October 11, 1996
Dear friends and URPE members,
This is a very first draft of a submission for the
Encyclopedia for Political Economy being coordinated by
Phil O'Hara. I have written 1174 rough words and have
a 1200 word maximum. I am stuck and need collective
help. I have no access to files at the URPE office or
the URPE archives at Cornell and need to depend on the
memory of 'old-timers' for the entry. Please correct,
verify, or add any information that will make this a
whole piece.
I'd like feedback soon. You may send it to the list or
to me. Please help out if you have something to
contribute, stories to share, important events to
chronicle, etc.. The entry will only be as good as the
sum of its parts.
In solidarity,
Susan Fleck
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P.S. If you have been a member of URPE in the past and
are not now, remember that it's easy to join! Just
send $15 to the URPE national office for yearly
membership (newsletter without journal).
URPE National Office
1 Summer St.
Somerville, MA 02143
If you'd like to receive a subscription the Review for
Radical Political Economics, I'll need to get the info
on where to send it, since we are in the midst of
changing publishers. Write me.
VERY ROUGH DRAFT OF HISTORY OF URPE FOR THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR POLITICAL ECONOMY.
The Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE)
was founded in 1968 in the United States to support an
alternative left perspective to mainstream neoclassical
economic theory. The name of the organization is
intended to invite all people who consider themselves
practitioners of radical political economics to join,
even though they are not economists. Graduate students
and faculty from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
and Harvard University and Radcliffe College held a
working meeting in Ann Arbor in the summer of 1968 to
found the organization, just a few weeks before the
Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
The first act of protest from this core of 25
economics students and faculty was to write to the
Executive Committee of the American Economic
Association (AEA) to request a boycott of Chicago as a
result of the police crackdown on protesters. They
wanted to move the December 1968 meetings of the Allied
Social Science Association (ASSA) to another city. The
proposal was considered by the AEA Executive Committee
but lost by one vote. As a result, a number of
graduate students decided to boycott the ASSA meetings.
A group of anti-war and left-leaning faculty decided to
join the boycott of the ASSA and the AEA and to
organize alternative meetings in order to interview
graduate students for the economics job market. This
alternative job market and first national URPE
conference was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
December 19-21, 1968. Approximately 600-700 graduate
students and faculty attended to listen to sessions and
to participate in the alternative academic job market.
The prospectus for the Union for Radical Political
Economics was also presented at that time. The purpose
of the organization ws defined as five tasks which
economists could tackle. These included:
1. A new approach to social problems should be
formulated - one which attempts to break out of the
bonds of narrow specialization and utilizes political
science,sociology, and social psychology...
2. In the classroom new courses should be tauhgt,
and those courses presently taught should be chnaged to
reflect the urgencies of the day...
3. The priorities in economic research should
also be made more relevant to the world around us. A
sampling of new issues whcih should be treated by
economsits include: the economics of the ghetto;
poverty in the American economy; international
imperialism; interest group analysis; and the military-
university-industrial-labor complex... Along with the
change in research priorities must come a change in the
vlaue premises upon which economic research is based.
4. Joint research must be formulated so that the
quest for scholarship does not indue us to tackle tiny
fragments of large interrelated problems.
5. The social movements of our day need an
economic analysis offered in a sensitive manner." (URPE
1968).
The first summer conference of URPE was held in a
camp in northern Michigan, in the summer of 1969, where
approximately 70 attended. It was at this time that
URPE developed its three pronged strategy of a parallel
professional organization in economics, which was to
present alternative perspectives through publications,
through the U.S. yearly economics meetings coordinated
by the ASSA, and to organize a yearly conference
distant from the stifling atmosphere of academic
institutions.
Although URPE has historically had been a more
activist organization than it is at present, (for
example, members of URPE threatened to take over the
hotel lobby of 1969 AEA/ASSA meetings if they were not
given room for URPE sessions) it has always maintained
as its' core mission to be an alternative professional
organization for left political economists and an
intellectual home for academics, policy-makers, and
activists who are interested in participating in a left
intellectual debate on theoretical and policy issues.
The organization opposes all exploitation on the
basis of class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual
orientation and other social/economic/cultural
constructs. URPE criticizes the capitalist system and
supports debate and discussion over an alternative left
vision of capitalist society.
NEED HELP HERE --- URPE has attempted to maintain
a broad community of left academics and intellectuals
among its membership, despite individuals' diverse
political and theoretical perspectives. Important
changes throughout the organizational life of URPE
reflect changes in the discipline of political economy
in the United States and the expansion of the
discipline to discuss exploitation on the basis of
gender, race, and sexual orientation. First, the
Women's Caucus was formed in 1971 to protest the white
male domination in the organization that tended to mute
women's and feminists' voices in the debates within
URPE. Second, the Gay and Lesbian Caucus was formed in
197? and has actively participated in creating a space
for discussion of queer theory and for presenting the
concerns of gays and lesbians to the organization as a
whole. Finally, the Third World Caucus was founded in
19?? in order to bring a representative voice of people
of color and from countries of the South into the
organization and onto the Steering Committee. The
struggle among and within the organization for
representation and participation in the debate not only
led to greater heterodoxy of views in the organization,
but also helped in creating a non-hierarchical
organizational structure that depends even today on a
horizontal structure of responsibility run by a 12
member elected Steering Committee.
URPE's activities for its members can be divided
into four major areas that are based on the first
year's strategy for being an alternative voice in the
economics and other social science disciplines. These
are the publication of the Review of Radical Political
Economics, the URPE Newsletter, the URPE Summer
Conference, and the URPE participation in the
professional economics meetings held in the United
States by the Allied Social Sciences Association. The
first issue of the Review of Radical Political
Economics was May, 1969; at that time it was the only
U.S. based academic journal willing to publish articles
on left political economy. The RRPE is published
quarterly. It is run by an elected editorial board and
a managing editor. The URPE Newsletter is also
published quarterly and includes news of the
organization and short articles on current topics from
members. It is organized by a newsletter collective of
URPE members. The URPE Summer Conference continues to
be held in a non-academic vacation-like setting in the
eastern United States to present work in progress,
engage in business of the organization, and network
with other radicals. The Summer Conference is
organized by the Steering Committee and annual topics
are chosen to discuss relevant policy debates in the
news. The approximately thirty sessions in the URPE
program at the Allied Social Sciences Association
Meetings in January of every year is organized by
members of URPE who are requested to serve as
coordinators by the Steering Committee.
Many members of the Union for Radical Political
Economics have gone on to create organizations that
complement the work of URPE. These organizations
include the Dollars and Sense Publishing Collective,
the Center for Popular Education, ...??
Membership is on a yearly dues-paying basis and
includes subscription to the RRPE for an extra fee.
Serious efforts are made to keep the journal accessible
to low-income students and the unemployed with a multi-
tier system of subscription rates.
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1968. "The
Union for Radical Political Economics: A Prospectus."
Conference Papers of the Union for Radical Political
Economics. December. Ann Arbor.
