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This chapter examines how darknet drug marketplaces operate within platform capitalism. While capitalist power relations remain underexplored in research on digital drug markets, the analysis shows that the basic foundation of cryptomarkets relies on the infrastructure of platform capitalism. The authors use the concept of platform capitalism to explore cryptomarkets in an ideology-critical way. Platforms are infrastructure for the mediation of buyers and vendors; however, they are designed to extract data on the activities of their users. Platform capitalism refers to the process by which the vast collection of user data feeds into the accumulation of capital. The authors use a dialectical method to examine the constellation of digital drug platforms by disclosing a threefold contradiction: state control and self-regulation; visibility and concealment; and legality and illegality. The analysis reveals that darknet drug platforms make a profit not only from the trade of illicit drugs and the collection of user data, but also based on the illegal status of drugs, the associated ideology, and the closed ecology of darknet platforms. Power relations in cryptomarkets thereby mimic those observed in platform capitalism in general. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of platform capitalism for online drug markets.

In this essay, I explore the question of how best to leverage the benefits of dialogue for leadership education. The essay makes the case for studying the work of the ancient Greek historian Plutarch, who provides us with a unique kind of dialogue about leaders and leadership in his Lives. This text features biographical sketches of important leaders from the ancient Greek and Roman traditions that are intended by the author to be in conversation with one another. In this essay, I present a brief content analysis of two lives, Lycurgus of Sparta and Numa Pompilius of Rome, with the aim of clarifying the leadership themes contained therein and showing how students of leadership can benefit from the conversation between these two biographies facilitated by Plutarch. In general, Lives is a resource though which students can enter into a profitable dialogue about important historical examples, revealing truths about leadership that help students to grapple with vital questions.

It is scholars' great mission in this era to creatively develop new implications, paradigms and discourses of China's political economy and establish a theoretical system of political economy with Chinese characteristics based on the fundamental principles of Marxist theory and the practice and historical process of Chinese economic reform, through theorizing and systemizing the practices of China's socialist market economy construction. The purpose of this paper is to give some suggestions to establish a socialist theoretical system with Chinese characteristics.

This paper makes a comprehensive analysis of the principles, objectives, study objects, methodologies as well as the framework of the theoretical system of the political economy with Chinese characteristics.

Additionally, starting from the unity of opposites between public ownership of resources and resource allocation in a market mechanism, which is the fundamental dialectical relation of China's socialist market economy, the authors will adopt the dual dialectical analysis approach to discover and understand the duality features of the socialist economic system with Chinese characteristics.

With adherence to the mission of China's socialist economic system, the goal of China's market economic reform, and the perspectives of Marxist political economy, the authors must explicitly define the so-called Chinese characteristics and then summarize the dynamics and innovations during the evolution of Chinese socialist political economy with high theory confidence and theory self-consciousness.

This study aims to contribute to the field of customer portfolio management by proposing a novel approach rooted in dialectic critical realism (DCR). DCR, as an ontological theory, enables a fundamental reimagining of customer portfolio management as a dialectic process. The conceptualized dialectic portfolio management is motivated by the concept of “absence”, akin to Hegelian “antithesis”, which highlights limitations, problems and tensions in portfolio management. In essence, “absence” serves as a diagnostic tool that directs portfolio actions towards resolving problems by pursuing a more comprehensive “totality”, similar to the Hegelian notion of “synthesis”.

This conceptual paper theorizes DCR in business marketing and customer portfolio management.

DCR conceptualizes customer portfolios as relational structures characterized by omissions and tensions. These issues are addressed through a dialectic synthesis aimed at achieving a more comprehensive “totality”. Consequently, DCR guides portfolio management to continually re-think the connections and distinctions that define a portfolio within its network context. This dialectic process is facilitated by a novel vocabulary that enhances the understanding of network and portfolio relations, incorporating concepts such as “intrapermeations”, “existential constitutions”, “intra-connections” and “intensive” and “extensive” portfolio practices.

This study aims to foster a fresh and process-oriented perspective on portfolio management, drawing inspiration from the growing demand for enriched dialectic theorizing within the realm of business marketing. The adoption of a dialectic process orientation based on DCR revolutionizes the comprehension of portfolio management by fundamentally reimagining the underlying ontological assumptions that underpin the existing body of literature on customer portfolios. Moreover, DCR asserts that ethical considerations are inextricably linked to human experiences and associated practices, emphasizing ethics as an integral component of customer portfolio management.

Marx suggested that it is infeasible and wrong to arrange the economic categories according to the order by which they have worked in history. Their order is determined by their interrelationship in the modern bourgeois society, which is in contrast to their natural sequence or that which is in accordance with the course of history. Sometimes, a logical sequence is precisely opposite to the historical sequence. There are many efforts to be done in the study of China’s economic and social issues with Marxist logical and historical methods. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

When reading Das Kapital, we can clearly see the historical materialism methods. Another method of Marxist political economics is the scientific abstract method.

This is based on the new development idea to carry out scientific and technological innovation and change the focus of development from quantity to quality. With regard to the supply side structural reform as the main focus, people’s ever-growing demand for a better life can be satisfied and the higher level dynamic supply–demand balance can be kept.

In fact, measures to remedy unbalanced and inadequate development of the social principal contradiction have been plainly indicated in the report delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is based on the new development idea to carry out scientific and technological innovation and change the focus of development from quantity to quality.

As the crystallization of Chinese wisdom and the shared wealth of all humanity, the Socialist Political Economy with Chinese Characteristics (SPECC) not only reveals the specific traits of SPECC but also indicates the general rules of the global economic development, showing both nationality and internationality. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Being aware of the nationality of the SPECC is of great importance. It requires to integrate the basic Marxist principles with the realities of China, and meanwhile draw lessons from, not just simply copy, the strengths of other countries. The authors must adhere to the basic principles of the SPECC.

From the perspective of past practices, the SPECC has not only provided theoretical guidance for China’s reform and development, but has also given references to some countries, especially developing countries under reform and transition.

SPECC should be based on China’s conditions and practices, absorb China’s traditional cultural essences, draw lessons from other nations’ positive theoretical and practical results, propose theoretical viewpoints independently and initially, and construct a distinct academic system and discourse system. In this way, China would work to develop the characteristics and advantages of the SPECC, and contribute Chinese wisdom to the development and improvement of world economics and economics theories.

Western economics came into being with the rise of the capitalist market economy. It had a nature of duality beginning from its birth: the justificativeness of providing theoretical pillars for the capitalist market economy system and the scientificity of revealing the internal relations and operating rules of the capitalist market economy. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

However, after the 1830s, this justificativeness gradually evolved into vulgarity. Since the 1930s, modern western mainstream economics has mainly explored the general market economy on the assumption that the capitalist system remains unchanged, and many outcomes of such research are positive and beneficial.

Political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, at the present stage, is mainly a Chinese socialist market economics. It is guided by the Marxist political economy and rooted in the great practice of China’s reform and opening up and socialist modernization.

According to political complexion, western economic theories can be divided into political economic theory, mainstream economic theory and basic economic theory. By subjecting these theories to what we term “elimination,” “transformation” and “transplantation” surgeries, respectively, we can absorb and accommodate their beneficial elements in building a political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which in turn is conducive to the development and prosperity of such an economy.

This chapter explores the disruptive potential of the Internet to transform illicit drug markets while also challenging stereotypical depictions and superficial understandings of supply and demand. It argues that the digital transformation of illicit drug markets combines, on one hand, a reconfiguration of the scope and impact of how sellers, buyers, and other actors interact within and upon digitally mediated retail drug markets and, on the other hand, continuing trends in the embeddedness of market structures in cultural, economic, political, and legal realms. We develop conceptual ideas for studying the architecture of digital drug markets by drawing on interdisciplinary approaches to digitalisation, markets, and drugs. To understand the functioning of online drug markets, we first need to understand digitalisation. Thus, we draw on scholarship on the digital transformation of society and, second, put forward an understanding of markets that considers how personal relations and social structures enhance and restrict market exchange. Thus, we draw on economic sociology. Third, we build on and extend social science research on illicit drug markets which points out that drug markets exhibit significant variations over time and across jurisdictions. The introduction aims to provide a research agenda that can help us to explore ongoing digital transformations of illicit drug markets. It expands and deepens scholarship on the technological, structural, economic, and cultural factors underlying the resilience and growth of digital drug markets. It also goes beyond a concern with just one type of digital drug market into wider forms of digital environments.

The paper debunks Peter P. Li’s assertion that Yin-Yang is superior to any other cognitive frames or logical systems for paradox research. The purpose of this paper is to alert the Chinese indigenous management researchers to the danger of Chinese exceptionalism and over-confidence.

To show that Peter P. Li’s assertion is doubtful, the authors identify the flaws in his analysis.

The authors find that there are three serious flaws in Peter P. Li’s analysis. First, there are four defects in the typology of cognitive frames he built in order to compare Yin-Yang with the others. Second, his understanding of dialectics in general and Hegelian dialectics in particular is flawed. And finally, without resorting to Yin-Yang, many scholars can develop theories that are equivalent to those derived from Yin-Yang.

Due to the page limit, this paper only focuses on arguing that Yin-Yang is not superior to other cognitive frames or logical systems without going one step further to explain in which situations Yin-Yang are valuable and might be more suitable than others for helping us understand some research issues.

This paper implies that we should not blindly believe that the Chinese way of thinking and acting is superior to other people’s. Chinese people should be open-minded in the globalized era, not only promoting their own culture but also appreciating and learning from other cultures.

The reduction of cultural exceptionalism and ethnocentrism can make cross-cultural communication and interaction smoother.

This paper is a rigorous critique on the “Yin-Yang being superior” assertion of Peter P. Li.