The ‘microfoundations’ metaphor had been used by mainstream macroeconomists with the intention of explaining macroeconomics in terms of microeconomics, or more precisely in terms of statements about individuals, viewed as representative agents with rational expectations who maximise lifetime utility, subject to shocks within a general equilibrium framework. Of the three reasons for rejecting this explanatory strategy, the focus here is on downward causation. Although individuals are heavily influenced by society, their decisions and behaviour are not sufficient as the explanatory foundations for a macrotheory.

This essay is a review of and tribute to the life and contributions of Nina Shapiro, who passed away this year. Shapiro was an American Post-Keynesian economist, who was a bridge figure in radical economics, connecting Marx to Keynes, Schumpeter to Kaldor, the behavior of the firm to the dynamics of the macroeconomy, and the process of innovation to the organization of production and accumulation. She was seminal to important moments in the history of radical economics in the US, including the formation of the Hegel-inspired journal Social Concept in the 1980s and the Rutgers University’s Post-Keynesian circle in the 1980s and 1990s. Shapiro’s deeply philosophical and dialectical approach to firm behavior, innovation, and business cycles led her to theorize the “revolutionary character” of Post-Keynesian economics and to formulate a critique of the competitive neoclassical firm which, she argued, is at odds with the logic of capitalism in which firms seek to make profit and grow.

After the triumph of the October Revolution in Russia the issue of how to develop a backward economy towards a socialist society took pre-eminence. The relationship between agriculture and industry was one of the key issues. In this respect, the Left Opposition argued in favour of a Big Push for industrialisation financed through the exploitation of the peasantry, while the Right Deviation defended adjusting industrial growth to the development of the agricultural surplus. The First 5-Year Plan meant the complete victory of one of these positions. Unfortunately, all discussions were banned subsequently, the leading figures of these two factions were expelled from the Party and many of them executed. Yet, this problem was of the utmost importance for underdeveloped countries, as Development Economics was to discover 25 years later. This new branch of Economics would have benefitted greatly from the lessons of the Soviet experience regarding industrialisation, as well as from the theoretical discussions surrounding it.

The Soviet Union experienced two very pronounced changes of direction in 1921 and 1929. At the beginning of the decade, the strategy of «War Communism» was abandoned, substituted by the completely different «New Economic Policy» (NEP); and changed again, at the end of those years, towards a strategy of forced industrialization based on the collectivisation of the agricultural sector. In recent years, some specialists have argued that this second change was unnecessary: i.e., rapid industrialization could have been achieved within the framework of NEP and the Law of Value. The purpose of this paper is to argue, from a theoretical point of view, and with the help of the model that best summarizes the strategy of rapid industrialization, that this new interpretation cannot be sustained, and that those authors that defended the incompatibility of NEP and rapid industrialization were correct.

Duménil and Levy’s Economics of the Profit Rate makes major contributions to our theoretical and empirical understanding of advanced capitalist economies. Questions and problems for further research raised by their work concern their definition of stability, the relation of finance to production, the role of the profit rate in the Great Depression, the secular rise in real wages and the pattern of technical change in the U.S. economy, econometric problems identifying low frequency macroeconomic patterns, and the relation of the corporate revolution to macroeconomic performance.