Theoretical Perspectives on Capitalism - Supporters of Capitalism

English economist Adam Smith is widely regarded as the father of economics. He was among the first authors to put forth a theoretical and ideological analysis of capitalism in his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith believed that people naturally tend to seek self-interest and improve their material conditions. He also believed that people have a natural tendency to buy and sell goods. For him, the best economic system is the one that promotes selfishness, entrepreneurship, competition, a laissez-faire market, and international free trade. Smith was decidedly against practices like mercantilism, guild restraints on participation and apprenticeship rules, protectionism, and monopolies. He argued that monopolies bring several negative consequences – higher prices, bad management, pressure on the government to protect their monopolistic interests, and misallocation of resources. Smith showed how crucial the division of labor in an economy is, as it improves worker’s skills, and promotes inventiveness and output.

Smith believed that the role of government should be limited. The only beneficial aspects of government intervention are creating and maintaining the military, maintaining internal order in the country, preventing monopolies, providing public goods in cases with large externalities (like financing education), and collecting taxes. Taxation should be proportional, the rate of taxation should be known in advance, and taxes should be levied at the most convenient time and easy to collect. Smith argued in his theory of price that the prices of goods are a direct consequence of the costs of paying for the land, labor, and capital involved in producing certain goods. Smith called the price that comes from the cost of production a natural price. He argued that market price tends to equal natural price. Smith also introduced the concept of natural wage, which was the rate that allowed workers only to survive and reproduce, and left them without any surplus.

Max Weber was a great proponent of capitalism, seeing it as the most rational organization of the economy. Capitalism entails the following aspects: rationalized technology, bureaucratic organization of companies and the state, calculable legal system, entrepreneurial engagement of capital, entrepreneurial ethics, and free labor and markets. He viewed bureaucracy as the most rational mechanism for governing the state and other organizations and institutions. Bureaucracy enables efficient and systematic management of a large number of people and material resources. Although the rudiments of bureaucracy appeared with the first civilizations, it was not until the nineteenth century that bureaucratic management spread to all aspects of social life. This development and expansion of bureaucracy were made possible by the creation of a centralized state, an increase in traffic and communication systems, an increase in the monetary economy, an increase in tax revenues, and the development of the industry.

Friedrich Hayek was a staunch supporter of capitalism. He believed that the market is a form of communication system that uses unregulated and competitive prices as a signal to all market participants. Market that is guided by decentralized decision-making and price signals is a prime example of spontaneous order. According to him, prices transmit information about supply and demand that is dispersed throughout society, allowing individuals to make informed choices without requiring a central authority. Hayek's advocacy for individualism and personal freedom was closely tied to his economic views. He believed that a free market economy not only promoted efficient resource allocation but also safeguarded individual liberties. His emphasis on individualism was not a call for unchecked selfishness but rather an acknowledgment of individuals' diverse knowledge and preferences. Hayek contended that personal freedom, within the bounds of the rule of law, allowed for creativity, innovation, and the flourishing of human potential. He warned against the allure of collectivist ideologies that sought to subsume individual rights for the sake of a perceived greater good.

Paul Samuelson’s international trade theory examined the economic consequences of both free trade and protectionism. He stated that free trade between countries will lead to equalization of workers’ wages, a concept he called the “factor price equalization theorem. On the other hand, protections and tariffs will benefit capitalists in capital-intensive industries and will benefit skilled workers in those industries that depend on that kind of work. Samuelson was a vocal supporter of free trade and international cooperation, which he believed were essential for global economic stability and growth. His contributions to trade theory provided insights into the benefits of specialization and the gains from trade.

Milton Friedman, in his influential work Capitalism and Freedom (1962), argued against government interventions that he believed hindered market mechanisms. He believed that competitive markets, coupled with minimal government interference, could lead to optimal outcomes for society as a whole. The concept of the "natural rate of unemployment" was another concept that garnered significant attention. Friedman argued that attempting to reduce unemployment below its natural rate through monetary policy would only result in temporary gains and inflation in the long run. This idea challenged the prevailing notion that governments could sustainably achieve full employment without consequences.

                                 Critics of Capitalism

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are not the first, but are the most famous critics of capitalism. Marx analysis of the  capitalism is best shown in his books Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy (1858), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), and three volumes of his most important and voluminous work - Capital, Critique of Political Economy (1867, 1885, 1894). To understand Marx's analysis of capitalism, as a mode of production, it is important to understand his theory of value of goods, the theory of exploitation, and his theory on classes. Marx’s theory of value views the market value of each commodity as the exclusive product of the socially necessary working time for a commodity to be produced and transported. Marx concluded from this that the difference between the wage that a worker receives for work and the price at which goods are sold, obtained by that work, represents the surplus value that the owner of the means of labor appropriates for himself, and to the detriment of the worker. This appropriation of surplus value is the essence of the economic exploitation that is done by the class that possesses the means of labor; while, by the same process, the class that performs the work is being exploited. In capitalism, capitalists are the owners of the means of labor, and the surplus appropriated is their profit, while the workers, who possess only control over their own labor, are exploited. This is the essence of the contradiction in the productive forces under capitalism. His view is that in the capitalist societies of Western Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, there were two key classes in society - the capitalist class, which owns the means of production, and the "proletariat" class, manual workers who own only their own labor. In addition to these two classes, in capitalism, some classes remained from the feudal era, such as aristocratic landowners and peasants, as well as the petty bourgeoisie consisting of merchants, craftsmen, and the like. Apart from them, at the absolute bottom of the social ladder are those whom Marx called the "lumpenproletariat." The Lumpenproletariat corresponds to what Engels called the reserve army of labor.

Friedrich Engels, in the essay Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844), emphasizes the importance of periodic crises for the functioning of the capitalist economy. Economic activity in capitalism constantly oscillates and goes through states of equilibrium and disequilibrium. There is a constant tendency of the economy to bring supply and demand into a state of equilibrium, but this state is almost never achieved in practice. While liberal economists believed that there was a "law" that regulated the equilibrium of supply and demand spontaneously in the free market, so supply could never exceed demand, Engles believed that trade crises occurred regularly, between five and seven years apart. In addition, he believes that these crises are becoming more pronounced and universal over time and that each new crisis brings a new decline of small capitalists and an increase in the proletariat. In his opinion, there will be an increasing concentration of capital and property in the future, because large industrialists, landowners, and traders have many advantages over their smaller competitors. Economic crises only increase these advantages, which will result in a situation in which the large capitalist will erode the small capitalist, which will lead to the disappearance of the middle class.

In the essay The Principles of Communism (1847), Engels argues that the development of capitalist competition and the race for profit, the rise of industrial machines, and the associated division of labor have led to a state in which workers have lost all of the already small autonomy they previously had. Many strata are falling into the proletariat - manufacturing workers, agricultural workers, petty bourgeois, craftsmen, etc. The whole society is divided into two great classes - the proletarians who own only their labor and the great capitalists who own almost all the means of production. The capitalists pay for the work of the proletariat only as much as is sufficient to achieve the minimum of the physical survival of the proletariat. Engels analyzes the key consequences of the development of industrial capitalism. The industrialization and development of international capitalism have led to the fact that the entire planet is connected economically, so the events in the most developed countries have great consequences for all other countries. The industrial capitalists managed to become the dominant class in the most developed countries, replacing the aristocracy and large landowners from the top. The capitalists secured their power by introducing parliamentary democracy (in which they control parliament), legal equality, and free market principles.

 Vladimir Lenin, in the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899) describes how, in the nineteenth century, Russia represented a feudal society in which the peasantry continued to live in serfdom, while at the same time, the cooperative form of ownership persisted. However, Russian feudalism is not characterized by only one form of production (agricultural-feudal), but it forms a "social formation" that includes other forms of production, and above all, the beginnings of the capitalist form of production. Russian feudalism, as an economic order, operates within a strong and centralized absolutist state. Lenin concludes that Russia is going the "Prussian way", that is, it is going through the same form of transformation that happened in Prussia. As in Prussia, in Russia, the feudal lords slowly became an agricultural bourgeoisie (similar to the Junkers in Prussia) as they began to employ workers to produce goods for the market. This path of development leads to the breakdown of rural cooperative life and rapidly divides the peasantry into several strata. At the top is the agricultural bourgeoisie, in the middle is the middle peasantry, and at the bottom of the pyramid are the rural proletarians and semi-proletarians. In Lenin's opinion, this stratification is positive because it creates natural allies for the industrial workers from the rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, to carry out the communist revolution.

Thorstein Veblen makes a sharp critique of capitalism, and he has a particularly negative view of the absent owners of large companies, which he considers to be complete social parasites. He studies the process in which the management of large companies is taken over by professional directors and managers who do not own the capital of the companies they manage. In addition, he criticizes the superiority of financial capital over productive capital, as well as the exploitation of workers by capitalists. In his opinion, the technology that enables the production of new things has the most positive impact on the development of the economy.

In the book The Sane Society (1955), Erich Fromm examines whether modern societies are healthy, following the example of psychoanalysis, which examines whether a person is sick or healthy. The pathological state of society is a consequence of inadequate satisfaction of social needs. Man's needs are a product of the conditions of his existence. There are five basic needs, and they can be realized in two opposite ways, one of which is healthy and the other sick. Fromm makes a list of five pairs of reactions to the different needs, of which the first part of the pair is a positive response and the second part of the pair is a negative response. These couples are: relatedness vs. narcissism; creativeness vs. destructiveness; brotherliness vs. incest; individuality vs. herd conformity; reason vs irrationality. The enormous economic development of capitalist democracies in the 19th and 20th centuries and the wealth that development brought did not lead to an improvement in fulfilling human needs. That economic progress was based on exploitation, destruction, alienation, selfishness, competition, and wastefulness. There is a creation of new idols - goods and money. In the twentieth century, there are three answers to the development of capitalism. The first two answers, fascism, and Stalinism, are based on centralized bureaucratic dictatorship and authoritarian idolatry. The third answer is "supercapitalism", a new form of capitalism that uses robots and communication technologies to increase production productivity to the most possible limit. The development of technology increases the dependence of workers on the employer, and the work itself becomes boring and monotonous, which leads to social atomization and self-isolation of people. Modern societies are complex and differentiated, different groups have different interests around which they fight, so the common good can't exist in those societies. Different groups, in modern democratic societies, are fighting for power and votes, and at the same time, they are carrying out political propaganda to which ordinary citizens are very susceptible. Topics and solutions that are the subject of political controversy were imposed on voters by politicians and not the other way around. In that sense, the popular sovereignty and rationality of the voters are a complete illusion. There is great political inequality between ordinary citizens and those with political and economic power - capitalists and corporations have economic power, politicians have their organizations and propaganda, unions have the power to lobby and negotiate, state bureaucracy controls the work and goals of state bodies, and the like. On the other hand, ordinary citizens have neither power, nor influence, nor enough information and rationality, and the only thing they have is the right to vote. In Schumpeter's view of democracy, this system becomes only an institutionally regulated procedure for electing political leadership.

In the book White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951) Wright C. Mills attributed the increase in the size of a part of the middle class, the so-called "white collars", to three processes: the growth of bureaucracy in all spheres of work, the development of technology, and the growth of industrial production. Corporations are getting bigger, so former small entrepreneurs are becoming ordinary employees within large companies. The growth of bureaucracy in companies requires the creation of more managerial levels within companies, and these levels are linked into chains of superiority and subordination. At each level, specific coordination and supervision of subordinate employees take place. Mills' book The Power Elite (1956) explores elites in the USA. The elite in the United States controls large bureaucratic organizations within three sectors: private corporations, state administration, and the military. Members of all three mentioned elites share many common features: they were born in the upper classes, they went to the same private schools and the most elite universities, and they belong to the same private social clubs.

German sociologist Claus Offe  In Contradictions of the Welfare State (1984), studied what he calls the "crisis of crisis management" in social security systems in capitalist countries. He believes that the modern state is no longer able to fully solve the socio-economic problems and conflicts of late capitalism. In his book Disorganized Capitalism (1985), Offe views modern Western democracies as disorganized systems full of problems: divisions in the labor force, declining role and strength of trade unions, and weakening liberal-democratic and neo-corporative governance mechanisms. Austrian-French sociologist André Gorz, in his book Farewell to the Working Class (1980), notes that organizational and technological changes have destroyed skilled labor. The product of this is that the working class, as a class that has the knowledge and ability to take control of the means and the production process, no longer exists, so we need to say farewell to it. Gorz also believed that the basic problem is not only the destruction of labor but that the system imposes the ideology of labor as a source of income rights.

In his book Civilization and Capitalism, 3 vol. (1967-1979), Fernand Braudel analyzes the relationship between capitalism and the market. For Braudel, capitalism functions as an anti-market, because it monopolizes economic life in order to maximize profits and distort the market to suit capitalism. In this way, capitalism dominates and threatens the market and everyday life. Capitalist aspirations to control the market, and market resistance to such tendencies, have shaped the history of the new century.

Harry Braverman used the Marxist paradigm in his book Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), to study how the work of manual workers has changed since the time of Karl Marx. The main conclusion of his study is that there was a massive decrease in the skills and knowledge of manual workers in the sphere of industrial production in the twentieth century. Such a reduction in the skills and knowledge of workers is not the product of chance, but of the systematic action of the capitalists to weaken the organized labor movement. The main method by which the deskilling of workers was achieved was by the application of principles of Taylorism, or scientific management. Taylorism, named after its founder Frederick Taylor, is the science of managing someone else's work under capitalism. Taylor wanted to achieve the highest possible productivity of labor by applying scientific methods, and he hoped that everyone, including workers, would see the rationality of his approach. The basic principles of Taylorism are the separation of the work process from the skills of workers, the separation of ideas from execution, and that all mental work should be removed from the plant and concentrated in the planning department, in order to use the knowledge monopoly to control every step of the work process. Craftsmen had great theoretical and technical knowledge in the 18th and 19th centuries, while the application of Taylorism separated skill and knowledge, so the worker stopped being a craftsman, and became a living tool of the machine. Braverman believes that the scientific management movement is of invaluable importance in shaping modern corporations and that it rules the world of production. Experts in human relations and industrial psychology are becoming a service department for the maintenance of human machinery. Taylorism has brought control over workers and the work process to a whole new level. In addition, the increase in productivity achieved by Taylorism did not lead to a proportional increase in wages, on the contrary, there was a reduction in wages. Braverman believes that the loss of control, knowledge, and reduction of wages that workers have experienced is the essence of Taylorism.

Erik Ohlin Wright believes that three related processes took place during the development of modern capitalism: 1) the reduction of control over the labor process by direct producers; 2) the establishment of complex hierarchies within capitalist enterprises and bureaucracy; and 3) the differentiation of functions previously performed by capitalists. The last process concerns the increase in the importance of management, but also an increase in the influence of large shareholders over small shareholders. In his book Manufacturing of Consent (1979), Michael Burawoy examines the ways in which directors and managers in companies obtain consent from workers, that is, how they manage to persuade them to cooperate with management. Manuel Castells believes that in monopolistic state capitalism, the state apparatus directly intervenes in favor of big capital by investing in collective consumption at the city level (housing, education, health, parks, cultural facilities), thus reducing labor market reproduction below market prices. In his opinion, the focus of interest should be the process of urban planning.

                                 Reformist view of Capitalism

In the book The Theory of Economic Development (1934, in German 1912), Joseph Schumpeter introduces the thesis that the basis of economic development is the actions of entrepreneurs whose main role is to be leaders in introducing innovations. Innovations introduced by entrepreneurs can be very different: new technologies, new goods, new raw materials, new markets, different organization of production, etc. Such entrepreneurial innovations deviate from established ways of producing and doing business, using new methods or an innovative combination of old methods, doing what Schumpeter calls "creative destruction" in order to create a new, better economic system. It distinguishes economic innovations made by entrepreneurs from technological inventions. In that sense, entrepreneurs differ from inventors, capitalists, bankers, managers, landowners, and workers, because only entrepreneurs introduce real innovations into the economy. Although entrepreneurs may, at the same time, have other functions (those mentioned above), they are primarily driven by the desire to innovate and take risks, and not the desire for profit or earnings. Entrepreneurial activities thus represent the basis of capitalism and its development, and in Schumpeter's theory, their activity is crucial for understanding his theories of credit, profit, capital, and economic cycles. Schumpeter's most famous work is the book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), written during his work in the United States. In this book, he emphasizes the importance of the institutional arrangement of the capitalist state. In the part of the book that refers to capitalism, he reiterates the thesis that capitalism is in crisis, not because it has failed, but because it is too successful. The different historical tendencies of the development of capitalism and the state leading to the transition of capitalism to socialism are: the rise of interventionism, the development of managerial bureaucracy in the public and private sectors, and the rise of the middle class whose interests and values ​​differ from the capitalist class. Innovation and entrepreneurship are increasingly becoming routine within large corporations, which reduces innovation. All these tendencies undermine classical capitalism.

François Simiand's greatest contribution to the science of economics is his theory of long economic cycles, which is presented in the book Wages, Social Development and Money (1932). After extensive historical research on prices, wages, economic productivity, and other economic parameters, Simiand concluded that there are two main economic cycles - the cycle of general economic expansion and the cycle of economic decline. He criticizes the classical economy, according to which there can be a static state of the economy. Economic cycles are influenced by many factors, of which socio-psychological ones are also important, such as people's trust in the economy. By studying the previous economic cycles and the factors that caused them, and reacting to changes promptly, it is possible to reduce the negative effects of these cycles. Simiand's theory of economic cycles has similarities with Nikolai Kondratieff's theory of the long cycles in the development of capitalism, but both theories emerged independently of each other. 

The consequences of the Great Depression of 1929–1932, prompted British economist John Maynard Keynes to write The General Theory of  Employment, Interest and Money (1936). The book subverted the classical economics assumption that a competitive market economy is self-equilibrating, and that it always produces full employment. Keynes introduced the concept of  ‘underemployment equilibrium’ that required monetary manipulation by the central bank and extensive ‘socialization’ of investment to maintain full employment. Keynes argued that government intervention was necessary in times of economic crisis to stimulate demand and prevent economic collapse. He believed that in a recession, individuals and businesses would cut back on spending, leading to a decrease in demand and a further decrease in economic activity. To combat this, Keynes advocated for government spending on public works, social programs, and other initiatives to boost demand and stimulate the economy. One of the key concepts of Keynesian economics is the idea of the multiplier effect. This refers to the idea that an increase in government spending or investment leads to a larger increase in overall economic activity as money is repeatedly spent and re-spent in the economy. This, in turn, leads to an increase in employment and income, which further stimulates demand and contributes to economic growth. Another key aspect of Keynesian economics is the idea of the trade-off between inflation and unemployment. According to Keynesian theory, if the economy is operating at full employment, increasing government spending to stimulate demand will lead to inflation. On the other hand, if the economy is in a recession, increasing government spending can help to reduce unemployment without causing inflation.

Karl Polanyi believes that two parallel processes are taking place in modern capitalism, on the one hand, market logic is spreading to all areas of social life, while, on the other hand, social protection mechanisms are being developed to protect society from the most harmful consequences of the self-regulatory market system. Free-market capitalism seeks to destroy relations of reciprocity and redistribution, but social protection mechanisms, such as those that emerged in England in the early 19th century, act as a resistance to that intention.

John Kenneth Galbraith’s book Affluent Society describes the disparity between the enormous wealth and consumer potential of the largest part of American society, and on the other hand, inadequate state investment in public goods: infrastructure, education, transport, ecology, etc. This book also emphasizes the new feature of modern corporations that survive, above all, creating new needs, and not only, as before, passively responding to the already existing needs of consumers. In the book The New Industrial State, Galbraith concludes that in the modern age, large corporations are led and controlled by employed bureaucratic technocrats, while owners have less and less power. The technocratic non-proprietary elite, which Galbraith calls “technostructure”, exert actual control over corporations, and they primarily strive to survive, thrive, and maintain independence, while less interested in profit maximization. Management, marketing, and connections with politicians are key resources of this group. Galbraith differed from most economists in that he did not believe that the essence of a good economy was the maximization of GDP, but it was much more important to build social harmony and meet the real needs of the people.

              Perspectives on the Historical Rise of Capitalism

Werner Sombart explored the origins and nature of modern capitalism in Modern Capitalism (1902). He supplemented Marx's theory of the origin and development of capitalism with a socio-psychological and socio-cultural dimension. Sombart emphasizes the influence of religion, especially Judaism, on the development of capitalism, because the Jews were the first to engage in trade and borrowing money. Sombart believes that Jews practiced these occupations because of their racial origins.

In The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920), Max Weber argues that each religion has its own economic ethics and that ethics implies practical incentives to perform a certain type of social action, based on a religious view of the world and life. Capitalism is also specifically marked by the inherent capitalist spirit, the main feature of which is the opposition to traditional economic social action. The capitalist spirit contains a positive view of work and the acquisition of material wealth. Emphasis is placed on effort, thrift, discipline, and innovation, while laziness, gaining wealth without work, and hedonistic spending are viewed negatively. In pre-capitalist economies, people worked only as much as they needed to achieve a standard of living that was satisfactory to them. The capitalist spirit led to the complete rationalization of economic life. The greatest influence on the development of the capitalist spirit and the rejection of the traditional form of doing business was the emergence of Protestant religions and their teachings in the early 16th century. Of all the Protestant currents, the most important for the development of the capitalist spirit was ascetic Protestantism, and above all Calvinism. Protestantism emphasizes the idea of ​​"vocation", that is, that work is the most sacred duty of man because it enables salvation through the fulfillment of duty to God and therefore represents the highest expression of ethical self-affirmation. Protestantism, by treating labor as a means of salvation, directly refutes the traditional view of labor as God's punishment for original sin. Protestantism believes that success in a business is a confirmation of God's election, but that economic success must be achieved through hard work, thrift, and honesty. With this approach to economics and work, Protestantism has made a key contribution to the emergence and spread of the capitalist spirit.

In Europe and People Without History (1982), Eric Wolf introduces a historical classification of societies according to the basic mode of production they used. These three types are: kinship, tributary, and capitalist. In the kinship system, the organization of work, production, and distribution are organized on the kinship relations of people. In the tributary system, direct producers have the means to produce, but the elite in these societies appropriate surplus labor by political or other non-economic means. The Asian mode of production is an example of a centralized, and European feudalism of a decentralized tributary production system. In Europe, in the period from the 16th to the 18th century, there was a mercantilist tributary system. The capitalist system did not appear until the end of the eighteenth century in England. The unique combination of historical and geographical circumstances led to the liberal political revolution, the industrial revolution, and the development of the free market in England at the same time, all of which were necessary preconditions for the emergence of capitalism. Great Britain contributed to the division of the world into zones of interest of European powers through its colonial expansion. All those societies that anthropologists view as ahistorical, due to the spread of capitalism through colonial imperialism, form part of global capitalism. Both European colonial societies and "societies without history" are, in fact, interconnected and equally dynamic. Processes that took place at the local level played a major role in the events in the wider world system.

In Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), Richard Tawney studies the relationship between religious attitudes and the development of capitalism in the 16th and 17th centuries. Unlike Max Weber, he questions the hypothesis of a simple causal link between the emergence of Protestantism and the development of entrepreneurship. Tawney believes that the capitalist and entrepreneurial spirit originated before the emergence of Protestantism, as well as that the rise of capitalism was influenced by other, non-religious, factors.

Anthony Giddens applied his approach to history to the development of capitalism in Europe in the modern age. The most important factors for the development of industrial capitalist society were: the development of administrative power, the creation of an abstract legal system, and the development of a bureaucratic apparatus in charge of tax collection. All three factors first developed within absolutist monarchies, and then expanded and strengthened even more with the advent of capitalism and the international system of nation-states. Wars and preparations for wars between European states have contributed to the concentration of administrative power, fiscal reorganization, and the consolidation of absolutism. The simultaneous development of capitalism, industry, and nation-states, after the fall of absolutism, was supported by the fact that each of these phenomena depended on and strengthened the others, while such development was made possible by a broader geopolitical context, as European states became politically and militarily dominant.

Norbert Elias argues that the development of trade and the monetary economy enabled the growth of the bourgeoisie, so the absolute monarch used this change in the relationship between the power of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, to increase his power even more. The development of centralized power conditioned the increase of administration and bureaucracy, which, together with the increase of the economic power of the bourgeoisie, enabled the emergence of a modern state. The process of development of civilization and civility is long and takes place over several generations. The main change occurred in relation to the source of control over individual behavior. In the Middle Ages, external coercion prevailed, while later, internal, psychological control of the superego began to be the main source of control over individual behavior.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris studied the preconditions for the development of capitalism. The feudal lords participated in trade and encouraged the development of cities and the crafts and trade that were carried out in them. At the beginning of the second millennium, the population increased, agriculture improved, and cities and trade flourished throughout Europe. Harris believes that it took 500 years for cities and markets to overturn the feudal order because serfs and free peasants were able to maintain a relatively high standard of living from agriculture during that time. As the population grew and the efficiency fell, the feudal lords began to look for an additional source of income in raising sheep for wool, which further limited the area of arable land, reduced peasant holdings and drove the majority of the peasant population into complete poverty. The plague that struck Europe in the fourteenth century contributed to a period of intense political and economic turmoil. There were massive peasant revolts, messianic movements, the extermination of Jews, dissension in the Catholic Church, and the organization of the Inquisition. The consequence of reaching the ecological maximum of the population under the feudal system is the development of technology, science, capitalism, colonialism, and finally parliamentary democracy. In the fifteenth century, China still had a technological advantage over Europe, but the demographic-ecological pressure that existed in Europe allowed the rise of industrial production and capitalism. The gradual emergence of bourgeois parliamentary democracies represented a rare example of an increase in freedom when one looks at 6 thousand years of gradual but increasing loss of freedom throughout history. Harris believes that the "Great Leap Forward" in technology and economics was made possible because ambitious individuals were freed from political, moral, and social constraints to enrich themselves. Ambitious individuals could accumulate great wealth without worrying about having their power taken from them or having to share it with relatives or friends. In the conditions of losing the ecological basis for increasing profits, these ambitious entrepreneurs emphasized the introduction of energy-saving machines. Although these machines require higher capital investments, they reduce the unit cost of the product.

Swedish sociologist Göran Therborn"s book Science, Class & Society (1976), shows how the emergence of the science of economics, bourgeois sociology, and historical materialism is inextricably linked to the development of capitalism. Therborn sees the emergence of bourgeois sociology as a consequence of French and other bourgeois revolutions. Those revolutions arose as a consequence of problems and conflicts caused by industrialization and the associated rise of the capitalist class because the new capitalist class clashed with the outmoded political structures of the aristocracy. The intellectual sources of bourgeois sociology are the theory of evolutionary determinism, the theory of elitist voluntarism, and the critique of the previous political economy. The main disadvantage of classical sociology is that it has not made an analytical distinction between society, on the one hand, and man and the state, on the other.

Domination, Indoctrination, and Oppression in Capitalist Societies

Karl Marx argues that, in capitalism, the capitalist class monopolizes political power and creates laws that protect its (capitalist) property, as well as its class interests, and thus dominates the working class. In this sense, the entire capitalist state and its institutions are only a reflection of the interests of the ruling capitalist class. In addition to direct political control, the capitalist class creates an ideology that aims to justify and legitimize existing relations of production and capitalist exploitation and domination. The capitalist class, with its ideology that uses the ideas of equality and freedom, achieves to disguise, to other members of society, the basis of exploitation and domination on which that class rests. However, equality, freedom, and civil rights are an illusion, because the worker is neither free nor equal to the capitalist. The worker is not free, because he is forced to work for the capitalist in order to survive. The worker is not equal either, because all political power and ideological narrative are created, and held by the capitalist class. That is why Marx sees ideology as a „false consciousness“, that is, a false image of society and the world. Marx believes that capitalist control over political power and ideological narrative will not be able to prevent the collapse of the capitalist system when the contradictions within the social base become too great.

One of the key consequences of the capitalist relations of production and the ideology that defends them is what Marx calls "alienation." Alienation occurs when workers in capitalism begin to view the things they produce as foreign objects. They see goods as something foreign to them and that has the power to control people. „Productive labor“ is the primary and most important human activity, in which people truly express their own being. When people give up the products of their labor to place them on the market as goods, they then lose a part of themselves. Workers are alienated not only from the things they produce but also from the whole system - economic flows and impersonal market forces of supply and demand, as well as from the ruling ideology and institutions that support capitalist domination. Eventually, workers become alienated from themselves. Religion is one of the main examples of human alienation and, as a value and as an institutional system, it plays a crucial role in protecting and justifying capitalist domination.

Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, in his book Prison Notebooks (1947), argues that the ruling class in capitalist societies does not rule only through force and repression but imposes its own ideological system, which defends the interests of the ruling class, and other subordinate classes. This imposed value system is what Gramsci calls "cultural hegemony." Hegemony is a synthesis of political, intellectual, and moral leadership within the ruling class. This leadership justifies its interests by creating an image of the world that presents those interests and the economic and political relations that sustain those interests as positive for the entire population. When other classes (which Gramsci calls "subaltern") accept such a picture of the world as normal and common sense, or even better, as the only possible one, then those classes become integrated into that ruling cultural hegemony. The capitalist class integrates subaltern classes in two ways. On the one hand, it gives them small concessions - workers' rights, allows the work of trade unions, creates a social security system, and the like. On the other hand, the state and civil society create institutions and organizations - educational institutions, the press, churches, and civil associations - that promote this cultural hegemony. In addition, the state creates institutions - police, army, prisons, psychiatric institutions - that carry out repressive measures against those who do not accept hegemony. The capitalist class also has its independent ways of achieving obedience, through the realization of control and punishment in the workplace itself, but also through employment itself, because most workers without capitalist employment cannot even survive.

Hungarian philosopher György Lukács argues in his History and Class Consciousness (1923) that bourgeois science constantly observes phenomena from the point of view of the individual and that such a view cannot produce knowledge of totality, but only fragmentary knowledge. That is why bourgeois science divides totality into several special sciences. The fragmentation that occurs with the subject is conditioned by the fragmentation of production, the division of labor, and the hierarchical structure of the labor market. It is the logic of capital that creates consciousness, not individual perception or understanding. Social and historical facts gain real meaning only when they are integrated into the whole (totality). Only subjects, who are totals themselves, can understand totality, and in modern society, total subjects can only be classes. The category of totality is the essence of the revolutionary principle in science. While in feudalism and slavery, the reified relations were disguised as relations of superiority and subordination, in capitalism the commodity form of relations, that is, "reification" became the ruling form of the whole society. The phenomenon of reification is reflected in the fact that relationships between people are beginning to take the form of relationships between things. Lukács agrees with Marx that in capitalism the labor power of the worker becomes a commodity. However, the worker is an object with consciousness by which he can overcome the reified and fetishized nature of capitalism.

Max Horkheimer, in Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), deals with the problem of science. He critically studies the methodological, theoretical, and practical aspects of science. Horkheimer rejects both positivist and pragmatic views on science because they do not pay enough attention to the social crisis and the problems of human existence. Science is neither capable nor ready, in a period in which there are social problems and economic crises, to deal with the elimination of social misery. Scientific truth cannot be separated from moral questions, so bourgeois science itself acts as an ideology. Scientific perception is always mediated by social categories, and those categories lead to the "reification" of society. Critical theory, in contrast, is conceived as an autonomous practice that should transform culture and society. Autonomous practice is guided by emancipatory principles, that is, that strives to achieve universal and authentic emancipation of all people, regardless of class and group interests. Only in such a rational world, free from reification is it possible for science to be guided by the principles of positivist science.

In the book Dialectics of Enlightenment (1947), which Horkheimer co-wrote with Theodore Adorno, the authors argue that in the modern society of advanced capitalism mass culture spreads conformism and controls social consciousness. They called this form of control over the masses "culture industry." The culture industry dominates all forms of mass culture; the mass media sell artistic values ​​as commodities; democracy is characterized by parties that control the masses through their programs and propaganda; consumer products are standardized and eliminate the need for individual consumer tastes. In Western culture, as a consequence of the Enlightenment, the instrumental form of formal rationality dominates, and the goal of that rationality is to achieve control over human action and society, through dehumanized science and technology. Capitalist societies, through the culture industry and dehumanized science and technology, destroy any real opposition by either assimilating or neutralizing it. In these societies, all models of social communication become monolithic and lead to cultural indoctrination. Modern society is becoming an iron cage of total administration, consumerism, and resignation.

In the book Dialectical Materialism (1940), Henri Lefebvre sees alienation as the most important consequence of modern capitalism, which makes it impossible to achieve human authentic self-realization. His interest in dialectics and alienation was also expressed in the book Critique of Everyday Life (2014, in French 1947, 1961, 1968, 1981). In these books, Lefebvre studies everyday life, which is not banal but represents a direct product of a society governed by consumerism and the bureaucratization of life. Everyday life is the best indicator of how the capitalist mode of production has shaped modern society. Bureaucratization and consumerism have impoverished and taken away authenticity from everyday life. Capitalism, marketing, and the liberal-democratic state have created a "bureaucratic society of organized consumption". Lefebvre believes that the city is the best place to study capitalism, due to the degradation capitalism brought to the city. Capitalism, through speculation with land and real estate, extends commodification to living space. In addition, the capitalist organization of urban space creates segregation of social groups, and this has the most negative impact on the working class.

Herbert Marcuse, in the book One-Dimensional Man (1964), explores forms of reification in a developed industrial society. Reification is reflected in the growth of the race for profit, bureaucratic impersonality, militarism, mass conformism, and value-empty culture. Technology and consumerism have prevented social criticism and conflict by assimilating and pacifying criticism and opposition from the working class by constantly creating "false needs." The end result is the emergence of a " one-dimensional man " who is unable to think critically about the society in which he lives. That is why true critical thought must come from marginal social strata, which are not integrated into the system. Marcuse studies the limits of tolerance in his book A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965). He believes that the liberal idea of ​​tolerance helps to reduce criticism of the existing society because such tolerance requires the acceptance of oppressive discourse, and therefore, such oppressive and discriminatory speech should be limited in public discourse.

In his book What Does the Ruling Class do When it Rules?: State Apparatuses and State Power under Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism  (1978),  Göran Therborn uses the categories of systems analysis to give a Marxist understanding of state power and the state apparatus. In analyzing the strategies that the ruling class pursues in capitalism in order to rule, he concluded that the ruling class uses mostly state apparatus and economic exploitation and domination as ruling strategies, rather than ideology. In the article "Class in the 21st Century" (2012), Therborn studies the history and future of classes and class struggle. He believes that in the first eighty years of the twentieth century, workers were a force that the state and the ruling class had to take into account, either by making concessions to or by strict control over it. The set of processes led to the breakdown of working-class power: liberalization of capital flows, credit expansion, digital trading and accumulation of capital in pension and insurance funds, and global commodity chains - all this led to an enormous concentration of private capital. Instead of nationalization and regulation, the state began to pursue a policy of privatization and liberalization.

Ralph Miliband, in his book The State in Capitalist Society (1969), studies how capitalistic ideological legitimization is implemented, and especially pays closer attention to the important role marketing has in that process. Marketing spreads ideological legitimization of capitalism in several ways: capitalist corporations use marketing to portray themselves as those who work for the common good, not for their own selfish interests; advertisements associate products with generally accepted positive values ​​and emotions; marketing spreads the ideology of consumerism to the masses.

In his book The State in Capitalist Society (1969), Nikos Poulantzas states that The state in capitalism does not rule through repression, but by creating an ideological consensus between the capitalist and other subordinate classes. The state controls workers by isolating them into separate individuals (citizens) and thus producing what he calls the " effect of isolation". This concept refers to the phenomenon that individuals from subordinate classes enter into competitive relationships with other individuals from subordinate classes, or are part of a political faction, and thus remain isolated from the rest of their own class. By mediating and reducing class conflicts, both between and within classes, the state creates long-term stability and the illusion of pluralism. Poulantzas emphasized that civil servants, regardless of their class, accept a structurally determined role that is related to the professional position they hold within the state apparatus.

In the essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970) Louis Althusser developed his theory of ideology, in which ideology functions “without history”, by providing people the framework to establish lived relationships within the social reality in which they are located. Ideology locates subjects in the system of relationships that is necessary for the maintenance of unequal class relations. Ideology molds individual identities that are functional to the propagation of the capitalist system of exploitation. Hence, ideology is not a philosophical illusion but a lived practice of everyday life. “Ideological state apparatuses” (legal system, family, school, church, communications, political parties) are predominantly responsible for those practices because they are supported by, and give support to those practices to ensure the undisturbed functioning of the capitalist system.

Pierre Bourdieu believes that of all the forms of power and domination, the most important for capitalism and the capitalist class (dominant class) are symbolic power and symbolic violence. All cultural symbols - art, food and clothing patterns, science, religion, language - serve to pursue the interests of those in power. Those at the top use symbols to preserve, increase, and legitimize that power, so such strategies are a source of symbolic power and symbolic violence. Symbolic power and violence have the function of creating and increasing social "distinction". The distinction, conceived in this way, is a separate analytical concept in Bourdieu's approach and is the main theme of his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment Taste (1979). Society is filled with the great struggle to create social distinctions, because class struggles are, in essence, struggles to create a symbolic classification of people into distinct classes. Symbolic power and symbolic violence serve to create, legitimize, and preserve the distinctions that exist between social classes. When symbolic power succeeds in gaining a monopoly on the legitimacy of power relations and the "distinctions" that exist between classes within a field, then that field begins to have its doxa, that is, common sense, which serves to present power relations and distinctions as natural and self-evident. The goal of those who exercise domination is to, with the help of symbolic power, present the relations of power so legitimate and self-evident that any attempt of resistance by the oppressed is extinguished. That is why self-restraint and self-censorship, imposed on themselves by oppressed actors, are the most effective forms of reproduction of power relations.

Barbara Ehrenreich, and her husband John, introduced the concept of the professional-managerial class in their article “The Professional-Managerial Class” (1979). This class consists of well-paid experts and managers, who do not own the means of production, but who, within the reproduction of capitalism, play the role of maintaining capitalist culture and capitalist social relations. This class acts against the interests of the working class in many ways. Engineers produce technologies that benefit the ruling class, while managers introduce a higher level of social control of workers within the production relationship. This class also directly affects the reduction of autonomy and skills of workers (deskilling), because it eliminates the need for highly qualified workers (the position of foreman) who previously organized the production process. Teachers and social workers indoctrinate children and control adult "problematic" people who do not fit into the capitalist system. Advertising professionals, managers, and entertainers spread capitalist and consumerist ideology among the general population. This class has high rates of intergenerational reproduction and interclass marriage. The final effect of this class is to increase the economic and organizational power of capital. Although not all members of this class have the consciousness and desire to act against the working class, by the very effect they have on the working class, the position they occupy within production, and the inherent lifestyle, they make up a diverse but unique class. The uniqueness of the interests of this class is reflected in the need to appropriate the surplus labor created by the working class, while, at the same time, they want to preserve autonomy in relation to the ruling class.

Sociologist Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe coauthored the book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985). In it authors argue that all ideological elements are connected and function as floating signifiers that can be transformed within discourse through hegemonic practices. The authors give the example of Thatcherism, as an ideology within which signifiers such as "free market", "strong state" and "individual freedom" merged into a single ideology that created a new identity for survivors of Britain's crisis in the 1970s. Political forces that create hegemony also create borders in the discourse between us (insiders) and them (outsiders), thus creating antagonism between the two groups. Antagonism reaches its extremes when outsiders are portrayed as a group that blocks or prevents the realization of an insider's identity.

Noam Chomsky, in the book, Manufacturing Consent (1988), analyzes how the mass media manipulates public opinion and perpetuates the interests of those in power. The book argues that the mass media in the United States and other Western countries operates as a "propaganda model," in which a small group of powerful corporations and individuals control the flow of information and shape public opinion to align with their own interests. This is achieved through a combination of censorship, self-censorship, and the creation of a "filter" that screens out information that is inconvenient or contradicts the dominant narrative. Chomsky highlights five of those types of filters: ownership, advertising, sourcing, "flak", and "anti-communism". One of the key components of the propaganda model is the "ownership" filter, which refers to the fact that a small number of large corporations control the majority of media outlets. These corporations have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and promoting policies that benefit their bottom line, and they use their control over the media to shape public opinion in their favor. Another important component of the propaganda model is the "advertising" filter, which refers to media outlets relying heavily on advertising revenue to survive. This leads to a bias in favor of content that is friendly to advertisers, and a reluctance to report on stories that might be seen as critical of their interests. The "flak" filter refers to how powerful individuals and groups can use their influence to shape the media narrative. This can include things like threats of legal action, pressure from advertisers, or even direct censorship. The "anti-communism" filter refers to how the media has been shaped by the Cold War, particularly in its focus on the threat of communism and its portrayal of the Soviet Union as an enemy of the United States.

Leslie Sklair asserts that capitalist transnational practices create, what he calls, the "culture-ideology of consumerism." He introduces this concept to emphasize the breadth and importance that the practice and values ​​of the culture-ideology of consumerism have on the economy, politics, and everyday behavior of people. The media and retail chains are key players in the spread of consumerism. The mass media implant the cultural ideology of consumerism in the minds of individuals while they are still children. The mass media blurs the boundaries between information, entertainment, and product promotion to sell the products they advertise to customers, but also to spread a consumerist view of the world. Retail chains, primarily through shopping malls, create places where the experience of buying goods merges with the experience of going to an amusement park. The final effect is the creation of a cultural need, fully internalized by individuals, for products created by capitalist corporations.

In How Class Works (2003) Stanley Aronowitz states that the labor movement in the US still struggles over working conditions, like working hours and overtime pay. But in the class struggle between workers and capitalists, capitalists hold the majority of power and are subjugating the working class by dividing them based on citizenship status, race, and gender. For the labor movement to gain power back, it should forgo divisions and unite to fight for common goals. 

                                Capitalism and the State

In his book The State in Capitalist Society (1969), Ralph Miliband challenges the idea that power in capitalist society is divided between a large number of groups fighting among themselves. Instead of this pluralistic view, he advocates and proves the view that the ruling class possesses a great concentration of power and that it has a decisive role in creating ideology and politics. He believes that the ruling class has control over state institutions (police, army, judiciary, central and local government, and state administration) and that through the control of these institutions it maintains its power. The ruling class is made up of those who possess economic power and who use that power to take control over state institutions, in order to maintain that economic power and stabilize capitalist relations. In that sense, people who directly manage state institutions, even when they themselves are not part of the capitalist class, mostly work for the benefit and in the interest of the capitalist class. When politicians and state bureaucrats come from a working-class background, they work in the interest of capitalists because they have accepted the values ​​of the capitalist class and are therefore co-opted into the bourgeoisie.

Greek-French sociologist Nikos Poulantzas In his book Political Power and Social Classes (1968), Poulantzas develops the idea of ​​the relative autonomy of the state. Unlike the earlier Marxists (Miliband, for example), he believes that the (liberal-democratic) state has a broader role than just expressing the class interests of the capitalist class. The state possesses relative autonomy from the individual interests of individual capitalists. As capitalists fight among themselves, the state must secure their general class interests, not side with individual capitalists. Precisely because the state acts as a mediator and arbiter between the various factions of the capitalist class it gains it autonomous power. Capitalists and other influential classes are creating long-term strategies and alliances that Poulantzas calls "power bloc." The state mediates in all class relations and all aspects of those relations - economic, political, and ideological. In a debate he led with Ralph Miliband, Poulantzas further developed his arguments about the autonomous role of the state.

Max Horkheimer, through his analysis of societies of late capitalism, found that the increasing concentration of economic power by large corporations and governments created the need for a state with large administrative powers to support a crisis-ridden economy. The state had to intervene directly in the economy to ensure the conditions for the preservation of capitalism. The state also started to intervene in the socialization process through schools, social welfare programs, and mass media, which developed elaborate modes of manipulation and persuasion to create more compliant and obedient citizens. Economy and state were fusing into a single system, a centrally-planned ‘state capitalism’; while culture stopped being the point of resistance to social control and a source of autonomous individuals and society. The decline of the paternalistic bourgeois family led to a rise of conformist individuals vulnerable to falling under the influence of authoritarianism.

                               International Capitalism

Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch was the first to introduce the division of the world economic system into a developed center and an underdeveloped periphery. In his opinion, trade between the center and the periphery is unequal and disastrous for the periphery, and the situation is getting worse, with the development of the world economy. The experience of falling prices of agricultural products that Argentina exported, which occurred during the Great Depression in the 1930s, influenced Prebisch to formulate the basic assumptions of his theory. During the period of economic downturn, there was a much larger reduction in prices for agricultural products than for industrial products. Economist Hans Singer made a similar argument, so in economics, this approach became known as the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis.

Egyptian economist Samir Amin (1931-2018), in Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment (1970), argues that the underdevelopment of poor countries is a direct consequence of the way that the capitalist economy works. The exploitation of poor countries by rich countries enables the former to give higher wages to their workers, while at the same time reducing the prices of goods for consumers, thus eliminating the problem of insufficient demand. The dominance of foreign capital in underdeveloped countries leads to a complete redirection of exports from those countries and the destruction of the tertiary sector in them. This dynamics of relations leads to an increase in the debt of peripheral countries, which makes them dependent on the countries of the center, whose debtors they are. Multinational corporations organize world trade, and the negative consequences of such trade (destruction of small peasants, impoverishment of workers, environmental destruction, abolition of human rights) affect underdeveloped countries significantly more. Structural differences between developed and underdeveloped countries (developed countries have greater political and economic power, and developed countries are the ones from which the largest multinational corporations come) prevent underdeveloped countries from taking advantage of their comparative advantages over developed countries within the global economy.

American economic historian and sociologist Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005) believed that since the beginning of European colonization, Latin America has been exploited by the greatest colonial powers. The essence of the underdevelopment of this region was external political, economic, and cultural influences on national development policies. After gaining independence, Latin American countries continued to be subject to colonial economic logic - they continued to export a small number of unprocessed raw materials, which did not yield large profits. The dynamics of the relationship between the center and the periphery, after gaining independence, were maintained through the local lumpenbourgeoisie, which, in addition to economic, also achieved political domination. That domination was maintained through the economic, political, and military support of the West, all to preserve neo-colonial relations. The most dramatic example of such "support" is the coup (organized by the CIA) in Chile in 1973 when the socialist president Allende was removed and General Pinochet was brought to power. He immediately began to implement neoliberal economic measures, as well as military terror and dictatorship. It was because of this coup that Frank had to leave Chile.

Russian-American economist Paul Baran, in The Political Economy of Growth (1957) examines the colonial relations between Great Britain and India and shows that the domestic industry in India was destroyed so that India would become just a territory from which Britain would procure cheap resources. In his book Monopoly Capital (1966), co-authored with Paul Sweezy, monopoly capitalism is presented as a system in which firms do not compete over prices, but compete in sales. The basic feature of such a system is progressive rationalization. Another important feature of monopoly capitalism is that large corporations have broad shareholder ownership and are controlled by managers rather than stockholders.

Immanuel Wallerstein divides the world-economy into three different sectors, which he calls the periphery, the semi-periphery, and the center. Each of these sectors contains multiple countries. The center consists of the most technologically developed and richest countries, which appropriate the greatest benefit from the way the whole system is organized. The countries of the center shape the world system itself and the patterns of investment and trade. There is always a struggle between the states of the center for power and the accumulation of capital. The states and colonies located on the periphery are exploited, through trade relations, by the countries of the center, and this exchange produces the subordination of the states of the periphery. Both development and underdevelopment are interdependent processes because the development of the countries at the center necessarily depends on the underdevelopment of the countries on the periphery. States that are in the semi-periphery, by their characteristics and position, are located between the center and the periphery and may include former countries of the center, whose position has declined, or countries originating from the periphery, but whose position has improved, so they moved to the semi-periphery. While the countries of the center often advocate a free world market, the countries of the semi-periphery prefer the tactics of protectionism.

Wallerstein argues that belonging to a sector affects many characteristics of a certain state or territorial unit: average life expectancy, living standard, position and control over the labor force, type of products intended for foreign trade, type of political regime, etc. The position of the labor force and the control over it are directly related to the type of production intended for foreign trade. The periphery produces and trades mainly with raw materials, and the labor force is poorly paid and subject to great control (whether the labor force has a formal-legal position of slaves, serfs, or free workers, it does not change its essentially extremely bad position of workers in the periphery), while the countries of the center produce and export finished products, and the wages of the labor force are higher, while the control over it is less strict. The growth of capitalism depends on the potential to constantly increase the accumulation of capital, and such accumulation necessarily depends on the possibility of incorporating new territories into the world-system. It is this fact that led to the creation of the world-economy. Capitalism also tends to subjugate the policies of all states to its own interests, so most capitalist profits come through quasi-monopolies guaranteed by states. The world-economy is dynamic, and long-term economic cycles (of which the Kondratieff's cycle is the most important), geopolitical relations, as well as internal economic dynamics, are the most important factors influencing the decline or progress of a country from one sector to another. The dynamics of the world system are also influenced by the resistance of the periphery and semi-periphery, anti-systemic movements (anti-colonial, socialist, for minority rights, etc.), class relations, but also race and gender relations.

Wallerstein asserts that the very structure of the system promotes particularism. Conflicts between states and ethnic conflicts within states promote nationalism, division into center and periphery encourages racial divisions, while the economic survival of poor households around the world depends on the sexist exploitation of unpaid women's labor. Wallerstein sees the process of globalization more as part of a great economic cycle than as a radical transformation of the international economy and politics. He believes that it is necessary to study the similarities and differences that exist in the waves and cycles of international trade and international investment in the last two centuries, in order to understand globalization. In the last few decades of the twentieth century, the internationalization of capital took place, which limited the power of nation-states to control their own economies. On the other hand, states have long been influenced by broader geopolitical and economic relations and processes taking place within the world-system. Economic integration has had long cycles of decline and growth over the past few centuries, and the current phase is only the last phase of a very long systemic cycle of accumulation. What marks globalization is the increase of global economic integration, primarily through the increase of international trade, financial flows, and foreign investments.

Italian political economist and sociologist Giovanni Arrighi, in the book Geometry of Imperialism (1978), claims that imperialism, which is a war between capitalist countries, is a necessary consequence of the transformation of classical capitalism into monopoly and financial capitalism. Arrighi showed that at the end of the twentieth century, there was an increase in the working class at the world level, although, at the same time, there was a numerical decline in the working class in rich countries. Workers in developed countries are facing declining wages and increasing competition due to immigrants willing to work for lower wages. In his book The Long Twentieth Century (1994), Arrighi deals with the history of international capitalism from the 14th century to the present day. He believes that financial capital has been a central component of the world system all that time. Current cash flows have the typical characteristics of very long "systemic cycles of accumulation". The new imperialism of rich states, which emerged in the twentieth century, contains two connected logics: the territorial logic of political power and the molecular logic of capitalist accumulation. That is why war is a means by which the United States ensures its hegemony over energy resources and thus increases its importance in the world economy.

In the second edition of his book Elites and Society (1993), Thomas Bottomore applies a neo-Marxist approach to elites and social power to study the new global political and economic order. He notes that at the end of the twentieth century, there was a huge concentration of wealth, while the world economy was controlled by the largest multinational corporations, as well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which act as regulatory institutions of global capitalism. With the rise of the New Right and the collapse of socialist regimes, capitalism and the free market remain without a visible alternative. As other sources of power lose importance (such as control of the military), classes and class relations have the greatest impact on the political order. The class of very rich people begins to act as an elite and gradually shapes the political system. This elite achieves this by controlling all political parties, turning politics into a media circus, preventing electoral reform, marginalizing social movements operating outside institutional politics, and creating transnational political institutions that are far removed from ordinary people and whose representatives are not democratically elected.

British sociologist Leslie Sklair began to study the process of globalization in the late 1980s, which made him one of the pioneers of the sociology of globalization. In his works, he claims that there are two rival systems of globalization - one is the dominant system of neoliberal capitalist globalization, while the other is the socialist and alter-globalist system of globalization. He is a sharp critic of neoliberal globalization and one of the most influential proponents of socialist/alternative globalization. "Transnational practices" are most important for the process of neoliberal globalization. Sklair defines globalization as "a particular way of organizing social life across existing state borders " (2002). He believes that as transnational practices are becoming more dominant, state borders are becoming less and less important. Transnational practices have created major changes in three key areas: the economy, politics, and the cultural and ideological spheres. In the sphere of the economy, the most important actors are transnational corporations. These corporations changed global capitalism, which was an international system, into a globalized system, operating separately from any individual state. Sklair singles out, as the most influential, companies that are on the list of "Global 500 corporations", a list compiled every year by Fortune magazine. Transnational corporations achieve their economic goals through foreign direct investment. Foreign direct investment does not represent the majority of the income of some corporations, however, these investments have a huge impact on the economy and politics of less developed countries, which often depend on these investments.

Sklair claims that the most important product of transnational practice in the sphere of politics is the "transnational capitalist class". This class does not only contain the owners of capital but consists of four separate "fractions", which act more or less uniquely. What unites these four fractions is that: they have more global than local economic interests; they have political control, both at the state and world level; they spread the same cultural and ideological matrix; they see themselves more as citizens of the world than as citizens individual states, and they share a similar luxury lifestyle. The four fractions of the transnational capitalist class, according to Sklair's interpretation, are: 1) the corporate fraction - directors and managers of transnational corporations; 2) the state fraction - politicians and appointed bureaucrats who control state policy, but also international political institutions (UN, EU, etc.); 3) the technical fraction - globalized professionals; 4) the consumerist fraction - key individuals who control the media and the trade sector.

Dutch-American sociologist Saskia Sassen is best known for her study of globalization within which she is most concerned with the global economy, immigration, and global cities. Sassen introduced the notion of the global city into sociology in her book The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991). Global cities are the focal points of the organization of the global economy; they are centers of financial firms and firms specializing in special services; they are innovation production centers in the most profitable industries, and they are large markets for products and innovation. These cities are globally integrated, with each other. They have undergone major changes in the structure of economic branches, spatial organization, and social structure. Global cities differ from earlier cities in that the modern economy has a greater need for centralized control and management. These cities are centers of financial and banking innovation and services, marketing, accounting, and legal services, and the largest users of these services are transnational companies. These economic sectors represent the largest source of income and economic power of global cities. Transnational companies, even if their center is not in one of the global cities, are becoming more and more attached to them. The networked relations of global cities are a source of global control that separates these cities from the scope of control of the countries in which they are located. At the same time, as these cities become more networked and dependent on each other, so they become more separate and independent from the state. Global cities usually have large and culturally diverse immigration from all over the world, so this multiculturalism makes them even more global. When Sassen set out to explore global cities, she singled out New York, London, and Tokyo, and in her book Sociology of Globalization (2006) written 15 years after the first book, she estimated that there were about forty global cities.

Sassen singles out three levels where changes are taking place in the age of globalization: local, state, and global. At the local level, great socio-economic changes are taking place, as many old industries and areas in which they were concentrated are declining, and new areas with new and more profitable industries are strengthening. The biggest change, especially in more developed countries, is the decline in the importance of classic industries - mining, textile production, production of consumer goods, machinery industry, and the like. These jobs, which previously gave durability and security of employment and income to manual workers, as well as the possibility of creating influential unions, are disappearing and are being replaced by insecure and poorly paid jobs in service industries. These changes, at the state level, lead to the creation of increasing economic differences between regions and individuals, which conditions migration to cities and areas experiencing economic growth. As global cities rise, so do other, less developed areas. At the global level, there are growing inequalities between the countries of the center and the countries of the periphery; there is an increase in immigration from the periphery to the center; and the weakening of the influence of nation-states in relation to global cities. Nation-states do not lose their significance completely, but the concept of sovereignty and territoriality is changing crucially. Sassen calls this process "deterritorialization of national territory".

British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in the book Globalization: The Human Consequences (1998), explores how the process of globalization has led to a lack of control and planning at the level of the entire planet, which is in a state of increased risk and fear because changes in objective living conditions have created a specific postmodern "habitat". In modern globalized capitalism, capital and finance are becoming more mobile and extraterritorial (financial capital is completely independent of state borders, capital in international trade is almost completely independent of the state, while industrial capital is significantly autonomous from the state), and supranational, that is, "planetary" organizations have a growing impact on the global economy, as a result of which the ability of nation states to control their own economy decreases significantly.

Economic globalization thus leads to increased independence of capital, which, freed from central control, becomes autonomous, but also increasingly chaotic, which leads to the creation of a "new world chaos" (as a counterpart to the "new world order"). While the idea of ​​"universalization" was present earlier, that is, the idea of ​​creating a universal global order and order, this idea has been completely abandoned in recent times. States are increasingly losing the ability to regulate their economic processes and achieve "dynamic equilibrium" through customs, monetary or fiscal policy. As national governments must obey the forces of extraterritorial global capital, countries lose, not only economic but also political sovereignty. Global capital requires states to pursue a policy of balanced budget and to abolish all forms of intervention in the economy and markets, implement deregulation and liberalization, reduce or abolish taxes for companies and banks, curtail labor protection laws, allow complete freedom of movement of capital, as and to minimize social benefits. The strength of individual states should be minimal, just enough to guarantee the physical and legal security of global investments in its territory.

The globalization of capital and the reduction of regulations lead to the "end of geography", that is, the end of the idea that geophysical boundaries can limit and slow down the flow of global capital. Even at the political level, the distinction between foreign and domestic policy is increasingly lost. For the global capitalist elite, political boundaries are as porous and unimportant as geophysical ones. Telecommunications and the Internet have enabled the transfer of information at the local level to be as fast as at the level of the entire planet. However, the technological revolution and reduction of spatial and temporal distances lead to increasing polarization at the global level. Thus, the differences between the poor and the rich are growing at the local level, where the rich elites are locked in fenced neighborhoods, which leads to increased rivalry and enmity between the elite and the masses of the poor. Withdrawing the elite and upper class to the rich suburbs almost always leads to an atmosphere of fear, paranoia, intolerance, and isolation, directed at those who do not live in those rich, racially and ethnically segregated suburbs. The artificially created demographic uniformity leads to conformism, and intolerance and calls for the preservation of order and peace, all in order to maintain that illusion of security and equality within those suburbs. This class-geographical segregation leads to an increase in poverty and crime in the poorer parts of big cities.

The power of global capital is also leading to increasing political fragmentation. The masses of disenfranchised individuals are increasingly divided on various political and ideological issues, which directly reduces their ability to unite in effective collective action to fight for their economic interests. Workers, in particular, are losing their sense of emotional connection to the workplace, and they need to become just a flexible workforce, which will not control factories and demand rights. Trade union organization and job security should be replaced by complete flexibility of the workforce without any labor rights. The state is obliged to build surveillance and punishment complexes, almost completely aimed at the poor while going to prison is a punishment for the very fact that they are poor. The state and the media are making a spectacle of criminal acts, and the desire of the state and the public to punish criminals is becoming more important than the crime rate and the effectiveness of prison sanctions.

The global redistribution of wealth and power is leading to the creation of a new planetary stratification structure. Few of the world's billionaires control the world's vast wealth, while two-thirds of the world's population lives in utter poverty. The mass media have a special role in manipulating the population in rich countries, forming their attitude towards poverty in underdeveloped countries. The media hides true levels of poverty and presents a picture in which poor countries are to blame for their failures, while reports on wars, epidemics, famines, and refugees serve to convince rich citizens that any attempt to really help underdeveloped countries is doomed to failure.

German sociologist Ulrich Beck studied globalization in the book Power in the Global Age (2005, in German 2002). The basic assumption of Beck's view of globalization is that at the end of the twentieth century, there was a key political transformation because the distinction between national and international in world domestic politics was abolished. Globalization leads to the demise of the importance of the nation-state and its policies, as well as the national economy because key political and economic events take place at the transnational level. Under global capitalism, the consumer has also become global because his behavior, which includes protests, is global. In the meta-game, there is an asymmetry in the power of the strategic ability of capital in relation to states and global civil society. The strategic power of capital does not arise from its unified performance but is the product of uncoordinated actions of a large number of individual companies, financial institutions, and international organizations (IMF, World Bank, WTO). Although these entities do not act in a coordinated manner, they all exert pressure on individual states and thus weaken the power of the nation-state. In addition to the cosmopolitanism of states, Beck singles out false cosmopolitanism, which is evident when individual states act internationally to implement their national-hegemonic plans.

The goal of strategies of global capital is the merging of the capital with the state, which is necessary in order to turn the state into a neoliberal state. The ultimate goal is the instrumentalization of the neoliberal state in order to maximize and legitimize the interests of capital on the level of the entire planet. In contrast, the global civil society aims to unite civil society and the state in a cosmopolitan state, to achieve a post-national and post-global order, in which radical and democratic globalization would be carried out under the legitimacy of global morality. One of the ways how global capital reduces the power of states is the global flow of capital, investment, goods, and services between international corporations themselves. In this way, state control is avoided, because these factors of production cross borders without official evidence, customs clearance, and taxation; thus the revenues that the state could collect are reduced. About half of the world's trade is just such "non-trade" between corporations. 

The greatest bargaining power that transnational companies have in relations with individual countries is the threat of not investing money or withdrawing capital from the country, that is, the so-called "relocation option". Global capital thus changes the structure of power relations and leaves voters in democratic elections, parliament, courts, and the executive without real power. This meta-power is outside the categories of legal and illegal but already exists as "translegal" at the national and international levels. The translegality of the world's meta-power gives legitimacy to anti-globalization movements around the world, thus creating strange coalitions of different ideological movements and the growth of ethnic and religious fundamentalism.

All political parties, around the world and in all countries, increasingly resemble each other and their names serve only as facades for a single program shaped by neoliberal ideology. Global capital and neoliberalism lead to many negative consequences, locally but also globally: financial instability and crises; unemployment and automation; inequality and poverty; environmental disasters and risks; declining tax revenues; as well as the decline of democracy. Globalization has led to new planetary social inequalities. Poor countries, most often, become even poorer, while the rich get richer. Globalization and the inequalities it creates are linked to declining incomes, overexploitation of natural resources, and the weakening of democracy.

In the age of the meta-power of global capital, the state has not yet lost its function, it must be strong enough to implement liberalization, privatization, and deregulation; it must have a stable legal order to secure investments and privileges given to capital; it must have strong boundaries to prevent immigration. The power of the state to control (supervise and punish) the exploited and subjugated masses must be maximized, and, on the other hand, the power of the state to control the work and finances of corporations must be minimized. The more, on a global level, the national approach to global phenomena grows, that is, the more rivalries and enmities between states grow, the stronger the meta-power of capital and the weak potential for interstate cooperation and counter-power creation. Meta-power is guided by the slogan "divide and conquer".

Pierre Bourdieu focused studies neoliberal economic globalization in the book The Weight of the World (1993). This book, edited by Bourdieu, is the product of a great deal of empirical research that was done by interviewing members of the lower and middle classes, to determine the economic difficulties of life and social exclusion. The consequences of economic globalization are declining trade union strength, collective bargaining, wage cuts, job insecurity, job flexibility, and labor market individualization. These economic changes have extremely negative consequences for the functioning of democracy, as there is depoliticization, voter apathy, and a crisis of political class legitimacy, as voters realize that all politicians represent the interests of international capital, not voters.

In the book Counterfire: Against the Tyranny of the Market  (1998b), Bourdieu shows that globalization entails, at the same time, the expansion of international financial capital, but also has a normative function because it spreads the ideology of global capitalism as an inevitable reality that all states, organizations, and actors have to adapt to. This ideology is a carefully crafted myth that serves to dismantle the welfare state in Western Europe. The new doxa orders individual states to abolish social protection measures to achieve flexibility in work forces them to reduce budget expenditures and increase global competitiveness. The decline in the power of states takes place at a time when there is a growth of global institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc.) that are not accountable, for their work, to any country. The goal of this new ideology is to increase the symbolic capital of companies, international institutions, and economists. Neoliberal economists and their discourse are presented in the media as objective, scientific, and rational, and economics itself has been transformed into an abstract and purely mathematical discipline. Neoliberal economic models are considered perfect, so economists blame politicians and citizens for every failure of their application in practice because they were not capable and disciplined enough. In this way, economists and their models became completely isolated from criticism. On the other hand, opponents of neoliberal globalization are branded as anti-democratic and reactionary. The goal of the new doxa is to present the particular system that exists in the United States as best and universally applicable and desirable. The application of abstract and mathematical economic models has enabled mathematics to become a new tool in selection and reproduction in the educational and academic fields.

Emmanuel Arghiri, in the book Unequal Exchange (1962), presents his theory of unequal exchange. Argiri criticizes similar theories of Prebisch and Singer; and points out that politically and historically determined wage levels are the ones that determine relative prices, and not the other way around, as previously thought in economics. He showed that capital is internationally mobile and that the profit percentage is harmonized at the global level. Since the labor force is not internationally mobile, this explains the absence of solidarity between workers from different countries because they remain nationally bound and fight for their own interests, which ultimately leads to an unequal exchange between countries with high and low wages. According to his theory, the global economy functions below its full potential and is prone to crises.

Naomi Klein is one of the most famous critics of corporate globalization. In No Logo (1999), Klein studies the business of global corporate brands, production conditions, marketing tactics, and the ideology of consumerism. In The Shock Doctrine (2007), she points out that major social upheavals, such as natural disasters or military coups, serve as a basis and excuse for neoliberal ideologues, corporations, and political powerbrokers to put neoliberal ideas into practice.

Capitalism in Post-industrial and Postmodern Phase

Polish-Australian sociologist Jan Pakulski in the book Postmodernization (1992),  explores the process of postmodernization. During modernization, culture went through processes of differentiation, rationalization, and commodification. In postmodernization, the processes of hypercomodification, hyperrationalization, and hyperdifferentiation take place. Thus, a "postculture" is created in which cultural styles and personal tastes are fragmented and mixed, and the distinction between high and popular culture is increasingly erased. In the sphere of politics, traditional political structures and relations were dying out, which were based on class politics and in which the state, representatives of employers, and trade unions played the most important role. Postmodern politics is characterized by increasingly significant extinctions of class identification and class voting, as well as the increasing importance of lifestyles and environmental issues in politics. The power of the state and traditional elites is weakening, while the importance and power of new social movements are growing.

Pakulski is best known for his neo-Weberian approach to the problem of classes, which he presented in his book The Death of Class (1996), which was also co-authored with Malcolm Waters. The authors believe that modern societies are transformed too much, in relation to the earlier ones, that they can no longer be considered class societies. The key processes that have led to such changes are: globalization, changes in the economy, new technologies, and political changes. Globalization has led to a new international division of labor, which has led to the disappearance of many traditional workers' occupations. The decline in manual labor, especially in the mining and steel industries, the growth of the service sector, and the emergence of flexible and fragmented labor markets are leading to a decline in the importance of the working class. Globalization has also reduced the ability of states to make political and economic decisions independently. In addition, unlike earlier periods, the increase in geographical mobility has now led to a decline in the importance of family and family background as the main source of class reproduction.

Frederick Jameson is best known for his book Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), in which he explores how postmodern culture is linked to the advanced stage of capitalism. He observes the development of capitalism through three phases: market capitalism, monopoly capitalism, and multinational capitalism. Each of these phases of capitalism was marked by different cultural forms: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. After 1945, the period of late capitalism begins and it represents the purest form of capitalism. The expansion of multinational capital leads to the penetration of culture into all areas of society. Thus postmodern cultural production penetrates all areas of late-capitalist society, erasing the boundaries between different structures. Postmodernism is based on reducing the differences between all social areas that become accultured and prevent the emergence of independent forms. Postmodernism is a cultural field of force where coexisting and diverse elements are brought together in structural unity.

American sociologist George Ritzer developed a concept he called "McDonaldization", which is best illustrated in the book McDonaldization of Society (1993). Ritzer sees McDonaldization (a term he introduced to sociology back in 1983) as the application of Max Weber's rationality to the overall structure of society, with McDonald's business taken only as an example that best reflects this process. Unlike the period in which Weber wrote, bureaucratization no longer represents the best model of rationalization;  McDonaldization has become the best way of rationalization in modern times. The type of rationalization that was introduced by McDonaldization seeks to achieve four main goals: 1) to increase efficiency, 2) to increase measurability, 3) to increase predictability, and 4) to increase control. An additional goal is, where possible, to replace human labor with mechanical labor. McDonald's, through its business model, perfectly achieves four main goals, although it still retains human labor and has not replaced it with mechanical labor. McDonald's has managed to achieve these goals by standardizing every aspect of its business: retail outlets, menus, meal layouts, prefabricated ingredients, food preparation, customer relations, and the like. In addition, McDonald's has perfectly applied Frederick Taylor's workflow rationalization and Ford's model of automation - food is produced as cars are produced on the workbench. The essence of the process of McDonaldization is the application of these principles and models of work in as many companies as possible, but also in other organizations and institutions (churches, schools, hospitals, courts).

In the books, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) Daniel Bell argues that the hedonistic culture of capitalism, in most developed countries, is not in line with the dominance of rationality required by the economic system. There is a growing divergence and alienation of the economy, as an area of ​​social structure, on the one hand, and culture, on the other. The Postmodern culture celebrates the hedonistic world of mass consumption, fashion, photography, and travel, the consumerist culture is built around play, entertainment, and show. In postmodern culture, the bourgeois value system based on Protestant ethics and Puritan self-control are being rejected. Post-industrial society is not a decentralized society, because there is a new social structure that is growing. Theorists in science, economics, and information dominate empiricists and create a class of knowledge. At the heart of post-industrial society is a professional class that embodies the norms of social responsibility and ethics of community service. Profit does not play the main motive in this class, so this class will succeed in imposing itself on society with its professional values. However, the techno-economic structure does not determine developments in the fields of politics and culture. Each of these three areas of society is governed by different and sometimes opposing principles. The economy is ruled by the principle of efficiency, politics by the principle of equality, while culture is marked by the principle of self-knowledge. Bell lists five basic cultural contradictions of capitalism: 1) the differences between economic growth and the needs of the population; 2) differences in the existence and realization of social values; 3) differences in quantity and quality of life; 4) differences in inflation and monetary stability; 5) the contradiction between plans for progress and realistically achieved social development. He emphasizes that modern capitalism contains the deepest opposition in its very logic of functioning, because it requires a puritanical ethic of work, while, at the same time, it depends on the hedonistic ethic of consumption.

David Harvey, in the book Boundaries of Capital (1982) explores different flows of capital. Marx believed that there would be an excessive accumulation of capital in the industrial sector due to the increase in the organic composition of capital. Harvey believes that the concept of land rent is important for understanding the development of the industrial sector. Firms are building their industrial complexes in locations that will allow them to save on transportation costs or provide lower labor costs. Since these locations are mostly on private land, the increase in land rent, which is due to the increase in demand for land, reduces the early savings of companies. Over time, the profit rate in the industrial sector decreases, so capital moves from the primary (industrial) to the secondary flow of capital. Secondary capital flows are funds that financial institutions invest in fixed capital. The secondary flow of capital is key to understanding urban growth under capitalism. Funds from this flow of capital are invested in the construction of residential and commercial buildings and traffic infrastructure in urban areas, so these investments are becoming a new form of fixed capital. Secondary capital flows also require the development of tertiary capital flows - in the fields of education, science, and technology - in order to increase or maintain profits in primary and secondary capital flows. Over time, the economic crisis spills over from the first to the second flow of capital, as real estate overproduction and depreciation of fixed capital occur. In such situations, banks and construction companies move their investments from those urban locations where the profit rate has been reduced to new locations that have the potential to bring in higher profits. The complex interrelationships of financial institutions, the construction sector, and the real estate market, which are motivated by the race for profit, create a dynamic system of urban development. Such a dynamic system of urban development always creates significant social consequences and new social geography.

Harvey's most famous and influential book is The Condition of Postmodernity (1989). In this book, he explores the consequences of the development of postfordism and new information technologies on the economy and culture. Postfordism has led to the flexibility of work, which is characterized by lower employment permanence, an increase in temporary and part-time jobs, a reduction in labor rights and benefits, and a reduction in the chances of obtaining pension and health insurance. Labor flexibility is associated with flexible accumulation - high structural unemployment, a large service sector, halting wage growth, and declining size and union influence. Flexible accumulation has led to what Harvey calls "space-time compression". This phrase signifies the change made possible by new communication and information technologies. Postfordist labor relations and new technologies have enabled capital to make and implement investment and business decisions around the planet in a very short time. Capital can now produce specific products, coordinate diversified investments, reduce production and delivery times, and employ workers in flexible positions in the short term and globally. The computerization of financial markets and businesses, and the increased flow of information, money, goods, and people at the transnational level, are creating a global market for money, goods, and labor. In addition, industrial plants are moving to underdeveloped countries where all factors of production - land, raw materials, taxes, and labor - are more favorable for making more profit. Former farmers from underdeveloped countries are becoming industrial workers and consumers of capitalist goods. Postmodern culture is also a consequence of these changes and it expresses the "cultural logic of late capitalism" (Jameson). The global increase in the availability and consumption of television, film, and other media content spreads the capitalist culture of consumerism to the entire planet. The global culture of consumerism creates new social identities and consumer styles that transcend national borders, but also class affiliation. The new global consumerist culture emphasizes the production of events and spectacles, in relation to the production of physical goods. Postmodernism celebrates ephemerality, spectacles, and the commodification of cultural forms.

                          Feminist Critique of the Capitalism

In her works, Angela Davis extends the Marxist theory of inequality to racial and gender relations. She believes that the exploitation of the proletariat, sexism, and racism are related systems of domination that reinforce each other and that all three are inherent features of unfettered capitalism. Global capitalism not only strengthened bourgeois power and authority but also extended race-based domination to the entire planet. The stereotypes introduced during slavery still exist: African American women are portrayed as sexually unrestrained, and African American men as sexual predators. The author sees every form of rape mostly as an expression of the desire for control and power, and not as a consequence of unrestrained sexual desire. Subjugation and violence against women in the family are consequences of capitalist patriarchal socialization. Davis is also a great opponent of the US penal system. The prison system in America serves to maintain the racist capitalist system but also to appropriate the products of free labor of prisoners. Of the more than two million prisoners in the United States, most are African American (although they make up 12% of the population) and most have been convicted of crimes that are a direct consequence of poverty. Davis advocates for socialism in which all forms of oppression and domination (class, racial, and gender), as well as all forms of violence, are abolished.

French sociologist Christine Delphy believes that there are two main ways of production in modern society. The industrial type of production is based on capitalist ownership and exploitation, and the patriarchal mode of production is defined by patriarchal exploitation. British feminist theorist and historian Sheila Rowbotham believes that capitalism produces double oppression and exploitation of women. Women are capitalistically exploited in the workplace, and in addition, they are exploited in the household. Women's domestic work is part of the production chain because it allows men to focus only on market-oriented work. Women, in addition to being controlled by men and being oppressed and exploited in the capitalist system, also have a problem with the internalization of domination, because they see themselves as inferior beings. American political scientist Zila Eisenstein believes that it is unnecessary to study capitalism and patriarchy separately because these two orders together form a single system, which she called "capitalist patriarchy". To end such an oppressive system, two simultaneous revolutions are necessary - socialist and feminist. She examined the rise of neoliberalism and imperial and militaristic globalization and how such globalization affects the decline of liberal democracy in the world, as well as the creation of new gender and class formations around the planet. American political scientist Nancy Hartsock studied the global market and claims that women are involved in that market differently. Women, in addition to selling their labor, also reproduce that labor through are more often victims of the global chain of forced labor and human trafficking. American anthropologist Gail Rubin believes that capitalism also contributes to the economic exploitation of women, because capitalism depends on the reproduction of labor, and it is based on the unpaid labor of women in the household.

In her book Theorizing Patriarchy (1990b), Sylvia Walby argues that patriarchy continues to be an excellent basis for explaining gender inequality. Her view of patriarchy is flexible, as she believes that patriarchy changes, over time, and that it acts differently among different classes or ethnic groups. Walby defines patriarchy "as a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate oppress and exploit women" (Walby, 1990b). She believes that patriarchy represents the institutional coexistence of both the patriarchal and capitalist modes of production. Throughout history, these two systems go through periods of harmony, but also tension, which is influenced by different historical circumstances. Capitalism has great benefits from patriarchy because the latter creates a gender division of labor. Walby distinguishes between private and public patriarchy. Private patriarchy refers to gender relations in the household and family and was most pronounced in earlier periods when women were forbidden to enter the public sphere. Public patriarchy refers to gender relations in the wider society. The state and the labor market are becoming the most important factors of oppression, exploitation, and the subordinate position of women. Although Walby recognizes that there has been a reduction in gender inequalities in Britain, she still believes that all structures and forms of patriarchy continue to exist and function and that women are isolated and subjugated in all areas of public life. She believes that of women from all ethnic groups in Britain, Muslim women are most likely to be oppressed by private patriarchy. In countries of market capitalism, the market plays the biggest role in public patriarchy. In welfare states, the state and the market are equally responsible, while in the former socialist states, the state and its institutions played the greatest role in public patriarchy.

Bell hooks created a feminist theory based on her own experience as an African-American woman. She explores how the combination of sexism and racism has marginalized black women. She called the system she was fighting "the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy." However, she is also critical of other feminists, because they overlook the importance of the influence of racial and class origin on the social position of women.

Dorothy E. Smith believes that patriarchy is a dominantly organized structure of modern capitalism that exists at both the institutional and discourse levels. Although there are multiple places of power, power is always concentrated in specific institutions and practices that maintain the capitalist social order. Discourse and text mediate power in a subtle and hidden way - the state retains power through tax refunds, social security forms, and the like. Smith sees sociology as an ideological project that marginalizes the concept of gender order in order to maintain the patriarchal nature of society.

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Bell. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976);

Bottomore. Elites and Society (1964);

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Braverman. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974);

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Castells. City, Class and Power (1978);

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     -     Capitalism as a System (1964);

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Harvey. Limits to Capital (1982);

     -     The Urbanization of Capital (1985);

     -     The Condition of Postmodernity (1989);

     -     Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (2001);

     -     The New Imperialism (2003); 

     -     A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005);

     -     Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (2006);

Hobsbawm. The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 (1975);

Hobson. Evolution of Modern Capitalism (1894);

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     -     Capitalist Democracy in Britain (1982);

     -     Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism (1989);

Mills. The Power Elite (1956);

Myrdal G. Rich Lands and Poor (1957);

Offe. Contradictions of the Welfare State (1984);

     -     Disorganized Capitalism (1985); 

Pareto. Manual of Political Economy (1971);

Piven. The New Class War (1982);

Polany. The Great Transformation (1944);

Poulantzas. Classes in Contemporary Capitalism  (1975, in French 1973);

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