DWA 103 · Introduction to Global Political Economy · Week 5 · Tue Sep 22 & Thu Sep 24
Global Capitalism as Social Structure: Marxism
First edition, London, February 1848. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Recap · Weeks 2–4 · and this week
Liberalism (Wk 2)
Realism / neomercantilism (Wk 3)
Constructivism (Wk 4)
Marxism (Wk 5)
Unit
Individuals, firms, groups
The state
Ideas, identities, norms
Classes; the capitalist system as a whole
Goal given priority
Prosperity, peace, individual freedom through open markets
National wealth and power
— (an approach, not a program: “Constructivism is not the answer”)
“challenging capitalism in order to end class-based inequality and exploitation within the world economy” CWE 87
On free trade
Harmony of interests
Strategic protection (Hamilton, List)
What counts as “normal” trade policy is historically made
Class conflict “on a wider scale” CWE 89
Helleiner, The Contested World Economy (2023), chs. 2–6; Abdelal 2009: 76. Weeks 2–4 cells condensed from the Week 4 recap slide.
Core premises · Marxist and post-Marxist thought
Premise
In Marx’s words
Where it returns this week
Historical materialism: base and superstructure
“The economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure… It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” 1859 Preface
Slide 8; Przeworski on “cultural Marxism” (25)
Classes in conflict
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Manifesto, ch. 1
Surplus (slide 9); the state (10); the ballot box (Part III)
Dialectic: change through contradiction
Of Hegel’s dialectic: “It must be turned right side up again”; “in its rational form it… regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement.” Afterword to Capital, 2nd ed., 1873
“Fetters” (slide 8); thesis → antithesis → synthesis as the usual shorthand
Capitalism is a global structure
“The need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.” Manifesto; CWE 88
Imperialism, world-systems (Part II)
Tendency toward concentration and monopoly
“One capitalist always kills many.” Capital I, ch. 32 — Lenin: a “monopoly stage of capitalism” CWE 92
Lenin and Hobson (slide 15); the falling rate of profit (9)
Crisis is built in
“Capitalism contains a ‘contradiction’: its development necessarily leads to its death.” Przeworski 2020: 13
Slide 9; Harvey clip (12); critiques (28)
Marx, “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859); Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848), ch. 1; Marx, Afterword to the second German edition of Capital I (1873); Capital I, ch. 32 — public-domain texts, cited by work. Helleiner, CWE, 88, 92; Przeworski 2020: 13. The thesis–antithesis–synthesis triad is not Marx’s phrasing.
This week · one question at three scales
Who produces the value, and who owns it?
Scale
Text
Where the question is asked
I · The workplace
Marx, via Helleiner ch. 6 and Przeworski 2020
Bourgeoisie and proletariat; surplus; the state
II · The world
Lenin, Luxemburg, Kautsky; Kōtoku to C. L. R. James (Helleiner chs. 6–7); Wallerstein 2013
Imperialism; core and periphery; one world-economy
III · The ballot box
Przeworski 2020
Universal suffrage inside a capitalist economy
Coda
James, Williams (Helleiner ch. 7); Walzer vs. Táíwò & Bright 2020 (Depth)
Dates per Helleiner, CWE: Manifesto and Capital88; First International 1864–76 90; Hobson, Lenin 92; Luxemburg, Second International 1889–1916 93; Comintern 1919 99; Fourth International 1938 102; Kōtoku 106; Mariátegui 109; James 119; Williams 120. “World-revolution of 1968”: Wallerstein 2013: 4. “Neoliberal offensive of the 1980s”: Przeworski 2020: 9. Not from the readings: Comintern dissolved 1943; Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I (1974); Robinson, Black Marxism (1983); 1991; 2008.
Part I · The workplace · Marx
“It compels all nations, if they are not to be overwhelmed, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production… In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”
Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848), quoted in Helleiner, CWE, 88
Karl Marx, London, 1875. Photo: John Mayall. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Part I · Marx · the record
Karl Marx, 1818–1883
1841
PhD, after studying law and philosophy
1842–43
Newspaper editor; the post had first been offered to Friedrich List
1848
The Communist Manifesto, with Engels, for the Communist League
1849–83
London
1867
Capital, vol. 1; three further volumes posthumous (1884, 1895, 1905–10)
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.”
Marx & Engels 1848, quoted in CWE, 91
Helleiner, CWE, 87–89 and n. 6 (List).
Part I · Marx · material conditions first
“…men must be in position to live in order to be able to ‘make history.’ But life involves before everything else, eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing, and many other things.”
Marx, The German Ideology (1845), quoted in Przeworski 2020: 15
“From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”
Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859), quoted in Przeworski 2020: 12
Base = the productive forces and the relations of production; superstructure = law, politics, ideas that “arise” on it (1859 Preface, slide 3).
Schematic of the 1859 passage; box = the base, labels are Marx’s terms as quoted in Przeworski 2020: 12. Not drawn to any data.
Part I · Marx · the accounting scheme
“Only labor generates surplus”
total output = c + v + s · rate of profit = s / (c + v)
Przeworski 2020: 12–13; both worked examples (200 + 100 → 0.33; 500 + 100 → 0.166) are his. Curve: 100 / (c + 100). Marx: “The gradual growth of constant capital in relation to variable capital necessarily leads to a gradual fall of the general rate of profit” (Capital, vol. III, quoted at 13).
Part I · Marx · the state
“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the entire bourgeoisie.”
The Communist Manifesto, ch. 1, quoted in Przeworski 2020: 10
Why would an elected state manage them? Two later answers (Przeworski 2020: 11):
Personnel (Miliband 1969): the state is staffed by “men drawn from the world of business and property or from the professional middle class” — Przeworski: “a feeble answer”
Structural dependence on capital (Przeworski & Wallerstein 1988): “because private investment decisions determine the future possibilities of consumption and employment, even pro-labor governments must anticipate the reactions of potential investors and employers to all of their decisions”
“Pyramid of Capitalist System,” Industrial Worker (IWW), 1911. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Part I · Marx · on free trade, 1848
Two sentences from the same year
Against the liberals
“To call cosmopolitan exploitation universal brotherhood is an idea that could only be engendered in the brain of the bourgeoisie. All the destructive phenomena which unlimited competition gives rise to within one country are reproduced in more gigantic proportions on the world market.”Marx, 1848 speech, quoted in CWE, 89
For free trade
“Generally speaking, the Protective system in these days is conservative, while the Free Trade system works destructively… In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade.”Marx, 1848 speech, quoted in CWE, 90
On List’s protectionism: it would allow the German bourgeois “to exploit his fellow countrymen, indeed exploit them even more than they were exploited from abroad” (CWE, 89). In the 1860s–70s Marx “endorsed limited trade protectionism in the German context” (CWE, 90).
Part I · clip · David Harvey, “Crises of Capitalism” (RSA Animate, 2010)
RSA Animate, “Crises of Capitalism,” lecture by David Harvey (CUNY), about 11 minutes: youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0. Not assigned.
Part II · The world · imperialism
“If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.”
Cecil Rhodes, as quoted by Lenin, Imperialism (1916); in Helleiner, CWE, 93
“The Rhodes Colossus,” Punch, 10 December 1892. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Part II · imperialism · Lenin’s evidence
Territory belonging to the colonial powers, 1876 and 1900
18761900
Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), ch. VI, table “Percentage of territory belonging to the European colonial powers (including the United States),” after A. Supan (1906). Public domain; not assigned — Lenin’s argument is summarized in CWE, 92–93.
Part II · imperialism · three Marxist accounts, 1913–16
Rosa Luxemburg
The Accumulation of Capital, 1913
Driver
Foreign markets for goods that “could not be absorbed at home because of the poverty of the workers” CWE 94
Where it ends
“Though imperialism is the historical method for prolonging the career of capitalism, it is also a sure means of bringing it to a swift conclusion.” 94
Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916
Driver
Export of capital: in the colonies “capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap” 92
Where it ends
War “for the division of the world”; “Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat.” 93
Karl Kautsky
“Ultra-imperialism,” 1914
Driver
Imperialism “not necessary for capitalism’s expansion”; arms and colonies absorb capital and tax the proletariat 98
Where it ends
A cartel of powers: “capitalists of all countries, unite!” 98
Helleiner, CWE, 92–98; “Driver” cells for Luxemburg and Kautsky quote Helleiner’s summary. Lenin on Kautsky: “a most reactionary method of consoling the masses with hopes of permanent peace being possible under capitalism” (98). Lenin built on J. A. Hobson, Imperialism (1902); Hobson’s remedy was taxation and social reform (92–93). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Part II · Helleiner ch. 7 · the global diffusion of Marxist thought
Kōtoku Shūsui
Japan · 1901
Imperialism from “overproduction” and war between rivals — fifteen years before Lenin 106–07
M. N. Roy
India · Mexico · Moscow 1920
Imperialism “prevented them from developing”; the East decides Europe’s revolution 112
Tan Malaka
Indonesia · Moscow 1922
“At present Pan-Islamism is a national-liberation struggle” 116
José Carlos Mariátegui
Peru · 1928
“Economic dependency”; “an Indo-American socialism reflecting our own reality” 109–11
George Padmore
Trinidad · Hamburg 1931
Against “World Capitalism” and against “race chauvinism, against all colour bars” 117–18
C. L. R. James
Trinidad · London 1938
The Black Jacobins: Haiti as the first anti-colonial revolution 119
Helleiner, CWE, ch. 7; also Takahashi Kamekichi and Sano Manabu (107–09), Mao Zedong’s “Sinification of Marxism,” 1938 (114), Eric Williams (120). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, public domain (Kōtoku n.d.; Roy 1930s; Tan Malaka c. 1945–48; Mariátegui, photo José Malanca; Padmore c. 1937; James 1938).
Part II · the latecomer · 1867, 1927, 1928
“The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.”
Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (1867), quoted in CWE, 89
“The path of historical development in backward countries occurs under conditions that differ substantially from those in advanced countries.”
Takahashi Kamekichi (1927), quoted in CWE, 108
“The Latin American countries came late to capitalist competition. The inside lanes had already been assigned. The destiny of these countries in the capitalist order is that of being simple colonies.”
José Carlos Mariátegui (1928–29), quoted in CWE, 110
Part II · Wallerstein 2013 · the unit of analysis
“The key element for me in world-systems analysis is the emphasis on the unit of analysis – a world-system rather than a State/society/social formation.”
“World”: “a relatively large unit… within which there is an axial division of labor” — “‘a’ world, not ‘the’ world” 4
Systems “are not eternal. They have lives.” 4
The political, the economic, the socio-cultural: “None of the three is ‘primary’” 5
“The gap between core and periphery has been widening rather than closing” 5
Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019), 2008. Photo: Alexei Kouprianov, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Part II · Wallerstein 2013 · two time models, 1945–70
“Temporally ahead” or “the development of underdevelopment”
Schematic, not data. Wallerstein 2013: 3 — modernization theory: the developed world “not ontologically different… but simply temporally ahead” (Rostow 1960); dependency theory: “from the same starting point, some zones had moved forward to becoming ‘developed’ and others had moved forward in time to becoming ‘underdeveloped’” (Prebisch and ECLA; Andre Gunder Frank’s phrase).
Part II · world-systems analysis · the axial division of labor
Instructor-composed diagram. “Axial division of labor” and “capitalist world-economy”: Wallerstein 2013: 4–5. The three-zone terminology and the semi-periphery are from Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (2004), listed in the article’s further reading — not assigned. Flow labels follow Mariátegui’s description of Peru (CWE, 109–10) and Roy 1920 (CWE, 112).
Part II · Depth · Hickel, Dorninger, Wieland & Suwandi 2022 · unequal exchange, 1990–2015
Net appropriation by the global North from the South, 2015
12 bn t
embodied raw material equivalents
822 m ha
embodied land
21 EJ
embodied energy
188 m
person-years of embodied labour
$10.8 tn
value in Northern prices, 2015; $242 tn over 1990–2015 (constant 2010 USD)
Hickel et al., “Imperialist Appropriation in the World Economy,” Global Environmental Change 73 (2022): 102467, abstract — the South’s losses “outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30”; drain “equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP.” Depth reading; the method (environmental input–output footprints priced at Northern prices) is the authors’.
Part III · The ballot box · Przeworski 2020
“From time to time I am asked if I am ‘still’ a Marxist. I do not know if I ever was: I never believed in Marx’s theory of history, any kind of an inevitability, or the promise of communism. But for most of my life I was drawn to some of Marx’s intuitions and analyses.”
Adam Przeworski, “What Have I Learned from Marx and What Still Stands?” Politics & Society (2020): 2
Part III · capitalism and democracy · Marx 1850, Przeworski 2020
Marx on the “bourgeois constitution”
“The classes whose social slavery the constitution is to perpetuate, proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, it puts in possession of political power through universal suffrage. And from the class whose old social power it sanctions, the bourgeoisie, it withdraws the political guarantees of this power.”The Class Struggles in France, quoted at 8
Przeworski
“In some—specifically thirteen—countries, democracy and capitalism coexisted without interruptions for at least a century… working-class parties and trade unions consented to capitalism, while bourgeois political parties and organizations of employers accepted some redistribution of income… The compromise, however, was tenuous. It collapsed under the neoliberal offensive of the 1980s.”Przeworski 2020: 8–9
Where Marx erred, per Przeworski: he saw the conflict as zero-sum — wages and profits “stand in inverse ratio to each other” (Wage Labour and Capital, quoted at 8); “if the bourgeoisie invests and the economy grows, there are joint gains to exploit” (8).
Part III · property and distribution · the world, 2021
Share of global incomeShare of global wealth
“The Newtonian law of capitalism is that inequality increases steadily unless its rise is counteracted by recurrent and vigorous actions of governments.”
“…mitigation is not transformation, and without transforming property relations, the need to mitigate inequality is eternal.”
Przeworski 2020: 14, 15
Data: Chancel, Piketty, Saez & Zucman, World Inequality Report 2022, executive summary (2021 estimates, purchasing power parity) — not assigned. Middle 40% computed as the remainder. Przeworski cites no dataset for the “Newtonian law.”
Part III · Przeworski 2020 · “taking stock”
Theme
Marx
Przeworski’s words
Freedom from necessity
“The realm of freedom does not commence until the point is passed where labor under the compulsion of necessity… is required” 4
“This text did not age well”; both questions “are eye-opening” 4
Capitalism and democracy
Their combination is “impossible as the normal form of society” 8
The framework “still stands”; the incompatibility “turned out to be false” 8
The state
“a committee for managing the common affairs of the entire bourgeoisie” 10
Neither later answer “is specifically ‘Marxist’” 11
Dynamics of capitalism
A falling rate of profit: “The system must die” 13
“the first dynamic theory of endogenous institutional change”; its assumptions “are wrong” 13
Property
Property structure shapes the distribution of income
“The main reason to return to Marx today” 14
Przeworski 2020; page numbers follow each quotation. “Marx” cells at 8, 13 and the last row are Przeworski’s paraphrase or his quotation of Marx.
Coda · race and class · Trinidad, 1938 and 1944
C. L. R. James
The Black Jacobins, 1938
“The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.”Quoted in CWE, 119
Eric Williams
Capitalism and Slavery, 1944
“The commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the wealth of Europe by means of slavery and monopoly… slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.”Quoted in CWE, 120
Helleiner, CWE, 119–20. On Marx: “The relationship between racism and capitalism was not tackled theoretically in Marx’s writings” (117). Photos: Wikimedia Commons — James 1938, public domain; Williams 1962, CC0.
“Capitalism ‘works’ with and without a racialized underclass and reserve army… the overlap is circumstantial, not necessary… Overthrowing racism will still leave us with capitalism; overthrowing capitalism will still leave us with racism.”
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò & Liam Kofi Bright
“…if Cox, Robinson, Williams, and Gilmore are right, then racial capitalism is the only sort we’ve ever had… the actual system we struggle against… is a system in which race and capitalism are mutually supporting.”
Manchester from Kersal Moor, engraving after William Wyld, c. 1852. Wikimedia Commons, public domain. “Manchester in 1844, as Engels described it” (Walzer).
Walzer, “A Note on Racial Capitalism,” Dissent online, July 29, 2020; Táíwò & Bright, “A Response to Michael Walzer,” Dissent online, August 7, 2020 (unpaginated). Gilmore’s definition of racism, quoted by Táíwò & Bright: “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”
Five critiques
Target
Who, when
The claim
Example
Labor theory of value
Jevons, Menger, Walras, 1871–74
Price is set by marginal utility and scarcity, not by labor embodied — “value depends entirely upon utility” (Jevons)
A litre of water in the Sahara and a litre in Scotland in January: the same labor, very different prices
Values → prices
Böhm-Bawerk 1896; Samuelson 1971
Prices are “not in proportion to the amount of incorporated labor”: vol. III contradicts vol. I; values become prices “by taking an eraser and rubbing it out”
A bakery and a steel mill employ the same labor hours; the mill’s prices must also repay its furnaces, or no one builds mills
Falling rate of profit
Okishio 1961
A cost-cutting technique adopted by one capitalist raises the general rate of profit, real wage held constant
The firm that automates earns more per dollar invested, not less — which is why it automates
Planning without prices
Mises 1920
“Where free market dealings are absent, there is no formation of prices; without the formation of prices there is no economic calculation”
Steel for tractors or for rails? Without a price for steel, the planner cannot tell which use is the waste
Method
Popper 1963
Early predictions “were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence”
Predicted: revolution first in Britain and Germany; workers growing poorer. Observed: Russia 1917, China 1949; real wages rose
Samuelson 1962: “From the viewpoint of pure economic theory, Karl Marx can be regarded as a minor post-Ricardian.”
Heterodox Economics Directory: 13 U.S. graduate programs with heterodox (incl. Marxian) economics — UMass Amherst, New School, Utah, UMKC, American, Colorado State among them.
Neither video is assigned. Varoufakis: interview clip on his book Technofeudalism (2023). Commanding Heights episode 1, “The Battle of Ideas”: full episode, continuing from the Week 4 clip.
Part III · Przeworski 2020 · Marx’s France, 1848–51, as a game
Przeworski 2020: 7–8, after Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and The Class Struggles in France (1850). “Almost the entire problematic of regime dynamics is here… as a framework it still stands” (8).
