Journal of Economics and Business Vol. VI – 2003, No 2 (123 – 128)
BOOK REVIEW Stephen Resnick’s & Richard Wolff’s: Class theory and History. Capitalism and communism in the U.S.S.R., London: Routledge, 2002 Reviewed by Michael Zouboulakis University of Thessaly This book was written with the explicit intention to offer a Marxist “interpretation of the USSR’s birth, evolution and death”. However, the writers aim much higher than this. In our view the principal contribution of this book lies in their effort to provide a fresh class-based analysis to any revolutionary project of social reform. Resnick and Wolff (R&W) define class not in terms of power (the relation of rulers to ruled) or even property (the relation of haves to have-nots), but in terms of surplus: individuals are classified in a society “in terms of their relationship to this surplus” (p.8). R&W use the old Marxian concept of surplus as the part of labor that is “above and beyond to that which society deems necessary for the reproduction [of its] laborers” (id.). The key issue of qualifying a system as capitalist or communist concerns then the appropriation of that surplus: when those who are producing the surplus are the same with those who appropriate that
© 2003 EAST-WEST University of THESSALY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED