A Critical Assessment of the Major Marxist Theories of the Political Economy of Modern Capitalism

Abstract

The task of Marxist political economy is to provide an understanding of the capitalist economy and hence to provide the working class with an explanation of the present and predicted development of that economy. It is argued that contemporary Marxist political economy has not been successful in that role, although there has been a considerable amount of more successful but more specific work. The reason lies in the domination of the left by Stalinism and its ruinous re-interpretation of Marxism. The non-Stalinist left failed to understand Stalinism and so the political economy of the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, and so forth. For the same reason it idealised so-called national liberation movements. As the expected crisis did not appear, theorists replaced a driving material cause for capitalism to be overthrown for a more voluntaristic discontent caused by the contradictions of capitalism. Marxist political economy was revived by two authors, both of whom wrote major textbooks and magnum opuses—Paul Sweezy and Ernest Mandel. Their work was a considerable step forward but Sweezy never broke with Stalinism itself, while Mandel, who was anti-Stalinist, never understood the USSR and did not theorise a doctrine which he himself accepted—that of the transitional epoch.