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Deepening supply-side structural reform is the main objective of the economic work since the Chinese economy entered a new stage of development. By adopting the fundamental principles and methodologies of Marxist political economy, the authors can provide clarifications on the three basic theoretical issues concerning the supply-side structural reform. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

First, the essential starting point for understanding the supply-side structural reform is the primacy of production, as well as the organic connection between production and consumption in social reproduction, rather than the supply and demand as superficially seen in exchanges. By identifying the right starting point, the authors can avoid alternating between demand and supply management, and between liberalism and interventionism.

Structural problems, which are closely related to the institutional structure of production and the purpose and nature of production, cannot be solely attributed to the imbalance caused by market failures. Chinese economy has suffered prolonged structural contradictions and structural problems.

To decide whether the financial and the real estate sectors are real economy or virtual economy, the key is to examine whether the monetary capital used in financial activities and real estate commodity (capital) go through the capital circulation process of from monetary capital to productive capital and further to commodity capital, and whether the capital gain is generated by the value appreciation of capital or the value transfer and distribution as a result of the transfer of ownership. With its emphasis on developing the real economy, the supply-side structural reform should foster both development of manufacturing, and parts of financial and real estate sectors that are the real economy.

The unsettled opposing conclusions reached by a number of scholars about the remaining significance and/or weakness of the nation-state and its conflict and/or coalition with global capital represent an analytical and theoretical impasse. These contradictory views have been contested in the literature leaving no clear methodological and analytical guidance on how to examine the state-capital relationship in any specific area in the era of globalization. This paper suggests that the contradiction and change in the relationship between the nation-state and capital is rooted in the contradictory needs of labor versus capital. However, the role of labor and its contradiction with capital has been absent from most state-capital analyses or is treated as a background variable. To help overcoming this analytical impasse, the paper calls for re-conceptualizing the role of labor on the global level and for incorporating this role within the state-capital relationship. The paper first provides a critical appraisal of the opposing views of the state-capital relationship and pinpoints problems in their analytical logics of contradictions and structural determination. The basic contradiction between labor and capital is restated and the ways in which different approaches had incorporated (or ignored) labor in relation to capital and the state are criticized. The critique covers mainstream and recent synthesized approaches but focuses more on post-Marxist political economy. The paper concludes with some suggested directions for research for addressing the capitalist state contradictions.

Currently, China’s economy is in the critical phase of transforming economic development patterns and replacing old growth drivers with new ones. Whether it can successfully overcome the “middle-income trap” has become a significant issue attracting wide attention.

Driven by underlying digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data, the fourth industrial revolution featuring the booming digital economy has provided significant opportunities for China’s economy to “overtake” and overcome the “middle-income trap”. The transformation of economic development pattern, the optimization of industrial structure, and the change of growth drivers, brought by the deep integration of digital and real economies are the keys to leaping over the “middle-income trap”.

From the supply side, the digital economy can improve the quality and efficiency of the supply side and promote the supply-side structural reform and economic growth from the following three aspects: First, promote the quality, efficiency and diversification of the supply system; second, promote networking, opening-up and synergy in the innovation system and third, promote the socialization, modularization and flexibility of production pattern. From the demand side, the digital economy can boost the new drivers of the “troika” of economic growth consisting of consumption, exports and investment by changing the market investment direction, promoting consumption upgrade and fostering export strengths. However, once these two attributes interact with each other, especially when data is combined with capital, the most adhesive factor in the market economy, a series of new social relations will then be produced based on the technical attribute, resulting in significant adjustments in social relations, involving both positive and negative externalities.

To overcome the “middle-income trap”, it is necessary to adapt to the laws of economic evolution and promote a fundamental change in economic growth drivers; boost the high-quality development of the digital economy by strengthening the support role of data in the digital economy; and accelerate digital industrialization and industrial digitalization to realize the integration of digital and real economies.

Commenting on the Mexican Revolution in 1938, Trotsky argued that the country might achieve “national independence,” understood as a break with dependency relations. Whether this might occur depended – Trotsky continued – on “international factors.” Though not engaging with Mexico, Antonio Gramsci made a similar theoretical point. It is hence from this perspective that this chapter analyses the Mexican Revolution, asking whether it led to a break in dependency relations and the attainment of “national independence” or what I refer to as “relative geopolitical autonomy.” Presenting a framework of analysis largely based on the work of Gramsci that highlights its continuity with the thought of Marx, the chapter will answer negatively to this question. The chapter starts from the idea that Porfirio Díaz’s regime was unable to adapt the economic structure (still pre-capitalist) to the complex superstructures (capitalist), that is, to realize an historic bloc. It would be this job that the emergent Mexican bourgeoisie sought to finish. However, the situation is complicated by the powerful emergence of social movements from below, constituted largely by landless peasants, and to a lesser extent, the industrial proletariat. I will therefore argue that the revolution has been both “passive” and “bounded.” The term passive revolution will be applied to the last phase of the revolution as the emerging bourgeoisie successfully coopted the demands of the popular masses thereby “passivizing” them. But crucially, the revolution was also “bounded” because international factors, and especially US influence, played a conditioning role throughout the revolutionary process. At the same time, it would be the very “passive” nature of the revolution that would contribute to the reproduction of relations of dependency. Hence the chapter concludes that the period Trotsky commented upon (the Cárdenas period) is the highest level of “independence” Mexico achieved, only to decrease again over the years.

Accounting’s definition of accountability should include attributes of socioenvironmental degradation manufactured by unsustainable technologies. Beck argues that emergent accounts should reflect the following primary characteristics of technological degradation: complexity, uncertainty, and diffused responsibility. Financial stewardship accounts and probabilistic assessments of risk, which are traditionally employed to allay the public’s fear of uncontrollable technological hazards, cannot reflect these characteristics because they are constructed to perpetuate the status quo by fabricating certainty and security. The process through which safety thresholds are constructed and contested represents the ultimate form of socialized accountability because these thresholds shape how much risk people consent to be exposed to. Beck’s socialized total accountability is suggested as a way forward: It has two dimensions, extended spatiotemporal responsibility and the psychology of decision-making. These dimensions are teased out from the following constructs of Beck’s Risk Society thesis: manufactured risks and hazards, organized irresponsibility, politics of risk, radical individualization and social learning. These dimensions are then used to critically evaluate the capacity of full cost accounting (FCA), and two emergent socialized risk accounts, to integrate the multiple attributes of sustainability. This critique should inform the journey of constructing more representative accounts of technological degradation.

Peter Boettke and I had taken Don Lavoie's graduate Comparative Economic Systems course during the Fall of 1985. Lavoie had just published Rivalry and Central Planning (Lavoie, 1985b) and National Economic Planning: What is left? (Lavoie, 1985a), and was at the cusp of establishing himself as a major player in the comparative systems and contemporary critique of socialist planning literature.¹

This article discusses the devolution of educational administration in Victoria from the perspective of the role and selection of principals in such a devolved system. Drawing on such writers as Dewey and Giddens the article presents the case why, in a political democracy, we should also have democratically administered organisations. But the tensions and problematic aspects in democratic forms of educational administration are also outlined. These forces impinging on the role and selection of principals are then exemplified through a case study.

The Chinese electricity sector is in the midst of a transition from a state-owned monopoly to a market-oriented structural unbundling. In the process of restructuring, the power system is facing significant deficiencies which hinder integration of sustainable solutions and dramatically impact the environment.

The chapter provides a qualitative analysis of the legislative, regulatory, and administrative provisions that have been recently implemented in the Chinese electricity sector, in order to identify the barriers that limit implementation of sustainable solutions and suggest prospects of change.

Despite a strong commitment to renewable energy, integration of sustainable solutions in the Chinese power system is hampered by an inefficient coordination between the players variously operating in the electricity sector and a lack of consistency at the regulatory design stage.

A clear picture of the legislative, regulatory, and administrative inconsistencies that characterize the Chinese electricity sector may help Chinese policy makers to overcome issues that hinder efficiency and hence develop a systemic approach useful to make the economic growth sustainable.

The chapter considers integration of sustainable solutions as related to the policy makers’ ability to conceptualize systemic efficiency in relation to an original understanding of proximity between efficient energy systems to be developed on a regional basis.

The Gandhian-Vedic approach to development is synonymous with the advancement of spiritual agency. It emancipates society by trying to raise people's interconnectedness with nature, mitigating capitalism's hegemony of consumerism on people's psyche and hence reducing the chances of individuals perpetuating the cycle of exploitation by adhering to capitalist norms. That is, the Gandhian-Vedic approach to discursive accountability minimises the risk of circularity in the dialectics of contradictions, which occurs when consenting behaviour replaces existing contradictions with another set of contradictions. It enables the actor to step off capitalism's treadmill of materialism and exploitation by centralising spiritual development. Its spiritual revolution involves caring for the whole whilst engaging with social structures. Here the Gandhian-Vedic logic is extended to emancipatory accounting by developing accounting as a discursive risk assessment tool that minimises the fragmentation of time and space aspects of performance. Its holistic representation of performance could change perceptions about interconnectedness between an individual's behaviour, nature and society. It is the antithesis of conventional accounting's prioritisation of private interest over responsibility for the whole.