Bill Dunn

Against neoliberalism as a concept

Neoliberalism is a slippery concept, neither intellectually precise nor political useful. It is used so widely, to mean such different things, that it becomes almost impossibly vague, while dissimilar international experiences of social change undermine the sweeping designation provided by most presentations of neoliberalism. The term is too often used as a catch-all category or as a category that catches selectively whatever a particular author chooses and disapproves. It is a word of the academic ‘left’, accepted neither by our opponents, the supposed neoliberals, nor in popular discourse, and its use perpetuates a self-referential world of our own. There is little new or liberal in the ideas or practices of ‘neoliberalism’. The term is politically unhelpful, little use in identifying strategic priorities. A tendency to reproduce a binary, which posits the state as good and market as bad, is particularly unhelpful.

Making sense of austerity: The rationality in an irrational system

This article understands contemporary austerity through historical comparisons informed by Marxist insights into the nature of the state. It argues that austerity policies make sense from the perspective of capital–labour, inter-capitalist and international competition. Differences among states over time, in terms of their size and international situation and contested domestic relations, produce varied imperatives towards austerity and prospects of effective resistance.

Marxist Crisis Theory and the Need to Explain Both Sides of Capitalism's Cyclicity

Marxisms insistence on the inherently contradictory nature of capitalism remains an enduring strength compared with orthodox accounts, which are unable to explain recurrent crises. However, no less inherent to capitalism is the transformation of slumps into booms, and Marx saw crises as momentary and forcible solutions to capitalisms contradictions. Despite this, extensive Marxist controversies have concentrated on how capitalism enters rather than how it recovers from crises. This paper examines prevailing theories in terms of their capacity to explain both sides of capitalisms cyclicity, considering their theoretical consistency and offering some provisional empirical examinations. None of the major existing interpretations appears entirely satisfactory. While the evidence is far from conclusive, this essay tentatively suggests a synthetic interpretation based around disproportionality and changing value compositions of capital.

Neither Free Trade Nor Protection

This book challenges both sides of the debate around international trade. Most mainstream economists advocate free trade as a mainstay of national and global prosperity. Meanwhile, many critics see trade causing inequality and poverty. Unfortunately, supporters and opponents share many assumptions about trade and the character of the international economy and produce similarly abstract and asocialized theories. Their propositions need to be investigated critically, and in doing so, this book begins the task of assessing when and how trade matters.

Capital Mobility and the Embeddedness of Labour

The paper discusses claims that radical restructuring of capitalism in the late 20th century fundamentally changed class relations. It challenges abstract presentations of space and time transformation, in particular contesting the logic of generalised, asocial concepts of spatial compression. Changes in capital mobility are dynamic and contradictory processes and spatial and temporal transformations are experienced inherently unevenly. Movements of capital are themselves made by workers. Moreover, the economic weight and social labour involved in transport and communications increased rather than decreased during the last two decades of the 20th century. The paper concretises this critique, evaluating claims that the “national” scale and national systems of industrial relations became less important, through a preliminary investigation of data of levels of industrial action. It shows that even amongst key sectors of labour such as transport and communications workers, who might be thought especially implicated in global transformation, the significance of the national scale for labour activity shows no sign of diminishing.The paper discusses claims that radical restructuring of capitalism in the late 20th century fundamentally changed class relations. It challenges abstract presentations of space and time transformation, in particular contesting the logic of generalised, asocial concepts of spatial compression. Changes in capital mobility are dynamic and contradictory processes and spatial and temporal transformations are experienced inherently unevenly. Movements of capital are themselves made by workers. Moreover, the economic weight and social labour involved in transport and communications increased rather than decreased during the last two decades of the 20th century. The paper concretises this critique, evaluating claims that the “national” scale and national systems of industrial relations became less important, through a preliminary investigation of data of levels of industrial action. It shows that even amongst key sectors of labour such as transport and communications workers, who might be thought especially impl...

The regionalization of international contracting and its implications for models of construction spending

This paper documents an increasing regionalization of overseas contracting during the 1980s and 1990s. This involved a greater share within richer countries, particularly of intra‐European work. This evidence challenges suggestions that middle‐income countries are particularly appropriate destinations of overseas investment by developed country contractors. The paper therefore re‐evaluates the model underlying such predictions, which relates construction spending to economic development. Reconsidering its empirical basis, it argues that the association between overall levels of per capita income and levels of construction spending is too weak to be of practical utility. It stresses the possibility of different routes to economic development and that this often remained an uncertain process and one within which levels of construction output varied widely. It therefore concludes that research should be informed by a broader political economy approach.

Skills, credentials and their unequal reward in a heterogeneous global political economy

The article further investigates the relationship between returns to education and trade openness in developed and developing countries. It contests Babones’ interpretation of the divergent experiences in terms of the greater credentialism associated with education in poorer countries. It identifies an alternative explanation based on classical trade theory which is at least as convincing. However, it further argues that the heterogeneity of labour markets is greater than either model suggests and that the characteristics of specific national and regional economies, rather than globalization, might be primarily responsible for the interesting statistical differences.

Value Theory in an Incomplete Capitalist System

The centrality of social labor to Marxist epistemology and the need to understand relations between capitalist production, strictly defined, and incompletely marketized forms of work require a relatively broad concept of value. Not simply a theory of price, the utility of the concept of value lies precisely in its ability to mediate between understanding the abstract truths of labor’s centrality to social life and the complex concreteness of the real world economy. The logical necessity and practical utility of the proposed interpretation is illustrated in relation to state and domestic labor. JEL classification: B51, B54, J01

On the Prospects of a Return to Keynes: Taking Keynes’s Political Philosophy Seriously

This article addresses the prospects of a “return to Keynes” in terms of Keyness own philosophy. It shows that Keyness moral and political philosophy provide little guide to how Keynesian economics might now be achieved. Keyness gradualist reformism, derived from both Burke and Moore, leaves a gulf between his economic agenda and the means of its implementation, which is widened in attempts to transpose his proposals onto the global political economy of the 21st century. Keyness faith in elite intuition and enlightened rule are never securely established and are undermined by his own insights into uncertainty. However, the priority of the short-run and Keyness depictions of organic unity suggest potential if underdeveloped avenues for alternative social choices and policy re-direction.

Marx's method and the global crisis

In the introduction to the Grundrisse, Marx describes a method of political economy involving an ‘obvious’ ordering of analysis. This has seldom been followed. This paper argues that doing so has the potential to deepen understandings of the post-2007 economic crisis. Presenting an analysis of the crisis in terms of a progressive movement from the abstract and general to the concrete and specific can avoid an empiricist eclecticism while challenging a tendency within existing Marxist scholarship to make too big a conceptual leap from the analysis in Marxs Capital to that of the particular crisis. It can incorporate insights from other perspectives while better explaining the relationships between the variety of contributing factors and their social bases.