Thomas Palley

This summer I have been reading selections from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. The Gramscian construct of cultural hegemony is brilliantly insightful and something every political economist should be aware of. The notebook entries are also very akin to blogs in construction and length.

Given my recent suspension by the Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES) for posting an announcement of an article on the political economic impacts of the Ukraine war (“The Ukraine war and Europe’s deepening march of folly”), that has prompted me to wonder if Gramsci would have also been banned had he posted his notebook entries from his prison cell? Sadly, the answer seems to be “Yes”.

This paper presents a theory and model of long-run cycles in income inequality. The model explains the historical pattern of income distribution identified by Kuznets (1955) and Piketty (2014). It breaks with conventional marginal product theory which claims functional income distribution is determined by the technological conditions of production. Instead, it emphasizes the role of socio-political forces that shape and drive fluctuations in the level of popular political organizations, which then impact distribution. That impact includes assessment and attribution of productivity contributions. The model provides a framework for interpreting the historical evolution of income distribution and inequality, and for reflecting on current conditions and possible future developments. The core message is twofold. First, socio-political developments matter for income distribution. Second, if those developments are cyclical, income distribution will also exhibit cyclicality.

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