Review Article: Searching for Feasible and Viable Marxian Alternatives to Capitalism

Abstract

This article reviews Peter Hudis and Richard Wolff's recent contributions to feasible and viable Marxian alternatives to both capitalism and historical socialism. Both Hudis’ reinterpretation of Marx’s major writings and Wolff’s proposal for building a WSDE-based economy are important attempts at answering various questions surrounding Marxian post-capitalist visions. However, Hudis’ textual analysis fails to make sense of Marx’s contradictory positions toward the Proudhonian utopian project and to fully discuss the importance of worker cooperatives. Wolff’s WSDE-based economy also left many important issues untouched, especially in explaining the relationship between WSDEs and other corporate ownerships and the proper relationship between the state’s planning and the market. This article attempts to address these problems in order to contribute to our collective endeavor for searching for feasible and viable alternatives to existing systems.

Keywords: alternatives to capitalism, classical socialism, worker’s self-directed enterprise (WSDE), worker cooperative

JEL Classification: B51, P13, P26, P41, P51, Y30