Background
GORDON, David M. was born in 1944 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America.
GORDON, David M. was born in 1944 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America.
Bachelor of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy Harvard University, 1965, 1971.
Lector Economics, Yale University,
1969-1970. Research Association, National Bureau of Economie Research, New York, New York, United States of America, 1970-1972. Research Association, Center Education Policy Research, Harvard University, 1972-1973.
Assistant Professor, Association Professor, New School Social Research,
1973-1977, 1977-1983. Visiting, Institute, Institution Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, 1978. Professor of Economics, Graduate Faculty, New School Social Research, New York City, New York, United States of America, since 1983.
Editorial Boards, Dialectical Anthropology, since 1977, New Political Science, 198Q-. Association Editor, Cambridge Journal of Economics,
1978-.
(Book by Gordon, David M)
With many others, I’ve sought since the late 1960s
to constitute a coherent and robust ‘radical’ or neo-Marxist alternative to mainstream economics — not simply to interpret the world through different lenses, as our seminal source might have put it, but also to change it fundamentally.
Analytically, this quest has propelled me through discourses on critical methodology, analyses of labour segmentation and urban transformation, contributions to the theory of long swings and stages of capitalist development, and, most recently, investigations of the dynamics of postwar United States capitalism and particularly of declining profitability and the productivity slowdown. Institutionally, we’ve been forced to devote substantial energy to establishing alternative bases within the economics profession, in my case particularly through efforts at constructing a serious graduate programme in political economy at the New School for Social Research.
Politically, several of us have turned increasingly to formulation of discrete and concrete alternative policy proposals which embody the apparently bizarre notion that we can transcend the alleged trade-off between equity and efficiency, that fairness, decency, equality and democracy actually make good economic sense. Beyond the Waste Land, with Bowles and Weisskopf, reflects one major step in this direction.
Another is an independent research and educational institute which I founded, the Centre for Democratic Alternatives. We aim to put socialist democracy on the agenda in the United States, which is precisely where it belongs.