‘Surplus Theory’ versus Marxian Theory
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Following is a discussion on the page titled: ‘Surplus Theory’ versus Marxian Theory.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!Richard Wolff has sent us the following comment:
Quote:Thank you for sending your email to our website. I am, of course, gratified to see another socialist grappling with the 40 years of work Resnick and I collaborated on to maintain and further develop a tradition of Marxian economics in less than encouraging circumstances. Happily those circumstances have altered drastically at least here, and our work is bearing all sorts of fruits (some of which you can see on the websites indicated below). So it is sad to encounter so poorly reasoned a breezy dismissal of what we have done. The basic mistakes in Marxian theory, the absurd attributions to us of positions we do not take, and so forth accumulate into another one of those overheated denunciations that refer to Marx "turning in his grave." Even the turns of phrase are old, hackneyed, and contentless. Colin Skelly knows what Marx really meant: we lesser mortals only manage with interpretations. Skelly also knows what Marxism and socialism are and expels us and our work from either: how quaintly old-fashioned and irrelevant a bluster. His crude diatribe may serve a purpose beyond self-indulgence: it may reinforce hostile stereotypes of socialists, Marxists and their debates that dissuade so many otherwise interested people from exploring them further.R. WolffRelated links are to be found at this site:http://tinyurl.com/cb9wtrn
It would have been useful if Wolff himself had supported and substantiated his own claims and explained why he thought the article was in error, especially if as he says the mistakes were basic which means easier to point out and explain to us lesser mortals.His reply adds nothing to the actula debate and certainly it does not present a defence of Wolff's and Resnick's reformism that they were accused of in the article.
Oh dear, I seem to have ruffled his feathers. I rather fear that it is Wolff that claims to be more Marxian (or at least more dialectical) than Marx, particularly in their concept of overdetermination. As is fairly typical a defence of Marx meets with the accusation of offering a "crude diatribe" and "overheated denunciations". I would like to think of it as firm but fair. I don't think it was a particularly "breezy dismissal" – the article ran to around 2000 words and the linked piece on the website to a further 2000. I think less is more when it comes to articles on subjects of philosophy and political economy that are aimed at being accessible to all and not merely to an academic audience. Unfortunately Wolff does not substantiate his other criticisms of the article being poorly reasoned, self-indulgent, old-fashioned and irrelevant bluster. I would expect better from the professor. The truth is that Wolff and Resnick are peddling their ideas as Marxian economics when most of the philosohical and historical content that might reasonably be called Marxian has been dismissed as un-Marxian. And the practical outcome? The fruit that has been borne of these 40 years of efforts? Workers Self Directed Enterprises. Glorified bloody co-ops. No thanks.
Incidentally, Stephen Resnick died this January:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_ResnickWhich makes me wonder whether the picture of him on page 17 of this month's Socialist Standard is really him or at least when it was taken.
I'm not sure if they have the right picture for Rich Wolff either. The economist Richard Wolff looks like this:
colinskelly wrote:And the practical outcome? The fruit that has been borne of these 40 years of efforts? Workers Self Directed Enterprises. Glorified bloody co-ops. No thanks.Yes, that's just what Michael Moore advocates at the end of his film Capitalism: A Love Story and he doesn't feel any need to justify this in "Marxist" terms. In fact he comes to it from a Christian/Catholic view. It's no solution of course and certainly isn't socialism.
DJPs picture is of the right Wolff. The picture of Resnick in the Standard is correct.I was saddened to hear of the death of Stephen Resnick. I had an e-mail exchange with him late last year and, while we obviously did not agree with each others views, he took the time to counter my criticisms. He seemed like a genuinely nice, sincere person who took pains to engage with my views. I wrote him a series of questions and he wrote back a 10,000 word response within a few days. This while he was being treated for the leukemia from which he died only months later. Wolff's reply is all the more disappointing in view of this. It would have been useful if he had explained where he thought I had attributed to him positions he does not hold and more particularly the basic errors in Marxian theory that he accuses the article of. But then which Marxian theory? That based on classical Marxism (more or less that of the SPGB) or his own brand of it? Clearly our positions are at odds but his implied claim to be on the side of developing Marxism, of being open as opposed to old, cliched Marxism is at odds with his vituperative rejection of my criticism which smacks of a leftist hatchet job.The following quote is from Wolff's recent book 'Democracy at Work', which sets out to promote his project of the creation of Worker's Self Directed Enterprises (WSDEs) – essentially worker's co-operatives (although he argues that they are something new). In this section he is discussing how these firms may co-exist with other capitalist firms (as if they weren't both capitalist):"WSDEs and capitalist enterprises will … manage their challenges and disappointments differently. Consider a WSDE troubled by the problem of falling revenues (because of lack of demand, technological backwardness, or shortage of inputs). That WSDE could well decide to lower individual wages and salaries and thereby enlarge the surplus available to solve the problem (via advertising, installing advanced equipment, securing new input sources, and so on). The workers who collectively lowered their individual wages would be the same workers who received and the used the enlarged surplus to solve the problem. In contrast, workers in a capitalist enterprise would more likely resist such a solution since other people – the capitalists who exploit them – would receive and decide what to do with any extra surplus realized by lowering individual wages. Distrust accumulated from conflicts and struggles between capitalists and workers would contribute to such a result. Thus WSDEs and capitalist enterprises would likely find and implement different responses to similar enterprise problems."Not different solutions but the same solution, one enforced on the workers as a collective employer by themselves the other by a single employer owner. The suggestion is that capitalism run by the workers would avoid the conflict between an employing class and an employed class – the problem is cured, the conflict resolved, by the workers becoming their own employer. It is quite clear that Wolff's cure for capitalism is quite different from anything that Marx worked for or that could reasonably be derived from his writings. It is possible for Wolff to view his WSDE project as Marxian because he re-works Marxian theory into 'surplus theory'. It may have been influenced by Marx's writing but the bulk of it is Wolff's own ideas. He attempts to re-engage the left with Marxian ideas only by changing them into something else. A Wolff in Marxian clothing. The problem is that he is out there teaching, lecturing and broadcasting this stuff as Marxian economics and WSDEs as a Marxian cure for capitalism. And he is getting a lot of attention, particularly in the US.
Check out this article in the Guadian by Wolff title 'Yes there is an alternative to capitalism, Mondragon shows the way'http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/alternative-capitalism-mondragon
As you can see i highlighted his influence in previous post which is a part of a broader movement that i called socialised private propertyhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/socialized-private-property
A recent interview with Wolff here supporting co-ops. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/16/cooperatives-and-workers-self-directed-enterprises/“Yugoslavia is a very interesting example where cooperative enterprises were tried, experimented with. Other examples were the kibbutzim in Israel in the early years of Israel. Many lived and worked in a kibbutz; many were in effect worker or producer co-operatives.…The most successful example… is Mondragon” Both in Yugoslavia and Israel ended up offering no solutions. Yugoslav model was similar to Venezuela, a top-down government initiative. And the Kibbutz have less and less involved and has become more and more a normal business, employing outside wage-labour. Wolff continues with the lie about Mondragon which has been an utter failure. There exists now a two tier work-force, members or non-members of the co-operative. Wolff’s mistaken belief is that “socialism” is simply a change in administration and so if Mondragon gives the appearence of "worker-control" it must be well on the road to socialism. And he accused you of over-simplification !! In "The Myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working-Class Life in a Basque Town", Sharyn Kasmir documents how Mondragon was able to survive Spain's neoliberalization in contrast with other cooperatives and regular capitalist enterprises in the area, largely because Mondragon members identified more strongly with Mondragon than with the working class, and so they were willing to put up with increasing work loads, falling income, and a corporate restructuring that rendered Mondragon much less democratic and egalitarian than before. Kasmir conclusion was that capital tends to force cooperatives to either fold or become increasingly similar to regular capitalist enterprises. The exact same analysis as we have on them. I hope you aren't going to let Wolff have the last word, Colin.
colinskelly wrote:A Wolff in Marxian clothing.I like it. The trouble is that his video When Capitalism Hits the Fan is well presented and even got a favourable reception when it was shown at one of our party meetings in Clapham so he has some standing amongst critics of capitalism (it actually gives an underconsumptionist theory of the crisis which we wouldn't accept but is still good general anti-capitalist material and only mentions his "workers cooperatives" hobby horse in passing).We've been battling against this idea of workers control of the market system for ages, going back to old Solidarity Group (a breakaway Trotskyist group which came to abandon vanguardism) in the 1960s and 197os. I see that somebody has recently reproduced our 1969 article on them on their blog:http://forworkerspower.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/the-solidarity-group-not-so-solid-spgb-1969/So others agree us on this. Anyone know who this blogger is?
There is some good stuff in Wolff and Resnick's work on the roots of the current crisis, atlhough the underconsumptionism tends to push it towards Keynesian conclusions (as with David Harvey). I wouldn't disagree that reduced 'effective demand' is part of the cause of the current crisis of capitalism. But beyond 'Capitalism Hits the Fan' and similar responses to the current crisis, their work is very theoretical with a definite agenda ('overdetermination') with its roots in the work of the abstruse Althusser (who after spending a career apparently dissecting the views of Marx, famously revelaed that he had hardly read any Marx). They are explicit that they are pursuing the 'development' of Marxian theory but not (except in saying it is different from crude, reductionist Marxism) where it differs from classical Marxian theory. The depth of their agenda is not necessarily immediately obvious except to those who already have some familiarity with the works of Marx. WSDEs are easily dismissed, underconsumptionism in its cruder forms can be tackled easily but there is a well-developed philosophical platform behind Wolff that also needs understanding which accepts a version of Marxian economics but rejects philosophical and historical materialism. To my mind an understanding of Marxian economics necessarily involves an understanding and broad acceptance of philosophical and historical materialism. Wolff is someone who appears to be part of the way to our analysis but is in fact vociferously opposed to it.
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