Review of Radical Political Economics

A key concept in the classical economic theory is the long-run equilibrium based on a uniform rate of profit with associated prices of production. This equilibrium is the outcome of an adjustment process: differential profit rates induce capital mobility between markets, which continues until profit rates equalize. Nikaido's (1983) critique initiated a series of papers modeling this process. This paper contributes to the debate by employing an evolutionary-type model with (1) bounded rationality in decision-making, (2) imperfect labor mobility, and (3) structural change in the economy. It finds that the latter two conditions impede a tendency for profit rates to equalize.

This paper presents an explanation of the decline of the rate of profit in the postwar U.S. economy which is based on Marx's distinction between productive labor and unproductive labor. According to this theory, the conventional rate of profit depends on the rate of surplus-value, the composition of capital, and the ratio of unproductive labor to productive labor. Estimates of these variables are presented which suggest that the main cause of the decline of the rate of profit was a very significant increase in the ratio of unproductive labor to productive labor. This explanation is contrasted with the "profit squeeze" explanations presented by Weisskopf and Wolff, and a post-period empirical test is conducted to evaluate the relative predictive ability of these competing explanations. The results of this test suggest that the alternative Marxian explanation presented here is the most consistent with the absence of a significant increase in the rate of profit in the past decade.

This article reviews radical political economic (RPE) analyses written since 1970 in which money or credit relations are centrally important. Contemporary authors within RPE differ on how important money and credit are in economic dynamics because they have very different ideas about whether money and credit perform essential economic functions. This paper argues that these essential functions arise only if financing constraints, uncertainty, and information asymmetry are elements of an author's analytical framework.

This paper shows how Marx extended his value theory beyond a mechanistic summing up of labor values to include the effect of scarcity, financial shocks, and technical change. This theory had a subjective and an objective dimension. I demonstrate how Marx's crises theory takes account of scarcity and financial shocks and that this theory is superior to the algebraic falling profit rate theory usually attributed to Marx. I explain why Marx used the category of constant capital as an obscure indicator of scarcity because of the political influence of the Malthusians.

For 1970-1982, the wage/profit ratio is strongly counter-cyclical; it's movements are determined mainly by output demanded (or capacity utilization) and only secondarily by unemployment with a long time lag. These data weakened the case for the reserve army theory and strengthen the case for theories of deficient demand (but data for 1950-1970 lean more the other way).

Feminists in academics have over the past fifteen years made significant contributions to our understanding of the political role of "science." These critiques of the methods and practices of science are embedded within the larger oppositional struggles of women and other marginalized groups. Sandra Harding's The Science Question in Feminism has become a classic presentation of the literature. However, Harding's continued commitment to "objective' knowledge, which is indicative of her unwillingness to relinquish certain key aspects of the western humanist tradition, serves as the basis of this author's critique of her work.

This article argues that Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed, feminist pedagogy and the methods of writing across the curriculum programs can be used in the classroom to broaden students' understanding of the possibilities of the workplace. Each of these approaches to teaching mirrors values which differ from those within capitalist relations of production and gives students practice in using them.

This paper critiques Bonacich's application of her middleman minority theory to the American Jewish experience. American Jewish immigrants did not have a sojourner outlook nor did they shift to the intermediary positions that Bonacich's theory anticipates. In contrast to Bonacich's model, Jews accumulated human and physical capital as a result of their lack of a sojourner outlook and remained a predominantly working-class group prior to World War II. Rather than being clannish and hostile to progressive movements, Jews were assimilationist and supportive of unions and antiracist activities.

The study of economic development in the Third World has been dominated by the comparison of import-substitution industrialization (ISI) and export-led industrialization as two "alternative strategies' of development. Using the theory of the internationalization of capital and Marx's expanded reproduction, I argue that ISI and export-led industrialization are two stages of the internationalization of production as opposed to two alternative strategies and that, in both cases, developing capitalist countries inherit a built-in instability in the process of accumulation.

This paper attempts to synthesize critically some aspects of the Monthly Review school within an orthodox Marxist theoretical approach. It is argued that the capitalist character of international exchange and of the international division of labor imply a tendency for an increasingly uneven development. The empirical evidence presented shows in fact a growing divergence between developed and underdeveloped capitalist countries and a differentiation in the development performance of underdeveloped countries. Some implications are finally drawn concerning the potential for social change in underdeveloped countries and for the establishment of a new international economic order.

The concept of surplus is a potentially valuable tool for the study of development dynamics. This paper presents a definition of surplus which is based on the national accounts and which, therefore, may be used in empirical studies.

This paper presents a model of capital accumulation in a small and open economy, a model consisting of an investment equation and a profit equation. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the erosion of the postwar social structure of accumulation, as reflected in declining profit rates, led to the current economic crisis. Econometric estimation of the model confirms the critical importance of lower profit-rate differentials in inducing a lower reinvestment of foreign capital, and it shows how the deterioration of the postwar social structure of accumulation has caused the decline of long-term profitability in Puerto Rico.

The official Soviet view of the world economic order has in recent years undergone a tremendous shift, a shift from that of two mutually exclusive world markets - one "socialist," the other capitalist - to that of world economic integration and interdependence. Accordingly, its view of Third World development, the so-called non-capitalist path of development, has likewise changed drastically: a change from that of extensive nationalizations, import-substitution, regional cooperation and exclusive ties with the Soviet Bloc countries to that of tripartite (East-West-South) industrial cooperation and comparative advantages of international division of labor. This study is an attempt to critically explore the relationship between these two global turnabouts: the signal change of the official Soviet view of the world economic order and of the East-West relations, on the one hand, and its view of the development path of the developing countries, on the other.