Marxism
100 Words on Heterodox Economics
To celebrate their 100th issue, the Heterodox Economics Newsletter editors asked about 100 heterodox economists, representing their school of thought, institution, association, country, or region, about the current state and future of heterodox economics. Richard Wolff was one of the individuals they asked and here is his repsonse:Orthodoxy, like heterodoxy, lies largely in its beholders’ eyes. Across the nineteenth century, Marxian economics contested the orthodoxy of classical political economy much as socialism contested capitalism.
Teaching Capitalism’s Crisis
After teaching both graduate and undergraduate economics since 1969 at Yale, at the City University of New York, and, since 1973, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, I retired at the end of 2008. The economic crisis that exploded across the second half of 2008 had suddenly created exciting new opportunities for Marxian critiques of capitalism to reach large audiences. As usual, the economics profession was far behind the flow of events; most economists continued to celebrate the private enterprises and markets that were so spectacularly imploding all around them.
Capitalism, Economy, and Religion: A Christian-Marxist Dialogue
Efforts to ally religion (and especially Christianity) with Marxism (and other sorts of socialism) built on their converging social criticisms as capitalism achieved global hegemony over the last two centuries. The specific objects of those criticisms included inequalities of wealth, inequalities of income, the fetishism of commodities, the idolatrous worship of material objects (and their accumulation) at the expense of spiritual values, and the calculating treatment of human beings as mere means to economic goals.Capitalist Crisis and the Return to Marx
Marxian analyses are now resurfacing in public dialogues about economy and society. A generation of marginalization is fading as a new generation discovers the diverse richness of the Marxian tradition’s insights. Just as an economic crisisin 1848 helped to provoke and shape Marx’s original insights, today’s crisis helps to renew interest in Marxism.In the century before the 1970s, the victims of capitalism’s recurring crises and its critics increasingly turned toward Marx’s and other Marxists’ works.
The Economic Crisis: A Marxian Interpretation
Like most capitalist crises, today’s challenges economists, journalists, and politicians to explain and to overcome it. The post-1930s struggles between neoclassical and Keynesian economics are rejoined. We show that both proved inadequate to preventing crises and served rather to enable and justify (as ‘‘solutions’’ for crises) what were merely oscillations between two forms of capitalism differentiated according to greater or lesser state economic interventions. Our Marxian economic analysis here proceeds differently.Transitions between Economic Systems
The transition out of feudalism to capitalism in Europe, mostly from the 17th to the 19th centuries, took multiple forms. It was uneven as well, happening in different ways at different rates in different places. Marx studied that transition's various dimensions because they offered valuable lessons for the different transition he was interested in: out of capitalism to socialism and communism. One such lesson needs restatement now.Class and Monopoly
Robert Pollin, Editor. Capitalism, Socialism, and Radical Political Economy: Essays in Honor of Howard J. Sherman. Cheltenham, UK and Northhampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishers, 2000, pages 154-176. Monopoly refers to a power or political process, whereas class refers to economic processes. This paper offers a systematic examination of the diverse possible relationships between monopoly power and class structure. The conceptual differentiation of power from class is central to the logic of our argument (Resnick and Wolff 1987, especially chapter 3).State Capitalism versus Communism: What Happened in the USSR and the PRC?
Since 1917 analysts have debated what kind of economic system existed in the USSR and the PRC. They mostly juxtaposed `socialism' there to `capitalism' in Western Europe and the USA. The two sides were defined chiefly in terms of private versus state property and markets versus planning. We challenge this debate by means of Marx's focus on the organization of surplus labor. That is, we distinguish capitalism, socialism, and communism according to how these systems differently organize the surplus.Healthcare and Politics
Published on September 1, 2009AUDIOAn interview with Jeff Farias on his AM radio show in Phoenix, Arizona [1010 AM Station KXXT].
The Reality Behind Economic "Recovery"
Mid-August, 2009, was a peculiar time in the US economy. Wall Street, big banks, and the media were mostly celebrating "economic recovery." Meanwhile, average Americans were suffering record levels of unemployment, job insecurities, home foreclosures, personal debt anxieties, and the upsets, tensions, and angers that inevitably result. One economist referred to the US as "one nation, two national economies." Two particular sets of August economic data reveal the deepening economic divide behind the "recovery" talk.
Marxian Economics
This course provides a working foundation in the core concepts of Marxian economic theory – necessary and surplus labor, labor power, surplus value, exploitation, capital accumulation, distributions of the surplus, capitalist crises, and the differences between capitalist and other class structures. In addition, these core concepts will be systematically used to understand current social problems (including political and cultural as well as economic problems).
