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Book Review Essay: Institutions, Culture, and the Moral Economy: The Reconfiguration of Class in Theory and Politics

The Moral Economy of Class: Class and Attitudes in Comparative Perspective Stefan Svallfors; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006, 248 pp., $45.00 (hardback). Marxism @ 2000: Late Marxist Perspectives Ronaldo Munck; New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000, 164 pp., $105.00 (hardback). Class Andrew Milner; London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi: Sage, 1999, 177 pp., $44.95 (paperback)

Industrial Relations Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 6140, New Zealand; e-mail: george.lafferty{at}vuw.ac.nz

This review essay draws on a discussion of the three books by Svallfors, Munck, and Milner to reflect on the continuing salience of class and Marxist analysis in the wake of neoliberalism, postmodernism, and post-Marxism. The essay explores the possibilities for a radicalization of the "moral economy" in the Anglophone nations, reversing the erosion of collectivist institutions. While claims of the "death of class" and the irrelevance of Marxism may be unsustainable, political issues such as working class conservatism require a radical re-examination of Marxist understandings of class in relation to gender, race, and ethnicity.

Key Words: class • neoliberalism • moral economy • Marxism

This version was published on September 1, 2008

Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 40, No. 3, 341-353 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0486613408319846


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