The final years of the twentieth century have revealed three critical conditions likely to dominate the history of the coming century: (1) economic stagnation and globalization; (2) environmental decline; and (3) the weakness of antisystemic movements. As economic conditions stagnate and environmental conditions worsen, the material bases will emerge for a new, much broader movement […]
Archive | Journal Articles (Refereed)
Journal Articles (Refereed)
The Long Stagnation and the Class Struggle
For more than a quarter-century, the advanced capitalist economies have been mired in a condition of economic stagnation, characterized by slow growth, sluggish investment and high levels of unemployment and excess capacity. Since this condi- tion has persisted so long and shows no signs of abating despite the current cyclical upswing, it seems appropriate to […]
The Limits of Environmentalism Without Class: Lessons from the Ancient Forest Crisis of the Pacific Northwest
Many prominent environmentalists today have adopted a political stance that sets them and the movement that they profess to represent above and beyond the class struggle. For example, Jonathon Porritt, the British Green leader, has declared that the rise of the German Greens marks the demise of “the redundant polemic of class warfare and the […]
The Absolute General Law of Environmental Degradation Under Capitalism
James O’Connor has asked us to consider the relationship between what he has termed the “first and second contradictions” of capitalism. I would like to refer to the first contradiction, following Marx, as ‘the absolute cereal law of capitalist accumulation.” The second contradiction may then be designated as “the absolute general law of environmental degradation […]
Sources of Instability in the U.S. Political Economy and Empire
“Sources of Instability in the U.S. Political Economy and Empire,” [PDF] Science & Society, vol. XLIX, no. 2 (Summer 1985), pp. 167-193. In Discussing the sources of instability in the U.S. social order, it is useful to focus successively on the economic, political-cultural and imperial aspects of the problem, corresponding to the three levels of economy, […]
Monopoly Capital Theory and Stagflation: A Comment
In my view, David Kotz’s article, ‘Monopoly. Inflation and Economic Crisis” (Kotz 1982), provides a clear and, for the most part, internally consistent explanation of the inflationary features of monpolistic pricing in the context of long-term economic stagnation, and deserves to be recognized as a notable addition to Marxian analysis. But his claim of having […]
The Political Economy of Joseph Schumpeter
The name of Joseph Schumpeter is still a prominent one in the social sciences. He was undoubtedly one of the leading economists of his generation. That by itself would have been enough to ensure him lasting fame, yet his importance as a social theorist extends far beyond that which is attributable simply to his performance […]
Understanding the Significance of the Great Depression
Only a few years ago it was an article of faith among most orthodox economists that the Great Depression of the 1930s was an unaccountable deviation from the natural course of capitalist evolution. They also thought that any further repetition of severe economic distress was inconceivable in the age of informed macroeconomic policy. Even now, […]
Theories of Capitalist Transformation
John E. Elliott’s [1980] article on some of the parallels between the visions of capitalist transformation to be found in Marx and Schumpeter is extremely insofar as it requires a serious reexamination of the schumpeterian system. Elliott’s argument, however, is somewhat misleading, since it overemphasizes the points at which their theories overlap, while largely neglecting […]
Marxian Economics and the State
How can we account for the somewhat paradoxical fact that certain socialist models of the capitalist economy are often thought to be prone to political degeneration? In essence, there are four divisions among Marxist on the subject of crisis: (1) the falling rate of profit school, (2) disproportionality theory, (3) underconsumptionism, and (4) profit squeeze […]
