Stephen Resnick

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stephen A. Resnick (born October 24, 1938) is a North American economist. He is well-known for his work (with Richard D. Wolff) on Marxian economics, economic methodology and class analysis.

Steve Resnick received his Ph.D. in 1964, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His dissertation was an econometric analysis of European Common Market. His early work (during his tenure at Yale University between 1965-1971) was with Stephen Hymer and focused on issues of economic development and international political economy.

After a brief period of service at the City College of New York (1971-1973), he began teaching at the Economics Department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1973. He began working with Richard D. Wolff in this period and since then together they published numerous articles and books formulating a nondeterminist, class analytical approach. Topics have included Marxian theory and value analysis, overdetermination, radical economics, international trade, business cycles, social formations, the Soviet Union, and comparing and contrasting Marxian and non-Marxian economic theories.

Resnick's work with Wolff took Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar's Reading Capital as its point of departure and developed a very subtle reading of Karl Marx's Capital Volumes II and III in their influential Knowledge and Class. For Resnick, Marxian class analysis entails the detailed study of the conditions of existences of concrete forms of performance, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor. While there could be an infinite number of forms of surplus appropriation, the Marxist canon refers to ancient (independent), slave, feudal, capitalist, and communist class processes.

In 1989, Resnick joined efforts with a group of colleagues, ex- and then current students to launch Rethinking Marxism, an academic journal that aims to create a platform for rethinking and developing Marxian concepts and theories within economics as well as other fields of social inquiry. He remained a member of the editorial board of the journal until 1994. He continues to serve as a member of the advisory board of the journal.

Resnick continues to teach graduate seminars and undergraduate courses and direct dissertation research in Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

[edit] Bibliography

Notable works of Stephen Resnick include:

Richard D. Wolff and Stephen A. Resnick. Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1987).
Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987).
J.K.Gibson-Graham, Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. Class and Its Others (Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis, 2000).
J.K.Gibson-Graham, Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism (Duke University Press, Durham NC, 2001).
Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR (Routledge, NY, 2002).
Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. New Departures in Marxian Theory (Economics as Social Theory (Routledge, NY, 2006).