AMERICA AND ENGLAND
Robert Lekachman
CAPITALISM: THE END OF THE JOURNEY
EDITORS ' NOTE:
The following pieces by Robert Lekachman and Lewis
Coser are part ofa continuing series ofcomments on the political and
economic crisis in America and Western Europe.
By now it is probably plain to everybody but professional
economists that October 1973 marked the conclusion of an unusual
quarter century of detente in the relationships of labor and capital ,
rich and poor, in the advanced capitalist societies of Western Europe ,
North America, and Japan .
In
all of these countries , though most
grudgingly in our own, politicians promised and (astonishingly)
delivered more generous old-age pensions , subsidized health care ,
public housing , and unemployment benefits . Exorcising traditional
fears of mass unemployment , all governments pledged themselves–
the United States once again least wholeheartedly-to the main–
tenance of full employment . The durable heritage of keynesian
economics was to be found in this nearly universal political
assumption that governments were electorally responsible for running
the industrial machinery at nearly maximum speed nearly all the
time . Under the new rules, parliamentary leaders could survive only
brief and shallow recessions .
Mter World War II, these successes of capitalism were facilitated
under the terms of a social contract at once implicit and fragile . By
common consent, corporations and unions tacitly agreed to refrain
from serious attempts to alter existing distributions of income,
wealth, and power , at least so long as rapid economic growth simul–
taneously financed more social services and annual gains in real in–
come for both capitalists and their employees. As time passed , blue–
and white-collar workers gained confidence that the horrors of the
