Understanding Marxism

by Richard D. Wolff

For capitalism to reproduce itself, it requires performers and enablers, productive and unproductive laborers, but that does not mean their differences do not matter. Quite the contrary: in every exploitative economic system, the two different kinds of laborers have played varying roles in supporting or overthrowing the system, in seeking political alliances with each other or alternatively with surplus appropriators. In slavery, for example, field and house slaves exhibited varying relationships. So too did serfs assigned to agriculture versus crafts. Capitalism has had its blue and white collar employees. To Marx’s credit, his surplus theory – and the class analysis built on it – grasped the deeper, systemic importance of these differences.