现代企业的社会责任

2010年9月29日,比尔·盖茨和沃伦·巴菲特在北京举办“巴比晚宴”,掀起了一股讨论现代企业社会责任的热潮.那么,什么是现代企业的社会责任?具体包括哪些内涵?仁者见仁智者见智,一个世纪以来人们对该问题的看法莫衷一是. 要讨论现代企业的社会责任,首先需要明确现代企业的基本特征.19世纪末20世纪初,美国由“镀金时代”迈入“进步时代”,垄断托拉斯掌握了经济命脉.随着规模的扩大,企业的经营管理日益超出所有者本人的能力所及受雇的管理阶层逐步控制了企业运营.     

论战后美国金融制度的演变与美国经济发展

战后美国金融制度演变的最深刻背景是战后美国经济的发展和转变。战后美国经济发展的一个主要特征是:经济增长较快,并且经济的增长日益同国家垄断资本主义的发展以及国家垄断资本主义对经济干预的不断加强联系在一起。战后美国政府通过廉价财政政策和膨胀性金融政策,启动和维持经济的持续发展,同时,也引起国债和私人债务迅速增长,导致美国经济走上了债务经济的道路。美国债务经济的发展以及由此引起的通货膨胀日益加剧和利率的不断上涨,又改变着美国的经济环境和市场条件,引起金融业经营环境、     

盖茨比的悲剧

《了不起的盖茨比》是菲茨杰拉德最优秀的小说，也是美国小说史上的一部伟大杰作英国著名诗人和批评家T．S．艾略特称它是“美国小说自从亨利·詹姆斯以来迈出的第一步”。这部悲剧小说，特别是其中盖茨比的悲剧深刻地展现了“爵士时代”的美国社会风貌。盖茨比的悲剧不仅仅是他的幻想造成的，从根本上讲，是资本主义社会中森严的阶级和等级差别造成的。本文试图通过盖茨比的悲剧来探讨造成其悲剧的原因。     

欧美传媒集团资本化运作解析

19世纪末,随着自由资本主义向垄断资本主义的过渡,出现了报业垄断性组织--报业集团(亦称"报团").20世纪20年代和30年代,广播电视相继问世,新闻传播由以印刷媒介为主的时代进入了印刷媒体与电子传媒并驾齐驱的时代.在广播出现后几年内,美国就出现两个民营的大型广播集团,即全国广播公司(NBC)、哥伦比亚广播公司(CBS).从20世纪60年代起,跨媒介经营、综合性的传媒集团成为传媒产业的主要存在形式.二战后,由于世界经济的一体化和现代新闻通讯技术的发展,使得过去广阔浩渺的世界,变成了一个鸡犬之声相闻的地球村.战后传媒产业发展个重要趋势跨国传媒集团的发展,这使新闻垄断超出了一国的范围而达到了世界级的规模.     

论恩格斯晚年对社会主义道路理论的贡献

在恩格斯的晚年 ,世界历史正经历着巨大的变化。以电的发现与运用为标志的第二次科学技术革命的兴起 ,为资本主义注入了新的生机。资本主义的社会表现出许多新情况、新特点。面对历史的巨大变化与发展 ,恩格斯一方面依据资本主义从自由竞争向垄断过渡阶段所呈现出的新情况、新特点 ,对马克思主义关于从资本主义社会向共产主义过渡的理论进行了新的修订与发展。另一方面 ,依据东方社会的情况 ,使马克思主义的东方社会跨越资本主义“卡夫丁峡谷”的理论得以完善。并将二者有机结合起来共同构成了完整的关于向未来社会过渡的理论。     

商业银行的制度转换与功能变迁

自由资本主义时期，银行仅发挥着“信用中介”和“支付中介”的作用，处于“公共簿记”和“生产资料的公共分配形式”的地位；随着资本主义发展到垄断阶段，生产的集中和垄断，必然导致银行的集中和垄断。银行出现垄断后，其与工业企业的关系遂发生了变化：信用关系固定了，银行有必要加强对企业的监督和控制。于是，银行的功能和地位也随之发生了显著的变化。     

世界重回镀金时代

在镀金时代的后期,大多数美国人开始改变对于美好社会和无为政府的传统信念,他们发现,经济增长伴随着越来越大的贫困、剥削、污染、精神空虚、混乱与腐败,自由主义理想彻底落空。这时以城市中产阶级为核心掀起了一场创新国家和政府体制的运动,     

卡莱茨基的经济周期理论

在众多的经济周期理论中,卡莱茨基的理论可以说是独树一帜.他在垄断程度理论和收入分配理论的基础上,得出了投资不足的结论,并结合投资的双重作用和时间滞后性,阐释了垄断资本主义社会的经济周期.     

法国银行业重组述评

第二次世界大战后至20世纪的80年代中期，法国一直实行国家垄断资本主义的经济模式，国民经济垄断资本主义的经济模式，国民经济的命脉由若干垄断资本集团操纵，金融业几乎完全在国家控制之下。     

当代经济危机的马克思主义阐释

始于2007年美国华尔街的"次贷"危机,在极短的时间内由金融危机转变成了经济危机,并从美国蔓延至欧洲、日本、亚洲等全世界各国和地区。这次危机是资本主义基本矛盾集中爆发的体现,给全世界的经济体系带来了巨大的冲击。此次危机也是资本主义社会周期性经济危机的新一轮周期。本文旨在运用马克思主义经济危机理论对发生在资本主义社会的这一危机进行分析,探讨危机发生的根源、本质,以期对社会主义的建设给出一定的指导。     

美国社会保障制度的困境及其社会影响——以20世纪为中心

美国的社会保障制度发挥了保护器、安全阀和调节器的作用,并且成为现代美国资本主义制度重要的有机组成部分。但是,它却面临着财政危机、工作伦理危机和家庭危机等困境,随着人口结构的老龄化,老年危机也成为与之相关的重大社会问题。     

中国金融不能照搬美国自由化模式——国际金融危机的一条根本教训

美国引发的国际金融危机,从反面给我国的金融体制创新提供一面镜子.鉴此,必须从根本上认识此次危机的社会制度原因,把握现代资本主义发展的阶段特征及其在金融领域的表现形式,廓清中国特色社会主义金融与美国资本主义金融六个方面的根本区别,坚持我国金融制度建设与创新的正确方向,处理好借鉴别人与自我完善的关系,决不能照搬美国自由化金融的模式.     

所有制形式与社会化大生产

公有制和私有制都在尽可能的条件下，寻求与社会化大生产相统一、相协调的机会和可能，最大限度地促进生产力的发展。资本主义社会生产力发展的基本矛盾是生产资料私有制与社会化大生产的矛盾。而社会主义初级阶段社会生产力发展的基本矛盾可以说是单一的生产资料公有制与社会化大生产的矛盾。只有解决了这个矛盾，才能切实解放生产力，从而发展生产力。     

Tocqueville revisited. The meaning of American prosperity

Why is business so admired in the United States and so often denigrated in Europe? How has America created 30 million new jobs in the last 20 years while the European Union, with a bigger population, only managed 5 million? What is feeding America's apparently inexhaustible appetite for growth and its recent dramatic improvements in productivity? In 1831, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to examine its prison system and returned with a vision of democracy so profound it has become part of our cultural heritage. More than a century and a half later, renowned British business philosopher Charles Handy retraces Tocqueville's intellectual journey, this time focusing not on democracy but on capitalism. The result is an eye-opening look at some of the fundamental assumptions underpinning business in America today. It is America's optimism that Handy finds most striking, the unquestioned belief that tomorrow can--and should--be made better than today. He contrasts this with the Spaniards when they came to the New World: No haya novedades, those Spaniards would say, "Let nothing new arise." The energy engendered by American optimism, coupled with the Puritan belief in work and in the nobility of earned wealth (as opposed to Europe's furtive attitude toward its nobility's inherited wealth) lies, in Handy's view, at the heart of America's success. Will American capitalism, born as it was from a property-owning democracy, now adapt to a dematerialized world, where property is intellectual rather than physical? Handy draws no absolute conclusions, but rather lays out the challenges that must be overcome for tomorrow to indeed continue to be better than today in this still-young country.     

Americanism and financial accounting theory – Part 2: The ‘modern business enterprise’, America's transition to capitalism,and the genesis of management accounting

The paper uses accounting evidence to explore when and how capitalism came to America. It continues the search for capitalists in American history begun in ‘Americanism and financial accounting theory. Part 1: Was America Born Capitalist?’ Part 1 concluded that America was not ‘born capitalist’ in Marx's sense, and that the capitalist mentality had not appeared in farming even by the late 19th century, on southern slave plantations by the Civil War, or in manufacturing enterprises by the 1830s. This paper (Part 2) challenges Alfred Chandler's thesis that the ‘modern business enterprise’ brought ‘a new type of capitalism’ from around the mid-19th century. It re-examines accounting evidence from the Boston textile mills, the railroads, and the iron and steel industry. It concludes that the Boston Associates who historians often see as ‘proto-capitalists’, the ‘managerial capitalists’ Chandler sees on the railroads, and the ‘entrepreneurial capitalists’ he sees in the iron and steel industry and elsewhere, remained semi-capitalists because their capitals and workers were not ‘free’. The paper re-examines the ‘costing renaissance’, the introduction and spread of product costing, standard costing, ROI and flexible budgets, and the evidence in Chandler's and Johnson and Kaplan's studies of the DuPont Powder Company and General Motors. This suggests that capitalism only appeared in America by around 1900, after more than two decades of intense conflict between ‘capital and labour’, and became established by the 1920s. This is the critical turning point in American business history, not the appearance of ‘managerial capitalism’, the paper argues. It concludes that America did not catch up with British capitalism until the late 1920s because its ruling elite faced an ideological problem created by its exceptional transition from a society of simple commodity producers and semi-capitalists, particularly the threat of popular socialism. The final paper, Part 3: ‘Adam Smith, the rise and fall of socialism, and Irving Fisher's theory of accounting’, argues that Fisher made a seminal contribution to solving this problem, but his legacy is a pathological theory of financial accounting.     

Americanism and financial accounting theory – Part 1: Was America born capitalist?

This paper (Part 1), and two related papers (Part 2: The ‘modern business enterprise’, America's transition to capitalism, and the genesis of management accounting; and Part 3: Adam Smith, the rise and fall of socialism, and Irving Fisher's theory of accounting), explore historical links between American ideology and Irving Fisher's theory of accounting. They explain Fisher's theory as the product of America's exceptional transition to capitalism and the ideological consequences. Part 1 uses Marx's theories of the transition in England, of colonisation, and of ideology, to construct an accounting history model of America's transition to capitalism that identifies the dominant social relations of production and calculative mentalities, and uses them to predict the accounting signatures and political ideologies we should observe if the theories are correct. Parts 1 and 2 test the model. Part 3 explores the ideological consequences of America's transition, for America and financial accounting. Scholars generally assume that America was ‘born capitalist’; historians argue it became capitalist sometime from the late 18th to early 19th centuries. The model, however, identifies early farmers as ‘simple commodity producers’ who, it predicts, kept only single entry accounts of debt, and had a ‘producer’ ideology of ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’. It identifies planters and manufacturers as ‘semi-capitalists’ – part merchant capitalist and part simple commodity producer – who it predicts calculated ‘profit’ as consumable surplus, pursued the ‘simple rate of profit’, controlled only prime costs, and had an ideology of ‘individualism’ that combined the producers’ ideology with the merchants’ ‘laissez-faire’. Part 1 re-examines evidence from accounts to around the mid-19th century, which confirms that farmers were not capitalists and that even the most advanced merchants, manufacturers and planters were semi-capitalists. Part 2 searches for capitalists in the second half of the 19th century. It re-examines evidence from the accounts of the Boston Associates who historians have seen as ‘proto-industrial capitalists’; from the railroads heralded by Chandler as the beginning of ‘managerial capitalism’; and from ‘entrepreneurial capitalists’ like Andrew Carnegie who created the large corporations that conquered America from the 1880s. Their financial accounts and cost management systems reveal the same semi-capitalist mentality found in the early 19th century. Re-examination of the ‘costing renaissance’ in the 1890s and evidence from the DuPont Powder Company and General Motors from 1900 to 1920, suggests that only from around 1900, after escalating conflict between ‘capital and labour’, did the capitalist mentality appear in new management accounting systems focused on ‘return on investment’. Part 3 shows that the accounting evidence closely correlates with the history of American political ideology. It argues that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations dominated American politics until the late 19th century because it theorised a nation of simple commodity producers and semi-capitalists. It explains the delay in America's transition compared to Britain's, and the decline in the popularity of laissez-faire from the 1880s, as consequences of this exceptional starting point. ‘Big business’ capitalism created an ideological problem for America's ruling elite, particularly the threat of socialism from around 1900 to 1920. Part 3 argues that Fisher's neoclassical theory of ‘capital’ and ‘income’, designed as a critique of Marx, responded to this problem and played an important role in undermining middle class support for socialism. Fisher said he based his theory on accounting practice, particularly double entry bookkeeping, but Part 3 shows he did not use or understand it, which divorced his accounting from reality. American history's legacy to the world, the papers therefore conclude, is a pathological theory of financial accounting.     

美国反垄断的经济学思考

众所周知,国际上垄断的主要形式是托拉斯,而美国这个崇尚自由竞争的经济大国,其垄断行为更为普遍。美国反垄断法的出台及实施,引起了我们更多的经济学思考,研究借鉴美国反垄断法的构成体系、主要内容以及典型的实施案例,对我国反垄断理论的研究和实践将有所裨益。     

Was America born capitalist? A counter view

This paper is a response to Part 1 of Rob Bryer's analysis of American business consciousness in the period prior to the mid-1800s. It argues that RB's historical model for tracking the transition to capitalism in the US based on accounting signatures is too simplistic, and that the evidence he presents is ambiguous, relying as it does on the interpretation of secondary sources. The paper questions RB's unique definition of capitalism as well as his conception of a clear point of divide between the capitalist and pre-capitalist worlds, and argues that the capitalist mentality or spirit existed in America long before the early 20th century based on current evidence.     

Americanism and financial accounting theory – Part 3: Adam Smith,the rise and fall of socialism,and Irving Fisher's theory of accounting

A previous paper (Part 1) rejected the conventional wisdom that America was ‘born capitalist’ and the historians’ consensus that it had become capitalist by the early-19th century; another (Part 2) rejected Chandler's thesis that the ‘modern business enterprise’ brought a ‘new form of capitalism’ to America from the 1840s. The accounting evidence suggests that America began to make the transition to capitalism around 1900 in a period of intense conflict between ‘capital and labour’ generated by ‘big business’ from the 1880s, a process not completed until the 1920s. This paper (Part 3) examines the consequences for America's political ideology and financial accounting theory. America's exceptional transition, it argues, explains the history of its political ideology, and this history explains Irving Fisher's theory of accounting. Section A argues that America lagged behind Britain because it started from a society of simple commodity producers and semi-capitalists, which created an exceptional ideological problem for its ruling elite. Big business generated hostility from workers, farmers and small employers – expressed in labour movements, ‘populism’, socialism, and ‘progressivism’ – and created an ideological problem by contradicting the ‘independent producer’ ideology of workers and farmers, and the ‘individual liberalism’ of small manufacturers and merchants, both underwritten by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The paper argues that Smith's theory of price articulates as semi-capitalist accounting, which explains his popularity in America until the appearance of big business in the 1880s. Socialism and progressivism became political forces in America from 1900 to around 1920. Progressivism produced ‘corporate liberalism’, the ideological counter to socialism that corporations could be made ‘socially responsible’ by government regulation and ‘publicity’ to ensure they earned only ‘fair’ returns, but this left two problems. First, socialists argued that no profit was ‘fair’, and second, fear of the ‘labour danger’ made American financial reports secretive and conservative. Section B argues that Irving Fisher responded to these problems with a theory of accounting, which he developed as a refutation of Marx and the American brand of socialism advocated by Eugene Debs, the threateningly successful presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America. An important but neglected reason for socialism's abrupt collapse around 1920, it argues, was that the socialists lost the intellectual argument with the middle classes, and that Fisher's theory played an important role in this defeat. Fisher was a vigorous self-publicist, strongly influenced the teaching of economics and accounting in the universities and, the paper argues, changed the language of American accounting. Fisher claimed that accounting practice supported his theory of ‘capital’ and ‘income’, but the paper shows he did not understand double-entry bookkeeping or the accountants’ ‘cost theory of value’, and therefore divorced accounting from the reality of business transactions. As his theory underlies the FASB's framework, the paper concludes that Fisher's legacy to the world is a pathological theory of financial accounting.     

Columbia Law School Roundtable on The Future Of Capitalism

In this discussion that took place at Columbia Law School's Millstein Center last October (and thus well before the appearance of the coronavirus), two distinguished English academics, a Pulitzer Prize‐winning journalist, and the executive chairman of a large American investment house discussed the role of corporations in addressing the crises that periodically beset the capitalist system. Sir Paul Collier opened with the comment that, although capitalism had shown itself to be the only effective system for mass human improvement in the past 10,000 years, it was now experiencing its “third serious derailment.” In each of the first two—the first in Northern England in the 1840s and the second during the Great Depression of the 1930s—capitalism was preserved in significant part by the “moral load‐bearing” performed by private companies and citizens. For capitalism to survive this third derailment, the public and private sectors must join forces to address what Collier to sees as the most formidable economic challenge: finding ways to transport urban jobs and capabilities to rural areas still reeling from two major blows—the first, a century ago to agriculture, and the second, for the past two or three decades, to large‐scale manufacturing. Collier's Oxford colleague Colin Mayer follows by calling on public companies to formulate and state a corporate social purpose that goes beyond maximizing their own long‐run shareholder values. And to encourage and support such a practice, Mayer urges the large universal owners that own large stakes in all the world's large listed companies not only to support and applaud such statements, but to find ways to ensure that companies are living up to them. Alan Schwartz, Executive Chairman of Guggenheim Partners, responds by noting that capitalism has been forced to make major adjustments throughout its history. And consistent with Collier's observations, Schwartz argues that the global economic order should have been preparing for the past 30 or 40 years for its biggest challenge: creating a global economy dynamic enough to provide jobs for some two or three billion new unskilled workers spawned by the globalization of the world economy. The American private sector, after having lost much of its efficiency and value in the 1970s, has since used continuous restructuring to produce enormous productivity gains and value. And although generally supportive of the thinking behind the Business Roundtable's recent statement, Schwartz deplores the confusion that continues to surround the message. Those corporate leaders now endorsing the pursuit of social goals are by no means asking their shareholders to accept below‐market returns on investment. In well‐run companies focused on long‐run efficiency and value, there is no inherent conflict between the interests of shareholders and the long‐run interests of other major stakeholders. In such companies, customers, employees, suppliers, and local communities all end up better served.