Abstract
There really are two books in this slim volume. The first (Parts I and II, pp. 17-115) offers a firm and lucid analysis of the contradiction faced by both capitalist and socialist economies around the creation and distribution of surplus value. A labor educator trying to unpack Marxist economic principles in order that her students may better understand actually existing capitalism and socialism will relish the keen clarity and logic of Wolff’s approach. However, the second section (Part III, pp. 155-85), ostensibly deriving its theoretical purpose from the first and intending to offer a cure for that contradiction, is much too dreamy for the task it takes on.
Even for those readers who share Wolff’s sturdily grounded critique of surplus value extraction, the leap to a world where “the disappearances of slaves and masters and lords and serfs would now be replicated by the disappearance of capitalists and workers” by virtue of voluntarily established “workers’ self-directed enterprises” or WSDEs (p. 12) is dizzying. Some readers may be exhilarated by his vision, but many will be unconvinced that the voluntary transition to a democratic, egalitarian, and environmentally judicious economy he posits is sufficiently grounded in historical experience or current political realities.
One such current political reality that Wolff does invoke seems inarguable: that ever-larger numbers of people are “seeking very different solutions to the economic and political morass engulfing the United States and beyond” (p. 12). Through detailing the collapse of capitalist and former socialist nations to meet the basic needs of their citizens for employment, security, social well-being, and equality, and the corollary loss of confidence in regulation (whether of the capitalist New Deal or state capitalist planned economy variety) and the growing post-2008 skepticism of market fundamentalism, Wolff wants to offer the cure we’re looking for. To do so he digs into the mechanisms of capitalist reproduction, inviting us into the “hidden abode of production” where surplus is generated—initially and continuously—by the separation between those who create value and those who appropriate and distribute it as profit.
This division, he convincingly asserts, is not only the basis of labor exploitation but also the root impediment to achieving democracy: As long as those who work don’t control the fruits of their work, the imbalance of power and privilege will remain. Therefore, a uniting of these two functions—production and control over distribution—becomes Wolff’s guiding principle in seeking a cure, expressing itself in a form of decentralized worker ownership (WSDEs).
This is an attractive fantasy, one where the problems of profiteering, deskilling, exploitation, socially unnecessary production, and environmental destruction are dissolved through mutually respectful consultation among worker-owners. Wolff writes, “Periodically, the collective of workers that produces a surplus gather to collectively receive that surplus and distribute it” (p. 123). Rotational job assignment would prevent the development of a class of privileged workers who might wish to appropriate surplus in selfish ways. The tendency towards wage stratification would disappear. Environmental considerations would trump profit motive, because the worker-owners would care about the quality of life in their community. The incessant drive towards efficiency through technological improvement (whose corollary is often unemployment and deadening work) would be tempered by worker-owners’ philosophic reflection on the historic failure of such innovation to secure leisure time for the majority of citizens. Even while coexisting, and even competing with, capitalist enterprises, the WSDEs would thrive because they are just sensible. Through an evolving transformation, with unforeseeable results emanating from multivectored negotiation among social players, WSDEs would at least give us a “different set of problems that we prefer” (p. 182).
Readers might argue that the same problem remains—that of power. Wolff shows us that capitalist modes of surplus appropriation consolidate wealth and power for the owning class. History shows us that this power is never ceded without struggle. Wolff’s failure to address the central problem leaves us with a lovely dream, but no path to it.