ABSTRACT
In our approach to the diversity of capitalisms, inequalities are neither one of the outcomes of a given form of capitalism, in the same way as growth, nor a fact that goes beyond the diversity of capitalism, because determined by the impact of globalisation or of technological progress. In our view inequalities (their intensity, their form) reveal something profound about the very nature of each kind of capitalism, in that they allow us to comprehend the nature of the underlying social compromise, notably concerning the division of value added and of risks (Lechevalier, 2011c). The social compromise is present in the concept of the Toyotist wage labour nexus developed by the régulation theory (Boyer & Yamada, 2000). Even so, in following Amable and Palombarini (2009), it seems more relevant to separate the analysis of the firm from that of social compromise, to study the latter in the perspective of political economy, even in the framework of the company-centred analysis of Japanese capitalism.
