David M. Gordon: Pathbreaking Radical Political Economist
ISBN: 978-1-80262-990-3, eISBN: 978-1-80262-989-7
Publication date: 20 April 2022
Abstract
David M. Gordon advanced labour economics with his theory of labour market segmentation, in which jobs rather than the marginal productivity of individual workers were the unit of analysis. He advanced economic historiography and macroeconomics by conceptualising social structures of accumulation – a framework built on the foundation of his institutionalist training and enriched by his study of Marxist economics. By appropriating methods from other social science disciplines into econometrics, he augmented empirical analysis in economics. He was a founding member of the Union of Radical Political Economics and its journal, the Review of Radical Political Economics – that advanced and promoted heterodox, radical, and Marxist economists in the United States. His contributions to economics, to organised labour, and to the New School for Social Research, where I studied with him, were stunning.
Part 1 lays out some context about the New School Graduate Faculty where Gordon taught. Part 2 explores what historical forces, including his family, led to his expansive creativity. Part 3 summarises how he expanded labour economics to include the relations as well as the technology of production, linked his understanding of the production process to a historical materialist view of labour in the United States, then extended that to econometric analyses of the US macroeconomy. Part 4 presents a bibliometric analysis to provide some idea of the impact of his work. I end with some concluding remarks.
Keywords
- David M. Gordon
- Labor market segmentation
- Social structures of accumulation
- New School for Social Research
- United States
- B. History of economic thought
- Methodology and heterodox approaches
- C. mathematical and quantitative methods
- J. labor and demographic economics
- N. economic history
- Economic development
- Innovation
- Technological change and growth
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
Patrick Joyce, for incisive comments on the manuscript, editing, and help translating spelling from American to British English.
Joelle Mornini, National Institutes of Health Library, for superbly executing the bibliometric analyses and graphics.
Stephanie Golden, Freelance Author and Editor, for detailed content editing.
Jordan Lindsey, Howard University, for reference management and other formatting.
Friends and Family of David Gordon for personal correspondence.
Diana R. Gordon, Senior Research Scholar and Professor Emerita, City University of New York, Graduate Center.
Sally Silvers, Chief Financial Officer, Institute for Labour Education and Research.
Michael Reich, Professor, UC Berkeley and Co-Chair, Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, Institute for Research on Labour and Employment.
University of California at Berkeley (UCB).
Prof Reich is a past Director of the Institute for Research on Labour and Employment (IRLE) at UCB.
Clair Brown, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Society at the UCB.
Prof Brown is a past Director of the Institute for Research on Labour and Employment (IRLE) at UCB.
Citation
Breen, N. (2022), "David M. Gordon: Pathbreaking Radical Political Economist", Fiorito, L., Scheall, S. and Suprinyak, C.E. (Ed.) Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on David Gordon: American Radical Economist (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 40A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 5-34. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542022000040A003
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited