Richard McIntyre

Is There a New Institutional Consensus in Labor Economics

We are interested in the extent of convergence between paradigms in labor economics. Proponents of both neoclassical and institutional paradigms now embrace the common premise that labor markets cannot be adequately understood in terms of the auction market described in the model of perfect competition. The persistence of phenomena such as internal labor markets and involuntary unemployment necessitate some explanation other than the neoclassical competitive model. While institutionalists have long grappled with these issues [Freeman 1988; Kerr 1988], serious attempts by neoclassicals, via efficiency-wage and insideroutsider models [Akerlof and Yellen 1986; Lindback and Snower 1988] have appeared only in the past decade. This paper focuses narrowly on whether recent work by neoclassical economists marks an acceptance of the institutional paradigm.1 We presume that existing institutional explanations of labor markets are adequate-indeed both sufficient and persuasive-and that recent empirical work does little to challenge long-held institutional tenets [Freeman 1988]. We argue that recent neoclassical models that depart from neoclassical or-

Contending perspectives in one department

Barones 1991 essay stimulated a debate in our economics department. Two department members at the time, Yngve Ramstad and Richard McIntyre, proposed to reorganise the undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree to emphasise contending perspectives. When this proposal was rejected, Ramstad then changed his (required) history of thought course to a contending perspectives course with a significant history of thought component. McIntyre has taught the course since 2008, and in 2010, in rotation with Robert Van Horn who joined the faculty in Fall 2009. The Competing Traditions course emphasises the acquisition of skills rather than the deconstruction of orthodox theory. We explain this shift in three steps: first through an interpretation of the initial departmental debate; second, by exploring student feedback on concrete learning goals and forms of assessment; and finally by considering two reflective essays, each by a university alumnus.

The "Limited Capital-Labor Accord": May It Rest in Peace?

This essay takes on a major pillar of the social structures of accumulation (SSA) literature: the “limited capital-labor accord.” The accord is shorthand for an industrial relations structure based on job-control, politically conservative unionism, and state-regulated collective bargaining during the period of 1948—1973. Our essay shows how this stylized assumption of industrial relations history has been empirically rejected by labor and business history and industrial relations scholarship since the 1980s.

Capitalist Class Agency and the New Deal Order Against the Notion of a Limited Capital-Labor Accord

In the United States the apparent crisis of neoliberalism has called forth nostalgia for the regulated capitalism of the post World War II era. In particular, radical economists’ thinking continues to be influenced by the notion of a “limited postwar capital-labor accord.” But a careful accounting of historial scholarship since the 1980s shows the stylized thinking found in social structures of accumulation (SSA) literature and radical political economy generally to be inaccurate and misleading: inaccurate because it creates an image of a golden age that never was, and misleading in that it suggests a politics of social cooperation rather than worker militancy. In this paper we show that capitalists as a class never accepted anything resembling such an accord. JEL classification: B5, J5, N32

The Political Economy and Class Analytics of International Capital Flows: United States Industrial Capital in the 1970s and 1980s

In both radical and liberal theories of international political economy, the period since the early seventies is often seen as one in which capital hypermobility has emaciated working class and popular redistributional strategies. Some picture the world as now being an essentially free market in industrial locations. (Frobel, et al. 1980, Wojnilower 1988, FernandezKelly 1983). Other focus on the particular ways in which capital mobility has undermined the position of manufacturing workers in the core countries (Bluestone and Harrison 1982, Harrison and Bluestone 1988). The basic thesis in this literature can be stated in two parts:

Revolutionizing French Economics

The French economics establishment has been under assault from some of its students, and sympathetic professors, for several years. Many contend that it is too grounded in mathematical models and that the classical approach should be supplemented by more studies of alternatives ideas and economic history. An American economist interviews Gilles Raveaud, a doctoral student at the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, who is a leading student activist.

A New Kind of Class Situation

Graham Cassano calls on Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation to understand the relationship between audiences and the socially conscious films of the New Deal period. These films called forth a new kind of working-class audience while that audience was itself developing out of the trauma of the Great Depression, which made the films possible. Working-class filmgoers were able to recognize themselves in these films as part of a “class situation” even when those films deployed retrograde images of race or gender. Cassano’s investigation of the work of John Ford is especially telling and evokes the arc of the New Deal from its early radical period through the period of national unity during wartime and the cold war and red scare that followed.

Combined Development and the Critique of International Political Economy

Radhika Desais Geopolitical Economy makes a persuasive case for a geopolitical interpretation of international finance. Her argument depends on a particular reading of international economic history in which U.S. hegemony is definitely over, which may or may not be true. The judgment that the strategies of U.S. elites have failed seems largely incorrect, though these strategies have certainly changed with the continued rise of productivity growth alongside stagnant wages and with the expansion of new centers of capitalist development in China and the United States, especially on the West Coast. The amount of surplus value produced in these networks, which is largely appropriated in the United States, has grown rapidly since the 1980s. The long-term decline in the industrial rate of profit is more a function of rising claims on that rising surplus, especially by finance. Still, Desai provides new ways to question the assumptions behind empire and to tally its costs.

Response to Theodore Burczak, George DeMartino, and Kenan Erçel

The commentators present a convincing argument that achievement of the rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining is “not enough.” The book should have included a stronger case for the achievement of such a right as a valuable and practical step toward replacing waged with associated labor and directly improving material living standards. I reaffirm the books critique of contemporary rights theory, especially the individualism that is prevalent in that theory.

Brave New Corporate World: An Assesment of Industrial Policy

Public concern with the dangers of corporate power reached a feverish pitch in the early 1970s. Bills designed to control perceived abuses were passed by Congress, establishing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) and curbing the widespread practice of overseas bribery. This antimonopoly fervor peaked with the attempt to nationalize the oil industry, and with Congressional consideration of the Hart Deconcentration Act. Though these efforts failed, they placed the monopoly problem at the center of the liberal agenda.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.