Reviews / Comptes Rendus (original) (raw)
Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Michael D. Yates, Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press 2003) | |
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| MICHAEL YATES was an economist teaching at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. He advocated a socialist view of economics both to critique mainstream economics and to advance an alternative analysis to his discipline in an effort to query what could be done to make this a better world. From my understanding he pursued these aims in ways that go well beyond the career courses of Economics professors. He advocated a radical alternative to the discipline, travelled miles every week to bring his alternative to students who were literally distant from main urban centres, and brought his alternative to groups of traditional working-class organizations. He has deep personal roots in this class both in terms of his own family and the family he married into. It is also my understanding that he retired early as the frustrations of a somewhat changed academia became just too annoying. The author of a number of previous books (and many articles) including the important work Why Unions Matter, he has since become an Associate Editor of the independent socialist journal Monthly Review, which has published his latest effort. | 1 |
| In 1964 Monthly Review Press published Capitalism As A System by the prominent African-American sociologist Oliver C. Cox. It can be reasonably argued that Cox has never received enough credit for his contribution to the emergence of world systems theory. That aside, Cox wrote then: "In this book, I want to show that capitalism, as a system of societies, is characterized by a definable order and structure which not only differentiates it from other social systems, but also determines and limits interactions of persons within its reach. It is an illusion that capitalism gives businessmen unlimited freedom to plan and dispose of resources at will.... I use 'system' mainly to denote the international order, and 'society' to refer to the internal organization of the national units. It should be clear that there can be no capitalist nation outside the capitalist system. And the sequence of motivation has been predominantly from system to society: the internal societal organization seems to depend upon demands and imperatives arising chiefly from a play of circumstances peculiar to the system." (ix–x) | 2 |
| Cox's "entry point" is more "global" in nature than that of Yates but both emphasize the interrelations of society's institutions and the crucial importance of a truly inter-disciplinary approach. In 1972 economists Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, and Thomas Weisskopf published an edited book titled The Capitalist System which contained a collection of readings identified as (the new) political economy drawing on radical (socialist) economics in many areas but integrating material from the other social sciences into the analysis. It was an attempt by economists to draw on all sorts of "leftist" social scientific research in order to comprehend the current state of capitalism as a system and at the international, national, regional, political, social, cultural, and psychological levels. Two updated editions were subsequently published in 1978 and 1986, and while all three were important contributions to providing people access to modern political economy and to how capitalism as a system works, their emphasis was still more economic than social and more political than cultural. Nonetheless, they did not get bogged down in terms of debates about "mode-of-production" rather than "system" and "social formation" rather than system. The point is that Yates carries on with this "systems" approach and the making of an attempt to reach an audience beyond Marxist intellectuals. | 3 |
| The "system" that Yates is "naming" is this very capitalist system alluded to. Yates takes a socialist political economy approach to his presentation and, to some degree, an interdisciplinary approach. His emphasis, however, is on the discipline of economics and to a lesser degree on the disciplines of political science and history. The other social science disciplines and the humanities receive lesser attention. A large part of his objective is to: criticize capitalism as a system and in whatever era; criticize economic theory which has celebrated capitalism both in the past (neo-classical economic theory) and currently (neo-classical/neo-liberal economic theory); and address the record of capitalism in the past and currently at the levels of the global economy, the national economy, and the local economy — and all in less than 300 pages. Yates mobilizes both theoretically and empirically-based critiques and evidence in carrying out his objective; and in large measure he succeeds. His book is well-written and, thus, readily accessible to virtually anyone reading it with many key concepts defined, explained, and exemplified. There are times when the analysis is oversimplified and not obvious to a reader somewhat not well-versed in the issues and topics he raises and deals with. The book seems to be a "primer" in the area of contemporary socialist political economy. Nonetheless, as I will suggest later, I remain unclear what audience this book was directed at and what role the author and publishers saw it playing at the present time. | 4 |
| Among the many tasks Yates has undertaken is one which could be described as a "primer" in the political-economic theory of Karl Marx. The basics of Marx are clearly laid out although there are other works which have already done this (Pierre Jalee, Ben Fine, Ernest Mandel to identify a few), and others who have done this at a higher level (Paul Sweezy and Ernest Mandel). His connections of Marx's classic theory to more contemporary Marxist political-economic theory are laudable but wouldn't necessarily be clear to those unfamiliar with these works (Baran and Sweezy, Magdoff, and Foster among others). Yates' presentations and examples in this area are useful and his deeper criticism of neo-classical economic theory is clear and worthy. His identification of capitalism's generation of various (inter-related) inequalities is important and he provides empirical evidence of those connections. His identification of the consequences of those inequalities is limited given the available research, and this is where the research from other social sciences would have been useful. Yates also extends Marx's discussion of the capital-labour, employer-employee relationship which entails both exploitation and alienation. The extension moves into the area discussed by Braverman and provides good examples of the daily issues experienced by labour in this day and age. Yates also provides a thorough discussion of labour production at the global level with some important emphasis on the position of women. Based on this he also identifies some of the important oppositional forces at work in the anti-globalization movement. On the other hand, such analyses and criticisms are many and some have been done by those closely associated with Monthly Review, i.e. William K. Tabb. Such a comment does not negate some of the useful material Yates identifies but it does raise further questions as to what the purpose of this book is. | 5 |
| There are, it seems to me, two major flaws to this work and they are interconnected. I have alluded to the first several times and that is what audience this text is attempting to reach, i.e. undergraduates in academia and/or the more general public. The identified problems so far have to do with what knowledge the reader already brings to a reading of this work and what discussions and debates it would raise which, in turn, depends on whether the reader is simply an individual or has involvement in a group which is prepared to engage in "exchanges." Such an exchange is undermined by the second flaw and that is Yates's identification throughout of the Soviet Union and its "satellites" as "socialist." All too often Yates is rather defensive in his identification of the Soviet Union as a place of "actually existing socialism" (there is the odd qualification to this in the book), and such an identification places socialists in the untenable position of trying to explain something that wasn't actually true. Yates's argument becomes even more mysterious given the fact that for decades the editors of Monthly Review have been highly critical of the former Soviet Union and have presented a cogent analysis as to why Eastern Europe wasn't close to being socialist in any Marxian sense of that term. Beyond the falsity of Yates's position here is the very practical politics of socialists being forced into the Soviet box, especially in this era. It is hard to recommend (or assign) such a book whose credibility will probably fall on this score alone. | 6 |
| Paul StevensonUniversity of Winnipeg |
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