Memoirs

2019

Since the middle years of the 1960s there has been within American economics a vibrant (and numerous) community of scholars who self-identify as radicals. "Radical" was a term dear to the New Left, a movement animated by University-based intellectuals that campaigned on such issues as civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam war. "Radical" had for them a double meaning. It signified boldness in demanding a major departure from the prevailing social order and a commitment to "get to the root" of power relations (an allusion to the etymology of the term). Fifty years ago that radical vocation found an institutional embodiment in a Union for Radical Political Economics (henceforth URPE) first assembled at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in September 1968. This collection appears at the pretext of that half-century landmark. This collection is however not narrowly about URPE. While the circumstances of the Union's founding are well-documented and understood (see for instance Wachtel 2008 and Mata 2009), historical and sociological study of the values, practices and careers of radical economists is sparse. When radicals earn a mention in the historical literature often times it is as ancillary to a debate about the architecture of contemporary economics, notably the secular persistence of a mainstream, a tightly knit, like-minded elite, that is beset by a motley crew of dissenters with their alternative methodologies. In this literature, attention to radical economics is subsidiary to the task of unraveling the fundamental antinomy between orthodoxy

Sociological Review, 2008

European Journal of Industrial Relations, 2012

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.

Neoliberalism, the doctrine that assumed hegemonic status about 1980, made a bold promise. Liberalizing markets, by unleashing the wealth-enhancing forces of competition and risk-taking entrepreneurship, would produce greater prosperity and well-being for more people than any alternative. But this promise appears today as a chimera to the populations of Western countries who are still struggling to escape the aftershocks of the 2008-2009 global crisis, a crisis rooted in the deregulation and liberalization extolled by neoliberals. The situation in the Global South appears to support a more favorable judgment of neoliberal development doctrine. In the countries of greatest neoliberal influence-in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa-the neoliberal promise was not kept in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, following 2002, these countries experienced high growth. Poor people consequently constitute a shrinking share of the populations of many countries while the middle class has expanded. This growth, instigated mainly by a commodity boom and inexpensive credit following the crisis-ridden 1990s, was interrupted by the world economic crisis that affected the Global South in 2009-2010. The extent to which the earlier neoliberal reforms belatedly spurred the growth surge is debatable. i What is clear, however, is the high and continuing costs to society and nature of neoliberal development trajectories. These costs, gleaned from critiques of the mainstream approach, would include some or all of the following. Privatization, cuts in the civil service and trade and capital-account liberalization have often led to the loss of jobs in the formal sector since the 1980s, while precarious employment in the informal sector has expanded. Credible threats by large-scale global corporations to relocate production in lower-cost jurisdictions have driven down wages throughout the world. Globalization has thus generated millions of poor-quality jobs. Market crashes and harsh competition for the available jobs and economic opportunities have fostered widespread economic insecurity. Periodic financial crises in many countries have reduced even middle-class families to at least temporary poverty. The reduction or elimination of agricultural subsidies and tariffs to protect small farmers has driven many into bankruptcy. The privatization of land formerly governed by indigenous or collectivist land-tenure rules has favored wealthy corporations and entrepreneurs seeking land for industrial activities or large-scale agricultural exports. Resurgent commodity speculation periodically drives the prices of basic foodstuffs dramatically higher, undermining food security for the poor in developing countries. User charges for educational and health services and/or the deteriorating quality of public services, together with the rising cost of private provision, confront even middle-class families with unpalatable choices. High and often growing economic inequality means that the gains from growth have been disproportionately appropriated by the wealthy, even while their evasion of income taxes has typically starved the public sector of resources. Inequality has also permitted the wealthy few to gain disproportionate political influence, vitiating democracy. Barely regulated industrial development, forestry, fisheries and export agriculture have despoiled the land, water and air. Growing carbon emissions from unregulated production and consumption propel climate change, evident especially in more frequent droughts and flooding, rising global ocean levels and shortages of fresh water. Individualism, especially the quest for personal material advancement, have weakened the bonds of community reciprocity, while social dislocation, unemployment and the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty have stimulated high rates of urban crime. These trends most adversely affect the poor and near-poor; they are forced off their land, housed in squalid, overcrowded and ill-serviced urban settlements and exploited by employers or the conditions of

Economic and Political Weekly, 2012

The coming of neoliberalism, what did it mean for the Global South? In which measure is, the post- Washington Consensus promoted by Stiglitz, an alternative to the Neoliberalism? In this essay, I am going to discuss the developmental policies proposed by the neoliberal agenda, I am going to describe the effects of neoliberalism on Global South with a special focus on neoliberal transition of Chile. The country is defined by IMF as an economic miracle and a virtuous example,1 but actually hides, beyond the shadow of an alleged “development”, an uneven access to the public utilities. As the scholar Patricio Escobar points out, the indicators that broadly describe the functioning of the economy do not reflect problems of poverty and the distribution of wealth.2 For example, in Chile, the sectors of the economy that are considered dynamic, present important evidence of the increasing precariousness of employment, and current wage levels leave a substantial part of Chilean workers and families unable to satisfy their basic needs.

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