For an interesting analysis of how the sociology of class and industrial warfare was replaced, even before Gunnar Myrdal, by America's racial dilemma over the integration or "the disappearance of the Negro", see Dorothy Ross' history of American social science and Wm Darity's disturbing history of racism in the early 20th century economics profession.
In reaction to this racial dilemma, the left has thought that what needed to be explained is why blacks and other "colonial" minorities, denied of effective citzenship rights either de facto or de jure, neither wanted nor were going to be assimilated into Amerikka in the same fashion as various "immigrant" European ethnic groups who became flag waving white nationalists in the process (there is of course the fascinating case of how Indian immigrants tried to win citzenship rights by referring to their shared Aryan ancestry with Europeans; there is also the fascinating case of the deportation of Indian immigrants who had been assisting the armed anti colonial movement, as they failed to win the American courts' sympathy by appeals to their shared history as British colonial subjects). Bob Blauner really began such analysis with his analysis of internal colonialism, and there is now a burgeoning literature on how European ethnics became white.
Yet since the problem of explaining the social dynamics of the assimilation and whitening of European immigrants relative to racialized internal colonials was clearly posed in the early 70s, the income of all high school graduates, regardless of ethnicity or putative race, has been falling absolutely and relatively to the college educated.
For example, from Monday's NYT (1/4/99, p. C10), we find the following:
"...from 1969 to 1997, when the earnings of college graduates rose briskly, the inflation adjusted median earnings of white male high school graduates 25-34 fell nearly 30 percent...the earnings of these less skilled white workers fell so far that they earned less in 1997 than their black counterparts had earned almost 30 years earlier. And those black male high school graduates fared almost as badly. Form 1969 to 1997, their inflation adjusted earnings fell 25 percent."
This new inequality crisis has yet to incite the same sort of passion and analysis from the left that the crisis in racial inequality still does. There may be reasons for this; for example, the NYT does not specify the level of racial inequality within the so called unskilled; nor does it specify whether after the 34 the trajectory of high school educated whites improves relative to high school educated blacks. But still it does suggest that where racial inequality is no longer legitimate, the inequality of merely high school educated people seems more understandable to Ph.D.leftist sociologists and economists who may wish to ascend to leadership in a state socialist society on the basis of their own intellectual powers.
But the new inequality crisis has received considerable attention from mainstream sociologists and economists.
Some explain it in terms of the rational workings of supply and demand, as skill intensive technological change has rendered skilled workers scarce relative to their supply--more so in the US than, say, Canada or Germany which have committed more resources to education. The idea of skill intensive technological change has now been formalized by such leading economists as E Helpman and Paul Romer in terms of the assimilation of what is called radical new general purpose technologies.There is now even an attempt to provide a metaphysical philosophy for a skill intensive change and the new learning economy by veteran anti Marxist Geoff Hodgson, Economics and Utopia.
Where Marx understood unemployment in terms of a race between mechanization and the rate of accumulation, the new economists understand it in terms of a race between the skill intensity of technological change and the education level of the workforce. The economists thus hope that the incentive of relative wage inequality, coupled with some educational initiatives, will induce upgrading by the unskilled. Of course some worry that the unskilled, among whom minorities are over-represented, are genetically unfit to be upgraded and thus head start and other educational ventures are a waste of of the tax money of good Americans. Others worry that due to the dullness of the unskilled, the educational monies required would necessitate an excessive tax burden on the good skilled people of America.
There are two other explanations for wage inequality. One is that foreign trade indirectly and immigration directly has increased the supply of unkskilled workers relative to demand. Adrian Wood has enjoyed spats with Robert Lawrence and Jagdish Bhawati over this. A minor school has emphasized that the political defeat of Keynesianism--and the unemployment and sluggish growth therfrom--are the efficient causes of the inequality crisis; the most important development of this argument is of course James Galbraith's. Some may argue that successful use of racial politics has allowed the right, on behalf of rentier and financial interests generally, to enjoy the political ascendancy with which to beat down the mildly inflationary and redistributive Keynesianism of low interest rates and budget deficits.
We now have to entertain political versus economic explanations for the defeat of Keynesianism. And this brings us back, as always, to Mattick.
Yours, Rakesh