BOOK REVIEWS 37 order; merely to make it tidier, healthier or more return also to the redistributive process of convenient. correcting the inequities and lack of resources which characterise the western suburbs of Sydney During the war, the Department of Post-war and Melbourne. It meant sums of money to tackle Reconstruction set about producing a blueprintfora better world when the fighting ended. A great deal of sewerage, and land for growth centres. It tried discussion centred on full employment planning, desperately to devise, through the Else-Mitchell decentralisation, Commonwealth-State Housing Report, the establishment in each state of a commission to acquire and develop land, to prevent Agreements. The conservative forces claimed that land speculation in the growth areas on the while it was necessary in war time, they would fight metropolitan and country fringes. But the the forces of reform when peace returned. The banks, the High Court, the oil companies, the machinations of the hostile Senate, implacable opposition from State Ministers, and the joint power medical profession and state upper houses resisted, of property owners working on the Liberal Party and wherever possible, those parts of Labor’s reconstruction program. their media connections, frustrated these objectives. The public either didn't understand, or “The re-distributive approach to city planning misinterpreted, what the changes were attempting required changes in the system of property rights to do. and ownership, regional and participatory planning required redistricution of power as well as The author also feels that part of the failure is due resources. ” to the fact that the public became attracted to giant office buildings on the city skyline, the freeways as All that was left when Menzies came to power was an extension of the car; the consumer ethic and the the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. In bright package ethos of the supermarket which the opinion of Dr. Sandercock, the Housing saturates the media waves without any Agreement produced more equity for the poor than countervailing influence. any act before or since. “Reformers and large corporations do not Yes, town planning Acts have been introduced compete on equal terms.” into three cities since the war. What did they In an industry like the automobile industry where achieve? That can be gauged from a contemporary both bosses and workers want to sell more cars, we planner’s remark: “A development plan must be obviously still have a long way to go. based on what can or cannot be done in the prevailing economic, social and political situation. While Dr. Sandercock’s summary minimises the Planners themselves, while not often espousing hope for radical solutions, she believes that the left social values, have attempted to regulate thorough can demonstrate that the passive days are over by zoning and subdivision control of the worst abuses putting its energy behind practical reforms to of a free market and its consequences for urban reduce the gap between the rich and the poor - in grow th". playgrounds, better public transport, better libraries, more attractive areas, swimming pools and Dr. Sandercock states: “This failure of political so on. support stems from the politics of a property- owning democracy. The structure of political power “We need to project, more than ever, a worked-out has been and is such to protect property owners and conception of the good society - that is, an pamper rural interests; both lower and upper houses ideological stand - if we are to discuss policies at the direction of both powerful business and intelligently.” property and rural property, city councils with As a student of town planning, I believe the book vested interest in protecting existing property and will be required reading and a standard text privileges in real estate and development, local wherever urban problems are discussed for many councils in private development because of the years to come. interest in ratable value." - Howard Hodgens. The return of the Labor government to political power in 1972, and the creation of the Department of (Howard Hodgens is an architect/town planner Urban and Regional Development (DURD) meant a working in Melbourne.)
Late Capitalism. Ernest Mandel, New Left Books, surprise; and at the same time to establish the 1975. pp. 599. S27.80. inherent limits of this period, which ensured that it would be followed by another wave of increasing social and economic crisis for world capitalism, 'One of the central purposes of this book". Mandel characterised by a far lower rate of overall growth." writes, 'is to provide a Marxist explanation of the To achieve this formidable aim the author criticises, causes of the long post-war wave of rapid growth in refines and accounts for the notion of the the international capitalist economy, which took Kondratieff wave, convincingly providing it for the both non-Marxist and Marxist economists by first time with Marxisi legitimacy. It will be here 38 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 53 argued that unlike his well-known Marxist Economic Economic Theory and The Economics of Neo- Theory (1962) which, though an ambitious attempt Capitalism (they are not mentioned in Marxist to bring Marx’s economic analysis “up to date", Economic Theory.) Here he simply accepted their presented little that was new, Late Capitalism reality and did little to deny the common tenet, held represents a fundamental contribution to the by Marxists and non-Marxists alike, of the development of Marxian economics. exogenous character of their causation. Trotsky Though, as we shall show, Mandel commits his held, for instance, that: usual errors along with some new ones and presents "The periodic recurrence of minor cycles is u s with several amazing (and often conditioned by the internal dynamics of capitalist unacknowledged) about-turns from his previous forces...As regards the large segments of the writings, his fundamental contribution emerges capitalist curve of development...theircharacterand unshaken earning his book a place alongside the duration is determined not by the internal interplay Marxist classics of the early twentieth century. of capitalist forces but by those external conditions through whose channel capitalist development flows."(Quoted by Mandel, pp128-9). Terminology In Late Capitalism. C hapter 4, “ ‘Long Waves' in the History of Capitalism”, Mandel breaks with this After years of peddling the expression “neo tendency. Recognising that external causes become capitalism”, Mandel has rejected it for that of “late operative only through internal causes he explains capitalism”. In 1968, in a pamphlet “The Worker the “long waves" of expansion and contraction in the Under Neo-Capitalism”, he wrote: “The German history of capitalism by means of the laws of motion term , Spatkapitalismus, or late capitalism, seems of capital itself, without resort to exogenous factors interesting, butsimply indicatesatimesequence. So alien to the core of Marx’s analysis of capital. “As in until somebody comes up with a better name - and the case of Kondratieff and Schumpeter, so in that of this is a challenge - we will stick for the time being to Dupriez, what should be the crucial connecting link 'neo-capitalism' ”, Now wefind:“ltssuperiorityover in the whole argument is missing - the rate of the term ‘neo-capitalism’ is obvious - given the profit"(p. 144). The originality of Mandel's thesis ambiguity of the latter, which can be interpreted to becomes clear: imply either a radical continuity or discontinuity with traditional capitalism.” In view of the fact that "The specific contribution of our own analysis to a the author, in the past, has made adequately clear solution of the problem of ‘long waves’ has been to what he meant by the term “neo-capitalism" it is relate the diverse combinations of factors that may difficult to discern what the change in terminology influence the rate of profit (such as a radical fall in accomplishes. the cost of raw materials; a sudden expansion of the world market or of new fields of investment for The same difficulty does not arise, however, with capital; a rapid increase or decline in the rate of Mandel's new rejection of the term "industrial surplus-value; wars and revolutions) to the inner revolution” to describe major developments in logic of the process ot long-term accumulation and productive technique such as the automation of valorization of capital, based upon spurts of radical production processes since the Second World War. renewal or reproduction of fundamental productive The industrial revolution of which Marx and Engels technology. It explains these movements by the spoke saw a qualitative change in every aspect of inner longic of the process of accumulation and self social structure. A change of this degree can hardly expansion of capital itself. Even if we assume that be said to have occurred, for instance, in the post the activity of invention and discovery is continuous, war period. “Accordingly, we here use the terms the long-term development of capital accumulation ‘first, second and third technological revolutions' must still remain discontinuous, for conditions (instead of the widely used formula ‘second and promoting the valorization of capital (and resulting third industrial revolution’). In doing so, we are in a rise or stabilization at a high level of the rate of correcting an error which we have ourselves profit) must in time turn into conditions committed in the past.” determinining a deterioration in this valorization (in Armed with his new terminology, Mandel other words, a fall in the average rate of profit). The proceeds to advance an extremely bold schema of concrete mechanisms of this conversion must be the "long waves” of over- and under-accumulation analysed by reference to the concrete historical in the history of capitalism, from the Napoleonic conditions of the development of the capitalist mode Wars to the present. This involves criticising and of production at the time of these major turning refining Kondratieff’s famous use of this notion. points (that is, the start of the 20s and the 70s of the 19th century; immediately preceeding the First World War; the mid-60s of the 20th century)"(p. 145 - The Kondratieff Wave our emphasis).
The first mention made of Kondratieff waves by Mandel shatters any illusion that the Kondratieff Mandel (or, for that matter, any Marxist since the wave is not in e xtricab ly linked to the "law s of m otion 1920s) was in 1964 in his An Introduction to Marxist of capitalist society." The revolutionary implications BOOK REVIEWS 39 are obvious. To end economic fluctuations, whether “ ... the main source of inflation became the of a long-term or short-term nature, requires the expansion of overdrafts on current accounts abolition of the capital/labor relationship. granted by banks lo the private sector, and covered, Mandel can now conclude: by central banks and governments - in other words, production credit to capitalist companies and “The history of capitalism on the international consumer credit to households...Thus permanent plane thus appears not only as a succession of inflation today is permanent inflation of credit cyclical movements every 7 or 10 years but also as a money, or the form of money creation appropriate to succession of longer periods of approximately 50 late capitalism for the long-term facilitation of years, of which we have experienced four up till extended reproduction (additional means for now...According to this scheme, which covers the realizing surplus-value and accumulating successive phases of accelerated growth until 1823, capital)."(p.417 - author’s emphasis). of decelerated growth 1824-47, of accelerated growth 1848-73, of decelerated growth 1874-93, of But Mandel cannot adequately account for why accelerated growth 1894-1913, of decelerated the rate of inflation did accelerate since he does not growth 1914-1939, of accelerated growth 1940-45 incorporate the distinction between profitable and and 1948-66, we should today nave entered into me non-profitable production into his analysis. He second phase of the ‘long wave' which began with claims that State expenditures (such as arms the Second World War, characterized by production) can “speed up rather than slow down decelerated capital accumulation” (pp.120,122). the accumulation of capitar’(p.556). In fact, the reverse is the case. To say that arms production, for The author thus substantiates the claims of his example, leads to “increased accumulation of earlier writings and lays the basis for achieving the' capital' (pp.301,306) is true only if we are speaking central purpose of Late Capitalism (undialectically) of individual, rather than total social capital. The individual capitalist producing for Eclecticism the arms sector quite clearly receives the general rate of profit and her/his workers perform unpaid labor-tim e but this constitutes sim ply a transferral o f Conscious of the advances made in Late existing surplus value. This is because her/his Capitalism, it is disappointing, to say the least, to production costs and profits, though paid by the find that Mandel still subscribes to his eclectic government, are paid out of private contributions to explanation of the crisis-cycle, first put forward in the government by way of taxes or loans - the latter the disastrous chapter 11 ‘Periodic Crises’ of Marxist merely implying future taxation. Looked upon from Econom ic Theory. To simply claim that crises "area the standpointof mass economic phenomena, of the combination of all the contradictions of the social econom y as a whole, and not from that of the capitalist mode of production” (p.438) is to abdicate individual arms producer, the arms economy ones scientific responsibility. For instance, subtracts from the available surplus-value destined although the crisis outwardly manifests itself as an to be turned into additional, surplus-value- over-production of commodities, in essence this producing capital. designates no more than an over-production of Although State expenditures can temporarily capital which can not be profitably employed. ensure a greater degree of employment of laborand Mandel may well quote Hegel to the effect that “the resources, they can do so only by encroaching on truth is the whole"(p.21) but he seems to forget, with accumulation in the private sector. However, the regard to his explanation of the industrial cycle, that expense of increasing government-induced the whole is more than the sum of the parts. production can, to a limited extent, be extracted Eclecticism is no substitute for dialectics. from the mass of the population by way o f increasing inflation. It is this, along with the factors enumerated Inflation by Mandel (pp.456-7), that account for the acceleration of the rate of inflation in the post-war Though Mandel remains consistent with his period. Marxist Economic Theory in this respect, his Yet if Late Capitalism has its shortcomings, it explanation of the origin and nature of retreats neither into exegesis nor apologetics. It contemporary permanent inflation in Late presents a concrete analysis, utilizing the analytical Capitalism represents a new shift For years the tools discovered by Marx, of the concrete history of author churned out the thesis that military outlays 20th century capitalism. For this reason alone the constituted the principal source of permanent book is worth buying, despite its outrageous price inflation. Now. ironically, he chides those who (SA27.80) and lack of an index. We can only look stubbornly cling to the notion"(p.417). He forward to Mandel’s new book mentioned on page effectively shows that in the post war period: 526.
- D avid Wasley.