"Fiscal Crisis of the State" refers to the tendency of
government expenditures to outpace revenues in the U.S. in the late
1960s and early 1970s, but its relevance to other countries of the
period and also in today's global economy is evident. When
government expenditure constitutes a larger and larger share of
total economy theorists who ignore the impact of the state budget
do so at their own (and capitalism's) peril. This volume examines
how changes in tax rates and tax structure used to regulate private
economic activity. O'Connor theorizes that particular expenditures
and programs and the budget as a whole can be understood only in
terms of power relationships within the private economy. O'Connor's
analysis includes an anatomy of American state capitalism,
political power and budgetary control in the United States, social
capital expenditures, social expenses of production, financing the
budget, and the scope and limits of reform. He shows that the
simultaneous growth of monopoly power and the state itself generate
an increasingly severe social crisis. State monopolies indirectly
determine the state budget by generating needs that the state must
satisfy. The state administration organizes production as a result
of a series of political decisions. Over time, there is a tendency
for what O'Connor calls the social expenses of production to rise,
and the state is increasingly compelled to socialize these
expenses. The state has three ways to finance increased budgetary
outlays: create state enterprises that produce social expenditures;
issue debt and borrowing against further tax revenues; raise tax
rates and introduce new taxes. None of these mechanisms are
satisfactory. Neither the development of state enterprise nor the
growth of state debt liberates the state from fiscal concerns.
Similarly, tax finance is a form of economic exploitation and thus
a problem for class analysis. O'Connor contends that the fiscal
crisis of the capitalist state is the inevitable consequence of the
structural gap between state expenditures and revenues. The state's
only way to ameliorate the fiscal crisis is to accelerate the
growth of the social-industrial complex. In his new introduction,
O'Connor describes "The Fiscal Crisis of the State" as "the product
of a unique combination of personal, intellectual, and political
experiencesa." He goes on to explain the origins of his theory and
the consequences of "The Fiscal Crisis of the State." He answers
the question "is there a fiscal crisis today?" and discusses
changes in fiscal policy since the '60s and '70s. James O'Connor is
emeritus professor in the Department of Sociology at the University
of California at Santa Cruz.
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