ABSTRACT
State and Discrimination examines the political economy of the Cold War. For the United States (US), competition with the USSR has forced a change in the state’s racial policies and general treatment of minorities, as foreseen by Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma. For the USSR, competition with the US has accelerated the implementation of environmental policies that might well have been delayed until a more propitious time period. And this competitive struggle has forced Soviet planning authorities to imitate or react to US military developments, albeit after some delay, as a result of breakthroughs in US defense and offense technology. At the microeconomic level, however, the operation of most US firms would appear to be remarkably efficient. Opposition to the goal of efficiency in the capitalist firm has been provided by traditional job-conscious, employment-creating trade unions in the US, but their influence seems to be waning over time.
