CPE Conference 2017 14/09/2017 Outline Variegated Capitalism in the Shadow of • Capitalism, what capitalism? • World system theory Neoliberalism • Varieties of capitalism • Marx on the CMP • Variegated capitalism • VoC versus VarCap • VarCap in the shadow of neoliberalism Bob Jessop • (In)compossibility? Lancaster University • Conclusions Capitalism, what capitalism? Wallerstein on Modern World System • All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically • Single logic of capital based on concentrated defy definition; only something which has no economic and military competition history can be defined (Nietzsche, GM, 1994: 53). among capitalist powers to capture • Apocryphal question to Marx: why doesn’t Capital define surplus, however generated • Exploitation occurs at the world capitalism? Apocryphal answer: only the whole book can provide a definition (NB: he wrote on CMP, not capitalism) scale – based on division of world into centre, semi-periphery • Weber sees modern capitalist spirit as based on a formally and periphery rational instrumental orientation to gain for sake of gain, • Mobility in world system is shaped mediated via commodity, money, rational enterprise, etc. by competitive logic of system plus • Schumpeter sees capitalism as a profit-oriented, market- players’ strategies mediated, competitive system prone to cycles and long waves and characterized by creative destruction A Single Capitalist System Wallerstein on World Systems • WS has a territorial division of Wallerstein, The Modern labour in which areas and World System (3 vols) sectors exchange goods and a world system is a social services system, with boundaries, • Crucial system since 16C is a structures, member groups, capitalist world system with rules of legitimation, and surplus extraction based on coherence trade (unequal exchange) Wallerstein proposes • Peripheral countries are not • World system is a single exploited by single countries capitalist system, with but by whole profit-oriented • three structural parts, and capitalist system • is a dynamic, changing system 1
CPE Conference 2017 14/09/2017 Three Structural Parts • A core with strong state; it competes economically and militarily, extracts surplus, reducing domestic tensions • A developed semi-periphery of core regions in decline and/or peripheries in ascent • Periphery exploited via raw materials and cheap labour, leading to local political and ethnic conflicts • These positions always exist but occupants can change Weber versus VoC Literature CAPITALISM • Weber distinguishes six types of capitalism Traditional Rational Political • Recent studies of varieties of capitalism (see below) commercial Capitalism Capitalism capitalism study variation in the sub-types of ‘rational capitalism’: • trade in free markets and capitalist production Mode #1 Mode #2 Mode #3 Mode #4 Mode #5 Mode #6 • capitalist speculation and finance • So these studies ignore Weber’s three sub-types of Trade in Capitalist Predatory Profit on Profit from Traditional free speculation political market from ‘unusual’ types of trade political capitalism + traditional commercial capitalism markets & and finance profits force and deals with or money capitalist domination political deals • former have key role in global economy production authority • commercial capitalism is also significant • Yet world market involves all six forms of capitalism Weber’s Typology of Capitalism (Based on Swedberg 1998) Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) Some Limits to VoC Analysis - I • Pluralistic logic based on two or • Historical institutionalism in VOC helps distinguish stages of more varieties of capitalism, each capitalism and also facilitates comparative research with its own dynamic • Analysis of institutional complementarities and micro- • Path-dependent ensembles of foundations helps explain relative stability of some VoCs institutional complementarities • Institutional analyses ignore capitalism’s generic features that efficiently solve critical and the abstract potential for crisis in its incompressible coordination problems of contradictions. Limits capacity to explain impermanence of capitalist production any spatio-temporal fix, whether linked to VoC or not • Global dynamic reflects • Mid-range analyses also neglect self-organizing dynamic of institutional competition plus profit-oriented, market-mediated capitalism and its profit-oriented, market-mediated ecological dominance, promoting completion of world competition among VoC market and helping to realize all of its contradictions 2
CPE Conference 2017 14/09/2017 Some Limits to VoC Analysis - III Some Limits to VoC Analysis - II • VoC approach evolved during “great moderation” (benign • As a crisis surfacing in USA evolved (via endogenous causation conditions in most advanced capitalist economies): so crisis, and contagion), we can ask if this is less a crisis of one variety stagnation, inflation were off VoC research horizon of capitalism than one based in, or due to, its commonalities ? • But great moderation can be seen as first stage in Minsky • Perhaps Marx could be introduced here: super-cycle (financial tranquillity, fragility, vulnerability), The most developed mode of existence of the integration of abstract with so-called “global financial crisis” as its culmination labour with the value form is the world market, where production is posited as a totality together with all its moments, but within which, • VoC work views private and public banks chiefly as at the same time, all contradictions come into play ( Grundrisse : 227) intermediaries in allocating capital to profitable non- • Does this mean convergence around a common mode, type, financial activities, sees financial innovation in this light or variety of capitalism? Or does growing integration of world • Hence ill-equipped to study autonomization of financial market intensify contradictions and crisis-tendencies specific capital and its diverse effects on firms’ performance to each variety in overall logic of capital as a social relation ? A Marxist View of “Capitalism” WS Approaches to Capitalism • Wealth appears as immense accumulation of commodities • AG Frank and Wallerstein study rise of modern • Commodity form generalized to labour-power (which is a world system based on expansion of traditional fictitious commodity but treated as if it were a commodity) commercial/mercantile capitalism from Europe • Duality of labour-power as concrete labour and labour time • Arrighi studies successive hegemonies based on • A political economy of time (note especially the constant territorial expansion (political capitalism) or capital rebasing of abstract time treadmill effects) flows (commercial/rational capitalism) and is • Key role of money as social relation in mediating profit- aware of financialization and its crisis-tendencies oriented, market-mediated accumulation process • All three highlight world system logic but Arrighi • Essential role of competition in dynamic of capitalism views this logic more dialectically and is more • Market mechanism cannot secure all conditions of capitalist concerned with multiple aspects of hegemony reproduction (even ignoring labour process) Some Foundational Contradictions Some Foundational Contradictions - II Basic Form Value Aspect Material Aspect Value Aspect Material Aspect Commodity Exchange-value Use-value a) Abstract value in motion as a) stock of specific assets to be necessary moment in the self- valorized in specific time and place Productive Labour-power a) abstract labour as substitutable a) generic and concrete skills, expansion of capital under specific conditions Capital factor of production different forms of knowledge b) source of profits of enterprise b) concrete entrepreneurial and b) sole source of surplus value b) source of craft pride managerial skills a) monetary cost of production a) source of effective demand a) Transformed natural a) Freely available and uncultivated Wage b) means of securing supply of b) means to satisfy wants in a Land resources resources useful labour for given time cash-based society b) Alienated and alienable b) 'Free gift of nature' that is a) interest bearing capital, a) measure of value, store of property, source of rents [currently] unalienable private credit value, means of exchange Money Knowledge a) Intellectual Property a) Intellectual Commons b) international currency b) national money, legal tender b) Monetized Risk b) Uncertainty c) ultimate expression of capital in c) general form of power in the general wider society State Ideal Collective Capitalist Factor of Social Cohesion Pure value in motion Hedging Derivatives State Bond Interest-bearing (fictitious) Means of reproducing state and its Arbitrage capital activities 3
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