DS 100

• Economy


  A vital part of a country's life that understands how a country works, and figures out what policies and programs can be carried out to improve the lives of the many, particularly the people who remain poor
• The Philippine economy is badly functioning
• We need to know how exactly our economy relates with our political life (polity)
• We need to resolve fundamental debates about the roles of the states, markets, communities, in encouraging the process of economic development
• Our main objective is to develop a critical and theoretically-informed understanding of today's issues in Philippine political economy and development
• Political Economy


  It seeks to integrate various disciplines (or areas of study) in the analysis of the way an economy functions
• Political Economy


  • Compared to other economic analysis where it views the market as having an equal players, political economy acknowledges that there are distinct interest groups in the political and economic arena with different degrees of access to power
  • It tries to study how these distinct interest groups gain access to that power to secure its political power and the economic security of its members
• Liberalism


  • It attempts to set aside and defend a private domain or area separate from the state and government authority
  • It is calling for individual liberty in both the socio-economic and political arenas
  • Society is nothing but a collection of individuals
  • The state (an independent public power) should be neutral or above that society in the sense that it should not be seen as favoring one or another individual or group
  • Ultimate sovereignty resides in the people (as expressed through the ballot and the market)
• Marxism


  • It looks at the history of human society as "dialectical development" and change of the "mode of production"
  • The economic foundation or the base builds the society's political-legal superstructure
  • The state is not independent of society and economy, it is closely tied to socio-economic realities and reflects the balance of forces in society
• Relative Autonomy


  • A semi-independent state from any undue influence brought to bear on it by powerful interest groups such as the wealthy from the different forces in the society
  • It also became an "arena of struggle" for the different social forces and groups
• Capitalism


  • It is the definite historical mode of production with the particular technical and social features of society that carries out the mass production of commodities and mass labor that receives wages for work
  • It develops the technical and social conditions for socialist transformation
  • The exploitative nature of capitalism is the reason why capitalism would not last long and would be overthrown by the entire global working class, which would replace it with socialism and communism
• Counterpoint Tradition


  • It did not fully accept the assumptions (individuals as the center of society) and effects (dehumanizing effect of uncontrolled capitalism) of the Industrial Revolution
  • It rejected industrialization and capitalist development
  • It attracted a wide range of individuals and groups like the conservatives, liberals, and even some radicals
• Conservative Romanticism


  Stresses the ugly effects and the worsening of moral and ethical standards brought about by social change
• Utopian Socialism


  Reacted to large-scale industrialism and proposed instead the creation of alternative microsocieties on which production would be based
• Anarchism


  Rejected the idea of a state in any form and stressed instead that it would be better to have socio-political organizations that are decentralized
• Populism and neopopulism


  To pay attention to agriculture and rural society, and to build an alternative society through the efforts of peasantry rather than the workers - the opposite of what the marxists want
• Keynesianism or Social Liberalism


  • Emerged in the 1930s, gained ground during the 1940s and became dominant in the immediate post-war period
  • It upholds private property and free enterprise but questions the ability of the free market in promoting efficiency, stability, and equity in the economy
  • It led to the rise of the "welfare ideology" or "welfarism"
• Neoliberalism


  • Came about as a reaction to the failures of Keynesianism
  • It believes that "imperfect markets are better than imperfect states"
  • It calls for "getting government out of the marketplace" or "privatization," "liberalization," and "getting the prices right"
• Instrumentalist Perspective on the State

  • The state is an instrument of class rule, "an executive committee of the bourgeoisie"
  • The state is primarily coercive, and is willing and able to use violence against the workers to achieve its own ends
  • To end this, the workers must bring about "socialist transformation" to violently seize and destroy the bourgeois-led state, and replace it with a "dictatorship of the proletariat"
• Counterpoint Tradition


  • Gandhi's ideas on development, E.F. Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful", and Julius Nyerere's "ujaama" model are prominent 20th century examples
  • The ideas of "participatory development" and "people empowerment" are considered the "children" of Counterpoint
  • The "Green" movement is the most visible symbol of the Counterpoint today, reacting to the reality of mass production associated with capitalism which has led to the destruction of the environment
• The proponents of the Counterpoint view today's ideological contradiction and debate as one not between Liberalism and Marxism, but between ecologism (i.e., the ideology of ecological protection) and the mainstream (i.e., non-populist and non-ecological) social sciences, especially mainstream economics