Capitalism

The First World War originated in Europe between 1914-18 and spread throughout the world. It is called the Great War or the Global War. WWI was also believed to bring an end to all other wars, hence it was known as ‘war to end all wars’. But it had not happened and the Second World War was also observed in 1939. This war started on 28^th July, 1914 and lasted till 11^th November 1918. Approx. one crore seventy lakh people had lost their life and about two Crores got injured. Many died due to epidemics and malnutrition.

The First World War was fought between Allied Powers (France, Britain and Russia; later on the USA joined the war during 1917-18) and the Central Powers (Germany, Japan, And the Ottoman Empire, Italy). At the end of the war new boundary for Europe was determined. The power of Russia, Germany and Austria were ended and the USA became the ‘Super Power’ of the world. The First World War affected the whole world directly or indirectly.

Reason of the First World War

The First World War was the clash of a long tussle among the European Countries before 1914. The reasons behind the war can be classified into two groups which are mentioned below:-

Long Term Reasons:

The different events and circumstances such as- feeling of nationality, militarism, communism, economic rivalry, secret and diplomatic treaties, lack of social media like newspapers and radio, lack of international institutions, imbalance in the society etc. were the main reason of the war.

Contemporary Reasons:

• The sign of unrest and disorder in Europe was noticed from a long period of time. The contemporary events put butter into the fire.
• Actually the instantaneous reason behind the war was the murder of the successor of the throne of Austria Arch Duke Francis Ferdinand in Bosnia and the blame of the murder was put on Serbia.
• The rough ties between the two countries were seen from a long time and this event had given the opportunity to Austria to attack on Serbia. Taking the advantage of the circumstances Austria had compelled Serbia to accept the ten point demand but Serbia refused to accept these inappropriate demands.
• As a result on 28^th July, 1914 Austria declared a war against Serbia. Many countries were involved in the war one by one and the war had taken a worldwide view.

How First World War Relate to the Indian Independence Movements

Since Britain was associated in the First World War hence the Indian Soldiers had to be involved into the war. It was the period of National dominance and the nationalist leaders believed that the British would provide them liberty to use some constitutional powers if they will contribute in the war in favour of Britain. The British had assured for some liberty. When the Indian soldiers returned from the war they were welcomed with great joy and zeal. A hope of liberty was prevailing in every Indian heart. Actually India had supported the British on the assurance of establishment of democracy but the British had imposed the Rowlet Act immediately after the war. A feeling of dissatisfaction grew in the Indian hearts and the national conscience was prevailed among the Indians that led to Non-cooperation Movement. With the rebuilding of Russia as USSR the effect of communism was felt in India also and its effect was seen in the freedom struggle of India.

India and its Association into the First World War

• Indians are well known for their bravery. The Indian soldiers were understood to support Britain as their duties that honour their tribal group as well as they wanted to win hearts of the British.
• From the British point of view appointing the Indian soldiers into the war was less expensive. They had to pay only INR 11 per month to an Indian soldier whereas the extra income gained by the war soldier was a good option for the poor soldier whose family was only based on farming. Therefore, economic income was the major objective to involve in the war.
• Many newspapers of that period revealed that many soldiers participated in the war to show their individual respect and duty towards Lord George Pancham.

Effects of the First World War

Significantly the Indian National Movement and the socio- economic development of the country are co-related. The First World War had associated the global events and its effects that were observed after the war, that are the followings:

Political Effect

• After the end of the First World War the soldiers in Punjab had stimulated their activities against the British rule which turned into elaborate demonstrations and violence.
• In 1919, the Montague Chelmsford reforms failed to fulfill the aspirations of the home-rule then the feeling of Nationality and common citizen disobedience arose.
• The policy of appointing the soldiers without their will put anger among the people which prepared the background for the feeling of Nationalism.

Social Effect

• In spite of the negative effects of the war, during 1911 to 1921 a remarkable increase in the literacy rate into the soldier’s community was felt.
• They started learning and improve their knowledge for the upcoming expeditions. The prestige and honour of those communities who fought wars had been increased.
• Many doctors and nurses were also appointed. In the male dominating society of India now the social utility of the women had been realized and their field of work was expanded.

Economic Effect

• The production in British industries was badly affected by the war thus the demand of Indian goods was increased in Britain.
• However there was an obstruction in the Shipping lane due to the war but that only meant that the discomfort faced due to the input of import from Britain and Germany previously. Thus hindrances were balanced with the extra demand.
• Another consequence of the war was the inflation. After 1914 the industrial prices became double in 6 years and these increasing rates largely benefited the Indian traders and manufacturers along with the whole Indian industry.
• In comparison to Industrial prices Agricultural prices increased gradually. The tendency of fall in prices continued especially during the Great Depression.
• Food supply was increased due the increase in the demand of food grains. Due to loss in European markets the export of cash crops like Jute faced a great loss.
• It is significant that the increase in demand of soldiers there was a scarcity of the labourers in the Jute industry and they were in loss. Compensation was granted by the British which would become the reason for the increase in income inequality.
• The cotton industry was in profit due the decrease in British production. The British investment was re-started in Britain providing growth opportunities for the Indian economy.
• On the comprehensive level although many people were killed during the First World War yet the effect of the war was said to be positive in many aspects for India.
• The demand of Indians to give them constitutional right was discarded by the British after the war that evoked the consciousness of the Indians.
• Apart from this, the elaborate changes had been observed at the social, political and economic level. In brief we can say that during the war, economy encouraged capitalism in India.

The Christian Right and Major Players’ Influence in the Values of Middle and Working Class America” Introduction! It’s February 2011. Barack Obama is the president of the United States. Despite sagging poll numbers, a slowly recovering economy is supporting the push of health care reform. The Democratic Party controls the Senate. The Republicans, led by midterm-elected John Bonder, control the House. Progress is tedious, but moving. Disdain for the President, spurred on by mass media and the murmurings of the Tea Party, is gripping hold of what seems to be a substantive chunk of voting Americans.

Wing for the Republican nomination, looking to feed off these energies, Georgia businessman Herman Cain stands in front of a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Cain is good at the rhetoric. He takes the underpinnings of conservative media and turns them on the crowd. ” “Stupid people are ruining America,” he says to applause. “It’s sad… I’m talking about the liberals. They don’t have tactics. They don’t have a strategy. They have an objective. The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country.

The objective of the liberals is to make America mediocre Just like everybody else who aspires to be like America. ” Cain takes in the applause and pauses for the audience to sit down. “They are trying to destroy this country at all costs! “” Fast forward to March 2014. Americans have seen the failings of the roll of Beam’s Affordable Care Act. Hobby Lobby has refused to offer birth control to its 2 employees under the plan, citing their religious beliefs. Arizona governor Jan Brewer has vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to LIGHT people.

Seizing the opportunity, former congresswoman Michele Buchanan gets on the radio with a conservative talk show host. ” l think the thing that is getting a little tiresome, the gay community, they have so bullied the American people, and they’ve so intimidated politicians. ” She goes on to insinuate that the “liberals” have initiated an attack on religious Americans: “Just like we need to observe tolerance for the gay and lesbian community, we need to have tolerance for the community of people who hold sincerely held religious beliefs. ” ” This type of speech from right-wing populists isn’t anything new. In fact, it’s been surfacing for some time, since the mid-twentieth century, a stand against the moving regressive of women’s rights, civil rights, challenges to the traditional patriarchy, and fear of communism. Pushed for some time beginning with post-World War II and beyond, today, rabid defense of religious liberty and unapologetic perpetuation of deregulated capitalism as a divine force infiltrates the very fiber of American political, public, and religious discourse. This project will examine several angles, arguments, and accounts of the power of right wing populism, religiously motivated or otherwise, in the mainstay underbelly of middle and working class white America. Presupposing that this regiment of withdrawing American “conservatives” is modernly strong and the consideration of it is worthwhile, I will offer research and commentary. To accomplish this, I will consider several academic and media sources, authored by political scientists, religious studies scholars, sociologists, philosophers, and ethnographers. 3 The main concepts necessary for context on this project are two. First, I will take into account William E. Connelly “Christian-capitalist resonance machine,” an idea articulated in his 2008 book Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. Second, a good deal of this study will focus on analysis of Thomas Franks 2004 book What’s the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America and his notion of a “backlash culture. “” These two trends, as they may be called, are powerful and are ingrained into American political culture, embedded in a power structure of the Right Wing, both Christian and secular.

Now, the backlash drives the Right Wing, and the Wing itself is a volleying voice in the Christian-capitalist resonance machine. Importantly, however, these trends did not always exist and emerged over some time. ” ” So my thesis argument is this: the unconditional accepting of the Christian- capitalist resonance machine has been growing in the national discourse of government over time, beginning with anti-communist movements after the Second World War and a wave of Southern evangelicalism establishing an effective empire on the tails of earlier labor movements.

This coincidentally intersected with the changing face of populism to resent the progressivism of the second half of the Twentieth Century, namely desegregation, increased legality for abortion, and increased teaching of evolutionary science in public schools. This occurred as the Right learned from its failings during the Goldwater campaign and transformed itself into a force ready for alliance with the Christian Right, which itself had become more powerful on account of television and radio.

Now, nostalgic sentiments of a supposedly better America in the past permeate the psyche of a white middle and working class that dollies the Christian-capitalist 4 resonance machine and unleashes blame of what it perceives to be moral flaws at the feet of the “liberals,” effectively promulgating a backlash culture. ” ” I will supplement the study of those two trends with theoretical methods of interpretation, analysis, and study, heavily relying on Sarah Diamond’s 1995 book Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States.

With Diamond as a starting point to understand the comprehensive formation of power to create a culture of backlash and Connelly Christian-capitalist resonance machine, pushed by an unlikely alliance of libertarians, evangelicals, conservatives, and moderates, I will add to her analysis with other scholars, most notably Michael Akin, Darrel Docks, and Lisa McGuire. ” Thomas Frank, Joe Pageant and the Backlash Culture! Patriotism has woven itself deeply into this generation’s personality.

The attacks on September 1 1, 2001 solidified a culture of burgeoning nationalism. The United States became an identity for many young people in a new, vibrant way. To disgrace the flag is to disgrace the people who were victims in terrorist attacks and to undermine the military, whose interest, after all, is rooted not in violence but in protection. The PATRIOT Act of 2001 called into question the importance of personal privacy in an era with the nation’s enemies are technologically as’. N. And that foe is n insurgency with no national ties, but who seemingly target the red, white, and blue hostilely. For a time, resulting from disgust for the French for seemingly not supporting the Just cause of the 5 United States, French fries were Jokingly renamed “freedom fries” and the French kiss dubbed the “All-American lip lock. “” Even discarding trivial pop culture phenomena like these, it is clear that the government denial that bubbled toward the end and in the aftermath of the War in Vietnam became questionable at best for the public in the early new millennium.

President Bush, to many, represented a strong, moral, religiously devout leader hose intentions in super sizing the United States military were only a vehicle through which to enact democratic change on behalf of oppressed people in the Middle East, specifically in Afghanistan and Iraq. For a time, intervention in the Middle East was patriotic and an offshoot of the De facto mission of the nation: that all people should be free and entitled to certain rights of privacy and prosperity in a venue of individualism and free exchange of ideas.

This obsession with capitalism with shades of manifest destiny eventually wavered when it was clear that there old be no “winning” the War on Terror, at least for the time being. It wasn’t until President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of Seal Team Six in 2011 that it looked like the insurgent al-Qaeda was on the run at A growing disparity of wealth in the United States resulting partially from offshore labor and the continuing success of Internet companies coupled with an unwavering patriotism in the new millennium.

What used to be a substantially sized white middle class in the United States was either being absorbed into the upper class or pushed downward into the working class. Combine this with a recession at the hands of the housing market collapse and you have an environment rich for what political scientist 6 Thomas Frank calls “backlash culture” Just at the time that Barack Obama took the oath in January 2009. ” In What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Frank discusses how a progressive hub like Kansas gradually turned into a prototypical example of the effects of the New Right on the middle of America and became symbolic of what he calls the “backlash culture. “” ” Backlash, by definition, is reaction to social change among a mass group of people toward what they feel is an outside, intervening power. For our purposes, the backlash of the second half of the twentieth century can be boiled down to a distrust of both big government and Wall Street powers, both of which are run by the elite and neglect the average, pious American.

However, according to Frank, an opportunist group of conservatives hijacked the distrust and malaise toward elite east-coast and west-coasters and morphed it into a political machine. We will examine this shift more, but it safe to say that Kansas was an exemplary microcosm of such radical change. ” Frank alleges that the backlash is a working-class movement hat has done incalculable, historic harm to working-class people and that confident liberals who led America in a previous wave of populism are a dying species.

Carefully cultivated derangement in places like Kansas have stirred these movements. The narrative has been perpetuated to paint liberals as out of touch and move Middle America from liberal to staunchly conservative. ” Frank is a Kansas insider, having grown up outside Kansas City on the KS side. 7 One of Franks big themes is the idea of “Two Americas. Fox News, Heartland, and others have espoused two entirely separate Americas where red-starters are down to earth and reverent and blue-starters are lazy and elitist.

Kansas used to be extremely progressive, but the red-states dynamic combined with huge telecommunications industries have pushed taxes low and labor cheaper. The huge industries play towns off against each other; it’s economic growth that makes an area less wealthy and less healthy as its population increases. Farm towns are in decay. Deregulated capitalism has allowed Walter to crash local businesses. Huge food reparations have used legislation to get richer while disenfranchising farmers. ” Kansas has found its most aggressively pious individuals and elevated them to public officer.

He gives an example: the leader of the Wyandotte County Republican Party reportedly once told a reporter, “Primarily my goal is to build the Kingdom of God” (69), a statement that any secularist might find alarming. Another prominent example of this trend is Sam Brownian, who as Kansas Secretary of Agriculture, may have been responsible for running the state’s small farmers into the grips of large agriculture corporations (73). Ironically, even though he once denounced the presence of PACK money in politics, corporate telecommunications front groups soon funded him and he and eventually voted against McCain-Feinting (74). Some of Franks conclusions to the change of culture in Kansas may be representative of much of middle America. The “rebels” (as they are called) of Kansas Imagine Georgia, Texas, or much of the Southeast and Midwest. Imagine ideally Massachusetts, New Hampshire, California, Washington, and Oregon. When you are looking for a change in dialogue, why not find the person who cares hyperbolically the most? Want to tear down federal farm programs and privative utilities because big business has told them to.

Towns that are dependent on the government want the “liberals” to pack up and leave them alone because the Cat Institute and others have created this mindset, and corporations dangle money over their heads because they are mobile and cities are not. ” The most consequential shift has been within the Republican Party, which has been pushed more and more to the right. Through the sass, the legislature was dominated by traditional moderate Republicans. This changed in 1991 when a pro- fife group pushed conservatives and rendered Democrats helpless.

Strangely, this populist movement was at the heeding of a policy that is is difficult to defeat in legalized abortion. Even so, anti-abortion protesters who were looking to build a “kingdom of God”, worked harder than the moderates to achieve their success. ” ” Only the conservatives’ complete opposition to taxes has any sort of tangible use anyway, but they stir the pot and push what would seem to be a class war, except that the war is from the top down, not the bottom up. The working class heroes are even more Republican than their bosses. This echoes Joe Pageant, whom I will mention in a moment. The conservative social critique always boils down to the message that liberals are rich and lazy, and Frank alleges all claims on the right advance from victimized. The backlash suspends material needs for grave social grievances. Frank writes that the backlash movement says that nothing can protect humble Americans from the alien forces of liberalism. For backlasher, business is natural and good, and the liberals want to destroy business. Frank alleges that Republicans have to lie about being the 9 party of the common man by concealing that huge business is actually their main interest.

Then, the backlasher label universities as places of evil “liberal” elitism, attempting to articulate that the future for them is doomed as well. Thus, conservatives pretend to be “persecuted, powerless, and blind. “” The backlash is about individual identity, and those who perpetuate it have used gun control, abortion, and evolution to manipulate voters. Ann-intellectualism is one of their unifying themes. Backlasher blame intellectuals for calling the shots in the political sphere. This anti-intellectualism can be dated back to the sass against New Deal regulations.

Then more came in the sass with McCarthy, as we have already seen. Republicans have hijacked several anti-intellectual traditions including Protestant evangelicalism (194) and in every social issue Republicans perceive the same pattern of a conflict of the “authentic” with the liberal and arrogant. Anti- intellectualism makes pro-life movements central to contemporary conservatism (198). ” ” The idea that the liberals are calling “all the shots” in America in a time of a worsening economy and the perceived debilitation of traditional morals affects these average Americans directly.

Social movements in LIGHT progress allegedly threaten heir families and religious freedom. The advancement of gun control legislation threatens their sacred constitutional rights. In all, I argue that the election of an Africanizing president contributes to a white fear that the average white American is somehow being made to pay for the inherent advantages in opportunity that they did not choose. ” The resonance was that the liberal elite were meddling in the definition of human life with their cliquey liberalism.

The backlash movement is becoming permanent in the 10 resonance machine, like the liberals against which they dissent (242). But what it has in common with mainstream culture is the refusal to think about capitalism critically. Because liberals have dropped the class language that distinguished them from Republicans, they have left themselves vulnerable to the cultural wedges. In short, the backlash works. ” It is no secret that Frank is writing from a left-leaning perspective, lamenting the ways large businesses like Boeing have taken over legislative imperatives in his hometown.

Even so, I think his argument is pessimistic and is one of more description than action, as we will see in Connelly. ” In summary, the government backlash has been emerging over time, a product of the response to progressive social movements. Because those social movements were often pushed by those called “liberals,” the other side of the coin blames the liberals for irrevocable progressivism that has negatively changed the values of the nation. ” ” Franks commentary connects well with Joe Pageant’s 2007 book Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War.

In a return trip to his home town of rural Virginia, Pageant, a Journalist, condenses interviews and relationships into this book, articulating what he calls the “American hologram. This hologram is the belief that white people must be middle class, even if they are living paycheck to paycheck. Starkly, Pageant writes,” “If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state of the PATRIOT Act, it is because they live comfortably enough to exercise 11 their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries.

You never know you are in prison unless you try the door” (263). ” Though Pageant’s people are less the backlasher than Franks people, they are a group of working class white people who have come to ascribe to the political levels of their bosses so as not to hurt their Job status. Pageant tells of a world where “liberals” are dubbed weak-willed people, and social questions aren’t about complexity, but about good guys versus bad guys (67). A good example of the cause of the malaise that Pageant describes is the actions of Rubberier, who, at the time of publishing, employed a good many of people in his hometown. Walter, in an attempt to lower the prices that Rubberier cost them, began replacing Rubberier with other products. After seeing a sales drop, Rubberier caved, shutting down sixty-nine of its 400 facilities and firing 1 ,OHO workers (76), some of whom Pageant knew. ” But for the people Pageant knows, this is the fault of the liberals, partially because they never reached these people with any message at away.

As Republicans became uneasy in the sass with change, they trapped into the uneasiness among middle Americans by lamenting the “loss of community and values and attributing it to the ‘cultural left’s feminism and Antarctica,” etc (82). Guns are American, and liberals are against them. Cultural freedom is American, and liberals are against it. He sums it all up “That’s what they [the people he knows, whites living paycheck to check] voted for – an armed and moral republic. And that’s what we get when we stand by and At least the Republicans had a message, even if it was only about values. 2 watch the humanity get hammered out of our fellow citizens, letting them be worked cheap and farmed like a human crop for profit” (91). ” Finally, the Christian element about which Pageant writes cannot be neglected. He writes, “you don’t need a degree in sociology to see that the most obvious class indicator in America is religious belief and that religious zeal is concentrated in lowercases and working-class whites” (182). ” ” Franks culture of backlash is a common one through the history of the United States. There has always been contempt for those in power on the part of a certain sect.

In sum, after the Second World War, ideas of anti-communism turned any type of progressivism into a wary opponent to “true” Americanism. Social Justice between desegregation and increased women’s rights, including eventual rulings on Roe v. Wade, added to a middle class restlessness about changing times, threatening the class’ prosperity. That middle class fed on alleged threats of progressivism to promulgate a backlash culture against the amoral and progressive government, effectively ensuring a discourse of the “two Americas” in Franks book that were at war for the heart of a real America. Even though there have always been backlash movements, times changed in the twentieth century when mass media became available to the backlogging populists who used a rhetoric of fear to convince others to Join them. This backlash culture culminated at the right time with the Christian Right and the New Right to form a pervasive Christian-capitalist resonance machine. ” William E. Connelly and the Christian-capitalist Resonance Machine” 13 In his book Capitalism and Christianity, American Style, William E.

Connelly explores how an ethos of existential revenge permeates a culture, including those of “work, investment, church assemblies, educational practices, modes of consumption, avowing habits, electoral campaigns, and economic theory’ (4). With an ethos a “shared spirituality,” this theme of revenge has been incorporated into an evangelical wing of Christianity and resonates with “exclusionary drives and claims to special entitlement running through the cowboy sector of American capitalism” (7). To me, it seems clear that the ethos of existential revenge is another facet of the backlash ultra introduced in the previous section. This ethos of existential revenge exists in a vacuum of what Connelly calls the “Christian-capitalist resonance machine. ” The confluence of backlash culture with the resonance machine creates a powerful motive for political activism in the Right. In his book, Connelly articulates this resonance machine and proposes a way to combat it. I will summarize his articulations and, at the end of the project, offer analysis and a new thesis of how to combat the resonance machine from the Left. ” ” Connelly posits as early as page 7 that he would like to explore what it would

Whilst texts may be fictitious constructs of composers’ imaginations, they also explore and address the societal issues and paradigms of their eras. This is clearly the case with Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein (1818), which draws upon the rise of Galvanism and the Romantic Movement of the 1800’s, as well as Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1992), reflecting upon the increasing computing industry and the predominance of capitalism within the late 20th Century.

Hence, an analysis of both in light of their differing contexts reveal how Shelley and Scott ultimately warn us of the dire consequences of our desire for omnipotence and unrestrained scientific progress, concepts which link the two texts throughout time. Composed in a time of major scientific developments, including Galvani’s concept of electricity as a reanimating force, Shelley’s Frankenstein utilises the creative arrogance of the Romantic imagination to fashion a Gothic world in which the protagonist’s usurpation of the divine privilege of creation has derailed the conventional lines of authority and responsibility.

Her warning of the dangers of such actions is encapsulated within Victor’s retrospective words of “how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge”, whilst Shelley’s use of a fragmented epistolatory narrative adds a disturbing sense of truth, foreshadowing the dark consequences of Frankenstein’s actions. Moreover, her allusions to John Milton’s Paradise Lost evoke the poetic retelling of Satan’s fall from grace, wherein the daemon’s association with “the fallen angel” exacerbates the effects of Victor’s rejection, ultimately transforming its “benevolent nature” into a thirst for retribution.

Together with its questioning of how Victor could “sport with life”, Shelley’s warning reverberates past the page, directly questioning the scientists of her era, including evolutionary theorist Erasmus Darwin, to reinforce the dangers of our humanity’s inherent yearning to play the role of the Creator. Such a warning also exists within Scott’s Blade Runner, hence linking the two texts throughout time, where the director echoes the rise of capitalist ideals and the Wall Street mantra, “greed is good”, through the symbolic dominance of Tyrell’s towering ziggurat, a reflection of both his desire for omnipotence and commercial power.

Tyrell’s egocentric nature is epitomised within the religious connotations of his abode, including his voluminous bed, modeled after that of Pope John Paul II, as well as his reference to Batty as “the prodigal son”. Such symbols are unnervingly subverted through both the foreboding Chiarscuro of flickering candle-light with shadow and his violent death at the hands of his own creation. Scott’s warning of the dangers of such a desire is also evident within the expansive shots of 2019 LA, revealing a dark and tenebrous world lit by the glow of corporate advertisements, a representation of a bleak future dominated by commercial dominance.

Hence, by drawing upon elements of his context, including the growth of capitalism and the ‘trickle-down theory’ of Reagan’s era, Scott positions us to reassess the consequences of overstepping our boundaries. In addition, both texts’ warnings also encompass the dangers of unrestrained scientific progress, where Frankenstein further demonstrates the Romantic Movement’s influence on Shelley’s mindset, as her criticisms of the Age of Reason and Industrial Revolution reflect their denigration of rationality.

The imagery of the “dead corpse” and repetitious use of “horror” upon the creation of the “miserable monster” establish a strong aura of death and despair around this scientific advancement, whilst Victor’s warning of Walton to “avoid ambitions of science and discoveries” encapsulates Shelley’s vilification of contributors to the Industrial Revolution, including renowned inventor James Watt.

Moreover, Shelley stresses her warning through the protagonists’ connections with nature, where Victor’s “insensibility to its charms”, arising from his immersion in science, results in his “deep, dark and deathlike solitude”, with the heavy alliteration exemplifying his degraded sense of humanity. Conversely, the monster possesses greater “benevolence” and a more intimate connection with “the pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring”, with such characterisation capturing Shelley’s reflection of Romanticism’s idolisation of nature, cautioning us against the dehumanising effect of unrestrained scientific advancement.

Blade Runner is no different, with Scott’s reflection of the explosion of technological progress during the 1980’s, including the rise of computing giants IBM and Microsoft, highlighting the dangers of such unrestrained progress. Most notable is the opening panoramic shot of blazing smokestacks which, together with the haunting synthetic pulses of the Vangelis soundtrack, establishes a festering miasma of technological overload, adding further semiotic weight to the film’s nightmarish dystopian agenda.

Indeed, this portrayal of a decaying environment reflects the growing ecological awareness of the 1980’s, which, whilst different to Shelley’s Romantic values, is similarly employed to highlight the destruction of mankind due to technology. Moreover, Scott illuminates us to the dehumanising effects of such progress, foregrounded through Deckard’s “retiring” of the Replicant Zhora.

Here, the stylistic placement of the transparent poncho places further emphasises the violence of her death, with slow-motion low angle shot conveying her heightened sense of humanity within her last painful moments. In contrast, Deckard’s emotionless features, together with the monotonous drone of the droid, suggests that our artificial creations will ultimately lead to the dehumanising of mankind, undermining our humanist framework and hence, warns us of the dire consequences of unchecked scientific progress.

Thus, we can see how both Shelley and Scott reflect their zeitgeists in their texts, Frankenstein and Blade Runner, as they draw upon the societal concerns of their times in order to warn us of the consequences of overstepping our boundaries and unbridled technological advancement. Subsequently, it becomes evident that despite their temporal and contextual differences, both texts are in fact linked through their common concerns and concepts.

The relationship between shareholders and managers is closely monitored by a government’s institutions of corporate governance. Both main forms of corporations are examined- the family, or closely held corporation, or the diffusely-owned corporation. Social democracies found mainly in Europe have been more concerned with the workers, than they have the managers or stockholders. In Germany, France and Italy, workers are found on the board of directors and the institutions created to watch corporation have needed to adjust to the power of the workers (Roe 18). These countries look after the welfare of their citizens much more so than the United States.

The United States has a much larger labor force that corporations are able to exploit and workers are not often seen on boards of directors. These factors have allowed corporate governance institutions to develop rather easily according to Mark Roe. These corporate governance institutions are created to ensure that corporations are acting within the confines of the laws and build stockholder trust in the corporation. No one would buy stock in a corporation if one did not feel that the corporation was acting lawfully or if they did not have confidence in the corporation’s ability to succeed.

The major corporate governance institutions within the United States are the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the most important piece of legislation, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) which created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. These institutions were all created to monitor the trading of stock and the behavior of corporations. While there are numerous laws and institutions within Europe governing corporations, they are changing as the European Union continues to emerge.

However, one scandal, Parmalat, in Italy demands further inspection of Italy’s corporate governance structures as there was ongoing fraud. The Italian Parliament is currently in the process of enacting laws that, according to Carlotta Amaduzzi, would reorganize securities and financial regulators while instituting corporate governance changes that echo the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Attention has focused mainly on the debate over redefining the supervisory roles of financial regulators. But other provisions of the bill, while less in the limelight, promise major reforms of Italian corporate governance.

Governments and institutions have at least taken swift action in response to these emerging scandals and are trying to rebuild public trust, while trying to reform the corporations. In recent years, institutions have been forced to probe deep within corporations or were created as a result of corporate scandals. The SOA was actually enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal. The government realized the extensive fraudulent activities of corporations needed to cease and for trust to be recreated in businesses. Investors and employees lost their retirement funds and pensions as a result of the creative accounting at Enron and other corporations, such as World Com and Parmalat.

These scandals would not have been as large or dramatic if there had been more stringent laws and rigorous inspections of financial statements. There were obvious lapses by the government and the institutions created to oversee corporations. Efforts are now being made to improve the transparency of corporations and to have much more in- depth inspections of financial disclosures. Stockholders and prospective investors should be able to evaluate the strength of a corporation based on the validity of its financial statements, not the creativity of its accountants.

Creative accounting was the base upon the Enron/Arthur Anderson debacle was created. Executives wished to “line their pockets” and they best way they felt was to overstate earnings and hide the increasing debt in partnerships and accounting schemes which would allow the stock price to inflate. These high level executives and managers had been given stock options- and acted in their own interests, not the corporations- the big pitfall of stock options. With the help of their auditors, Arthur Anderson, Enron created over 800 offshore tax havens and practiced illegal or highly questionable accounting and other business practices.

What is particularly shocking is that executives were exercising their stock options while the price was high and making money all the while knowing the company would collapse all and encouraging employees to buy Enron stock. The last people to know about the fraud would be the unassuming stockholders- they were just trying to save money for the future. It took one woman’s determination to cause the misdeeds of Enron officials to come to the forefront. Sherron Watkins, while working for the CFO Andrew Fastow, noticed that Enron was losing money on two of its equity investments, which harmed Enron as the investments were backed up by Enron stock. Her memos to other top executives detailed her concerns, and are now the basis for the ongoing investigation.

In the attempt to prosecute those responsible for the grievous deeds of the Enron officials, the government investigators are focusing upon the truly illegal activities. Michael Duffy, a Time columnist, notes, ” Enron avoided paying federal income tax for four out of the last five years and instead received millions of dollars in federal-tax refunds. For now, the House Energy and Commerce Committee and federal agents probing Enron’s fall are skipping over the accounting schemes and other questionable business practices–including a bizarre sex angle: a scheme to offer pornography via the Internet. The investigators instead have zeroed in on what officials from Enron and Andersen did and did not do once they realized that the debts were mounting, that the stock price was falling and that the last people to learn of the looming reckoning were going to be millions of Enron shareholders. Watkins’ two letters provide the road map for their inquiry.

Investors and all Americans want to see the officials of Enron prosecuted for their illegal activities. Investigators are particularly interested in the illegal deeds of both Enron and Anderson employees how may have had knowledge of the questionable practices and shredded documents. It would be highly illegal if documents were shredded after the investigations began and subpoenas issued.

The former chief outside auditor for Enron, David Duncan plead guilty in 2002 to an obstruction of justice, admitting that, He knew he had committed a crime when he instructed his colleagues at Arthur Andersen LLP to destroy documents as their energy client collapsed. “I obstructed justice,” testified Duncan, the government’s key witness in the trial of his former company. “I instructed people on the engagement team to follow a document-retention policy which I knew would result in the destruction of documents. (Johnson)

Recently several top Enron officials have pleaded guilty in plea agreements with former CEO Ken Lay currently facing a possible indictment. These executives were accused of mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and various conspiracies. Steps are being taken to ensure that those responsible are paying for their actions and that a scandal of this magnitude could be averted. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is an example of the action taken in the wake of Enron.

In addition to Enron, World Com has found itself in the midst of a scandal that has its former leaders on trial. World Com hid debts, understated costs and backdated contracts in a fraud of $ 11 billion dollars. The SEC filed a civil suit against the corporation and federal charges have been filed against several executives. Executives are charged with securities fraud, falsifying documents and statements to the SEC, and conspiracy (www.securitiesfraudfyi.com). World Com is currently seeking to emerge from bankruptcy protection, to rebuild trust in the company that is now known as MCI. Trust is being rebuilt by bringing in new leaders from outside the company with exemplary records, as well as a re-audit of the company’s financial statements from 1999 to 2002 and “while internal controls are being reviewed and strengthened” (Schlesinger).

While much attention has been placed upon the American corporations, European corporations were not exempt from these scandals. The Italian firm, Parmalat, exposed its ongoing fraud in late 2003. According to Gail Edmondson, a Business Week columnist the fraud began when, Parmalat defaulted on a $185 million bond payment in mid-November. That prompted auditors and banks to scrutinize company accounts.

Some 38% of Parmalat’s assets were supposedly held in a $4.9 billion Bank of America (BAC ) account of a Parmalat subsidiary in the Cayman Islands. But on Dec. 19, Bank of America reported that no such account existed. In the ensuing investigation, Italian prosecutors say they’ve discovered that managers simply invented assets to offset as much as $16.2 billion in liabilities and falsified accounts over a 15-year period, forcing the $9.2 billion company into bankruptcy on Dec.

Parmalat is controlled by the Tanzi family who owns 51% of the corporation. Several members of that family have been arrested and indicted on charges of fraud. Former CEO Calisto Tanzi is accused of diverting $990 million dollars from the corporation for his own personal use as well as fraud, false accounting, misleading investors and destruction of documents. Parmalat certainly used some creative accounting with the use of “derivatives and other complex financial transactions to shore up its balance sheet” (Edmondson). No one is sure where the missing money went, but Italian authorities want the punishment of Parmalat officials to be severe to possibly deter other corporations from committing similar acts of fraud.

The SEC is also investigating Parmalat as it has holdings within the United States- “the SEC has also charged Parmalat with fraudulently offering $100 million worth of unsecured notes to U.S. investors and inflating its assets by at least $5 billion. SEC regulators called this “one of the largest and most brazen corporate financial frauds in history”  (http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=1327&blz=1). This scandal will be unfolding as both Italian and American authorities continue their investigations.

The corruption was at the highest level at Enron, World Com and Parmalat suggesting flaws in the corporate governance structure of both of the diffusely- owned corporation and the closely owned corporation. Stockholders trying to get managers follow their wishes instead of siding with the workers have created this difficult situation by offering stock options. Many managers are choosing to create schemes to boost the short term outlook of the corporation to make themselves wealthier while harming the corporation in the long term. These managers must be reined in to prevent from scandals of these magnitudes from happening in the future. No form of governance will ever be perfect, but the stockholders and the boards of directors must pay greater attention to the actions of the managers and must not succumb to the temptations of wealth that corruption and creative accounting provide.

Works Consulted

Amaduzzi, Carlotta. “Italian Parliament Discusses Post-Parmalat Reforms.” http://www.issproxy.com/articles/2004archived/074.asp.

American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. www.aicpa.org/sarbanes/index.asp

Chandler, Alfred. “The Emergence of Managerial Capitalism.” The Sociology of Economic Life. Ed. Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992.

Minhchau Truong ID 125 Prof. Kevin Maclean Midterm Exam Citation Black, Maggie. The No-Nonsense Guide to International Development. (London: New Internationalist Publications Ltd, 2007). Naim, Moises. Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy. (New York: Anchor Books, 2005). Reding, Nick. Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009). Thurow, Roger and Scott Kilman. Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. New York: Perseus Books, 2009). 1. ) Modernization Theory was used to justify the process of decolonization and intervention by the United States, which had the ulterior motive of gaining access to new markets and thus boosting the national economy. The U. S. separated this theory from Cold War ideologies with the distinguishing feature that it emphasized GNP and technical measures. The theory is ethnocentric and is posited in the belief that there is a ceaseless struggle against scarcity and that underdeveloped nations must overcome this natural state.

The role and ability of the developed state was framed by the teleological doctrine that began with preconditions to “take-off”, which was recognition that economic progress was necessary to move from “tradition” to “modernity” to the final “take-off”, to the “drive to maturity” (which was expected to be completed in 1-2 generations), to the “age of high-mass consumption” (similar to the historical patterns of the U. S. ). The strengths of Modernization theory included its organized capitalism, integration into the world economy, and outlook of economic expansion.

These changes were to be achieved through institutions and a shift from earlier colonial hierarchy and integration into the United Nations family (a de jure equality). However, the weaknesses overpower benefits. The theory naturalizes “underdevelopment” as something that can be changed easily, and discounts implicit historical, geographical, sociological circumstances or specific constraints. Furthermore, it disregards underdeveloped countries by trivializing conditions by labeling it as the “global norm”.

Economics is foremost on the agenda, rather than politics, because capital accumulation for developed states- not actual welfare of the concerned state- is the main objective. The theory displaces the more correct principle of the right to self-definition. The linear growth implied by the theory can only be achieved by mass consumption, competition, individualism. Essentially, modernization theory is an ahistorical narrative imposed by ethnocentric developed states that could not possibly relate to their underdeveloped states.

Dependency Theory sees the historical relations of inequality, the unequal relationships developed between industrialized countries versus underdeveloped. Theoretically, the problem is explained as: economic growth in advanced industrialized countries did not lead to a growth in poorer countries. Dependency theory acknowledges that modernization theory directly contradicted neo-classical economic theory- the Pareto optimal, that economic growth was beneficial to all even if benefits not equally shared, this was not evident in the relationship between industrialized nations and unindustrialized nations.

The strengths of dependency theory included that is accounted for real history as opposed to modernization theory, which was a philosophy of history. It saw states as a global structure, and saw inequalities as a problem rather than a way to promote competition and equalizations. There were realistic expectations, unacknowledged that imposition of “development” was actually an act of exclusion. What was preferred was a more natural, predestined process of inclusion.

Economically, dependency accurately determined the outcomes of modernization: poor countries exported primary commodities to rich countries, which the rich countries used to then manufacture products out of them, therefore adding value to the overall product during the manufacture, which they then export back to poorer countries. In the end, these poorer countries would never earn enough from exports to pay for their imports due to the added value. However, the weaknesses are substantial, and expose the logical fallacies dependency theory is built upon.

It is more of a critique than an independent theory for improvement, there is some insight but not much. With dependency theory, there is little to no success from its initial conclusions. Its avocation for protectionism and trade tariffs was not enough for developing countries to emerge economically. The suggestion of Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) was also not enough because the economic theory required implementation of incubation of domestic infant industries that many times were difficult to start-up without the help local governments.

Various avenues, tariffs, import quotas and subsidized government loans were many times not possible due to absence of political will or ability. The development of production channels were often times distorted or disrupted due to external forces or inability of states to handle. Here, an imperialist mindset is once again imposed onto undeveloped nations, Transnational corporations (TNCs) stationed in undeveloped nations impose standards and expectations, which are most pronounced in their monopolistic practices and assertion of political and economic agenda onto the concerned country.

In addition, many times, when a country did specialize in their production of goods, their own internal markets were not large enough to support the economies of scale. People either didn’t have enough money or had a preference for outside foreign goods. Essentially, relations cannot simply be fixed, there is a much more dynamic complexity. Peripheral states cannot possibly “just catch up”, they did not ask to be placed in their respective positions within the world economy, they were forced by dominate states (developed countries like the U. S. – they were labeled as “under-developed” when their “inequalities” were identified by us, pitted against our own standards- unfairly so. Advanced industrial economies can’t serve as models for developing ones, their success was contingent upon highly exploitive colonial relationships (with the very underdeveloped countries they are trying to aid now, which is ironic) these relationships cannot be created. Implications of dependency include: Alternative use of resources preferable to current patterns of use- they don’t want our methodologies.

The practice of diverted resources are maintained by dominant states and power elites within dependant states, this fixes nothing, rather, it further complicates relations between concerned “underdeveloped” country and those who are in control of them. There are overlapping interests, value and culture assumptions, assumption that this dependency is voluntary, elites believe key to economic development is to follow liberal economic doctrine, this is essentially hegemony. Economic growth does not equal economic development, more attention needs to be paid o social indicators- life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality, education, emergence of human index. Greater integration is not the answer, equality cannot be achieved World System Theory was first was labeled as “Modern World system. ” An integration through market rather than political center, the state was an economic tool for capital accumulation by certain classes. The world was comprised of mini-systems, which made up world empires, which made up a capitalist world economy.

This world-wide perspective with historical depth of centuries was necessary to understanding the present. Single tripartite division of labor notion induced that countries do not have economies but are part of a world economy. The core zones benefited from monopolies, while the semi-peripheries were dominated by the core zones, and the peripheries themselves were developing countries dominated by both core and semi-periphery countries. Labor-intensive production took place in periphery states as a means to former states’ economic deliverance.

Periphery states’ subordinate status is due to a number of factors including, technological conditions and the difference in strength of states on the global market scale, thus the differential flow of surplus to core results in unequal exchange. However, the strengths of the theory lies in the assumption that capital accumulation on a global scale will in turn, benefit developing countries. The weakness of the theory is how it is debilitating regarding focus towards strong and weak states.

The theory concentrates on the historical evidence of failure rather than success, and discounts the class structure and economic growth, among other important elements, within states. The zero-sum economic narrative is limited, grounded in ahistorical euro-centrism. The theory polarizes periphery states by keeping them down, with the ideology of ruling groups presiding over them. Conclusively, the theory is a capitalist structure that operates on the endless accumulation of capital rather than the well-being of particular periphery states.

The contemporary forms of “globalization” make these three theories of state-led development irrelevant and require us to rethink some of the assumptions upon which they were based for many reasons. Firstly, the increased but selective flow of financial capita between major metropoles exemplified in Illicit Trade shows the unrecognized potential of “dependant” states, how they are actually able to thrive despite conditions (of scarcity, etc. ).

In Illicit Trade, the examples of countries thriving on the wholesale of contraband commodities, or transshipment havens (Suriname, Nauru) shows how the differentiated labor markets within and across national borders have essentially been empowered, there is no definitive route to economic growth, illicit trade just so happens to be this new growth- for the good or the bad. The increased, but uneven integration of consumer markets worldwide proves the irrelevancy of modernization and dependency theory, as there was no prerequisite in this integration that was previously said necessary in the former theories.

The Governments were a emphasized factor in the theories for growth and development, however, in this context of globalization and illicit trade, the private facilitation of capitalist penetration from countryside to countryside has actually been the impetus. The new, emerging aspects of illicit trade is that it’s not just a crime, or an underground phenomenon, but it could fashion economic possibilities. There is now an intrinsic connection to political structures, emerging Governments. High-profile trafficking organizations now have a heavy influence and control over governments.

The dependency on illicit trade has pervaded into the basic exchange of commodities, thus the interaction of people, thus it is now well stitched into the fabric of existence, it has constituted cultures. The entire disarraying manifestations of illicit trade has now coalesced, it is now a part of history, it has become facet of life. 2. ) The manufacture, distribution, and sale of methamphetamine rose largely out of the recent developments of Globalization and free trade, long term trends in agricultural and pharmaceutical companies, and the action of government lobbyists.

These basic components make up for what Reding describes in Methland, as the meth epidemic of today. Reding’s best illustration is his microcosmic case example of Lori Kaye Arnold, starting from the origins of her entrepreneurial endeavors to her quick succession of wealth and monopoly control over meth. Lori’s decision to drop out of high school and house herself through her meth delivery service exemplifies the opportunities of income that are available to small rural communities subjugated to lack of employment.

Due to this facet, production of meth transferred to underground population sites of small town meth addicts (like Lori) and outlaw chemists. Rural economies of small towns like Oelwein were gradually taken over by profiteering industries. The turning over of Iowa Ham to Gillette to Iowa Beef Products (IBP) to Tyson, resulted in a shrinkage of worker demand and stationary wages. In January 2006, Tyson officially closed the plant , “the initial workforce had been reduced from nearly two thousand people to ninety-nine, a remarkable, devastating loss of revenue in a town of only six thousand” (Reding 2009, 53).

Ottumwa, a town in southeast Iowa endured the same hardship that crept into Oelwein. The town was eventually also starved of tax revenue and disposable income from the shut-down of the town’s railroad, air force base, and the sale of its meat-processing plant to Cargill. And like Oelwein, “Methamphetamine moved into the new economic gap,” and helped to sustain not just the market in Oelwein, “but also in towns all over Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas” (Reding 2009, 60). It was Lori’s success in Ottumwa that made her decide to expand her horizons in meth distribution.

Lori went straight to her middleman in Des Moines, and continued in her ambitions to her supplier in Long Beach, California. Meanwhile, Lori’s own enterprise fueled the franchises of people like Jeffrey William Hayes and Steve Jelinek, such is the lucrative nature of the meth business. Lori’s eventual partnership with the Mexican Mafia, the Ameczua brothers ushers in powerful forces that make up a web of interdependence, all revealing the scale of hold meth has on not just small towners like Lori, but also our local and global economy. The U. S. mmigration policy could not prevent the influx of Mexican immigrants that came, who were now seen as excellent transportation devices for large quantities of the meth throughout California and the west. Midwestern residents who just lost their jobs were now headed for booming labor-markets in Los Angeles and San Diego, becoming ideal social and business connections for drug cartels like the Amezcua brothers. These factors enabled drug cartels to expand their business prospects, but also provided a source of income for those involved, a major motivator.

Additionally there was the appeal of the drug itself. Meth was powerful; a vocational drug rather than a recreational one, it was perfect for labor-intensive occupations, thus effectively converting mere middlemen or workers into consumers. The cost-effective narcotic had been around since industrialization, and its cheap convenience was made all the more apparent when rural economies collapsed and people felt like they needed the drug in order to survive. For all these reasons, meth was a sustainable business in its inception that allowed it to go unnoticed.

The precursor to meth production (ephedrine, and soon, pseudoephedrine) was made readily available by pharmaceutical companies and engineers in legal, enormous, and unmonitored supplies. The high-demand for these precursors provided a huge incentive for pharmaceutical companies to prevent purchasing restrictions that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was trying to enforce. When the DEA discovered bulk shipments of ephedrine being redirected to the Amezcua brothers, there was also a realization of a “narrow processing window” of ephedrine that was perfect for the meth trade.

Cooperation from the nine processing factories in India, China, Germany, Czech Republic and pharmaceutical companies was the only thing needed. Despite DEA efforts, pharmaceutical industry lobbyists blocked every single anti-meth bill with help of key senators and members of congress. The relentless battle of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine prohibition was most often times won by powerful companies and corporations, thus the manufacture, distribution, and sale of meth proceeded.

Through the lens of Dependency theory, rural economies like the town of Oelwein would be encouraged to discontinue the market of meth because it has become a dependant source of revenue that creates unequal relationships between powerful entities (such as drug cartels, pharmaceutical companies, agricultural based corporations) and small town communities, poor job-seeking immigrants and aspiring meth cooks. The manufacturing of meth is not sustainable and does not result in equal or greater proportions of benefit for those dependant on the business, rather, it enslaves them.

Thus, dependency theory is good in its avocation of meth abolishment, but it does not provide other revenue generating substitutes or a way into economic stability. Dependency theory stresses independence while keeping up with developed nations, but in the case of Oelwein, their economy was crippled by external forces and now has to be rebuilt, and thus, their regeneration would require an initial dependence on outside sources. 3. ) In 1940, Vice-President elect Henry Wallace, who formerly served as Franklin D.

Roosevelt’s activist agriculture secretary desired to visit Latin America before starting his official duties. He was dispatched to Mexico as a representative, where he applied his unique perspective to the Mexico’s destitute situation. Most Mexicans depended on farming. The Mexican revolution ousted a dictatorship and then seized land from a wealthy few and redistributed it among the poor. The new government had distributed out land to 1. 7 million landless peasants so that they could grow their own food, however this land form was not enough.

Mexico did not have the necessary support systems for agricultural scientists, the rural population was illiterate, soils were depleted of nutrients and heavily eroded, basic tools were lacking; tractors were rare- this in turn limited production growth. In addition, diseases often times wiped out the wheat crop, forcing Mexico to import half of its needs. Wallace’s evaluative approach was to raise crop yields combined with Mexican farmer’s disciplined work ethic. Wallace connected to the resources at the Rockefeller foundation asking to the President Raymond B.

Fosdick to conduct a study on how to increase Mexican harvests, Fosdick himself dispatched a trio of experts to scour the countryside. Soon enough, Harvard plant breeder Paul Mangelsdorf, Cornell agronomist Richard Bradfield, and University of Minnesota plant pathologist E. C. Stakman commenced on their research, convincing the foundation to set up a joint research program with the Mexican government in 1943, called the Office of Special Studies. The program’s mission was to train Mexican scientist on how to breed higher-yielding varieties of corn, wheat, and beans.

Initial successes of the program included the newfound knowledge of “how to plant a few verities of inbred seed- the precursor to hybrid seed- allowing them to cross-pollinate naturally” (Thurow and Kilman 2009, 8). Stakman was interested in Mexico’s second-biggest crop, wheat. Wheat was a crop often subjugated to the fugal epidemics that turned fields into tangles of dead plants, leading to the discontinued production of wheat by Mexican farmers which were an unfortunate lost opportunity for protein.

Stakman called upon two proteges from the University of Minnesota to aid him in his mission to end this plight, one would be the founder of the Green Revolution- Norman Borlaug. Borlaug, impatient by the time sucking process of cross-pollinating different varieties of wheat in rust-infested areas to find a natural immunity among them, decided on an unconventional method of breeding that including “shuttling newly harvested seed between the Yaqui Valley and his experimental plots near Mexico City” (Thurow and Kilman 2009, ). In four years, Borlaug generated his first rust-resistant plants, setting in motion a series of events that would lead to the Green Revolution. The main achievements of the Food Revolution were the high-yielding wheat crops that occurred with every Mexican farmer, leading to the successive spread of the seed throughout Mexico, and therefore the end of Mexico’s wheat shortage by the mid 1950s.

And unlike hybrid corn, farmers could “save seeds from the best of their wheat harvest and plant them the next year to get the same results” (Thurow and Kilman 2009, 11). Borlaug’s wheat permeated to Asia, in India and Pakistan, which spurred Governments, private philanthropies and humanitarian organizations to fund and implement the construction of fertilizer factories, irrigation networks, infrastructure, and an introduction to new modern farming techniques.

Similar effects took place in Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, China and elsewhere throughout Asia. Additionally, the Green Revolution encouraged foundations and organizations from around the world to establish research centers, projects, and laboratories specializing in number of agricultural-based crops (agroforestry to fish). The shortcomings were evident in its early beginning; the yields were plentiful but sucked so much out of the soil that water and synthetic fertilizer replenishment was necessary.

And because farmers could afford fertilizer, this boosted their harvests even further, reinforcing dependency on foreign supplied fertilizers, and therefore diverting funds from the local economy to an outside economy. Increase fertilizer use also introduced pesticides and nitrates that were poisoning to millions and millions of acres of land and some drinking water. This chemical pollution led to a general distrust of the Green Revolution by environmental groups and negative press. Geopolitical considerations would overpower altruistic intentions of the Green Revolution.

The idea “to create an international agency that would control vast grain reserves for the purpose of responding to emergencies and feeding hungry children” was shot down because it would “reduce opportunities for the world’s agricultural powers to use their homegrown food aid as a tool for furthering their own diplomatic aims” (Thurow and Kilman 2009, 23). Ironically, the food revolution had empowered nations enough to the extent of elevating countries’ abilities for political and economic agendas.

Another disappointment of the Green Revolution was the failed momentum. Public consciousness no longer had a strong grip; the “Malthusian Optimism” had befallen upon developed countries. The new crop surpluses and thus, low grain prices “created a false sense of accomplishment and security in the rich world” (Thurow and Kilman 2009, 24). Financial institutions, religious affiliated and nonreligious charity organizations slowly turned away, and aid agencies shifted attention to other social programs.

Trends and use of agricultural subsidies have affected food security in developed and developing states more generally. The Green Revolution indirectly started overwhelming Government subsidies for exports, thereby instigating competition between developing countries. Between 1975 and 1985, the Green Revolution helped old U. S. customers such as Mexico and India to become less dependent on the west for grain. In order to keep domestic prices from depressing U. S. government subsidized exports of surplus wheat overseas.

The European Community followed along the same strategy, subsidizing exports of wheat, beef, butter, milk and so on- all in efforts to protect farmers. Big multinational commodities firms took advantage of the subsidies race, playing the U. S. and Europe against each other for the cheapest grain, resulting in a distorted world market. The two arising developments, rich-world subsidies and cheaper commodities harshly impacted farmers in the developing countries who were not aided by their impoverished governments and therefore could not compete with similar levels of subsidies.

Sasakawa Africa (Norman Borlaug and his team) and the Ethiopian government pushed for heavy production of crops resulting in surplus harvest through the late 1990s, and then a bumper year of 2001-2001, “when fields burst with about 13 million tons of grains and cereals” (Thurow and Kilman 2009, 72). But this positive outcome was not cultivated or optimized due to a number of factors unpredicted by Government and foreign aid shortsightedness. The government policy of structural adjustment failed the agricultural market in Ethiopia and Africa.

Under this new policy, government ended responsibility for market functions (such as buying, transporting, storing, marketing of crops, fertilizer) and left them to a private sector, in expectation that the sectors would pick up these tasks. But rarely did these sectors have the capital and infrastructure to complete such tasks. Roads to ports were appalling, let alone the practically nonexistent ties to foreign buyers- exporting options were dismal. The country’s transportation network still relied on unproductive methods (donkeys), and local markets were undercapitalized to buy and store harvest.

This, along with the absence of storage facilities that forced crops to come into the market at the same time caused a nationwide glut of corn and wheat, triggering a free fall in grain prices. Ethiopian farmers suffered as what was reaped was far below what it had cost to sow. Another main effort to mitigate food famines in Ethiopia was a considerable amount of American food aid, but this was also not enough. After the 1894 famine, “Ethiopia routinely had been the largest annual recipient of emergency food aid…. U. S. ood aid was running at more than $250 million a year leading up to 2003” (Thurow and Kilman 2009, 88). The negative reaction to this, however, was the contraction of longer-term aid and projects to develop agriculture. In 2003, U. S. aid was $500 million and $5 million in development projects. It was illogical, food aid partly helped in aiding against the hunger, but never entirely, rather it seemed to be perpetuating it. Ethiopia became a global welfare state, its farmers and people at first feeling shameful and resentful to having willful acceptance that border on righteousness to aid.

The growth models considered in Chapter 2 are highly aggregative and some economists (Lewis 1954; Fei and Ranis 1961, 1964; Jorgenson 1961, 1967; Dixit 1968, 1971; Kelly et al. 1972) began to analyse the problems in terms of two sectors, namely agriculture and industry.

Briefly, the socalled traditional noncapitalist agricultural sector is supposed to be unresponsive to economic incentives and here the leisure preferences are imagined to be high; production for the market does not take place and producers apparently do not follow profit-maximizing rules: ‘disguised’ or open unemployment is supposed to prevail throughout the rural sector and indeed the marginal productivity of labour is expected to be zero, and in some cases negative (Nurkse 1953). Income is equal to subsistence level (Leibenstein 1957:154) partly determined by physiological and partly by cultural levels (Lewis 1954).

Further, capital has no role to play in agricultural production (Jorgenson 1967:291). Two sectors are linked by the influx of surplus homogenous labour from agriculture to industry. Nothing happens to the transfer of savings or capital and growth takes place when demand rises as a result of ploughing back of profits by the capitalists into reinvestment. The backward sector is eventually ‘modernized’ with the transfer of all surplus labour from agriculture. The extension of the Lewis model by Fei and Ranis (1964) also suffers from some limitations.

First, no attempt is made by Fei and Ranis to account for stagnation. Second, no clear distinction is made between family-based labour and wage-based labour and nothing is said about the process of self-sustaining growth. The investment function is not specified and money, price, foreign exchange as well as terms of trade between agriculture and industry are ignored. The dual economy model of Jorgenson is based on familiar neoclassical lines but this hardly helps us to accept it as a more sound theory or, better, in terms of its predictive capacity.

For example, Jorgenson considers land and labour only in terms of their agricultural production function and ignores the role of scarce capital. Jorgenson assumes that a surplus arises when agricultural output per head is greater than the income level at which the population growth rate is at its ‘physiological maximum’. This is difficult to comprehend because a clear definition of physiological maximum is lacking and a surplus may exist even before the point at which income corresponding to this maximum is reached. Jorgenson, like Fei and Ranis, neglects the role of money and trade.

No capital formation takes place in agriculture in Jorgenson’s model; no attempt is made to analyse the problems of disguised unemployment in agriculture and it is assumed that the industrial wage is equal to the marginal productivity of labour. The shortcomings of the Jorgenson model vis-a-vis the FR model lie in the assumption of a ‘Malthusian response mechanism and a zero income elasticity of the demand for food’ (Hayami et al 1971:22–3). Population growth in LDCs is not always determined by consumption per head.

Also, the case for a zero income elasticity of the demand for food is not well supported in practice (NCAER 1972). (For an extension of the Jorgenson model, see Ramanathan (1967), where some of the restrictive assumptions are relaxed. ) In both the FR and Jorgenson models, it is implicitly assumed that technical progress would be of a labour-augmenting type. This may not happen in practice (Krishna 1975). The Lewis and FR models suffer from an additional weakness in laying the emphasis only on accumulation and not on technical progress.

If growth in the Lewis-FR fashion means rise in income and if the marginal propensity to consume food is positive for any group of income recipients, then, with given output, food prices will rise which will raise wages and reduce profits and growth. Thus any type of accumulation increases industrial wages and at no phase is the supply of labour to industry infinitely elastic (Guha 1969). The earlier dual economy models failed to specify the precise relationship between two sectors (Dixit 1968, 1971).

It is contended that to take care of the interdependence between terms of trade and supply price of labour, a general equilibrium analysis may be necessary. Dixit implies that the important factors that affect the shadow price of labour are the degrees of suboptimality of savings (the shadow price of savings in terms of consumption) as well as the price and income elasticities of the demand for food. In general equilibrium analysis, if the interdependences are to be dealt with simultaneously, it becomes difficult to see how the results rest on the premises or whether the ‘tail is wagging the dog’.

Again, Dixit’s assumption that the only activity which can be undertaken in the traditional sector is food production is not easy to accept. The traditional sector also enters into non-agricultural activities; market wages and the shadow price of labour could be different because of taxes which may be influenced by the elasticity of marketed surplus. In any case, Dixit does not give much emphasis to the agricultural sector in his earlier model. Thus, the closed economy models of the dual economy may be misleading (Newbery 1974:41) and the empirical estimation of a general equilibrium model is very difficult.

It seems that although the writers on the dual economy models adopted a useful approach to analyse the problems of LDCs, most of their work is devoid of any rigorous empirical analysis. An attempt has been made (Kelly et al. 1972) to test a modified neoclassical dual economy model with particular reference to Japan by using simulation techniques. It seems that the Japanese case is not very typical (Ishikawa 1967) of LDCs. The other familiar neoclassical premises on which the model rests do not seem to be very appropriate.

These include full employment, wage-labour and neglect of land as an input in the production function. The absence of foreign trade and lags in the economic system is also disturbing. Although the dual economy models originated from the unnecessary neglect of agriculture the models themselves do not perform very well, not only because they are based on certain simple and sometimes incorrect assumptions but also because they fall in their predictive power. First, the division of the sectors into two completely independent compartments is dubious.

Second, almost all the empirical evidence available at present suggests that farmers in LDCs respond to price incentives in a way which is very similar to the response that one finds in developed countries (Bauer and Yamey 1959; Behrman 1968; Krishna 1963; Ghatak 1975). Third, it is doubtful whether disguised unemployment prevails throughout the year. Seasonal unemployment is easily observed in many poor countries, e. g. Algeria. But employment in non-farm works is also observed in some countries (Griffin 1969).

Evidence also suggests that in some countries surplus labour could disappear at times of sowing and harvesting (Jorgenson 1966; Schultz 1964; Marglin 1976). Fourth, wages could be higher than marginal products only when non-farming activities are wholly absent, no employment is offered outside the joint family farm and if no labour is hired (Berry and Soligo 1968). But the experience of Latin America, the case of migrant labour in Africa and the fact of hiring labour during sowing and harvesting seasons of main crops in India would not always support the zero marginal productivity theory. It is hown that all farms are not characterized by zero marginal productivity of labour (Mathur 1964).

Fifth, the case of a backward-bending supply curve of labour (Boeke 1953:40; Higgins 1968) in LDCs may also be debated. If people live at subsistence level, it is only natural that they would seek to attain their survival algorithms and the trade-off between income and leisure would not be observed until a critical minimum income level is reached where the basic wants are satisfied. We shall elaborate this point in the next chapter. Sixth, the theory that only the capitalists in the urban sector can save is questioned (Bergan 1967).

After investigating the saving behaviour in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Bergan concludes that ‘rural areas … appear to have contributed at least three fourths of total savings of the country’. Similarly, despite the fact that the Egyptian situation conformed well to some basic assumptions of the Lewis model, its application shows very poor predictive power partly because of the underestimation of population growth rate, the nature of manufacturers and the behaviour of capitalists (Mabro 1967:341–77; Kanbur and McKintosh 1987; Ghatak 1991).

Adam Smith and Karl Marx Modern political economic theory and philosophy can be greatly attributed to the works of two men who seemingly held polar opposite views on the subject. Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher, published his most well known work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776 and is most often associated with the ideas and principles of the political economic system known as Capitalism. At the other end of the spectrum is Karl Marx; the German philosopher most often associated with Communism and the author (or co-author) of The Communist Manifesto.

This paper seeks to discuss the core differences in their respective political economic philosophies with regards to what economic value is and what the role of government should be in their versions of political economy. This will conclude with the argument that while Smith’s work had laid the foundation for modern economic philosophy, it was Marx who would ultimately leave the most significant impression upon the world with his revolutionary ideas. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (commonly abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations) is considered to be the first full treatment on the study of Economics.

This work essentially lays the foundation for the economic system known as Capitalism. Interestingly enough, Capitalism was a term first brought into the public debate, somewhat pejoratively, by Karl Marx himself in describing a “capitalist” as a private owner of capital or the means or production. (“Capitalism” (Wikipedia), 2008). A consensus definition of this idea is an economic system based on private individual ownership of property in which the distribution of goods is determined freely by competing market forces and investments are made by individuals. (“Capitalism” (Merriam-Webster), 2008).

In a Capitalist society, individuals are free to own property and invest their capital in the pursuit of profit with relatively limited influence or barriers from the government. The Wealth of Nations was organized into five books of several chapters each. The first two books examine the fundamentals of the market system and include explanations relating to the role of labor, the nature of capital and markets, and the motives people have for entering into the market system. The third book is mostly an historical examination of the economics in ancient societies.

The fourth book is the core of Smith’s argument for the capitalist society and it in these chapters that Smith lays out the core arguments for the limited role of government that is required for long term economic success. The fifth book deals primarily with government spending, revenues and taxation. The Communist Manifesto was much more a call to action than it was a treatise on economics and is a much shorter work than Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Marx also published a very thorough (and denser) economic examination known as Das Kapital in 1867.

The conclusions reached in that and other works would underpin the concepts found in The Communist Manifesto. It is not inaccurate to say that Communism is in many ways the opposite of Capitalism. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and co-author Friedrich Engels listed 10 attributes of an ideal Communist society. The first one lays out the primary condition: “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. ” (Marx & Engels, 2006, p. 32) This effectively describes state-ownership and control of all capital and the means of the production made for the benefit of all in a classless society.

Communism espouses the idea that the economy should function for the greater good of all society and not merely act as a tool to enrich the ‘bourgeois” or ruling classes. As the title would indicate, The Communist Manifesto lays out the purpose and reasoning for the existence of the Communist party that was developing across Europe in that time. In the prologue, Marx and Engels state the books purpose: It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself. Marx & Engels, 2006, p. 2) The chief disagreement between Capitalists and Communists is who or what is entitled to ownership and the means of production. In chapter one of the second book of The Wealth of Nations, Smith defined capital as the stock (read: assets or money) that a person does not immediately consume for which the owner expects to derive a future profit. (Smith, 1909) This of course implies that the individual has possession and ownership of the capital item in the first place. Marx bestows a social aspect upon what capital is in The Communist Manifesto. Marx stated that capital is a “collective product? nly by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power. ” (Marx & Engels, 2006, p. 23) In other words, capital belongs to all of the people that are needed to not only produce it, but to provide a reason for its value. One thing that Marx and Smith seems to have agreed upon is something economists call the Labor Theory of Value. While they would ultimately come to different conclusions on the use of the value, the basic assumption is this theory is that value is ultimate derived in an object from the labor necessary to produce it. “Labor Theory”, 2008) In chapter 5 of book I of The Wealth of Nations, Smith argues that “the real price of everything? is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. ” (Smith, 1909, p. 36) Smith distinguishes this from the nominal value of an item that can vary based on market forces; he holds that the real value is constant in relation to the labor that it used in its production. Smith argues in the following chapter that there are three components to the price of an item: the labor needed to produce it, the “rent of the land” or resources needed to make it, and the “profit of stock” that compensates the investor for risking his resources.

In Das Kapital, Marx also recognizes the labor component of any item in the first chapter. He states that any commodity has a use-value and an exchange value that is derived from the labor needed to produce it. (Marx, 2000) Marx however viewed the “profit of stock” as the ability of the capitalist to exploit the wage laborers out of the surplus value of the things they create because of their control over the means of production. The role of government in relation to the economic system is a central theme of how ultimately successful the economic system would become.

One of Smith’s core arguments to the success of capitalism is summarized in his most famous metaphor of the “invisible hand” found in Chapter 2 of Book IV in The Wealth of Nations: By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. (Smith, 1909, p. 351-352) Smith argued that in a fair and free market economic system, producers will act in their own self-interest to maximize their profits. As profits increased, competitors would come about seeking to obtain a share of the profits, and would thus drive down prices through this competition.

The result was more efficiency and productivity that would lead to the long term benefit of all of society. He was against any government action that would serve to disrupt this natural balance such as trade restrictions, wage laws, and industry regulation. Smith essentially believed that the more the government stayed out of the way, the better off society would be as a whole. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx makes an argument for an entirely stateless society. “Political power” he states, “? is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. ” (Marx & Engels, 2006, p. 3) A common theme of The Communist Manifesto is the struggle between different classes of society, to which Marx simplifies to a clash between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariats”. Marx argues that “The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. ” (Marx & Engels, 2006, p. 19) Marx held the belief that in a pure Communistic society, there would be no classes, and that the government would out of necessity dominate and control the means of production in the economy.

The legacy and impact of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was felt throughout Europe shortly after its publication. In England in particular, the British prime ministers sought policies that were attributed to what they had learned in Smith’s book including a new commercial treaty with France, customs reform, and a change in fiscal policy that resulted in lower debt and government spending. Government’s throughout Europe also began to realize the fallacy of the artificial trade barriers erected between the different countries; so much so that they would prefer to trade with their American colonies more often than their own neighbors. West, 1990) Smith’s greatest impact is perhaps the academic contribution to the study of economics. Before The Wealth of Nations, there really was nothing of the sort that so thoroughly examined the fundamentals of economics. Nearly every economist after Smith, including Karl Marx, would use The Wealth of Nations as a primary source and base their arguments off of Smith’s suppositions. Marx’s influence on the world however was far from an academic exercise. The violent revolution that Marx predicted would need to occur in order for the proletariats to overthrow the bourgeois did indeed occur in Russia during the “Red October” of 1917.

The ruling aristocracy of Russia’s Czarists came to an end at the hands of Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks. This would lead to the formation of the communist Soviet Union. During the revolution, the Bolsheviks seized all the private property around the country, gave control of all the factories to the government, nationalized all the banks, seized all of the Church’s properties, and declared that they would not honor any foreign debts. Thus the first real attempt at Communism took the form of the Soviet Union; symbolized by the worker’s sickle and hammer on the flag. “October Revolution”, 2008) The actions of the Soviet Union would go on to inspire many other Eastern countries to attempt their own versions of Communism; all consistent with the principles Marx envisioned in The Communist Manifesto. The resulting conflict of economic fundamentals between these Communist entities and the more Capitalist economies of Western Europe and the United States would spark conflict throughout much of the 20th century. References capitalism. (2008) In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Retrieved December 17, 2008, from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Capitalism capitalism. (2008). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved December 17, 2008, from http://www. merriam-webster. com/dictionary/capitalism labor theory of value. (2008) In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia Retrieved December 17, 2008 from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Labor_theory Marx, K (2000) Das Kapital Gateway Edition, Washington, DC, Regnery Publishing, Inc Marx, K & Engels, F (2006) The Communist Manifesto, New York, Penguin Books October Revolution. 2008) In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia Retrieved December 17, 2008, from http http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/October_ Revolution Smith, A (1909) Harvard Classics: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, New York, P F Collier and Son West, E (1990) Adam Smith’s Revolution, Past and Present. Adam Smith’s Legacy: His thought in our time. Retrieved December 17, 2008 from http://www. adamsmith . org/images/uploads/publications/ADAM_SMITH_Legacy. pdf