Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The historical materialism of the classical Marxist tradition envisions human history as a developmental sequence, with each stage defined by the level of technology and the corresponding mode of production. Marx and Engels themselves expressed confidence that socialism and communism were gestating within 19th century capitalism, just as capitalism had gestated for centuries within European feudalism. Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, both Economics professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, responded to the teleology and economism of this Marxist orthodoxy by adopting a notion of overdetermination from Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. In the hands of Resnick and Wolff, overdetermination became a methodological-cum-ontological premise according to which every social phenomenon is to be understood as the byproduct of an infinitely complex causal web that defies reduction to any subset of causes. For Resnick and Wolff, the Marxist project is to envision and examine the conditions and consequences of class processes: exploitative and non-exploitative, actual and envisioned.
This book presents a broad, reflective survey of the "Amherst school" of non-determinist Marxist political economy inspired by the work of Resnick and Wolff: its elemental concepts, intellectual origins, and future prospects, and the multiple pathways explored in its 40-year evolution. The volume's original essays reflect the range of projects and perspectives that comprise the Amherst school and it's defining ideas: a novel conception of class as a process of performing, appropriating, and distributing surplus labor, and an overarching open-system framework that presupposes the irreducible complexity and contingency of social-historical events. The Amherst school has influenced contemporary economic theory, literary theory, diverse strands of the Marxian tradition, and major intellectual movements of the late 20th century: postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, feminism, deconstruction, poststructuralism and postmodernism.
Synopsis
Knowledge, Class and Economics: Marxism without Guarantees presents a broad, reflective survey of the "Amherst school" of non-determinist Marxist political economy inspired by the work of Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff: its elemental concepts, intellectual origins, and future prospects, and the multiple pathways explored in its 40-year evolution.
The title captures the defining ideas of the Amherst school: an open-system framework that presupposes the complexity and contingency of social-historical events and the parallel "over determination" of the relationship between subjects and objects of inquiry, along with a novel conception of class as a process of performing, appropriating, and distributing surplus labor. In a collection of 30 original essays, chapters confront readers with the core concepts of over determination and class in the context of economic theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, Continental philosophy, economic geography, economic anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary theory/studies.
Though Resnick and Wolff's writings serve as a focal point for this collection, their works are ultimately decentered - challenged, historicized, extended, and revised. The topics explored will be of interest to proponents and critics of the post-structuralist/postmodern turn in Marxian theory and to students of economics as social theory across the disciplines (economics, geography, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, political theory, philosophy, and literary studies, among others).
Synopsis
Knowledge, Class and Economics: Marxism without Guarantees surveys the "Amherst school" of non-determinist Marxist political economy, 40 years on: its core concepts, intellectual origins, diverse pathways, and enduring tensions. The volume's 30 original essays reflect the range of perspectives and projects that comprise the Amherst school - the interdisciplinary community of scholars that has shaped, challenged, and extended the anti-economistic Marxism first formulated in the mid-1970s by Stephen Resnick, Richard Wolff, and their economics Ph.D. students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The title captures the defining ideas of the Amherst school: an open-system framework that presupposes the complexity and contingency of social-historical events and the parallel "over determination" of the relationship between subjects and objects of inquiry, along with a novel conception of class as a process of performing, appropriating, and distributing surplus labor. In a collection of 30 original essays, chapters confront readers with the core concepts of over determination and class in the context of economic theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, Continental philosophy, economic geography, economic anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary theory/studies.
Though Resnick and Wolff's writings serve as a focal point for this collection, their works are ultimately decentered - challenged, historicized, extended, and revised. The topics explored will be of interest to proponents and critics of the post-structuralist/postmodern turn in Marxian theory and to students of economics as social theory across the disciplines (economics, geography, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, political theory, philosophy, and literary studies, among others).