I’ve read much of the older classic stuff over the last few years, but I’ve found it hard to find good Marxist analysis of current events, or thinkers advancing Marxist theory/adapting it to our conditions. Are there any names in particular I should be looking out for?
I like Wolff, I’ve watched some of his videos and I listen to economic update every so often. He’s quite good in a “here’s some stuff that’s happening around the world, look how much capitalism sucks” sense, but I’m looking for a more hard-nosed analysis. I’ve probably just not been engaging with that side of his content, more his “popular economics” stuff. He’s always a good guest on TMBS too.
Ecosocialism: John Bellamy Foster revived and extended Marx's idea of metabolic rift which is a great way to look at the ecological crisis and how it emerges from capitalist development.
Economics: Andrew Kliman gives a convincing defense of Marx's system against the Transformation Problem critique and the empirical critiques of his crisis theory and the falling rate of profit.
Imperialism: Zak Cope has developed an empirical and theoretical extension of the work of Samir Amin on imperialism and the labor aristocracy, the economics of how these things manifest in the 21st century, and what the implications are for socialist strategy.
Cockshott's sole influential work is an towards a new socialism. IMO cottrell the co-author did more legwork. Basically that's Cockshott's only work. Even in the space it's written in I hear more references towards Stafford Beer instead.
That's quite the take on Harvey lol. Though I disagree with Harvey's interpretation of capital, he's a prominent Marxist scholar and is not trying to deflate Marxism. Parenti and Cockshott are also basically dead at this point, nothing new in years (same to guys like Frederic Jameson and Harvey though as well). IMO some the interesting new marxist scholarship include the endnotes collective, and William Clare Roberts.
Harvey literally comments are not rejecting the labor theory of value but the way it has been interpreted by certain schools of Marxism historically, he clarifies the distinction of it from a "value theory of labor" that was expounded on by people like Diane Elson, and endorses a value form that he thinks is accurate and what Marx was getting at. Marx's labor theory of value was not really his, it was derived by later writers, there are other perfectly valid derivations that look more like Harvey describes, and is still befitting of the term Marxist. I don't agree with it, I think Michael Roberts had a good critique, but he's still a Marxist.
I also see no reason calling Harvey a revisionist should be a pejorative or disqualify him from being a Marxist. Most Marxist writing is revisionist in some way at least, and claims of orthodoxy and that ones own work is the single scientific explanation is a rhetorical strategy, and not really meaningful to the content of any work that claims that..