INTERSTITIAL JOURNAL
LETIZIA · DEMOCRACY AT WORK (REVIEW)
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism Richard D. Wolff Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012, pp. 220, $15.00 paperback ISBN: 978-1-60846-247-6 Reviewed by Angelo Letizia, The College of William and Mary
In Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, Richard Wolff argues that global capitalism can no longer meet the needs of the world's population. He goes on to note that socialism as it has been practiced during the twentieth century cannot meet these needs either. His work is an attempt to construct a viable alternative to global capitalism, centering on Marx’s notion of surplus capital. Marx argued that one of the most salient features of capitalism was that workers produce more than what they are paid for. For instance, a worker may work eight hours a day but his labor in those eight hours may be equivalent to twelve hours labor. It is the owners and managers that appropriate this surplus labor, enrich themselves with it, and exploit the laborers in the process. What Wolff proposes as an alternative are Workers Self Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). In WSDEs, workers, who produce surplus capital, are in charge of the profit, not owners, managers or executives. The first half of the book examines the current economic crisis which began in 2007. Wolff situates the Great Recession of 2007 in a historical context by contrasting it with the Great Depression of 1929. This section spans the three quarters of a century between the two economic collapses and the various methods governments dealt with them. Wolff draws a crucial distinction between what he terms private capitalism, state regulated private capitalism, and state capitalism. For Wolff, there must be three components for a true socialist government to exist: nationalized property to replace private property, national planning to replace markets, and for the laborers to appropriate the surpluses of their work. In private capitalism, none of these exist. In state regulated private capitalism, there are combinations of state and private property, a mix between markets and planning and the appropriation of surplus capital still mainly by non-laborers. He argues that all countries that claim to be socialist or communist implement the first two components, but neglect the third. The result: state capitalism. Property is nationalized and economic planning is instituted, but laborers still do not control and direct the profits of their work. Instead of CEO’s or managers, the surpluses are directed by state officials. Thus, all supposedly socialist countries were really just various methods of capitalism. The 1980s saw a crisis of socialism (or more accurately state capitalism). Many nations, such as the USSR and Eastern www.interstitialjournal.com · December: 2013 · 1