Richard B Du Boff
Biographic Data
| ID | 282719 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard B Du Boff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard B |
| FAMILY NAME | Du Boff |
| SIGNATURE | DU BOFF R B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bryn Mawr College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1964 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A History of the Great Bust—Still With Us
Michael Perelman, The Confiscation of American Prosperity. From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 239 pages, $30.00 hardcover.Yves Smith, Econned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 362 pages, $30 hardcover.Some forty years ago, the American business empire viewed itself as under siege as a r…
U.S. Hegemony: Continuing Decline, Enduring Danger
"Global hegemony" might be defined as a situation in which one nation-state plays a predominant role in organizing, regulating, and stabilizing the world political economy. The use of armed force has always been an inseparable part of hegemony, but military power depends upon the economic resources at the disposal of the state. It cannot be deployed to answer every threat to geopolitical and economic interests, and it raises the danger of imperia…
Mergers, Concentration, and the Erosion of Democracy
A new surge of corporate concentration is in process in the United States and abroad, driven in large measure by a restructuring of global markets through mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Announced worldwide merger deals reached $3.4 trillion in 1999, an amount equivalent to 34 percent of the value of all industrial capital (buildings, plants, machinery and equipment) in the United States in 1999. Of this total, nearly a third were cross-border t…
A Critique of Tabb on Globalization: An Exchange
In "Globalization Is An Issue. The Power of Capital Is The Issue" (MR, June 1997), William Tabb rejects what he calls "the strong version of the globalization thesis" as based on the "myth" that "technology and irresistible market forces [are transforming] the global system in ways beyond the power of anyone to do much to change." He prefers "a more nuanced view," which would give "a major role to national-level policies and actors, and the centr…
Thurow on Social Security: The "Left" Strikes Again
Lester Thurow belongs to a minority group among U.S. economists—those who are even moderately left of center on the political spectrum. He often raises hackles among mainstream economists by writing books with broad, socially relevant themes that expose the narrowness of their research. In The Future of Capitalism. How Today's Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow's World (1996), Thurow contends that "the world's economic topography" has been altered by…
Contract, Economic Change, and the Search for Order in Industrializing America
Contract, Economic Change, and the Search for Order in Industrializing America. By Lester G. Lindley. (New York: Garland, 1993. xii, 325 pp. $57.00, ISBN 0-8153-0895-7.) Get access Richard B. Du Boff Richard B. Du Boff Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Page 245, https://doi.org/10.2307/2082014 Published: 01…
Government and Social Insurance: A View from the Left
A massive assault on "big government" dominates American politics. It began with Reaganomics in the early 1980s and received a powerful ideological boost from the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe a decade later. It is gaining momentum in the 1990s as the Republican Party tells "middle-class" Americans that government policies like taxes, welfare, environmental and safety regulations, and affirmative action are to blame for stagnating house…
Reply to Du Boff; Rejoinder by Du Boff; Reply to Albert Prago
We write to reply to the singularly insensitive review by Richard Du Boff of our book The Debt and the Deficit (MR, December 1989). Our book begins from, and is addressed to, a single argument on which all stands or falls: that the deficit is ill understood, and for that reason constitutes a major barrier against effective social action in this country. Perhaps this is not the view of readers of the Monthly Review, who are not alarmed at the defi…
The U.S. Budget Deficit: Love it or Leave it
Review of The Debt and the Deficit: False Alarms/Real Possibilities by Robert Heilbroner and Peter Bernstein.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
The Rise of Communications Regulation: The Telegraph Industry, 1844–1880
The Rise of Communications Regulation: The Telegraph Industry, 1844–1880 Richard B. Du Boff Richard B. Du Boff 1Richard B. Du Boff is Professor of Economics at Bryn Mawr College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 1984, Pages 52–66, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1984.tb02173.x Published: 07 February 2006
The Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century America: Technology and Monopoly
In the United States, the technological optimism that accompanied the birth and diffusion of the magnetic telegraph between 1844 and 1880 had few predecessors-if any. Commercial telegraphy was barely a year old in 1847 when the telegraph was seen as 'facilitating Human Intercourse and producing Harmony among Men and Nations\....[I]t may be regarded as an important element in Moral Progress.' 'The telegraph system is invaluable,' a business journa…
Theory and the Struggle Against Oppression
Review of Research in Political Economy: A Research Annual edited by Paul Zarembka.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Alfred Chandler's New Business History: A Review
Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844–1860
“The telegraph system in America is eminently characteristic of the national mind. At its very birth, it became the handmaiden of commerce.” So wrote the editor of a telegraph trade journal in 1853. Professor Du Boff describes an antebellum American business community that was as ready for a “revolution” in its size and structure as the dawning science of electricity was ready to make it happen. The result was the telegraph and its enthusiastic a…
The "Bias" of Technology: Corporate Capital and the Engineers, 1880-1930
Review of America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism by David F. Noble.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Unemployment in the U.S: A Historical Summary
There can be no appreciation of the seriousness of unemployment without a knowledge of its true extent. In the absence of information about the number unemployed, many people will drug themselves into the belief that but few of those seeking work are really unable to find it. The comfortable men and women of the ruling class do not like to admit unpleasant facts about a social system which has proved its worth by giving them—the deserving persons…
Comment on Papers by Robinson and Brittain
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
The Year of Europe
1973, Richard Nixon and his man Kissinger told us a year ago, was slated to be "The Year of Europe." "No aspect of U.S. foreign policy commands greater attention and care than our relations with Western Europe," the President said last spring. Having "ended" the Vietnam war, the United States could now address itself to mending frayed relations with its European allies. President Kennedy's July 4, 1962, "Declaration of Interdependence" with Commo…
How Not to Eliminate Poverty
Review of The Retreat from Riches: Affluence and Its Enemies by Peter Passell and Leonard Ross.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Dollar Devaluation and Foreign Trade
When President Nixon announced his "new economic policy" (NEP) to a stunned capitalist world on August 15, 1971, little did he dream that just four months later he would be standing in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington hailing an official devaluation of the dollar as "the most significant monetary agreement in the history of the world."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published i…
Pentagonism or Imperialism
Review of Pentagonism: A Substitute for Imperialism by Juan Bosch.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
The Decline of Economic Planning in France
The Decline of Economic Planning in France
N RECENT YEARS, few institutions have impressed Western politicians and economists more than the indicative methods developed over the past two decades in France. French economic planning has been widely acclaimed as proof that democratic planning is possible in market-oriented economies, and that public and private sectors can harmoniously co-exist in a mixed economy. It has also been held up as an example of how well the Western world has diges…
Western Europe's Postwar Boom: The End of an Era
Western Europe's recovery from the devastation and dislocations of the Second World War was achieved by the early 1950's, since by then prewar levels of national output had been re-attained. As is well known, this basic recovery was followed by over a decade of unprecedented economic expansion. In terms of Gross National Product (GNP), growth rates for the area as a whole averaged close to five percent annually. In terms of product per head of po…
The Introduction of Electric Power in American Manufacturing
Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844–1860
“The telegraph system in America is eminently characteristic of the national mind. At its very birth, it became the handmaiden of commerce.” So wrote the editor of a telegraph trade journal in 1853. Professor Du Boff describes an antebellum American business community that was as ready for a “revolution” in its size and structure as the dawning science of electricity was ready to make it happen. The result was the telegraph and its enthusiastic a…
The Introduction of Electric Power in American Manufacturing
A Critique of Tabb on Globalization: An Exchange
In "Globalization Is An Issue. The Power of Capital Is The Issue" (MR, June 1997), William Tabb rejects what he calls "the strong version of the globalization thesis" as based on the "myth" that "technology and irresistible market forces [are transforming] the global system in ways beyond the power of anyone to do much to change." He prefers "a more nuanced view," which would give "a major role to national-level policies and actors, and the centr…
U.S. Hegemony: Continuing Decline, Enduring Danger
"Global hegemony" might be defined as a situation in which one nation-state plays a predominant role in organizing, regulating, and stabilizing the world political economy. The use of armed force has always been an inseparable part of hegemony, but military power depends upon the economic resources at the disposal of the state. It cannot be deployed to answer every threat to geopolitical and economic interests, and it raises the danger of imperia…
Mergers, Concentration, and the Erosion of Democracy
A new surge of corporate concentration is in process in the United States and abroad, driven in large measure by a restructuring of global markets through mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Announced worldwide merger deals reached $3.4 trillion in 1999, an amount equivalent to 34 percent of the value of all industrial capital (buildings, plants, machinery and equipment) in the United States in 1999. Of this total, nearly a third were cross-border t…
The Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century America: Technology and Monopoly
In the United States, the technological optimism that accompanied the birth and diffusion of the magnetic telegraph between 1844 and 1880 had few predecessors-if any. Commercial telegraphy was barely a year old in 1847 when the telegraph was seen as 'facilitating Human Intercourse and producing Harmony among Men and Nations\....[I]t may be regarded as an important element in Moral Progress.' 'The telegraph system is invaluable,' a business journa…
Unemployment in the U.S: A Historical Summary
There can be no appreciation of the seriousness of unemployment without a knowledge of its true extent. In the absence of information about the number unemployed, many people will drug themselves into the belief that but few of those seeking work are really unable to find it. The comfortable men and women of the ruling class do not like to admit unpleasant facts about a social system which has proved its worth by giving them—the deserving persons…
Dollar Devaluation and Foreign Trade
When President Nixon announced his "new economic policy" (NEP) to a stunned capitalist world on August 15, 1971, little did he dream that just four months later he would be standing in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington hailing an official devaluation of the dollar as "the most significant monetary agreement in the history of the world."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published i…
Pentagonism or Imperialism
Review of Pentagonism: A Substitute for Imperialism by Juan Bosch.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
The Decline of Economic Planning in France
Economic Thought in Revolutionary France, 1789-1792: The Question of Poverty and Unemployment
A Note on the Substitution of Inanimate for Animal Power
Electrification and Capital Productivity: A Suggested Approach
T HE theoretical role of technology in economic growth is no mystery. It provides new machines and processes (improved capital quality) that raise output relative to input, or productivity. Yet for several reasons, once it comes to pursuing this truth by observation, hypothesis, and testing, every manner of obstacle seems to appear. One may be told that technology per se is rarely susceptible of measurement, that productivity increases can be att…
Economic Thought in Revolutionary France, 1789-1792: The Question of Poverty and Unemployment
The Introduction of Electric Power in American Manufacturing
The Decline of Economic Planning in France
The Decline of Economic Planning in France
N RECENT YEARS, few institutions have impressed Western politicians and economists more than the indicative methods developed over the past two decades in France. French economic planning has been widely acclaimed as proof that democratic planning is possible in market-oriented economies, and that public and private sectors can harmoniously co-exist in a mixed economy. It has also been held up as an example of how well the Western world has diges…
Western Europe's Postwar Boom: The End of an Era
Western Europe's recovery from the devastation and dislocations of the Second World War was achieved by the early 1950's, since by then prewar levels of national output had been re-attained. As is well known, this basic recovery was followed by over a decade of unprecedented economic expansion. In terms of Gross National Product (GNP), growth rates for the area as a whole averaged close to five percent annually. In terms of product per head of po…
Pentagonism or Imperialism
Review of Pentagonism: A Substitute for Imperialism by Juan Bosch.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Dollar Devaluation and Foreign Trade
When President Nixon announced his "new economic policy" (NEP) to a stunned capitalist world on August 15, 1971, little did he dream that just four months later he would be standing in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington hailing an official devaluation of the dollar as "the most significant monetary agreement in the history of the world."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published i…
Comment on Papers by Robinson and Brittain
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
The Year of Europe
1973, Richard Nixon and his man Kissinger told us a year ago, was slated to be "The Year of Europe." "No aspect of U.S. foreign policy commands greater attention and care than our relations with Western Europe," the President said last spring. Having "ended" the Vietnam war, the United States could now address itself to mending frayed relations with its European allies. President Kennedy's July 4, 1962, "Declaration of Interdependence" with Commo…
How Not to Eliminate Poverty
Review of The Retreat from Riches: Affluence and Its Enemies by Peter Passell and Leonard Ross.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Unemployment in the U.S: A Historical Summary
There can be no appreciation of the seriousness of unemployment without a knowledge of its true extent. In the absence of information about the number unemployed, many people will drug themselves into the belief that but few of those seeking work are really unable to find it. The comfortable men and women of the ruling class do not like to admit unpleasant facts about a social system which has proved its worth by giving them—the deserving persons…
The "Bias" of Technology: Corporate Capital and the Engineers, 1880-1930
Review of America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism by David F. Noble.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Alfred Chandler's New Business History: A Review
Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844–1860
“The telegraph system in America is eminently characteristic of the national mind. At its very birth, it became the handmaiden of commerce.” So wrote the editor of a telegraph trade journal in 1853. Professor Du Boff describes an antebellum American business community that was as ready for a “revolution” in its size and structure as the dawning science of electricity was ready to make it happen. The result was the telegraph and its enthusiastic a…
Theory and the Struggle Against Oppression
Review of Research in Political Economy: A Research Annual edited by Paul Zarembka.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
The Rise of Communications Regulation: The Telegraph Industry, 1844–1880
The Rise of Communications Regulation: The Telegraph Industry, 1844–1880 Richard B. Du Boff Richard B. Du Boff 1Richard B. Du Boff is Professor of Economics at Bryn Mawr College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 1984, Pages 52–66, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1984.tb02173.x Published: 07 February 2006
The Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century America: Technology and Monopoly
In the United States, the technological optimism that accompanied the birth and diffusion of the magnetic telegraph between 1844 and 1880 had few predecessors-if any. Commercial telegraphy was barely a year old in 1847 when the telegraph was seen as 'facilitating Human Intercourse and producing Harmony among Men and Nations\....[I]t may be regarded as an important element in Moral Progress.' 'The telegraph system is invaluable,' a business journa…
The U.S. Budget Deficit: Love it or Leave it
Review of The Debt and the Deficit: False Alarms/Real Possibilities by Robert Heilbroner and Peter Bernstein.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Reply to Du Boff; Rejoinder by Du Boff; Reply to Albert Prago
We write to reply to the singularly insensitive review by Richard Du Boff of our book The Debt and the Deficit (MR, December 1989). Our book begins from, and is addressed to, a single argument on which all stands or falls: that the deficit is ill understood, and for that reason constitutes a major barrier against effective social action in this country. Perhaps this is not the view of readers of the Monthly Review, who are not alarmed at the defi…
Contract, Economic Change, and the Search for Order in Industrializing America
Contract, Economic Change, and the Search for Order in Industrializing America. By Lester G. Lindley. (New York: Garland, 1993. xii, 325 pp. $57.00, ISBN 0-8153-0895-7.) Get access Richard B. Du Boff Richard B. Du Boff Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Page 245, https://doi.org/10.2307/2082014 Published: 01…
Government and Social Insurance: A View from the Left
A massive assault on "big government" dominates American politics. It began with Reaganomics in the early 1980s and received a powerful ideological boost from the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe a decade later. It is gaining momentum in the 1990s as the Republican Party tells "middle-class" Americans that government policies like taxes, welfare, environmental and safety regulations, and affirmative action are to blame for stagnating house…
Thurow on Social Security: The "Left" Strikes Again
Lester Thurow belongs to a minority group among U.S. economists—those who are even moderately left of center on the political spectrum. He often raises hackles among mainstream economists by writing books with broad, socially relevant themes that expose the narrowness of their research. In The Future of Capitalism. How Today's Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow's World (1996), Thurow contends that "the world's economic topography" has been altered by…
A Critique of Tabb on Globalization: An Exchange
In "Globalization Is An Issue. The Power of Capital Is The Issue" (MR, June 1997), William Tabb rejects what he calls "the strong version of the globalization thesis" as based on the "myth" that "technology and irresistible market forces [are transforming] the global system in ways beyond the power of anyone to do much to change." He prefers "a more nuanced view," which would give "a major role to national-level policies and actors, and the centr…
Political science (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Law (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · History (14 works) · Economic history (12 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Economic Theory and Policy (5 works) · Economy (5 works)