On Dec 21, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
(A sign of the times. Uchitelle quotes Counterpunch contributor Bob
Pollin.)
Uchitelle did a piece on an URPE summer conference back in 1987 (I
think his summer house was nearby, so he stopped in), and Pollin has
been talking with him ever since.
Doug
----
New York Times - September 1, 1987
Radical Economics in the 80's
By LOUIS UCHITELLE, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Most of the members of the Union of Radical Political Economics, which
represents the nation's Marxist economists, are young college
professors and graduate students. But a few old-timers from the 40's
and 50's showed up last week at the organization's annual summer
conference, and when one rose from the audience to call for arming the
proletariat, there was an embarrassed silence.
Radical economics in the late 1980's is a milder animal. The fiery
rhetoric about class warfare is gone, along with the sharp criticism
of American society so characteristic of radical economists in the
early 70's, the group's young years.
The members who gathered with their families at a Y.M.C.A. camp in
this Cape Cod village for four days seemed far more interested in
addressing current economic problems than in attacking the system.
Indeed, many of the group's members are highly trained economists
whose research is beginning to get a hearing among the nation's
mainstream economists.
''This is a place where people of many views can gather and test their
ideas,'' said Laurie Nisonoff, an associate professor at Hampshire
College in Amherst, Mass.
'Capitalist Crisis' Questioned
One of the views being tested, at a rainy-morning session in an
amphitheater overlooking the lake, was the concept of capitalist
crisis, a basic thesis first described by Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels in the ''Communist Manifesto'' in 1848. It holds that a
capitalistic system's internal contradictions will destroy it. ''I
always thought there were clear signs of the system coming apart,''
said Stephen J. Rose, an economist employed by the State Senate in
Washington who helped lead the discussion. ''But I'm hesitant, after
16 years of making apocalyptic statements, to make any more.''
John Willoughby, a professor at American University in Washington who
also helped lead the session, agreed. ''The system is more unstable
than ever,'' he said, ''but that does not mean it is in crisis. To use
the term obscures what is really happening to the country.''
But some in the audience, holding more strictly to Marxism, disagreed
almost indignantly. Their reaction, in fact, reflected a dilemma that
surfaced frequently at the conference: whether to enter the economic
mainstream and bring radical thought to bear on various problems, as
Mr. Rose has done with detailed studies of income distribution in the
United States, or to stand outside and analyze the economy from a more
orthodox Marxist perspective.
Arthur MacEwan, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in
Boston and a founder of U.R.P.E. (the acronym, pronounced UR-pea, is
frequently used in conversation), was persistent in urging that
members be true to a stricter Marxist perspective. ''They are right in
noting that the crisis is not about to happen,'' he said. ''But their
emphasis is wrong; 'capitalist crisis' is an important and useful
concept.''
But the 175 members at the conference were bent on unity, not
division. They took pains to describe their group as an umbrella
organization able to represent a range of viewpoints. While Mr.
MacEwan is more of a traditional Marxist, David Gordon and Samuel
Bowles, two well-known Harvard-educated economists, hold some views
shared by mainstream liberals. Their widely read books arguing for
''worker democracy,'' or more worker control of American corporations,
are sometimes cited by non-Marxists in discussions of industrial
reorganization in America. A Respect for 'Das Kapital'
But Marxist doctrine is clearly the guiding principle of virtually
every member, of whom there are about 1,000, with state government and
labor union economists making up the largest contingent, after
professors and graduate students. And the ultimate goal of the group
is a society that makes worker wages and benefits, not corporate
profits, the top priority.
''You might say that reading 'Das Kapital' and having a respect for it
is a common denominator,'' said Jerry Sazama, a professor at the
University of Connecticut.
In this framework, Teresa Ghilarducci, who teaches at the University
of Notre Dame, led a session on feminist economics, a subject that
until recent years the organization itself did not stress. She urged
mainstream economists to gather more data on the number of women
earning the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. ''If the wage were
raised,'' she said, ''most of the salary increases probably would go
to women. The minimum wage is a women's issue.'' No More Political
Stands
But U.R.P.E. itself no longer takes political stands, as it did in the
early 1970's. ''To the extent that any of us are activists, we do it
through other organizations,'' said Mr. Gordon, who teaches at the New
School for Social Research in New York.
Rather, the energies of radical economists in the United States today
are focused heavily on studies of the same issues that preoccupy
mainstream economists: shifting income distribution, shrinking real
wages, the dynamics of the emerging global economy, labor union
effectiveness, the country's trade deficit and the national debt. And
this December, after an unusual invitation, some of this research will
get a hearing before the American Economic Association, which
represents the nation's establishment economists.
Four of the panel discussions at the association's annual meeting in
Chicago are being organized by radical economists - the first time
this has happened. Usually, the radical economists' group sets up
sessions that compete with those of the economic association. A Call
for Diversity
Robert Eisner, of Northwestern University, the association's president-
elect, sent the invitation. ''I think that having people who are not
restricted by conventional ideas is useful,'' Mr. Eisner said.
One of the sessions will be led by Barry Bluestone, of the University
of Massachusetts, a member of the radical economists' group who is
well known for his studies of what he describes as the widening income
disparity between the rich and the poor. Another is being organized by
Juliet Schor of Harvard, who argues that the principal goal of Federal
Reserve monetary policy in the Reagan years has been not to curb
inflation but to protect corporate profits.
Whatever the hearing that the nation's radical economists get in
Chicago this winter, however, Paul Samuelson, the Nobel laureate in
economics, doubts their views will have much impact. ''My impression
is that, to a degree that seems excessive to me, the profession is
moving in a conservative direction,'' he said. ''U.R.P.E. is not a
rapidly disseminating group.'' Some Signs of Strength
Still, the radical economists' group seems to be gaining strength. The
organization's finances are sufficient to resume regular publication
of the group's chief journal, the Review of Radical Political
Economics, said Robert Pollin, a professor at the University of
California at Berkeley and a member of the organization's steering
committee.
In addition, two volumes of articles by radical economists are due out
this month. And the annual summer conference, for which the group
rents the Y.M.C.A. camp here, was well enough attended this year and
last to make money after some losing years, Mr. Pollin said.
But within this prosperity, some disagreements flourish. They emerged
in the session on capitalist crisis and in a discussion of the
globalization of financial and industrial markets. William Tabb, a
professor at Queens College, part of the City University of New York,
argued that international capital flows and the networks of factories
in many countries are largely coordinated and controlled by private
business - to the detriment of workers, whose wages are cut in the
interest of competitiveness.
Mr. Gordon challenged this concept, asserting that the world
marketplace is beyond such private control and is a destabilizing
force unless governments regulate it. The Tabb view that the global
marketplace can be privately manipulated is fatalistic, Mr. Gordon said.
But Mr. Tabb insisted that the Gordon analysis leads to inadequate
solutions, among them the establishment of an international regulatory
agency, a proposal favored by some mainstream economists. ''It is the
job of the left,'' he said, ''not to deal in marginal or incremental
changes, but to reorganize society properly - a prophetic role.''
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