Restructuring in U.S. Manufacturing: The Decline of Monopoly Capitalism

Abstract

Abstract We outline a framework grounded in Marxist political economy for investigating structural change in particular industries as well as the larger economy. Our approach focuses upon processes of capital and labor restructuring that lie behind the geographical manifestations of industrial change. An empirical study of capitalist restructuring in 51 U.S. manufacturing sectors from 1958–77 reveals the emergence of a distinctively new variant of capitalism, termed “global capitalism,” and a coincident decline in the monopoly capitalist variant which had previously prevailed. Two statistical analyses identify the existence of restructuring, which is defined as transition between monopoly and global capitalism within a particular sector. The results generated by discriminant analysis, confirmed by a cluster analysis, sustain the hypothesis of structural transition in the U.S. economy. We find that by 1977 sixteen U.S. manufacturing industries had experienced transition to the global variant of capitalism while thirty industries remained unchanged. Many of those recording no change were basic industries in regions experiencing significant economic decline during the 1970s. Key Words: cluster analysisdiscriminant analysisfalling rate of profitglobal capitalismU.S. manufacturingmonopoly capitalismrestructuringtransition