Wolfe was part of 'insurgency' in US poli sci in late 60s & early 70s that resulted in Caucus for a New Political Science...he was also part of Kapitalistate collective (if memory serves) which put out a good journal for awhile...I benefitted from a number of his works from that period, including:
An End to Political Science (ed. with Marvin Surkin) Political Analysis: An Unorthodox Approach (written with Charles McCoy) Seamy Side of Democracy: Repression in America Limits of Legitimacy: Political Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism Rise & Fall of Soviet Threat: Domestic Sources of the Cold War Consensus America's Impasse: Rise & Fall of the Politics of Growth (premature subtitle?)
by late 80s, he was a 'civil society' guy (see Whose Keeper? Social Science & Moral Obligation)...basic argument: principal responsibility for human development muust be assigned neither to the market (US), nor to government (Scandinavia), but to moral and social relations of said civil society...where market or gov't ceases being servant of civil society and begins to replace its essential functions, loss of moral agency and weakened human bonding results, life becomes less tolerable...Wolfe includes family. commnity customs, rituals of friendship & mutual concern as part of civil society...in US, he finds family breakdown stemming from invasion of commercial values at expense of mutual commitment while in Scandanavia, children & elderly becomes wards of impersonbal bureaucracy...Wolfe says latter is preferable to former, but question of personal moral responsibility and loss of 'something essential' to society via institutional appropriation remain...this begins to sound like the smarmy communitarianism of Amitai Etzioni...Michael Hoover