Internationalism and the Development of An Alternative Economic Strategy in the United States: A Review Essay on The Deindustrialization of America and Beyond the Waste Land
Restricted accessReview articleFirst published online November, 1983
Internationalism and the Development of An Alternative Economic Strategy in the United States: A Review Essay on The Deindustrialization of America and Beyond the Waste Land
The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismanding of Basic Industry by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison; and Beyond die Waste Land: A Democratic Alternative to Economic Decline by Samuel Bowles, David Gordon and Thomas Weisskopf are two recent contributions to the debate on alternative economic strategies in the United States. After critically discussing their proposals, this article moves on to outline the crucial ingredients of a more internationalist alternative.
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References
1.
1. Unlike Europe, there is a lively non-Marxist leftist tradition in the United States. Thus, it is more appropriate to refer to the different oppositional perspectives as ‘radical’ rather than ‘Marxist’ or even ‘socialist’.
2.
2. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982).
3.
Samuel Bowles, David M. Gordon and Thomas E. Weisskopf, Beyond the Waste Land: A Democratic Alternative to Economic Decline (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983).
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3. Bluestone and Harrison present data which demonstrate that while jobs expanded by three million between 1969 and 1976, none of this net growth occurred in the ‘Frostbelt’ (the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern regions of the country). Bluestone and Harrison: 270.
5.
4. Ibid.: 25–81.
6.
5. Ibid.: 208–9.
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6. Lester Thurow, The Zero-Sum Society (New York: Basic Books, 1980): 191–2.
8.
7. Bluestone and Harrison: 231–64.
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8. One general weakness in both Deindustrialization and Waste Land is that neither book addresses the issue of Canadian industrial decline. Given the complete integration of the Canadian and US economies, any alternative programme must deal with the Canadian experience.
10.
9. Bowles, Gordon and Weisskopf: 6.
11.
10. Ibid.: 177.
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11. This is not the complete programme, which also includes macroeconomic reflation to reduce unemployment eventually to 2%.
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12. The authors refer to Keynes's 1933 Yale Review essay on industrial self-sufficiency favourably. Ibid.: 258.
14.
13. Ibid.: 346–51.
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14. The category New Left is not rigorous and has a certain ironic ring as many of us begin to grey and enter our forties. Nevertheless, it is possible to distinguish theoretically the theoretical emphasis of this school from Baran and Sweezy's underconsumptionist theory or other theorists' concentration on the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
16.
15. R. Boddy and J. Crotty, “Class Conflict, Macro Policy and the Political Business Cycle”, Review oj Radical Political Economics7 (1975).
17.
S. Bowles and H. Gintis, “The Crisis of Liberal Democratic Capitalism: The Case of the United States”, Politics and Society11 (1982).
18.
T. Weisskopf, “Marxian Crisis Theory and the Rate of Profit in the Postwar US Economy”, Cambridge Journal of Economics5 (December 1979).
19.
T. Weisskopf, “The Current Economic Crisis in Historical Perspective”, Socialist Review11 (May-June 1981).
20.
A. Glynn and B. Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profit Squeeze (London: Penguin Books, 1972).
21.
M. Kalecki, Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitlaist Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
22.
16. Arthur MacEwan, “International Economic Crisis and the Limits of Macropolicy”, Socialist Review11 (September-October 1981).
23.
17. One example of ‘capital control policies’ which the Left normally does support is movements by workers to place economic pressures on corporations so that they are prevented from shifting productive locations. Bluestone and Harrison do propose innovations that might assist efforts by workers to articulate grassroots opposition strategies. The danger exists in devising policies which invite the state to regulate such activities, or which invite individual industries to appeal for special assistance while shutting out other workers from similar options.
24.
18. Paul Samuelson, Economics, 11th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980): 616.
25.
19 Trade among industrial OECD countries has declined from 71% of the total in 1966 to 65% in 1981, but an alternative programme would probably intensify this trend. OECD, World Economic Interdependence and the Evolving North-South Relationship (Paris: OECD, 1983): 72–3.
26.
20. It should be clear that the disruption of the US's network of global control would not usher in an immediate period of peace and prosperity. Indeed, the transition is likely to be quite tumultuous as internal and external power relations throughout the globe change dramatically.
27.
21. Rudolf Bahro is an advocate for the former environmentalist position. Rudolf Bahro, Socialism and Survival (London: Heretic Books, 1982).
28.
Recently feminists have begun to stress the importance of agitating for a shorter working week. Anne Phillips, “Fighting for Shorter Week”, Politics and Profit (June 1983).
