Marx predicted in Capital (1867) that as capitalism became global, patterns of work would be transformed, and workers would need to develop versatility, flexibility, and mobility. This 'general law of social production', as he called it, is now in evidence all around us, in global value chains, 'zero hours' contracts, and contract work organised through digital platforms. It results from competition between capitalists, scientific and technological revolutions in production, and incessant advances in the division of labour as production processes are broken down into ever smaller steps. This book documents the leading roles of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Washington-based World Bank as advocates of these developments. They do not, as generally supposed, simply represent the interests of the advanced economies or the 'West' and their transnational corporations. They promote a single global model of capitalist development, without 
limits and on a genuinely global scale. It calls upon all states to 'adjust' continually to the structural and social demands of competitiveness, which they see as essential to the global hegemony of capital over labour. The OECD and the World Bank propose policies that give girls and women equal access to education and paid work, reform welfare to 'make work pay', introduce flexible labour contracts that make 'hiring and firing' easier, focus education on skills that boost employability, and draw workers in the developing world from the 'informal' sector into the formal sector, where they can be more productive. This is the politics of global competitiveness.

The Politics of Global Competitiveness

Business & Money

Cammack, Paul

Economics

Oxford University Press

This book offers a comparative and thematic introduction to third world politics, placing it in historical, social and international context. The second edition has been expanded with new sections on East and South East Asia added to revised and updated coverage of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. The authors all have lengthy experience of living in and writing about different regions of the Third World.

Third World Politics: A Comparative Introduction

Pool, David

Tordoff, William

Red Globe Press

This volume offers a critique of the literature on political development from the 1960s and 1970s, and traces its influence in contemporary approaches to democratization. It argues that the orthodox view was never optimistic about the immediate prospects for democracy around the Third World. On the contrary, it was always fearful that democratic reform, once initiated, would prove hard to control. This prompted the formulation of a pragmatic "doctrine for political development" which survived failed attempts to establish a persuasive theory to back it up. Pardoxically, suggests this book, despite such failure, this doctrine dominates discussion of democratization today.

Capitalism and Democracy in the Third World: The Doctrine for Political Development (Critical Political Studies)

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Leicester University Press

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