Review of the book ‘Make Capitalism History’
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Review of ‘Make Capitalism History’.
The book ‘Make Capitalism History’ is by Simon Sutterlütti and Stefan Meretz. A review of it: https://leftdis.wordpress.com/2026/04/19/the-blind-spot-of-commonism-labor-need-and-social-mediation/
The book, which would probably receive a (much?) more favorable review in the SS than it does from this reviewer’s GICist standpoint, is freely downloadable here as either PDF or epub: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-14645-9
You are right. This book does seem worth reviewing by us.
A bit surprising, though, that there are still some people around defending the idea of “labour time money” that circulates. I thought that money-crank theory had been dealt with ages ago. As here from 1984:
“The Grundprinzipien outlined a plan for organising the production and distribution of wealth without money but on the basis of accounting in units of labour-time. They followed Otto Leichter here, but totally rejected the technocratic structure in which he had seen labour-time accounting replacing monetary calculation. In its place they proposed a federation of workers’ councils.
But when this plan is stripped of its socialist terminology, it turns out to be a scheme for a sort of self-regulating exchange economy in which money as we know it today would be replaced as the currency by a “labour-money”; in other words, the money-prices-wages system would continue to exist but would be run by workers’ councils and without exploitation. But to believe that an exchange economy could function in the interests of the workers if labour-money and labour-time accounting were to be used in place of the coins and notes and monetary calculation we know today is to completely misunderstand how capitalism works and to fall into the purest currency-crankism.”
Hermann Lueer, apparently a voracious reader (and — who knows, maybe a speed-reader as well) has now published a review of the (500-page) Tony Smith book. After praise at the start, what he goes on to say will not be too unexpected. But again, as with his review of the Sutterlütti and Meretz book ‘Make Capitalism History’, perhaps it can be gleaned from it to what degree this book is of interest from an SPGB point of view.
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