David F. Ruccio

Global fragments : Subjectivity and class politics in discourses of globalization

In this paper we critically examine existing discourses of globalization by focusing on the conceptualizations of subjectivity and the possibilities for class politics. Two forms of subjectivity emerge from the radical political economy literature: the ‘national Keynesian’ and the ‘global imperative’. Although the cultural analyses of globalization emphasize a plurality of subjectivities, they operate in a manner similar to that of radical political economy, deriving subjectivities from a logic of globalization in an economistic manner. Our goal is to challenge the givenness of capitalist globalization (along with its presumed necessary effects) in order to widen the possible forms of subjectivity and forms of class transformation.

When failure becomes success: Class and the debate over stabilization and adjustment

Abstract This article criticizes the current debate over stabilization and adjustment and develops an alternative, class-analytic approach. First, the respective theories and policy recommendations of neoclassical and structuralist economist are analyzed. Then, the article considers the recent experiences of Argentina, Brazil, and Peru where orthodox and heterodox policies have been attempted and subsequently declared failures. Finally, it is shown that those failures with respect to employment, inflation, and the balance of payments become successes to the extent that they involve increasing exploitation and otherwise strengthening the class aspects of capitalism.

Methodological aspects of a Marxian approach to development: An analysis of the modes of production school

Abstract This essay presents a methodological analysis of one Marxian approach to development, the so-called modes of production (MOP) school. The three basic positions encompassed by the MOP school are examined in terms of the specific issues of the constitution of theories, the process of concept formation, and the status of concepts within theory in general. The MOP school is criticized for two major problems associated with its use of the concept of mode of production: the problem of economic determinism and the use of a strict theory-fact dichotomy.

Fordism on a World Scale: International Dimensions of Regulation

The method of analysis of the French Regulation School, especially the work of Lipietz, is presented and critically discussed as a potential contribution to a much-needed Marnan class analysis of contemporary capitalism. Particular attention is paid to the concepts of Regulation theory, especially the accumulation/regulation model, and to the internal tensions that emerge from the attempt to transpose a theory of national regulation to the world economy.

Rethinking Socialism: Community, Democracy, and Social Agency

In this essay, we show how Marxian theory can contribute to the ongoing rethinking of the concepts of “community” and “democracy,” especially in relation to the question of “social agency.” Our discussion is organized around a particular reading of Marxs concept of commodity fetishism and broadens the notions of “the social” and of “the economy” beyond the unidimensional concepts that have undergirded much of orthodox thinking, transforming them into spaces that are both multidimensional (consisting of plural agencies) and polymorphous (comprising plural forms of agency).

Cooperatives, Surplus, and the Social

In this essay, I argue that communism involves eliminating capitalist exploitation and changing both the appropriation and distribution of the surplus. Cooperatives (and other forms of communal production) are an important step, but only one step, in this process. We do cooperatives a disservice by placing too large a burden on them.

ECONOMIC REPRESENTATIONS: What's at stake?

Diverse representations of the economy exist in both academic and nonacademic, everyday contexts. I show how investigating these representations challenges existing conceptions of both the discipline of economics and “real” economic relations and institutions – such that they can be denaturalized, and new ones can be produced.

Keywords: An Introduction

One of the goals of Rethinking Marxism from the very beginning has been to recover the vocabulary of the Marxian tradition. Our view was that many Marxian concepts and ways of producing specifically Marxian knowledges about the world had been repressed, neglected, or transformed beyond recognition. Now, fortunately*and, we’d like to believe, at least in some small measure thanks to our own efforts over the course of the past twenty-five years*that situation has begun to change, as the current crises of capitalism have generated renewed interest in the rich vocabulary of the Marxian tradition. While our goal throughout has been to reclaim that corpus of categories and ideas, we never thought it could or should be accepted as is*as if all the creative thinking within the Marxian tradition had been exhausted and all we needed to do was identify and apply the existing vocabulary. That simply wouldn’t do. For all the respect we had for the long and rich tradition of theories and thinkers, we also understood the need to rethink the tradition, both by excavating underappreciated or overlooked fragments of thought (especially those connected with the more antiessentialist moments of the tradition) and by rearticulating the existing concepts with respect to new modes of critical thinking (such as feminism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism) and recent events (from the Fall of the Wall to the emergence of the Occupy movement). We hope to be able to push forward that work of retrieving and rethinking a particularly Marxian vocabulary in a new section of the journal, Keywords, which we inaugurate with this issue. In this we have been inspired by, and want to pay our respects to, other such projects. Raymond Williams’s

Development, institutions and class

Ha-Joon Chang effectively criticizes the mainstream approach to the institutions of development, on theoretical, empirical and historical grounds. He also creates an opening for a different kind of discussion about institutions and development, between heterodox institutional and Marxian economics. But he overlooks the opportunity to analyze the relationship between class and the institutions of development.

The (Dis)Orderly Process of Capitalist Competition

For most of the past one hundred years, Marxist economists have produced and disseminated a particular set of stories about capitalism and socialism. According to these well-known accounts, capitalism is a singularly destructive, crisis-prone system governed by the ‘logic of capital’, which is often expressed in terms of economic ‘laws of motion’ and the ‘drive to accumulate’ on the part of capitalists. Socialism, in contrast, represents the suppression or elimination of such a logic and its underlying laws and drives, and thus creates the possibility of a rational, planned way of organizing economic and social life.