The book builds on an important emergent body of discussion which questions, both empirically and theoretically, the conventional neoclassical doctrine that economies are more efficient if the state withdraws from it.  It develops a “space-time” approach to state theory as a way of explaining development outcomes in the global economy as the latter increasingly shifts to what is referred to as “knowledge capitalism”. It examines two global cases – Finland and China – as expressions of two broad models of successful development punctuated most recently by successful...

This book offers a novel treatment of one of the most important and long-standing research agendas in critical political economy: the theorizing of stages of capitalist development. Albritton advances the work of Japanese economist, Kozo Uno, to explore capital accumulation and its ideological, legal and political supports, not only in the stages of mercantilism, liberalism and imperialism, but also in the post-World War II capitalist stage of consumerism. The power of Albritton’s adoption of this Japanese approach resides in the crisp clarity it achieves over the way stage...