Paresh Chattopadhyay

A Provisional Overview

In the following lines we discuss the contradictions inherent in the category of labor that Marx underlines in his different writings where labor is examined in its multiple existence "” labor as such, abstract and concrete labor, necessary and surplus labor.

In what follows, `capital,' following Marx, refers to a historically specific mode of production (based on the producers' separation from the conditions of production) and the corresponding social relation between producers and the owners of the conditions of production - the basis of the modern society.

CLASS THEORY AND HISTORY: CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM IN THE USSR, Stephan A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff; New York and London: Routledge, 2002

Reviewed by Paresh Chattopadhyay

The book under review is not just one more addition to the numerous works on the USSR that have so far appeared in print. This is an unusual work. It attempts to analyse the whole soviet experience (1917-1990) in terms of `class,' derived from Marx. According to the authors the USSR was all along a "state form of capitalism." The Bolsheviks had simply replaced pre-1917 "private capitalism" with "state capitalism."

"Karl Marx - Exzerpte und Notizen: Sommer 1844 bis Anfang 1847" in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels "” Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) vierte Abteilung. Band 3. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998, pp. 866.

Reviewed by Paresh Chattopadhyay*

It is sixty years since Oskar Lange defended socialism in a famous debate with Mises, Hayek and Robbins, who had argued that rational allocation of productive resources was impossible in socialism, inasmuch as the absence of private ownership in the means of production would do away with the price system, the only rational basis for allocating the productive resources.

Marx's "Marginal Notes" of 1875 or what he called in a letter (to Bracke, May 5, 1875), a "long scrap of paper," was a purely occasional text which its author felt compelled to compose, in order to underline what he thought to be the serious shortcomings in a workers' programme. However, the document could perhaps be considered kind of a second "Communist Manifesto," authored by Marx alone this time of course. Both of them concern party organisation "” the Communist League and the German Workers' Party. The second document was enriched by Marx's great theoretical breakthroughs as well as by his involvement in the new forms of working class struggles as manifested above all in the work of the First International and the Paris Commune, posterior to the "Communist Manifesto."

In the text that follows we argue that the basic Marxian ideas concerning the type of society supposed to follow the demise of capitalism are contained in the Manifesto in a condensed form. Accordingly, the first section offers an outline of what type of society the Manifesto envisages for the future as well as the conditions necessary for its appearance while the second section relates these ideas to Marx's other texts.

This is an important book. Its great merit lies in a clear presentation of Marx's position on nature in its relation to human beings as well as a convincing defense of Marx against his ecological critics. The book has 14 chapters spread over three parts: nature and historical materialism; nature and capitalism; and nature and communism.