Reviving Growth Keynesianism – Details, episodes & analysis

For this episode we talk to Herman Mark Schwartz on a wide range of issues - from biopolitics, industrial policy, and the New Cold War political economy to why "financialization" is a limited analytical frame for recent history. Mark argues that conflict between firms over profits is just as important - if not moreso - than conflict between capital and labor over the consumption share. The shift from midcentury "Fordism" to today's three-tiered economic structure happened as the result of a "Kalecki moment" in the late-1960s and early-1970s: workers, women, and the third world wanted more, and corporate strategy transformed to meet, and rebuff, their challenges.


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You can find his faculty profile here: https://politics.virginia.edu/people/profile/schwartz

And the articles we discussed today here: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/author/herman-mark-schwartz/

and here: https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/manufacturing-stagnation/

Jamie Martin joins us to discuss his new book *The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance.* After the first World War, the tools  that European empires had used to govern their colonies' economies were applied to Europe itself. To stabilize that respatialization politically, the victorious powers had to invent new institutions - what Martin calls "legitimation machines" - to justify treating European countries like colonies. The new institutions were supposed to legitimize global economic governance, but were castigated as "meddlers" as often as not. We ask him what we would have to do to escape the imperial roots of today's institutions.


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Follow Jamie Martin on twitter @jamiemartin2

Faculty page: https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/jamie-martin

Book page: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976542

Interview mentioned:
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/the-rotten-roots-of-global-economic-governance/

Wanting more? Check out other interviews Martin has done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoOE3Qg_zN4&ab_channel=TheMajorityReportw%2FSamSeder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RBIpteLAbk&ab_channel=HarvardBookStore

This week we spoke with John Shovlin about his new book on capitalist international relations between France and Britain during the "second Hundred Years War." Its well-known that uneven commercial development provoked conflict in early modern Europe, as great powers that lagged behind fought violently to catch up. What's less well-known is that, as Shovlin shows, the same mercantilist rivalries could also provoke the opposite responses: free trade and peace projects. We ask him about the notorious John Law episode in France, hegemony and empire as master concepts for narrating international history, and the problem of protection costs for global capitalism.

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Check out John's personal website here: https://www.johnshovlin.com/

Buy the book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253566/trading-enemy

Less familiar with the early modern period? The following might be worth skimming:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbertism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiocracy

This week we've brought you a double feature! First we talk to Luke Petach about his article on "Spatial Keynesianism." Macroeconomic policy was, at its inception, methodologically nationalist, and Keynesian policies fostered income convergence all across the US as poor regions caught up to wealthier ones. We talk about how that worked and why it ended.

Then we bring on his co-author and former adviser, Daniele Tavani to talk about the post-Keynesian tradition, its differences with the Marxian economic tradition, and how they might be brought together again under the rubric of secular stagnation. Along the way we discuss Italy's unique place in the post-Keynesian tradition, and Piketty's contribution to the profession.

The first ep ends and the second picks up @55:25.

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Follow Luke on twitter @LPetach

Read "Spatial Keynesian policy and the decline of regional income convergence in the USA" here: https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/45/3/487/6145995

Read "Income shares, secular stagnation and the long-run distribution of wealth" here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/meca.12277

Read "Aggregate Demand Externalities, Income Distribution, and Wealth Inequality" here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3855763

Find more of Luke's papers here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NUZzlFEAAAAJ&hl=en

Explore Daniele's work here: http://www.danieletavani.com/

Other papers mentioned: 
Ganesh Sitaraman, Morgan Ricks & Christopher Serkin, "Regulation and the Geography of Inequality" https://dlj.law.duke.edu/article/regulation-and-the-geography-of-inequality-sitaraman-vol70-iss8/

Manduca, "How National Income Inequality in the United States Contributes to Economic Disparities Between Regions" https://equitablegrowth.org/how-national-income-inequality-in-the-united-states-contributes-to-economic-disparities-between-regions/

Nathan, "The Nationalization of Proposition 13," https://www.jstor.org/stable/418699

Kaldor, "The Case for Regional Policies," https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1970.tb00712.x

Verdoorn's law, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdoorn%27s_law

Nakamura and Steinsson, "Fiscal Stimulus in a Monetary Union: Evidence from US Regions" https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.104.3.753

This week we spoke with Zach Carter about his award-winning book *The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.*  Its our most comprehensive episode yet on the Keynesian Revolution, then and now. We ask Zach about the role of Enlightenment liberalism, art, love, journalism and war in the life and times of JMK, and the narrowing of Keynesianism's horizons in the later half of the twentieth century.

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Follow Zach on twitter @zachdcarter

Find more on the book and his writing at: https://www.zacharydcarter.com/

This week we talked to David Stein about his dissertation, "Fearing Inflation, Inflating Fears" and the centrality of full employment to the black freedom struggle. From the 1930s through the 1970s, the fight for a job went hand in hand with the fight for freedom and equality. The proposal for a Job Guarantee, it turns out, has multiple origins - one was in the fight against Jim Crow monetary policy. Cold War complications  ultimately undid the movement for a time, but its coming back today. 

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Follow David on Twitter @DavidpStein

Read David's work at the Boston Review, "Why Coretta Scott King Fought For a Job Guarantee" here:  http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-race/david-stein-why-coretta-scott-king-fought-job-guarantee
 
And find the rest of his academic publications here: https://ucla.academia.edu/DavidStein

Also mentioned: 
- Who Makes Cents podcast (now run by Jessica Ann Levy), https://whomakescentspodcast.com/

- Landon Storrs, *The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left* https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691153964/the-second-red-scare-and-the-unmaking-of-the-new-deal-left

- Destin Jenkins on white fraternity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iAGfuPJqM8

- Cedric Robinson, http://bostonreview.net/race-philosophy-religion/robin-d-g-kelley-why-black-marxism-why-now

- Kristoffer Smemo and Samir Sonti, and Gabriel Winant on the 1958 recession, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/690968

For this episode, we stood back to take stock of some Robert's own research on inequality in its all its complexity. Its a multi-dimensional issue, with generational, spatial, racial, national, and macroeconomic processes all intersecting to generate the world we see today.

Check out more of his stuff here: http://robertmanduca.com/publications/

And follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/robertmanduca

Nick Foster is a graduate student in history at the University of Chicago, writing a dissertation on the Reagan Revolution and the cultural history of finance capitalism. We discuss why Reagan embraced the biggest farm bill in US history, and speculate about the historiography of capitalist agriculture.

When Nick's paper is published we'll edit the show notes to provide a link and tweet about it so you can read it too. In the meantime, all enthusiastic fan mail can be directed to: https://history.uchicago.edu/directory/nicholas-foster

This week we talked to Jon Levy, Professor of US History at the University of Chicago, about his forthcoming book *Ages of American Capitalism.* We asked him what "capitalism" even is, what makes one age different from another, and what Keynes can tell us about its past and possible futures.

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Pre-order the book from Penguin: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227741/ages-of-american-capitalism-by-jonathan-levy/

or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ages-American-Capitalism-History-United/dp/0812995015

Read about Jon's definition of "capital as process" here: https://www.academia.edu/34785107/Capital_as_Process_and_the_History_of_Capitalism

and check out his paper "Primal Capital" on Freudo-Keynesianism (which, as it turns out, is just Keynesianism): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/705295

Today's guest is Lizabeth Cohen, the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies in the History Department at Harvard University. We discuss her classic work A Consumers Republic: The Politics of Consumption in Postwar America, which argues that in post-war America, the act of consuming was seen as a virtuous contribution to the public good. But the model had inherent limits in the race, gender, and class dynamics of the era, especially visible in housing, suburbanization, and the market segmentation of advertising, which ultimately limited that model of economic culture by the 1970s. We also briefly touch on her most recent book, Saving America’s Cities, which re-examines postwar urban development corporations.

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Cohen's faculty profile: https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/lizabeth-cohen

Consume her classic book here: https://www.amazon.com/Consumers-Republic-Politics-Consumption-Postwar/dp/0375707379

Or develop an appreciation for her most recent work here: https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Americas-Cities-Struggle-Suburban/dp/0374254087