James Ronald Stanfield

Where has love gone? Reciprocity, redistribution, and the Nurturance Gap

Abstract An orderly free society requires the spontaneous cooperation of its citizens. This cooperation has to be continuously instituted in the dynamic social context by caring or nurturing labor. America at present is beset by a Nurturance Gap which is evident in growing social disorder and cultural disintigration and which is observed in the loss of childhood, intimacy, civility and dignity in American society. Careful examination of the place of economy in society is necessary to uncover the roots of this malaise. This examination must be based upon a transactional analysis of the integration of labor, including caring labor, by reciprocity, redistribution and exchange.

Governance and the legitimacy of Corporate Power: A Path for Convergence of Heterodox Economics?

Do large corporations have power, and, if so, is it legitimately exercised? We take power to be the ability to issue an order with a reasonable expectation that it will be obeyed (Takata 1995). This may seem narrow, but a brief reflection is persuasive to the contrary. The order given may be to seek to change the attitudes of consumers or voters or to influence political figures or jurists and change the formal rules and cultural norms that govern organizations in their pursuit of their goals. Power is exercised legitimately when it is deployed within the bounds of dominant rules and norms, that is, when it is transparently deployed such that information is available to those who must hold its use accountable.

Consumption in Contemporary Capitalism: The Backward Art of Living

This chapter is prompted by what justifiably may be labelled the paradox of affluence, by which we mean the deterioration in quality of life despite or because of sustained growth in consumption (Danner, 1974; Bookchin, 1974; Seabrook, 1978). This proposition is unlikely to startle anyone with its novelty but it is subject to considerable controversy and topicality that justify efforts toward more systematic discussion. This chapter first reviews Mitchell’s old but remarkably fresh discussion of the backward art of spending money, then turns to more recent literature on the question of consumer competence. The suggestion is that a large gap exists between the responsibility assigned to consumers and their ability to fulfill this role. This gap is then put forward as resolving the paradox of affluence, which in turn suggests that social progress awaits a new practical philosophy which is materialist in the proper sense of the term.

The Role of the Press in a Democracy: Heterodox Economics and the Propaganda Model

The central thesis of this paper is that there is need to reinstitute the public purpose requirement for broadcast licensing. On that path, this paper develops an instrumentalist concept of democracy and from there expands to evaluate the ideological function of the press. With a conceptualization of democracy and the presss role established, this paper addresses what is interfering with the news medias ability to inform and educate the citizenry and the consequences of this corruption of media democracy. Recent deregulation and concentration of ownership of media, and controversies concerning the reporting of the war in Iraq have cast doubt on the independence of the press and the vitality and viability of American democracy. In this light, Edward Herman and Noam Chomskys propaganda model (1988) deserves further consideration. It also is important to examine Karl Polanyis protective response to the media democracy crisis: the citizenrys dramatic attempts to change the trajectory of news away from corporate serfdom to a renewed sense of public purpose. In addition, this paper contends that the retrenchment of the public interest standard makes it necessary to reestablish that standard based on a democracy criterion as a requirement for continued free use of the broadcast spectrum.

Social Reform and Economic Policy

The Galbraithian System seeks to clarify the complex matter of social and economic reform in late capitalism. Much of the focus rests upon the social predicament of turning the vast influence of the mature corporation and its administered sector of the economy to the human, public purpose. This effort runs aground upon the twin shoals of the crisis of the state and the sway of the conventional wisdom. The extent of mandated collective action is increasing amidst a widespread discontent not only with the prevalent forms of collective action but also with collective action in principle. This discontent is rooted in an intellectual confusion that obscures both the nature of the social predicament and the character of its resolution.

Veblenian and Neo-Marxian Perspectives on the Cultural Crisis of Late Capitalism

This chapter seeks to draw attention to the psychocultural consequences of the systemic late capitalist response to economic crises and to the need for a research agenda to delineate and evaluate these consequences. The work of Veblen and recent American neo-Marxists is suggested as the basis for a start toward developing this research agenda. I use the term neo-Marxism loosely to encompass a variety of scholars who share a common point of departure in Marx’s social theory, but insist that Marx’s categories do not capture the essential tendencies of existing capitalism and socialism (Brown, 1988, p. 9).

Karl Polanyi on the Limitations of Formalism in Economics

This chapter examines Karl Polanyis critique of formalism in economics and his case for a more institutional economics based upon a reconstitution of the facts of economic life on as wide an historical basis as possible. The argument below reviews Polanyis argument with regard to the relation between economic anthropology and comparative economics, the contrast between the formalist and substantive approaches to economic analysis, the notion of an economistic fallacy, the most important limitations of the conventional formalist economics approach, and the nature and import of the new departure that Polanyi envisioned.

Phenomena and Epiphenomena in Economics

Conventional economics is preoccupied with the sphere of exchange to the neglect of the sphere of production; this is tantamount to preoccupation with economic epiphenomena to the neglect of the underlying phenomenal structure. This exchange emphasis is largely responsible for the current crisis in economic thought in that it renders conventional economics incapable of responding to the comprehensive impasse of democratic industrial society.

The Protective Response and the Evolution of the Capitalist State

In his foreword to the new edition of Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, from which we excerpted the epigraph above, Stiglitz asserts that: economic science and economic history have come to recognize the validity of Polanyi’s key contentions. But public policy — particularly as reflected in the Washington consensus doctrines concerning how the developing world and the economies in transition should make their great transformations — seems all too often not to have done so.

Radical Economics, Institutionalism, and Marxism

The argument here is that the Marxist and institutionalist traditions are similar in many respects, notably that both are inherently radical in their approaches to the economic system. There is an ongoing need to assay the similarities and differences between these two vital intellectual traditions. The phrase ‘inherently radical’ is used advisedly. It is argued in what follows that the two intellectual traditions are inherently radical owing to the character of their respective philosophical and methodological orientations.