Re: Information requested: US finance capital? which fraction of the bou

Aysen:

Here are some page citations from Anthony Brewer's _Marxist Theories of Imperialism_ (1980) that might be of some help to you on your questions about the distinctions between the various types of capital:

1.  On Marx's own treatment of the three fractions of capital (merchant (commercial) capital, industrial (productive) capital, and financial (money) capital, see pp. 38-39.  Note that the usage described here is inconsistent with Van der Pijl's treatment of money and commercial capital as the same.  I have a strong impression that he doesn't clearly distinguish between what Marx and Hilferding would call merchant's (commercial) capital and financial (money) capital.

2.  On Hilferding's distinction between financial capital and finance capital (the latter being the product of what Hilferding believed to be the fusion of industrial and financial capital that had taken place in his own time), see p. 84, and pp. 95-98.  

In raising the questions you raise, you enter a long tradition of argument about whether or not classical distinctions between various fractions of capital make sense at particular historical moments.  The Brewer book describes some of these debates.  In the end, you may have to accept or reject some formulations over others, or even (gulp!) engage in theoretical innovation if you conclude the distinctions don't make sense. Nothing wrong with innovation; after all, it's one of the reasons we still remember Hilferding.  Just be sure you tell everybody what definitions you are using before you make your theoretical argument! :  )

Let me also comment briefly on your question regarding the distinction between Keynes and Hamilton.  Hamilton cared primarily about the salutory effects of the development of a national manufacturing capacity.  These effects were not only economic, but political.  This is clear from the most famous quotation in Hamilton's _Report on Manufactures_ (1791), which reads thus:

Not only the wealth, but the _independence and security of a  country_
appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures.
_Every nation_, with a view to these great objects, ought to endeavor to
possess within itself, all the essentials of national supply.   _These
comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and  defense_
(Hamilton 1968, quoted in Beatty 1988.  Italics added).

The _Report on Manufactures_ proposed a plan for domestic industrialization behind tariff walls.  The plan represented the beginning of protectionist American foreign economic policy that later became known as "the American system".  Elements of the plan included (lacking other sources at hand at the moment, I must quote from somebody's rather mediocre master's thesis) "protective duties or prohibitions against products competing with domestic products; prohibition of exports of materials used in manufacturing; bounties and premiums upon domestic manufactures; exemptions and drawbacks from duties for material used in manufacturing; encourage of domestic invention and innovation, particularly in machinery; regulations for inspection of manufactures; circulation of bank paper and bills of exchange; and construction of roads and canals.  Hamilton felt these policies would enable the U.S. to overcome dependence upon 'casual and occasional' demand for agricultural products, overcome disadvantages in international markets caused by protectionist policies of more advanced countries, and speed up the normal process of industrialization" (Beatty 1988, p. 37).  (Note the similarity between these arguments and those of later advocates of industrialization of the developing world; Gilpin (1987) has also noted this similarity).
As Hamilton's arguments proceed from nationalistic concerns, Van der Pijl is correct to list him among those making "national bourgeois".  

Hamilton's emphasis on a country's need to "possess within itself, all the essentials of national supply" is quite different from the arguments of free-traders.  For example, Adam Smith, if I correctly recall a rare humorous moment in _The Wealth of Nations_, muses about the technical possibility of growing grapes for wine production in England using hothouses, rejecting the idea because of the extreme cost.  In Smith's thought, a country had no need to possess within itself "all the essentials of national supply".  For him, the "invisible hand" linking individual and collective interest prevailed in the international as in the domestic economy, and would ensure that countries practicing free trade would specialize according to _absolute_ advantage (as you know, not Ricardo's _comparative_ advantage) and, in so doing, receive gains from trade (Smith 1937).

The point of all this is to suggest that Hamilton is, indeed, closer to the "protectionist faction of the U.S. bourgeoisie" than to the internationalist (Aysen's phrase).  It is important to keep in mind, however, that in U.S. political economic thought, the distinction between "protectionist" and "internationalist" is not watertight.  Certainly the U.S. auto and steel industries want to compete internationally, but still advocate "fair trade" policies sometimes understood (by free traders!) as protectionistic.  Furthermore, there's an ample supply of popular writers from the business schools and elsewhere (Reich, Magaziner, Thurow, Porter, Zysman, Tyson) who clearly advocate U.S. industrial "competitiveness" but, in the Hamiltonian tradition, advocate various forms of industrial policy.  Note that at least some of the people I just named would probably consider themselves "internationalists" in the sense that they believe the policies they recommend are necessary to head off demands for protectionism (cf. Zysman and Cohen 1987; Tyson and Zysman 1983).  Note also that their thought sometimes gets attacked by free traders as representing a dangerous argument for protectionism.  

So what about the distinction between Keynes and Hamilton?  Note that Keynes, while clearly critical of free trade in some of his writings, grounded his critique of the self-regulating market of classical and neoclassical mythology primarily in its tendency toward speculative excess and tendency toward equilibrium at less than full employment.  This analysis is quite distinct from the nationalistic concerns of Hamilton (incidentally, it is crystal-clear from the _Federalist Papers_ that this guy was a _Realpolitikker_ _par excellence_!).  Furthermore, Hamilton, although by no means a stranger to the virtues of debt (cf. his scheme for managing the national debt of his own time), would probably have found Keynesian notions of demand stimulus conceptually quite foreign.  Twentieth century macroeconomic theory had obviously not been developed in his time.  Finally, Keynesian economics _can_ be interpreted as an argument for an "activist state" with a very limited set of policy tools, namely, fiscal and monetary policy.  Keynesian thought is an argument for _macroeconomic_ management, quite unlike the more micro-level policies practiced under the labels of active labor market policy and industrial policy (whether Keynes himself would have rejected these micro-level policies is a question I don't have a ready answer for).

As for your question about Keynes' analysis of the gold standard, my hunch (again, I'm not completely sure) is that Keynes may have realized that the gold standard effectively limited the ability of states to control their own money supply, as money supply growth was constrained by the amount of gold available to back it.  Thus, states were unable to practice the sort of demand-management strategies Keynes advocated.

Finally, responding to your fourth question (regarding literature on business behavior):  you will find a number of citations in my list of references below that may be useful to you, either because they survey various perspectives on the issue, contain case studies of sectors of industry, or represent important theoretical contributions on the issue. 


Enough aready!

REFERENCES

Barney, Jay B., and William G. Ouchi, eds.  Organizational economics.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986.

Beatty, Jeffrey L.  "'A kind of revolution':  domestic political consequences of international trade."  MA thesis, Iowa State University, 1988.

Biersteker, Thomas J.  Distortion or development? : Contending perspectives on the multinational corporation.  Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979.

Biersteker, Thomas J.  Multinationals, the state, and control of the Nigerian economy. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1987.

Brewer, Anthony.  _Marxist Theories of Imperialism:  A Critical Survey_.  London and New York:  Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

Campbell, John L., J. Rogers Hollingsworth, and Leon N. Lindberg, eds.  Governance of the American economy.  Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Caves, Richard E.  American industry : structure, conduct, performance.  7th ed.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992.

Caves, Richard E.  Multinational enterprise and economic analysis.  2nd ed. Cambridge, [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Cohen, Stephen S., and John Zysman.  Manufacturing matters : the myth of the post-industrial economy.  New York: Basic Books, 1987.

Dicken, Peter.  Global shift: transforming the world economy.  New York : Guilford Press, 1998.

Dunning, John H.  The globalization of business: the challenge of the 1990s. London; New York: Routledge, 1993.

Evans, Peter. Dependent development : the alliance of multinational, state, and local capital in Brazil.  Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1979.

Evans, Peter.  Embedded autonomy : states and industrial transformation / Peter Evans.  Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1995.

Evans, Peter, Claudio R. Frischtak, and Paulo Bastos Tigre, eds.  High technology and third world industrialization : Brazilian computer policy in comparative perspective.  Berkeley : International and Area Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1992.

Freeman, Christopher, ed.  Long wave theory.  Cheltenham, UK ; Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1996.
[You will find in this volume a set of seminal works in long wave theory, including some written from at least a quasi-regulationist  perspective].

Gereffi, Gary, and Donald L. Wyman, ed.  Manufacturing miracles : paths of industrialization in Latin America and East Asia.  Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Gilpin, Robert.  _The Political Economy of International Relations_.  With the
assistance of Jean M. Gilpin.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1987.

Gourevitch, Peter.  Politics in hard times : comparative responses to international economic crises.  Ithaca : Cornell University Press,  1986.

Hamilton, Alexander.  _Report on the Subject of Manufactures_, in _Industrial
and Commercial Correspondence of Alexander Hamilton Anticipating His Report on
Manufactures_, ed. Arthur Harrison Cole, with a preface by Edwin F. Gay, Reprints of Economic Classics (Chicago:  A.W. Shaw, 1928; reprint, New York:
Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), 289-300.

Hollingsworth, J. Rogers, and Robert Boyer, eds. Contemporary capitalism : the embeddedness of institutions.  Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Hollingsworth, J. Rogers, Phillipe C. Schmitter, and Wolfgang Streeck.  Governing capitalist economies : performance and control of economic sectors. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Kindleberger, Charles P.  "Group Behavior and International Trade."  Chap. in
_Economic Response:  Comparative Studies in Trade, Finance, and Growth_.  Cambridge and London:  Harvard University Press, 1978.

Kleinknecht, Alfred, Ernest Mandel, and Immanuel Wallerstein.  New findings in long-wave research.  New York : St. Martin's Press, 1992
[More quasi-regulationist stuff here].

Porter, Michael E.  The competitive advantage of nations.  New York : Free Press, 1990.

Smith, Adam.  _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_.  Edited by Edwin Cannan.  WIth an introduction by Max Lerner.  The Modern Library.  New York:  Random House, 1937.

Williamson, Oliver E.  The economic institutions of capitalism : firms, markets, relational contracting.  New York : Free Press ; London : Collier Macmillan, 1985.

Zysman, John, and Laura Tyson.  American industry in international competition: government policies and corporate strategies.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.



--
Jeffrey L. Beatty
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
2140 Derby Hall
154 North Oval Mall
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(o) 614/292-2880
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Email:  Beatty.4@osu.edu
______________________________________________________   
'_Sapere aude_'--'have courage to use your own reason'
--this is the motto of Enlightenment--Immanuel Kant,
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