Terrence McDonough

Social structures of accumulation : the political economy of growth and crisis

Introduction David M. Kotz, Terrence McDonough and Michael Reich Part I. The Theory of Social Structures of Accumulation: 1. Long swings and stages of capitalism David M. Gordon, Richard Edwards and Michael Reich 2. How social structures of accumulation decline and are built Michael Reich 3. Interpreting the social structure of accumulation approach David M. Kotz 4. Social structures of accumulation, contingent history, and stages of capitalism Terrence McDonough 5. The regulation theory and the social structure of accumulation approach David M. Kotz Part II. History, Institutions, and Macroeconomic Analysis: 6. The construction of social structures of accumulation in US history Terrence McDonough 7. The financial system and the social structure of accumulation Martin H. Wolfson 8. Alternative social structure of accumulation approaches to the analysis of capitalist booms and busts Thomas E. Weisskopf 9. The politics of the American industrial policy debate Jim Schoch Part III. Class, Race and Gender: 10. Shopfloor relations in the postwar capital-labor accord David Fairris 11. Towards a broader vision: race, gender and labor market segmentation in the social structure of accumulation framework Randy Aldelda and Chris Tilly Part IV. The International Dimension: 12. Accumulation and crisis in a small and open economy: the postwar social structure of accumulation in Puerto Rico Edwin Melendez 13. Apartheid and capitalism: social structure of accumulation or contradiction? Nicoli Nattrass 14. The social structure of accumulation approach and the regulation approach: a US-Japan comparison Tsuyoshi Tsuru 15. The global economy: new edifice or crumbling foundations? David M. Gordon Afterword: new international institutions and renewed world economic expansion David M. Kotz, Terrence McDonough and Michael Reich.

Thatcherism delayed? The Irish crisis and the paradox of social partnership

This article reviews the state of Irish industrial relations in light of the current economic crisis. It argues that social partnership, paradoxically, was rooted in the continuation of a tradition of permissive voluntarism with minimal employment rights with both direct and indirect implications for the current Irish economic crisis. As such, Irish industrial relations cannot be understood in isolation from a broader analysis of the rise and fall of social structures of capitalist accumulation. The discussion considers the prognosis for social partnership post-economic crisis.

Social Structure of Accumulation Theory

In this two-volume set, the editors present seminal articles by leading SSA scholars describing the development of SSA Theory and its wider application.

Social Structures of Accumulation Theory: The State of the Art

This article summarizes developments within the SSA perspective since the publication of Social Structures of Accumulation: The Political Economy of Growth and Crisis in 1994. The article first overviews the literature produced since 1994, defining the main lines of research, starting with David Gordons last contributions to the SSA framework before his death in 1996. In addition, a number of contributions from the academic discipline of sociology are highlighted. The geographic reach of the SSA framework has been extended to new areas, most prominently to developing countries. Several authors have applied the SSA framework to the history and analysis of specific institutions, including institutions of criminal justice and social control, as well as corporate structure. The theoretical contributions made by these works in the last ten years or so are assessed. The article concludes with a discussion of whether there is presently a new SSA in the making. JEL classification: B0, B5, E3, N0, N1, N4

Critical realism, Marxism and the critique of neoclassical economics

This paper argues that while critical realist insights are important for heterodoxy, any engagement with the economic mainstream must remain faithful to Bhaskar’s original formulation with its explicit focus on ‘ideology critique’. The article proceeds by distinguishing Bhaskar’s more Marxian-inspired realism from the broadly heterodox variety of the ‘critical realism in economics’ (CRE) project. It then highlights the weaknesses of the CRE critique of the economic mainstream before positing an alternative critique in terms of ideology.

What does Long Wave Theory have to Contribute to the Debate on Globalization

While there has been a great deal of debate around the topic of globalization, it has most frequently centered around the descriptive adequacy of the term. The article approaches the topic using long wave or stage theories of capitalism to examine whether the characterization of the current era as one of globalization can be given a theoretical and therefore scientific meaning within the Marxian paradigm.

Introduction: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the 21st Century

Since the 1994 publication of our volume, Social Structures of Accumulation: The Political Economy of Growth and Crisis (Kotz et al. 1994), social structure of accumulation (SSA) theory has continued to inspire a substantial outpouring of articles and books in a variety of disciplines. The purpose of this new volume is to provide a definitive account of the state of SSA theory and its applications today, 30 years after SSA theory first emerged, and well over a decade since our previous volume was published. SSA theory seeks to explain, among other things, why long periods of relative economic stability alternate with long periods of economic crisis. For this reason, it is well suited to help understand the factors underlying the financial and economic crisis of global capitalism that broke out in 2007–08. SSA theory was developed in the 1970s and early 1980s by David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich (1982) as a way of relating apparent long cycles of growth and stagnation in capitalist history to periods of change in the institutional structure of capitalism. Contrary to the sunny picture of conventional equilibrium economics, capitalist history appeared to be punctuated by periodic crises of unusual depth and length. And contrary to some conventional Marxian expectations, capitalism had not fallen into a permanent state of depression or stagnation. Subsequent to the crisis periods, capitalist economies experienced prolonged periods of relatively vigorous and stable growth and accumulation. SSA theory sought to explain both the long periods of more rapid expansion and the long periods of stagnation or contraction. This task was made urgent at the end of the 1970s by the crisis of the postwar social order, manifested in the United States as The

Social Structures of Accumulation, the Regulation Approach and the European Union

In addressing the urgent task of formulating a regulation theory approach to the question of the European Union it is also helpful to examine closely related approaches. This article first undertakes a comparison between the American Social Structure of Accumulation Framework (SSAF) and the Regulation Approach (RA). A considerable convergence of the two approaches can be identified, especially in those works that maintain a commitment to foundational Marxian as well as Keynesian concepts. While European Union structures operate at a somewhat novel supra-national level, both the RA and the SSAF have developed in the context of analyzing specifically national economies. Thus both schools face a challenge in understanding the EU. Recent work within the SSAF that discusses accumulation at scales different from the national is reviewed including the ‘spatialization school’. In addition, two perspectives from international political economy (IPE), specifically the new medievalism and Gramscian IPE are found to be helpful in approaching the globalization of economic governance of which the emerging EU structures are an example.

Of Rats and Economists

When the article “Experimental Confirmation of the Existence of a Giffen Good,” authored by Raymond C. Battalio, John H. Kagel, and Carl A. Kogut, appeared in 1991 in the American Economic Review it represented the culmination of two separate and seemingly unrelated traditions in the economics literature. The first is a now-venerable tradition of attempting to locate Giffen behavior in the real world. The second is a more truncated modern tradition of animal experimentation in economics. In their article, Battalio et al. combine these traditions through setting out to discover Giffen behavior in a laboratory setting using white rats as experimental subjects. The authors (p. 962) describe their experimental procedure: Subjects were placed in an experimental chamber for approximately three hours each day, during which time they received their entire daily liquid food ration … A rat obtained quinine and root beer by pressing either of two levers mounted on a wall in the experimental chamber … Income was controlled by restricting the number of lever presses that would result in obtaining liquid. Prices were changed by varying the amount of liquid obtained at each lever press.

The Marxian Theory of Capitalist Stages

This article traces the history of a continuous tradition of Marxian stage theory from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present day. The resolution of the first crisis of Marxism was found in the work of Hilferding on finance capital, Bukharin on the world economy and Lenin on imperialism as a new stage of capitalism. Hilferdings, Bukarins and Lenins analysis was carried into the post–World War II era through the work of Sweezy and Mandel. A second wave of Marxian stage theorizing emerged with the end of the post–World War II expansion. Mandels long wave theory (LWT), the Social Structure of Accumulation Framework (SSAF), and the Regulation Approach (RA) analyzed the stagflationary crises as the end of a long wave of growth. This long wave was underpinned by the emergence of a postwar stage of capitalism, which was analogous to the reorganization brought about by monopoly capital at the turn of the century. These new schools were reluctant to predict the non-resolution of the current crisis, thus opening up the possibility of further stages of capitalism in the future. This elevated Lenins theory of the highest stage to a general theory of capitalist stages. The last decade has seen a substantial convergence in the three perspectives. In general, this convergence has reaffirmed the importance of Hilferdings, Bukarins and Lenins (HBLs) initial contributions to the stage theoretic tradition. The article concludes with some thoughts on the necessity of stage theory for understanding of the current period of globalization.