Starlets: Before They Were Famous

Average customer rating:
Starlets: Before They Were Famous
Nancy Ellison
Manufacturer: Carlton Books Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 184222512X

Book Description

What can one man accomplish, even a great man and brilliant scientist? Although every town in France has a street named for Pasteur, was he alone able to stop people from spitting, persuade them to dig drains, influence them to undergo vaccination? Pasteur's success depended upon a whole network of forces, including the public hygiene movement, the medical profession (both military physicians and private practitioners), and colonial interests. It is the operation of these forces, in combination with the talent of Pasteur, that Bruno Latour sets before us as a prime example of science in action.

Latour argues that the triumph of the biologist and his methodology must be understood within the particular historical convergence of competing social forces and conflicting interests. Yet Pasteur was not the only scientist working on the relationships of microbes and disease. How was he able to galvanize the other forces to support his own research? Latour shows Pasteur's efforts to win over the French public--the farmers, industrialists, politicians, and much of the scientific establishment.

Instead of reducing science to a given social environment, Latour tries to show the simultaneous building of a society and its scientific facts. The first section of the book, which retells the story of Pasteur, is a vivid description of an approach to science whose theoretical implications go far beyond a particular case study. In the second part of the book, "Irreductions," Latour sets out his notion of the dynamics of conflict and interaction, of the "relation of forces." Latour's method of analysis cuts across and through the boundaries of the established disciplines of sociology, history, and the philosophy of science, to reveal how it is possible not to make the distinction between reason and force. Instead of leading to sociological reductionism, this method leads to an unexpected irreductionism.

Louis Pasteur: Disease Fighter (Great Minds of Science)

Average customer rating:

Louis Pasteur: Disease Fighter (Great Minds of Science)
Linda Wasmer Smith
Manufacturer: Enslow Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

Chemistry | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Technology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

Scientists | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0894907905

Louis Pasteur and Pasteurization (Graphic Library)

Average customer rating:

Louis Pasteur and Pasteurization (Graphic Library)
Jennifer Fandel
Manufacturer: Capstone Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0736868445

Average customer rating:

PASTEURIZATION OF FRANCE
BRUNO LATOUR
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K8M14U

Average customer rating:

An Apologist for Productivity and Scientific Managment

Post-Capitalist Society

The Post Capitalist Society

Get the whole picture elsewhere

Merely a collection of essays with a bold title

Post-Capitalist Society
Peter F. Drucker
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Theory | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Entrepreneurship | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Managing in the Next Society

The Information Society Reader (Routledge Studentreaders)

The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where all of Life is a Paid-For Experience

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management

ASIN: 0887306616

Book Description

Business guru Peter Drucker provides an incisive analysis of the major world transformation taking place, from the Age of Capitalism to the Knowledge Society, and examines the radical affects it will have on society, politics, and business now and in the coming years. This searching and incisive analysis of the major world transformation now taking place shows how it will affect society,economics, business, and politics and explains how we are movingfrom a society based on capital, land, and labor to a society whoseprimary source is knowIedge and whose key structure is theorganization.

Customer Reviews:

An Apologist for Productivity and Scientific Managment.......2006-12-05

I don't know whether we will become a post-capitalist society, as Drucker dreams it. Some make the argument that America may become a third world country because he don't produce goods as much as we used to. A service economy has a lower profit margin that one based on manufacturing. Most of the jobs being produced right now are low wage service jobs. Some once high paying technical jobs can be outsourced overseas to cheaper labor because of the miracle of the internet. A lot of the people from developing countries are moving into the developed ones and the trend seems to be increasing. We may be witnessing the merging of developing and developed countries.

Drucker makes an interesting point that the "rural slums" of the past were far worse off than the "satanic mills" of the industrial era. There was more money to be had in industry, even though the working conditions were bad. I generally got the impression while reading that the lot of the common people has improved as time has gone on and there is no use in pining for the old days. But with improved conditions comes rising expectations, so I guess that's why there is so much depression, nihilism, and malaise in prosperous countries these days.

The positive review of Frederick Taylor was surprising. Years ago, I read what Noam Chomsky said about him and figured he would be in the lowest part of hell along with B.F. Skinner for their supposed lack of compassion in trying to turn people into mere tools. Drucker states that Taylor actually wanted to make the worker more productive so that he could make more money and he also referred to the owners as hogs, proving his egalitarian sentiments. Taylor also helped us win World War II with his work principles. It is also interesting that wars can often help a nation become more productive and innovative because of necessity, which gets us out of our complacency. --I don't know what to believe now regarding Taylor. Is reading a way of informing yourself or is it just misinforming? I'll be wary of all intellectuals from now on.

If Mexico and America are so culturally different from one another why is it desirable to have the two merge into a North American Union? Drucker's answer is that Mexico needs to do so for economic reasons. Regionalism will also somehow strengthen the economy of that merged region. In Mexico's case, they really have a lot of wealth and resources in that country, but it is not shared with the poor. It has a much stronger plutocratic element than America and also has a lot of billionaires. Mexico sends its poor that they won't take of to America. I've also read that people can get by in Mexico, but they can make more money in America. It's a problem if someone comes to the country for solely economic reasons and without the general approval of the people of the host nation, especially when no limit has been defined. Merging with Mexico will surely lower American wages. Even if regionalism is an economic success, is economics more important than culture?

The European Union has been attempted, but from what I've read, it is unpopular with the people and many voted against it. I don't really consider it ethical to establish such a Union against their will, in this case. I can't help but think that regionalism will only benefit people who are already rich.

I am relieved to see that Drucker thinks that the Megastate is a bad idea.
Drucker's description of the Megastate is particularly disturbing when he states that the government thinks that your money and property is just something that they have allowed you to have. Having a permanent war time economy under the Megastate has put the government in debt with all its expenditures on defense. The money could be given back to the people or spent on other priorities.

Drucker reveals his opinions about how government should be run. Drucker associates high productivity with equality of income; equality can't be achieved by taxes and wealth redistribution. He likes that idea that a government should not try to spend its way out of a recession. Doing nothing will get a country out of a recession faster. Drucker believes that the government should pay for healthcare, but it should not manage healthcare institutions. This leads to delayed treatment and higher costs. Drucker believes that we should spend about 2 percent of GNP on the military, not 5 percent that we presently spend. This makes us uncompetitive economically.

Drucker's goals for schools are highly idealistic and seems to be overly confident that nearly everyone has the ability to be a knowledge worker. I don't think it will be possible for schools to give all students high literacy, eventually students' native ability will determine how far they go in achieving this literacy. Drucker defines high literacy as something beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also encompasses knowledge of science, technology, and foreign languages. As things are now, schools will be lucky to do well just to provide basic literacy. But in reality, it is ultimately up to the students to achieve literacy, not schools, which are just "guides". Drucker wrongly places the responsibility for student achievement on the schools, rather than the students. Schools can only offer the learning; the student has to then accept it. Schools and teachers can only be partially responsible; achievement is really the responsibility of the student, which will highly correspond with his ability. Drucker states that high school dropouts have the ability to become knowledge workers. I'm highly skeptical of this statement.

Post-Capitalist Society.......2006-08-31

On April 15, 2006 the Collegiate Forum at Georgetown University held a talk on the future of labor policy in the United States and how to redistribute opportunity. Peter F. Drucker's book was cited by the discussion leader numerous times and I subsequently read it. Jonathan Fantini Porter, President of the Collegiate Forum at Georgetown University, lead the discussion and argued that the Bill Clinton Initiative and similar opportunity distribution policies, similar to the ones argued by the author, are the means to achieving a strong labor force in the United States.

Peter F. Drucker is a superb source for economic policies.

The Post Capitalist Society.......2006-08-11

Reading this book was a review of what Peter would speak about in his classes in the early 1990's until he died. Professor Drucker had tremendous perception of what was happening in the world. He often said, "I will not tell you anything you don't know but I will tell you things you do not perceive". He accomplishes this in this book. Peter is not a visionary, he writes about things that are currently happening. He does not provide the answers for todays issues but rather clarifies the questions. He does not look at the world's issues as left or right but as a manager would who is faced with addressing them.

Everyone in the world, especially society's leaders, should read and re-read this book.

I have asked my grandkids to read this so that they will have a better understanding of the world they are growing up in.

Get the whole picture elsewhere.......2006-08-11

It certainly is no surprise with the development of technology and expansion of capitalism that knowledge-based workers are the future in American Society. It seems to me that Drucker spent too much time attempting to criticize Marx, which was a complete failure. Drucker didn't even fully analyze Globalization in its entirety.

The only credit that should be given to this book is his analyzation of the American worker. Nonetheless, he offers a limited viewpoint on all aspects of society. Look elsewhere if you want to get a better understanding of where our world is headed and what state we are in. Drucker neglects the whole and simply accepts what backs his own perspective.

Merely a collection of essays with a bold title.......2006-06-05

Perhaps reading this book from the vantage point of 2006 is a mistake, but I thought I'd enjoy Drucker's big picture thinking about the topic of the knowledge economy. Drucker's discussion of the rise of the knowledge worker in today's society was only a quarter of this book. This book is really a series of essays that lacked coherence as a whole. I would recommend "The Essential Drucker" instead, to the reader looking for a good compilation of Drucker's insights.

From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation

Average customer rating:

Summary: Mises was right
The ignorance of algorithms
Miscalculations and botched economies
You Won't Be Disappointed
A book of the first importance

From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation
David Ramsay Steele
Manufacturer: Open Court
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic Conditions | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Theory | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Conditions | International | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0812690168

Book Description

In 1920, Ludwig von Mises proclaimed that all attempts to establish socialism would come to grief, for reasons of informational efficiency. At first, socialists and economists took Mises's argument seriously, but by the end of the Second World War, a consensus prevailed that Mises had been discredited. More recently, that consensus has been rapidly reversed: it is now widely agreed that 'Mises was right'. Yet the momentous implications of the Mises argument - for economics, politics, culture, and philosophy - remain largely unexplored. From Marx to Mises is a clear, penetrating exposition of the economic calculation debate, and a scrutiny of some of the broader issues it raises.

Customer Reviews:

Summary: Mises was right.......2003-12-25

But why read that from David Steele? I would almost say why even bother reading about Marx's wothless arguments? except that to demolish socialist beliefs, you need to understand them. If you're interested, I suggest you also read Mises' book "Socialism". The one negative reviewer of this book criticizes Steele for not discussing the algorithms of calculuation. I can say that standard mathematics in regards to economics is gravely flawed and quite frankly irrelevant. Human beings are individuals who can make choices, not solar bodies who's behaviour can be nearly perfectly predicted by mathematics. The only mathematics that has any hope of being relevant to economics and praxeology is chaos theory and network theory.

The ignorance of algorithms.......2002-10-24

If you are a firm believer in the "free market" and know it to be the best of all possible economic organizations, both now and for ever more, then this is the perfect book to confirm your prejudices. This type of reader accounts for the five-star reviews this book has enjoyed (including glowing reviews in an academic journal or two).

If you are less convinced that you are living in the best of all possible worlds, in which efficiency and welfare are maximized, and instead are looking for alternatives, then this book is like taking a cold shower: it'll make you think about the problems involved in constructing alternatives.

Essentially, the book argues that it is undersirable to plan economic organization because planning is inherently inefficient compared to the operation of "free markets". From a scientific perspective the main problem with this book is methodology.

The author attempts to reason about complex systems, such as market organizations, planned economies, information flow from consumers to producers, coordination problems in systems with huge numbers of degrees of freedom, and so on, with very poor tools: essentially analytical philosophy and qualitative arguments. The sophisticated reader will be surprised to find very little mathematics or analysis of computational models. This is an acute lack because the calculation debate is essentially a debate about the theoretical and practical feasibility of classes of algorithms for allocating resources. The author doesn't have the intellectual tools to get to grips with the issues. For example, the actual planning algorithms that are critiqued are not specified in sufficient detail to implement. The author derives definitive conclusions from the analysis of partially and vaguely specified objects.

So for sceptics of the free market: read this critically, but take with a huge pinch of salt: remember the author is an ex-Marxist and revealed between the cracks of the often rambling prose is the desire to justify a wholesale rejection of past commitments. This motivation does not make for good science.

Miscalculations and botched economies.......2002-01-16

Critiques of Marxism are too often biased and useless misunderstandings of the substance and history of its philosophy and theories, but this book points to a partial exception that is more than ideological cliches, the socialist calculation debate, and contains a thorough history of this theoretical wrangle and its arcana, exposing the core weakness of the so-called Communist economies in action. Since consevatives make a fetish of this argument, I will recommend it instead to ostrich students on the left since few seem to be even aware of domain of discourse, or else they are not telling. G. Hogdson's Economics and Utopia also contains a corrective discussion of this issue, with a summary of "Towards a New Socialism", with its provocative and amusing attempt to resolve the intractable pricing nexus with computers! This after all is partly a technical, not a philosophic, issue, in the long run. Pricing twelve million commodities was a nightmare for Stalinist bureaucracies, but a few seconds computer time these days doing an input-output matrix! Hayek the dragonslayer may find himself trumped by Moore's Law, one day. That will be the day. Ha!
Important and useful book.

You Won't Be Disappointed.......2000-10-02

Only a man like Steele, who was once a well-versed Marxist, and then came to appreciate the passionate and compelling anti-socialism of "the Marx of capitalism," the great Ludwig von Mises, could have produced such an insightful book.

The trouble with most Marxists and Misesians is that they usually misconstrue the other side. Steele doesn't. He's one of the few writers who really understands where both sides are coming from.

The result is a fascinating and pentrating analysis of the single most important debate of the last 200 years----one which actually came close to destroying Western civilization as we know it.

Steele cuts through layers of irrelevancies to arrive at the crux of the controversy, and no one who reads this book will go away without a much deeper understanding of politics, economics, and intellectual history. (Example: A powerful analysis of the very idea of "property," whether public or private.) There is no thinking person that the insights of this book will not affect.

A book of the first importance.......1999-07-22

This book explores the relationship between economics and politics by focusing on the idea of "social planning" of the economy. The idea has been tremendously important, both in socialist and in modern liberal countries--but is it right? Steele shows the reasons for and against the idea, and while doing so provides an excellent account of the history of economic theories. He brings clarity, intelligence, and even wit to a subject that other writers struggle to make as opaque as possible. A fascinating book, the best introduction to modern economic thought that I've ever seen.

Economic Planning in Transition: Socio Economic Development and Planning in Post-Socialist and Capitalist Societies

Average customer rating:

Economic Planning in Transition: Socio Economic Development and Planning in Post-Socialist and Capitalist Societies
Janos Kovacs
Manufacturer: Dartmouth Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Production & Operations | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1855211130

Frankfurt School Critique of Capitalist Culture: A Critical Theory for Post-Democratic Society and Its Re-Education (Avebury Series in Philosophy)

Average customer rating:

This book supersedes Habermas in defining democratic praxis.

Frankfurt School Critique of Capitalist Culture: A Critical Theory for Post-Democratic Society and Its Re-Education (Avebury Series in Philosophy)
Ronald Jeremiah Schindler
Manufacturer: Avebury
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

This book supersedes Habermas in defining democratic praxis........1999-04-16

Dr. Schindler has explored the very limits of the Unhappy Consciousness of our times. He is a combination of Hegel and Habermas in terms of developing a historical materialism for the third millennium. He does not mince words. He believes there is Truth, and emprically analyzes the factors that have led to the colonization of the last democratic public spaces in the Atlantic democracies. Professor Schindler conceives that through self-understanding, by changing our own selves, we can collectively arrive at a new consensus on what is an effective democracy where all interest groups and the res publica in general are empowered to exercise the sovereignty inherent in a global community. In particular, he is concerned with the emergence of the United States as the dominant imperial elect, drawn from our corporate world. However, his concepts are not static; he has redesigned historical materialism to incorporate elements of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, cultural anthropology, political philosophy, sociology, linguistics, and general social science precepts that delineate a political praxis with an emancipatory thrust. After reading this classic work created in the context of its own time, the reader will find it incumbent upon himself/herself not simply to philosophize about the world but to change it. Professor Schindler means that we are all responsible for each other through discursive will formation. Revolutionary violence however is an ultima ratio. Our own nation's founding fathers proved willing to die for their democratic convictions.

Schindler advocates a fundamental change in the capitalist order so as to free all peoples hitherto dominated by the powers that be in order to birth an international order with founding fathers and mothers who understand and can explain scientifically the contradictions within capitalism that disallow the emergence of social democracy. He is appalled by the inequitable distribution of economic resources that could permit all denizens of our planet not only a historical right to be free but to live and enjoy a life that is ethical, that is one worth having been lived. Too, he develops principles of right in which they can be applied to whole groups of individuals who have been deemed marginal to the societies in which the rule of law polices them. Hence, there is a levels of analysis shift in which he looks toward a world socialist republic and one where these heretofore outgroups, the wretched of the earth, seize through critico-practical activity their species liberated potential to be fully human. Dr. Schindler cuts through the cant of present-day democratic propaganda to allow the human condition to see for itself what it truly is. He exposes the pathologies at hand through a linguistic critique of the disturbed patterns of communication that emerge from the huge disparities of economic power that frustrate democratic impulses so necessary to invigorate the general population to appropriate what has been stolen from them by the social forces of modernity, that is particularly illustrated by the absolutist princes of plutorcracy who make the Robber Barons of yesteryear look like philanthropists. His arguments are nuanced and subtle in espousing a dialectic of conflict within the Atlantic republics. With the revolution in communications and information made readily available through computers that any person can afford to buy and put in his bedroom, an enlightened populace can educate each other continually as to what are the basic problems of our Zeitgeist.

In particular, Professor Schindler anathematizes nationalism as the toxic poison that has made the twentieth century the most lethal in history. It is not just that wars are more deadly in a technical and scientific sense. Man has experienced an unprecedented repression of his instinctual life. At the collective level, the stressors externally in the environment and internally in the psyche has led man to desublimate his socialization process in order to release pent-up aggressions at the collective level in ceaseless wars. This spells genocide for the human project and the extinction of Homo sapiens. There is the principle of hope in Schindler. He has faith that the Enlightenment ideals can be reignited with a combination of political activism, reeducation, and a radical reorganization of the world order where the nation state alienates its sovereignty to a supranational entity. Hence, the new world order and its practioners would systemically be engaged in a participatory democracy at the local level but sanctioned by a global government in a confederation of special public interest groups, women's organizations, unions, and ethnic minorities. The reference point ultimately would be an international society in which all peoples belong, work at meaningful jobs, enjoy general respect and recognition as a birth right, and practice politics in an intelligent manner so that structurally and functionally there would be an integration of social purposes internationally through the redesign of current corporate and special interest groups, and their representatives, that would be socialized so as to be all inclusive of every species interest to enhance not only the survivability of the human project but to make it a worthy one.

Dr. Schindler indicates the public policy remedies that would have to be entailed to make that a reality and not just wishful thinking. He applies an especial focus on the university subsystem that has sold out its production of knowledge, that should be the patrimony of mankind, to Fortune Five hundred corporations and the government to the detriment of achieving social justice for groups historically excluded from the American mainstream. Hence, he believes that given that historical failure of nerve to incorporate marginal groups there has to be new thinking on a universal plane to effect an outcome in which every individual experiences himself/herself to be at home in the universe. I suspect we will be hearing further from Dr. Schindler in the near future as to how we can programmatically institutionalize such a vision, while minimalizing the risks of a general war that is now threatening the collective security of the world with the local conflict in the Balkans that has reached a critical threshold of engulfing the world in a general conflagration. In the name of humanity, the United States to this date has only aggravated the situation with its ideological arrogance by rendering foreign policy an extension of military violence. As the only superpower in the world, its leaders have calculated that to protect their economic empire their armies must police the world. That policy, as of this moment, has proven to be an abysmal failure, only putting the Kosovars in deeper danger of being "ethnically cleansed." In the new world order, such militaristic misadventures and parapraxes will be governed by prudence. That is man's best hope is to learn collective self-restraint and respect for other culture's attending to their poltical problems in a manner suited to their customs and democratic practices. We should not expect nations to be molded in our image. That is idolatry of the meanest sort. The way out is to sublimate aggressions by collective undertakings that materially allow all to enjoy not just the goods and services of a productive world order but to partake of a style of life that can be described as that of living the good life. Such a definition will realize its form as people partake of the poltical process in an all inclusive manner.

Average customer rating:

Shocking picture of counter-revolution's effects

Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan (Anthropology, Culture and Society Series)
Joma Nazpary
Manufacturer: Pluto Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books | Agricultural | Commercial Policy | Comparative | Consolidation & Merger | Cooperatives | Debt & Deficits | Development & Growth | Econometrics | Economic Conditions | Economic History | Economic Policy & Development | Exports & Imports | Free Enterprise | Inflation | International | Labor & Industrial Relations | Macroeconomics | Microeconomics | Money & Monetary Policy | Natural Resources | Privatization | Public Finance | Statistics | Sustainable Development | Theory | Unemployment | Urban & Regional
General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books
Former Soviet Republics & Siberia | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Russia | History | Subjects | Books
Cultural | Anthropology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Social Situations | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (California Series in Public Anthropology, 6)

ASIN: 0745315038

Book Description

In the 1990s, the former Soviet states of Central Asia experienced dramatic, revolutionary changes. Liberal economic reforms have affected every aspect of daily life, a new local elite of Mafia has rapidly taken power, and corruption and violence are now a fact of daily life.

Focusing on Kazakhstan, A Global Brothel examines the impact of the new capitalism on the everyday lives of the people of Central Asia. The author draws on extensive interviews as well as social and political analyses to explain the extent to which people have been dispossessed. The author assesses the strategies people have used to overcome poverty and insecurity: the new hallmarks of life for nearly everybody; and illustrates well the complex and human responses to the post-Soviet chaos.

Customer Reviews:

Shocking picture of counter-revolution's effects.......2002-01-03

Nazpary's remarkable book surveys the appalling effects of a real counter-revolution. Since 1990, Kazakh workers' rights to jobs, wages, welfare, free education, pensions and savings, have all been ripped away. Their access to cheap housing, electricity, gas, phones, transport, health care, childcare, sport, arts, libraries, have all gone. In the 1980s and 1990s, active NATO and IMF interventions enforced capitalism in Kazakhstan, grabbing oil, gas and metals for firms like Shell and British Gas. 15% of foreign investment is British, 23% South Korean, 29% US. Theft of public property through privatisation has closed factories and destroyed jobs: engineering and agricultural outputs both halved between 1995 and 1998.

This is what happens when the working class lets go of its controls over society, its party and trade unions.

As a young Kazakh woman said, "Before, in the Soviet time, there were moral limits and the authorities looked after them. There were high moral standards ... People were truthful. They were brought up in a good way. But today people have become like savage animals. They behave according to the law of the jungle."

Now violent and corrupt mafiosi, newly freed, traffic in drugs and sex, and become the new rich, while for the workers, there is only loss, insecurity, growing ethnic and gender tensions and huge growths in poverty and migration. Capital goes global; workers are ghettoised. The workers rightly see all these evils as resulting from the infliction of capitalism. Nazpary notes the very strong `Soviet patriotism' among the mass of the people, while the new rich view the Soviet era only as tyranny. He details the networking of family and friends in the scrabble for scarce goods, but as he notes, "tragically and paradoxically, networking as a response to the chaos perpetuates it."

In the FSU as whole, an estimated 4.7 million more people have died since 1990 as a direct result of the counter-revolution. As world capitalism, unrestrained by the USSR's existence, grows more brutal and corrupt, Kazakhstan is just one instance of problems common to workers across the world.

Kazakhstan's workers need to make a new revolution.

Average customer rating:
Information Technology Post Industrial Society of Capitalist Control
Kevin Robins , and Frank Webster
Manufacturer: Ablex Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0317447823

Average customer rating:
Network capital in capitalist, communist, and post-communist societies (Working paper)
Endre Sik
Manufacturer: The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Corporate Finance | Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006PEMPS

Average customer rating:
Post-capitalist Society
Peter F. Drucker
Manufacturer: HarperBusiness
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N7DQQA

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books