1946–
A political economist of Soviet system change
In Revolution from Above, Kotz argued that the USSR's ruling party-state elite itself dismantled the Soviet system in pursuit of greater wealth and power.
David M. Kotz is an American economist whose work examines institutional change and political economy. With Fred Weir, he interpreted the Soviet demise not simply as economic collapse and popular revolt, but as a process in which the party-state elite dismantled the system in pursuit of greater wealth and power. Their book Revolution from Above links Soviet stagnation, perestroika, the formation of a pro-capitalist coalition, and Russia's subsequent political economy.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1978Coauthor of Bank Control of Large Corporations in the U.S.
- 1994Coeditor of Social Structures of Accumulation
- 1997Published Revolution from Above with Fred Weir
- 2007Published Russia's Path from Gorbachev to Putin with Fred Weir
- 2015Published The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism
- 2021Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Related historical events
- 1985–1991Perestroika and GlasnostEconomist who analyzed perestroikaIn Revolution from Above, he linked perestroika to Soviet stagnation and the formation of a pro-capitalist coalition.
- 1991The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSRResearcher of elite motivationsAnalyzed the coup and Soviet collapse as the party-state elite's abandonment of socialism for personal gain.
Social Structure of Accumulation Theory and the Analysis of Capitalist Stages
Kotz defines his own research areas as social structures of accumulation (SSA) theory, neoliberalism, economic crisis theory, and the Russian and Chinese economies. SSA theory seeks to explain the long waves, averaging about fifty or sixty years for a complete cycle, that have characterized capitalist economic growth, and the distinct stages of capitalism that have marked each long upswing. The focus of the theory is on the institutional arrangements that help to sustain long-wave upswings. Institutions can be understood narrowly as organizations, such as universities or the World Bank, or more broadly as made up of customs, habits, and expectations; in that broader sense they are typically country- or culture-specific.
Kotz worked within this tradition as coeditor and contributor. With Terrence McDonough and Michael Reich he coedited Social Structures of Accumulation: The Political Economy of Growth and Crisis (1994) and, with the same coeditors, Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the 21st Century (2010); in 2021 he coedited the Handbook of Social Structure of Accumulation Theory with McDonough and Cian McMahon. His articles have appeared in journals including Review of Radical Political Economics, New Left Review, and Monthly Review, indicating that theoretical work on stages of U.S. capitalism has been a second axis of his scholarship alongside his research on Soviet system change.
This framework feeds into his analysis of neoliberalism. In The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism (2015) he treats neoliberalism as a historical stage of capitalism, and in 2024 he published Socialism for Today: Escaping the Cruelties of Capitalism. He argues that postwar regulated capitalism delivered gains such as rising labor productivity and wages and relatively stable income inequality, but could not be sustained in the long run because of the capitalists' drive to resist restraints on profit maximization; after the crisis of the 1970s it gave way to neoliberal reforms. Reviewing how socialism re-emerged as a political alternative after the 2008 Great Recession, he argues for democratic socialism, the replacement of capitalism itself, rather than reformist alternatives such as social democracy or market socialism. Beyond the university, he developed curricula and gave workshops in popular economics for the AFL-CIO Education Department and the Center for Popular Economics.