Acceptance Speech for World Marxian Economics Award (I)

May 24, 2014I am honored to receive the World Marxian Economics Award from the World Association for Political Economy.Marxist economics has two aims, as Marx noted: to understand the world and to contribute to changing it. Indeed, if we wish to create a more humane world than that of global capitalism, we must understand how capitalism works, in general and today. Unless we can develop an understanding of contemporary capitalism- its main tendencies and contradictions-we cannot hope to devise strategies to overcome it and replace it with socialism.The dominant economic theory in the world today, neoclassical economic theory, also has two aims. One is to understand capitalism (a market economy as they call it), not to replace it by another system, but to determine the policies required to preserve capitalism. The second aim of neoclassical theory is to make it appear that capitalism is an ideal economic system that assures optimal efficiency, income distribution, economic growth, and technological progress, as well as guaranteeing individual freedom.Marx referred to the second aspect of neoclassical economics as vulgar economy. In his day this was represented by Nassau Senior and Jean-Baptiste Say, a tradition carried on in recent times by the neoliberal economists such as Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas. The former aspect of neoclassical economics, which seeks to understand capitalism so as to save it, is represented by such figures as John Maynard Keynes and today Paul Krugman.Marxist economists have analyzed various aspects of capitalism, and class society more generally, including, although not limited to, the following aspects: (1) the capital-labor relation, which can be understood using the Marxist theory of value and surplus value; (2) the capital accumulation process and the crises that periodically interrupt the accumulation process stemming from forces within the capitalist system itself; (3) the particular institutional forms that capitalism has taken at different times and places, forms that periodically change based on forces that can be analyzed using Marxist theory; (4) the transitions from one mode of production to another, particularly the transition from capitalism to socialism/ communism as well as the transitions back from socialism to capitalism that have occurred in recent times-transitions that can be explained using Marxist theory and in particular class analysis; (5) the struggle in less developed capitalist countries to develop their economies in the face of already existing powerful developed capitalist states; and (6) the nature of capitalism at the global level, including the theory of imperialism and the analysis of the forces in global capitalism that tend to give rise to wars.No one can work on every topic. My work has been primarily on topics 2 (accumulation and crisis), 3 (particular institutional forms of capitalism), and 4 (transitions between modes of production). All of my work has in common a focus on explaining, based on Marxist analysis, important economic developments that were unexpected and surprising.Topic 4: Transitions between Modes of ProductionWhen the world's first socialist system met its end in the USSR in 1991, it was clear that this event would have a profound effect on Marxist economics and the socialist movement. The dominant interpretations of this event, propounded by neoclassical economists and mainstream Western analysts in political science, history, and Soviet studies, argued that this event resulted from, and indeed proved, the inferiority of socialism compared to capitalism. The more extreme interpretations claimed, against all the evidence, that it showed that socialism could not work in practice-despite more than 50 years of economic progress under Soviet socialism. It was further argued that Marxism was now finally dead.Along with a secondary co-author, Fred Weir, I undertook a research project in 1992 to determine the real causes of this unexpected development, which gave rise to the book Revolution from Above published in 1997. …