
The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Rentier Capitalism
The Political Economy of the 20th and 21st Centuries
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira(Author)
Oxford University Press
Published on 6. March 2025
Book
Hardback
496 pages
978-0-19-889814-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Rentier Capitalism is an account of the political economy of capitalism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Capitalism is an unjust form of economic organisation; it is a culture of exacerbated individualism justified by the glorification of individual competition. Today, after 40 years of neoliberalism, capitalism faces again a legitimation crisis.
The book discusses capitalism after two revolutions - the Organisational Revolution and the Democratic Revolution. It views capitalism since the New Deal in the US and the post-war as a progressive and developmental era and the Neoliberal Turn as the change from social democracy to radical and regressive global neoliberalism, which was a regressive time for almost forty years. In the Neoliberal Years, rentiers replaced entrepreneurs in the command of the economy and called on the financiers to manage their wealth and serve as organic intellectuals, and both mounted an attack to the state, which is the main capitalist institution.
The global crisis and, in 2020, the Covid pandemic showed that the state remains the nations' resource of last instance. The transition of China from statism to an active developmentalism resulted in an extraordinary growth. Given such realities, in 2021 we saw the collapse of neoliberalism, and in the United States, a Developmental Turn - the state is back in the economy.
The transition phase we live in is characterised by three main forces - economic liberalism, managerialism, and democracy. Economic liberalism is the great defeated, managerialism became powerful and is developmental, and democracy is the stronger force. It was attacked by neoliberalism and is now being attacked by right-wing populism, but resisted and resists brilliantly, proving that it was a conquest of the popular classes that became a universal value counting on the support of all social classes.
The book discusses capitalism after two revolutions - the Organisational Revolution and the Democratic Revolution. It views capitalism since the New Deal in the US and the post-war as a progressive and developmental era and the Neoliberal Turn as the change from social democracy to radical and regressive global neoliberalism, which was a regressive time for almost forty years. In the Neoliberal Years, rentiers replaced entrepreneurs in the command of the economy and called on the financiers to manage their wealth and serve as organic intellectuals, and both mounted an attack to the state, which is the main capitalist institution.
The global crisis and, in 2020, the Covid pandemic showed that the state remains the nations' resource of last instance. The transition of China from statism to an active developmentalism resulted in an extraordinary growth. Given such realities, in 2021 we saw the collapse of neoliberalism, and in the United States, a Developmental Turn - the state is back in the economy.
The transition phase we live in is characterised by three main forces - economic liberalism, managerialism, and democracy. Economic liberalism is the great defeated, managerialism became powerful and is developmental, and democracy is the stronger force. It was attacked by neoliberalism and is now being attacked by right-wing populism, but resisted and resists brilliantly, proving that it was a conquest of the popular classes that became a universal value counting on the support of all social classes.
Reviews / Votes
Bresser-Pereira has produced one of the most comprehensive interpretations of capitalism's evolution since the financial crisis, combining analytical rigour with moral and political commitment. * Henry Veltmeyer, The Journal of Development Studies * Examines globalization as a necessary and irreversible economic phenomenon derived from technical progress as well as an imperial project. Details the concepts of rentier and financier and the nature of the narrow class coalition that formed in the neoliberal years. Provides a methodological critique of mainstream neoclassical economics. * Journal of Economic Literature (Vol. 63, No. 4) *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 166 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
871 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-889814-6 (9780198898146)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira is Emeritus Professor of Getulio Vargas Foundation, editor of the Brazilian Journal of Political Economy and founding member of the Arns Commission for the Defence of Human Rights. He was finance minister (1987) and minister of federal administration of Brazil (1995-98). He holds an MBA from Michigan State University, a law degree, and a PhD in economics from the University of Sao Paulo.
Content
Part I: Forms, Phases, Models 1: Human progress and the republican state 2: The Capitalist Revolution 3: Two forms and four phases 4: The developmental state 5: Imperialism and the developing world Part II: Two Founding Revolutions 6: The Democratic Revolution 7: Organizational Revolution 8: The managerial ideology 9: The Golden Age and the 1970s crisis 10: The end of statism in Russia and China Part III: The neoliberal regression 11: The Neoliberal Turn 12: Globalization: reality and design 13: Rentiers and financiers 14: Neoliberal ideology: reactionary and neoconservative (Google) 15: Neoclassical Economics and its critiques 16: Financialisation Part IV: The crisis 17: The 2008 Great Financial Crisis 18: Collapse of neoliberalism and secular stagnation 19: Falling inequality? 20: The developing world 21: China, the US, and developmentalism Part V: What lies ahead for capitalism? 22: Democracy is alive 23: Neoliberalism collapsed 24: Democratic Managerial Capitalism 25: No emancipatory transition