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The
changes within world capitalism in the last thirty years since the
end of the postwar boom have brought a significant theoretical
discussion about both their scope and characteristics, and also
their consequences for the prospects outlined by revolutionary
Marxism. Thus, in the view of many contemporary thinkers, the
globalisation of capitalist production and the world market have
brought to life a new situation and a historical turn-about. This is
the case with Toni Negri, autonomism's main theoretician, who
upholds such views in his latest book, Empire, co-authored with
Michael Hardt. They define the latter as the globalisation's new
political order. Contrariwise, other theoreticians belonging to the
school of historical sociology of the world system argue that, ever
since its beginnings, capitalism has always operated as a world
economy, thus rejecting the novelty of globalisation as a mere
misinterpretation of history. One of the most notorious
spokespersons of this strand is Giovanni Arrighi, who in the mid 90s
went on to publish The Long Twentieth Century, a work where he poses
such view. Such theoretical orientations challenge, from different
angles, the classical definition of imperialism, such as it was
formulated by Lenin and upheld by revolutionary Marxists in the
bygone twentieth century.
The significance of this debate lies in
the fact that the new developments call forth a reappraisal of the
political, economical and social events, as a way to validate the
Marxist categories that have been hammered out to grapple with the
former. Regardless the changed situation, the current debate
resembles the bustling theoretical and intellectual polemic that
took place inside the international socialist movement -and also
beyond it-, as free- concurrence capitalism grew into imperialism in
the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. In the light of these
new debates, new fundamentals questions for historical materialism
and dialectics arise, to be able to grapple with the new challenges
posed by the complex reality of the world and the new century. Such
was Lenin's approach, who took up the categories of dialectics to
respond to the complex new questions which had arisen out of the new
phase of capitalism- the Great War among them. Lenin did not confine
himself to a scholastic repetition of Marxist categories. Instead,
he applied them to the new reality in a creative manner, taking on
board -albeit in a critical fashion- insights furnished by his
adversaries and co thinkers, such as Hilferding or Kautky, and even
by bourgeois liberal ideologues such as Hobson, while ridding them
of the reformist overtones infused by their authors. In Lenin's
view, it was a matter of putting together those breakthroughs,
building them into a new set-up that should highlight the
revolutionary potential enshrined within the new epoch then
unfolding before his eyes.
The two strands of thought we are
taking issue with carry the merit of being endeavours to furnish a
global overview of contemporary reality. However, the shortcomings
of their theoretical approach prevents them from accurately
understanding, no matter the findings and the genuine questions
underpinning their contributions, the shifts within the world order
in the last thirty years. That is why before dwelling on our own
view, we shall make a critical appraisal of Negri's and Arrighi's
postulates, which in turn shall enable us to understand better and
more profoundly the classical Marxist method, as it was postulated
in the new epoch by Lenin and Trotsky.
In this article we will
criticise the those two strands of thought challenging the
postulates on imperialism, taking up the materialist dialectic
approach to analyse world capitalism, in an updated view that shall
enable us to grapple with present-day reality.
The
"Long Twentieth Century"
The
purpose of this book is to set out how the decline of American
hegemony and the crisis of accumulation of the 70s (a reflection of
which was the flotation of the dollar that put an end to the gold
standard dictated by the Bretton Woods agreements, along with the
American defeat in Vietnam) have both been a watershed in the
history of world capitalism. In order to explain the shifts in the
world today, Arrighi claims that we have to go back and place this
crisis in the framework of the protracted record of cycles of
capitalist accumulation. Drawing on Ferdinand Braudel and his
approach, Arrighi builds up a massive analytical and historical work
that tackles with the four systemic cycles of capitalist
accumulation, the four "long centuries" which place the
American century at the end of a series of centuries- Genoa's, the
Netherlands' and the British century.
From this historical
perspective, Arrighi shows that there is nothing new to the crisis
of the 70s. What capitalism is going through today under America's
rule, it had already been through under the domination of the
British, the Dutch before them, and the Genoese right at the onset
of capitalist expansion. The crisis points to a transition, a
watershed that has been common to every systemic cycle of
accumulation, in which there has been a first phase characterised by
material expansion, investment into production, then a second phase
of financial expansion, including speculation. Such transition to a
financial expansion, which in the author's view took place in the
early 80s in the American case, always bears an "atmosphere of
doom" (in Braudel's words), pointing to the end of a systemic
cycle. It also highlights the decline of American hegemony over the
world system, since in Arrighi's view the end of long century goes
hand in hand with a geographic shift of the heartland underpinning
the systemic process of capital accumulation. In his own words,
"Shifts of this kind have occurred through all the crises and
financial expansions that have borne their mark on the transition
from a systemic cycle of accumulation to another." Arrighi
claims that the U.S. has given way to Japan so that the latter will
preside over the coming long cycle of capitalist
accumulation.
Arrighi: the rejection of the class struggle as history's
driving force
Arrighi's theoretical edifice on the series of systemic
cycles of accumulation supersedes the Marxian tenet regarding the
class struggle as the driving force of history. As with every cyclic
theory, it is not human action, the human agency, the one that
shapes the course of history, but the objective laws of capitalist
accumulation. Change is brought about by a structural build up of
contradictions. Such view on history precludes any chance of a
revolutionary break up and transformation within society, just
allowing for a cyclical repetition -although a more complex one
every time- of the state bodies and the capitalist enterprise, the
dialectic between the state and capital, the only agents of change
within the historical process perceived by Arrighi. The
"systemic chaos" sparked off by the end of the phase of
capitalist accumulation and the onset of the financial expansion of
the hegemonic power that also provokes an increased inter-state
competition among the main powers and also heightened social
developments, always end up in the replacement of an old hegemony by
a new emerging state and economic power. The outcome of this is a
steady increase in the complexity, the size and the might of the
leading agencies of capitalist history, a process that can be summed
up as follows.
Thus, the Genoese regime was based upon a
city-state of small size and simple organization, which actually had
very little power. Its strength lay in its widespread commercial and
financial links that enabled it to deal with most of the mighty,
territory-based European rulers on an equal foot, and which were the
at the base of its symbiotic bond with the rulers of the kingdom of
the Spanish peninsula.
The United Provinces were a much bigger
and more complex organization than their Genoese predecessor, a
hybrid kind of organization combining some features of medieval
city-states now withering away with features of the emerging
nation-states.
Then, Arrighi claims, "Great Britain was not
only a full blown nation-state and, as such, a much bigger and more
complex organization than the United Provinces at any time; it was
also conquering a commercial and territorial empire of world
dimensions that would furnish its ruling circles and its capitalist
class with an unprecedented rule over the human and natural
resources of the entire world."
Lastly, in the words of the
same author, "…the U.S. were already something more than
a full-blown nation-state. They were a continental
industrial-military complex endowed with a power strong enough so as
to give efficacious protection to a number of subordinated
governments and allies, and to live up to its threats of economic
strangulation or military annihilation aimed at rival governments
anywhere in the world."
However, regardless of the valuable
historical elements he contributes with, such series of systemic
cycles of accumulation whose origin and evolution is governed by a
self-repeating pattern fails to explain away the actual operation of
the capitalist mode of production. As every cyclic theory does, it
just describes a kernel of efficient causes that fails to
incorporate the driving forces at work behind the motion, it just
describes a contingent sequence of events. In this way, Arrighi
relapses in some sort of empiricism at odds with historical
materialism, for which the source of motion lies in the
contradiction and its laws of development arise from the process of
interpenetration of the opposing poles of the
contradiction.
History and structure of the world capitalist
market
The
outcome of such approach combining a changing hierarchy between the
state power and the capitalist enterprise is a view on the history
and the structure of the world capitalist market is an outright
rejection of the fact that its development contains within it the
existence of different relationships of production. In this way, it
confounds the development of the world market, brought to life by
merchant capital, a prerequisite for the unfolding of the capitalist
mode of production in the fringes of the feudal mode of production,
placing the origin the capitalist world market some 500 years ago,
along with the flourishing of the Italian city-states in the
Renaissance.
Secondly, it overlooks the fact that the existence
of the world market can only be understood as the by-product of the
consolidation of the capitalist mode of production, as a dominant
regime of production, and that its setting up poses that
"…an articulate system of capitalist relationships of
production, semi-capitalist and pre-capitalist ones, linked to each
other by capitalist relationships of exchange and dominated by the
world capitalist market." The coming to life of the capitalist
world market, with these features, can only be found from the
industrial revolution onwards, which took place in the late
eighteenth century, early nineteenth century.
In the third
place, it puts and equal sign between the capitalist economy and
commodity exchange, overlooking the fact that under capitalism, the
distinctive feature is the pursuit of surplus value, which is
churned out of industrial production, being the latter the driving
force of the expansion of world commerce. In Marx's words, "the
world market constitutes in itself the basis for this regime of
production. On the other hand, its inherent need to produce on an
ever increasing scale contributes to the steady expansion of the
world market, therefore not being commerce the one to spur industry,
but contrariwise, the latter spurs commerce."
The
conclusion of such theoretical schema is that it fails to
differentiate the phases of the development of capitalism. If
outbound expansion is a feature of the capitalist mode of production
since the beginning, i.e., since the industrial revolution, in the
history of capitalism in the last 200 years or so, we can see two
phases. As Ernest Mandel points out: "In the epoch of free
concurrence capitalism, the direct production of surplus value by
big industry was confined to Western Europe and North America. The
process of primitive accumulation of capital, however, was going on
in many other places of the world at the same time, never mind the
tempo was uneven…Foreign capital, of course, flowed into the
countries which were industrializing themselves, but was unable to
take over the process of accumulation."
Mandel goes on,
"In the epoch of imperialism there was a turn-about in this
whole structure. The process of primitive accumulation of capital in
the formerly non capitalistic economies was therefore submitted to
the reproduction of the big capital coming from the West. From now
on, the export of capital from the imperialist countries, but not
the process of original accumulation of capital, was to shape the
economic development of what later came to be known as the 'Third
World'. The latter was thus forced to meet the needs of capitalist
production in the metropolitan countries…The process of
imperialist export of capital thus suffocated the economic
development of the so-called 'Third World'…."
Arrighi and his theory of cycles overlooks this quantum leap in
the structure of capitalist accumulation worldwide. Quoting
Ferdinand Braudel -and discussing against a major feature of the
classical definition of imperialism, the emergence of finance
capital (an issue Lenin took from Hilferding)- he argues that:
"Hilferding regards the world of capital as a series of
possibilities, within which the finance type, a very recent outcome
according to him, has tended to prevail over the rest, penetrating
them from within. It is an opinion with which I would agree, with
the reservation that I understand that the plurality of capitalism
goes well back into time. Finance capitalism was no recently-born
baby in the early twentieth century. I would even argue that in the
past, let us say, in Genoa or Amsterdam…finance capital was
already able to take over and rule during some time at least, over
all of the endeavours of the business world." In this
quotation, we clearly see how the cyclic kernel of capitalist
accumulation is completely misleading when it comes to understanding
the quantum leaps within that mode of production. Such overlapping
of historical epochs stems from the weakness of the concepts. How
can we compare the money capital hoarded by the merchants living in
the city-states of Italy and the Netherlands, which was used to give
loans to the several European dynasties, with the surplus capital
(churned out of big industry) accumulated in the main developed
countries in the late nineteenth century, a by-product itself of the
concentration and centralization of capital within the boundaries of
the nation-state had reached its limit? Such surplus capital
underpinned the unprecedented extension of capital's geographic
boundaries reaching out to the whole world. Such outbound expansion
of national capital inexorably led to a chaotic competence for the
resources, the markets and the control of the routes for foreign
trade, which are at the base of struggle for the scramble of the
world that reached momentum in the World War I. This was nothing but
a symptom that the development of the productive forces had out
flowed the borders of the nation-state, that imperialism deepens the
contradiction between the growth of the productive forces of the
world economy, and the borders separating nations and states against
each other. This is also a symptom, in turn, that the contradiction
between the qualitatively increased social production, such as the
monopolies which embraced vertically under a single control
different phases of production, and the private appropriation of
social wealth. Such structural contradictions, inherent to the
capitalist mode of production burst open in the early twentieth
century, thus ushering in a new phase of capitalist development.
This new phase of decline and agony does not preclude the
contradictions at work in the capitalist mode of production, but
incorporates additional laws presiding over its works. Arrighi, with
his theory of cycles, fails to understand this. But it was Marx the
one to point out that "The are special laws presiding over the
origin, the existence, the development and the death of a given
social organism, and also its replacement."
The onset of
this new epoch had brought to life something new: the first
victorious proletarian revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolution. Such
extension of capital's domains, that bringing to life the mighty
reality of the capitalist world market, had ripened the objective
conditions that were to radically alter the nature of the epoch,
putting proletarian revolution right on the agenda. Ever since, we
cannot understand the dynamics of capitalist accumulation without
taking into account the powerful revolutionary leverage of the
proletariat and the oppressed worldwide. It is here where the schema
furnished by Arrighi collides head-on with the reality of the
"long twentieth century", one that was characterised by a
persistent class struggle, wars and revolutions, not only in those
moments when "systemic chaos" reigned supreme, using his
own words, but when "material expansion" was under way
(such as the postwar boom). Those have shattered the metropolitan
countries from time to time, whereas they have been present in the
periphery continuously.
Following his own schema, Arrighi notes
that "…as time elapsed, the cycles have grown shorter.
As we move on from the early stages to the latter phases of
capitalist development, the systemic regimes of accumulation have
taken less time to come to life, develop and be superseded."
This speeding up of history's tempo is a fact of the contemporary
world. However, Arrighi fails to understand the fundamental reason
for such shortening of history's tempo: the social power accumulated
by the workers movement and the masses, and the upheaval of the
colonial and semicolonial peoples in pursue of their liberation.
These two substantial elements have impinged on the dynamics of
capitalist rule in the century now bygone. That is why in this book,
it goes unnoticed to cast aside, in his own words, "the class
struggle and the polarization of the world economy in peripheral and
central areas, processes both that have played a preeminent role in
my original view of the long twentieth century." In this way,
with a one-sided approach, one of which he is aware, he undoes the
dialectic unity between the economy, the inter-state relationships
and the class struggle, the one and only accurate starting point for
an all-round understanding of today's capitalism, and even the issue
of the links between money and power, an aimed pursued by Arrighi in
this book.
Empire
In this
book, Negri and Hardt hold that globalisation has brought about a
decline of sovereignty, since it relied on the nation-state, and
also an ever-decreasing ability to regulate the cultural and
economic exchanges: "The sovereignty of the nation-state was
the cornerstone of the imperialisms that European powers constructed
throughout the modern era. By 'Empire,' however, we understand
something altogether different from 'imperialism'. The boundaries
defined by the modern system of nation-states were fundamental to
European colonialism and economic expansion: the territorial
boundaries of the nation delimited the center of power from which
rule was exerted over exteral foreign countries through a system of
channels and barriers that alternately facilitated and obstructed
the flows of production and circulation. Imperialism was really an
extension of the sovereignty of the European nation-states beyond
their own boundaries." However, this does not mean the end of
sovereignty altogether, but the coming to life of a new type, made
up of a whole new series of national and supranational agencies,
gathered together by a new common logic of rule, such would be what
they call Empire. "In contrast to imperialism, Empire
establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on
fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and
deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates
the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers".
For them, these transformations in the political order worldwide
point to a shift within the capitalist mode of production. It has
put an end to the spatial divisions of the "worlds" known
under Yalta, the First World (western powers), the Second World (the
USSR and the European East) and the Third World (semicolonial
world), for it is now possible to find the First World within the
Third, the Third World within the First, whereas the Second World is
nowhere to be seen. This has gone hand in hand with a transformation
of the dominant productive process, one in which the role played by
industrial, factory-based labour has by and large subsided, while
communicative, cooperative and affective labour have all become
predominant. The outcome is that "postmodernity" holds a
firm grip on the global economy.
Against those who regard the
U.S. as the ultimate source of authority presiding over the
unfolding of globalisation and the new world order, either to praise
it as the leader of the world and sole superpower, or else those who
loathe the renewed imperialist oppression, the autonomist
theoretician and his cothinker postulate that "Our basic
hypothesis, however, that a new imperial form of sovereignty has
emerged, contradicts both these views. The United States does not,
and indeed no nation-state can today, form the center of an
imperialist project. Imperialism is over.No nation will be world
leader in the way modern European nations were."
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt: an overestimation of the
class struggle
If
Giovanni Arrighi overemphasizes the role of the structure, up to the
point of writing off the human agency as the driving force of social
transformations, Negri and his literary fellow, Hardt elevate the
latter to unprecedented heights. Thus, Negri takes issue against
Arrighi in his Empire as follows: "What concerns us more is
that in the context of Arrighi's cyclical argument it is impossible
to recognize a rupture of the system, a paradigm shift, an event.
Instead, everything must always return, and the history of
capitalism thus becomes the eternal return of the same. In the end,
such a cyclical analysis masks the motor of the process of crisis
and restructuring. Even though Arrighi himself has done extensive
research on working-class conditions and movements throughout the
world, in the context of this book, and under the weight of its
historical apparatus, it seems that the crisis of the 1970s was
simply part of the objective and inevitable cycles of capitalist
accumulation, rather than the result of proletaran and
anticapitalist attack both in the dominant and in the subordinated
countries. The accumulation of these struggles was the motor of the
crisis, and they determined the terms and nature of capitalist
restructuring."
We agree with Negri that the wave of
working class and people's struggles that swept through the
imperialist countries, the bureaucratised workers states and the
semicolonial countries since the late 60s, and that went through the
following decade (although with ebbs and tides), meant a shift in
the balance of forces favourable for the mass movement, a period
where the oppressed moved to the offensive against
imperialism.
Notwithstanding that, one cannot say that "The
accumulation of these struggles was the motor of the crisis, and
they determined the terms and nature of capitalist
restructuring." In this way, he endows the class struggle with
absolute powers, taking issue against Arrighi -who abuses of the
structural elements in his theoretical postulates- in an abstract
way. The inherent contradictions of the capitalist mode of
production, i.e., the relationship between the development of the
productive forces and the relationships of production is downplayed
because crises are regarded as the direct by-product of the power of
labour.
At a more general level, the agency and the structure are
strongly intertwined, and if one separates any of these poles,
giving primacy to one over another is a big mistake. To give an
absolute value to structural contradictions within the mode of
production results in a closed structure devoid of any chance of
revolutionary transformation through human action, therefore
relapsing in a cyclic kernel, a feature we have already taken issue
with in Arrighi and the school of the world system. Likewise,
Negri's elevation of the class struggle leads him to downplay the
material contradictions that provide the substrate for the class
struggle to unfold. He also forgets that the former becomes
history's driving force when the structural contradictions come to
the surface. Such moments are the watersheds in history's evolution.
In other words, social developments play a predominant role when the
contradictions have ripened. In this sense, we agree with an old
polemic book by Anderson in which he claimed:
"…according to historical materialism, among the most
fundamental mechanisms of social change we find the systematic
contradictions between the productive forces and the relationships
of production, and not only social conflicts between the classes
nourished by antagonistic relationships of production. The former
overlap with the latter because one of the biggest forces of
production is always labour, which in turn constitutes a distinct
class due to the relationships of production. However, they do not
coincide with each other. The crises of the modes of production are
not identical with the clashes between the classes. They can fuse
with each other occasionally. The onset of major economic crises,
both under feudalism and capitalism has often caught the social
classes unawares, since they stemmed from the structural depths
lying beneath the direct clash between them. On the other hand, the
resolution of such crises has been brought about quite often as a
result of protracted clashes between the classes. As a matter of
fact, the revolutionary transformations -from a mode of production
to another- are as a rule the privileged terrain for the class
struggle."
As to the 70s, the increased organic composition
of capital boosted during the boom and the subsequent fall in the
rate in the profit, plus political developments such as sharpened
inter-imperialist rivalries due to the emergence of powers like
Germany and Japan -in other words, a ripening of structural factors-
were all causes that pushed the exploited classes onto the scene
worldwide. This, in turn, dislodged the postwar world order. It also
disrupted the equilibrium between the states, the classes and inside
the economy that had allowed for the boom, thus ushering in a period
of crisis of accumulation for capital. Such crisis is the reflection
of this combination of elements, but not a direct reflection of the
power of labour.
In turn, this power of labour "dictates the
terms and the nature of capitalist restructuration". As Negri
puts it in his work: "The revolting masses, their desire for
liberation, their experiments to construct alternatives, and their
instances of constituent power have all at their best moments
pointed toward the internationalization and globalization of
relationships, beyond the divisions of national, colonial, and
imperialist rule. In our time this desire that was set in motion by
the multitude has been addressed (in a strange and perverted but
nonetheless real way) by the construction of Empire. One might even
say that the construction of Empire and its global networks is a
response to the various struggles against the modern machines of
power, and specifically to class struggle driven by the multitude's
desire for liberation. The multitude called Empire into being."
There is little doubt that the upsurge in the 70s aimed against
the two mainstays of the postwar order eroded the partition of the
world in three distinct areas (metropolitan countries, "the
second periphery" or the degenerate and deformed workers
states, and the semicolonial countries or the so-called "Third
World") that had shaped the class struggle during that
historical period, due to the grip of the counterrevolutionary
apparatuses (socialdemocrats, stalinists and bourgeois
nationalists). The struggle waged by the Vietnamese masses and the
solidarity movement that emerged in the imperialist countries, both
of which paralysed the U.S. imperialist military machine, was the
most eloquent proof of this. We cannot deny that that mass upsurge
drove capital to seek for a response in the direction of undermining
the bases of the power of labour, one that later on took the shape
of the neoliberal offensive and the so-called globalisation that
goes hand in hand with it. But claiming that the "terms and the
nature of the capitalist restructuring" were the direct result
of such accumulation of struggles overlooking the outcome of those
fights is simply to glorify the class struggle in itself. The
moments of capitalist accumulation are determined by the different
phases and the corresponding shifts in the balance of forces between
the classes. During the "dress rehearsal" back in 1968,
although the industrial working class fought tooth and nail, the
proletariat was unable to find a solution for its decade-long crisis
of revolutionary leadership and thus could not win decisive
victories over imperialism. In failing to do so, they gave time for
it to rally its ranks, thus letting the unfolding of the neoliberal
offensive get through. Such policies set in the early 80s, but the
Brezhnev counterrevolution that had crushed the 1968 "Prague
spring" and the Polish events a decade later paved the way for
them. To these, we should add the policy of the CPs and the
socialdemocracy that worked for the derailment of the upsurge in
France and Italy, as well as the anti-dictatorial struggles in
Portugal and Spain, and also the responsibility of the CPs in the
debacle of the revolutionary upheaval in South America.
Hinging
upon this balance of forces, the endogenous mechanisms of the
capitalist accumulation gradually prevailed, i.e., the need to
offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall through the
incorporation of new regions with cheap raw materials and labour,
the ceaseless search of superprofits by monopolies and the constant
technological revolution need for this, the wave of mergers and
acquisitions as a fetter to competition.
Both elements, the
derailment and the defeat of the "accumulation of
struggles" in the 70s, and the imperialist backlash fuelled by
the crisis of accumulation, were to dictate the terms of the
capitalist restructuring, and not just the first element alone,
making abstraction of outcome of the class combats
A
ultrasubjectivist theory of a mysterious and phantasmagoric
subject
The
downplaying of the structural contradictions inherent in the
capitalist mode of production and the overestimation of the subject
are manifested in the new theoretical scheme proposed by Negri and
Hardt to define the "Empire" as a new phase of capitalism
that leaves imperialism behind. Breaking up the dialectic unity
between the relationships of production and the class struggle, they
attempt a recreation of materialism that is vitiated by the
hypertrophy of the subject, a subjectivists theory where the
structure holds no barriers, it does not constraint the human
agency, even more, the former is a mere consequence of his action.
This can be clearly seen when the Italian philosopher and his
literary co thinker claim that: "Theories of the passages to
and beyond imperialism that privilege the pure critique of the
dynamics of capital risk undervaluing the power of the real
efficient motor that drives capitalist development from its deepest
core: the movements and struggles of the proletariat...History has a
logic only when subjecitivity rules it, only when (as Nietzsche
says) the emergence of subjectivity reconfigures efficient causes
and final causes in the development of history. The power of the
proletariat consists precisely in this...The old analyises of
imperialism will not be sufficient here because in the end they stop
at the threshold of the analysis of subjectivity and concentrate
rather on the contradictions of capital's own developmet. We need to
identify a theoretical schema that puts the subjectivity of the
social movements of the proletariat at center stage in the processes
of globalization and the constitution of global order." The
emphasis between the role played by structural contradictions and
the conscious human agency, of working out organic crises, has been
displaced from the former to the latter throughout the centuries
through which the history of mankind has unfolded. In the epoch of
proletarian revolution, the subjective factor acquires a decisive
role. The transformation heralded by proletarian revolution
constitutes the most conscious step humanity has ever taken. The
transition from feudalism to capitalism, in a certain way, is
in-between (in the sense that the take over of the means of
production comes before the seizing of political power by the
bourgeoisie) when compared to the downfall of the Roman Empire and
the Russian Revolution. Nonetheless, in spite of the predominant
role played by the subjective factor -and its most developed form:
the organization of the masses in soviets as organs of power led by
a revolutionary party- one cannot appraise the outcome of these
transformations through endowing subjectivity with an absolute power
as a change agent in the world. Such is the view the Bolsheviks had
of themselves: "…one of the historical factors, its
'conscious' factor, a very important but not a decisive one. We have
never sinned of historical subjectivism. We regarded the class
struggle -standing on the basis provided by the productive forces-
as the decisive factor, not only at a national level but also
internationally."
Negri and Hardt relapse in such
historical subjectivism when they claim that: "History has a
logic only when subjecitivity rules it, only when (as Nietzsche
says) the emergence of subjectivity reconfigures efficient causes
and final causes in the development of history". Their
subjectivism, however, is of a different type to that mentioned in
Trotsky's quote mentioned above. It is not a subjectivism relying on
a revolutionary party. It is neither a strand of subjectivism
stemming from the revolutionary maturity or learning of the working
class, i.e., the process of becoming a class for itself from a class
in itself, the achievement of its political independence with
regards to the bourgeoisie, which only can be brought about through
the experience of the class itself and its bound with a
revolutionary party. This is not the case with Negri and Hardt,, for
whom the becoming of the subject does not hinge upon these
achievements, but rather on ever-present grounds for
liberation.
Building on a logic of an unreal subject ("the
multitude") that bears no correspondence at all with an
empirically-set subject, they proceed to blur the objective
positions of the different exploited classes within the capitalist
mode of production, the centrality of the proletariat in particular
as the social subject of the socialist revolution. Such phantom-like
subject built by them, omnipresent and pure potential, has no need
for programmes, strategic and tactics, let alone a revolutionary
party to accomplish its historic mission.
Hence, when the authors
of Empire are faced with the setting of the early 80s and most of
the 90s, when neoliberalism gained momentum and the actual subject
is in retreat and atomized, a far cry from the "constituent
flames" of the 70s, their theoretical framework turns out to be
completely unable to deal with reality. This comes to light when
they explain why the U.S. has been able to hold on to its hegemony
throughout the crisis. Thus, they claim that "The answer lies
in large part, perhaps paradoxically, not in the genius of U.S.
politicians or capitalists, but in the power and creativity of the
U.S. proletariat...in terms of the paradigm of international
capitalist command, the U.S. proletariat appears as the subjective
figure that expressed most fully the desires and needs of
international or multinational workers. Against the common wisdom
that the U.S. proletariat is weak because of its low party and union
representation with respect to Europe and elsewhere, perhaps we
should see it as strong for precisely those reasons. Working-class
power resides not in the representative institutions but in the
antagonism and autonomy of the workers themselves...In order to
understand the continuation of U.S. hegemony, then, it is not
sufficient to cite the relations of force that U.S. capitalism
wielded over the capitalists in other countries. U.S. hegemony was
actually sustained by the antagonistic power of the U.S.
proletariat" . This is really surprising. If there is a place
where the bourgeoisie in the last twenty years has been able to
overcome the fetters imposed by labour onto accumulation, that place
is the U.S. As the Reagan onslaught unfolded, and later continued
into the 90s, the American workers endured a massive retreat through
a combination of defeats and the fear of the 1979-82 recession that
brought about a hike of unemployment. It led to a big loss of
conquests, a massive wage loss, the lengthening of the working day,
which as a whole allowed for a significant increase of the rate of
exploitation and a recovery of corporate profits. It is these
factors that account for the relative strength of the U.S. in the
face of its competitors and also lay the basis for its continued
hegemony -along with the U.S. privileged position within the world
finance system. Nonetheless, the analysis proposed by Negri and
Hardt writes off this material reality, replacing it by a
subjectivist approach. Thus, the objective balance of forces between
the classes is replaced by the "desires" of the workers.
As to the trade union and political level, it is true that the union
and political representatives of the European workers is a reformist
one or has been bought off by the bourgeoisie. But celebrating the
weakness of the trade union organization and the lack of any class
representation in the American bipartisan system as proof of
strength is nonsensical. The low level of organization of the
American working class is the result of a fierce opposition of the
American bourgeoisie to giving the slightest right of organization
to the workers on one hand, and the political and conservative
backwardness of the working class stemming from the dominant
position of the U.S., on the other. As we see, autonomism and its
ultrasubjectivist approach, whose historical origin goes back to the
euphoria of the struggles in the 60s and the 70s combined with the
(justified) repulsion of many left Marxist intellectuals with
Althusser's structuralism and anti-humanism, is totally unable to
understand the present-day world.
A
new "ultra-imperialism"
From
such new theoretical framework, it flows that the becoming of the
Empire "as a global order, a new logic and structure of
government, shortly a new form of sovereignty going hand in hand
with the world markets and the world network of production"- in
the words of the authors. When working out their subjectivist
approach to the very end, they dissolve the capitalist competence
and the fight for world supremacy by the rival capitalist states
still at work in the imperialist phase- although disguised in new,
more complex forms- into such "global order".
In the
early twentieth century, Kautsky, when analyzing the first
"wave of globalisation", foresaw a progressive withering
away of interimperialist contradictions, a process that should
culminate in "ultraimperialism". In his schema, the
international merger of capital has developed so much so as to make
the distinct economic interests of the different international
capital owners fade away. In his Der Imperialismus, published in Die
Neue Zeit on November 11, 1914, he claimed that: "Thus, from a
purely economic standpoint one cannot rule out that capitalism will
outlive itself to another phase, the cartelisation in foreign
policy: a phase of ultraimperialism, against which we shall, of
course, fight against as resolutely as do against imperialism, but
one which poses dangers of a different kind, not those of an arms
race and the threat to world peace." Lenin did not rule out the
possibility that a bigger concentration and centralization of
capital on an international level may take place. He claimed that
the long-term "logic" tendency led to the establishment of
a single world-embracing concern. But he argued that before such
"logical" conclusion should come about, capitalism would
blow itself up as a result of its increased internal contradictions
and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the oppressed
peoples of the world altogether. In his preface to Bukharin's
Imperialism and the World Economy, he wrote: "There is no
question that the development is heading towards a single world
trust that will swallow up al of the enterprises and the states with
no exception. But on the other hand, the development is unfolding
under such circumstances, tempo, contradictions, stand-offs,
upheavals -not only economic ones, but of a political and national
kind, etc- that before we end up with a single world trust, a
worldwide 'ultraimperialist' union of national finance capitals, the
break-up of imperialism shall be inexorably unavoidable and
capitalism will be turned into its contrary."
The key of
Lenin's policy lay in the revolutionary perspective, but one that
was not worked out due to sole voluntarism, but one that flowed from
an objective analysis of the contradictions at work within
capitalist development. In this, he differed from Kautsky and his
"profoundly reactionary wish to smooth out the
contradictions" (in Lenin's words), a stand from which his
deeply pacifists conclusions stemmed from.
Negri and Hardt want
to emulate Lenin's revolutionary policy and his struggle for a
revolutionary international, in their own words: "there is an
implicit alternative embedded in Lenin's work: either communist
revolution or Empire". But they devoid this alternative of any
objective basis for its realization. If Kautsky, out of sheer
economism, arrives to the theory of "ultraimperialism" and
to deny the existence of contradictions, Negri and Hardt, in turn,
come to the same conclusion through their subject-focused approach,
albeit they do not share the reformist conclusions drawn by the
former. This can be seen in the following argument: "The
analyses of the state and the world market also become possible in
Empire for another reason, becausse at this point in development
class struggle acts without limit on the organization of power.
Having achieved the global level, capitalist development is faced
directly with the multitude, without mediation. Hence the dialectic,
or really the science of the limit and its organization, evaporates.
Class struggle, pushing the nation-state toward its abolition and
thus going beyond the barriers posed by it, proposes the
constitution of Empire as the site of analysis ad conflict. Without
the barrier, then, the situation of struggle is completely open.
Capital and labor are opposed in a directly antagonistic form. This
is the fundamental condition of every political theory of
communism."
Such denial of dialectics bears its
consequences. Here, there view of the world reality turns out to be
completely abstract. It is true that the internationalization of the
productive forces and the ensuing internationalization of capital,
and the objective basis for the internationalization of the class
struggles with them, have all increased ten-fold in the last one
hundred years, when compared with the time at which Lenin wrote his
notorious pamphlet on imperialism. Because of this, the need for
proletarian internationalism flowing from such basis has grown
stronger than ever. Hence, we share their criticism of the
"thirld world" perspectives, one of the strongest
arguments put forward by them in their new road. But the authors of
Empire wrongly regard the current reality of capitalism as a
tendency, turning the tendency to the internationalization of
capital into a demiurge, which in turn transforms their whole
interpretation of reality into an abstraction that leaves out the
role of mediations. In this way, their methodological approach is
ridden with the same flaws as those Lenin criticized in Kautsky's,
although they regard "ultraimperialism" not as a
possibility (in a "dream" according to the Bolshevik
leader) but as an actual reality. As Lenin said: "In this
yearning to turn away from the reality of imperialism and to take
refuge in the pipedream of the 'ultraimperialism', one we do not
know whether or not is feasible, there is not even the slightest
shed of Marxism. Within such schema Marxism is taken on board for
this 'new phase of capitalism' whose chances of becoming are not
even guaranteed by its own creator, but for the present, already
existent, phase, a deeply reactionary and petty bourgeois yearning
to smooth out the contradictions prevails instead."
Negri's
and Hardt's logical operation, paired with their rejection of
dialectics, blurs the actual structure of the world system and the
contradictions flowing from it, i.e., the different hierarchies of
countries within the capitalist world economy both at the centre and
the periphery, the struggle for hegemony between the rival central
powers, the world division between oppressive and oppressed
countries and the concrete intermingling of the working class
struggle and the people's sector in the latter with the masses of
imperialist heartlands, and thus the need to put forward both a
revolutionary tactic and strategy. What comes out of this is an
attack against the Leninist theory of the revolutionary party, since
there is no need to take on the "weakest" link of the
imperialist chain, but rather the "virtual centre" of the
Empire can be conquered from any other point, such as they say in
the following lines. Hence, "From the point of view of the
revolutionary tradition, one might object that the tactical
successes of revolutionary actions in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries were all characterized precisely by the capacity to blast
open the weakest link of the imperialist chain, that this is the ABC
of revolutionary dialectics, and thus it would seem today that the
situation is not very promising. It is certainly true that the
serpentine struggles we are witnessing today do not provide any
clear revolutionary tactics, or maybe they are completely
incomprehensible from the point of view of tactics. Faced as we are
with a series of intensive subversive social movements that attack
the highest levels of imperial organization, however, it may be no
longer usseful to insist on the old distinction between strategy and
tactics. In the constitution of Empire there is no longer an
'outside' to power and thus no longer weak links-if by weak link we
mean an external point where the articulations of global power are
vulnerable. To achieve significance, every struggle must attack at
the heart of Empire, at its strength. The fact, however, does not
give priority to any geographical regions, as if only social
movements in Washington, Geneva or Tokyo could attack the heart of
Empire. On the contrary, the construction of Empire, and the
globalization of economic and cultural relationships, means that the
virtual center of Empire can be attacked from any point."
It is true that the increased internationalisation of capital
has shortened the distances between the centre and the periphery of
the world, and that the developments in the alter bounce back on the
imperialist heartlands more strongly than in the past. But in spite
of this, the fact remains -even for any sensible observer- that the
U.S. and Indonesia are vulnerable to a very greatly different
degree, to put an extreme case, thus showing the validity of Lenin's
concept of the weakest link as the mainstay of the theory of world
revolution, regarded as a concrete process stemming from the
internal contradictions of world capitalism.
A
strange coincidence
We have
already said that Negri and Hardt's "theoretical
subjectivism" revolves around an abstract polarization against
the views of "theoretical structuralism" of the world
system school and its cyclic patterns in the historical evolution of
capitalism. But quite surprisingly, and despite this methodological
difference, Arrighi in his Long Twentieth Century arrives at the
same conclusion at the onset of the twenty first century,
postulating a structure of the world system that is quite similar to
that of the Empire as a world order of "globlisation".
Thus, he argues that "The modern interstate system has
consequently acquired its present global dimension through a series
of successive hegemonies of an ever-expanding scope that have
consequently reduced the exclusivity of the right of sovereignty
really enjoyed by its member states. If this process were to carry
on, nothing but a true world government such as that contemplated by
Roosevelt would meet the condition that the next world hegemony
should have a territorial and operational scope much extended than
the precedent…Has the western world ruled by the American
hegemony attained such a degree of world power so as to be on the
verge of putting an end to the capitalist history in the way it has
been shaped within the system of expansion of the modern interstate
system?…the obverse of this process of formation of a world
government is the crisis of the territorial states as efficacious
instruments of dominion." Further on, in the conclusion, he
postulates, on the basis that Japan controls world liquidity but
remains defenceless on the military terrain, quite the opposite of
the U.S. that still enjoy a de facto monopolistic control of the use
of violence, that: "Such peculiar configuration of the world
power seems to fit perfectly into another of those 'memorable
alliances' between the power of the arms and the power of money that
has pushed forward the capitalist world economy both in space and
time since the late fifteen century. All those 'memorable
alliances', except for the first one, the Iberian-genoese one, were
alliances between entrepreneurial elites and governmental groups
that belonged to the same state: the United Provinces, the United
Kingdom, the United States…"
What is the difference
between such views and those holding the becoming of a
"ultraimperialism" such as the ones we have criticized in
Negri? Both views run against Lenin's characterization of the
imperialist phase. It is true that in the early twentieth century
the international concentration of capital "did not take on the
form of an international centralization but rather set the national
imperialist monopolies against each other as antagonists in the
world market of commodities, raw materials and capital." The
formation of monopolies closely linked to their own state that
strived for political and military control of wide geographical
zones laid the basis for a merciless struggle for the scramble of
the world, sometimes through pacific means (tariffs, protectionism,
etc), and when the contradictions burst into the open, it took the
form of an imperialist war.
Ever since then, the international
centralization of capital has grown apace. During the postwar, the
expansion of American multinationals constituted the first great
wave. The second wave took place in the wake of the onset of the
crisis of accumulation of capital in the 70s, one that spread to the
American companies and beyond, affecting the two other poles of the
imperialist triad: Japan and Germany. If the monopolies were a major
feature in Lenin's schema, its importance has increased ten-fold, as
shown by the increasing transnationalisation of the imperialist
corporations. The frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, on a scale
encompassing bigger capitals, is aimed at gaining the share of
markets of those concerns or holdings merged.
The growth of these
transnational corporations and the sheer size of their exchanges
both between each other and within themselves have brought about a
bigger integration of the world economy. In other words, such
development is the form through which capital tries to overcome the
contradiction between the development of the productive forces and
the limits imposed by the national state. Nonetheless, as Marx
argued with regards to credit, such process has meant "an
abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist
mode itself", i.e., it has deepened its contradictions, posing
them on a higher level. This has not brought about a withering away
of the state, but a shift of its economic functions; it is oriented
to an ever-increasing scale to guarantee the reproduction of its own
transnational concerns. This is highlighted by the major role played
by the state in the signing of commercial treaties, in the
regulation of competition between rival concerns in the regions
under its control, in implementing measures to boost a growth in the
size of its big concerns, in the negotiations in the different
multilateral agencies such as the WTO, where the different states
strive to protect its groups of interest. All these speak against
analyzing the world economy, if we are to understand it, without
pondering these two aspects of reality, i.e., the level of the
productive forces and the survival of the nation-state as one of the
main contradictions of capitalism nowadays. Likewise, the
introduction of new technology has but deepened this dichotomy. Thus
the chief editor of the Foreign Policy magazine, in an article
titled "New Economy, Old Policy" argues that: "This
reality faces the companies of the new economy with a disquieting
paradox:…the technology companies favour speed,
decentralization, individualism, the disregard for geography,
frontiers and sovereignty altogether. Multilateralism involves a
process of slow decision-taking, obscure aims and a hypersensitivity
to any erosion, be it real or symbolic, of national
sovereignty." The view of a "stateless" corporation
bears no resemblance with reality.
The
dialectics of the twentieth century
The
twentieth century has been, as Eric Hobsbawn puts it, the "age
of extremes". The 1929 crack and the two world wars showed the
convulsive and violent nature of the contradictions embedded in the
development of capitalism. In turn, the revolutionary epoch ushered
in by the Russian Revolution showed the enormous social might and
maturity of the proletariat as a subject of change on the world
arena. Hence the tendency to unilaterally underline any of these
aspects, be it the structural tendencies, be it the tendencies to
the class struggle when pondering the actual dynamics of capitalist
development. Taking just one of these aspects into account, breaking
up the dialectic relationship between them, and endowing it with an
unlimited scope prevents one from reaching a scientific
understanding of reality.
It is here where the materialistic
dialectics shows its superiority. In this sense, Trotsky's concept
of "capitalist equilibrium" enables us to deal with the
world system as a whole in a dynamic fashion. In this respect he
pointed out that "capitalist equilibrium is a complicated
phenomenon; the capitalist regime builds up such equilibrium, then
it breaks it up, just to rebuild it and break it up once again,
widening up, in passing, the limits of its dominion. In the economic
sphere, such continuous break-ups and restorations of equilibrium
take on the shape of crisis and booms. In the sphere of the
relationship between the classes, the break up of equilibrium
results in strikes, lock-outs, revolutionary struggle. In the sphere
of the relationships between the states, the break up of equilibrium
brings about war, or else in a veiled way, a war of tariffs, an
economic war or a blockade. Capitalism possesses then a dynamic
equilibrium, which is always undergoing a permanent break up."
Such is the method that enables him to postulate that the break
out of World War I, itself the manifestation of the contradiction
between the development of the productive forces and their
constraint by the capitalist relationships of production and the
borders of the national state, meant a break up of the basis of
capitalist equilibrium and the subsequent opening of a revolutionary
epoch. In that epoch the interaction between the subjective and the
objective elements reaches new heights, being very difficult to
distinguish one another in the works of the economy at times. This
is true to such extent that in the wake of the complete undoing of
world commerce following the 1929 crack and the onset of the
decade-long world economic depression and stagnation, and after the
failure of the revolutions in the 30s due to the betrayals of
Stalinism and social democracy (and their common responsibility for
the ascent of nazism), Trotsky went on to say that "the crisis
of mankind is the crisis of its revolutionary leadership". It
was the delay of proletarian revolution -not as consequence of the
lack of heroism or fighting disposition of the proletariat but as a
result of its most subjective factor: the counterrevolutionary
nature of its leadership- what accounts for the survival of a
decomposing capitalism.
In other words, the revolutionary
overthrow of capitalism did not come about because the
"opportunist cancer", such as Lenin defined social
democracy, was far stronger. Furthermore, Stalinism was to reach
unheard-of proportions in the wake of World War II, a time when it
became the mainstay of the world status quo, better known as the
"Yalta Order".
Thus, the defeat of fascism at the hands
of the Soviet Russia gave renewed prestige to Stalinism, which used
his regained strength to smash the European revolution and clinch a
new deal with the U.S. to build a new world status quo. Thus, the
world witnessed a contradictory situation in which the might of the
Russian degenerate workers state was used to consolidate the
American hegemony, under which the economic boom set in.
The
"partial development" of the productive forces in the
advanced capitalist countries cannot be explained away unless we
take into account the extra economical factors allowing for its
emergence: the derailment of the European revolution at the hands of
Stalinism (which shifted the revolution away towards the colonial
and semicolonial world), the prior destruction of productive forces
provoked by the war, the sheer weakening of the US rival imperialist
states (which enabled the former to rule unchallenged for decades
within the imperialist camp), along with the low wage levels
inherited from fascism. It would also have failed to uphold without
the qualitatively increased economic and political action of the
imperialist states (which introduced all-round social reforms and
strengthened the mechanisms for the cooptation of the union
bureaucracies out of fear of the revolution), the mechanisms of
permanent monetary inflation and the inflation of credit, along with
the role played the arms industry as a "replacement
market" in the face of the overcapitalization of the
monopolies. The very "compromise" of Yalta reflected the
contradictory outcome of the war, since it was in exchange for the
concessions given to the mass movement (new deformed workers' states
in the east and social gains the west), and the cooptation of the
union bureaucracy (both of the Stalinist and Social democratic
blend) as guarantors of the world order that a new order of
imperialist rule was set up.
However, the partial development of
the productive forces that took place in the imperialist heartlands
during the boom (the growth of labour productivity was more intense
in the 50s and the 60s in the main imperialist heartlands than in
any other previous period) did not alter the general character of
the epoch as one of "crises, wars and revolutions". Thus,
with these peculiarities, the new "equilibrium" achieved
by and large by the agreements of Yalta and Potsdam did not prevent
capitalism from losing a third of the planet in the years 1948/49,
what ultimately expressed at the same time the fact that the USSR
had survived the war and that capitalism (lacking inner strength)
had been forced into a negotiation with the Stalinist leaders of the
Soviet Union. With all these peculiarities and limits, a new
capitalist equilibrium set in and the US economy finally reach a
fresh momentum through the reconstruction of a devastated Europe -
although at a much longer time than Trotsky had predicted. On the
other hand, and in contrast with the capitalist expansion in the
nineteenth century, the proletariat in the second postwar was
already existent in the colonial and semicolonial world, which
witnessed a number of revolutionary (and counterrevolutionary)
upheavals that constantly haunted the relative stability achieved in
the imperialist heartlands. Once again, Stalinism played a crucial
role in this respect, preventing a break-up of the status quo. The
postwar boom, in this context, was far proving capitalism organic
strength. It not only needed of two world wars that wreaked havoc,
but also a pact sealed with Stalinism that was a mainstay of the new
equilibrium achieved.
Capitalism in the last few decades
The
backlash of capital in response to the crisis of accumulation of the
70s, a decade in which the basis of the American hegemony were
massively eroded, was neither due to a cyclic pattern of capitalist
accumulation nor the onset of a fresh phase of capitalist
development. The neoliberal onslaught and the so-called
globalisation that went hand in hand with it was the peculiar form
the American backlash took on. Due to crisis of legitimacy of its
world rule fuelled by the failure in Vietnam, it took advantage of
the leverage it exerts on the international finance system.
The
first element, i.e., the weakness of the American might, or else its
lack of legitimacy as the guardian of the world order both at home
and abroad provoked a change in the forms of its interventions, in
order to diminish their impact on its dominion. The "human
rights" policy, the promotion of the NGOs , the substantiation
of the so-called right of intervention in judicial and moral rights,
and the pursuit of "just wars" were the ethos of the US
foreign policy, which from a defensive position in the 70s was
turned into a more offensive policy in subsequent years. It reached
its climax with the so-called triumph of "democracy and the
market" in the wake of the debacle of the so-called socialist
countries. In the 90s, this ideology gained new forces with the
intervention against Iraq, backed by the UN and supported by a wide
coalition, and also in NATO's war in Kosovo, where the imperialist
intervention wrapped itself up in "humanitarian" clothes
and the "rescue of the oppressed masses" . Nonetheless,
this "new model of imperial authority" does not correspond
with the new political order if globalisation, such as Negri and
Hardt argue, but to the constraints imposed on the US might as a
result of the yet open wounds of Vietnam, and the lack of an
efficacious legitimating ideology for its interventionist policy, in
the way the threat of Stalinist gulag had worked before.
The
second fundamental factor was - we insist- the privileged position
of the US within the international finance system, one that was to
shape the neoliberal onslaught and globalisation altogether.
In
this sense, one cannot but recall a poignant interview conceded by
Trotsky to the New York Times when the depression in the 30s was
raging. When asked: "How do you regard the position of the US
in the present world situation?", Trotsky replied that he
foresaw an ever tightening grip by American capitalism over European
capitalism, and he added that: "However, such inexorable growth
in the US world hegemony will eventually nourish deep contradictions
both in the economy and the politics of the great American republic.
In imposing the dictatorship of the dollar over the world, the
American ruling class will introduce the contradictions of the
entire world in its own dominion" Nowadays, this remark retains
a fundamental methodological value. This is because it has been from
the US that all the attempts at reaching a fresh equilibrium have
emanated, once the basis allowing for the postwar boom came undone.
At the same time, in a complementary and contradictory fashion, the
major factors of instability running through the world economy since
the 70s have always revolved around it. This has been the case at
the level of international relationships. The world currency system
codified at Breton Woods was always conditioned and partially
implemented, and although at the onset the US abode by the
discipline of tying the dollar to the gold standard, when such
parity was deemed detrimental for the interests of the US, the Nixon
administration just cast it aside unceremoniously. This meant a way
out of the constraints imposed on the balance of payments, thus
giving it an increased room for manoeuvre in the exchange with other
foreign currencies, but at the cost of increasing the fragility of
the international currency system.
The same can be said with
regards to the world finance system and the American initiative to
do away with the state control on capital flows, a condition also
codified in Breton Woods, pushing ahead with the deregulation and
putting international finance flows in the hands of private
financial brokers and the markets, thus turning New York in the main
financial centre in the early 80s.
Another instance of this
"dictatorship of the dollar" over the entire world was the
ratification of the Treaty of World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the
past decade, which explicitly states that the US recognition of its
jurisdiction is hinged upon the WTO being "fair" towards
America's interests.
The 90s witnessed a tightening of such
positions as a result of the debacle of the USSR, which left the US
with an unchallenged military supremacy. However, it is its
privileged position on a financial level that has empowered the US
to regain its leading position in the last decade, using it to
significantly limit the ability of rival imperialist centres to deal
with their internal affairs in an autonomous fashion.
It is here
that we are to find the capital difference between the basis of the
British hegemony in the nineteenth century and those of the American
rule in the twentieth century. Albeit Arrighi in his books paves the
way for researching into the new modalities acquired by the
development of the American hegemony and its decline compared with
its predecessors , the school of the world system and its cyclic
pattern is inadequate to grasp this qualitative difference stemming
from the imperialist nature of the epoch we live in. While the
British hegemony rested upon an extension of its frontiers in the
direction of its new territories, its unfolding did not block the
emergence of other powers such as the US and Germany directly. The
"equilibrium of power", the ethos of British diplomacy
vis-à-vis the different European powers, had a rather
negative character: it meant reassuring that no other power should
dominate the continent. Britain itself did not have the ability, nor
the willingness, to rule over Europe on its own. Quite otherwise,
the American hegemony rests upon the need of the capitalist states
of dominating the economy of all the continents, capital
investments, preferential commercial agreements, currency
regulations and political control altogether. It is a matter of
subordinating not only the less developed world but other
industrialized states as well, be them enemies or allies, to the
priorities of the accumulation of capital of the hegemonic power.
This weighs upon the conditions for the emergence of powers
questioning the rule of the old hegemón: not only due to the
fact that the scramble of the world has been done already (although
the disintegration of the postcapitalist economies has created a new
geographical area of dominion and dispute for capital), but, more
important still, due to the increased subordination of those centres
to the dictates of the accumulation of the ruling nation of the
ancient order that holds back and delays the search for more
autonomy.
However, the fact that we point to this development
does not mean that we foresee the emergence of a
"superimperialism" as the most likely event, such as the
proponents of the twenty first as another "American
century" claim once and again. A man coming from the inner
circle of the American establishment, the conservative Henry
Kissinger, has provided the most accurate prognosis as to its actual
strength: "What is really new in the nascent world order is
that, for the first time, the US cannot retreat from the world nor
dominate it…When the US entered the world arena they were
young and robust, and the necessary might to make the world adopt
its view of the international relationships. At the end of Second
World War, in 1945, the US were so powerful (at some time, 35% of
the world economic output was American), that it seemed that they
were poised to shape the world according to their
preferences…Three decades later, the US are not in the same
position to push ahead with the immediate satisfaction of its
desires. Other countries have reached out to the status of big
powers."
In turn, it is the very existence of such other
big powers that makes of the tendency to
"ultraimperialism" an untenable view. Its advocates rely
on the bigger integration of the world economy as a result of the
accelerated centralization of capital worldwide, a process that has
been unfolding ever since the crisis of accumulation of the 70s
broke out, one that has been mainly fuelled by American capital. The
tendency to an increased interimperialist competition, no matter it
takes veiled forms, is today more noticeable than ever before. The
increasing merger of capitals on a continental level has fuelled a
renewed competition between blocs of power of continental scope,
like the imperialist triad (the US and the NAFTA and his attempt to
extend it to the FTAA, the EU and his expansion towards Eastern
Europe, and to a lesser extent, Japan and the Pacific rim). So far,
this interimperialist competition has taken a "benign"
form, expressing itself has a heightened commercial competence, more
mergers and acquisitions seeking to limit concurrence, the increase
in direct investment in the imperialist countries themselves, etc.
The likelihood that the American economy, which was the most
stabilizing and dynamic factor of the world economy in the last
decade, might go through a deep downturn, combining with the
depression of the Japanese economy, thus ushering in the perspective
of a world recession, might all herald a more vitriolic
interimperialist competition that should lead to an all-round hike
in tariffs which in turn might entangle the networks of world
commerce. Both the American think-tank Stratfor and the British
magazine The Economist hold that this perspective is likely to
materialize. The former claims that: "In the past decade, there
was a general consensus in favour of free trade, casting aside the
protectionist forces. The reason was less ideological than
empirical, the policy of free trade went along with the
prosperity…In bad times, however, the relationship between
free trade, protectionism and the economic performance becomes more
problematic. As long as unemployment grows, the bankruptcies go up
and life becomes more difficult, the foreign imports to the American
market and the difficulty of exporting to foreign markets fuel by
far more resistance. Much more than fuelling intolerance towards
interventions abroad, the recessions make the Americans think that
other countries are direct threats to the prosperity, and even
agents of the economic failure. Things can get sour very rapidly.
The powerhouse of international relationships can get dramatically
altered when its centre of gravity becomes suspicious and
hostile." The Economist claims that: "The GDP of the world
has not fallen at any year since 1930. Even during the oil crisis of
the 70s, the world GDP grew. A truly global recession would not only
be painful, but would bring about immense dangers, encouraging the
countries to retreat once again behind protectionist barriers. With
luck and some skill, a global slump might be avoided. The policy
makers should be ready to stand by the economies, if need be, by
lowering interest rates and taxes altogether. They should also make
sure that the first recession of the new world economy does not
bring about a reversal of globalisation itself."
In this
framework, with the phantom of the "old" protectionism
haunting the world economy, the postmodernist novelty of an
"Empire" that "does not establish any centre of
territorial power and does not rely on fixed borders or
barriers" sounds at best like a mere exaggeration of some
conjuncture tendencies of the world economy, or else worse, a mere
phantasmogorical ruse that is unable to predict the dynamic of the
system, let alone to provide a scientific basis to fight against
it.
Where is the world system going at the onset of the twenty
first century?
We are
not heading towards the Empire nor to the emergence of a
"superimperialism", but to an epoch of heightened crises,
wars and revolutions, which under new guises and changing balances
of forces cut across the reality of contemporary capitalism.
The
last period of the twentieth century, particularly the last decade,
witnessed a strengthening of the American supremacy, as opposed to
the 70s, a time when its historical decline began. The collapse of
Stalinism, along with the victory of the imperialist coalition in
the Gulf War boosted the neoliberal onslaught worldwide. The
withering away of what Arrighi and Hardt call the "second
periphery", along with the imperialist backlash against the
semicolonial countries, which integrated these more openly into the
world economy (the so-called "emerging markets"), meant a
widening of the geographical scope of capital. In turn, the
weakening of the rival imperialist nations and of the so-called
"Rhineland" and "Nippon" models, and their
submission to the US' dynamics of accumulation (financing the
American commercial deficit, as shareholders and direct investors,
through the process of mergers and acquisitions, etc) is what
explains that the reinforcement of the American rule took on the
form of a break-through of "globalised" capitalism- hand
in hand with the extension to new geographical frontiers.
Those
who speak of Empire are just adapting their view to this appearance,
working out from such peculiarities and the conjuncture tendencies
of imperialist politics in the last period -the last decade in
particular- the characteristics of a supposedly new phase of
capitalism. They commit the same methodological mistake as the high
priest of Marxist revisionism, Eduard Bernstein, although without
drawing openly reformist conclusions. The former, when writing at
the end of the great 1873-96 depression and the onset of the belle
époque of European capitalism, when it went through one of
its biggest booms worldwide that brought about improved living and
work conditions for some layers of the industrial proletariat (what
Lenin's Marxism branded the "labour aristocracy"), saw no
reasons why those tendencies might be reversed in a foreseeable
future. The 1914 war and the crisis of bourgeois society that broke
out at the time settled that debate and were a cruel reminder of how
dangerous is to forget the dialectics (i.e., the laws that lay bare
motion) when analyzing reality.
Against this methodological
mistake and the conclusions that flow from it that many thinkers of
contemporary capitalism relapse into nowadays, the 90s did not
hallmark the emergence of a global empire nor a
"superimperialism", but rather ushered in an interregnum
of "unstable US rule" opposed to the period of absolute
hegemony that followed the Second World War.
The illusions of the
early 90s as to the emergency of a "new world order" that
went hand in hand with "globalisation" are coming up
against the stumbling block of reality at the end of the same
decade. The downfall of the USSR, albeit it has brought about a
geographical extension for the rule of capital, has not yet provided
a "historical" new lease of life (a new boom) for it,
which would mean its complete transformation in semicolonies. Quite
otherwise, the smashing up of the old order of rule, which had in
the Stalinist bureaucracy one of its mainstays, has not yet been
replaced by a reactionary new world order. Moreover, it has ushered
in a period of clashes between the classes, the relationships
between the states and the economy worldwide, where the
contradictions in the formerly called socialist countries are one of
the main sources of destabilization.
In the current period, the
loss of its Stalinist ally leaves the US more lonely and exposed to
deal with the contradictions running deep in the world arena, within
a world system split into a imperialist triad (the US, Germany and
Japan) of competing powers rivaling the American hegemony,
especially in the sphere of the economy, increasingly in the level
of politics, and still lagging behind in the military level, where
the US remains unchallenged.
If the in the past decade these
realities were "hidden", the end of the cycle of American
economic growth and its destabilizing consequences for the rest of
the economies worldwide, along with the strong tensions running
through the system of interstate relationships are making them come
to the surface. This is noticeable in the shift under way in the
foreign policy of the recently sworn-in Bush administration that is
leaving behind any pretence of "universalism" typical of
the Clinton administration, and is going for a increasingly
"unilateral" policy prioritizing the "defence of
national interest", even at the risk of jeopardizing the
relationships with the other big powers. Stratfor has taken notice
of these shifts, claiming in its latest reports that: "The last
few weeks have witnessed the tensions between the US and both Russia
and China. This period will be remembered as the end of the post
cold war period, and the onset of a new period of the international
relationships…The structure of the world system is at stake
here. Two big powers want to see a more multipolar world. The only
superpower wants, understandably, to uphold the status quo, a
unipolar system." The "calm" period of the 90s and
the bourgeois optimism that the world, after the "defeat of
communism" was heading to and unlimited period of prosperity
and less cashes is now behind us. As Stratfor claims:
"Washington took this state of affairs as guaranteed, a
hallmark of the post cold war period. The economic prosperity of the
90s allowed for this diplomatic carelessness. Russia's and China's
natural inclination to resist the US military and political power
was countered by theirs interest in maintaining friendly economic
relationships". For Stratfor the forthcoming scenario is not
simply a "reversal" to the cold war period, as the
rhetoric of the new Bush administration might seem to indicate, but
to a more intricate scenario of international relationships, and
this for two reasons: "First, neither Russia nor China might
have domestic political stability so as to pursue their policies in
the long term. Secondly, it is not yet clear if other countries will
rally to resist the US. Japan will go soon through some dramatic
changes, due to its untenable economic situation, while the
political evolution of Europe with regards to the US is grimmer
every time. In any of these cases, we are not facing a new cold war.
This a world that has few precedents, one in which a superpower
confronts several big powers trying to control it. The postwar
period has passed away and cannot be resuscitated. All that is
missing in this new period is a good name."
Although this
overview of emerging world situation is heavily biased towards the
interstate relationships, as every bourgeois geopolitical analysis,
it is useful to get a less "romantic" and
"naïve" picture of the world system and the class
struggle than that depicted by the authors of Empire, one devoid of
contradictions and mediations. In the face of a world heading to
increasingly deeper disputes and tensions between the main
imperialist powers, between these and the former
"communist" countries, between the centre and the
semicolonies, with economic crises, saber-rattling and wider gaps
between "those at the top" and a potentially heightened
class struggle, the logic of the imperialist epoch as one of
"crises, wars and revolutions" retains its full validity.
This does not mean scholastically ruminating the old categories, but
updating them incorporating the following elements that we have
explicated in this article, which we now detail in summary. They
are: a) the increased integration of the world economy and thus of
the class struggle with a more decisive weight of the working class
in most of the countries of the world (as shown by the growth of
wage-earners in major regions of the periphery, and also the fact
that most of the world population lives in the cities) than at the
onset of the twentieth century; b) the weakness of the
counterrevolutionary misleaderships that, first with the Social
democracy and Stalinism then, were a major bulwark to contain the
upsurge of the mass movement in the last century; c) the
exacerbation of the interimperialist competence, one that starts
from a massive unevenness between the old hegemonic power -whose
rule relies upon the unprecedented control of the fundamental
economic and military levers of worldwide accumulation- and the
emerging powers, a factor holding back and delaying the alteration
of the status quo of the world; d) the tendency to the formation of
a "pool" of imperialist powers, no matter how unstable and
utopian such endeavour might be, that in spite of their counter
posed national interests have taken decisive steps towards
supranational unification (European Union) as way of counteracting
the unevenness of the components of interstate system mentioned in
the last item; e) the yet indefinite social nature of the process of
restoration-semicolonisation of the former degenerate and deformed
big workers states, Russia and its sphere of influence and
China.
Taking up the classical theory of imperialism in a
creative fashion is a key task to appraise the complex and intricate
reality of the world today.
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