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Class Theory and History
First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
368 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 10, 2017
Resnich and Wolff have used Marx's class theory of surplus value as a lens through which to evaluate the USSR from the 1917 Bolshevik revolution through its collapse and dissolution around 1990.
This theory says that capitalism, like slavery and feudalism before it, is an exploitive system because the people who do the actual work that generates profit are not the ones who appropriate and distribute that same profit. Communism, the theory continues, is a system where the people who do the work are the same people who appropriate and distribute the profits from that work.
Using this theory and its class implications, the authors conclude that aside from some agricultural collectives begun in the '30s, communism was never really installed in the USSR. Instead, a form of state capitalism was achieved that never really conceived its goal as communistic in Marx's sense. Instead, the ideal was state-controlled distribution as opposed to market-based, and abolition of private property. While lip-service was paid to acting in the worker's best interests, the system never actually gave individual workers any say over the disposition of the fruits of their labor. As such, what successive generations (in the USSR and the West as well) were taught was a communistic society, was actually an exploitive system where the state (as opposed to private enterprise in the West) appropriated and distributed the profits.
The conclusions painstakingly developed in this book reinforce the intuitive feeling one gets studying the Cold War or observing the two-party system in modern US politics: that the main ideological differences between the two sides are a sham and distraction from Marx's more fundamental dichotomy. The opposition between exploitive and non-exploitive systems.
This theory says that capitalism, like slavery and feudalism before it, is an exploitive system because the people who do the actual work that generates profit are not the ones who appropriate and distribute that same profit. Communism, the theory continues, is a system where the people who do the work are the same people who appropriate and distribute the profits from that work.
Using this theory and its class implications, the authors conclude that aside from some agricultural collectives begun in the '30s, communism was never really installed in the USSR. Instead, a form of state capitalism was achieved that never really conceived its goal as communistic in Marx's sense. Instead, the ideal was state-controlled distribution as opposed to market-based, and abolition of private property. While lip-service was paid to acting in the worker's best interests, the system never actually gave individual workers any say over the disposition of the fruits of their labor. As such, what successive generations (in the USSR and the West as well) were taught was a communistic society, was actually an exploitive system where the state (as opposed to private enterprise in the West) appropriated and distributed the profits.
The conclusions painstakingly developed in this book reinforce the intuitive feeling one gets studying the Cold War or observing the two-party system in modern US politics: that the main ideological differences between the two sides are a sham and distraction from Marx's more fundamental dichotomy. The opposition between exploitive and non-exploitive systems.
January 29, 2020
A great, in-depth Marxian analysis of the USSR and its class contradictions. I read "Socialism Betrayed" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny before reading this and found this book to be a great compliment to it, exploring the deeper, economic details behind the problems only briefly outlined in "Socialism Betrayed" (even going over issues which that book hadn't even mentioned, such as the 1923 "Scissors Crisis").
More orthodox Marxists may not like this book, since Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick conduct their analysis using a very different theory of class than the more "classical" Marxist theory of class as defined in terms of property-relations (who does and doesn't own means of production). Under this different theory of class, still based in Marx, class is understood instead in terms of relation to surplus (who produces, appropriates and/or distributes the surplus within a society determines their class). Wolff and Resnick also come to the conclusion that the hegemonic (main or "official") class structure of the USSR wasn't actually socialist, but was rather state capitalist (which is why, they argue, the swing back into private capitalism after the USSR's collapse never came with a violent revolution, since the USSR had never left capitalism to begin with).
Whether or not one agrees with Wolff's and Resnick's definition of class or their conclusion about the overall class structure of the USSR's economy, I think their analysis is indispensable since it brings much greater clarity to the problems the USSR faced and the contradictions that were at the heart of them.
More orthodox Marxists may not like this book, since Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick conduct their analysis using a very different theory of class than the more "classical" Marxist theory of class as defined in terms of property-relations (who does and doesn't own means of production). Under this different theory of class, still based in Marx, class is understood instead in terms of relation to surplus (who produces, appropriates and/or distributes the surplus within a society determines their class). Wolff and Resnick also come to the conclusion that the hegemonic (main or "official") class structure of the USSR wasn't actually socialist, but was rather state capitalist (which is why, they argue, the swing back into private capitalism after the USSR's collapse never came with a violent revolution, since the USSR had never left capitalism to begin with).
Whether or not one agrees with Wolff's and Resnick's definition of class or their conclusion about the overall class structure of the USSR's economy, I think their analysis is indispensable since it brings much greater clarity to the problems the USSR faced and the contradictions that were at the heart of them.
March 14, 2022
More crap from the parasitic class. Sadly, Russia never experienced Capitalism. It was on its way out of the Dark Ages when what Resnick calls Communism brought more death and terror. Sadly, apart several debatable months, Russia hasn't experienced Communism either. And Resnick keeps pushing for this or that sort of Socialism, while the Emperor has no clothes.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews