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This essay revisits an earlier article, published in 2008, that argued that the United States had created a "hidden developmental state" that helped move technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace. In the intervening fifteen years, this apparatus has become more elaborate with ever more government initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels. Moreover, the major pieces of legislation passed in the first two years of the Biden administration have added considerable new funding. Nevertheless, this set of programs has not yet become a part of political debates outside of the federal government. It remains hidden to most of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need for a new economic paradigm that recognizes the shift towards a "habitation economy" characterized by non-standardized goods and services. Topics include the importance of democratic control, expanding public and nonprofit provision of goods and services, and global reforms to address issues such as climate change and tax havens.

The US government's expanding role in assisting businesses with the development of new technologies has significantly increased corporate dependence on the state. This dependence creates new opportunities for social movements to extract significant concessions from capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hannes Lacher's article (2019) misrepresents and then denounces both the substance and the spirit of our book, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique (2014). Lacher claims his interpretation of Polanyi to be the only acceptable one, and vociferously alerts readers to beware the dangerous influence of our work. Because we continue to believe that familiarity with Polanyi's theoretical framework is valuable for those resisting the depredations of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, we restate our commitment to interpreting Polanyi's work in the most capacious way possible, treating it not as Scripture but as a body of work multidimensional enough for varying perspectives. In our reply to Lacher, we revisit several themes central to our book, including Polanyi's complex use of "utopianism"; the "always-instituted economy"; the gold standard's attack on the "democratic virus" and the rise of fascism; and Polanyi's socialist commitment to democratizing the economy. We also suggest that by exploring several apparent puzzles in the text of GT it is possible to derive a more fruitful and powerful interpretation of Polanyi's thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economic consequences of growing wealth inequality. Topics include U.S. government data shows that through the Great Recession, personal saving in the U.S. had been trending steadily downward and this downturn was often cited to justify tax cuts for high-income households, U.S.-based firms have a strong incentive to credit as much of their overseas profits as possible to subsidiaries in places with low rates of taxation on corporate profits, and leak of data from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network documents the enormous scale of illicit transactions.

There have been significant changes in what economists include in the category of investment over the last six decades. The US government agency that compiles national income date, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, has tried to keep up with these changes, but it has not succeeded. The resulting tension between economic theory and official data can be overcome by adopting a different theoretical lens. Work on social reproduction and social investment suggests a more coherent definition of investment than that offered by mainstream economists. The paper then contrasts the measurement of investment in the government data with a calculation of investment derived from this new approach. The results show that business investment is dwarfed by the combined investment made by government and households. This finding suggests that business investment is not the key engine that powers the economy. This has significant implications for economic and social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay introduces a special issue of Politics & Society in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019), outlines nine characteristics of a future socialism. It elaborates socialism as a set of processes and institutional arrangements that would open the way to a society that is radically more democratic, more just, and more sustainable than the existing order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, there has been little agreement between advocates of radical financial reform and socialist theoreticians. However, in the new circumstances of the twenty-first century, a productive synthesis of these two traditions might be possible. Drawing on the franchise model of credit creation elaborated by Robert C. Hockett and the dysfunctions created by the extreme concentration of private financial institutions, this article outlines a reform agenda that would both democratize finance and facilitate the flow of funds into valuable forms of investment that are currently starved for resources. If the new institutions envisioned in this proposal were able to take root and expand, they could ultimately facilitate a transition to socialism, defined as the subordination of the market to democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the articles and commentaries in the special issue titled "Democratizing Finance." Here, the term "democratizing finance" focuses on reducing inequalities of income, wealth, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction explains the logic of bringing together the perspectives of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi to analyze processes of financialization. Although Minsky and Polanyi have very different intellectual trajectories, there are important complementarities in their approaches. The introduction also explains the focus of the three papers in this special section written by Kurtuluş Gemici, Lucas Kirkpatrick, and David Woodruff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles Karl Polanyi, Hungarian economic historian, economic anthropologist, political economist, historical sociologist and social philosopher. Information is provide on the extraordinary theoretical contributions of Polanyi to socialist thought, his attack of market liberalism and the role of government and politics in his analysis of market economies.

While financial institutions have not figured prominently in utopian thinking, the democratization of finance is central to any vision of bringing contemporary economies under democratic control. This paper is an initial effort to conceptualize a series of feasible reforms that could incrementally weaken the power of incumbent financial institutions while helping to facilitate economic development that is more egalitarian and sustainable. While the focus is on the US economy, the specific ideas have relevance in other national contexts. The core of the reform idea is to mobilize a combination of governmental supports and grassroots entrepreneurialism to create an expanding network of nonprofit financial institutions that would redirect household savings to finance clean energy, growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors present a discussion of poverty and public welfare policy in the U.S. as of 2013, in the form of an open letter addressed to former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, viewed as a possible 2016 U.S. presidential candidate. They outline the history of U.S. welfare policy, discussing the passage of the U.S. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) welfare reform law under U.S. President Bill Clinton which eliminated cash assistance to the poor as a federal entitlement. They call for a renewed debate on government poverty programs and the creation of a stronger social safety net. Topics include anti-welfare recipient rhetoric and political competition between Democrats and Republicans.

A global financial crisis seems a propitious time to renew a dialogue between legal scholarship and the field of economic sociology. In the 1920s and 1930s, legal realist scholars developed insightful analyses of market processes. But since post-war mainstream legal scholarship has largely ignored this aspect of legal realism, economic sociology might be helpful in refocusing legal scholarship on what happens in actual market settings. One tool is Zelizer's concept of relational work; that in market transactions, actors must define the nature of their relationship, what is to be exchanged, and by what media. Relational work has an enormous impact on the outcomes of transactions, but it is largely ignored in economic accounts. An empirical study of variations in relational work across economic settings could provide a strong foundation for rethinking the relationship between law and economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue on “Relational Work in Market Economies” by explaining the origins of the concept and its value in illuminating a dimension of market activity that has not been systematically addressed by social scientists. It also explains why this focus on individual economic transactions could be relevant for those whose interest centers on broader questions of political economy. Finally, there are brief descriptions of the other six articles that make up this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, there has been considerable excitement about the economic potential of the 'developmental network state'-decentralized government policies that successfully accelerated growth in several high- and medium-income countries. The question remains whether such a strategy could be successful in less-developed nations whose scientific and technological resources were relatively limited. This paper analyzes the trajectory of Chile, a Southern country which, despite adverse conditions, managed to produce something akin to an economic miracle during the last few decades. Our argument is that Chile's success was based on the developmental network state strategy. Moreover, we highlight the centrality to understanding the Chilean experience of the concept of 'network failures'-a common phenomenon that occurs when domestic production would be best served by network forms of organization but for a variety of reasons, these networks either fail to materialize or fail to take hold (Schrank and Whitford ). Over and over again, we see that the logic behind the actions of the Chilean state was to provide resources that reduced the likelihood of network failures. We examine three case studies of successful export sectors: salmon; wine; and fruit and vegetables. The paper outlines some of the challenges faced by the Chilean model and assesses its long-term viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the issue of whether critiques of the negative consequences of specific market arrangements can be expounded with the view that markets are socially constructed. According to Karl Marx and other critical theorists, markets reshape social life. The expansion of markets requires the contraction of others as argued by Michael Walzer of the Institute for Advanced Studies. A distinction between tightly and loosely coupled systems is presented by Charles Perrow.

The article discusses the reinvention and revival of the tradition of social democracy in the case of Australia for the 21st century. It argues that economist Karl Marx and most of his followers were mistaken when they promoted the idea that changing ownership of the means of production is the indispensable element to radical social change. The author mentions that the experience of the government of Russia in terms of eliminating capitalist property failed to serve the broader process of emancipation.

The article reviews the article "Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States" by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, which appears in the June 1, 2010 issue of the journal "Politics & Society."

Despite the dominant role of market fundamentalist ideas in U.S. politics over the last thirty years, the Federal government has dramatically expanded its capacity to finance and support efforts of the private sector to commercialize new technologies. But the partisan logic of U.S. politics has worked to make these efforts invisible to mainstream public debate. The consequence is that while this "hidden developmental state" has had a major impact on the structure of the U.S. national innovation system, its ability to be effective in the future is very much in doubt. The article ends by arguing that the importance of these developmental initiatives to the U.S. economy could present a significant opening for new progressive initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a neo-Polanyian theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics within contemporary market societies. It uses this framework to analyze the divergence between the United States and other developed societies that has become more pronounced in the first years of the twenty-first century. The argument emphasizes the shifting political alliances of the business community in the United States and suggests that from 1994 onward, business lost power in the right-wing coalition to its religious Right allies. The growing power of a religious-based social movement is a critical ingredient in the unilateralist turn in the Bush Administration's foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contemplates on the operation of large corporations in a moral economy and suggests a strategy for the transformation of ethically challenged corporations into ethically responsible companies in the U.S. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the corporations are being urged by the public to take an active role in solving the social problems like racial inequality and environmental degradation. It is said that efforts to improve corporate governance and expose corporate malfeasance have failed to reach critical mass.

To understand the rise of market fundamentalism from the margins of influence to mainstream hegemony, we compare the US. 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act and the English 1834 New Poor Law-two episodes in which existing welfare regimes were overturned by market-driven ones. Despite dramatic differences across the cases, both outcomes were mobilized by "the perversity thesis "-a public discourse that reassigned blame for the poor's condition from "poverty to perversity." We use the term "ideational embeddedness" to characterize the power of such ideas to shape, structure, and change market regimes. The success of the perversity thesis is based on the foundations of social naturalism, theoretical realism, and the conversion narrative. In the poverty to perversity conversion narrative, structural blame for poverty is discredited as empiricist appearance while the real problem is attributed to the corrosive effects of welfare's perverse incentives on poor people themselves-they become sexually promiscuous, thrust aside personal responsibility, and develop long-term dependency. This claim enables market fundamentalism to delegitimate existing ideational regimes, to survive disconfirming data, and to change the terms of debate from social problems to the timeless forces of nature and biology. Coupling economic sociology with a sociology of ideas, we argue that ideas count but not all ideas are created equal. Only some have the capacity to fuel radical transformations in the ideational embeddedness of markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karl Polanyi’s 1944 book, The Great Transformation , has been recognized as central for the field of economic sociology, but it has not been subject to the same theoretical scrutiny as other classic works in the field. This is a particular problem in that there are central tensions and complexities in Polanyi’s argument. This article suggests that these tensions can be understood as a consequence of Polanyi’s changing theoretical orientation. The basic outline of the book was developed in England in the late 1930s when Polanyi was working within a specific type of Marxist framework. However, as he was writing the book, he developed several new concepts, including fictitious commodities and the embedded economy, that led in new directions. Because circumstances did not give him the time to revise his manuscript, the book is marked by a tension between these different moments in his own theoretical development. The result is that Polanyi glimpses the concept of the always embedded market economy, but he does not name it or elaborate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines how the findings of studies in social and economic history undermine the stories about Speenhamland, a town in Berkshire County, England that have been deployed in social policy debates. Indictment of Speenhamland issued by the Royal Commission Report of 1834; Controversy surrounding the English Poor Law legislation; Trends in productivity and wages exemplified by the standard Speenhamland stories.

Introduces a series of articles which deals with the subject of a world economy organized through a system of self-regulating markets. Progenitors of sociological Marxism; Restoration of international gold standard in the period after World War I; Misery of the rural poor in the decades leading up to New Poor Law in 1834.

This article discusses the use of social theory to leap over historical contingencies with reference to the sociologist William I. Robinson. The author says that it can be useful for a scholar to push a theoretical perspective to its outer limits, since the exercise can help to clarify broader empirical and theoretical debates. Hence, Robinson deserves our gratitude for going out on a theoretical limb. Robinson starts from the current scholarly debate about globalization. Social scientists have been struggling to make sense of the tensions between the historic role of the nation-state and processes of economic globalization that are undermining the nation-state's ability to shape its own economic and social policies. Neoliberal policies have been in the ascendant; the usual mix includes privatization, welfare cutbacks, deregulation, lower wages, and higher levels of unemployment. International financial institutions have had increasing opportunities to impose draconian structural adjustment policies on countries that get into financial difficulties.

The article provides a useful account of the critical period of transition in the 1970's when the old Bretton Woods system was giving way to a new era of more disorganized global capitalism, but it failed to anticipate three key patterns. The first has been the extraordinary expansion of global financial flows, currency trading, and speculation in derivatives and other complex instruments that has occurred over the past twenty years. It assumes that without movement towards substantially greater international economic coordination, the global economy would be vulnerable to escalating financial crises that could lead to a replay of the crisis of the 1930's. There has been a succession of international crises and severe economic problems, including the Third World debt crisis, the long term rise of European unemployment levels, the Japanese economic downturn in the 1990's, and the East Asian financial crisis at the end of the 1990's. But the dominant story has been the amazing resilience of the global economy and the ability of U.S. and other international policymakers to manage successfully a series of global crises.

The purpose of this article is to develop a critique of the post-War international monetary system. It further focuses on post-World War II capitalist world economy. During and after World War II, the U.S. struggled, with eventual success, to impose on the rest of the world an international monetary system with both a high degree of openness and a large measure of special rights and responsibilities for the U.S. During much of the post-War period the existence of an international monetary system with a specific structure was barely recognized in the U.S. However, beginning in the late fifties and continuing through the sixties, the U.S. experienced serious balance of payments deficits that had a devastating impact on the existing international monetary structures. The tendency towards permanent inflation is rooted in the various techniques that post-World War II capitalism has used to avert the periodic crises that characterized the classical business cycle. But a particular country's rate of inflation at a particular time depends on a variety of factors, including the combatitiveness of its working class, the degree of monopoly power in pricing decisions, the level of economic maturity, the politically tolerable level of unemployment, and the political capital of the government in power.

This article examines the principles underlying macroeconomic policy, suggesting caution toward contentions that economic rationality mandates specific policy directions in the U.S. It has become an accepted truth on the political left that the conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan are a necessary response to the needs of the capitalist system. In this argument, cuts in civilian spending and reductions in the living standards of working people and the poor conform to the logic of capital in a period of crisis. This position grows directly out of the theory developed in the 1970s that capitalist states are torn between the conflicting imperatives of legitimation and accumulation. The legitimation versus accumulation argument is a mirror image of conservative arguments about interference with free markets. With growing intensity during the 1970s and early 1980s, conservative economists and publicists advanced the argument that problems of high inflation and slowing productivity growth were the consequence of excessive growth of government. They insisted that deregulation, tax cuts, and the reduction of social spending were necessary to restore the integrity of the free market, so that the conditions for stable economic growth could be restored.

This article shows that how writings of the sociologist Karl Marx provides a starting point for conceptualizing contradictions of advanced capitalism. The core of theoretical framework is an effort to make a post-industrial argument with Neo-Marxism. Most developed societies -- both capitalist and state socialist -- face a transition from industrial society, organized around the production of goods, to post-industrial society, organized around the provision of services and advanced technologies that release labor from direct production. The transition to a post-industrial society creates a profound social crisis: contemporary capitalism is ripe for a transition to post-industrial society, but existing social relations block the release of new productive forces, creating social and economic stalemate. Some writers pointed to the inadequacy of orthodox Marxism for understanding an advanced capitalism that had successfully improved the standard of living of the working class. They stressed that within advanced capitalism, new contradictions and new social forces would become the basis for emancipatory social possibilities, as capitalism created new needs that could not be satisfied within it.

Examines whether household saving in the United States declined during the administration of Ronald Reagan. Proposed definition of household financial surplus available for use by corporations and the public sector; Financing of additions to the housing stock; Capital inflows, equity retirements and excess capital gains.

Argues in favor of a progressive negative income tax to eradicate poverty in the United States. Nature of poverty and dilemmas of anti-poverty strategies; Employment paradigm versus transfer paradigm; Integration of elements of employment and transfer paradigms to generate a politically feasible anti-poverty strategy.

Examines the impact of international financial arrangements on global unemployment. Effect of Bretton Woods agreement; Developments in international finance; Role of higher long-term interest rates; Impact of debt crisis; Costs of high real interest rates; Steps necessary for expansion of global employment growth; Possible problems.

The study of social indicators is valuable for understanding the role that the social sciences play in the political arena. One common pattern is for a particular social indicator to become frozen in place once it takes on political significance, and this can result in ironic consequences. This study traces out the case of indicators of aggregate productivity trends in the United States. These measures were initially developed as part of an underconsumptionist argument that was linked to the political left, but there was considerable debate over different measurement schemes. Over time, one particular measure of trends in aggregate productivity became central for wage negotiations and for government policy. This created a context in which the slower rates of growth of this measure of productivity in the 1970s helped to validate the views of those on the political right who saw the need for greater restrictions on wage gains and government civilian spending. The paper raises questions about the value of this particular measure and ends by emphasizing the problems of locking in place an "objective" social indicator when the reality being measured is in continua! flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the authors discuss their concerns on the stimulus funding in the U.S. An economist from Harvard College states that insufficient funds will worsen prospects for young researchers. They also cite the encouragement of the president of Arizona State University for a shift to outcome-based research. A journalist from Washington, DC offers that existing agencies can be outdone by a new virtual agency.

The article looks at the rise of market fundamentalism and responds to an article by Alex Hicks commenting on the connection between evangelical Christianity and market fundamentalism. The article discusses social naturalism, power of conversion narratives, theoretical realism, economic sociology, Keynesian welfare measures, policy change, the power of ideas, pietism, the role of the Religious Right in the U.S. Republican party, economic and social transformations, and the need for more research.