The Nature and Logic of Capitalism/The Zero-Sum Solution
Wilber, Charles K.
editing, strong photography, and the masterful team acting of the English cast which manages to catch the precise right note of subtle high camp. The arch tone is present even in Forster's names,...
...THE ZERO-SUM SOLUTION BUILBING A WORLD-CLASS AMERICAN ECONOMY Lester C. Thurow Simon and Schuster, $18.95, 414 pp...
...but, rather, political economic ones...
...It also introduced a set of policies to ensure some degree of equity in the workings of the capitalist system...
...The authors are both wellknown political economists who have written a number of best-sellers...
...As Simpson ~otes, this demonstrates "the phenomenon which Hegel defined as 'the secularization of the spiritual.' " A labor system "of fortuitous historical origins was identified with the operation of God's will in history...
...Fortunately, as she demonstrated also in Lady Jane, she can act, and uses an array of body language and instantaneous facial transitions between sulks, smiles, frowns, questioning glances, and confusion to convey the kaleidoscope of adolescent sensuality...
...In Marxist terms, Heilbroner calls this the tendency toward crisis...
...Other essays handle broad topics such as humor, poetry, and fiction...
...Are the structural and behavioral changes called for sufficient to overcome this latest crisis of capitalist development...
...In Marxist terms, class war has replaced social collaboration...
...What is most interesting about the two books is the way Thurow's work can be seen as a specific instance of Heilbroner's theory...
...If we are forced to give it up, even for a short period, we will have to deal with serious equity issues of who sacrifices...
...Third, Thurow argues that the world economy cannot function without a world manager...
...Sensible, but it probably won't work...
...Heilbroner stops at this point, claiming that his task is the development of a mode of analysis not a prediction of the concrete changes necessary for capitalism to survive...
...There are many technical solutions that make sense...
...For example, if we grant Thurow his premise that we "must engage in a massive mobilization to build a world-cla~s American economy," his program makes technical sense...
...As he says "America must pass through a zero-sum society to restore economic prosperity...
...Leadership will be required to develop international cooperation as a complement to international competition...
...Instead, only major shifts in structural and social relations will relieve a crisis and allow the system to resume its normal, though altered, mode of cyclical expansion...
...Thurow's solution to capitalism's latest crisis is a program, outlined above, that requires a new type of businessgovernment partnership...
...While this is a morally important opportunity it is politically intractable...
...We know what to do to restore America's competitive position in the word economy, but we have not had the political will to pay the cost...
...She also perfects a resolute comic stalk toward the end of the film that subtly, but strongly, transmits the "Beethovenian spirit" that eventually fully reveals itself in Lucy's character...
...His thesis is straightforward: "America is now in a competitive fight for its economic life...
...Some shots of her at the piano (she loves Beethoven, but his impassioned sonatas make her "peevish") are extraordinarily fine, especially when director Ivory focuses on her fingers and their peevish energy...
...Guilt about these subjects, even contortions, may be the undercurrent which pulls these widely diverse essays forward...
...The important questions are not technical economic ones -- will consumption controls or a value-added tax do the job...
...Beebe (played by someone named Simon Callow...
...If you are a liberal economist you recommend monetary and fiscal policies to ameliorate the swings of the cycle...
...This will mean lower standards of living for some in the short run because the increased productivity pays off only in the long run...
...His heroine is an embodiment of both sweetness and light, the aptly named Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter), who is chaperoned around Florence by her fussy, overprotective cousin Miss Bartlett (Maggie Smith...
...a value-added tax and a new dollar-a-gallon tax on gasoline...
...selective policies to revitalize old or build new industries...
...Despite their theoretical and philosophical differences, they have co-authored several books, including a textbook for collegelevel courses in introductory economics...
...Fourth, major efforts will be required of the government to make America more competitive: a major program of education and training, particularly in science and technology, to upgrade the quality of the labor force...
...It is less apt for today's mood, which prefers comedy of manners to historical tragedy, in which one is asked to think too much...
...That myth disguises the underlying class differences of a capitalist economy...
...Because of their transitory nature such cycles, while painful to the people and firms affected, are not a danger to the long run viability of the economic system...
...Instead, we turned to Reaganomics' free market theories hoping that they would provide painless solutions...
...Thurow's belief that a new social consensus can be built around the issues of Dixie's trove THE HISTORY OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE Edited by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., et al...
...Let me mention the most important...
...In fact their prosperity has been purchased at the price of crushing organized labor, maintaining high levels of unemployment, and eliminating or reducing many of the economic security provisions developed under the New Deal/Keynesian consensus...
...Unfortunately, those who are prospering under present economic policies have little incentive to cooperate with those who are not...
...An added attraction involves, perhaps, the freedom from labor in Edwardian social comedy, providing escapism from contemporary career pressures...
...The arch tone is present even in Forster's names, which often scream with shamelessly allegorical hints about character...
...The list of Thurow's policies to revitalize the economy is too long to enumerate in this brief review...
...What is the meaning of Thurow's program of revitalization in terms of Heilbroner's crisis theory...
...The New Deal/ Keynesian consensus, that solved the crisis of the 1930s, introduced government intervention into the economy in the form of macro-stabilization policies to encourage a full-employment level of business investment...
...They have failed...
...When capitalism floundered again in the 1930s, government took on the role of stabilizer under the guidance of the New Deal/Keynesian consensus and the government's role grew along with the economy...
...is currently in one of the long-run stagnation crises which beset the U.S...
...Government must now become a promoter of economic productivity and investment...
...And now, beginning somewhere in the 1970s, we have entered a third major economic crisis, perhaps the worst of all in terms of long-run events...
...All the essays are designed to make readers aware of the vast sweep of Southern literature...
...Joy...
...In the first two cases capitalism was saved, but not without major institutional and behavioral revisions...
...The format of the book, for example, provides individual chapters within its first division only for Captain John Smith, William Byrd, William Gilmore Simms, and Edgar Allan Poe...
...We must increase savings by placing controls on too easy access to consumer credit...
...Is reliance on in11 April 1986:215creased competitiveness a self-defeating policy where competitors cancel out each other's gains...
...A serious crisis threatened the nation shortly after the Civil War, lasting from 1870 until about 1890...
...Shockingly, when once touring the luscious Italian countryside, Lucy is kissed by young fellow tourist George Emerson (Julian Sands), shortly after he has fallen from a tree while expansively hanging from its limbs and crying out, "Beauty...
...Second, he argues for a variety of policies (such as credit controls to lower consumption), to increase the savings rate and thus the level of investment...
...Thurow's book is a practical "how-to" study on restoring the competitivenes of THE NATURE AND LOGIC OF CAPITALISM Robert L. Heilbroner Norton, $15.95, 225 pp...
...The second side of the tendency is substantially more serious, for a series of short cycles could, over the long run, develop into an economic stagnation of critical proportions...
...The New Deal/Keynesian role of promoting employment and ensuring minimum security is no longer enough...
...The organization of the book is chronological: four major divisions cover years from 1607 to 1860, 18611920, 1920-1950, and 1951-1982, successively the colonial and antebellum accomplishments, the years after, the Renascence, and the contemporary movement...
...With Miss Carter's work, it makes the film exceptional...
...Heilbroner argues that the U.S...
...The jokes on Victorian repression are also old hat, although they seem to feed a current nostalgia for the quaint repressions of the time, as if the exhibitionism of our time made such innocence, or such pretense, appealing...
...Two marginal subjects haunt this volume, and while never examined in great detail these become the unsaid locus of the project: religion and race, or, perhaps, the modification of these subjects according to the literary demands of a developing Southern consciousness...
...The first side of the tendency is the familiar business cycle -- fluctuations in production and employment from short booms to temporary recessions...
...This will only be possible if equitable ways are found to share the short-term losses...
...Slaveholders, enslaved by their slaves Commonweal: 216...
...The framework of the first part, 1607 -to 1860, under the guiding hand of Lewis P. Simpson, provides a thoughtful way of introducing the volume as a whole...
...He sees international competitiveness and slow productivity growth as the political issues that could bring together low, middle, and uppermiddle classes...
...Can the Democratic party provide the necessary leadership...
...Crises such as these will not cure themselves, as will the shorter periodic fluctuations...
...Miss Carter's other performance now on view, Lady Jane, is being ignored because it dared to he sincere about matters of faith and morals...
...His solution is equally clear: "The answer is that we must engage in a massive mobilization to build a word-class American economy...
...Unfortunately, economic disaster may be necessary before we take Heilbroner and Thurow seriously enough to begin building a new, viable social consensus...
...Or perhaps the walk was to suggest the sting a honeybee can use on occasion...
...seventy separate essays...
...Truth...
...The best economic policies will be of little use if there is no vision of a commitment to a good society...
...Thurow's policies certainly seem reasonable...
...Much of this early literature was ultimately envisioned, at least by many propagandists, as "the coalescence of the secular and religious visions of the institution of slavery in the pro-slavery argument...
...Will this economic program work...
...These short cycles are an Commonweal: 214inevitable aspect of economic growth in a capitalist system...
...Victor A. Kramer F OUR centuries of Southei'n literature...
...Once home, however, the "scandal" kept secret, Lucy is engaged to Cecil Vyse (Ruppert Graves), an affected, supercilious culture-vulture, who frowns on sports, is uneasy with a kiss, but seems as if he would like to suffocate his betrothed with superiority...
...Louisiana State University, $29.95, 626 pp...
...The real problems are not economic but political...
...and so on...
...economy every fifty years or so...
...More on this later...
...The next severe crisis, which many of us (or our parents) still remember, began with the stock market crash in October of 1929...
...TOM O'BRIEN Books: FISCAL THESES FOR SALE T HESE two books, written from radically different theoretical perspectives, are at the same time quite complementary...
...Despite his attack against over-reliance on market solutions, Thurow's analysis derives from the tradition of mainstream neoclassical/ Keynesian economics...
...This set of policies appears no longer adequate to solve the present crisis...
...In these two books they go their separate ways...
...All significant authors and cultura~ trends are examined, the major ones in some detail...
...Such a framework, which I am suggesting for this encyclopedic reference work, is not featured by the editors, but it is present in many of the essays...
...Finally, Heilbroner argues that before we emerge from the crisis of the seventies and eighties, the economy will undergo another major shift...
...and the desire for a manageable volume would seem to make impossible a committee project such as this...
...Heilbroner's book demonstrates that Marxist-like (i.e., structural) interpretations and explanations of our current economic dilemma have a surprising degree of coherence and relevance...
...is forever photographed from a low angle, his vertical face transformed into an even sweeter caricature of parsonly benevolence...
...ending the independence of the Federal Reserve...
...The system was saved from complete collapse at the end of the nineteenth century by a proliferation of new monopolies that did away with the ravages of uncontrolled competition, by a surge in global expansion that reduced the costs of raw materials, by new technical innovations, e.g., the entirely new industry created by electric power, and by r~elatively progressive labor policies undertaken "voluntarily" by the newly created large firms...
...These questions are vital to our well-being but, unfortunately, the evidence is unclear...
...Otherwise conflict over income shares among social classes will disrupt any program of revitalization...
...The only social consensus holding us together as a nation is our belief that a fundamental purpose of life is ever 'greater consumption...
...Nevertheless, A Room with a View richly amuses, and one scene at a swimming hole photogenically and hilariously renews some of the old clichrs about Victorianism...
...There is no one best way...
...However, whatever direction the economy actually moves in, one can be sure that there must be a dramatic change in the economic and social system before it can enter into a stage of renewed vitality...
...Rubin...
...Cecil is quickly tiresome, as are-the lawn games played to show he's a wimp...
...If you are a conservative economist you advise policy-makers that doing nothing is the best course of action because counter-measures will not work...
...Fortunately, Emerson shows up again, living across the street from the kindly Reverend Mr...
...Except for Lucy's development, much of the material is clichrd...
...One can hardly blame the young ones: poor Emerson not only has a romantic name but a "freethinking" journalist father (Denholm Elliot0, and the country expedition was initiated by risqu6 novelist Eleanor Lavish (Judi Dench), who flamboyantly proclaims the sensuality of Italy with earnest gusto...
...The pieces in this history range from listings of the mediocre to philosophical speculations which account for the significance of the South as the tragic non-meeting ground of minds turned inward and away from others who have frequently been denied their otherness...
...The real test of economic policies is their political economic acceptability...
...I tremely complex subject, and in so doing they also provide a living document which reveals the difficulty of such a project, and the irony of achieving any balanced presentation in such short space because obviously as many questions are raised as answered...
...Beebe (perhaps a play on "bee" and a link to Miss Honeychurch...
...The stagflation problem of the 1970s was the result of the social conflict stemming out of the inability to bring about widespread agreement on the distribution of the fruits of production...
...Crucial to both Marx and Heilbroner is the argument that capitalist economies are characterized by a dual tendency within the structure of the system...
...Charles K. Wilber the American economy...
...Neither Reagan's self-interested individualism nor Thurow' s"mobilization to build a world-class American economy" can provide the basis for a new social consensus...
...The odd events in early Southern literary history take off from this wedding, and the first section examines this fact...
...Such views are daring, since they risk depriving us for a moment of the sight of the whole woman, who is perhaps the most lovely newcomer on film in many years...
...Something more than an economic program is needed...
...It required a major recession to halt inflation and despite three years of recovery, growth in productivity continues to lag substantially behind our major competitors...
...The purpose of Thurow's book is precisely to tell us how to overcome the present crisis (even though Heilbroner's concept of crisis in not acknowledged...
...No economic program will work unless a new social consensus can be negotiated and agreed upon by the different social classes...
...scores of scholars...
...In any case, A Room with a View is the sort of film that's perfectly calibrated to feed the upscale, highbrow tastes of the college-educated audience nursed on Upstairs, Downstairs -- as sure a niche in movie-marketing sociology as young male adolescents...
...Heilbroner's book is an abstract, theoretical inquiry into the logic of longrun capitalist development that owes more than a little to Marxian theory...
...First, a new political economic consensus must be created by a revitalized Democratic party to replace the now moribund Keynesian/New Deal consensus...
...Miss Carter as Lucy is also beautifully served by the camera, or vice-versa...
...The volume's relative success is proof of mind over matter...
...and six editors have produced a usable history which provides basic information about an exinternational competitiveness and slow productivity growth seems naive at best...
...The editors are to be commended for allowing the many authors to approach their subjects with an honesty which collectively reveals tensions which have contributed to the development of the largest and most significant body of American literature...
Vol. 113 • April 1986 • No. 7
