[URPE] URPE Steering Committee letter to members

[PaddyQuick at aol.com]

December 20, 2010 
Dear URPE members, 
At  the recent Steering Committee meeting on November 20 and 21, we had a 
lengthy  in-depth discussion about what URPE is doing and what URPE should be 
doing  today. We started off by acknowledging the success involved in still 
existing  and still fighting the good fight more than 40 years after our 
founding, when  quite a number of other groups founded in that period have 
faded  away. 
We  have the same mission today that we started with, namely the 
development and  dissemination of radical political economics, but the world today is 
different  from 40 years ago. The Steering Committee therefore undertook a 
comprehensive  review of the activities of our organization in order to see 
what we were doing  well, and what needed to be changed.  As a result of this 
review, it agreed to start up several new projects  which will require the 
redirection of the energies of Steering Committee  members, and which, it is 
hoped, will draw on the energies of other URPE  members. It also agreed  
not to hold  an URPE Summer Conference in 2011, and to review, at its Fall 
2011 meeting, the  overall activities of the year in order to decide whether or 
not to hold future  Summer Conferences. URPE members are encouraged to read 
below the results of the SC’s review and its decisions, and, of course, to  
share their reactions to them.  
The  Steering Committee began its review with a recognition of the 
significance of  the Review of Radical Political  Economics (RRPE) for the 
organization as a whole. RRPE is the primary URPE  vehicle for the publication of new 
work in the field of radical political  economy, work which both challenges 
the dominant orthodoxy and provides  alternative  approaches to the  
challenge of understanding the political economy of the world today. It has  
achieved national and international recognition within the academic community,  
and is respected even by many who disagree with its content.  It provides 
radical political economists  within academia with a place for the respectful 
consideration of their work and  the articles that are accepted contribute to 
the progress of their careers. It is perhaps the biggest URPE project as 
measured by time that URPE  members put into it as members of its Editorial 
Board and by the work of its  Managing Editor, Hazel Dayton Gunn. 
The  Steering Committee focused its attention then on its own activities 
and  projects: 
i.                    An  URPE project closely connected to the RRPE is the 
organization of URPE sessions  at the annual meetings of the American 
Social Sciences Association (ASSA.) The  ASSA organizers are appointed by the 
Steering Committee, while the RRPE  publishes the Proceedings in one of its 
four annual issues.   
ii.                  Growing in importance is URPE participation in the 
Eastern Economic  Association (EEA) with 21 sessions in the 2011 meetings. This 
also is a Steering  Committee initiative.  It is  noteworthy for the 
substantial involvement of graduate students in not only the  presentations but 
also the planning. The Steering Committee hopes to organize  participation in 
other academic conferences in the future.   
iii.                Job  listings.  We have begun to list on  our web site 
job openings, mainly but not exclusively in  universities. 
iv.                Course syllabi.  This newly  revived SC project aims to 
assist people who are teaching courses with radical  political economic 
content. Many reading lists are already posted on the  website, including some 
in Spanish, and more will be put up over the next year.   
v.                  Bibliographies. The Steering Committee has begun to 
solicit and ask for  volunteers to provide bibliographies (with abstracts) on 
various topics for  posting on the Website. Individual URPE members engaged 
in research in  particular areas will share their selection of useful 
articles and books, and  update their lists annually.  The  first such 
bibliography, on International Economics, is now available:   
_http://www.urpe.org/res/standardecon/intleconomics.html_ 
(http://www.urpe.org/res/standardecon/intleconomics.html)   
vi.                The  URPE Website. This is itself, of course, an ongoing 
project, and one on which  both the Steering Committee and the RRPE 
Editorial Board have devoted  considerable energy.  But there is  clearly a lot 
more work to be done to make radical political economics available  to those 
who rely on the internet for information.  Here we continue to look for 
suggestions  from the membership on what sort of information on the Website could 
help our  work. 
URPE’s presence outside of academia is still very  limited, although 
several of the projects involved, and in particular the  Website have considerable 
potential to reach beyond this.  Nonetheless, the Steering Committee  noted 
as a weakness in our organization its limited outreach to those outside of  
academia, while noting the following projects that do contribute 
specifically to  this part of our mission: 
vii.              Speakers Bureau – Economy Connection.  Economy 
Connection, under the leadership  of Ruthie Indeck, brings URPE speakers together with 
organizations both in and  out of universities, while also providing people 
with information on other  resources. 
viii.            The  URPE listserve, which began four years ago, is 
increasing successful. It has  added a degree of connectedness to URPE members, 
largely scattered throughout  academic departments or activist organizations 
across the country. The goal has  been to make a low volume list, yet get out 
information on relevant meetings,  books, etc, that would be of interest to 
our members. Recently a number of  people have started to use it to get 
information from other members concerning  work and projects they are engaged 
in – the sort of thing you’d ask a colleague  in your department if one had 
a department of radical political  economists. 
ix.                URPE  Facebook and blog.  We have begun to  develop 
these two channels for communication, through which people can engage in  
extended conversations.  We are  working on determining exactly how URPE members 
might like to use these.   
x.                  Left  Forum. URPE continues to be one of the many 
organizations that organize panels  at this annual event, and it will continue to 
do  so. 
xi.                Brooklyn Conference.  URPE  organized a one-day 
conference in October 2009 in Brooklyn which was designed to  bring together people 
involved in theoretical and practical work on several of  the issues 
confronting us today.  A  second conference is planned for October  2011. 
xii.              URPE  Newsletter. The Newsletter goes out in paper form 
to all members, as well as to  libraries, but is also available on the URPE 
website. It carries information on  URPE events, and occasional short 
articles. We will continue to consider the  pros and cons of publishing it 
electronically, given that some of us just like  to get things and read things in 
paper form. The cost of publishing it and  mailing it is not large and not a 
significant consideration. Our main question  right now is what else it could 
do that would be useful for our  membership. 
The  Steering Committee committed itself to two new projects aimed 
specifically at  increasing URPE’s outreach to the non-academic sections of the  
population: 
xiii.            Participation in conferences of activists.  URPE has had 
almost no organized  presence at such major gatherings of activists as the US 
Social Forum.  The Steering Committee will work to  organize groups of URPE 
members to attend such events and contribute to the work  that they are 
engaged in. 
xiv.            URPE  Fact Sheets.  URPE will develop a  set of short 
(one-page) fact sheets on topics of interest to those engaged in  economic, 
political, and social struggles.   The Fact Sheets will consist of  basic 
information together with analyses based on  radical political economic theory, and 
 will be available on the website as well as in hard copy.  Members will be 
encouraged to discussion  their content on the URPE blog, and an edited 
version of such discussions may,  with the permission of authors, be added to 
the Fact Sheets and printed in the  URPE Newsletter. The Fact Sheets will be 
solicited and reviewed by a newly  constituted body of URPE members, to be 
called the URPE Fact Sheet Advisory  Board.  They will be signed by their  
authors, and will be published with a statement that views expressed do not  
necessarily reflect the views of URPE as an organization.  (Further 
information on this project  will be distributed shortly.)  
The URPE  Summer Conference 
In  order to accomplish these goals, it was clear to the Steering Committee 
that it  would be necessary to reallocate our resources, particularly our 
time  resources.  And the big issue there  was the time spent on organizing 
the Summer Conference.   
Most of the people on the SC have been to past Summer  Conferences, some to 
many of them. This made even considering cancelling it very  difficult. Put 
simply, most of us, like many of you reading this, love the URPE  summer 
conference. We think it has provided a place particularly both younger  and 
older members can present their work, including work that is in its early  
stages, in a supportive environment. Over the years it has played important  
roles in both developing and disseminating radical political economics. In  
addition, we have loved seeing old friends year after year, watching each  
other's children grow up, sharing ideas between students, professors, and  
activists.  We have loved the  "working vacations" in beautiful settings. The 
summer conference has been both a  social event and an academic/activist one. 
And we believe the feeling of  intimacy and trust at URPE’s Summer 
Conferences is one important reason that  URPE has stayed alive as a source of 
radical political economy for 42  years. 
But  here are the realities we considered. We estimate that over the last 4 
or 5  years organization of the summer conference has taken up 40-50% of 
the time of  the National Office Coordinator. In addition, a large part of 
both the Spring  and Fall Steering Committee meetings have been taken up with 
picking a topic,  deciding who to approach for plenaries, talking about 
workshops, as well as  dealing with organizing the event. The actual organization 
of the conference  then took a large amount of the time and energy, which 
could have been spent on  other URPE projects.  
The  conference always drew a significant number of non-URPE members, which 
was a  good thing, but the number of URPE members who have come recently 
has been  fairly small. It became clear that a disproportionate amount of  
work was involved in a project which  served only about 10% of the 
organization, and that this cut into our ability to  serve URPE members as a whole and 
to build radical political economy beyond  that. 
There is also the issue of the Annual Business Meeting,  which from the 
beginning was a central reason for the Sumer Conference.  Summer Conference 
business meetings  barely met the quorum needed for decision-making – 25 
members or 7% of the  membership, whichever is smaller (they are presently about 
the same.)  This last summer, 2010, we had less than  this.   
There is another motif behind all of this. When the  summer conference was 
born, and for many decades, it was one of very few places  the radical 
political economists could get together and both develop their work  and socially 
interact. Now, there are quite a few. In addition to URPE sessions  at the 
ASSA and the EEA, many URPE people attend the Western Economic  Association 
meetings. In addition there are the meetings of Historical  Materialism in 
New York, Toronto and London. Every three years there is Marx  Actuel in 
Paris, and the Rethinking Marxism Conference in Amherst. The World  Association  
for Political Ecoonomy  (WAPE), a new organization with its own journal, 
has a yearly conference, and  this coming May URPE is co-sponsoring its 
conference in Amherst. A European  Political Economy group IIPPE has a yearly 
conference. And there are many more  Heterodox conferences.  
Taking all of this into account, the Steering Committee  voted to cancel 
the 2011 Summer Conference.  The 2011 Business (or Membership)  Meeting will 
be held on Sunday October 2, following the Brooklyn Conference on  Saturday 
October 1.  The Steering  Committee will then evaluate where we are at and 
how things have worked out at  its Fall 2011 meeting.  In the  meantime we 
welcome ideas from all members on our decisions and our  plans. 
Conclusion 
In  summary, although the Steering Committee’s decision to cancel the 2011 
Summer  Conference was a difficult one, the Committee is looking forward to 
the coming  year.  We are excited by the  projects in place and by the 
opportunity to use our energies to strengthen the  organization so that it can 
continue to develop and disseminate radical  political economics.  
URPE Steering  Committee 
Frances Boyes 
Jenny Brown 
Al  Campbell 
Scott Carter 
Laura Ebert 
Mathew Forstater 
Armagan Genzici 
Julio Huato 
Laurie Nisonoff 
Patty Lee Parmalee 
Paddy Quick 
Chris Rude 
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