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A Reformulation of Marxian Theory and Historical Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Stephen Resnick  and
Richard Wolff
Stephen Resnick
Affiliation:
Professors of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003.
Richard Wolff
Affiliation:
Professors of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003.
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Abstract

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.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 53 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1982

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References

1 Certain aspects of the theory are not discussed here. Our approach involves, for example, a particular epistemological position based upon Marx's break from the long philosophical tradition of empiricist and rationalist epistemologies. This break, emphasized by the French philosopher Louis Althusser, has important consequences for our theory, e.g., our notion of “overdetermination” as against various determinisms. Historically this has been an important issue of struggle within Marxism: see Resnick, Stephen and Wolff, Richard, “Marxist Epistemology: The Critique of Economic Determinism,” mimeographed (1980).Google Scholar

2 These few sentences condense a complex argument with far-reaching ramifications. For us, a history does not exist independent of the particular conceptual framework used to produce it. Different histories, like different analytical taxonomies, exist through frameworks and any statement about them must be from within a particular conceptual framework. For Marxism a problem occurs when some take their particular produced history and assert that it is the object as well for all other conceptual frameworks. The histories produced from these latter frameworks are then “tested” against the one true history to see if they make sense, if they “got the history right.” Reality is attributed to the one true history allowing it to become the real history. By fiat, the object produced is no longer produced; it exists outside and independent of its production. For an excellent example of such an empiricist approach, see Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York, 1979). In contrast, the rationalist conceives of his particular history as having a basic underlying truth that is captured in his particular theory or in its logic. All other theories of history are ranked according to how well they approximate the unique singular logic.Google Scholar

3 The original formulation of overdetermination was by Althusser, in “Overdetermination and Contradiction” (1963) in For Marx, trans. Brewster, Ben (New York, 1974). Our notion of overdeterminatjon differs from Aithusser's original. This difference is elaborated in Resnick and Wolff, “Marxist Epistemology: The Critique of Economic Determinism.”Google Scholar

4 Others also recognize this important point. Poulantzas, Nicos, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, trans. by Fernbach, David (London, 1978);Google Scholar and Wright, Eric Olin, Class, Crisis, and the State (London, 1979)Google Scholar, specify several classes in contemporary capitalism. Our approach to class analysis differs significantly from these two authors. Where they greatly multiply class positions and introduce direct political and cultural definitions of class, we build upon Marx's treatment of merchants, money lenders, and landlords in vols. 2 and 3 of Capital. Marx there discusses what we have called subsumed classes. Class remains an economic process in our approach, one overdetermined by other economic and noneconomic social processes: see Resnick and Wolff, “The Concept of Classes in Marxian Theory,” mimeographed (1981).Google Scholar

5 For example, one side of a feudal religious struggle may be individuals occupying a feudal fundamental class position of surplus labor extractors, while on the other side are other individuals who also occupy this same fundamental class position but have a conflicting religious position. This split in the ranks of feudal lords may well be matched by splits in the ranks of performers of surplus labor (feudal peasants) and of all kinds of feudal subsumed classes, e.g., merchants, money lenders, various manorial officials, and even church officials.Google Scholar

6 For example, see our class analysis of feudalism in Resnick, and Wolff, , “The Theory of Transitional Conjunctures and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in Western Europe,” Review of Radical Political Economy, 11 (Fall 1979), 3–22. Several graduate students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, are currently using and extending this theory to produce class analyses of several different entities.Google Scholar

7 This knowledge includes empirical work. We understand empirical research to be a constituent part of our theory. What we reject (as suggested by footnote 2) is any dichotomy between “theory” and “facts.” Such a dichotomy opens the door to non-Marxian epistemological (empiricist or rationalist) approaches. For us, any theory involves the ceaseless interaction between relatively more and less abstract concepts, i.e., between theoretical and factual statements.Google Scholar