本文在作者已发表的“消费黑洞”理论基础上,完成从批判到建构的理论跨越。文章指出,传统政治经济学的根本局限在于将“价值”视为一种可被生产、占有与分配的实体性存在。本文提出一个截然不同的起点:分配的本质并非物质财富的权属分割,而是主体贡献的本体论承认。 基于对笛卡尔“我思故我在”、黑格尔—马克思“我劳动故我在”的存在论谱系溯源,本文拓展劳动实践范畴,建构“贡献存在论”(Contribution Ontology)*3(WD-2026-B003),提出“我贡献故我在”的本体论命题。本文确证:人的社会性存在通过劳动、消费、关系、文明四维贡献结构得以显现。这是马克思实践存在论在数字时代的延伸与深化。 依托贡献存在论,本文揭示资本主义的本质矛盾是制度化的“存在论暴力”(Ontological Violence)*4(WD-2026-B004)——资本通过三重褫夺否定消费、关系、文明维度的人类贡献。在此基础上,本文界定“消费无产阶级”(Consumption Proletariat)*5(WD-2026-B005)范畴:同一批劳动者在生产中是劳动无产阶级(被剥夺剩余价值),在消费中是消费无产阶级(被褫夺消费贡献价值)。这是劳动无产阶级的第二重属性,揭示当代资本主义“生产端剥削+消费端褫夺”的双重剥夺结构。 本文论证按消费贡献分配的历史必然性,建构“贡献流动理论”(Contribution Flow Theory)*6(WD-2026-B006)与“消费贡献值六重质变”(Sixfold Qualitative Transformation)*7(WD-2026-B007)核心架构。六重质变遵循“贡献值只升维不归零”的根本原则,实现消费贡献从隐匿到全球流通再到文明守护的全维度价值升维。第四重质变升华生成“公信值”(Public Trust Equity Value,PTV)——包含“社保值”(Personal Social Security Value,SSV)和“社权值”(Personal Governance Rights Value,GRV),标志着贡献从经济领域升华为公共治理领域。第五重质变升华生成“共信币”(Global Trust Coin,GTC)——归国家所有,全球流通,反制资本霸权。第六重质变升华生成“圣火币”(Eternal Fire Coin,EFC)——国家消耗共信币于全人类最高事业时燃烧升华,锚定国际治理话语权。 战略层面,本文提出“利益虹吸效应”(Interest Siphon Effect)*8(WD-2026-B008)理论,论证通过市场化理性选择实现消费者觉醒、资源集聚、主权转移的四阶段和平升维路径。本文确立的按消费贡献分配制度框架,是实现从资本主权到消费者主权(进而指向贡献者主权)文明和平升维的战略方案。 本文的最高文明论断是:共信主义(WD-2026-999)不是与暴力文明、资本文明、劳动文明并列的第四种特殊文明,而是人类文明的完成形态——一个终于承认一切贡献的普遍文明。它是共产主义在数字时代的制度化展开,是人类分配制度演进中从局部到全域的必然升维。共信主义不是资本的敌人,而是资本的归宿——它将资本从压迫和异化的根源,转化为服务人类共同福祉的贡献形态。按贡献分配是对“按资分配”和“按劳分配”进行历史扬弃后的完成形态。 关键词:按贡献分配(WD-2026-000);按消费贡献分配(WD-2026-B001);消费者主权(WD-2026-B002);贡献存在论(WD-2026-B003);存在论暴力(WD-2026-B004);消费无产阶级(WD-2026-B005);贡献流动理论(WD-2026-B006);六重质变(WD-2026-B007);贡献者主权(WD-2026-B009);共信主义(WD-2026-999) This paper,building upon the author‘s previously published theory of the Consumption Black Hole,completes the transition from critique to construction in political economy.It argues that the fundamental limitation of traditional political economy lies in treating“value”as a substantive entity that can be produced,possessed,and distributed.The paper proposes a radically different starting point:the essence of distribution is not the division of material wealth,but the ontological recognition of subjective contribution. Based on a critical examination of the ontological genealogy from Descartes’“I think,therefore I am”to Hegel-Marx‘s“I labor,therefore I am,”this paper extends the category of labor practice to the broader domain of contributive existence.It demonstrates that human social existence manifests through multiple dimensions——labor,consumption,relationality,and civilization——which together constitute the four-dimensional ontological structure of human contribution. Drawing upon this framework,the paper deconstructs the deep operational logic of capitalism:the essential contradiction of capitalism is not superficial distributional inequality,but institutionalized Ontological Violence——the systematic deprivation of contributions in the dimensions of consumption,relationality,and civilization.On this basis,the paper defines the category of the Consumption Proletariat as the second attribute of the proletariat,revealing the complete structural mechanism of dual deprivation in contemporary capitalism. Integrating the materialist premises of digital productive forces——big data,blockchain,and artificial intelligence——this paper demonstrates the historical inevitability of Distribution According to Consumption Contribution.It constructs a Sixfold Qualitative Transformation framework:welfare-based→savings-based→investment-based→public governance(Public Trust Equity Value,embracing Social Security Value and Governance Rights Value)→international(Global Trust Coin)→civilizational(Eternal Fire Coin)——achieving full-dimensional value return from contribution visibility to global circulation to civilizational guardianship.At the strategic level,this paper proposes the Interest Siphon Effect theory,demonstrating that consumer resources constitute the structural core node of capital circulation.It outlines a four-stage peaceful evolutionary path of human civilizational upgrading and capital reclamation from consumer awakening to sovereignty transformation,ultimately pointing toward Contribution Sovereignty. The supreme civilizational thesis of this paper is:Convivialism is not the fourth special civilization alongside the civilizations of violence,capital,and labor,but the completed form of human civilization——a universal civilization that finally recognizes all contributions.It is the institutional unfolding of communism in the digital age and the inevitable upgrading from partial to universal recognition in the evolution of distribution systems.Convivialism is not the enemy of capital,but its ultimate destination——transforming capital from a source of oppression and alienation into a contribution form that serves human common well-being. Keywords:Distribution According to Contribution(DAC,WD-2026-000);Distribution According to Consumption Contribution(DACC,WD-2026-B001);Consumer Sovereignty(WD-2026-B002);Contribution Ontology(WD-2026-B003);Ontological Violence(OV,WD-2026-B004);Consumption Proletariat(CP,WD-2026-B005);Contribution Flow Theory(CFT,WD-2026-B006);Sixfold Qualitative Transformation(SQT,WD-2026-B007);Contribution Sovereignty(WD-2026-B009);Convivialism(WD-2026-999)
A unit of semantic labor cannot function as money, because meaning is not fungible without being destroyed. THE MONEY-FUNCTION TEST: Any instrument enabling transferability + accumulability + general comparability + convertibility + settlement power functions as money—regardless of framing. THE HARDEST SENTENCE: If semantic labor becomes currency, semantic life becomes debt. THE POST-MONEY OPERATOR STACK (PMOS): 1. Context Ledgers (CL): Memory without fungibility 2. Reciprocity Windows (RW): Obligation without permanent debt 3. Non-Transferable Credentials (NTC): Recognition without accumulation 4. Commons Access Rights (CAR): Allocation without payment 5. Dispute and Repair Protocols (DRP): Settlement without objectivity theater THE MONEY LIMIT: Money works when value can be abstracted from context. Money fails when value is inseparable from context. Semantic labor crosses the money limit. THE ABOLITION: Money is abolished not by replacing it with better money, but by building coordination systems appropriate to the form of value being coordinated. PMOS is designed so that adding money-properties destroys the system's function—structural protection against financialization. SCHOLARLY LINEAGE: Marx → Mauss → Polanyi → Graeber → Ostrom → Semantic Economy This document prevents recuperation of the Semantic Economy critique into "semantic tokens" or other money-functioning schemes.
This article presents research on emerging global techno-libertarian networks for the establishment of venture-capital, crypto, and Web3-based jurisdictions and the new territorial and state projects they produce, including free private cities, charter cities, seasteads, and network states. Rooted in a self-professed anarcho-capitalist ideology, many of these projects paradoxically claim to eliminate “the state” in favor of decentralized and self-organized societies, while simultaneously proposing or producing different forms of centralized power. The article provides a critical analysis of techno-libertarian statecraft by examining the visual and discursive representations used to convey and obscure ideas of state, governance, and power. To do so, I look primarily at the use of metaphor (Semino 2008) and spectacle (Tsing, 2005) in techno-libertarian representations of territory. Finally, the article uses the Próspera Zone for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDE) located on the Honduran island of Roatán and in the Satuyé Port, La Ceiba as a case study in private statecraft. In addition to analyzing the structures created by Honduras Próspera Inc to govern the highly autonomous jurisdiction and the longevity biotech “network state” that it hosts, the article explores the visual representations that accompany actual structures of governance and state power.
Kamilla Nazirkhanova, Vrushank Gunjur, X. Pilli Cruz-De Jesus, Dan Boneh
Ensuring the privacy of votes in an election is crucial for the integrity of a democratic process. Often, voting power is delegated to representatives (e.g., in congress) who subsequently vote on behalf of voters on specific issues. This delegation model is also widely used in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Although several existing voting systems used in DAOs support private voting, they only offer public delegation. In this paper, we introduce Kite, a new protocol that enables $\textit{private}$ delegation of voting power for DAO members. Voters can freely delegate, revoke, and re-delegate their power without revealing any information about who they delegated to. Even the delegate does not learn who delegated to them. The only information that is recorded publicly is that the voter delegated or re-delegated their vote to someone. Kite accommodates both public and private voting for the delegates themselves. We analyze the security of our protocol within the Universal Composability (UC) framework. We implement Kite as an extension to the existing Governor Bravo smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, that is widely used for DAO governance. Furthermore, we provide an evaluation of our implementation that demonstrates the practicality of the protocol. The most expensive operation is delegation due to the required zero-knowledge proofs. On a consumer-grade laptop, delegation takes between 7 and 167 seconds depending on the requested level of privacy.
The single and combined work of Scott Lash and John Urry have become extremely significant in the social sciences in the UK and beyond. In particular, one of their principal ideas that dominant capitalist countries have made a transition to a ‘disorganized’ and ‘mobile’ era founded on digital networks, global flows of people, objects, images and texts, decentralized and flexible work practices, declining industrialized social classes, and a loss of power for the nation-state to regulate flows of finance, has influenced many researchers. Their work has even helped to establish of a new ‘mobilities’ paradigm in the social sciences. Ernest Mandel has also explored the impact of digital technology on capitalist restructuring. Indeed, he claims that from 1945 onwards, a ‘late capitalist’ wave emerged predicated on the rise of factors like automation, the service sector, and new class identities. Unlike Lash and Urry, however, Mandel applies Marxist theory to investigate these changes. The aim of this paper is to draw on Mandel’s ideas to examine critically the account put forward by Lash and Urry. Five areas in particular will be discussed: theoretical differences between Lash and Urry and Mandel; the transition between different phases in capitalism; the changing composition of social class; whether the workplace is now dominated by decentralized and flexible networks; and the relationship between finance, the state and digital technology.
 Los trabajos individuales y combinados de Scott Lash y John Urry han adquirido una gran relevancia en las ciencias sociales del Reino Unido y de otros países. En particular, una de sus ideas principals y más influyente se fundamente en que los países capitalistas dominantes han realizado una transición hacia una era "desorganizada" y "móvil" basada en las redes digitales, flujos globales de personas, objetos, imágenes y textos, prácticas laborales descentralizadas y flexibles, declive de las clases sociales industrializadas y pérdida de poder del Estado-nación para regular los flujos financieros. Su trabajo, sin duda, ha contribuido a establecer un nuevo paradigma de "movilidades" en las ciencias sociales. También Ernest Mandel ha estudiado el impacto de la tecnología digital en la reestructuración capitalista. En efecto, afirma que a partir de 1945 surgió una oleada de "capitalismo tardío" basada en el auge de factores como la automatización, el sector servicios y las nuevas identidades de clase. Sin embargo, a diferencia de Lash y Urry, Mandel aplica la teoría marxista para investigar estos cambios. El objetivo de este artículo es basarse en las ideas de Mandel para examinar críticamente el relato presentado por Lash y Urry. Se discutirán cinco áreas en particular: las diferencias teóricas entre Lash y Urry y Mandel; la transición entre las diferentes fases del capitalismo; la composición cambiante de la clase social; si el lugar de trabajo está ahora dominado por redes descentralizadas y flexibles; y la relación entre las finanzas, el Estado y la tecnología digital.
Abstract This chapter discusses the justification of Bitcoin from the perspective of political philosophy. Bitcoin is a form of digital money that is not tied to a central bank or government and that primarily facilitates anonymous economic transactions on the internet. The chapter suggests that the Bitcoin movement to a large extent has been driven by a libertarian framework, stressing the right of individuals to choose their own means of transaction without government interference or oversight. However, it argues that the libertarian case ultimately is unconvincing. A better case for Bitcoin can be formulated by using an egalitarian framework, more specifically, concerns about unequal distribution of power and resources. In the end, however, the chapter makes the claim that the justification also must depend on the political and economic context, and that this seems to speak against the use of Bitcoin in reasonably well-ordered societies.
Abstract One of the perennial fault-lines in monetary theory is that between commodity and credit theories of money. The emergence of alternative payment systems based on blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, of which Bitcoin is the most prominent example, has raised a host of important questions in relation to this debate. This article considers two. The first is ontological: Are Bitcoin and similar ‘cryptocurrencies’ best conceived of as money? The second is political: Do these money candidates represent an emancipatory development over state-backed fiat currency? The ontological question, we will argue, invites the political one. If it is the case, as Chartalists maintain, that (i) for some X to be money it must have certain properties which can only be imparted by political authority (broadly understood) and if (ii) political authority ought to be subject to public control, then attempts by private actors to usurp a social ‘money function’ cannot count as legitimate political developments. We will argue in support of this position. This discussion is limited to Bitcoin, though its implications generalize for relevantly similar cryptocurrencies. Our method involves considering, first, claims made by Bitcoin’s defenders about its status as money, and what accounts for that status. While these claims are often thought to extend Mengerite or generally Austrian lines of economic argument, they resonate more with Marx’s theory of monetary value. Moreover, a close assessment of that theory’s defects yields specific normative conclusions that potentially undermine the notion that Bitcoin constitutes a valid means of resisting state monetary authority.
Hugh D. Whittaker, Timothy J. Sturgeon, Toshie Okita and Tianbiao Zhu, Compressed Development: Time and Timing in Economics and Social Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 295 pp. £ 60.00 hardback. Graham Harrison, Developmentalism: The Normative and Transformative within Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 304 pp. £ 58.74 hardback. At the turn of the 21st century, development research witnessed the consolidation of a socio-economic transformation paradigm centred around individual agency (and freedoms) and localized processes of empowerment (and stable forms of change). Within this paradigm, development processes are mainly mediated through markets and enhanced by good governance institutions. Neoclassical economics, as well as humanist approaches to development advanced by the capability approaches of Amartya Sen (1999) and Martha Nussbaum (2000), provide theoretical foundations to this paradigm. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Agenda for 2000–2015 was a clear manifestation of this established consensus at the turn of the century (United Nations, 2000). Aligning with a liberal tradition, these theories have promoted research in development policies and the implementation of institutional market failure fixes that deliberately avoid a direct engagement with the political economy of structural transformation, the developmental role of the state, and the full reality of development in context. Examples of the transformative structural dynamics that the conventional development discourse struggles to grasp include changes in the organization of global production and their impact on the development of countries; technological changes driven by information and communications technology and, more recently, digitalization; the rise of China and the ‘great doubling’ in the global labour markets. There have been several calls for new syntheses, integrating alternative research frameworks which can address the current reality of global development. These include a call to rediscover high-level theories of the classical political economy and developmentalist traditions.11 See, for example, Chang and Andreoni (2021) and other contributions in the special issue on ‘Bringing Production Back into Development’; Kholi (2004) on the developmental state; and Kvangraven (2021) on the ‘dependency research programme’. The widening contradictions between the dominant development research agenda and the reality of local and global development have been addressed mainly by scholars ‘trespassing’ across disciplinary boundaries (Hirschman, 1981). This includes economists working in the classical political economy tradition — Marxist in particular but also Structuralists, Schumpeterians and Old Institutionalists — alongside anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists. This essay considers two recent books whose authors breach these traditions and disciplines. They both make a significant, and in many respects complementary, contribution in pushing ahead a new wave of high-development theory better equipped — both theoretically and empirically — to address development and underdevelopment in the 21st century. The first of these two books, Compressed Development: Time and Timing in Economic and Social Development (hereafter Compressed Development) by Hugh D. Whittaker, Timothy J. Sturgeon, Toshie Okita and Tianbiao Zhu, advances a new theoretical synthesis within which the global matrix of technological and organizational change (and their co-evolving relationships) is framed and linked to state and markets relations (and their embedding and disembedding dialectics). The authors use these theoretical constructs to identify and document distinctive features of the current ‘era’ of development — what they call ‘compressed development’. In their view, there is something unique in the regime of compression experienced by countries from 1990 onwards. Compressed development is a historical phase of global capitalist transformation characterized by ‘out-of-sequence’ and ‘simultaneous’ phenomena. For example, the authors point to the coexistence of ‘premature de-industrialisation’ in developed economies and ‘thin industrialisation’ among several middle-income countries (p. 23). Furthermore, Compressed Development highlights how ‘transmission mechanisms’ such as global value chains (GVCs) and the disembedding of global markets lead to the spread of phenomena like financialization and interdependence across developed and developing countries. Indeed, the book points to mutual interdependencies between countries whereby national dynamics shape (and are shaped by) state–market and organization–technology relationships unfolding in different countries. For example, the compressed development framework highlights how imperial powers shaped the development journey of ‘the rest’ through ‘policy space compression’, as well as showing how the rise of the rest — China in particular — has affected early and late industrializers including America and Japan (the so-called ‘China shock’). These structural interdependencies pose new development trade-offs in the forms of ‘dual challenges’, especially for countries aspiring to achieve socially inclusive industrialization. This is perhaps the second most important contribution of this book — pointing out that social policy was a key, although implicit, ingredient of late industrialization (Mkandawire, 2004) and that this key policy has become increasingly difficult to deliver under compressed development. ‘Recent developers now face simultaneous challenges in social development which early and late developers confronted sequentially’ (p. 160). Education and health are sectors in which the double burdens and challenges are most acute and difficult to address. In the education sector, for example, the need for inclusive ‘basic education’ co-exists alongside the need for ‘advanced education’ towards technological and innovation capabilities development. These complex relationships and policy challenges are finally addressed in Chapter 8 of Compressed Development with the introduction of the idea of an ‘adaptive developmental state’ and the discussion of the need for ‘dynamic state‒civil society relationships’ (p. 185). Building on the case of China, the authors convincingly point to the importance of understanding the opportunities offered by multilevel governance structures and incentives, including ‘local developmentalism’; they also highlight new problems posed by decentralization projects for overall policy coherence and integration at the time when these are increasingly necessary. The book adopts a political economy lens to advance a stylized theory of an adaptive developmental state. However, it does not fully engage with the problems that ‘the rest of the rest’, that is, countries that have not even managed to reach their middle-income status, are facing in their efforts to initiate and sustain their infant processes of capitalist transformation. This is where Compressed Development finds an interesting interface and starts a dialogue with the second book reviewed in this essay. The second book, Developmentalism: The Normative and Transformative within Capitalism (hereafter Developmentalism) by Graham Harrison, offers an ambitious critical political economy framework that takes on — directly and forcefully — the ‘normatively pleasing’ approach to development embodied by capability approaches and germane liberal development perspectives (p. 48). The key historical anchor of the book is that while romanticized historiographies of capitalist transformation should be avoided, we cannot escape from acknowledging the fact that developed capitalist societies have achieved generalized conditions of material progress which are historically unprecedented. Within developed capitalist societies these conditions of material progress are so ‘pervasive and obvious’ that they are often not recognized — even though ‘they are very easily recognizable if one does not live in these conditions’ (p. 7). Using Tanzania as a standpoint — a country where a radical transformation in the material conditions of people's daily lives has still to come — the book centres the analysis on the tension between progress and agency, as a tension between the normative and the transformative. This is central to development understood as a process of capitalist transformation, an untidy process that is in fact intrinsically (p. 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The of this synthesis is by the that the authors as well as that the can country research In Compressed the contradictions and challenges in the education and social sectors are linked to the of compressed and the this of capitalist transformation. we these and contradictions at a more of capitalist frameworks can to are the dominant of development that from these contradictions and This is where an dialogue between the authors of the two books reviewed in this essay Compressed Development on the key and the of dynamics capitalist transformation, book the of an historical within which policy is as a of of and In and is and is state social to and and is on a process of that is intrinsically (p. is, the in which political is to has a of the dynamics of between the state and of the coherence and social of the of and their to stable projects of social the to which state and and the dynamics of and in of the The features by cannot be more from the of development in Amartya of as and other normative political theories of and In Chapter of the a critical of the theoretical foundations of the capability approach — in — and normative points out how the within capability approaches is the one of the and this is where individual for social structures agency are as a to individual forcefully liberal traditions for their of understanding of the political economy of structural transformation and is not to that also from the institutional fixes promoted within the good governance agenda and by Economics This agenda the manifestation of social phenomena with their For example, is framed as a even in most development and to for ‘the of (p. which as the structures and relations central to the capitalist this can be understood by the between institutional development and Indeed, it was capitalist and inclusive that institutional change and state the book is framed within a Marxist tradition theory of so to that the phenomena and the — that is, the structural and capitalist social relations that their forms of and has not a process of and markets are and not into of labour is a of the by and the of by are to the to a to provide material for The second — in which is and, is not (and — is the most one in of the engagement with this is one that takes from approaches calls such as ‘dependency In view, these approaches not engage with the of capitalist development in the alongside approaches such as of Production and that on to for example, Within these the of is fully In the of markets and and the of are key of state and capitalist transformation. In this the of the capitalist state is not it is the of a historical and political framed so takes a and to address this This is one of the key contributions to development research and the of a approach to centred around approaches to development are on a in which are to the These what is and (p. Within this if conditions of processes and of the development of state points out how this of the state to as a of implementation a for the of normative (p. In view, this is to as not they are in (p. alternative of of the state and the political can be in on this approach to identify as a political as one important of among which from socially and historically In we can an interesting with political and on the role of institutions. Harrison, one In book the so-called ‘basic that the state to achieve a of of and is in of and the conditions of (p. to Harrison, the of is also a political theory with a critical and the of the most a for This is the to forms of are so that their and are their (p. this and under forms of that are to in the of for it is to forms of governance such as the of of In and a historical and political economy of how in America and their for capitalist — from and to society and and is in this the developmentalist state, and a dominant one which shaped through the global space for development. Indeed, the first of as a to this and the from like and and policy America achieved through policy of the of was more the rest of the This capitalist and of including and the of However, in both America and as their economies the to a and the state to address this to and late and development in countries such as China, and for most of these countries there is a still to highlight important political economy and contributions to the contributions in the have to the capitalist transformation of of these countries — in — by developmental and on the process of state and and the rise of a capitalist within a material of capitalist transformation. In this the of China and are as of we on the from both books, Compressed Development and the is with a of the importance and of integrating these research into a new ‘compressed This essay has key contributions by Compressed Development and that understanding of and the political economy of capitalist transformation. books a of development whose can be to classical political economy and on and political economy structures and their books from an to make of a production Compressed Development with a the of a late and very within the and on the of in (p. This of the and the new — something that in developing countries often — is difficult to within a of development and in Andreoni with an in which the Tanzania with an Tanzania in when has in this become dominant (p. This is centred on the and of the The in to Tanzania to a capitalist transformation under and the of the 21st century an to this analysis the developmental of Tanzania with that of books also a of development as capitalist transformation in which production transformation is with social and institutional and state They also the idea that the developmental state is to the that it can deliver social that is, be inclusive (and does not in of the books, their and but this is with their Compressed Development on the in which the state is by good and social under a compressed development on the in which the state can a through of (and This is in fact an ingredient of the development In Compressed double of and disembedding are central in the of a theory of the while is to the In a Marxist lens is to and dynamics in the process of state both books a that is, the integration of theory and In the case of Compressed this integration for an framework in which and historical time and agency is This does not that there is agency, but that development in a and This tradition can be to the of classical development economists — from to — but also to scholars of technological change and such as and In the case of the historical is mediated by the it is directly in Marxist political economy and a approach to In and can be to the of and are these books in the of a political economy of developmental between the books can be as an approach that is liberal approaches to but an approach in the reality of and material of the state. For Harrison, — a approach to — is a to a change that is within as and the historical of is on In Compressed the authors are mainly on towards a developmental state. recent contributions in Development and have at the for example, Chang and Whittaker, Sturgeon, Okita and a new of developmental state whose is to be the of multilevel governance and local in China Chapter Compressed Development points to opportunities offered by projects in a time of compression such as and also points to the fact that this two local but it does so at the of policy coherence and the of is more in a time of but the of many social and on the address of these contradictions and and in society an important the state–market and co-evolving They call for state‒civil society (p. a often but difficult to in especially at a time when forms of such as political and have been in This is perhaps where the two books reviewed in this essay to even on the of the we society we the society in capitalist countries like and Tanzania in so-called advanced countries like the This an but it is a central In both the of and policies as in Compressed as well as the political of and a material of social change that the state and a of for as in These two books, in this other and from two different an important contribution to these and for the Andreoni is of Development Economics at University of is also University of and an of the of Development has on the political economy of development and
In recent decades, the birth of crypto-currency has challenged the monopoly of paper money controlled by national central banks and their respective states. From a decentralized conception of the economy, digital currencies such as Bitcoin have tried to replace traditional money as a new and more democratic form of economic relationship. However, it is necessary to confront these new forms of economic exchange with Karl Marx's analyses in Das Kapital to see whether they really represent an effective alternative to capitalism or whether they fall into new forms of capitalist relations.
Cryptocurrencies present a disruption to financial institutions, investments, and markets. Should governments therefore allow cryptocurrencies or ban them? How will they affect the flow of money? What form of economic justice should the cryptocurrency market adopt? Who should be involved in the determining of the economic justice? I claim that Michael Polanyi’s theories about employment, money, trade, and his overarching sociotechnical vision of society and the economy can help us understand the current labour market challenges and solutions in view of the digital economy.
This chapter seeks to contextualize the nature of cryptocurrencies as an alternate form of capital that, while being inspired by cryptoanarchist thought, has come to embody extreme forms of inequality among its owners. The concentration of wealth produces a “whale effect” that, as the chapter argues, in fact reflects the forms of inequalities that are found in the ownership of traditional forms of capital. The chapter thus alludes to the mismatch between the professed cryptoanarchist philosophical bent of cryptocurrency owners and the reality of capital ownership in the cryptocurrency domain; while cryptoanarchism postulates autonomy, decentralization, and the spread of ownership, the whale effect suggests that cryptocurrencies are insufficiently different from traditional forms of capital in this regard. This challenges the degree to which the praxis of cryptocurrencies coheres with the philosophy of cryptoanarchism.
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.
This article analyses the rules on wage coordination and their effectiveness in the Italian two-tier bargaining system. It seeks to cast light on bargaining coordination by starting from the analysis of collective agreements, rather than focusing exclusively on normative and institutional aspects of wage bargaining. Accordingly, the study examines a dataset of 498 company-level collective agreements concluded between 2012–2015 in three sectors – metalworking, food, banking and finance – to analyse wage developments in company-level bargaining. The study considers the extent to which local wage negotiations are consistent with the rules on wage bargaining coordination laid down in economy-wide agreements and national collective labour agreements. Wage coordination rules are generally respected, though a significant number of company-level agreements still provide fixed-rate pay rises in breach of the rule that wage increases at company level should be linked to productivity and other factors relating to the workers’ and/or the firm’s economic performance. Although the violation of wage bargaining rules between national agreements and company-level collective agreements is in line with the favourability principle, it is argued that local negotiations on fixed-rate pay rises could be regarded as a form of uncoordinated decentralization, diminishing the effectiveness of horizontal coordination policies and the normative role of the social partners.
This book is based upon research and reflection supported by BALTA during its initial research program from 2006-2012. It explored many of the themes that became central to BALTA’s work in its Scaling Innovation for Sustainability Project. With our communities confronted by major sustainability challenges, many linked to the impact of climate change, it argues for replacing the paradigm of limitless economic growth with a more decentralized, co-operative, steady-state economy. It examines case studies of success in energy sufficiency, local food systems, low-cost community based financing, affordable housing and land reform. Specific chapters and the book as a whole redefine the development paradigm within a sustainability and steady-state economic framework.
Abstract. This paper examines the process of mass democracy as the fundamental cause of transfer seeking and the centralization of governance, using Austrian-school theory and methodology such as decentralized knowledge, disaggregated phenomena, and the structure of capital goods. The alternative of decentralized, small-group gov-ernance reduces the demand for campaign financing and makes more effective use of decentralized knowledge. In addition, when public revenues originate in the local districts and are passed on to higher levels of governance, it provides incentives for revenue sources which do not have an excess burden on production. The governance struc-ture of cellular, bottom-up, multi-level voting, with public revenue flowing up from the lower to the upper levels, provides a contrast for a comparative systems analysis that can yield insight into the transfer seeking endemic in mass democracy.