DOCSLIB.ORG

Marx's Theory of Crisis Simon Clarke

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Marx's Theory of Crisis Simon Clarke Marx’s Theory of Crisis Simon Clarke Marx’s Theory of Crisis 1 Simon Clarke 1 Introduction: Marxism and the Theory of Crisis 5 Political Economy and the Necessity of Crisis 5 Marxist Theories of Crisis 7 The Impasse of Contemporary Marxism 9 Marx and the Marxist Theory of Crisis 10 The Theory of Crisis in the Second International 13 The Marxist Heritage: Engels's Theory of Crisis 15 Kautsky and the Historical Tendencies of Capitalist Accumulation 18 Kautsky's Theory of Secular Overproduction 20 Kautsky's Theory of Crisis 21 Bernstein's Challenge –- Reform or Revolution 24 Tugan-Baranowsky and the Necessity of Crisis 26 Hilferding and the Disproportionality Theory of Crisis 30 Competition and the investment cycle 32 The investment cycle and the crisis 35 Stabilisation and the necessity of crisis 37 Rosa Luxemburg's Underconsumptionist Theory of Crisis 41 Crises Associated with the Falling Rate of Profit 44 The Reformulation of Marxist Crisis Theory in the 1970s 47 Class struggle and capitalist crisis 48 Crisis and the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall 49 Class Struggle and the Rate of Profit 52 Is There a Marxist Theory of Crisis? 54 Engels's Theory of Crisis 57 Marx's Early Development of Engels's Analysis 59 The Dynamics of Capitalist Production and the Tendency to Crisis 61 The Theory of Crisis in the Communist Manifesto 66 The Early Theory of Overproduction and Crisis 67 Production, Circulation and Global Crisis after 1848 68 The Politics and Theory of Crisis after the 1848 Revolutions 68 The Historical Development of Capitalist Crises 70 Money, Credit and Crisis in the Notebooks of 1851 73 The Theory of Crisis in 1853 79 Revolutionary Hopes and the Crisis of 1857 81 Production and Circulation 86 Money, Crisis and Currency Reform 88 The Money Form and the Possibility of Crisis 90 The Transition from Money to Capital 91 The Self-Expansion of Capital and Overproduction 93 Production and Realisation 94 Marx's Theory of Crisis: One Theory or Three? 96 Disproportionate Production and General Overproduction 98 Competition and Disproportionality 99 Underconsumption and the Tendency to Crisis 101 Disproportionality and the Valorisation of Capital 105 The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall 111 The tendency for the composition of capital to rise 111 The composition of capital and the formation of a relative surplus population 112 The composition of capital and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall 113 The tendency for the tate of profit to fall and the tendency to crisis 115 The Dynamics of Capitalism and the Tendency to Crisis 117 The Methodology of the Grundrisse and the Theory of Crisis 121 Underconsumption Theories: Malthus and Sismondi 126 Overproduction and Crisis: Say and Ricardo 130 The production of surplus value and the possibility of crisis 130 Disproportionality and general overproduction 132 The tendency to crisis and the critique of political economy 134 The contradictions of capital and the possibility of crisis 136 Money, credit and the possibility of crisis 138 Capitalist production and the possibility of crisis 139 Capitalist Reproduction, Disproportionality and Crisis 140 The Falling Rate of Profit and the Tendency to Crisis 144 The Critique of Political Economy and the Falling Rate of Profit 145 Is There a Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall? 147 The tendency for the composition of capital to rise 148 The rate of exploitation and the rate of profit 149 The Falling Rate of Profit and Relative Surplus Population 152 The Concentration of Capital, the Rate of Profit and Crisis 155 Internal Contradictions of the Law 157 The mass of profit, the rate of profit and the tendency to crisis 158 The rate of profit, crisis and the depreciation of capital 160 The falling rate of profit and the absolute overaccumulation of capital 162 Overaccumulation and crisis 163 What is the significance of FROP? 166 The Theory of Crisis in Capital 169 Politics and the Theory of Crisis 170 The Theory of Crisis in the First Volume of Capital 171 The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation 172 Labour shortage, wages and crisis 173 Crises and the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation 175 The Necessity of Crisis and the Periodicity of the Cycle 178 Fixed Capital and the Periodicity of the Cycle 179 Fixed Capital and the Problem of Reproduction 184 Credit and the Investment Cycle 187 Conclusion 191 Bibliography 197 Introduction: Marxism and the Theory of Crisis Political Economy and the Necessity of Crisis With every boom the apologists for capitalism claim that the tendency to crisis that has plagued the capitalist system since its very beginnings has finally been overcome. When the boom breaks, economists fall over one another to provide particularistic explanations of the crash. The crisis of the early nineteen nineties was the result of the incautious lending of the nineteen eighties. The crisis of the early nineteen eighties was the result of excessive state spending in the late nineteen seventies. The crisis of the mid nineteen seventies was the result of the oil price hike and the inflationary financing of the Vietnam war … the crisis of the nineteen thirties was the result of inappropriate banking policies … … . Every crisis has a different cause, all of which boil down to human failure, none of which are attributed to the capitalist system itself. And yet crises have recurred periodically for the past two hundred years. Bourgeois economists have to deny that crises are inherent in the social form of capitalist production, because the whole of economic theory is built on the premise that the capitalist system is self-regulating, the principal task of the theoretical economist being to identify the minimal conditions under which such self-regulation will be maintained, so that any breakdown will be identified as the result of exceptional deviations from the norm.1 Even the most apologetic of economists cannot fail to notice that recurrent crises occur, but, developing the traditions of classical political economy, the economists explain such crises as contingent phenomena. The normal operation of the forces of supply and demand ensures that there is always a tendency towards equilibrium. This means that crises can only arise as a result of external shocks, which temporarily disrupt equilibrium, or internal disturbances, which impede or subvert the processes of market equilibration. Within the framework of general equilibrium theory capital moves between branches of production in response to variations in the rate of profit which arise from imbalances between supply and demand.2 This movement of capital is the means by which competition maintains proportional relations between the various branches, so that disproportionalities which might disrupt accumulation are evened out by the smooth interaction of supply and demand. Any crisis of disproportionality, such as that of the mid nineteen seventies, is then attributed to market imperfections, in this case the monopoly powers of the oil producers. Within neo-classical theory the overall balance of supply and demand is maintained by the interaction of the rate of interest and the rate of profit. If there is a shortfall of investment the demand for investment funds will fall, leading to a decline in the rate of interest which will stimulate renewed investment. A stable monetary policy will ensure that equilibrium is maintained. In the classical world of the gold standard a deficit on the balance of international payments provided the prime indication of overheating, the outflow of gold and currency reserves forcing the monetary authorities to tighten monetary policy to rectify the imbalance. Similarly, the onset of 1 There are professional as well as ideological reasons for such an assumption. The economists' claim to their role of scientific soothsayers depends on their possession of models with determinate and quantifiable solutions. 2 Even within the framework of general equilibrium theory the conditions of stability of the equilibrating mechanism are very restrictive and unrealistic. recession led to an inflow to the reserves which permitted a more relaxed monetary policy. In the modern world the indicators of inflationary and deflationary pressures are more complex, but the principle remains the same. A crisis of overaccumulation, such as that which struck at the end of the nineteen eighties, is then the result of lax monetary policies which have stimulated inflationary and speculative over- investment. For all their mathematical sophistication, the explanations of crises offered by today's economists are no different from those that were being put forward at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was always recognised that a large external shock, such as a war or harvest failure, might precipitate a temporary disruption in the relations between branches of production, or in the international economic relations of the national economy, but the cause of such a crisis lies outside the capitalist system, and it was assumed that stability would soon be restored by the normal processes of market adjustment. Apart from such external shocks, the principal cause of crises was traditionally identified as the discretionary intervention of the government in the regulation of the economy. In particular, if the government sought to stimulate the economy artificially by printing money to finance its excessive spending, it would promote over-investment, which would lead to an inflationary boom. Eventually the boom would collapse as unsound and speculative ventures failed, requiring a period of recession to purge the excesses from the system. The cyclical alternation of boom and bust which has marked the history of capitalism is not, therefore, inherent in the capitalist mode of production, but is the result of the folly and irresponsibility of politicians.3 Keynes questioned the stability of the classical macroeconomic adjustment mechanism, but otherwise his work remained largely within the classical framework.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Marxist Crisis Theory and the Severity of the Current Economic Crisis
    Marxist Crisis Theory and the Severity of the Current Economic Crisis By David M. Kotz Department of Economics Thompson Hall University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, MA 01003, U.S.A. December, 2009 Email Address: [email protected] This paper was presented on a panel on "Heterodox Analyses of the Current Economic Crisis" sponsored by the Union for Radical Political Economics at the Allied Social Science Associations annual convention, Atlanta, January 4, 2010. Research Assistance was provided by Ann Werboff. It is a revised version of a paper "The Final Crisis: What Can Cause a System-Threatening Crisis of Capitalism," Science & Society 74(3), July 2010. Marxist Crisis Theory and the Current Crisis, December, 2009 1 The theory of economic crisis has long occupied an important place in Marxist theory. One reason is the belief that a severe economic crisis can play a key role in the supersession of capitalism and the transition to socialism. Some early Marxist writers sought to develop a breakdown theory of economic crisis, in which an absolute barrier is identified to the reproduction of capitalism.1 However, one need not follow such a mechanistic approach to regard economic crisis as central to the problem of transition to socialism. It seems highly plausible that a severe and long-lasting crisis of accumulation would create conditions that are potentially favorable for a transition, although such a crisis is no guarantee of that outcome.2 Marxist analysts generally agree that capitalism produces two qualitatively different kinds of economic crisis. One is the periodic business cycle recession, which is resolved after a relatively short period by the normal mechanisms of a capitalist economy, although since World War II government monetary and fiscal policy have often been employed to speed the end of the recession.
    [Show full text]
  • Conversations with Stalin on Questions of Political Economy”
    WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS Lee H. Hamilton, Conversations with Stalin on Christian Ostermann, Director Director Questions of Political Economy BOARD OF TRUSTEES: ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Joseph A. Cari, Jr., by Chairman William Taubman Steven Alan Bennett, Ethan Pollock (Amherst College) Vice Chairman Chairman Working Paper No. 33 PUBLIC MEMBERS Michael Beschloss The Secretary of State (Historian, Author) Colin Powell; The Librarian of Congress James H. Billington James H. Billington; (Librarian of Congress) The Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin; Warren I. Cohen The Chairman of the (University of Maryland- National Endowment Baltimore) for the Humanities Bruce Cole; The Secretary of the John Lewis Gaddis Smithsonian Institution (Yale University) Lawrence M. Small; The Secretary of Education James Hershberg Roderick R. Paige; (The George Washington The Secretary of Health University) & Human Services Tommy G. Thompson; Washington, D.C. Samuel F. Wells, Jr. PRIVATE MEMBERS (Woodrow Wilson Center) Carol Cartwright, July 2001 John H. Foster, Jean L. Hennessey, Sharon Wolchik Daniel L. Lamaute, (The George Washington Doris O. Mausui, University) Thomas R. Reedy, Nancy M. Zirkin COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT THE COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT WORKING PAPER SERIES CHRISTIAN F. OSTERMANN, Series Editor This paper is one of a series of Working Papers published by the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Established in 1991 by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) disseminates new information and perspectives on the history of the Cold War as it emerges from previously inaccessible sources on “the other side” of the post-World War II superpower rivalry.
    [Show full text]
  • Harvey's Limits of Capital: Twenty Years After
    On the Limits of Limits to Capital Bob Jessop Professor, Department of Sociology Lancaster University Copyright This online paper may be cited or briefly quoted in line with the usual academic conventions. You may also download it for your own personal use. This paper must not be published elsewhere (e.g. mailing lists, bulletin boards etc.) without the author's explicit permission. But please note that • if you copy this paper you must include this copyright note • this paper must not be used for commercial purposes or gain in any way, • you should observe the conventions of academic citation in a version of the following form: Bob Jessop, ‘On the Limits of Limits of Capital’, published by the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University at: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/soc129rj.htm Harvey's magisterial text is a sustained attempt to develop the basic method, extend the substantive arguments, and overcome some of the theoretical limits of Marx's classic critique of political economy. Yet Limits to Capital has its own limits and these are often rooted in the limits of Capital itself. Let us recall that the latter is an unfinished text. In the 1857 outline of his future magnum opus, Marx stated his intention to write six 'books' (Marx 1973; cf. Harvey 1982: xiv). These would deal in turn with capital, landed property, wage-labour, the state, foreign trade, and the world market and crises. The chosen order of presentation corresponded to his method of analysis, which moved from abstract-simple objects to the reproduction of the totality as a concrete-in-thought.
    [Show full text]
  • Overaccumulation, Public Debt, and the Importance of Land
    Overaccumulation, Public Debt, and the Importance of Land Stefan Homburg Discussion Paper No. 525 ISSN 0949-9962 Published: German Economic Review 15 (4), pp. 411-435. doi:10.1111/geer.12053 Institute of Public Economics, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany. www.fiwi.uni-hannover.de. Abstract: In recent contributions, Weizsäcker (2014) and Summers (2014) maintain that mature economies ac- cumulate too much capital. They suggest large and last- ing public deficits as a remedy. This paper argues that overaccumulation cannot occur in an economy with land. It presents novel data of aggregate land values, analyzes the issue within a stochastic framework, and conducts an empirical test of overaccumulation. Keywords: Dynamic efficiency; overaccumulation; land; fiscal policy; public debt JEL-Classification: D92, E62, H63 Thanks are due to Charles Blankart, Friedrich Breyer, Johannes Hoffmann, Karl-Heinz Paqué, and in particu- lar to Marten Hillebrand and Wolfram F. Richter for very helpful suggestions. 2 1. Introduction In a recent article, Carl-Christian von Weizsäcker (2014) challenged the prevailing skepti- cal view of public debt. In a modernized Austrian framework, he argues that the natural real rate of interest, i.e. the rate that would emerge in the absence of public debt, has be- come negative in OECD economies and China. Because nominal interest rates are posi- tive, governments face an uneasy choice between price stability and fiscal prudence: They must either raise inflation in order to make negative real and positive nominal interest rates compatible, or lift the real interest rate into the positive region via deficit spending. To substantiate his point, Weizsäcker claims that the average waiting period, the ratio of private wealth and annual consumption, has risen historically whereas the average produc- tion period, the ratio of capital and annual consumption, has remained constant.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 27 Sociology 621 April 30, 2008 What Is Socialism?
    Lecture 27 Sociology 621 April 30, 2008 What is Socialism? I. What Do Socialists Want? Socialists have traditionally criticized capitalism for the ways in which it violates five central values: 1. Equality: Capitalism generates morally intolerable levels of inequality of material conditions of people. This is especially offensive in its impact on children, but more broadly the levels of material deprivation in a world of affluence generated by capitalism violates a wide range of principles of egalitarian justice held by socialists. 2. Democracy: Capitalism thwarts democracy. By placing the basic economic resources and conditions of investment in hands of private individuals, the capacity of the democratic polity to make decisions about the fate of the community is significantly undermined. 3. Autonomy: Capitalism robs most people of meaningful control over much of their work lives. There is a deep meaning-deficit in most people’s lives because they are pawns in other people’s projects. Capitalism does not merely generate inequality and poverty through exploitation, it generates alienation as well. 4. Community: Capitalism undermines a sense of solidarity among people. As G.A. Cohen has argued, the forms of competition and conflict built into capitalism drive economic activities primarily on the basis of two motives -- greed and fear. Instead of social interaction in economic life being normatively organized around the principle of helping others, it is organized primarily around motive of taking advantage of the weakness of others for one's own gain. This underwrites a culture of selfish individualism and atomism. 5. Efficiency/rationality: This may seem quite odd, but traditionally socialists have criticized capitalism because it was irrational, wasteful and ultimately inefficient.
    [Show full text]
  • Accumulation Regimes Agnès Labrousse, Sandrine Michel
    Accumulation regimes Agnès Labrousse, Sandrine Michel To cite this version: Agnès Labrousse, Sandrine Michel. Accumulation regimes. Tae-Hee Jo; Lynne Chester; Carlo D’Ippoliti. The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics Theorizing, Analyzing, and Trans- forming Capitalism, pp.54-69, 2017, 978-1-138-89994-0 (hbk) 978-1-315-70758-7 (ebk). hal-01719977 HAL Id: hal-01719977 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01719977 Submitted on 28 Feb 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Accumulation Regimes Agnès Labrousse and Sandrine Michel Introduction Historical observation shows that accumulation undergoes long periods of stability, followed by long periods of instability and crisis, so the economist has to explain why an episode of growth, based on a seemingly ‘virtuous’ accumulation process, can enter into crisis. Accumulation regimes grasp the dynamic compatibility of production, income sharing, and demand dynamics: “the set of regularities that ensure the general and relatively coherent progress of capital accumulation, that is, which allow the resolution or postponement of the distortions and disequilibria to which the process continually gives rise” (Boyer & Saillard 2002: 334). Two institutional theories, French Régulation theory (RT) and the American Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) theory, are particularly relevant to the investigation of accumulation processes.
    [Show full text]
  • Preface This Compendium of Marxist Ideas and Practices Is Aimed at The
    AN A-Z OF MARXISM Preface This compendium of Marxist ideas and practices is aimed at the newcomer to the socialist movement who may be unfamiliar with socialist terminology. We have included cross-referencing, suggested books for further reading and links to relevant websites at the end of most entries. Included are many biographical entries of individuals and organisations of interest to the socialist movement. The inclusion of any of these should not necessarily be understood as an endorsement of their ideas and practices. Likewise, the suggested books and websites may contain views which are not necessarily the same as those of the Socialist Party. The website links are checked at the time of publication but we cannot accept responsibility for their continuing availability. It will be obvious that there are some errors, omissions and unworthy inclusions. We make no claim to comprehensive, final and definitive truth. This compendium can and should be better. We therefore invite suggestions and constructive criticisms for use in future editions of this compendium. Education Department June 2010 The Socialist Party of Great Britain 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN www.worldsocialism.org/spgb Abundance. A situation where resources are sufficient, or more than sufficient, to satisfy human needs; whereas scarcity is a situation where resources are insufficient to meet human needs. It is because abundance is possible that socialism can be established. In capitalist economics human wants are said to be unlimited, so that abundance is impossible. Economists infer that because wants exceed the poverty imposed by the wages system then scarcity and capitalism must always exist.
    [Show full text]
  • The Basic Theory of Capitalism: a Critical Review of Itoh and the Uno School
    The Basic Theory of Capitalism: A Critical Review of Itoh and the Uno School Simon Clarke Makoto Itoh: The Basic Theory of Capitalism: The Forms and Substance of the Capitalist Economy, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1988. 1 The Uno Approach and the Pure Theory of Cap- italism Makoto Itoh's work is well-known to readers of Capital and Class through his long-standing involvement in the CSE. He has now brought together his contributions to the debates on the theory of value and the theory of crisis within a systematic exposition of Marxist theory which brings out clearly the roots of his perspective in the work of Uno. The Uno School is one of the major schools of post-war Japanese Marxism, which came to prominence in the 1960s.1 The Uno approach is marked by a radical neo-Kantian separation of theory from politics, and a fierce opposition to logical-historical interpretations of Capital in favour of a sharp distinction between theoretical and historical analysis. Itoh's book is important in making the Uno approach more accessible to an English speaking readership by relating its perspective directly to the recent English language debates. Although Itoh revises and develops the Uno approach, particularly in his concern to give the theory a greater political and historical relevance, he retains the essential methodological and theoretical foundations of the Uno approach. While Itoh's contribution is of considerable interest in its own right, in this article I intend to focus on these foundations as the basis of a critique of Itoh's book. The methodological foundations of the Uno school lie in the radical sepa- ration of three levels of analysis.
    [Show full text]
  • Marxism, Crisis Theory and the Crisis of the Early 21St Century
    Marxism, Crisis Theory and the Crisis of the Early 21st Century WILLIAM K. TABB In the writings of Karl Marx we find the most penetrating theoretical construction of the basic laws of motion of capitalism, and also acute observation of the significant events of his time and their larger meaning. Distinguishing his different levels of analysis can be obscured by the employment of the same words in different usages. For example, as Marx moves between the usages of the term "class" applied at the level of the mode of production to "class" as class fractions relevant to a specific social formation in his contemporary conjuncture, the term takes on different meanings (Oilman, 1978; Tabb, 2009). So too his writing explaining the causes of economic crisis range from disequilibrium in reproduction schemas and the core contradictions of social relations under capitalism, to contingent events of timely importance which attribute causal significance to such things as the discovery of natural resources or the bankruptcy of a particular enterprise. Just as our use of "class" depends on subject of our inquiry, so "crisis" is employed to consider different ranges of explanation. Marx was quite expansive in discussion of crisis but, as Schumpeter writes (1951, 49), he "had no simple theory of business cycles. And none can be made to follow from his 'laws' of the capitalist process." But this is to ignore his dialectical method. It is true that nowhere does Marx present a single crisis theory. He offers different explanations in different contexts. This should not be surprising, for Marx's science is not a deterministic one but a dialectical approach with strong stress on historical specificity.
    [Show full text]
  • The Political and Social Thought of Lewis Corey
    70-13,988 BROWN, David Evan, 19 33- THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THOUGHT OF LEWIS COREY. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1969 Political Science, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THOUGHT OF LEWIS COREY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By David Evan Brown, B.A, ******* The Ohio State University 1969 Approved by Adviser Department of Political Science PREFACE On December 2 3 , 1952, Lewis Corey was served with a warrant for his arrest by officers of the U, S, Department of Justice. He was, so the warrant read, subject to deportation under the "Act of October 16 , 1 9 1 8 , as amended, for the reason that you have been prior to entry a member of the following class: an alien who is a member of an organi­ zation which was the direct predecessor of the Communist Party of the United States, to wit The Communist Party of America."^ A hearing, originally arranged for April 7» 1953» but delayed until July 27 because of Corey's poor health, was held; but a ruling was not handed down at that time. The Special Inquiry Officer in charge of the case adjourned the hearing pending the receipt of a full report of Corey's activities o during the previous ten years. [The testimony during the hearing had focused primarily on Corey's early writings and political activities.] The hearing was not reconvened, and the question of the defendant's guilt or innocence, as charged, was never formally settled.
    [Show full text]
  • Behind the Crisis Marx’S Dialectics of Value and Knowledge by Guglielmo Carchedi
    Behind the Crisis Marx’s Dialectics of Value and Knowledge By Guglielmo Carchedi LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 Contents Foreword: On Marx’s Contemporary Relevance ...................................... vii Chapter One Method .................................................................................. 1 1. The need for dialectics .............................................................................. 1 2. Dialectical logic and social phenomena ................................................. 3 3. The dialectics of individual and social phenomena ............................. 22 4. Class-analysis and the sociology of non-equilibrium .......................... 31 5. A dialectics of nature? .............................................................................. 36 6. Formal logic and dialectical logic ........................................................... 39 7. Induction, deduction and verification ................................................... 44 Chapter Two Debates ................................................................................. 53 1. Recasting the issues .................................................................................. 53 2. Abstract labour as the only source of (surplus-) value ........................ 55 3. The materiality of abstract labour ........................................................... 60 4. The tendential fall in the average profit-rate (ARP) ............................. 85 5. The transformation-‘problem’ ................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Relative Autonomy: State Managers As Historical Subjects*
    BEYOND RELATIVE AUTONOMY: STATE MANAGERS AS HISTORICAL SUBJECTS* Fred Block Neo-Marxist analyses of the state and politics now centre on the vexed question of the 'specificity of the political'. What is the degree to which politics and the state have independent determining effects on historical outcomes? Can the state or the people who direct the state apparatus act as historical subjects? The questions are critical because without a clear set of answers, it is impossible to develop a consistent theory of the state. In an interview done only months before his death, Nicos Poulantzas insisted that these questions had been answered through the idea of the relative autonomy of the state. Poulantzas' remarks are worth quoting at length: Interviewer: Much of your writing has been directed towards questions of the state and of politics, based upon the concept of 'relative autonomy'. What is your assessment of the capacity of a theory based on a concept of 'relative autonomy' to grapple with the problems of the specificity of the state and politics? Poulantzas: I will answer this question very simply because we could discuss it for years It is very simple. One must know whether one remains within a Marxist framework or not; and if one does, one accepts the determinant role of the economic in the very complex sense; not the determination of forces of production but of relations of production and the social division of labour. In this sense, if we remain within this conceptual framework, I think that the most that one can do for the specificity of politics is what I have done.
    [Show full text]