Economic elites, crises, and democracy : alternatives beyond neoliberal capitalism

225 Pages·2014·1.63 MB·English

by  Andres Solimano

Economic Elites, Crises, and
Democracy

Economic Elites,
Crises, and
Democracy
Alternatives beyond Neoliberal
Capitalism
z
ANDRÉS SOLIMANO
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Solimano, Andrés.
Economic elites, crises, and democracy : alternatives beyond neoliberal capitalism / Andrés Solimano.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–935598–3 (alk. paper)
1. Elite (Social sciences)—History—21st century. 2. Rich people—History—21st century.
3. Financial crises—History—21st century. 4. Neoliberalism—History—21st century.
5. Capitalism—History—21st century. I. Title.
HN460.E4S65 2014
305.5′2—dc23
2014006781
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1. Introduction and Guide to the Book 1
PART ONE: Elites, Entrepreneurs, and the Middle Class: 
The Top 1 Percent and the Rest
2. Economic Elites and the Super-Rich in the Twenty-First Century 25
3. Productive Elites? On Entrepreneurship, the Technostructure, and
the Corporation 55
4. The Fragmentation of the Middle Class in the Neoliberal Era 68
PART TWO: Economic Crisis and the Instability of
Financial Capitalism
5. Stories of Financial Crisis and Austerity from the Nineteenth to the
Twenty-first Centuries 85
6. Making Sense of Crises in Capitalism: An Overview of
Theories and Approaches 110
PART THREE: Elites, Diaspora Migration and Social
Movements in Global Capitalism
7. The International Circulation of Elites and Global Social Movements 131
vi Contents
8. Migrant Diasporas, Development, and the Attachment to
National Identity 142
PART FOUR: Economic Democracy and the 99 Percent
9. Can Capitalism Afford Economic Democracy? 161
10. Epilogue: Deconstructing Neoliberal Capitalism 181
References 191
Index 203
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Entrepreneurship and Business School of Universidad
Mayor in Santiago, Chile, for providing a congenial environment for me
to complete this book. I would like to thank also my colleagues and good
friends Juan Pablo Jimenez from UN-ECLAC for joint work on economic
elites and taxation that led eventually to chapter 2 of this book; and Federica
Chiocchetti with whom I started, some years ago, the exploratory work on
economic democracy that served as the basis for chapter 9. I want also to
acknowledge the unfailing support and encouragement of Scott Parris, now
at Oxford University Press, in writing this book. Appreciation goes also to
Cathryn Vaulman from OUP for her continued help in the publication pro-
cess and to Angelica Sepulveda from Universidad Mayor, who provided very
effective assistance in the final stages of putting together the manuscript.
Last, but not least, my gratitude goes to my wife Bernardita, daughters
Gracia and Paula, and son Pedro for their patience and support while I was
writing this book.

1
Introduction and Guide to the Book
Since the 1980s and 1990s we have been living in a variant of capital-
ism—dominant in the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, South
Africa, Russia, and to an extent in China, and a score of other countries—that
embraces policies of privatization, market deregulation, globalization, dena-
tionalization, and financialization as the engines for growth and moderniza-
tion. This variety of capitalism, often called neoliberalism, shows the following
main features: (i) prevalence of monopolistic markets dominated by oligopo-
lies and big conglomerates in key economic activities; (ii) legitimization of the
profit motive over other motivations, such as solidarity and altruism, as the
fundamental mechanism to coordinate human activities and encourage wealth
creation and distribution; (iii) reduced role for the state in the economy as pro-
ducer, regulator, and redistributive agent; (iv) significant concentration of eco-
nomic power and political influence in small but powerful economic elites—in
other words, a strong dominance of capital; (v) a high frequency of financial cri-
ses; (vi) weakening of the influence of labor unions and decline of labor shares
in the national income; (vii) control of the mass media and other mechanisms
of knowledge production, and dissemination by private interests and economic
conglomerates; and (viii) low-intensity democratic processes with reduced citi-
zen participation, and strongly influenced by big money and interest groups.
The adoption of neoliberal policies has been accompanied, in the eco-
nomic and social realms, by pronounced growth cycles, financial instability,
large inequality of income and wealth, sharp internal differentiation of the
middle class generally considered as a stabilizing segment in society, fragmen-
tation of entrepreneurship, the globalization of elites, and a rise in the migra-
tion of highly segmented global labor markets along with the surge of global
and national social movements critical of inequality, power abuses and the
lack of effective and transparent democracy.