Описание: Conventional wisdom argues that welfare state builders in the US and Sweden in the 1930s took their cues from labour and labour movements. This work makes the argument that social reformers took capitalist interests and preferences into account.
Honorable Mention, 2019 Saul Viener Book Prize, given by the American Jewish Historical Society
A vivid history of the American Jewish merchants who concentrated in the nation's most important economic sector
In the nineteenth century, Jewish merchants created a thriving niche economy in the United States' most important industry--cotton--positioning themselves at the forefront of expansion during the Reconstruction Era. Jewish success in the cotton industry was transformative for both Jewish communities and their development, and for the broader economic restructuring of the South. Cotton Capitalists analyzes this niche economy and reveals its origins. Michael R. Cohen argues that Jewish merchants' status as a minority fueled their success by fostering ethnic networks of trust. Trust in the nineteenth century was the cornerstone of economic transactions, and this trust was largely fostered by ethnicity. Much as money flowed along ethnic lines between Anglo-American banks, Jewish merchants in the Gulf South used their own ethnic ties with other Jewish-owned firms in New York, as well as Jewish investors across the globe, to capitalize their businesses. They relied on these family connections to direct Northern credit and goods to the war-torn South, avoiding the constraints of the anti-Jewish prejudices which had previously denied them access to credit, allowing them to survive economic downturns.
These American Jewish merchants reveal that ethnicity matters in the development of global capitalism. Ethnic minorities are and have frequently been at the forefront of entrepreneurship, finding innovative ways to expand narrow sectors of the economy. While this was certainly the case for Jews, it has also been true for other immigrant groups more broadly. The story of Jews in the American cotton trade is far more than the story of American Jewish success and integration--it is the story of the role of ethnicity in the development of global capitalism.
Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. Surveying the development of the steel, automobile, and semiconductor industries in each of these countries, Jeffrey A. Hart illuminates the role of national policy in a changing world.
Hart describes the global structure of production and consumption in the five major capitalist countries and offers a rich comparative history of their industrial policymaking. He concludes that variations in statesocietal arrangements—and the impact these differences have on the creation and diffusion of new technologies—provide the best explanation for divergences in international competitiveness. In Japan, state and business are allied, but labor is marginalized, whereas in Germany, labor and business are allied, and the state is decentralized. Yet both countries have become increasingly competitive because they have developed institutional mechanisms for technology diffusion. France's state-led system, in contrast, is linked with only moderate competitiveness. The decline of competitiveness in the United States and Britain, Hart concludes, may be attributed to state-societal arrangements that have allowed one actor-labor in Britain, business in the United States-to dominate policymaking.
Rival Capitalists will be an invaluable source for policymakers and business analysts as well as scholars and students of political economy, international relations, industrial organization, industrial sociology, and comparative politics.
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