Accumulation and Power

by Richard B. DuBoff

To determine the causes of the current socio-economic crisis of the United States and to draw appropriate political conclusions, it is essential to understand how the system evolved toward its present condition. Accumulation and Power helps provide this understanding by showing how the development of corporate enterprises and the corresponding emergence of a class structure composed primarily of capitalists and wage laborers caused fundamental metamorphoses in the processes of competition, aggregate-demand determination, and state policy making. Richard Du Boff demonstrates that although this transformation entailed an unprecedented development of productive capacity, the end result was a system in which the socially-rational utilization of this productive capacity conflicts with the overriding objective of the capitalist class: "to maintain control over the profit-making environment and to keep unwelcome incursions into it bottled up."

(Paul Burkett, Feb. 1993)

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction

223 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1989

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent collection of US economic history and analysis. This work was published in 1989, and I will certainly be looking out for more recent works by Du Boff. Of particular interest to me was the balance of trade that very dramatically went negative during the Reagan years, and the aggregate educational budget at the state and local governmental levels (I had not realized their historic extent). But that just touches the surface. This little book is densely packed with information.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A