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Book Review: Late Capitalism

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Book Review: Late Capitalism 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.
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