Essays on Capitalist Economy

Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

“We are what we eat; in the modern, western world, we are made more and, more into what we eat, whenever forces we have no control over persuade us that our consumption and our identity are linked ( Mintz, 1985, 211).” In his book, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Sidney. W. Mintz takes a historical and anthropological approach to the production and consumption of sugar and in the process explains the place of sugar in the human food chain and how capitalism and market forces changed the status of sugar from a luxury item into ...

Slavery as an institution takes various forms and it spans numerous centuries. The compatibility of slavery with different economic systems is evident from a simple analysis of the existing economic systems. The narrative of rise and fall of slavery have been used to depict the development of the modern capitalism. By looking at various aspects of a capitalist economy, it is apparent that slavery has major contributions to the success of the modern capitalists. Great differences in economic power, competitive ability, production efficiency, cultural orientation, and political powers exist between the capitalists and the wage earners. Karl Marx described ...

Introduction

It is noteworthy to study about the past labor and political economy of Japan, as its transformation to what it is today is too different from what it was in the past. Japan has successfully reinvented itself, from one that used to be a closed political economy, into a country that is now open to world economic integration. Despite its economic stagnation in the past few years, Japan remains to be one of the world’s greatest powers, and this can be attributed to decades of political and economic choices that fostered its miracle growth. One of the critical ...

BRICS effect on global capitalist economy

The debates about the increasing role of emerging economies became more vigorous since the global financial crisis that became a start for a new global framework with the developing countries surfacing as a major hub. The most attention is given to the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and the South Africa (BRICS) that had demonstrated high growth during the last decade against the global recession. The future dominance of the BRICS may shift the economic center towards the multipolar model. Changes in the matrix of competitive forces (finance, resources, technology) lead to a decline in the economic, political ...

While financial crises have been present for many years such as the Great Depression in and the 2008 financial crisis surprised many. The difficulties and struggle in the mortgage market in the United States had moved up to larger financial markets and later the economy. This financial crisis in 2008 that ensued the global recession until 2012 had changed the way the economy is viewed globally. The crisis had made global economy spiral down. The prices of commodities were constantly changing in an unpredictable ways which had frozen consumers. Secondly, due to the uncertainty in prices of commodities, there ...