DOCSLIB.ORG

Global Capitalism and American Empire

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Global Capitalism and American Empire GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN EMPIRE LEO PANITCH SAM GINDIN This is the first draft for the lead essay in The New Imperial Challenge: The Socialist Register 2004, L. Panitch and C.Leys eds, forthcoming October 2003. ‘American imperialism… has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic.’ Harold Innis, 19481 1. The American empire is no longer the world and doing so in the American concealed. In March 1999 the cover of the interest.’2 Of course, even before it was Sunday New York Times Magazine taken up by the American newspaper of displayed a giant clenched fist painted in record, the American state’s own the stars and stripes of the US flag above geopolitical strategists had already taken the words: ‘What The World Needs Now: this tack. Among those closest to the For globalization to work, America can’t Democratic Party wing of the state under be afraid to act like the almighty the Clinton Presidency, Zbigniev superpower that it is’. Thus was featured Brzezinski did not mince any words in his Thomas Friedman’s ‘Manifesto for a Fast 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: World’, which urged the United States to American Primacy and Its Geostrategic embrace its role as enforcer of the Imperatives, in asserting that ‘the three capitalist global order: ‘…the hidden great imperatives of geo-political strategy hand of the market will never work are to prevent collusion and maintain without a hidden fist…. The hidden fist security dependence amongst the vassals, that keeps the world safe for Silicon to keep tributaries pliant, and to keep the Valley’s technologies is called the United barbarians from coming together.’3 In the States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine same year, the Republican wing’s Core.’ Four years later, in January 2003, intellectuals, who eventually would write when there was no longer any point in the Bush White House’s National pretending the fist was hidden, the words Security Strategy, founded The Project ‘The American Empire: Get Used It ’ for a New American Century with the took up the whole cover of the Magazine goal of making imperial statecraft the to feature an essay by Michael Ignatieff: explicit guiding principle of American ‘…[W]hat word but ‘empire describes the policy.4 awesome thing that America is 2. Most of what passes for serious becoming? …Being an imperial power… analysis in justifying the use of the term means enforcing such order as there is in ‘American empire’ is what might be GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN EMPIRE.. 1 called theory by analogy, implicitly or imperialism was the extent to which the explicitly harkening back to imperial words that opened Kautsky’s infamous Rome.5 But analogy, of course, does not essay in 1914 — the one that so attracted constitute theory. The neglect of any Lenin’s ire - increasingly rang true: ‘First serious political economy or pattern of of all, we need to be clear what we historical determination that would understand from the term imperialism. explain the emergence and reproduction This word is used in every which way, of today’s American empire, and the but the more we discuss and speak about absence of the dimensions of structural it the more communication and oppression and exploitation pertaining to understanding becomes weakened.’8 it, serve as poignant reminders of why it 3. The confusion was apparent in debates was Marxism that made the running in in the early 1970s — the last time the theorizing imperialism for most of the concept had much currency on the left - 20th century. Saying this, however, over the location of contemporary immediately raises anew the question a capitalism’s contradictions. There were leading Indian Marxist posed to the left a those who focused almost exclusively on decade ago. Prabhat Patnaik’s 1990 essay the ‘third world’, and made its resistance ‘Whatever Happened to Imperialism?’ to imperialism bear all the weight as the lamented that ‘Marxists look bemused source of transformation.9 Others when the term is mentioned’ and that ‘the emphasized increasing contradictions topic has virtually disappeared from the within the developed capitalist world, pages of Marxist journals.’ The costs of fostering the impression that American this were severe for the left. The concept ‘hegemony’ was in decline. This became of imperialism has always been especially the prevalent view, and the notion that important for the left as much for its ‘the erosion of American economic, emotive and mobilizing qualities as for its political, and military power is analytic ones. Indeed, in Patnaik’s view, unmistakable’ grew into a commonplace the silence over imperialism had little to by the mid-1980s.10 Even so, it was do with the analysis itself; rather than ‘a notable that very few went back to the old theoretically self-conscious silence’, it Marxist theory of inter-imperial rivalry in was the ‘very fact that imperialism has this context, since despite increased become so adept at “managing” potential economic competition from Japan and challenges to its hegemony [that] made us Germany, it was recognized that ‘things indifferent to its ubiquitous presence.’6 are a long way from a military trial of Yet the left’s silence on imperialism did strength’, as Glyn and Sutcliffe put it. All also reflect severe analytic problems in it was ‘safe to predict’ was that without a the old Marxist theory of imperialism. As hegemonic power ‘the world economy Giovanni Arrighi had argued in 1978: will continue without a clear leader....’11 ‘[B]y the end of the 60s, what had once Meanwhile, the widespread notion that been the pride of Marxism — the theory the power of the nation state had withered of imperialism — had become a tower of away in the era of globalization added to Babel, in which not even Marxists knew the confusion. Against this, there were any longer how to find their way.’7 What very few who had the temerity by the in good part lay behind the left’s mid-1990s to say, as did Peter Gowan in disenchantment with the concept of concluding his analysis of the West’s GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN EMPIRE.. 2 imposition of neoliberal shock therapy in inter-imperial rivalry by understanding Eastern Europe: ‘…this does not so much how it came to pass that the American suggest a new era on the globe as empire incorporated its capitalist rivals, something rather old—fashioned which, and how this was related to the in the days of Communism, used to be establishment of a truly global capitalism. called imperialism.’12 Central to this project must be the 4. There was indeed no little irony in the questions of wherein the plausibility of fact that so many on the left continued to the American state’s insistence that it was turn away from what they thought was an not imperialistic historically derived, and old-fashioned notion, just while the how this was put into practice and ground was being laid for its current institutionalized. And no less central, in renewed fashionability in the New York the current conjuncture, must be the Times. At the end of the 1980s, Susan questions of under what conditions the Strange, in a little-noticed academic American state’s insistence that it is not essay, stood almost alone in pointing imperialistic become implausible, and ‘Towards a Theory of Transnational indeed jettisoned, and what implications Empire’ with Washington D.C. at its this has for its no longer being attractive. centre. Yet the understanding of 5. There is a structural logic to capitalism ‘American structural power’ she called that tends to its globalization. This was for was not only cast in non-Marxist famously captured in Marx’s description analytic terms but was explicitly oriented in the Communist Manifesto of a future to breaking ‘with the presumption of most that stunningly matches our present: ‘The writers on imperialism that imperialism is need of a constantly expanding market for undesirable’, and to advancing the goal of its products chases the bourgeoisie over making the America state live up to its the whole surface of the globe. It must responsibilities as a global empire.13 To nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, be sure, soon after the turn of the century, establish connections everywhere. it with the American state’s own avowal of creates a world after its own image.’ But its imperial role, the term was back on affirming Marx’s prescience in this every leftist’s lips. The popularity of respect runs the risk of treating what we Hardt and Negri’s tome, Empire, reflected now call globalization and its specific the new conjuncture. Their post- forms as inevitable and irreversible. It modernist Marxist case that historical must be remembered that Marx’s words materialism needed to be revived on the also seemed to apply at the end of the 19th basis of an entirely different theory of century, when, as Karl Polanyi noted, imperialism than the old one was by no ‘[o]nly a madman would have doubted means uninsightful, but their bizarre that the international economic system insistence that ‘the United States does was the axis of the material existence of not, and indeed no nation state can today, the human race’.15 Yet, as Polanyi was form the center of an imperialist project’ concerned to explain, far from continuing soon turned out to itself be out sync with uninterrupted, there were already the times.14 For what is above all needed indications that the existing system of now is a new historical materialist global accumulation was in the early theorization of imperialism that precisely stages of its dissolution, and soon allows us to transcend the old theory of thereafter it in fact collapsed by way of GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN EMPIRE.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Economic Development: a Case for Visionary Leadership by Paul Weisenfeld
    Economic Development: A Case for Visionary Leadership by Paul Weisenfeld Paul Weisenfeld is mission director at the U.S. Agency for International Development in Zimbabwe. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of USAID. ince 9/11/01, efforts to identify the causes of persistent poverty and despair in the developing world have expanded, largely focused on Scultural factors, especially in Middle Eastern cultures. There is no question that cultural attitudes and practices have an impact on economic development. Culture, however, does not evolve in isolation. It is only one of many factors that impede economic growth. Geography, environment, and history influence the evolution of culture and have served as significant obstacles to growth in low-income countries. The failure to recognize these other factors leads us to underestimate the enormity of the challenges facing poor countries and, consequently, to devise prescriptions for overcoming poverty that are unrealistic and unlikely to succeed. Prior to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, life for most Europeans and Americans who were not born into the landed elite was similar to that of the poor in the developing world today: nasty, brutish, and short. This was before the unprecedented creation of wealth brought about by democratic capitalism. In fact, Europe was the technological, cultural, and economic backwater of Eurasia for most of history, importing virtually all of its ideas and technologies from the Middle East and Asia. Europe’s distinctive geography and history allowed for an era of increasing innovation between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, creating the conditions that ultimately transformed European culture and its American spin-off into the vibrant cultural and economic powerhouses of today.
    [Show full text]
  • Global Issues
    Global Issues Bringing Class Back In* Sam Gindin, Adjunct Professor, York University, Toronto, Canada Over the past three decades a rather astonishing change occurred in the trajectory of capitalist societies. Working class achievements that were formerly seen as examples of capitalism’s success – rising standards of living, growing economic security – were suddenly redefined as ‘problems’. Concessions and permanent insecurity became the new norm, rising inequality the new inevitability. The catch-all term to describe this was ‘neoliberalism’ and Adolph Reed, a prominent US political scientist, nicely summarized its essence as ‘capitalism without a working class opposition.’1 This succinctly highlights the kind of society we get when labour is weak. But more important, it pushes us to confront the limited resistance of labour to that rightward shift since the end of the 1970s. This period did of course witness examples of courageous struggles and moments that brought glimpses of labour’s potentials. In fact, the response of Canadian labour was generally more impressive than elsewhere. Yet given the extent of the assault on working people, labour’s response was too sporadic, too timid, and far too narrow in scope. It’s this failure that I want to discuss – not in any spirit of giving up on unions, but as part of demanding more from this crucial institution. The last time there was as profound an economic breakdown as the recent financial crisis was in the 1930s. The contrast between the labour movement’s current reaction and the earlier one couldn’t be starker. Then, with the predominantly craft-based unions reeling and trapped in exclusive, increasingly bureaucratized structures, a rebellion within the labour movement – with communists playing a prominent role – gave birth to industrial unionism, an inclusive unionism committed to organizing across skills, race and gender.
    [Show full text]
  • Acting Locally in a Flat World: Global Citizenship and the Democratic Practice of Service-Learning Richard M
    © Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, Volume 13, Number 2, p. 89, (2009) Acting Locally in a Flat World: Global Citizenship and the Democratic Practice of Service-Learning Richard M. Battistoni, Nicholas V. Longo, Stephanie Raill Jayanandhan Abstract This article suggests ways to frame the democratic practice of service-learning in the context of a global society, and reports on emerging efforts at three universities to act globally through local community engagement. The article concludes with prac- tical lessons for promoting global citizenship through service- learning in higher education. Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neigh- borly community. —John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems The world is being flattened. I didn’t start it and you can’t stop it, except at a great cost to human development and your own future. —Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat Introduction uilding on the ideas of John Dewey, service-learning has always sought to embed educational experiences within local contexts, relationships, and community institutions. BBut this education is taking place in an increasingly interconnected, global world, which has an impact on every aspect of community life. The “flattened world,” as Thomas Friedman has popularly termed the rise of globalization, has important implications for educators who aim to implement Dewey’s vision of building demo- cratic, neighborly communities. To continue to be relevant, service-learning needs to respond to the new realities of student and community life in
    [Show full text]
  • In a Flatter World Characterized by Rugged and Diverse Terrain, The
    JULY 2012 THE GLOBAL NETWORK FOR ADVANCED MANAGEMENT Motivation: In a flatter world characterized by rugged and diverse terrain, the Global Network for Advanced Management is an innovative approach to enable those involved – faculty at business schools around the world, enterprises in all sectors, and students at various stages of professional development – to connect and address the leadership challenges facing business and society. Enterprises in all sectors need leaders who understand how markets and organizations work in increasingly diverse and complex contexts. Leadership teams must understand and contribute to the big issues facing societies around the world as well as be able to work effectively in and across regions and sectors, to adapt to the different roles of governments in economies, to master increasingly complicated financial arrangements, and to draw upon ever-closer connections in the modern world. Other important considerations for leaders include an appreciation of a broad range of diversity issues, e.g., the highly variable roles of women in business, and divergent approaches to the environment and education. Leaders also must attend to fundamental questions about enterprise objectives and effective means of aligning incentives and motivating sustained effort in these extraordinarily challenging and exciting times. The development of the Global Network for Advanced Management is a vital response to this diverse landscape as well as to limitations in the ways that business schools and other academic institutions are organized. As Thomas Friedman explained in compelling fashion,1 the world has flattened over the last three decades, as over three billion people have joined the world’s market- oriented economy and businesses have become more global, in large part due to technological advances.
    [Show full text]
  • The World Is Flat: a Brief History of the Twenty First Century
    THE WORLD IS FLAT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY By Thomas L. Friedman. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. 488pp Thomas Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work at the New York Times, where he writes a regular syndicated column. He is also the author of numerous books, including the popular 1999 book on globalization, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree.” Friedman’s premise is that computing and telecommunications technologies have done more than speed up the world—they have transformed the nature of commerce and society. This transformation has huge implications for business, geopolitics, and individual survival in a world that now operates by a new set of rules. I no longer compete only with those in my industry who are located nearby. A large company can lose out to a small company a world away. An individual in Indiana can lose a job to an individual in India or South Africa. No government, business, or individual is immune to these forces, so we had better understand them. Numerous examples of companies operating around the world were sited. In one section he recounts an order placed for a Dell laptop computer. Each part of the computer is listed below and it’s country of origin: Dell Inspiron 600m Notebook: Part/Function Mfg/Assembly Online order to Penang Malaysia Assembly Penang Malaysia Intel processor Philippines. Costa Rica, Malaysia or China Memory Korea (Samsung) Taiwan (Nanya) Germany (Infineon) Japan (Elpida) Graphics Card China (MSI or Foxconn) Cooling Fan Taiwan (CCI or Auras) Motherboard
    [Show full text]
  • “Anti- Globalization” Movement Jeff Rey M
    Framing Collective Action Against Neoliberalism: The Case of the “Anti- Globalization” Movement Jeff rey M. Ayres INTRODUCTION he rise of the so-called “anti-globalization movement” represents one of Tthe most signifi cant illustrations of social confl ict and contentious political behavior of the past several decades. Th e numerous boisterous and well-attended protest events against neoliberal globalization at the turn of the century, more- over, seemed to provide evidence of the rise of an incipient transnational move- ment, as from Seattle, to Chiang Mai, to Prague, to Quebec City and fi nally Genoa, domestic and internationally-represented protests developed solidarities, stirred public debate and attracted larger crowds committed to challenging neo- liberal policies and institutions. Th e transnational character of this movement attracted particular attention, and its emergence coincided with a remarkable and increasingly well-documented upsurge in transnational civic activity around a host of global issues (Smith, Pagnucco and Chatfi eld 1997, Della Porta, Kriesi and Rucht 1999; Tarrow 2001; Khagram, Riker and Sikkink 2002; Smith and Johnston 2002), while sparking a mini-publishing industry of “how-to” manuals for budding street activists (Danaher and Burbach 2000; Welton and Wolf 2001; Prokosch and Raymond 2002). One means of understanding the recent trajectory of this protest movement is to appreciate that its dynamics have been shaped by an underlying and quite ferocious contest over people’s interpretations and understandings of the sup- abstract posed benefi ts of neoliberal economic policies. How people interpret and frame Th e rise of the protest movement against fi cult time generating agreed upon strategic neoliberal globalization represents one of the responses to neoliberal policies.
    [Show full text]
  • The World Is Flat by Thomas L
    The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman - MonkeyNotes by PinkMonkey.com For the complete study guide: http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/ PinkMonkey® Literature Notes on . http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/ Sample MonkeyNotes Note: this sample contains only excerpts and does not represent the full contents of the booknote. This will give you an idea of the format and content. The World Is Flat A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman 2005 MonkeyNotes Study Guide by Laurie Lahey http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/ Reprinted with permission from TheBestNotes.com Copyright © 2007, All Rights Reserved Distribution without the written consent of TheBestNotes.com is strictly prohibited. 1 PinkMonkey.com/TheBestNotes.com. Copyright © 2007, All Rights Reserved. No further distribution without written consent. http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/ The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman - MonkeyNotes by PinkMonkey.com For the complete study guide: http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/ KEY FIGURES Nandan Nilekani – CEO of Infosys Technologies Limited, “one of the jewels of the Indian information technology world.” Friedman describes Nilekani as “one of the most thoughtful and respected captains of Indian industry.” Ann – Friedman’s wife. Ann is a first-grade teacher and Friedman’s confidant throughout the text. Orly and Natalie – Friedman’s daughters, whom he references throughout the text. David Ricardo – is the Ricardo to whom Friedman refers in the subtitle of Chapter 5, “Is Ricardo Still Right?.” Ricardo (1772-1823) “was an English economist who developed the free-trade theory of comparative advantage, which stipulates that if each nation specializes in the production of goods in which it has a comparative cost advantage and then trades with other nations for the goods in which they specialize, there will be an overall gain in trade, and overall income levels should rise in each trading country.” G.
    [Show full text]
  • Mariel John 21F.098
    Mariel John 21F.098 - Paper Topic #1 Globalization The future effects of globalization are widely debated. Will globalization end economic, political and cultural differences throughout the world? Or will it only serve to widen and exacerbate these differences? Or are both too hasty a conclusion? I believe that globalization does have the potential to end longstanding national differences, but I believe it is happening at a slower pace than it may appear on the surface. I also believe that for globalization to be ultimately successful in this endeavor, there are many challenges that must be overcome. By examining both sides of this issue, I will illustrate what globalization has seemed to accomplish and what problems are being faced. In his book “The World Is Flat”, Thomas Friedman paints a very rosy picture of the effects and extent of globalization in the world. While visiting Bangalore, India, he sees Indians taking on jobs that would traditionally have been held by people in western nations. He notes that Bangalore looks and feels like a western city and is a Silicon Valley within India. Due to advances in technology and communications, Friedman asserts that anything that can be done on a computer or over the phone, can be done just as well from Bangalore as it can from somewhere in America. He notes that the economic changes that had taken place in that Indian city were not the only alterations being made. As part of their efforts to succeed in the global market place, many Indians took on American sounding nicknames and many took lessons to learn to neutralize their Indian accent.
    [Show full text]
  • GLOBALIZATION AS Mcworld
    5 GLOBALIZATION AS McWORLD Who invented globalization? The way you answer this question de- pends on how you think about globalization. If you think of globaliza- tion literally you might answer ‘‘Christopher Columbus’’ or someone else from the great era of (European) discovery. If you want to know who ‘‘invented’’ the world as a single geographic unit, all connected to the European center, there are several names you might give, but Co- lumbus is as good as any of them. If you think of globalization as the idea of an economic process that unites and transforms the world, creating a single global system, the inventors’ names are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They said it all in The Communist Manifesto, first published in that great year of revolu- tions, 1848. The bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels wrote, has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self- sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interde- 121 ................. 11092$ $CH5 11-02-04 13:02:33 PS PAGE 121 GLOBALONEY pendence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual produc- tion. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.1 Marx and Engels were writing about capitalism, of course, but they were really describing globalization in this passage.
    [Show full text]
  • Friedman's Follies: Insights on the Globalization/Regionalization Debate
    Friedman’s Follies: Insights on the Globalization/Regionalization Debate Alan Rugman and Chang H. Oh Abstract In this paper we deconstruct the popular book by Thomas Friedman which argues that the world is integrated through the advent of a new form of globalization based on the Internet. We use the logic of international business strategy to demonstrate that Friedman’s examples of world- wide integration are special cases which ignore the empirical realities of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate that the world’s largest MNEs do not operate globally, but sell and produce the vast majority of their output within their home region of the triad. We develop a new analytical framework to explain the limited nature of Friedman’s thinking, and we contrast this with the more robust frameworks available in international business. The latter frameworks, which take into account country level and regional level barriers to inte- gration, are better at explaining the activities of MNEs. We conclude that, from the viewpoint of international business strategy, the prescriptive thinking from Friedman is misleading if it is be- lieved that a global strategy is feasible. Instead, MNEs need to develop strategies to accommodate the realities of intra-regional integration and to overcome the liabilities of inter-regional expansion across the triad. KEYWORDS: globalization, regionalization, international business strategy, multinational enter- prises Rugman and Oh: Friedman's Follies Introduction A large academic literature in the international business field suggests that multinational enterprises (MNEs) are the key drivers of globalization (Rugman 1981, 2000; Dunning 1993, 2001). Yet many popular books on globalization fail to recognize the nature, extent and business reality of MNEs as leaders of globalization.
    [Show full text]
  • Globalization and the Flattening of the World: a Book Review of “The World Is Flat”
    The Kabod Volume 5 Issue 1 Fall 2018 Article 3 September 2018 Globalization and the Flattening of the World: A Book Review of “The World is Flat” Shannon L. Wade Liberty University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/kabod Part of the Business Commons Recommended Citations MLA: Wade, Shannon L. "Globalization and the Flattening of the World: A Book Review of “The World is Flat”," The Kabod 5. 1 (2018) Article 3. Liberty University Digital Commons. Web. [xx Month xxxx]. APA: Wade, Shannon L. (2018) "Globalization and the Flattening of the World: A Book Review of “The World is Flat”" The Kabod 5( 1 (2018)), Article 3. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/kabod/vol5/ iss1/3 Turabian: Wade, Shannon L. "Globalization and the Flattening of the World: A Book Review of “The World is Flat”" The Kabod 5 , no. 1 2018 (2018) Accessed [Month x, xxxx]. Liberty University Digital Commons. This Individual Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Crossing. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Kabod by an authorized editor of Scholars Crossing. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Wade: Globalization and the Flattening of the World: A Book Review of “ Running Head: A BOOK REVIEW: THE WORLD IS FLAT 1 Globalization and the Flattening of the World: A Book Review of “The World is Flat” Shannon L. Wade Liberty University Published by Scholars Crossing, 2018 1 The Kabod, Vol. 5, Iss. 1 [2018], Art. 3 A BOOK REVIEW: THE WORLD IS FLAT 2 There is no doubt the world is changing.
    [Show full text]
  • Capitalist Crises and the Crisis This Time
    CAPITALIST CRISES AND THE CRISIS THIS TIME LEO PANITCH AND SAM GINDIN I xactly a hundred and fifty years before the current crisis began in August E2007, the collapse of the Ohio Life Insurance Company in New York triggered what became known as ‘the great crisis of 1857-8’. As it quickly spread to Europe’s main financial centres, Karl Marx ‘was delighted and thrilled by the prospects for another revolutionary upsurge on the continent’. As Michael Kratke notes, ‘the crisis started exactly as Marx had predicted already in 1850 – with a financial crisis in New York’ and the crisis itself led Marx to extend ‘the scope and scale of his study’ for the Grundrisse notebooks he was working on, so as to take account of ‘the first world economic crisis, affecting all regions of the world’. In their correspondence, Marx and Engels agreed that ‘the crisis was larger and much more severe than any crisis before’, viewing the financial crisis as ‘only the foreplay to the real crisis, the industrial crisis that would affect the very basis of British prosperity and supremacy’.1 In October 1857, Engels wrote to Marx: ‘The American crash is superb and will last for a long time... Now we have a chance’. And two weeks later: ‘…in 1848 we were saying: now our moment is coming, and in a certain sense it was, but this time it is coming completely and it is a case of life or death’.2 As the crisis abated and began to fade away in mid-1858, Marx tried to understand why it had not turned out as expected.
    [Show full text]