The Value of Radical Theory. An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. By Wayne Price. AK Press. 190 pages. £8.95.
We often joke that anarchists know very little about economics and that what little they do know they got from Marx. US class-struggle communist anarchist Wayne Price seems to agree and has written a short book to explain Marxian economics to his fellow anarchists.
He does an excellent job in explaining the labour theory of value in chapter 1 and state capitalism in chapter 6. The views he expresses in the other chapters, while certainly held by some in the Marxist tradition, are controversial. For instance, that crises are caused by the fall in the rate of profit due to a rise in the organic composition of capital and that this will eventually lead to capitalism’s demise; and that capitalism has been in a state of decline and decay since 1900 and has only been kept going by arms spending, wars and reconstruction after them, and the creation of fictitious capital (a couple of ICC pamphlets figure in the bibliography).
There is a peculiar attempt to include the 17th and 18th century witch-hunts as part of the primitive accumulation of capital; and also a passage (p. 122) which seems to suggest that ‘supervisors’ are not part of the working class (which would exclude a large chunk of those forced by economic necessity to work for a wage or salary).
On the other hand, Price recognises that Marx regarded the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ as referring to the same society and that he stood (like Price and us) for a classless, stateless, moneyless society of common ownership and democratic and production for use not profit. His discussion of the differences between Marx and anarchism is intelligent and fair: that Marx tried to ignore morality in presenting the case for socialism; that he envisaged a higher degree of centralisation than anarchists; and that he was not opposed to elections either under capitalism or in socialism.
So, a book that can be useful both for socialists and anarchists.
Adam Buick
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