High road or common neoliberal trajectory? Collective bargaining, wage share, and varieties of capitalism
- Authors: Mpuku, Mutale Natasha Muchule
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Collective bargaining , Globalization , Labor union members , Wages Statistics , Income distribution , Economic development , Neoliberalism , Capitalism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/357611 , vital:64760
- Description: Wage shares have been falling since the 1980s across developing and developed countries. There has also been a downward trend with labour market institutions in these countries, with a few exceptions. This thesis analyzes these trends using firstly an extended literature review and secondly an econometrics analysis of a panel of 36 countries over 39 years. The extended literature review identified two broad competing narratives surrounding this topic: the mainstream and the alternative growth narratives. They both focus on two different growth regimes, the former, posits that growth is profit-led and the latter that growth is wage-led. Both are not ‘zero sum’ processes and seem to offer the same end result (growth and development). However, profit-led growth seems to have two problems. First, at least in the medium run, there is a trade-off between growth and income distribution. And secondly, profit-led growth is contradictory at the global level. Wage-led growth, which offers a ‘high road’ approach, seems far more appealing. Furthermore, several authors, including in South Africa, have claimed that regime-switching (to wage-led growth), is possible, and it seems that labour market institutions may play an important role in facilitating such a switch. However, the empirical literature, especially regarding middle- and low-income countries, is sparse and inconclusive. The panel data analysis provided by this thesis was not conclusive in establishing whether the wage-led, high road path is still viable for countries like South Africa. However, it did not find strong evidence of the contrary. The thesis concluded that there is scope for further research in this field and makes certain suggestions in this regard. , Thesis (MCom) -- Faculty of Commerce, Economics and Economic History, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
Capitalism and natural rights: Marx, Locke and the moral justification of capitalism: inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University
- Authors: Beard, T V R
- Date: 1979-07-25
- Subjects: Capitalism , Marx, Karl, 1818-1883 , Locke, John, 1632-1704
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:595 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020664
- Description: Inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University , Rhodes University Libraries (Digitisation) , ONE of the commonplaces among political philosophers and theorists is the contempt with which Marx regarded Natural Rights theory. In 1843 he wrote that "the so-called rights of man, the droit de l'homme as distinct from the droit du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society, that is the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community." And again "the real man is recognised only in the shape of the egoistic individual, the true man is recognised only in the shape of the abstract citoyen."1 Marx saw Natural Rights as means for the justification of capitalism, and so, as justifying inequalities of wealth and property-ownership. And of course it is true that many writers, in supporting Natural Rights, have stressed, as Stuart Brown expresses it, that "They are the rights of a man to the protection of what is in his interest. The moral interests of one man may differ radically from those of another. Different men may have radically different needs and capacities. And these differences, in conjunction with unavoidable differences in opportunity, produce differences in estate. "2 Expressions of this kind make clear the point of Marx's critique. I wish tonight to argue and to attempt to establish two main theses. The first is that, despite Marx's expressed attitudes to Natural Rights, his own theory of capitalism cannot easily be disentangled from Natural Rights theory, and, if my argument is right, it in fact depends upon it. Secondly, I shall try to show, through an examination of the theories of John Locke, that if Natural Rights theory is to be taken seriously, it is at odds with the very capitalist theory which it is generally taken to support, and that Natural Rights cannot therefore provide an adequate under-pinning of capitalism, at least not without generating self-contradictions within the theory of Natural Rights. If the arguments which I shall present are right, I shall hope to have established what might be termed two paradoxes.
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- Date Issued: 1979-07-25