Capitalism and Its Uncertain Future

Kristin Plys, Charles Lemert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000429572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

For decades, Charles Lemert has been the leading voice in social theory. In Capitalism and its Uncertain Future he teams up with one of the most creative emerging social theorists, Kristin Plys, to examine how social theory imagines capitalism. This engaging and innovative book provides new perspectives on well known theorists from Adam Smith, and Frantz Fanon, to Gilles Deleuze, while also introducing readers to lesser known theorists such as Lucia Sanchez Saornil, Mohammad Ali El Hammi, and many more. The book examines theories of capitalism from four perspectives: macro-historical theories of the origins of capitalism; postcolonial theories of capitalism that situate capitalism as seen from the Global South; theories of capitalism from the perspective of labor; and prospective theories of capitalism's uncertain future. This provocative and ambitious, yet accessible, perspective on theories of capitalism will be of interest to anyone who wants to explore where we've been and where we're headed.

Part I The Confusion of Capitalist Structures

1 Foundations of a Critique of Capitalist Theories

Karl Marx, Capital I (1867)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003198291-2

Admittedly, it is a bit misleading to introduce this book by way of Marx, if only because it is not about highlighting the unique contributions of Karl Marx, nor is it primarily about furthering Marxist thought. Instead, it’s a continuation of the broader intellectual project initiated by political economists during the 18th century to describe the capitalist world-system, critique it, and speculate about its future trajectory. But Marx’s hypothesis of the long-run historical trajectory of the capitalist world economy still resonates today, and whether one supports or critiques his theses, his oeuvre remains the key texts with which theorists of capitalism engage. While Marx clearly stands out as among the first in this tradition, equally important are the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who were more critical of the capitalist world-system than they are typically given credit. This legacy of political economy to describe and critique capitalism continues to the present, and given the many challenges—war, fascism, economic decline, mass migration, climate change, social movements, and so on—facing the capitalist world-system in the current conjuncture, accurate description is more important than ever.

When Marx set out to describe and critique the global system of political economy that we would eventually term capitalism, he was not doing so in a vacuum. Marx’s project of political economy was both a critique and an extension of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).¹ Smith’s work was arguably the first model of capitalist economic development in the modern Western tradition of political economy. Over the course of the five volumes, Adam Smith endeavors to explain why some nations are poor while others thrive. He begins his analysis with an understanding of labor productivity and how the product of labor is distributed within and among societies.² Then, he examines how the accumulation of capital through the labor process fosters an interstate system, whereby “opulent cities” serve as a market not only for local goods and local consumption but for goods from elsewhere and consumption abroad.³ He shows how this process takes form in many places and in previous historical periods, and then shows how different systems of political economy differentially enrich both states and individuals.⁴ Finally, he proposes some policy implications for his model, detailing measures states can take in order to increase the wealth of the nation.⁵

Taking up similar concerns in Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817),⁶ David Ricardo challenges Adam Smith’s conceptualization of rents, claiming that without a clearer understanding of rent one cannot fully understand the way in which profits and wages contribute to increasing wealth. Rent, claims Ricardo, is the portion paid to the landlord for use of the land.⁷ Profit, however, is the value of an item less wages and rents.⁸ While Ricardo claims that Smith conflates rent and profit, Ricardo seeks to show that both are governed by different logics. The amount of land at a country’s disposal affects the cost of rent. This, along with the quality of land, has great implications for the “progress” of that society.⁹ These works—Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817)—were important forbearers of Karl Marx, not simply as fodder for critique as is commonly thought, but also for their similarities to Marx’s description of the capitalist world-system in Capital (1867).¹⁰

Building on Adam Smith’s critiques of the labor process and David Ricardo’s arguments on the source of profit in the capitalist economy, Marx’s concept of capitalist development was first presented in The German Ideology (1846).¹¹ In it, Marx explains how the hierarchy of nation-states was created within the capitalist mode of production. This description of world-historical capitalism is further fleshed out in Marx’s subsequent work and culminates in Capital (1867), the defining work of Marxist political economy in which Marx elegantly explains where value is derived, thereby delineating the politico-economic laws of the capitalist system, by beginning and ending with the definition of value, akin to a mathematical proof. Marx’s systematic analytical approach, perhaps even more so than his politics, is what makes Marx so compelling and what explains his continued resonance.

In Capital (1867), Marx describes the nature of the economic system we would eventually term “capitalism” in a way that is worth quoting in detail:

As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from the top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by a few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodological cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as the means of production combined, socialised labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. The integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.¹²

Capitalism, Marx contends, began by many expropriations. The transformation of laborers into proletarians—i.e. people who meet their basic needs by selling their labor power; and the transformation of the land into means of production, to name a few. These expropriations allow for the further intensification and spread of capitalism as a system, and also centralizes capital into the hands of a few of those capitalists who are best situated to develop businesses of a larger and larger scale, employing more and more labor, and engaging in global markets. As the system matures, this process will create a condition where fewer and fewer capitalists will be engaged in capital accumulation, and therefore will have monopolies. With monopoly, the working classes will be increasingly immiserated, leading to an inevitable revolt against the system. The tendency toward monopoly will become a fetter on capitalism itself, leading to such a high degree of centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor that the system will be no longer socially sustainable. At such a time, when the working class revolts against an ever declining standard of living, the expropriators, i.e. capital, will be expropriated by the workers.

While Karl Marx is often credited with having developed the first theory of capitalist development, the classical political economists that were his precursors also had concepts of capitalist development even if they did not employ the term “capitalism.” While Marx is commonly thought to have developed a theory of capitalism independent of classical political economy, he was, on the contrary, quite conscious of previous theories and formulated his ideas by both critiquing and building on existing concepts.

Theorizing Capitalism

While the first theories of capitalism were first formulated by classical political economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the academic inquiry into the nature and future trajectory of the capitalist world economy continues to the present. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of scholarly interest in describing and critiquing capitalism, but the word “capitalism” itself has lost much of its original meaning as it has come to hold many different, and at times contradictory, meanings.¹³ As a result of these multiple definitions, theorizing capitalism in the 21st century becomes ever more challenging as there is no scholarly consensus regarding the definition of capitalism. In the following section, I’ll present some of the existing definitions of capitalism and assess what is at stake in these ways of thinking about capitalism. The following snapshot of intellectual history is not meant to be an exhaustive survey by any means. It is presented to the reader in order to demonstrate the key mainline theories of capitalism that have resonated in academia and beyond since Marx penned Capital (1867) just over 150 years ago.

In the early 20th century, theories of imperialism were developed to explain the changes in the capitalist world economy that transformed society of the time. Central to the concept of imperialism is monopoly finance capital which, as these theorists contend, is oversaturated in wealthy countries. As a result of this overaccumulation, capital can only stave off a potential crisis by expanding commodity production outward geographically in order to maintain a sufficient level of profit.¹⁴ That monopoly capitalism necessitates outward expansion was for Rudolf Hilferding the essential fact of the capitalist world economy, and the only way to maintain and potentially increase the rate of profit for capital.¹⁵ However, as Hilferding acknowledged and John Hobson further expanded upon, imperialism benefits certain segments of the capitalist class, but is “bad business for the nation.”¹⁶ In order to expand commodity production to markets abroad, the state must act in the interest of private capital in order to exert political control of foreign territories, thereby forcibly opening new markets. Hobson claimed:

The economic root of imperialism is the desire of strong organized industrial and financial interests to secure and develop at the public expense and by the public force private markets for their surplus goods and surplus capital… The whole struggle of so-called Imperialism upon its economic side is towards a growing parasitism, and the classes engaged in this struggle require Protection as their most serviceable instrument.¹⁷

Hobson’s critique of imperialism as the form of capitalism that took shape during the conjuncture in which he lived was that imperialism, and thereby capitalism, meant private gain through the public cost of Empire and war-making. His focus remains on how imperialism benefits the capitalist class of the colonizer at the expense of the working class of the colonizing country but neglects to analyze the human toll of imperialism from the perspective of the colonized.

Vladimir Lenin, perhaps the best known theorist of imperialism, proposes a working definition of imperialism at the daw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part I The Confusion of Capitalist Structures
• Part II Macro-Historical Theories of Capitalism
• Part III Postcolonial Theories of Capitalism
• Part IV Theories of Labor and Capitalism
• Part V Capitalism’s Uncertain Future
• Part VI Exploitation and Exclusion
• Bibliography
• Index