, UK, and Spain operated under a debt-led private consumption boom regime; Germany and Sweden under an export-led mercantilist regime; and France and other core Eurozone countries under a domestic demand-led regime. However, a major shift occurred during and after the crisis: Germany and Sweden remained unchanged; Spain and the core Eurozone countries overall shifted to an export-led mercantilist regime; and the US and UK became domestic demand-led regimes similar to France, though their crises were primarily stabilized through government deficits. Hein argues that these institutional shifts have exacerbated stagnationist trends in mature capitalist economies and increased current global macroeconomic risks. This is because if more and more countries shift to export-led mercantilist regimes—such as the Eurozone as a whole—the global economy faces an aggregation problem, as it will become increasingly difficult to generate corresponding current account deficits in other regions.
The evolutionary path and volatility of financial profits are particularly important for analyzing the transition to financialization. Costas Lapavitsas and Ivan Mendieta-Muñoz utilized various methods to measure the average profit rate, the financial sector profit rate, and the profit share of the US economy from 1955 to 2015, revealing the evolutionary process of the financialization of the US economy. The study found that from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, the profit rate of the US financial sector increased rapidly, and the total volume of financial profits reached a historical peak in the early 2000s; this period was the "golden age" of financialization. Meanwhile, interest rates and net interest margins of banks showed a downward trend, indicating the existence of "financial expropriation" in the US economy. The 2007–2009 economic crisis was a watershed; neither the profit rate nor the volume of profits in the financial sector recovered to previous levels after the crisis. They argue that the fluctuations in financial profit rates post-crisis are not merely short-term adjustments in the financial sector; the financial crisis may be a historical watershed marking the end of the golden age of American financialization.
Katherine A. Moos examined changes in the "net social wage" in the United States from 1959 to 2012, providing an explanation from a Marxist perspective. The net social wage method was pioneered by Anwar Shaikh and others. Net social wage refers to the difference between the fiscal transfers received by workers and the taxes they pay. Currently, there are two calculation methods: NSW1, which includes indirect taxes, and NSW2, which does not. Shaikh found that the net social wage in the United States from 1952 to 1997 was close to zero. Moos extended the calculation period to 2012 and found that from 1959 to 2012, NSW1 and NSW2 averaged 1.3% and 3.8% of GDP respectively. The net social wage increased rapidly after 2002, indicating that redistribution to workers began to increase from the start of the 21st century. How was this possible while neoliberal policies remained dominant? Moos argues that the capitalist state must not only remove obstacles for capital’s exploitation of labor but also ensure the labor force can maintain daily and intergenerational reproduction. In the neoliberal era, capital's excessive squeezing of labor urgently required state intervention. US redistributive policies were intended to mitigate the impact of the neoliberal capitalist labor market on households and workers; that is, the state needed to assume the responsibility of cushioning class relations.
Following the 2008 global financial crisis, intensified income inequality stimulated academic discussion regarding "unconditional basic income." Annamaria Artner analyzed the feasibility of unconditional basic income under capitalism, arguing that in a profit-centered society based on private ownership, unconditional basic income policies are unsustainable. Unconditional basic income refers to the state unconditionally providing a certain amount of money to every citizen each month to enable them to live with dignity. Artner points out that under the capitalist system, the existence of the "iron law of competition" means enterprises constantly face a race for survival. To obtain sufficient profit, enterprises must strive to compress the wage share. However, unconditional basic income sets a floor for worker income, thereby limiting the possibility of compressing the wage share. Even if an unconditional basic income policy were implemented, there is no guarantee that the government would not abolish or cut it in the face of a severe economic depression. The sustainability of unconditional basic income policies depends on a fundamental transformation of the internal logic of production through the abolition of private ownership of the means of production.
3. Research into Digital Capitalism
Matthieu Montalban and others used the Regulation School [9] approach to analyze the impact of the "platform economy" or the "platformization" of the economy on the contemporary capitalist system. They argue that the platform economy is merely an internal transformation and intensified version of the financialized accumulation regime, rather than a completely new regime of accumulation. The platform economy includes both digital infrastructure—hardware and software—and a governance structure, thereby constituting a form of regulation. Montalban et al. point out that although the platform economy disrupts most institutional forms and previous modes of financial capitalist regulation, it does not represent a new regime of accumulation but is endogenous to the financialized neoliberal regime of accumulation. Financialization created the preconditions for the development of the platform economy, which is based on a similar institutional hierarchy, while technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrency have furthered the development of financialization. Simultaneously, the platform economy accelerates neoliberal trends through more flexible wage-labor relations and outsourcing. Income inequality and unemployment caused by the crisis of the financialized accumulation regime promoted the development of the platform economy, which in turn exacerbated income inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. Furthermore, stakeholders in the platform economy have promoted the "silicolonization" of public policy, including neoliberal policies such as deregulation and spending cuts.
Evgeny Morozov provided a deep analysis of views held by some scholars that big data will radically transform capitalism and eventually replace price coordination systems, while examining the inspiration that concepts such as "digital feedback infrastructure" provide for solving the problem of socialist calculation. Scholars such as Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argue that big data will destroy existing business models and create new ones, not only reshaping but ending capitalism. Morozov argues that these scholars lack a theoretical and historical understanding of the concept of capitalism, and their views regarding the opposition between data and money, or price and information, are untenable. Morozov contends that we should examine the feedback infrastructure itself, which will play an important role in the reshaping of both Left and Right political programs. For the Left, a promising proposal is to utilize feedback infrastructure to identify new, non-market forms of social coordination, thereby challenging the coordination tools produced by neoliberalism. Morozov identifies three possibilities: first, "solidarity as a discovery procedure," drawing on Hayek’s description of "competition as a discovery procedure"; second, "designing the non-market," focusing on social coordination issues unrelated to production and consumption; and third, "automated planning," concentrating solely on coordination within the economic sphere. Morozov points out that if the means of creating alternative social coordination models remain the exclusive property of tech giants, these three proposals cannot be realized. This requires the socialization of the "means of feedback production," with the feedback infrastructure controlled by society.
In the past two decades, employers have utilized a large number of new electronic surveillance methods in the workplace. Ivan Manokha...
Manokha argues that the nature of workplace surveillance today is fundamentally different from the past, exerting a significant influence on the nature of workplace power relations. Due to the development of information and communication technologies, ubiquitous electronic devices and sensors can collect and process digital data on employee performance in real time; furthermore, employee health is increasingly monitored and analyzed through new technologies such as biometrics and wearable tech. Manokha contends that the "digitization of the employee" represents a qualitative change in workplace surveillance, transforming workers, their performance, and their bodies into lines of code and data streams that can be inspected and manipulated—processes over which workers have no control and of which they may not even be aware. From the perspective of Foucault’s theory of biopower, Manokha argues that the intensifying surveillance of employee health can be understood as a form of privatizing and implementing biopower. As automated electronic surveillance replaces the "naked eye" observation of the supervisor, the disciplinary forces within the workplace are immensely strengthened.
David Arditi proposes the concept of the "digital music trap," viewing it as a natural consequence of digital capitalism, which commodifies our daily lives. The digital music trap refers to the use of digital technology to expand the modes of music consumption; it is the expansion of cross-media music consumption platforms that push music consumption beyond mere record sales. We are paying for music everywhere in countless ways, such as through customized streaming services, where the payment may be in cash or data. From a political economy perspective, music listeners are effectively working for and being exploited by record companies. These companies not only obtain advertising revenue but also profit by selling information on user preferences. Arditi notes that while the commodity of the recording industry is recorded music, its form has undergone multiple transformations from physical records to copyrights; these changes in the commodity form drive people to purchase music in new formats repeatedly, and every purchase or "play" by the listener increases the rate of exploitation. Arditi concludes by stating that we need a critical understanding of the social implications of the digital music trap. Despite the ubiquity of music, it remains subordinate to the logic of capitalist commodification.
4. Research on the Systemic Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism
William I. Robinson argues that contemporary global capitalism faces a structural crisis of over-accumulation and a political crisis of legitimacy or hegemony. It is moving toward a total crisis of capitalist rule, to which the "global police state" and fascism are responses. Robinson analyzes the links between the crisis of global capitalism, the tendency toward 21st-century fascism, and the rise of the global police state. The core of 21st-century fascism is the fusion of transnational capital, reactionary political forces within the state, and neo-fascist forces within civil society; it attempts to find a mass base among the "privileged" global working class. Donald Trump, for his part, has used his charismatic personality to inspire various neo-fascist forces, as Trumpism and other similar movements attempt to reconstruct the state's legitimacy. Robinson points out that to achieve victory in the war against the global police state and 21st-century neo-fascism, we must build a broad anti-fascist alliance; simultaneously, we must revive the Marxist critique of global capitalism and its crises to provide guidance for an emancipatory working-class political movement. In another article, Robinson notes that a more extensive militarization of the global economy and society has appeared in recent years, necessitating a re-understanding of the relationship between militarization and capitalism. Compared to "Military Keynesianism," the concept of the "global police state" better encapsulates the current stage. The emergence of the global police state is a response to world capitalism falling into an unprecedented crisis. Robinson defines the global police state through three interconnected aspects. First, the ruling groups have created a ubiquitous system of mass control, repression, and warfare to contain the actual or potential resistance of the global working class. Second, the global economy itself has become increasingly dependent on these systems of war, social control, and repression as a means to continue obtaining profit and accumulating capital amidst economic stagnation—a process Robinson terms "militarized accumulation." Third, political systems are increasingly moving toward 21st-century fascism or, in a broader sense, totalitarianism.
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira argues that "rentier-financier capitalism," neoliberalism, and globalization have been in crisis since 2008, and have fallen into a political crisis since 2016. Bresser-Pereira characterizes contemporary capitalism as rentier-financier capitalism, arguing that the ruling class is no longer an entrepreneurial class but primarily a rentier-capitalist class, while technocrats retain the role of managing firms. Specifically, contemporary capitalism faces a crisis of low growth rates and quasi-stagnant wages. From the supply side, this is due to a decline in the productivity of capital that began in the 1970s. The response has been to increase monopoly power on the one hand, and to adopt neoliberal structural reforms aimed at lowering wages and restoring capital profits on the other. From the demand side, wage stagnation is the problem itself rather than the solution. To resolve the problem of surplus capital, the rentier-financier elite has employed means such as mergers and acquisitions, the privatization of public monopolies, and increasing consumer debt. Bresser-Pereira points out that these measures do not increase investment; instead, they exacerbate inefficiency and inequality, benefiting only a small circle of the empowered class, rentier-capitalists, financiers, and top executives.
IV. Research on Socialism and Anti-Capitalist Struggle
Samir Amin and Firoze Manji argue that late capitalism has become a completely closed and totalitarian system. At the current stage, substantial progressive reform is merely an illusion; the only way forward is to unite the workers and all oppressed masses in a resolute socialist struggle. Amin and Manji point out that over the past thirty years, power within the world system has become highly concentrated, with financial oligarchies seizing absolute political power. Imperialist forces strive to prevent peripheral countries from escaping their subordinate status, and contemporary capitalism has lost its capacity for innovation and flexibility. However, current anti-capitalist struggles suffer from defects such as excessive fragmentation and a lack of solidarity. In this context, Amin and Manji advocate for the establishment of a transnational alliance of the working class and the oppressed, offering four suggestions: first, the goal should be to form an alliance capable of developing into an organization rather than just organizing a movement; second, the historical experience of the Workers' Internationals [10] should be seriously studied; third, a large number of militant political parties and organizations should be invited to join; fourth, this undertaking is not about recreating a past international workers’ organization, but should be built on new principles. They suggest convening a founding congress of the alliance attended by advanced representatives of anti-capitalist resistance from various regions to establish common struggle objectives, while calling on each of us to enhance our sense of historical responsibility and explore the path of revolutionary socialism.
John Bellamy Foster points out that the first two decades of the 21st century have demonstrated that the capitalist system has failed completely, and the socialist system is the only way out. The current capitalist world faces economic stagnation, financialization, mass unemployment, ecological crises, and the most severe inequality in history. The digital revolution has been alienated from a promise of communicative freedom and productive emancipation into a new means of surveillance, control, and the displacement of the working class. Liberal democratic institutions are collapsing, while fascism, racism, imperialism, and war are quietly rising. Foster criticizes a popular erroneous view among the Left that reduces the aforementioned problems to the "neoliberal model" of capitalism, suggesting they could be resolved by replacing it with a more "rational" capitalist model. Foster points out that capitalism has transformed from a social system with historical necessity and creativity into an unnecessary and destructive one. We now face an epochal choice between a thorough revolutionary reconstruction of society or "common ruin." [11] Millions of people globally have already entered the anti-capitalist struggle, laying the foundation for a worldwide movement toward socialism.
Tom Brass analyzes the fact and the causes of the disappearance of "revolutionary agency" from leftist theory and practice. Brass notes that while favorable conditions exist for moving beyond neoliberal economics, the outcome seems unlikely to take the form of a transition to socialism. At the core of this paradox is a negative attitude toward the class-based concept of revolutionary agency. Brass argues that the disappearance of actions intended to seize power directly—and of socialism itself—can be traced back to the advocacy of capitalism's "evolution" and subsequent "resistance" (rather than "transcendence"). This reformist tendency is linked to changes in the academic world; critiques of capitalism aimed at a transition to socialism were replaced after the 1980s by a new populist postmodernism. This form of anti-capitalist resistance avoids systemic transcendence and is thus less politically threatening. The reason the leftist perspective has been weakened is largely because many socialists have abandoned the basic principles of Marxism. Brass believes this postmodern "cultural turn" in Marxist theory and practice has had significant political consequences: it has led many who abandoned Marxism to struggle for the wrong goals, allowed populism to become the dominant framework in the social sciences, removed revolution as an option for radical practice, and made it so that economic crises do not inevitably trigger political crises.
Peter Ranis argues that worker cooperatives should play an important role in the anti-capitalist movement. Only within the social relations of a cooperative can a worker's potential be fully realized, as they manifest as "all-around" rather than "one-dimensional" human beings. From the perspective of the alienation of labor, worker cooperatives exist in deep ideological antagonism with the division of labor that constitutes the foundation of capitalist production. Facing the assaults of American capitalism, the formation of worker cooperatives acts as a counterweight against the deterioration of working conditions, job insecurity, and Supreme Court strikes against labor unions. Ranis believes that while markets will continue to play an incentive role, as worker cooperatives develop, proliferate, and unite, market forces will weaken and use-value will begin to dominate exchange-value. Cooperatives do not rely on the exploitation of workers; their internal positions are determined through democratic election, and their technological innovations serve the entire group. Ranis argues that cooperatives oppose capitalism but do not oppose capital; rather, they oppose the "notorious behavior" and immoral use of capital. Regarding income distribution, the wage relationship is replaced by the distribution of surplus value decided by the cooperative members, thereby ending the labor-capital hierarchy.
V. Summary and Implications
1. Characteristics and Causes of Foreign Political Economy Research in 2019
Compared with previous years, the general characteristics of foreign political economy research in 2019 were a decrease in purely theoretical research and an increase in research on practical issues; furthermore, there was a significant increase in articles criticizing contemporary capitalism and exploring resistance strategies and the path to socialism. There are two possible reasons for this. First, 2017 and 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Capital and the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth respectively. As there were no similar commemorative activities in 2019, the number of international seminars and purely theoretical research papers was relatively low. Second, by 2019, ten years had passed since the 2008 global financial crisis, yet developed capitalist countries like the United States remained mired in multiple crises: economic downturn, rising unemployment, increased income inequality, the rise of fascism, and deepening ecological crises. Simultaneously, protests occurred frequently around the world. In this context, foreign Marxist scholars strengthened their research on imperialism, economic financialization, the critique of neoliberalism, ecological Marxism, anti-capitalist movements, and socialism.
Specifically, regarding the research on the logic, methodology, and contemporary value of Marxist political economy, Fred Moseley's 2016 book Money and Totality: A Macro-[Monetary Interpretation of Marx's Logic in Capital...]
While the discussions inspired by Fred Moseley's book Money and Totality: A Marxian Monetarist Interpretation of the Form of Value and the End of the Transformation Problem have somewhat subsided, discussions on research methodology have increasingly drawn upon perspectives from philosophy and Western Marxism. Regarding research on classical theory, the most palpable difference between 2019 and previous years was a significant decrease in studies on the labor theory of value; conversely, research on the theory of exploitation, the theory of capital accumulation, the theory of imperialism, and ecological Marxism increased. This shift is clearly inseparable from practical issues such as the intensification of social contradictions in contemporary capitalism, the stagnation of capital accumulation, the heightening of global conflict, and environmental degradation. In the study of contemporary capitalism, foreign Marxist scholars have, on one hand, paid close attention to the latest changes—such as the evolution of neoliberalism and financialization, the dynamics of income distribution, and digital capitalism—attempting to provide theoretical explanations for them. On the other hand, they have engaged in profound criticism and reflection regarding the social contradictions and systemic crises of contemporary capitalism. In terms of research on socialism and anti-capitalist struggle, foreign Marxist scholars have not only further demonstrated the necessity of socialist revolution from a theoretical perspective but have also discussed specific strategies for struggle, such as establishing transnational alliances, forming workers' cooperatives, and restoring radical agendas. Except for the relative decline in the first area of research, the other three areas reached new levels of depth in 2019.
2. The Significance and Lessons of Foreign Political Economy Research in 2019
The research in foreign political economy in 2019 can undoubtedly provide great inspiration for relevant domestic theoretical research and for the study of the political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Specifically, we believe the following aspects can serve as points of reference for us.
First, we should draw upon the research methods of Western Marxism. Western Marxism’s critique of the cultural crisis of technical rationalism and its exploration of the path toward human freedom and liberation can provide us with important insights. Of course, the theoretical starting points and emphases of Western Marxism differ from those of Marxist political economy; the views of some scholars must be accepted critically. Due to the limitations of the author's own knowledge structure, this article primarily introduced ecological Marxism and a set of articles regarding Nietzsche; research in these areas needs to be further strengthened.
Second, we must focus on the dynamics of labor exploitation and capital accumulation, revealing the deep-seated roots of contemporary capitalist social contradictions from these two dimensions. Many problems of contemporary capitalism stem from the obstruction of capital accumulation. To overcome these obstacles, capital on one hand intensifies the exploitation of labor, and on the other hand, continuously innovates methods of exploitation and expands the spheres of exploitation. The ultimate result is the continuous intensification of international conflicts and the daily deepening of domestic contradictions.
Third, starting from a holistic perspective, we must grasp the internal connections between imperialism, financialization, neoliberalism, the Anthropocene [12] ecological crisis, the crisis of social reproduction, and even digital capitalism to reveal the systemic crisis of contemporary capitalism. The crisis of contemporary capitalism is by no means a unilateral one; even when analyzing a single issue within it, one must connect it to other aspects. Using digital capitalism as an example, beyond being linked to issues of labor exploitation and socialist calculation, neoliberalism and financialization both play significant roles within it.
Fourth, we must strengthen the construction of discourse power [13] and remain firm in our "Four Matters of Confidence" [14] regarding the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The systemic crisis of contemporary capitalism and the rise of anti-capitalist struggles worldwide have further highlighted the theoretical and practical value of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Scientific socialism has radiated great vitality in 21st-century China, holding high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the world. At present, we must not only remain firm in the "Four Matters of Confidence" and strive to win the great victory of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era, but also strengthen the construction of discourse power, resolutely resist neoliberal ideology, and provide a "China solution" for the development of world socialism.
(Author’s Affiliation: Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Online Editors: Zhong Yao, Zheng Yifan Source: Contemporary Economic Research, 2020, No. 7