主题：Capitalism, Economic Crisis, and Socialism: Is a Transition to Socialism Possible in the Developed Capitalist Countries?
主讲人：马萨诸塞州立大学阿姆赫斯特校区经济系 David M. Kotz 教授
主持人：马克思主义经济学研究院，经济学院，刘灿教授
时间：5月6日（周二下午）14：00—16:00
地点：通博楼B223会议室
主办单位：马克思主义经济学研究院、经济学院、科研处
主讲人简介：
加州大学伯克利分校经济学博士。曾任美利坚大学教授。马萨诸塞州立大学阿姆赫斯特校区经济系和上海财经大学教授。
1975年在加州大学伯克利分校获得经济学博士学位，主要研究领域是比较经济体制、宏观经济学和马克思主义经济学。科茨教授曾任美利坚大学教授，目前，除了在马萨诸塞州立大学阿姆赫斯特校区经济系主讲马克思主义政治经济学外，还长期主管研究生工作，此外，科茨教授则主要在《每月评论》、《激进经济学评论》、《科学与社会》、《反思马克思主义》以及《美元与常识》等杂志发表论文并出版专著《美国银行对大公司的控制》等，1991—1996年间，科茨教授潜心研究苏联解体问题，对第三世界国家很有感情，与弗雷德·威尔（Fred Weir）合著的《来自上层的革命——苏联体制的终结》(曹荣湘等译，中国人民大学出版社，2002年版)一书在苏联研究领域引起了很大反响，他在中国知识界的影响曾被与斯蒂格利茨（Stiglitz Joseph E.）相提并论。科茨教授最近的工作主要集中于当代俄罗斯的社会经济制度研究、新自由主义理论和政策批判和社会主义计划等领域。
主讲内容:
The socialist movement is relatively weak throughout the economically developed capitalist countries today. However, history shows that popular movements can arise suddenly and grow rapidly under certain conditions. This paper presents a case that a transition to socialism is possible in the high-income capitalist countries in the years ahead.
Since 2008 capitalism in the economically developed countries has been in a structural crisis, with similarities to earlier capitalist structural crises in the late nineteenth century, the 1930s, and the 1970s. Every past structural crisis of capitalism has been followed by major change in the institutional form of capitalism. The crisis of the late nineteenth century led to the rise of monopoly/finance capitalism. The crisis of the 1930s was eventually resolved by the post-World War II regulated capitalism. The 1970s crisis gave rise to the neoliberal form of capitalism.
As well as facing a structural crisis, capitalism today confronts long-term developments that threaten its continued viability. These include dangerous environmental constraints and natural resource limitations. There is also a growing contradiction between the increasing role of information in commodity production and the “public good” character of information whose development is held back by capitalist property relations.
This paper considers the possibility of two forms of restructuring within capitalism in response to the economic crisis, a business-regulated form of capitalism and a social-democratic form of capitalism. Historical evidence suggests that neither of those two forms of capitalist restructuring can emerge unless a strong progressive movement develops that would put pressure on the capitalist class to make major changes away from the neoliberal form of capitalism. The paper argues that the above two forms of capitalist restructuring cannot resolve the long-run problems noted above and would potentially threaten the survival of human civilization.
The paper presents a case that a transition to a democratic participatory planned socialism is the only direction of change that can resolve the current structural crisis of capitalism while also leading to an environmentally sustainable relation of the economy to the natural environment and fostering the full development of the potential of contemporary information technology. The paper considers the possibility that a popular movement will arise that can bring about such a transition.
