http://leftnews.org/archives/2010/01/23/19846/ News And Views From The Left Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:50:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://leftnews.org/archives/2010/01/23/19846/comment-page-1/#comment-173074 Geoff Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:39:41 +0000 http://leftnews.org/?p=19846#comment-173074 A very interesting lecture. This is the "monopoly school" take on the U.S. economy. It's based on Baran and Sweezy's 1966 book, <em>Monopoly Capital</em>. The argument is that stagnation is the normal state of affairs in monopoly capitalism due to the so-called "tendency of surplus to rise". Stagnation, however, is punctuated by periods of moderate growth caused by external stimuli such as speculation. This is their famous inversion: Stagnation is the normal state of affairs, so it's the periods of growth that we have to explain. I don't subscribe to the theory, but I think JBF points to some important empirical tendencies that have to be account for. A very interesting lecture. This is the “monopoly school” take on the U.S. economy. It’s based on Baran and Sweezy’s 1966 book, Monopoly Capital. The argument is that stagnation is the normal state of affairs in monopoly capitalism due to the so-called “tendency of surplus to rise”. Stagnation, however, is punctuated by periods of moderate growth caused by external stimuli such as speculation. This is their famous inversion: Stagnation is the normal state of affairs, so it’s the periods of growth that we have to explain. I don’t subscribe to the theory, but I think JBF points to some important empirical tendencies that have to be account for.

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