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Modern Economic System Selection And Its Pertinence With Social Structures

Posted on:2008-04-08Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:W DongFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360215453549Subject:Marxist philosophy
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Postmodernism is a cultural trend of thought that is on the reverse side of tradition but in favor of non-rationalism, instead of being an independent subject or school of learning. It is a common trend of thought that is widely found in literature, arts, philosophy, etc. of the 20th century, adverse to the traditional-modern positions, thinking perspectives and logical methods. Compared with that of 20 years ago, today's world has witnessed tremendous changes, and traditional theories and thinking patterns find it hard to interpret the super-complicated world. People are looking forward to the emergence of new theories. The relations between economic system and social structures are proposed right on the basis of"establishing a multi-orientation and multi-perspective criticism". It has been a long time since the merging trend of economic theories and social theories, and this trend has become even more conspicuous.Since the dominance of Adam Smith's classical economics and Marshall's neoclassic economics in the circle of western economics, classic economics and neoclassic economics have both failed to incorporated the economic institutional school into their theoretical scopes, while the non-mainstream institutional school has incorporated system into the research realm of economics. The emergence of neo-institutional economics is a historical inevitability. A big economic crisis hit the west between 1929 and 1933. It was Roosevelt's New Deal and his new financial and monetary policies that helped reversed the crisis. However, in the 1960s, stagnancy, namely,"stagflation", came and posed a challenge to Keynesianism. How could people explain the loss of control over economic regulation advocated by Keynesianism? Neo-institutional economics came into existence under this background. It broke through the restrictions of traditional economics and attained its simultaneous incorporation with traditional economics.There are individualism and utilitarianism in neo-institutional economics. On the basis of the establishment of"economic man"hypothesis, it holds that the property ownership system with the lowest transact costs is the most effective and a state itself is an"economic man"that pursues maximized benefits for the governor. Its theory is founded on the basis of private ownership, maintaining that the capitalist mode of production is a result of human nature; freedom of contract is a human right endowed by God; equivalent exchange is a symbol of equity and justice. It can be seen that neo-institutional economics has certain flaws in its methodology. Structuralism is an important philosophical school that originated in France and it arrived at its peak in France at the end of the 1960s.Structuralism holds that structures consist of components, which contains some structures among themselves. In order to analyze component natures, structural natures must be understood first, namely, mastering the relations among the components, so as to interpret the whole in a correct manner. It originated in Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistics and Levi Strauss'anthropology. Representatives of post-structuralism were Michel Foucault and J. Jacques Derrida. Foucault used structuralism methods in his studies on social history, which marked the transition to post-structuralism. Post-structuralism uses"no-structure"to replace"structure"and criticizes logocentrisme and phonocentrism to deconstruct (thus known as deconstruction). In 1984, Anthony Giddens published his"Composition of Society: Structural Theoretical Outline"and put forward the concept of structural duality to interpret the relations between individuals and society, between acts and structures. Giddens regards system as an activity of practice, but its nature is to study the relations between acts and structures. Although acts constitute a process of systemization, strictly speaking, human practices are acts within system frameworks. Or we may say that systems take human practices as their carriers and expressions. This thesis holds that acts are system-restricted acts under certain subjective wills in conformity with certain goals. On one hand, acts are restricted by existing systems; on the other, acts create new systems. From this point of view, analyzing the relations between systems and structures are the keys to analyzing the relations between acts and structures. According to Marxism, human society is a"process of natural history"; social production modes determine systematic selections; all the social acts take place within certain systematic scope and restricted by social systems. Social structures exert their influence over social acts through the intermediary of systems. People's social acts embody social structural demands through systems; systems'functions are to implement structures; acts impact and change the expression forms of social structures through systems.Liberalism, as an independent think system, has had a history of more than 300 years since its debut in England in the 17th century. John Locke is recognized by common consent as the founder of liberalism. Liberalism is an economic system in its economic expressions. Major schools are: modern monetarism, the London School, public selection theories, etc. Before the 1930s, all the major capitalist countries decided on economic systems of liberalism (laissez-faire), which lasted till 1929, when an economic crisis hit the capitalist world. American adopted the"Roosevelt New Deal", whose economic system is known as economic system of neo-liberalism. Liberalism and neo-liberalism are appeals to political concept and values. Their mistake and limitations lie in their unilateral understanding of the relations between economic systems and socials structures. The thesis'criticism to neo-liberalism is conducted through the analyses of system and structure relations.According to Marxism, certain productivity development levels are determinants of certain social production modes; production modes are not prescribed by human subjectivity or human choices."People update their production modes with the acquisition of new productivity."Starting by analyzing material productions, Marx revealed the essentials and origins of overall development of human beings and founded his theories on emancipation of overall development of human beings. The essentials of relations between system and structures are social relations, and people's free and all-round development constitutes the aims of system and structure relations. The designed system guided mainly by neo-liberalism has brought about a series of social problems that have exposed the limitations of the system. Wallerstein proposed the world system analysis, holding that work division in the world divided the world into three zones: core zone, semi-marginal zone and marginal zone. The inequitable exchanges between the"core zone"and the"marginal zone"constitute the basis of capitalist economic operations. Wallerstein furthered Marx's theory of surplus value and showed concern over surplus value and capital accumulation in the sphere of the world. Meanwhile, he pointed out that the development process of the world system is the process where conflicts become constantly exacerbated. Pierre Bourdieu's"Utopia of Endless Exploitation --- Nature of Neo-liberalism"also criticized neo-liberalism.The first challenge encountered by the establishment of China's market economy system was system selection. In particular, at the beginning of the 1990s, when"USSR and East Europe Upheavals"took place and many countries gave up socialism (failures of radical market economy reforms), there was an urgent need to have a theoretical guidance. Summing up the lessons learned from the economic transformations of Russia and Latin America, we can see that a basic cause was that there occurred structural obstacles against economic system establishments. Samuel Huntington once remarked that,"When Latin American countries won their independence, they inherited and sustained a social structure whose nature was feudalism. They attempted to copy the republic models of the U.S.A. and revolutionized France onto their feudal social structures."In another word, there are structural conflicts and inadaptability between western economic system designs and the late-developing countries. That is one of the major causes to the reform failures in the late-developing countries.At the beginning of China's reform drives, the Chinese theoretical circles tended to interpret China's reforms with the economic systems based on neo-liberalism. Especially neo-institutional economics as the mainstream of neo-liberalism school had rather big impacts on China. China's economic system selection is different from Russia's radial reforms and it has strict difference from the liberalization advocated by neo-liberalism. It has formed its own development models with Chinese characteristics and established the economic system with public ownership as the main coupled with multi-ownerships in coexistence. Meanwhile, based on the characteristics in China's social structures, China has taken the method of gradual progress in proper sequences in the establishment of market economy systems, so that it can avoid big upheavals during its social structure transformation and attain harmonious development of society.
Keywords/Search Tags:neo-liberalism, economic system, social structure, public ownership as the main, free development of human beings
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