Stephen Resnick
Biographic Data
| ID | 3673823 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen Resnick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen |
| FAMILY NAME | Resnick |
| SIGNATURE | RESNICK S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 257 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR
Marxism
We compare and contrast two different kinds of Marxism: traditional (orthodox) and overdeterminist. The argument pinpoints key theoretical and political consequences of each kind of Marxism for the history of the Left and for anticapitalist struggle today. Our preference, overdeterminist Marxism, places the elimination of class exploitation (conceived in surplus labor terms) back on the Left's agenda for social change where Marx had placed it. We…
On Overdetermination and Althusser: Our Response to Silverman and Park
We respond to critical comment directed at our understanding of overdetermination and our argument that Althusser fell into economic determinism despite also offering a way out of it. Our first response reviews what the concept of overdetermination is and what it implies. On that basis, we argue that the first critic's claim of “prediction” is logically impossible. Our second response explains why we still think that a tension arises in Althusser…
Persistance du marxisme traditionnel et pertinence du marxisme surdéterministe
This article assesses the relevance today of two different kinds of Marxism : (1) traditional, “classical” or determinist Marxism and (2) non-traditional or overdeterminist Marxism. These two Marxisms are compared and contrasted to show how and why they yield different notions of socialism and communism, class, the place of economics in Marxism, causation, and epistemology. The authors explain why the overdeterminist version is preferred to the d…
Class And Its Others
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 economi…
The Class Analysis of Households Extended: Children, Fathers, and Family Budgets
We continue our class-analytical work on the household and family life by extending its purview to include the lives of children, the interaction between household and capitalist value flows, and fathers’ household labor contribution. We show how and under what conditions parents’ rearing of children also can involve mothers’ class exploitation; the contradictory value relationship between feudal households and capitalist wages; and the class con…
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…
Un marxisme made in USA: Marx au-delà d'Althusser
Marxist epistemology: The critique of economic determinism
An unsettled and unsettling dilemma has beset the Marxist theoretical tradition: the problem of the relation between Marxism and economic determinism. The historically predominant tendencies within the tradition have affirmed and elaborated variations on the theme that economic aspects of the social totality determine its non-economic aspects. Words and concepts such as base-superstructure, forces-relations of production, objective-subjective soc…
Power, property, and class
We share with many a central focus upon class as an indispensable concept for analyzing society. Thus the multiplicity of concepts of class inside and outside the Marxist tradition poses problems. Are there some concepts of class that prevail over others within Marxist literature? Are there criteria for preferring theoretically one against another of such concepts? We think that these questions demand answers. Otherwise, class analyses will conti…
New Departures in Marxian Theory
Over the last twenty-five years, Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff have developed a groundbreaking interpretation of Marxian theory generally and of Marxian economics in particular. This book brings together their key contributions and underscores their different interpretations. In facing and trying to resolve contradictions and lapses within Marxism, the authors have confronted the basic incompatibilities among the dominant modern versions of M…
Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR
Introduction Part I: Communism 1. A General Class Theory The Classical Tradition Our Basic Terms Utopia and Communism: A Brief Digression A Concrete Communism Communist Class Structures: Centralization versus Decentralization Culture, Politics and Economics of Communism Appendix: How Societies Differ: A Methodological Problem Endnotes 2. The Many Forms of Communism Class and Property Class and Markets Class and Power Classless Communism and Prole…
Class Analysis and Economic Development
Critical evaluation of Transition and Development in India, by Anjan Chakrabarti and Stephen Cullenberg, argues that this book presents for the first time a postmodern Marxian approach to economic development. It offers a way to conceive and, to a degree, achieve two different but related needs: eliminating poverty, and eliminating class exploitation
The point and purpose of Marx's notion of class
This response to comments made on Class and Its Others and Re/Presenting Class explains why class exploitation conceived in Marx's surplus labor terms is an outrage. The point of Marx's class analysis is to expose this outrage and its pernicious effects on our lives. The hope is that the resulting awareness will motivate us to eliminate it from our lives, much like any other socially recognized disease or crime. Working for that elimination is a …
The Categories of Class Analysis and the Soviet Experience: A Reply to Victor Lippit, Satya Gabriel, and Jonathan Diskin
This response to comments on Class Theory and History explains why we focus on and how we use the concepts of class and class struggle to frame new conceptions of communisms and capitalisms, their multiple forms, and their pertinence to the rise and fall of the USSR. We address concerns about essentializing class as well as our specifications of how profit, industrialization, value, and collective surplus appropriation vary across the different f…
Exploitation, Consumption, and the Uniqueness of US Capitalism
The Diversity of Class Analyses: A Critique of Erik Olin Wright and Beyond
Class analyses are both very old and quite new. This essay argues that Marx contributed a new class definition and analysis focused on the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor. Yet, that innovative, new class analysis was lost by being dissolved into either pre-Marxian conceptualizations of class in terms of property and power or later social theories in which class was determined by people's consciousness and self-identif…
Long-Term Global War
Class, Contradiction and the Capitalist Economy
Two major contributions differentiate Marx’s explanation for how a capitalist economy works. One involves theorizing its functioning from the perspective of class, namely the processes of producing, appropriating and distributing surplus labour. Adding Marx’s concept of class to economic explanation provides a potential threat to capitalism, for the stark implication is that the value received by industrial capitalists exactly equals what they ex…
Toward a Poststructuralist Political Economy
Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism
Empire and Class Analysis
Between State and Private Capitalism: What Was Soviet “Socialism”
(1994). Between State and Private Capitalism: What Was Soviet “Socialism”? Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 9-30
State Capitalism in the USSR? A High-Stakes Debate
(1993). State Capitalism in the USSR? A High-Stakes Debate. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 46-68
Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR
The Decline of Rural Industry Under Export Expansion: A Comparison among Burma, Philippines, and Thailand, 1870–1938
This paper endeavors to explain the economic and social forces underlying the economic transformation of three Southeast Asian countries from agrarian societies to commercial ones. In particular, a model is used to explore this historic behavior over the period 1870 to 1938 for Burma, the Philippines, and Thailand. It is also suggested that the varying economic consequences of the model were dependent on the respective pre-colonial history and th…
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 economi…
Division and Difference in the 'Discipline' of Economics
State Capitalism in the USSR? A High-Stakes Debate
(1993). State Capitalism in the USSR? A High-Stakes Debate. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 46-68
Communism: Between Class and Classless
(1988). Communism: Between Class and Classless. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 14-42
Between State and Private Capitalism: What Was Soviet “Socialism”
(1994). Between State and Private Capitalism: What Was Soviet “Socialism”? Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 9-30
For Every Knight in Shining Armor, There's a Castle Waiting To Be Cleaned: A Marxist-Feminist Analysis of the Household
Households and their profound influence upon modern society have been badly and unjustifiably neglected in Marxian social theory. However, that theory and particularly its class analytics can be applied to contemporary households to help remedy that neglect. Feminist theories of gender, of the social construction of what “male” and “female” are supposed to mean, can likewise yield original insights into the dynamics of households today. We propos…
The Diversity of Class Analyses: A Critique of Erik Olin Wright and Beyond
Class analyses are both very old and quite new. This essay argues that Marx contributed a new class definition and analysis focused on the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor. Yet, that innovative, new class analysis was lost by being dissolved into either pre-Marxian conceptualizations of class in terms of property and power or later social theories in which class was determined by people's consciousness and self-identif…
Exploitation, Consumption, and the Uniqueness of US Capitalism
Empire and Class Analysis
Colonial Development: An Econometric Study
The second path to capitalism: A model of international development
The point and purpose of Marx's notion of class
This response to comments made on Class and Its Others and Re/Presenting Class explains why class exploitation conceived in Marx's surplus labor terms is an outrage. The point of Marx's class analysis is to expose this outrage and its pernicious effects on our lives. The hope is that the resulting awareness will motivate us to eliminate it from our lives, much like any other socially recognized disease or crime. Working for that elimination is a …
The contradictions of post-war development in Southeast Asia
1970). The contradictions of post-war development in Southeast Asia. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 37-49
Marxism
We compare and contrast two different kinds of Marxism: traditional (orthodox) and overdeterminist. The argument pinpoints key theoretical and political consequences of each kind of Marxism for the history of the Left and for anticapitalist struggle today. Our preference, overdeterminist Marxism, places the elimination of class exploitation (conceived in surplus labor terms) back on the Left's agenda for social change where Marx had placed it. We…
The Class Analysis of Households Extended: Children, Fathers, and Family Budgets
We continue our class-analytical work on the household and family life by extending its purview to include the lives of children, the interaction between household and capitalist value flows, and fathers’ household labor contribution. We show how and under what conditions parents’ rearing of children also can involve mothers’ class exploitation; the contradictory value relationship between feudal households and capitalist wages; and the class con…
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…
Althusser's Contribution
Class Beyond the Nation-State
Foreign exploitation has been a recurrent theme in radical analyses of centre periphery relations. We suggest a new, class-analytical way to analyse the relations between centre and periphery which involves specifying concepts of class (including the space and time dimensions of class processes) and, especially, foreign exploitation different from those that exist in current radical literature. We also discuss the potential role of this type of c…
Marxist Epistemology: The Critique of Economic Determinism
On Overdetermination and Althusser: Our Response to Silverman and Park
We respond to critical comment directed at our understanding of overdetermination and our argument that Althusser fell into economic determinism despite also offering a way out of it. Our first response reviews what the concept of overdetermination is and what it implies. On that basis, we argue that the first critic's claim of “prediction” is logically impossible. Our second response explains why we still think that a tension arises in Althusser…
Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR
Introduction Part I: Communism 1. A General Class Theory The Classical Tradition Our Basic Terms Utopia and Communism: A Brief Digression A Concrete Communism Communist Class Structures: Centralization versus Decentralization Culture, Politics and Economics of Communism Appendix: How Societies Differ: A Methodological Problem Endnotes 2. The Many Forms of Communism Class and Property Class and Markets Class and Power Classless Communism and Prole…
Class Analysis and Economic Development
Critical evaluation of Transition and Development in India, by Anjan Chakrabarti and Stephen Cullenberg, argues that this book presents for the first time a postmodern Marxian approach to economic development. It offers a way to conceive and, to a degree, achieve two different but related needs: eliminating poverty, and eliminating class exploitation
Reply to Richard Peet
The Decline of Rural Industry Under Export Expansion: A Comparison among Burma, Philippines, and Thailand, 1870–1938
This paper endeavors to explain the economic and social forces underlying the economic transformation of three Southeast Asian countries from agrarian societies to commercial ones. In particular, a model is used to explore this historic behavior over the period 1870 to 1938 for Burma, the Philippines, and Thailand. It is also suggested that the varying economic consequences of the model were dependent on the respective pre-colonial history and th…
The contradictions of post-war development in Southeast Asia
1970). The contradictions of post-war development in Southeast Asia. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 37-49
The second path to capitalism: A model of international development
The Distribution of West European Trade Under Alternative Tariff Policies
Colonial Development: An Econometric Study
Colonial Development. An Econometric Study
Journal Article BIRNBERG (T. B.) and RESNICK (S. A.). Colonial Development. An Econometric Study Get access Colonial Development. An Econometric Study. By T. B. Birnberg and S. A.!Resnick. (London: Yale University Press, 1976. Pp. xiii + 347. £12.00.) A. G. Hopkins A. G. Hopkins University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 87, Issue 346, 1 June 1977, Pages 350–352, …
The Theory of Transitional Conjunctures and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in Western Europe
This paper has two parts. The first presents what the authors understand as Marx's conceptual framework for analyzing social change, Marx's science. The second seeks to exemplify the analytical power of Marx's science by means of a discussion of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The argu ments concerning the precise specification of Marx's science make extensive use of the work of Louis Althusser as it has evolved over the last twenty …
Classes in Marxian Theory
We argue that Marx provided the basis for a far more complex class analysis of social formations than has been recognized. We find this analysis to be consistent neither with the two-class approach long prevalent in the Marxian tradition nor with recent critiques of that approach by Poulantzas, Wright, and others. Marx's most basic philosophic concepts and his value analysis are shown to imply a differentiation between what he terms the fundament…
A Reformulation of Marxian Theory and Historical Analysis
The paper develops a Marxian approach to economic history utilizing some recent, far-reaching reformulations of Marxist theory. On the basis of a new specification of class structures, the approach permits a nondeterminist analysis of the interactions of class and nonclass aspects of social change
Marxist Epistemology: The Critique of Economic Determinism
The 1983 Nobel Prize in Economics: Neoclassical Economics and Marxism
29
Marxism and the Facts of Life; Reply; How Powerful is the Fed
I found Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff's essay "The 1983 Nobel Prize in Economics: Neo-classical Economics and Marxism" to be misguided. It is misguided because into the conflict between Marxist and bourgeois "non-class" economics they introduce issues about the nature of truth and knowledge. It is also misguided because they treat certain facts of life as theoretical truths of Marxism.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review websi…
Radical Differences Among Radical Theories
1-6
Communism: Between Class and Classless
(1988). Communism: Between Class and Classless. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 14-42
For Every Knight in Shining Armor, There's a Castle Waiting To Be Cleaned: A Marxist-Feminist Analysis of the Household
Households and their profound influence upon modern society have been badly and unjustifiably neglected in Marxian social theory. However, that theory and particularly its class analytics can be applied to contemporary households to help remedy that neglect. Feminist theories of gender, of the social construction of what “male” and “female” are supposed to mean, can likewise yield original insights into the dynamics of households today. We propos…
Dialectics and Class Analysis
Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy
China Today and Class Analysis
Class, Patriarchy, and Power: A Reply
(1990). Class, Patriarchy, and Power: A Reply. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 124-144
Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy
Division and Difference in the 'Discipline' of Economics
Althusser's Contribution
Division and Difference in the 'Discipline' of Economics
The existence and unity of a discipline called economics reside in the eye and mind of the beholder. The perception of economics as unity and disciplinarity, itself, arises in some, but not all, of the different schools of thought that we would loosely categorize as economic. Indeed, as we hope to show, the presumption of unity and disciplinarity-the idea that there is a center or 'core' of propositions, procedures, and conclusions or a shared hi…
Class Beyond the Nation-State
Foreign exploitation has been a recurrent theme in radical analyses of centre periphery relations. We suggest a new, class-analytical way to analyse the relations between centre and periphery which involves specifying concepts of class (including the space and time dimensions of class processes) and, especially, foreign exploitation different from those that exist in current radical literature. We also discuss the potential role of this type of c…
Reply to Richard Peet
Political science (37 works) · Economics (36 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (35 works) · Law (33 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Epistemology (30 works) · Philosophy (28 works) · Politics (27 works) · Neoclassical economics (20 works) · Law (19 works)