Published Academic Articles and Book Chapters by Stephen Maher
Critical Sociology, 2021
We argue that a new form of finance capital has been consolidated in the United States since the ... more We argue that a new form of finance capital has been consolidated in the United States since the 2008 crisis-defined as a fusion of financial and industrial capital. In this regime, financiers have become more entrenched in the governance of nonfinancial corporations while, reciprocally, industrial firm managers have increasingly become financiers. Indeed, this fusion has taken place on two interconnected levels: (1) within the nonfinancial corporation itself, and (2) between the nonfinancial corporation and the financial sector. Internal diversification and internationalization over the postwar era led to the reorganization of the industrial corporation as a financial group, managing not concrete production processes, but portfolios of financial assets. This was reinforced by the increasing power of outside investors over the neoliberal period. However, new forms of financial organization that emerged after 2008 produced tighter and more direct linkages between external financiers and the nonfinancial corporation, constituting the new finance capital.
Rudolf Hilferding: What Do We Still Have to Learn From His Legacy?, eds. Judith Dellheim and Frieder Otto Wolf, 2021
New Political Science, 2018
S. Archer, C. Roberts, K. Skerrett, and J. Weststar, eds., The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism, 2018
Science & Society, 2016
The project of renewing historical materialist theory for a new generation requires overcoming th... more The project of renewing historical materialist theory for a new generation requires overcoming the limitations of Althusserian structuralism. Upon investigation, Althusser's theory is revealed to be idealist, inconsistent with the philosophy actually articulated by Marx, and unhelpful in understanding the dynamics of human societies. The flaws in this approach led both to E. P. Thompson's rejection of abstract theory altogether, and Michael Lebowitz's effort to “complete” Marx's theoretical project, while avoiding Althusser's structural determinism by incorporating agency and social struggle into the heart of political economy. Yet Lebowitz's theoretical system has very little to say about how these were historically practiced by classes as institutional formations in different spatio-temporal contexts. In this respect, the “Institutional Marxist” approach developed by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin shows the most promise for further developing today's revival of historical materialism.
Studies in Political Economy, 2014
Book Reviews by Stephen Maher
Other Articles by Stephen Maher
Socalist Register, 2023
With the death of Leo Panitch, editor of the Socialist Register for 35 years, the international l... more With the death of Leo Panitch, editor of the Socialist Register for 35 years, the international left lost an irreplaceable guiding light. Apart from maintaining the Register as a unique, non-sectarian space for the free exchange of socialist ideas, his many contributions to Marxist political economy and social science will leave a lasting imprint on socialist theory and practice long into the future. Above all, Leo's writing was exemplary of 'the unity of theory and practice'. Taking this seriously, for Leo, meant confronting the 'hard questions' about the limits and contradictions facing contemporary left forces and political strategies. Leo's socialism was one of 'sobriety', as he would constantly insist, by which he meant that we must base our analysis not on the world as we wish it was, but as it is. A primary concern for socialists, therefore, is to decipher the arrangement of social forces, the structure of capitalist class power, the specificity of state institutions, and the like, within a particular historical moment. This emphasis on understanding how capitalism actually exists historically, and how it is restructured and practically reproduced over time, is expressed methodologically in what we have elsewhere referred to as the 'Institutional Marxism' which Leo, along with his co-author and lifelong friend Sam Gindin, developed across much of their work. 1 History, from this perspective, is not a matter of the working out of general economic laws, nor the functional equilibration of a closed system. Rather, it is a process of open-ended eventuation, shaped by human beings and the institutions they create, albeit within conditions not of their own choosing. Critically, that history remains a capitalist one is indicated by the systematic reproduction of its basic structural pressures: competition and class struggle. The question 'what is capitalism' is thus inescapably one of 'what is capitalism today'.
Jacobin Magazin, 2021
Joe Biden’s recent spending spree can make the United States a less miserable place. But the pres... more Joe Biden’s recent spending spree can make the United States a less miserable place. But the president has no interest in bringing about the structural change that would weaken the power capitalists have over workers.
Socialist Register, 2020
The renewed appeal of a socialist political discourse, one hundred years after the Soviet rev... more The renewed appeal of a socialist political discourse, one hundred years after the Soviet revolution and thirty years after its ignominious endpoint, has astonished the punditocracy. It does indeed appear that socialism in the twenty-first century has finally broken free of the legacy of the Russian revolution which so defined – pro and con – the political discourse of the left through the twentieth century, often weighing ‘like a nightmare on the brains of the living’. The emergence of a twenty-first century socialism which neither defines itself by the Bolshevik model, nor abjectly shrinks from advancing a socialist project for fear of being tainted by it, is itself a historic development. This is not to say that the Russian revolution is forgotten, but only that as young socialist activists mobilize against the timidity of career politicians and the machinations of the old centre-left party and media establishment that keeps them in place, they are today far more likely to be inspired by elements of its original revolutionary spirit than its specific revolutionary methods.
This makes it all the more imperative that socialists face squarely, and discuss far more openly than has yet been done, whether the policy proposals that are being advanced in the current conjuncture through an explicitly socialist discourse only amount to the revival of social democratic reformism, or foretell the emergence of a new strategy for structural reform which would create the conditions for taking capital away from capital. This is the remit of this essay. It is not written with the expectation that either Corbyn or Sanders are on the verge of electoral victories that would lead to their forming a government. Rather it seeks to clarify what any socialist-led government in the UK or US in the foreseeable future would have to face. That is, a still deeply-integrated global capitalism, with capitalist economic dominance domestically securely in place, with working-class forces not strong enough, or coherent enough, to sustain a full-blown challenge to that dominance, and with public institutions very far from having the capacity, let alone the orientation, to implement democratic economic and social planning.
London School of Economics Business Review, 2021
The difference between industrial and financial corporations is no longer clear. Both are now uni... more The difference between industrial and financial corporations is no longer clear. Both are now units of finance capital organised around managing portfolios of financial assets. Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno write that the global restructuring that has accompanied these developments has certainly made working class life more precarious, but far from simply ‘hollowing out’ production, finance has in fact been integral to the capitalist globalisation of recent decades.
Jacobin Magazine, 2020
The riot at the Capitol on Wednesday was a symptom of right-wing weakness, not power. The real da... more The riot at the Capitol on Wednesday was a symptom of right-wing weakness, not power. The real danger isn’t a MAGA coup, but a restoration of the neoliberal status quo that produced the nightmare of Trump and his minions.
Jacobin Magazine, 2020
Leo Panitch will live on in the democratic socialism he espoused and the lives he touched.
Jacobin Magazine, 2020
Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who died this week, turned GE into a private equity compa... more Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who died this week, turned GE into a private equity company. He was celebrated as the “manager of the century” for ruthlessly exploiting workers and their communities and promoting an economic model that increasingly appears to be incompatible with continued human civilization.
Jacobin Magazine, 2018
We need to challenge the logic of capital. Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act only fur... more We need to challenge the logic of capital. Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act only further entrenches it.
Jacoibin Magazine, 2017
Jeff Immelt’s resignation as CEO of General Electric shows that we cannot think of industry as fi... more Jeff Immelt’s resignation as CEO of General Electric shows that we cannot think of industry as finance’s opponent.
Jacobin Magazine, 2016
The Left shouldn’t counter the logic of “Make America Great Again” with nostalgia for an idealize... more The Left shouldn’t counter the logic of “Make America Great Again” with nostalgia for an idealized liberal democracy.
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Published Academic Articles and Book Chapters by Stephen Maher
Book Reviews by Stephen Maher
Other Articles by Stephen Maher
This makes it all the more imperative that socialists face squarely, and discuss far more openly than has yet been done, whether the policy proposals that are being advanced in the current conjuncture through an explicitly socialist discourse only amount to the revival of social democratic reformism, or foretell the emergence of a new strategy for structural reform which would create the conditions for taking capital away from capital. This is the remit of this essay. It is not written with the expectation that either Corbyn or Sanders are on the verge of electoral victories that would lead to their forming a government. Rather it seeks to clarify what any socialist-led government in the UK or US in the foreseeable future would have to face. That is, a still deeply-integrated global capitalism, with capitalist economic dominance domestically securely in place, with working-class forces not strong enough, or coherent enough, to sustain a full-blown challenge to that dominance, and with public institutions very far from having the capacity, let alone the orientation, to implement democratic economic and social planning.
This makes it all the more imperative that socialists face squarely, and discuss far more openly than has yet been done, whether the policy proposals that are being advanced in the current conjuncture through an explicitly socialist discourse only amount to the revival of social democratic reformism, or foretell the emergence of a new strategy for structural reform which would create the conditions for taking capital away from capital. This is the remit of this essay. It is not written with the expectation that either Corbyn or Sanders are on the verge of electoral victories that would lead to their forming a government. Rather it seeks to clarify what any socialist-led government in the UK or US in the foreseeable future would have to face. That is, a still deeply-integrated global capitalism, with capitalist economic dominance domestically securely in place, with working-class forces not strong enough, or coherent enough, to sustain a full-blown challenge to that dominance, and with public institutions very far from having the capacity, let alone the orientation, to implement democratic economic and social planning.