Comments on Tom Weisskopf’s David Gordon Memorial Lecture

Over a time span almost as long as the one he reflects on, Tom Weisskopf has inspired and sustained my own engagement with radical political economics, for which I am very grateful.

It is so easy to ignore or rationalize mistakes. Tom urges us in gentle but unflinching terms to face up, lean in, and learn from the past. I agree with much of what he says. The socialist project seems weaker, social democracy seems more precious, and environmental sustainability more precarious than it did in the 1960s. No wonder many of us suffer from what Antonio Gramsci called pessimism of the intellect.

Yet (mysteries of the dialectic!) Tom’s essay elicits its opposite in me: a combative intellectual optimism. I have more confidence in the conceptual contributions of radical political economy than he does, perhaps because I have defined the paradigm in broader terms. While he set out on what he describes as a Neo-Marxist path, I set off in an even more revisionist direction (perhaps Neo to his Neo) as a socialist feminist.

That path led away from a class-centric toward a more intersectional analysis, exploring the relationships among forms of inequality based on class, gender, race/ethnicity, citizenship, and other dimensions of collective identity and action.

It also led away from a definition of Capitalism with a big C toward a decentered analysis of hybrid systems, varieties of capitalism shaped by legacies of patriarchy and racial/ethnic domination.

I would not claim that this theoretical expedition has arrived at its hoped-for destination, but I do think it has gained ground. Ironically, its progress testifies to adaptability and relevance of a tradition of radical political economy that once considered it apostasy.

Unlike Tom, I believe this tradition represents a coherent paradigm in addition to a moral commitment. I will outline here five dimensions of radical political economy that, taken in concert, render it distinctive, then explain why I think they are increasingly relevant to current events and public policy.

First, radical political economy insists on a holistic analysis of social structure, exemplified by the Marxian analysis of modes of production in general, and capitalism in particular. In its original formulation, this structural analysis was often applied in simplistic, even functionalist ways. Since the 1960s, however, the rise of analytical Marxism has fortified appreciation of the role of individual agency, encouraging the development of micro-foundations for the behavior of individuals, firms, and families.

Obviously, opinions differ. But unlike neoclassical economists, radical political economists generally insist that micro-foundations are shaped by macro-structures, as well as vice versa. Our attention to the constraints on individual choices reaches far beyond the concept of exogenously given budgets (neoclassical utility maximization) or minor perturbations to rational choice (behavioral economics) to insist that structural forces shape the very norms, preferences, and perceptions that animate individual choice.

Further, our attempt to understand structural forces reaches beyond individual social institutions, which could be understood metaphorically as “Little Structures,” to an effort to analyze “Big Structures,” or meta-structures that link institutions together in both complementary and conflictual ways, generating what Marx called “laws of motion” of historical change.

We disagree, often vehemently, on what we call this Big Structure. Some remain perfectly happy with the term “capitalism.” Others prefer something similar, like “the capitalist world system” or “neoliberal capitalism.” I prefer a term that departs more substantively from traditional nomenclature: “patriarchal capitalism.” This term has always made some of my friends within URPE shudder, but they know what I am talking about. Neoclassical, institutionalist, and behavioral economists have no idea.

A second feature of radical political economy, related to the first, is its emphasis on collective identity and action that extends far beyond effects on exchange, bargaining, or negotiation to include attention to collective force and violence. How and why are strong groups able to gang up on weaker groups and establish institutional arrangements that perpetuate their advantage? In classical Marxism, class conflict is central, exacerbating, if not actually causing, all other forms of collective conflict. But in its attention to conflicts based on gender and race, radical political economy is no longer exclusively class-centric.

Its attention to the complex intersectionality of social conflict, in which individuals often occupy contradictory positions—privileged in some ways, oppressed in others—helps radical political economy explain why inequality remains so persistent. Individuals may be willing to bear the “hidden injuries of class” because they feel partially compensated by the benefits of citizenship in a hegemonic nation or the privilege of belonging to a dominant race, ethnicity, or gender.

This perspective suggests that coalition-building is not just a strategic necessity (though as Tom emphasizes, it is certainly that) but a logical response to forms of inequality more complex–and more interdependent—than traditional Marxian theory appreciated.

A third distinguishing feature of radical political economy is its concern with economic justice, a philosophical concept given more specific substance through the conceptualization of exploitation. The moral commitment to build a good society that Tom persuasively celebrates is founded on such conceptual efforts. To reach for the good, you must be able to define the bad.

In traditional Marxian theory, exploitation is conceptualized narrowly as expropriation of surplus, taking a specific form in capitalist societies: payment of a wage that is lower than the value created by the worker. Many, though certainly not all, radical political economists demand a broader definition of exploitation, delinked from the labor theory of value. Often, expanded definitions are based on some counterfactual question: what would a worker be able to earn if he or she had equal access to the means of production? What would racial/ethnic inequality look like if minorities were fully compensated for the cumulative effects of oppression and discrimination? How would women fare economically if men equally shared the costs of caring for dependents? How differently would we treat the environment if future generations had a voice in our decisions?

The answers to these questions—and the others relevant to the development of a comprehensive theory of exploitation—are less important here than the larger project of confronting the realities of coercive appropriation and unequal exchange.

Another, more subjective, reality concerns the ways in which inequality is legitimated, which brings me to a fourth distinctive element of radical political economy: its emphasis on ideology and false consciousness. Psychologists have long registered the importance of factors like selective perception, efforts to reduce cognitive dissonance, and the impact of emotion on human reasoning. Behavioral economists have—to their credit—begun considering how such factors complicate economic decisions. But just as there is a big difference between Little Structures and Big Structures, many small misperceptions do not necessarily add up to systematic distortion.

A theory of ideology may usefully build on behavioral economics, but it offers a more profound—and more disturbing—critique of human perception, suggesting that it is often shaped in ways that accommodate the existing social order. Whether as a result of social docility, a deep-seated need to believe in a just world, or the explicit “manufacture of consent” (to use Noam Chomsky’s term), human beings tend to internalize inequality and to fear destabilization of the status quo. Indeed, without reference to this deep limitation of human rationality it is impossible to explain the crisis that Tom predicts will essentially doom our economic system: environmental destabilization.

This brings me to a fifth defining characteristic of radical political economy: its undaunted advocacy of so-called utopian projects, its persistent efforts to encourage institutional innovation and structural redesign. Here, I would hold forth Erik Olin Wright—card-carrying sociologist but also stellar radical political economist—and his Real Utopias project as an example. Marxism raised the banner of emancipatory transformation. Many different flags now wave in that direction, from welfare state reforms to worker-owned businesses and community-based care provision.

I would not relegate these to the tired old rubric of “social democracy.” At their best they are forms of economic democracy that could have an enormous cumulative effect. As Tom notes, state capitalism and central planning have disappointed many of us. But, as I am sure he agrees, we have plenty of other possibilities to pursue.

But why am I optimistic? That feeling does not necessarily flow from pride in the radical political economy paradigm, since, as Tom points out, the point is not just to understand the world, but to change it. Here, another irony comes to the fore. Although I started out as a critic of class-centrism, I see class becoming a more central dimension of collective identity and action in the United States, one that could help unify previously disparate groups disadvantaged by the existing order.

Tom notes that political struggles to reduce gender and racial/ethnic inequality have generally benefited affluent individuals the most. That’s exactly right; a result of the complex intersectionality that radical political economy now recognizes. But this process of uneven amelioration itself is reconfiguring collective identities. It is no accident that William Julius Wilson, a scholar who has spent a lifetime trying to understand racial inequality, has written a book called The Declining Significance of Race, or that Francine Blau, Mary Brinton, and David Grusky, all experts on women’s occupations and earnings, have edited a volume entitled The Declining Significance of Gender? Both projects speak to the increasing significance of class.

Not that race and gender have lost their relevance. But the evolution of patriarchal capitalism itself—its laws of motion—seems to reshape inequalities even as it reproduces them. All of the divisions emphasized by critics of simplistic class-centrism—not just those based on race/ethnicity and gender—are diminishing over time. The relatively privileged professional-managerial class within the United States, once believing itself safely above the stresses and strains of globalization and new information technologies, now feels the sharp edge of economic vulnerability. The United States itself, its internal tensions once buffered by its hegemonic position, now faces steep international competition, fueled in part by the increased geographic mobility of corporate capital.

Radical political economists do not fully understand this process. But I think we understand it better than anyone else. That is why we should press on to advance a crucial intellectual as well as political agenda, even if our chances of success are low.

It is a magnificent quest. It is a noble cause. Let us get on with it.