Marx's analysis of society has traditionally advanced a two-class framework; of worker and capitalist. In Managerial Capitalism, Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy argue that a transition is underway towards a new mode of production, shaped by a third, intermediary class: managerialism.
With a focus on the US and Europe in particular, the authors provide a historically rooted interpretation of major current economic and political trends. They argue that the transition towards managerialism as a new mode of production is much more advanced than usually understood, especially in the US. While reasserting the explanatory power of Marx's theory of history and political economy, they update the Marxian framework to incorporate the transformation of relations of production and class patterns whose main expression has been the rise of managerial features.
The book makes the case for a revision of Marxist analysis on analytical as well as political grounds, to demonstrate that capitalism is entering a new period based on managerialism.
About the Authors
Gerard Duménil is an economist and former Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is a member of the editorial board of Marx. He is the co-author with Dominique Levy of Managerial Capitalism (Pluto, 2018), and The Crisis of Neoliberalism (HUP, 2014).
Dominique Lévy is an economist and former Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is a member of the editorial board of Marx and co-author of Managerial Capitalism (Pluto, 2018) and The Crisis of Neoliberalism (HUP, 2014
What People Are Saying
"Every serious student of political economy will want to read Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy's masterful synthesis of Marxist method, contemporary Econo-physics, and their own theoretical and empirical work on the emergence of neoliberal managerial forms of capitalism on a global scale" Duncan K. Foley, Leo Model Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1. Introduction
Part I: Modes of Production and Classes
2. Patterns of Income Distribution
3. Marx's Theory of History
4. Managers in Marx's Analysis
5. Sociality and Class Societies
6. Managerialism and Managerial Capitalism
7. A Wealth of Alternative Interpretations
8. Hybridization as Analytical Challenge
Part II: Twelve Decades of Managerial Capitalism
9. Varying Trends of Inequality
10. The Sequence of Social Orders
11. Class and Imperial Power Structures
12. The Politics of Social Change
13. Tendencies, Crises and Struggles
Part III: Past Attempts at the Inflection of Historical Dynamics
14. Utopian Capitalism in Bourgeois Revolutions
15. Utopian Socialism and Anarchism
16. Self-Proclaimed Scientific Socialism
Part IV: Prospects for Human Emancipation within and beyond Managerialisms
15. The Economics and Politics of Managerialisms
16. The Potential of Popular Struggle
Notes
Index