The "rule" and Fall of the Phillips Curve

The intensification of the general crisis of capitalism and mounting economic difficulties are accompanied by tougher competition among the leading directions of bourgeois political economy. This struggle is particularly graphic in the case of such acute economic and social problems as unemployment and inflation. The connection between the level of unemployment and the rate of inflationary price rises in modern bourgeois macroeconomic theory is usually interpreted in terms of the so-called Phillips curve. Accordingly, the debate surrounding the Phillips curve in the seventies and early eighties also brought to light the most characteristic changes in the methods employed in the ideological defense of the capitalist system.