Rethinking municipal privatization: A Marxian class analysis of the privatization of New York City's Central Park

• Main Author: Cooke, Oliver David
• Language: ENG
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2005
• Subjects: Economic theory|Economics|Public administration
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3193891

This dissertation constructs a Marxian class analysis of one of the most high-profile municipal privatizations of the 1990s---the privatization of New York City's Central Park. Two arguments are advanced. First, it is shown how the complex class analytic contradictions that municipal privatization processes give rise to may work to: undermine private sector rates of accumulation, and stimulate non-capitalist class processes. While the former finding necessarily casts a long shadow over the mainstream privatization discourse's central efficiency/cost propositions, the latter finding highlights the limitations of the discourse's hegemonic association that weds privatization processes to "capitalism." Building upon the latter finding, the final chapter advances an argument that centers on the class transformative opportunities privatization processes---both in the municipal and global contexts---might afford. Such opportunities open up immense theoretical and policy space for radically reconsidering and rethinking privatization processes.