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The Italian Economists and the Crisis of the Nineteenseventies. The Rise and Fall of the "Conflict Paradigm"

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  • Piero Bini

Abstract

Between 1969 and the early nineteen-eighties a unique parabola took place in Italy that was both historical and theoretical. We are referring here to the birth, development and decline of a research project that had assumed Sraffa?s book Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities as its basic reference. At the beginning of this debate, the characteristics of Sraffa?s theory as an "open" scheme enabled it to produce a theoretical core having multiple derivations (both Keynesian and Marxian). In this system of scientific synergies a special role was played by the discussion concerning wages as "independent variable". The result was a meta-theoretical concept of wage as a price governed prevalently by social forces and power relations. We have called this complex research programme the "conflict paradigm". Successively the paper considers the reasons which, since the mid-seventies, started to corrode this compound doctrinaire alliance, first of all the intellectual disorientation caused by both the acute expressions of crisis in the second half of nineteen-seventies, and the criticism against the Sraffa?s theory as an "open" scheme, as a factor that deprived the study of economics of the solid anchor of equilibrium analysis.

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  • Piero Bini, 2013. "The Italian Economists and the Crisis of the Nineteenseventies. The Rise and Fall of the "Conflict Paradigm"," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2013(1), pages 73-101.
    • Handle: RePEc:fan:spespe:v:html10.3280/spe2013-001005
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    Cited by:

    1. Francesco Cattabrini & Fabio Masini, 2017. "Balance of Payment, Wage Indexation and Growth: the Role of CESPE in Italian Policy-Making in the 1970s," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2017(2), pages 25-48.
    2. Dafano, Alessandro, 2016. "Back to the long-run: the “Development Operation” as a supply-side policy by the Italian Industrial Association during the Seventies," MPRA Paper 71591, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Giovanni Michelagnoli, 2017. "The case of ISEL within the strategy of CISL," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2017(2), pages 103-116.
    4. Piero Bini, 2018. "Power and Economics in Italy: From the Social Conflicts of the 1970s to the Euro-Crisis," Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, in: Manuela Mosca (ed.), Power in Economic Thought, chapter 13, pages 349-381, Palgrave Macmillan.

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    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • B22 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Macroeconomics
    • B51 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Socialist; Marxian; Sraffian

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