Though BUSINESS WEEK dubs it "One of the ten best business books of 1995," I only got around to reading Frank & Cook's THE WINNER- TAKE-ALL SOCIETY recently -- when it came out in paperback. (I'm not finished, so what I say below is tentative.) I think that though it's limited in its coverage and the questions it asks, it's a very good book and I will recommend that my students read it next semester. It's also very readable. The main problem is that the book totally focusses on labor markets (and how superstars win like crazy) and ignores capital and class relations. But given that limitation, it's interesting how the authors' story is so similar to that of Marx's much-maligned "absolute general law of capitalist accumulation," the theory of the immiseration of the proletariat (a tendency that seems to be operating these days). That "law" is, in essence, that the winners (which for Marx consist of the capitalist class as a whole) can build on their success to get even more winnings, due to economies of scale and the like. Frank & Cook's story of winners building on previous winnings is similar, but relies on factors specific to the determination of labor incomes. Their factors are largely technological or sociological, but might be seen as being encouraged by capitalist social relations. Interestingly, just as with Marx, F & C's story has its countervailing tendencies, which explain why the main trend doesn't always manifest itself empirically. F & C don't talk explicitly about the difference between their posited abstract trend and the countervailing tendencies that lead to different results at "a lower level of abstraction." But their theory can easily be thought of in those terms. The countervailing factors include the role of government restrictions on markets, informal norms that do the same, unions, and (as a part of the main trend itself), the possibility that technical change may favor niche or boutique markets which are not large enough for the "winner-take-all" phenomenon to arise. F & C don't really have an explicit reason why the main trend wins over the alternative "boutique" path, leaving the issue as an empirical matter. But they give hints, which fit with Bennett Harrison's recent book, LEAN AND MEAN. The fact is that even though intracorporate relationships have increasingly been marketized or decentralized, so that winner-take-all processes can work more completely, the corporations still remain as large concentrations of financial wealth. That concentration of wealth is in fact increasing (fitting with Marx's posited tendency). The concentration of financial wealth means that the big corporations can set up their own niche or boutique operations as branches, driving out the small operators. Getting beyond F & C's labor-income focus helps fill in the gap in their theory. Without the niche/boutique countervailing tendency, the only countervailing forces come from outside the market (government, unions, informal customs, etc.) So the book might be seen as an implicit critique of market processes. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] <74267,[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
