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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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