LEO PANITCH Is a Member of the Department of Political Science at Carleton University

Copy Link

LEO PANITCH is a member of the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. The Canadian State is a powerful collection of essays. Leo Panitch's theme essay, dealing with the theories of recent neo-Marxist thinkers such as O'Connor, Mili- band, and Poulantzas on the nature and role of the state and sketching their rele- vance to Canada, sets the tone and interpretation of the whole work, which thus has a rare unity and cohesion. Reg Whitaker and Qarth Stevenson provide papers offer- ing profound analyses of the history and functioning of the federalized state in Can- ada. The twelve further contributors develop this theme, dealing with such topics as the aspirations of those behind the governments of Alberta and Quebec, relations between the government elites and Canada's classes and ethnic groups, the manage- ment of the economy through budgets and welfare state policies, and the manage- ment of culture through education, the arts, and citizen participation. Together they illuminate various aspects of the way the bourgeois state organizes our society, above all, for the accumulation of capital and the legitimation of capitalism and, at times, uses coercion to these ends. The work as a whole brings together Canada's economics and politics in a new and penetrating way. EDITED BY LEO PANITCH The Canadian state: political economy and political power UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 1977 Toronto and Buffalo Reprinted 1983, 1985 Reprinted in 2018 Printed in Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Canadian state ISBN 0-8020-2285-5 bd. ISBN 978-0-8020-6322-9 (paper) l. Canada- Politics and government -Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Canada - Economic policy - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Socialism in Canada - Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Panitch, Leo, 1945- JL65 1977.c35 320.9'71 c77-001588-3 .

Recommended publications

MARXISM NOW TRADITIONS and DIFFERENCE 30 November-2 December 1989 University of Massachusetts-Amherst

MARXISM NOW TRADITIONS AND DIFFERENCE 30 November-2 December 1989 University of Massachusetts-Amherst Sponsored by Rethinking MARXISM: A Journal of Economics, CultuNq and Politics Financial support has been provided by the Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Dean of the School of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Department of Econ- omics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the Department of Economics at the University of California-Riverside. For additional information, please contact George DeMartino, 413/545-0366, or write to the Association for Economic and Social Analysis, P.O. Box 715, Amherst, MA 01004-0715. PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE Special Events Plenary I: MARXISM AND POLITICAL STRUGGLE FOR THE 1990s (Thursday, 30 November, 7:30 P.M.) MANNINGWLE VICENTE NAVARRO JAMES PETRAS SHEILA ROWBOTHAM Plenary II: MARXISM NOW: TRADITIONS AND DIFFERENCE (Friday, 1 December, 7:30 P.M.) JAMES O’CONNOR GAYATRICHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK CORNEL WEST RICHARD WOLFF Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 12:12 04 January 2012 Films: Films concerning Gramsci’s life and work will be shown throughout the Conference, including “Car0 Julka.. .” and “Gramsci: L’ho visto cosi.” Also, “C.L.R. James: A Tribute” will be shown on Thursday, 30 November, at 5:30 p.m., immediately following the panel “C.L.R. James and the Decentering of Western Marxism.” Art: Several contributors to Rethinking MARXISM will have their artworks on exhibit throughout the Conference, including Rudolf Baranik, Louis Camnitzer, Alfred0 Garzbn, Ann Langdon,
The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys Page 1 of 4

LSE Review of Books: Book Review: Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys Page 1 of 4 Book Review: Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys bring out the continuities in the policies and aspirations of Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn in seeking to transform the British Labour Party into an instrument of socialist change. While urging for greater efforts towards instilling socialist values and objectives within the Labour Party, the authors conclude that without a compelling socialist ideology capable of overcoming the contradictions of 21st- century capitalism, we remain searching for socialism, writes David Lane. Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn. Leo Panitch and Colin Leys. Verso. 2020. Leo Panitch and Colin Leys’s Searching for Socialism brings out the continuities in the policies and aspirations of Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn in seeking to transform the British Labour Party into an instrument of socialist change. Searching for Socialism is arranged chronologically. The first five chapters summarise the content of The End of Parliamentary Socialism, published by the authors in 2000, which covered the period of Benn’s challenge to the rise of New Labour under Tony Blair. The remaining chapters consider New Labour in power and its contest with Labour’s ‘new left’, culminating in the leadership of Corbyn, and end with the defeat of the Labour Party in the UK General Election of 2019.
Downloaded from Manchesterhive.Com at 09/25/2021 01:35:06AM Via Free Access ITLP C05.QXD 18/8/03 9:57 Am Page 72

ITLP_C05.QXD 18/8/03 9:57 am Page 71 5 The continuing relevance of the Milibandian perspective David Coates and Leo Panitch The belief in the effective transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of socialist politics is the most crippling of illusions to which socialists in Britain have been prone . To say that the Labour Party is the party of the working class is . important . but it affords no answer to the point at issue, namely that a socialist party is needed in Britain, and that the Labour Party is not it, and it will not be turned into it. To say that it is a party of the working class is, on this view, to open the discus- sion, not to conclude it. It might be otherwise if there was any likelihood that the Labour Party could be turned into a socialist formation; but that is precisely the prem- ise which must, on a realistic view, be precluded. (Miliband 1976: 128, 130) Labourism . a theory and practice which accepted the possibility of social change within the existing framework of society; which rejected the revolutionary violence and action implicit in Chartist ideas of physical force; and which increasingly recognized the working of political democracy of the parliamentary variety as the practical means of achieving its own aims and objectives. (Saville 1973: 215; see also Saville 1988: 14) The legacy of Ralph Miliband’s writings on the Labour Party has been, and remains, both an important and a controversial one. It is also one that is much car- icatured by critics unfamiliar with its central theses.
Globalisation and the State

GLOBALISATION AND THE STATE Leo Panitch Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying 'Faster! Faster!', though she had no breath left to say so. The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything . 'Well, in our country,', said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran for a long time as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass I. Introduction Think of the Red Queen's Garden as capitalism. The relentless search for markets and profits brings about faster and faster changes in production and space, industry and commerce, occupation and locale, with profound effects on the organisation of classes and states. It is through this ferocious process of extension and change that capitalism preserves itself, remains capitalism, stays the same system. This paradox, or rather this dialectic, can only properly be grasped if we understand that the "bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of produc• tion, and thereby relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.'" This was not an understanding merely appropriate to what happened to the world in the first half of the 19th century: it is no less appropriate to understanding what has happened over the second half of the 20th, and to what is taking place in the world today.
Lakiersky Has Produced a Commendable Book. He Suc- Ceeded in Presenting a Comprehensive Analysis of the Economic System and the Distribution of Income in Yugoslavia

Nevertheless, 1�'lakiersky has produced a commendable book. He suc- ceeded in presenting a comprehensive analysis of the economic system and the distribution of income in Yugoslavia. In short, such a careful study de- serves a wide audience. Zeljan Suster University of New Haven Socialist Dilemmas: East and West. Edited by Henryk Flakierski and Thomas T. Sekine. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991. xi, 151 pp. $39.95. Socialist �3ilemmas: Eaat and West contains eight papers first read at the Political Economy Workshop at York University in 1988. The papers, while quite heterogeneous, all reflect the intellectual discomfort of former and current socialists in a world which seems nearly to have assumed them away. Three pieces (by Tadeusz Kowalik, Dusan Pokorny, and Thomas Sekine) offer theoretical guidance for socialists under the "New World Order"; two articles (by Louis Lefeber and Leo Panitch) reflect on the reasons for the limited electoral successes of West European leftists; finally, three chapters (by Wlodzimierz Brus, Henryk Flakierski, and Kazimiersz Laski) offer empirical insight into the fall of the Communist bloc. Among the theoretical pieces, Kowalik's "Toward a Mixed Socialist Economy" discusses the road back from Communism for Eastern Europe. Kowalik hopes that the end of Communism will not imply the end of socialist ideals and contends that some "third road" (perhaps collective self-management arrangements) might be the least costly means for reforming the former Eastern bloc. He admits, however, that the seemingly dominant intellectual fashion in post-totalitarian Poland is liberalism a la Friedman and Hayek. 1 Sekine's "Socialism as a Living Idea" provides an alternative vision for the future, urging socialists to focus their attention on environmental is- sues and on the proper (small-scale, communal) organization of society for preservation of the environment.
The Persistence of American Economic Power in Global Capitalism: from the 1960S Into the Twenty-First Century

The Persistence of American Economic Power in Global Capitalism: From the 1960s into the Twenty-First Century Sean Kenji Starrs A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA June 2014 © Sean Kenji Starrs, 2014 Abstract This dissertation intervenes in the more than four decades-long debate on the decline or persistence of American economic power. It argues that we cannot move forward without reconceptualizing the nature of economic power in global capitalism, especially by moving beyond national accounts (such as GDP). Too many commentators from across the diversity of perspectives assume that the relative rise and decline of national accounts approximates the relative rise and decline of national economic power. In contrast, this dissertation argues that in the era of globalization, national accounts are an inadequate measure of national economic power. Rather, we must investigate the transnational corporations themselves in order to encompass their transnational operations, and analyze the matrix of inter- linkages now characteristic of global capitalism in general, and American power in particular. Therefore, this dissertation draws upon extensive original empirical research, including the following: 1) the first aggregation of the national sales- shares of the world’s top 200 corporations from 1957 to 2013; 2) the first aggregation of the national profit-shares of the world’s top 2,000 corporations across 25 broad sectors from 2006 to 2013; 3) the first aggregation of the top 50 national acquirers and targets of all cross-border mergers and acquisitions worth $1 million or more from 1980 to 2012; and 4) the first national aggregation of the ownership structures of the world’s top 500 corporations.
The Making of Global Capitalism

Contents Preface vii INTRODUCTION 1 PART I: PRELUDE TO THE NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE . The DNA of American Capitalism 25 The Dynamic Economy 26 The Active State 31 Internationalizing the American State 35 . American State Capacities: From Great War to New Deal 45 From Wilson to Hoover: Isolationism Not 46 The Great Depression and the New Deal State 53 From New Deal to Grand Truce with Capital 59 PART II: THE PROJECT FOR A GLOBAL CAPITALISM . Planning the New American Empire 67 Internationalizing the New Deal 69 The Path to Bretton Woods 72 Laying the Domestic Foundations 80 . Launching Global Capitalism 89 Evolving the Marshall Plan 91 The American Rescue of European Capitalism 96 “The Rest of the World” 102 PART III: THE TRANSITION TO GLOBAL CAPITALISM . The Contradictions of Success 111 Internationalizing Production 112 Internationalizing Finance 117 Detaching from Bretton Woods 122 . Structural Power Through Crisis 133 Class, Proﬁ ts, and Crisis 135 Transition through Crisis 144 Facing the Crisis Together 152 PART IV: THE REALIZATION OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM . Renewing Imperial Capacity 163 The Path to Discipline 164 The New Age of Finance 172 The Material Base of Empire 183 . Integrating Global Capitalism 195 Integrating Europe 196 Japan’s Contradictions of Success 203 The Rest of the World (Literally) 211 PART V: THE RULE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM . Rules of Law: Governing Globalization 223 The Laws of Free Trade 224 Global Investment, American Rules 230 Disciplinary Internationalism 234 . The New Imperial Challenge: Managing Crises 247 Fireﬁ ghter in Chief 248 The Asian Contagion 254 Failure Containment 261 PART VI: THE GLOBAL CAPITALIST MILLENNIUM .
Strategy, Meta-Strategy and Anti-Capitalist Activism

Socialist Studies Études socialistes The Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies Revue de la Société d’études socialistes ‘You are Here’ an interview with Dorothy E. Smith Vol. 6 No. 2 Special Section Rosa Luxemburg’s Political Economy Klaus Dörre, Peter Hudis, Ingo Schmidt, Helen Scott, Estrella Trincado, Paul LeBlanc Fall 2010 Book Reviews www.socialiststudies.com ISSN 1918-2821 Socialist Studies: the Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies 6(2) Fall 2010 Socialist Studies: the Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies, is published by the Society for Socialist Studies. The Society for Socialist Studies is an association of progressive academics, students, activists and members of the general public. Since its creation in 1966, the Society has been dedicated to providing a forum for those who promote a socialist perspective as a foundation on which to build solutions to political, economic, workplace, social, gender, ethnic, environmental and other forms of exploitation, oppression and injustice. It is unique in bringing together individuals from all walks of life and as a member of the Canadian Federation for Humanities and Social Sciences, is in a position to create links with other organizations, promote the concerns of members, and present an influential face to policy makers. As such, Socialist Studies: The Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing articles on as broad an array of topics as possible from all fields of study. Typically, articles will adopt a critical perspective, which will shed light on, and offer remedies for, any form of social, economic or political injustice.
Miliband and the State 19/08/19, 1928 Miliband and the State

Miliband and the State 19/08/19, 1928 Miliband and the State BY JASON SCHULMAN Ralph Miliband was right in urging socialists to leave the legacy of Leninism behind us. But achieving socialism will still require a change in the fundamental nature of the state. Leo Panitch’s defense of the thought of the late Ralph Miliband — specifically his 1969 classic, The State in Capitalist Society — makes for excellent reading. The two most important things that Panitch emphasizes, and which deserve to be emphasized, are how Miliband was at pains to prove that social- democratic governance of capitalist society does not, and cannot, overcome capitalism’s inherent nature as a class-exploitative system nor the inevitability of capitalist economic crises, and that Miliband didn’t actually hold to an “instrumentalist” theory of the capitalist state. (This fallacy has been repeated so many times that Clyde W. Barrow had to write a painstakingly detailed piece demolishing this “artificial polemical construct.”) Panitch also usefully stresses Miliband’s focus on the day-to-day fight under capitalism for pro-worker “structural reforms” — or, as André Gorz labels it in his 1964 book Strategy for Labor, “non-reformist reforms.” In Panitch’s words, Miliband understood that “radically intended socialist reforms must run up against certain limits.” He never claimed that structural reform was about, to quote Ed Rooksby, an “unbroken line of reforms leading from capitalism to socialism.” Contrary to the assertions of certain far-leftists, Miliband simply wasn’t a more left-wing version of the “parliamentary socialists” that he so sharply criticized in his other 1960s classic, Parliamentary Socialism.
GLOBAL CAPITALISM and AMERICAN EMPIRE Leo Panitch

1 GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN EMPIRE Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin ‘American imperialism… has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic.’ 1 Harold Innis, 1948 Este material aparecerá publicado en Socialist Register del 2004, y la revista nos autorizó a divulgarlo durante seis meses en la web Cuba Siglo XXI The American empire is no longer concealed. In March 1999, the cover of the New York Times Magazine displayed a giant clenched fist painted in the stars and stripes of the US flag above the words: ‘What The World Needs Now: For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is’. Thus was featured Thomas Friedman’s ‘Manifesto for a Fast World’, which urged the United States to embrace its role as enforcer of the capitalist global order: ‘…the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.... The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.’ Four years later, in January 2003, when there was no longer any point in pretending the fist was hidden, the Magazine featured an essay by Michael Ignatieff entitled ‘The Burden’: ‘…[W]hat word but “empire” describes the awesome thing that America is becoming? …Being an imperial power… means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest.’2 The words, ‘The American Empire: (Get Used To It)’, took up the whole cover of the Magazine.
In Appreciation of Leo Panitch

In Appreciation of Leo Panitch The sudden death our friend and comrade Leo Panitch has led to an extraordinary outpouring of sadness and appreciation across the world. Very few intellectuals on the left have had the intellectual impact on progressive thinkers and activists that Leo has had, as the flood of testimonials shows; and fewer still have in addition personally trained a comparable network of scholars of the highest calibre who are now carrying forward his distinctive project of critical – and self-critical – research and teaching in dozens of countries. Leo also combined research and teaching with engagement with activists in parties, trade unions and social movements: he knew and was consulted by leaders on the left in several continents, but was also known and admired by the rank and file who flocked to meetings whenever he showed up in Johannesburg, Athens, Frankfurt, London, Rio, New Delhi and elsewhere. Leo’s contributions to left thought and strategy have been reviewed in several places since he retired from teaching, and will need to be reviewed and celebrated again when there is time to do it properly. His influential and prize-winning magnum opus, The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (co-written with Sam Gindin and published by Verso in 2012) summed up his most important and original arguments on the real nature of globalisation and its meaning for the domestic politics of the countries in that empire from the 1970s onwards. His last book, Searching for Socialism: the project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn (co-written with Colin Leys and published by Verso in March this year, and now available for free as ane-book ) analysed the strategic and tactical problems of the left in the Labour Party from the 1970s to 2019, drawing also on the experiences of the left in other countries, especially Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.
Liberal Democracy and Capitalist Hegemony: a Reply to Leo Panitch on the Task of Socialist Political Theory I

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALIST HEGEMONY: A REPLY TO LEO PANITCH ON THE TASK OF SOCIALIST POLITICAL THEORY Ellen Meiksins Wood I I want to take up again the question: What is the task of socialist political theory? Having said this, I should add that this will involve first, another fairly long discussion of Macpherson before I move on to other matters. There is, as I said the first time, a large and important area of political theory which socialists have left for Macpherson to deal with virtually alone. It is, therefore, impossible to take up these aspects of political theory from a socialist point of view without coming to terms with Mac- pherson. Any attempt to build on the ground he has broken is likely to proceed as if it were a personal encounter, a dispute, with him. This is what it means to be the major reference-point in a debate. My argument with Macpherson is at first a methodological one concern- ing the study of political thought in general and liberalism in particular; but it is a methodological dispute with larger, practical implications. Under- lying the methodological differences are different assumptions not only about the meaning of liberalism and its function in capitalist society but, more generally, about the nature of the socialist project, what that project suggests about the historic conditions of socialist struggle and about the terrain on which it must be waged, and what tasks this imposes upon socialist intellectuals. It is these programmatic, political issues that I want to explore further in what follows.