EDITORIAL
The aim of Capita! & Class is not simply to publish more Marxist theory but to stimulate its collective produ...
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EDITORIAL
The aim of Capita! & Class is not simply to publish more Marxist theory but to stimulate its collective production and increase the relevance of such theory to political practice . This was one of the main themes discussed at the open Editorial Board meeting held in London on March 26th . Over the past year the CSE network of local and national working groups has expanded enormously . A large number of comrades who had been working in isolation or had difficulty in relating their theoretical work to their political activities are now finding in CSE groups a suprasectarian forum in which these problems can at least be faced collectively . Capital & Class hopes to be able to promote this process and to advance Marxist discussion in Britain and elsewhere . The content of this issue, like that of the first, reflects this concern . The first issue contained three papers from last year's annual conference on the labour process . This issue contains three articles that have grown out of the intensive collective work which is being done in working groups and regular dayschools to prepare this year's conference on "Class Struggle, the Restructuring of Capital and the State", to be held in Bradford on July 2nd-4th . Simon Clarke's article on Poulantzas' theory of the state was first presented at a dayschool in December on theoretical aspects of this year's theme and has grown from work done in the Coventry CSE group . It develops in a provocative manner one of the themes which has dominated much of the year's discussion : the relationship of so-called structuralist approaches to the development of a materialist theory of the state . The article by Holloway and Picciotto, also the product of discussions in many local and national meetings, takes up this theme and, drawing to some extent on recent German debates, stresses the importance of relating the state and its development systematically to the capital relation, understood as a relation of class struggle . The third contribution resulting from collective work involving CSE members is the Workers' Inquiry on the Motor Industry . This presents a preliminary analysis of the struggles in the motor industry over the restructuring forced by the crisis ; but more importantly the Inquiry is an attempt to develop a methodology for political analysis and intervention which is more generally relevant . Our commitment to developing a process of collective work and discussion in no way precludes an international approach . On the contrary, the CSE is very much an international organisation in membership, and we consider it very important to overcome the incongruously strong barriers which at present divide Marxist discussion into national spheres, and to feed the best of the articles
EDITORIAL
produced in other languages into English-speaking discussion . This issue contains an article by two of our Berlin members, Olle and Sch6ller, on international tradeunionism, in which they explore a theme which has been rather neglected in this country, arguing in particular against received notions about the relation between the internationalisation of capital and the internationalisation of trade unions . Finally, we follow up our publication of Pannekoek's critique of Grossmann in the first issue of Capital & Class by publishing the first part of a long article by Grossmann . Like Pannekoek, Henryk Grossmann (1881-1950) is one of the classic Marxist theorists of the first part of this century whose work, despite its considerable importance, has remained almost totally unknown in this country . The article we publish is of particular interest because it relates closely to debates that have been carried on within the CSE : by stressing Marx's distinctive emphasis on the dual character of labour in capita! ;sm, he contributes to the discussion of the relation between Ricardo and Marx, and also indicates ways in which the work started in the context of last year's Labour Process conference might be carried forward . This issue is being produced with a modified design and layout . We apologise to readers for any inconvenience caused by the teething troubles in the production of our first issue . These were due essentially to pressures of editorial work obliging the Editorial Committee to leave production largely to an outside organisation . An expansion of the committee has enabled us to become more closely involved in production . Plans are now also being developed to expand the CSE's programme of publishing pamphlets and books . We hope that an increasingly wide range of CSE membership will come forward and become actively involved in ensuring the success of our publishing programme, as well as participating in the meetings and discussions which provide its intellectual basis .
CORRECTIONS FOR-CAPITAL AND CLASS I There are two important printing errors in the translation of Anton Pannekoek's article "The Theory of the Collapse of Capitalism" : p . 64, the text from line 29 should read "The problem which seemed to have been left open was who was to buy the products in which the surplus value was contained . If Departments I and II buy from each other more and more means of production and means of subsistence this would be a pointless circular movement from which nothing would result" (the words underlined were omitted) . p. 77, lines 13-4 the words "and that the revolution only found its natural necessity through economic forces" should be omitted . Thus the sentence in question should read: "The consciousness was always lacking that this virtue only found its natural necessity through economic forces, and that the revolution only found its natural necessity through the mental forces of men" .
NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS
Capital & Class welcomes all contributions within the general scope of the CSE, not only long articles of a theoretical nature but also short notes and polemics and pieces long or short which have a topical political relevance . The Editorial Committee is responsible for producing Capital & Class . The members of the EC are elected at the annual conference, half being replaced each year so that no-one serves for more than two years . In addition there is an Editorial Board which meets twice a year and helps to lay down editorial policy and provide a wide reference group . The EB consists of six members elected directly by the Conference, plus representatives of CSE groups and from related journals . In addition (as with all CSE committees) all CSE members are welcome to attend . Material submitted to Capital & Class is assigned by the reviewing editor to at least 4 people for comment, usually two members of the EC and two others . Frequently, papers submitted will have been discussed at a CSE group or dayschool, and might have been revised after discussion there . However, the Editorial Committee of Capital & Class likes to be involved at an early stage rather than simply being presented with a final version to accept or reject . Papers submitted to the EC may be referred for comment to a CSE group if they have not already been presented at such a group meeting . All submissions should go directly to a member of the EC or to John Harrison, Oxford Institute of Economics & Statistics, St Cross Building, Manor Rd ., Oxford . Material submitted in draft form should be typed single-spaced and if possible 5 copies should be provided . The final copy which, goes for typesetting must be typed very clearly, double-spaced with very wide margins . Writers should try to avoid unnecessary jargon or other complexities of style ; for our basic format in using references and footnotes please refer to a current issue . There are special problems in typesetting equations, mathematical symbols and tables, and these should be discussed with editors before final copy is typed .
MARXISM, SOCIOLOGY AND POULANTZAS' THEORY OF THE STATE Simon Clarke
1 INTRODUCTION Political developments in the last ten years have led to a very considerable renewal of interest in Marxist economic and political analysis, and to a concerted attempt to reinvigorate Marxist theory as a revolutionary force . The focus of this movement is the attempt to develop a Marxist critique of Stalinist dogmatism and of post-Stalinist revisionism . Its material conditions are the end of the long wave of post-war capitalist expansion and the reappearance of capitalist crisis, on the one hand, and the development of working class resistance to the domination of capital independently of the orthodox Communist Parties, on the other . This Marxist renaissance is taking place in conditions which make it extremely vulnerable to absorption into the frame of reference of bourgeois ideology . Since 1930 Marxist theory has been positively or negatively dominated by the official Marxism of the orthodox Communist Parties (which I shall refer to as 'dogmatism') . Those Marxists who were not prepared to subordinate themselves to dogmatism were not able to challenge it either . The period of cold war and the absence of independent working class resistance to capital meant that there was no basis on which such a challenge could be mounted . The independence of such Marxism was maintained by its diversion of attention from political and economic concerns . It was dominated by the attempt to explain the apparent solidity of bourgeois domination by reference to specific superstructural features which varied from one country to another, thus constituting various national schools of 'Western Marxism', which borrowed heavily from the dominant bourgeois cultural theories in the various countries . The 'Marxist' alternatives to dogmatism systematically evaded the fundamental theoretical issues which would have been raised by any direct challenge to dogmatism (Anderson, 1976) . The development of capitalist crisis and the corresponding development of political alternatives to revisionism has created new conditions for Marxist theory . These dictate a return to the foundations of Marxism, to the generality of the capital relation, and a confrontation with the dogmatist orthodoxy . However the novelty of these conditions also indicates a weakness of contemporary Marxism . In the absence of a Marxist critique of dogmatism, various forms of bourgeois ideology, and above all bourgeois sociology, have monopolised such criticism .
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The renewal of Marxist theory is therefore very vulnerable to absorption by bourgeois ideology, innocently basing its critique of dogmatism on that offered by the bourgeois social sciences, and so being led to adopt bourgeois solutions to the theoretical problems posed . It is therefore as important for Marxism to state its distance from the bourgeois social sciences as from Marxist dogmatism . It is my argument in this paper that Poulantzas's theory of the state fails to do this . Although I would not presume to question Poulantzas's own political motives, the many genuinely original and important insights contained in his work are nullified by its domination by a theory quite alien to Marxism, a theory whose implications, indeed, Poulantzas constantly tries to avoid . This theory, adopted from Althusser, is based on a superficial criticism of dogmatism which leaves the theoretical foundation of the latter untouched and which reproduces that offered by bourgeois sociology . This leads Poulantzas to reproduce with uncanny accuracy the theory characteristic of contemporary structural-functionalism, the dominent tendency of bourgeois sociology . Poulantzas's many insights can only be integrated into Marxism in the wake of a thoroughgoing theoretical critique which relates his work both to Marxist dogmatism and to bourgeois social science . This paper is offered as a contribution to that critique .
II THE 'NEO-GRAMSCIAN' CRITIQUE OF THE THEORY OF STATE MONOPOLY CAPITALISM Contemporary Marxist developments in the theory of the capitalist state centre on the critique of the dogmatist theory of State Monopoly Capitalism . The latter, in its crudest but most common form, argues that the state is the instrument of monopoly capital in the era of imperialism, and so the means by which the domination of capital over civil society is maintained . This role of the state is itself an expression of the contradiction between the forces and relations of production, representing the socialisation of the latter in response to the socialisation of the former, but under the control of monopoly capital . The revolutionary task of the proletariat is to lead a coalition of democratic forces which will free the state from this control and use it as the instrument of the transition to socialism . The most obvious faults of this theory can be characterised as its evolutionism and its economistic reductionism . The former implies that the contemporary capitalist state is in some sense transitional, and so can be the neutral instrument of the transition to socialism . The theory is therefore unable to grasp the limits of state interventionism inherent in the character of the state as a capitalist state . The economistic reductionism of the theory implies that the state is the instrument of capital, ignoring the specificity of the capitalist state as a political institution and the complexity of the class struggle in its relation to the state . Any adequate theory of the capitalist state must embrace these critical points, which are of great political as well as theoretical importance . Poulantzas's work clearly attempts to do this, for it is centred precisely on questions of the autonomy of the state relative to the economy and to the dominant class, of the complexity of the class structure and of class relations, of the structural limits on the action of the state, and so on . His work can be seen as an attempt to build a theory of the state in opposition to the theory of State Monopoly Capitalism which avoids the
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evolutionism and economism of the latter, and so has an obvious appeal to contemporary Marxists . However, an anti-evolutionist and anti-economist theory of the capitalist state is not necessarily a Marxist theory . It is not Marxism, but bourgeois sociology, which has constantly condemned dogmatism for its economism and evolutionism, and bourgeois sociology has built a theory of society which avoids these errors . The crucial problem for Marxists is that of theorising the institutional separation of the state from capitalist enterprises, the political separation of the state from the capitalist class, the differentiation and fragmentation of social classes, the representative relations between classes and political parties, and the limits of state intervention, without losing the fundamental Marxist premise of the capital relation as principle of the unity of the social formation . The temptation which faces Marxism is that of adopting a bourgeois sociological theory of the state and of giving that theory a "Marxist" twist by emphasising the primacy of the relations of production . This was the tendency of an earlier generation of British Marxists who developed theories which can be described as 'neo-gramscian', in the sense that they derived their authority from a particular interpretation of Gramsci s work .(1) These theories interpose a level of 'civil society' between the relations of production and the state, which is distinct from both . In 'civil society' ideological and institutional relations are added onto relations of production to create a sphere of interacting social groups, the 'society' of bourgeois sociology . The theory is given a radical slant in that it tries to theorise the dominance of capital in this sphere of interaction, the dominance in question consisting fundamentally in the imposition of a normative order on society, in the management of a consensus, which is the basis of the relative autonomy of the state, but at the same time the basis of the state as the power of capital (Negri, 1976, pp . 7-8) . The dominance of capital is explained as the dominance of a social group endowed with a disproportionate share of material resources, and so is founded at the level of 'social interaction' and not at the level of the relations of production . The relations of production are thus introduced into a purely sociological theory to give it a contingently radical, but not Marxist, orientation . The latter can be reduced to the assertions that economic interests play a primary role in the constitution of social groups, and that material resources are predominant in determining the course of social interaction . Inequality is therefore self-perpetuating and the state, as institutionalisation of the dominance of the well-endowed, plays a major part in perpetuating that inequality . This 'Marxist sociology' is characterised by the empirical assertion that economic interests and material resources play a preponderant role in defining social interaction, but is not theoretically differentiated from bourgeois sociology . These neo-gramscian theories get beyond economism and evolutionism only by adopting a sociological conception of society . Paradoxically they are not incompatible with the revisionist politics associated with the theory of State Monopoly Capitalism . The state itself continues to be a neutral instrument dominated by the interests of big capital . The task of the proletariat is still to free 'the state from this domination . The difference is that the domination of capital is now indirect, mediated by its domination over civil society . It is no longer sufficient to break the direct grip of capital on the state apparatus, but it is also
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necessary to contest bourgeois domination of civil society by contesting the ideological consensus imposed by the bourgeoisie. Poulantzas has sharply attacked the neo-gramscian analysis of the state put forward by Miliband.[2) He criticises Miliband for reproducing bourgeois ideological theorisations by confining his critique of bourgeois accounts to their empirical adequacy . He correctly insists that a Marxist critique must be properly theoretical . What he objects to in this conception of society is the focus on social actors, the view of 'individuals as the origin of social action' in a 'problematic of the subject'. To this Poulantzas counterposes the conception of 'social classes and the State as objective structures, and their relations as an objective system of regular connections' . (Poulantzas, 1%9, p . 70.) Poulantzas does not, however, show that this distinction is constitutive of Marxist as opposed to bourgeois theories of society. On the contrary, as I shall indicate later, it is a distinction within bourgeois sociology . [3] The crucial question for the Marxist critique is not so much that of the objective character of the structures, but rather that of their substantive content . I shall argue that Poulantzas offers the objective 'structures' of structural-functionalist sociology, and not the Marxist relations of production . In order to establish this a detour is called for . In the next two sections I shall look at the substantive foundation of bourgeois conceptions of society, and its critique by Marx .
III MARX'S CONCEPT OF PRODUCTION AND THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY The theoretical foundation of bourgeois ideology can be precisely located in a particular conception of production . The classical formulation of this conception of production is found in classical political economy, and it was to its critique that Marx dedicated the most fertile ten years of his life . For classical political economy the realm of production is seen in technical terms as the realm in which labour sets to work means of production to, make products .(4) Relations of distribution determine the transformation of the product into revenues accruing to the various classes . These relations are therefore superimposed on production as the social framework within which material production takes place, but production itself is not seen as a fundamentally social process . In the capitalist mode of production this superimposition is achieved simply by ascribing revenues to factors of production (labour, land and means of production) and assigning classes to these factors as owners .(5] This is Marx's 'trinity formula', the form of appearance of bourgeois relations of production . It is a form of appearance which eternises the latter relations, because it makes them appear as relations already inscribed in the technical structure of the material production process by ascribing revenues to factors of production . This can be clearly seen in the treatment of non-capitalist modes of production by classical political economy . Since revenues 'naturally' belong to the classes of capitalist society, non-capitalist relations of distribution must be based on political intervention by which revenues are diverted from their natural recipients . This political intervention secures a class monopolisation of particular factors of production which makes possible the extortion of excessive 'profits' by the owners
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of these means of production (Marx, n .d ., p. 116) .[6) This is transparently the ideology of the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal privileges of the landowning class, which reached its most self-conscious expression in the struggles against the corn laws which marked the high point of classical political economy. It is an ideology because it postulates as eternal that which is historically specific . It is a bourgeois ideology because that which it postulates as eternal is the bourgeois production relation .[7J Marx devoted the ten years between 1857 and 1867 to the elaboration of the critique of the ideological conception of production which underpins the eternisation of bourgeois relations of production in classical political economy . In this critique he shows that the errors of political economy derive from its conception of production . Correspondingly the basis of Marx's own theory and of his dialectical method is to be found in his conception of production . In the second section of the 1857 Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy Marx outlined his project, insisting on the historical character of production and on the domination of the moment of production over those of distribution, consumption and exchange . In the Grundrisse of 1857-8 the critique of classical political economy, and the corresponding development of Marx's own theory, is partial and undeveloped . The reason for this is that Marx insists on the primacy of production, but has not fully transformed the bourgeois conception of production itself . Marx still tends to contrast capitalist relations of production with the technical process of production in an external relation of form to content, the capitalist form deriving from circulation and superimposing itself on an already-defined content . To this extent capitalist social relations are still fundamentally relations of distribution mapped onto production . The result is that Marx does not clearly distinguish production as the process of production of usevalues from production as the process of production of value, and so tends to see the two processes as being consistent with one another, the latter being simply superimposed on the former . This means that he is unable clearly to make the fundamental distinction between labour and labour power, and the derived distinction between constant and variable, as opposed to fixed and circulating, capital .[8J Since he is still not able to theorise adequately the contradictory foundation of the capitalist mode of production in production itself, he sees it instead in the relation between production and circulation, with the result that the Grundrisse is dominated by an overproduction theory of crisis . Finally, the separation of form and content makes it possible to discuss form without content, social relations in abstraction from their material foundation, and so makes it necessary to discuss the development of social relations in the abstract language of 'positing' and of 'presuppositions' . The contrast between the Grundrisse, on the one hand, and Theories of Surplus Value and Capital, on the other, shows clearly that Marxism does not consist simply in the assertion of the primacy of production, nor in the use of phrases like 'relations of production', but consists above all in the transformation of the bourgeois conception of production itself . In Capital relations of production are no longer the social relations within which material production takes place, on the basis of a contrast between social relations of distribution and technical relations of production . In Marx's developed thought production is seen as a process which is itself
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both social and material, as the contradictory unity of the production of value and the production of use-values . Capitalist relations of production are not contrasted with material production as an externally derived form imposed on a pre-existent content, for form and content are integrated in a contradictory unity . [91 The clear distinction between value and use-value makes it possible to develop the contrast between concrete useful labour and abstract value-creating labour, and so the concepts of labour power, of constant and variable capital, and of surplus value . Surplus value is no longer seen as the revenue accruing to a distributive class, a share in t; .e material product . Rather it is seen as the product of the labour process as a process of production of value, of the compulsion imposed on the worker by the capitalist to work beyond the time necessary to reproduce the value of his labour power. Exploitation and class relations are therefore given a scientific foundation in production, and no longer have a moral foundation as relations of distribution . The contradictory foundation of production itself means that the law of motion of capitalism, expressed in the tendential law of the falling rate of profit, and the countervailing tendencies it calls forth, can be founded in production . Moreover, because production is now seen not simply as material production, but also as the production of social relations, the conditions of reproduction are themselves founded in production . Finally, because form and content can no longer be separated, the development of social relations cannot be discussed in an abstract way, in isolation from their material foundation . The development of social relations is now a historical process driven by the contradiction inherent in capitalist production of being the production of value and the production of use values . [10] It is in the development of this contradiction that relations of distribution, circulation and consumption are subsumed under the relations of production . It is therefore only with the Marxist concept of production as valorisation process that the primacy of production is itself put on a sound theoretical basis . The contradiction between value and use-value is the specification of the contradiction between the forces and relations of production in the capitalist mode of production . Dogmatism tends to follow classical revisionism in identifying the latter contradiction with a contradiction between increasingly socialised production and private appropriation (i .e . between production and circulation), whose developed form becomes a contradiction between the economic and political, or between civil society and the state (c .f . Colletti, 1972, pp . 97-108) . The contradiction between production and circulation must rather be seen as a form of the more fundamental contradiction between the production of value and the production of use-value . The Marxist critique of political economy is not merely of historical interest, for it is a critique of the constitutive basis of all bourgeois ideology, whose defining feature is the conception of production as a technical process, a conception which underpins the eternisation of capitalist relations of production . It is their adoption of this conception that enables us to characterise even certain self-proclaimed 'Marxist' theories as dominated by bourgeois ideology . This characterisation does not necessarily imply any judgement about the intentions of those propounding such theories, nor even about the 'scientific' or 'unscientific' character of their procedures . It is because of their common foundation in the bourgeois conception of production that bourgeois sociology and dogmatist
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Marxism are dominated by bourgeois ideology . It is correspondingly because of their common foundation that attempts to base a Marxist critique of dogmatist Marxism on bourgeois sociology are bound to fail, for they must fail to strike at the foundations of dogmatism . This explains the paradox that Marxist attempts to use bourgeois sociology as the basis of the critique of dogmatism are easily assimilated by the latter . Hence both neo-gramscian and Althusserian Marxism have been used to bolster the revisionist politics of the orthodox Communist Parties . We are now in a position to look at these different currents as variants of the bourgeois ideological conception of society .
IV THE LAW OF VALUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF BOURGEOIS IDEOLOGY Poulantzas presents his theory of the capitalist state as a development of the interpretation of Marx offered by Althusser and Balibar .(11] This interpretation emerged on the basis of an attempt to break, from within the orthodox Communist movement, with the theoretical positions of Stalinist dogmatism . Dogmatism is based on the bourgeois conception of production which I have outlined above . This 'technicist' view of production was adopted by Stalin . through Plekhanov and Menshevism, from the classical revisionist theories of the Second International . On this basis Stalin constructed his theory of modes of production in which the technical structure of production is the 'material foundation' on which different modes of production arise . History is seen as a succession of modes of production, each mode being constituted as a specific form of appropriate of the surplus and a corresponding form of exploitation of labour . The mode of production is seen as the combination of a technical structure of production and what are in fact social relations of distribution . Developments in the forces of production produce a dislocation between forces of production and relations of distribution, precipitating a change in relations of distribution so that they correspond with the more developed forces of production.[12J In the current phase of capitalist development capitalist relations of distribution are preserved by the control over the institutions of political and ideological domination exercised by monopoly capital . The task of the proletariat is to break this domination so that new relations of distribution, appropriate to the developed forces of production, can appear . The most obvious errors of this conception are its evolutionism and its economistic reductionism, as I have already noted in the case of the theory of State Monopoly Capitalism . These errors derive from the conception of production on which dogmatism is based . It is because the 'forces and relations of production' are seen as technical relations of production and social relations of distribution that the relation between them is seen as a relation alternately of correspondence and dislocation, and not a relation of contradiction . Hence the Marxist theory of history, which is based on the contradiction inherent in production in all class societies of being production of use values and production of relations of domination, is turned into a metaphysical philosophy of history in which the dialectic is an external law of history which governs the development of modes of production in a fixed succession by governing the progressive development of the forces of production which underlies it . Correspondingly, the
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separation of 'forces and relations of production', and consequent abolition of the dialectical relation between the two, dictates that the primacy of production takes the form of an economistic, or a technicist, reductionism . This bourgeois conception of production is also the basis of the revisionist politics which dogmatism legitimates . The eternisation of bourgeois relations of production on which it is based dictates that political activity can only strike at the relations of distribution which arise on the basis of a technically determined structure of production . 'Trade Union' activity is confined to modification of the position of classes within given relations of distribution, 'political' activity to the use of state power to transform these relations of distribution . However revolutionary the rhetoric in which it is cloaked, a politics based on this distinction is bound to be reformist, for it eliminates resistance to the capital relation in production, where that relation is produced and reproduced, while directing political activity towards the forms of the bourgeois state, forms whose effectivity is subordinate to the domination of the capital relation . These political implications are not associated directly with the economism and evolutionism of dogmatism, which serve only to underpin the claimed inevitability of the revolution, but with the conception of production which underlies it . Any critique which fails to base itself on the critique of this conception of production is bound to remain a prisoner of the political implications of the latter, as I have already indicated in the case of neo-gramscian theories of society .(13) The bourgeois sociological critique of Marxist dogmatism, as of bourgeois technological determinism, continues to be based on the technologistic conception of production, and is itself reproduced both by Althusserian and by neo-gramscian theories of society . All take as their starting point the distinction between relations of production,[14) seen as the technical relations combining factors in material production, and relations of distribution, seen as social relations constituted by ownership of the means of production .[15) Since rights to revenue depend on 'ownership' of factors, the relations of distribution are mapped onto the relations of production . The former cannot, however, be reduced to the latter, for they involve the relation of 'ownership' which is a relation defined politically and/or ideologically (Althusser and Balibar, 1970, p .177) . Class relations cannot be defined purely 'economically' . They are consequently social relations that express political and ideological determinations . The starting point of the theory of society cannot, therefore, be the asocial, purely 'economic' or 'technical' relations of production, as they are for dogmatism and for technological determinism . The starting point can only be the pre-given whole, called 'society' or 'social structure' in bourgeois sociology, 'civil society' or the 'mode of production' in Marxist sociology . Interactionist sociology and neo-gramscian Marxism interpose 'civil society' between material conditions of production, seen as the economic realm, and the state, seen as the political realm . The task of sociology is to study the interaction of individuals and groups in this world of 'society', these being social subjects acting in a framework of economic and political institutions, themselves studied by economists and political scientists, which can be modified by social actors . Structural-functionalism is based on the attempt to dissolve social groups as subjects into the structure which constitutes them as subjects and which structures their interaction . The relation between structural-functionalism and interactionism
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is summed up very succinctly in Poulantzas's critique of Miliband . Structuralfunctionalism replaces the view of 'individuals as the origin of social action' in a 'problematic of the subject' with the view of social phenomena as 'objective structures, and their relations as an objective system of regular connections .' In following Althusser in basing his critique of dogmatist economism and evolutionism on the bourgeois conception of production, and in rejecting the 'problematic of the subject' for an 'objectivist' account, Poulantzas, no doubt quite unintentionally, also followed Althusser in reproducing the theory of society developed by structural-functionalism, and above all by Talcott Parsons .(16J In Althusser s work the Marxist elements are purely rhetorical . The importance of Poulantzas is that he tries to give Althusserianism some substance by developing a theory of class . The structural-functionalist/Althusserian view of society rejects the interactionist account of structures as the production of the action of social subjects . The subjective principle is replaced as the basis on which the structure is organised by the functional principle . A variety of different levels are defined according to the functions they fulfil in relation to the whole. The identity of the functions and levels and the relations between them vary according to the particular theory in question . The basic principle is, however, invariant . The differentiation of functions determines that each level should have its own specificity and its own autonomy relative to other levels . The different functions are hierarchically ordered, the technical requirements of material production normally being primary because of the supposed primary requisite of physical reproduction .(17J The hierarchy takes the form of limits imposed by one level on the variation of other levels (PPSC, p . 95) : hence very varied normative systems, or ideological and political systems, may be compatible with the requirements of physical reproduction of a society or social formation at a given technical level . Within these limits of variation the different levels are themselves structured under the domination of their relative functions in the whole, and not under the domination of other levels . They are therefore determined as levels of the complex whole, and not as expressions of other levels .[18] For Althusser the various levels are defined as particular kinds of practices, the basic levels being the economic, political and ideological . The economic level is that of material production, guaranteeing the physical survival of the whole . The political level assigns individual agents to means of production as owners or non-owners, the latter being residually owners of labour power, and so as recipients of their respective revenues . The ideological level constitutes these individual 'supports' of the relations of distribution as social subjects able to fulfil their roles in society . The economic level is thus the technical realm of material production, the political and ideological levels are the social realm which establishes the social conditions of material reproduction . For this analysis, therefore, the autonomy of the political and ideological relative to the economic is the supposed autonomy of relations of distribution relative to relations of production which depends on the bourgeois conception of production . The consequence is the view of social relations as constituted not in production, but 'politically and ideologically', or 'normatively', which in turn underpins a reformist politics . The basic conceptions of society shared by dogmatism, neo-gramscian Marxism and interactionist sociology are reproduced .
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The 'planar' conception of society characteristic of the latter has been replaced by a 'structural' conception, but the structure remains the 'pre-given, complex, overdetermined whole structured in dominance determined, in the last i nstance. by the economic' characteristic of structural-functionalist sociology . The Marxist conception of production leads to a quite different idea of the structure of the whole from that offered by Althusserianism . For Marx, relations of production are inherently social 'naturally arisen . . . historically developed' (Marx, 1973, p . 485) relations . The relations of production are not simply relations of the immediate labour process, but are the relations constituted by the valorisation process, relations of a total process of social production, whose development is governed by the law of value. The relations of production are not distinct from society, rather 'the relations of production in their totality constitute what are called the social relations, society, and specifically, a society at a definite stage of historical development .' (Marx 1%2a, p . 90) . To take the relations of production as the starting point of analysis is not, therefore, to introduce a reductionism, for the relations of production are already social . Hence the determination of social relations as relations of production is not an abstract determination in the last instance of the social by the functional requirements of material production . It is rather the specific and determinate historical process by which all social relations are subsumed under the dominant relation of production and so are determined as developed forms of that relation . The basis of this process is the contradictory foundation of production itself as production of use-values and production of social relations . In the capitalist mode of production the social relations within which products are produced, distributed, circulated and consumed are subordinate to the production of value as moments of the process of selfexpansion (Valorisation -Verwertung) of capital . They are not counterposed to production as the social framework within which production of use values take place . They are rather moments of the total process of social production which is the process of valorisation, a production both in society and of society . Correspondingly the economic, in the narrow sense, the political and the ideological are not defined abstractly as the framework within which relations of production are subsequently to be defined, as politically and ideologically constituted and reproduced relations within which material production takes place. Rather the economic, political and ideological are forms which are taken by the relations of production . Political and ideological relations are as much relations of production as are strictly economic relations, for they are specific forms of the social relations within which production takes place . The Marxist theory of ideology and the Marxist theory of the state have to show how and to what extent political and ideological relations are forms of the relations of production as moments of the total process of social production subordinate to the relation between capital and labour which is constituted in the immediate process of production . This must follow the method Marx has developed in Capital for the derivative economic relations of distribution, circulation and consumption . This is not achieved by formal deduction from a simple abstraction like 'society' in the language of functionalism, but, as Marx does in Capital, by showing the concrete historical process by which these relations are subsumed under the capital realtion .(19) It is only such a historical materialist analysis which
MARXISM, SOCIOLOGY AND POULANTZAS'S THEORY OF THE STATE
11
can establish concretely both the domination of all social relations by the capital relation and the limits of that domination . For intellectuals trained in the bourgeois social sciences the specificity of Marx's theory is difficult to understand . The dialectical method of historical materialism even seems abstract and esoteric to those for whom the concepts of the bourgeois social sciences ('society', 'norms', 'equilibrium', 'legitimacy' etc .) are so familiar that their reality is almost tangible .(20J When Marx's theory, which is 'nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought' is encountered, the familiar points of reference are absent . In the absence of the mythical world which the bourgeois social scientist takes for reality, the world which Marx describes appears to be an abstract construction of theory . This is all the more the case because of the success with which Marx has managed 'to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace their inner connection' . The result is that the very concrete materialist dialectic is taken for an abstract metaphysical device . As Marx warned, 'if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction' . (Marx, 1962b, p . 456) . It is in this sense that my remarks above must be interpreted . However abstract they may appear to be, they refer to concrete, specific, determinate historical connections .
relations and not to abstract, 'speculative
V POULANTZAS'S THEORY OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE We are now ready to return to Poulantzas . The originality of Poulantzas's work lies in his attempt to transcend the integrationist perspective of functionalist sociology . He does this by trying to graft the Marxist proposition that the class struggle is the motor of history onto Althusser's structural-functionalist conception of society . The theory of class is inserted between the structure and the state, so that the state is subject to a double determination . In the first place, it is determined directly by the structure as a specific functional level of that structure . Secondly, its functioning in practice, within limits determined by its place in the structure, is subject to the conditions of the class struggle, which are in turn determined, at least partially, by the structure . The focus of Poultanzas's attempt to integrate a theory of class into the framework of Althusserianism is the theory of the state . This focus is itself dictated by the structural theory which determines the function of the state . In this section I shall examine this structural theory, before turning to the theory of class . This structural theory describes the functions of the levels of the structure and the character of the relations between them . The political is defined by Poulantzas as the 'juridico-political superstructure of the state' (PPSC, p . 37), but it should not be identified with the state as an institution, but rather with the function which is attributed to the state by the structure .(21] The function of the state is defined by its role as 'factor of cohesion between the levels of a social formation . . . and as the regulating factor of its global equilibrium as a system' (PPSC, pp . 44-5) .(22] This function has various 'modalities' according to the levels on which it is exercised (economic, ideological
12
CAPITAL & CLASS
and 'strictly political'), which are subordinate to the overall requirement of preserving the unity of the social formation, and so 'over-determined' by the 'strictly political' function . Within this overdetermination by the political function, however, other functions may be dominant, this dominance expressing in inverted form the dominance of levels within the social formation (PPSC, pp . 50-6) .1231 The specificity of the state's functions determines that it has a specific autonomy in relation to other levels of the mode of production : its functions are specifically political functions, all subordinated to the need to maintain the unity of the whole . This specific autonomy of the political is characteristic of the capitalist mode of production . (241 Poulantzas argues that it has nothing to do with the dominance or non-dominance of the political among the levels of the social formation, nor with the intervention or non-intervention of the state in other levels . 'This specific autonomy of the political and the economic . . relates ultimately to the separation of the direct producer from his means of production . . . in the cbmbination which governs and distributes the specific positions of the economic and political, and which sets the limits of intervention by one of the regional structures at another .' (PPSC . p . 127) . Poulantzas does not actually specify how the particular combination of relations of 'property' and of 'real appropriation' in the capitalist mode of production determine the specific autonomy of the political . The implicit argument rests on the bourgeois conception of production and distribution . In Balibar's terminology the relations of 'property' and of 'real appropriation' are 'homologous' in the capitalist mode of production . This in fact means that the social relations of distribution correspond to the 'natural' relations of production .[25] The political level does not therefore intervene in distribution, which follows directly from the natural ascription of revenues to 'factors of production' . The eternisation of capitalist relations of production in this theory implies that the economic dominance of the capitalist class in inscribed in the technical structure of production itself, and so this dominance does not exist at the level of the state . The state can therefore present itself as the state of the whole, as the unity of the individuals it has itself constituted as juridical subjects . That this is indeed Poulantzas's view emerges clearly in his specification of the functions of the state at the economic level . On the one hand, the state intervenes in the process of material production as 'organiser of the labour process' in order to increase the productivity of labour . On the other hand, the state is present at the economic level in the judicial system, 'i .e . the set of rules which organises capitalist exchanges and provides the real framework of cohesion in which commercial encounters can take place (PPSC ., p. 53) Hence the state intervenes technically in the material process of production, and establishes the social framework within which production takes place by constituting the agents of production who enter labour contracts and own means of production as individuals, as specific recipients of revenues (PPSC ., p . 128) . The state does not intervene in production directly as a class state to secure the position of the dominant class . It is true that for a Marxist analysis, in the first instance at least, the dominance of the capitalist class does not require the intervention of the state in the immediate process of production . This is not, as Poulantzas implicitly and
MARXISM, SOCIOLOGY AND POULANTZAS'S THEORY OF THE STATE
13
Balibar explicitly argue, because the dominance of the capitalist class is already inherent in the technical structure of production . It is rather because Marxism regards production in both social and physical terms . The dominance of capital is a product of the valorisation process, which takes place on the basis of a certain level of development of the forces of production . Hence in Capital Marx shows precisely that as a result of the valorisation process, not only production, but also circulation, distribution and even consumption are brought under the domination of the relations of immediate production . In other words it is not the state 'which organises capitalist exchanges and provides the real framework of cohesion in which commercial encounters can take place' or which serves 'to transform and to fix the limits of the mode of production' (PPSC ., pp. 53, 161), but it is capital itself which achieves this . Consequently, for Marxism, the 'relative autonomy' of the capitalist state is not rooted in a supposed 'homology' or 'correspondence' between relations of production and distribution, for this 'correspondence' is itself a product of the relations of production, instead it must be founded in the separation of economic and political domination which is in turn not inherent in the concept of the capitalist mode of production, to be deduced from that concept, but which is inherent in the historical development of the capitalist mode of production (Pashukanis, 1951, section V) . The ideological level, like the political, is supposed to have its own specific autonomy . The function of ideology is to insert individuals 'into their practical activities supporting this structure', it 'has the precise function of hiding the real contradictions and of reconstituting on an imaginary level a relatively coherent discourse which serves as the horizon of agents' experience . . . Ideology . . . has the particular function of cohesion .' (PPSC ., p . 207) . This function determines the structure of ideology, since the ideology 'offers an imaginary coherence to the unity governing the real contradictions of the ensemble of this formation . The structure of the ideological depends on the fact that it reflects the unity of a social formation' (PPSC ., p . 208) .(26J Poulantzas is unable to establish the specific autonomy of the ideological level relative to the political . Firstly, the function of the ideological level is simply a specification of the function of the political level . In the second place, because the levels are given a functional and not an institutional definition, all institutions which embody ideological domination are thereby assimilated to the state, even if they have no institutional connection with the state, as 'ideological state apparatuses' . [271 Poulantzas's conception of the social structure is essentially indistinguishable from that of structural functionalism . The definition of the structure, the specification of its levels and their functions, requires no reference to Marxist concepts of any kind . The Marxist claims of the theory depend entirely on the claims of the theory of class which is superimposed on the theory of social structure . The state, for example, is a specific institution which has specific functions to perform in relation to the whole . The state is not defined with reference either to the 'economic' level or to the dominant class . However, the state continues to be a class state because the social formation whose unity it maintains is a social formation in which a particular class is dominant (PPSC ., pp . 51, 54, 115) . In maintaining the unity of society, therefore, the state is at the same time maintaining the dominance of the dominant class . In the same way the dominant ideology is not the ideology of of the dominant class, but the ideology
14
CAPITAL & CLASS
of a social whole in which a certain class is dominant . 'The dominant ideology, by assuring the practical insertion of agents in the social structure, aims at the maintenance (the cohesion) of this structure, and this means above all class domination and exploitation' (PPSC ., p . 209) . Structural functionalism is not theoretically at fault, it has simply failed to point out that the structure whose functioning it theorises is characterised by exploitation and domination . If this argument is to amount to anything more than a moral protest, the theory of class exploitation and domination must be put on a scientific footing .
VI POULANTZAS'S THEORY OF CLASS Poulantzas bases his theory of class on the distinction between the level of structures and the level of practices . The relations within the structure are not social relations, and so are not relations of domination or of exploitation (PPSC ., pp . 62-6) . [28] They are, on the one hand, the technical relations of material production, and, on the other hand, differential relations of ownership of agents to means of production . The distinction between 'relations of production' and 'social relations of production', between 'structure'and 'practice, rigorously reproduces that between technical relations of production and social relations of dis(ribution . The social classes of Poulantzas's theory are not constituted by the relations of production, in the Marxist sense, but are rather distributive classes defined by reference to the technical functions of their members in production as well as by political and ideological, 'social', factors . The theory of class is thus based on the same conception of production as the theory of structure . It is this subordination of the theory of class to the theory of structure that dictates that the classes be seen in distributional terms . As we have seen, the structure is not a structure of social relations, the economic level being defined in purely technical terms . Hence the inevitable result of the definition of classes as 'the result of an ensemble of structures and of their relations' (PPSC, p . 63), is the view of classes as being constituted as distributional categories, related externally to production by assignment to technical functions . The 'social relations of production' are relations between social groups constituted by the distribution of the product . These concrete groups are not defined simply by the size of their incomes, but more fundamentally by the source of that income . This 'source is itself seen in purely technical terms as the relation to the technical function in production (CCC, p . 18) .(29) However, for Poulantzas, the distribution of the social product is not simply determined by the relation to the technical function in production, by the 'technical division of labour' . On top of determination by the technical structure of production, ideological and political factors, which constitute the 'social division of labour', are important in defining class relations even at the economic, distributional, level . This is especially clear in pre-capitalist societies, in which the political level is supposedly dominant in the structure, and so in the definition of distributive groups at the economic level (PPSC, p . 70) . However it is also true in the capitalist mode of production that social classes cannot be defined in purely 'economic' terms (PPSC, pp . 62-4) . This is not a Marxist theory of class, but the theory of class of classical political
MARXISM, SOCIOLOGYAND POULANTZAS'S THEORYOF THE STATE
15
economy, as modified and developed by contemporary bourgeois sociology . Distributive classes are precisely the 'interest groups' which have such a fundamental position in bourgeois sociology . The interests of these groups are defined within the limits of the given (eternal) structure . Because production is seen in purely material terms it is regarded as fixed in size, so that the distributive 'shares' of the various groups are shares of a fixed product . The interests of these various groups necessarily conflict with one another because the material advance of one can only be at the expense of another. In order to achieve their collective economic interests these groups have to exist at the political and ideological levels, political and ideological conflict providing the means to advance or to defend their interests . Interest groups can have an effect on the political level even if they are not politically organised, so that classes can exist even without their being politically organised . On the other hand, just as there are interest groups which do not achieve the political status of pressure groups, so there are pressure groups which are not constituted on the basis of distributive interests (PPSC, pp . 77-85) . In the relation between the different levels of conflict it is the political which is dominant because of the role of the state in the structure, the ability of the state to intervene in the economy to the benefit of one group or another . Therefore to have power, to become a genuine pressure group, it is necessary for interest groups to achieve a sufficient level of political organisation (PPSC ., p . 107) . In the conflict relations between these interest groups the ability of each group to achieve its interests is determined by its power, which in turn is dependent on its position in the structure (its bargaining position) and its level of organisation (PPSC ., p . 112) . This pluralist theory of social conflict, as conflict between distributively defined interest groups organised into pressure groups and political parties which seek to achieve their ends by organising with state power as their objective, operating on a given and technically determined economic foundation, is the theory which Poulantzas offers as a Marxist theory of class . The specific claims of Poulantzas's formulation are firstly, that economic interests are dominant in determining the constitution of pressure groups and political parties, and, secondly, that the relations between these interest groups are in some way asymmetrical, relations between some groups or sets of groups being relations of 'exploitation' or 'domination', so that conflict is not the symmetrical interrelation of competing groups, but tends to fuse into the conflict between social classes . The first claim appears to be specific to the capitalist mode of production, in which the economic is dominant . In pre-capitalist modes of production, where political intervention is supposedly required to secure revenue, the political is dominant, so that the constitution of interest groups is itself politically determined . [30) The second claim, that the relations between social groups are asymmetrical, is never explained by Poulantzas . This asymmetry is not a result of the political domination of the dominant class . Monopolisation of state power by the dominant class is not, in general, characteristic of the capitalist mode of production for Poulantzas . Hence 'domination' does not refer to the monopolisation of state power by the dominant class, nor indeed does it refer to dominance on the 'political scene' (PPSC, pp . 248-9) . Hence 'domination' is not defined at the political level at all . It is therefore defined at the level of the structure,
16
CAPITAL & CLASS
'domination' being an effect of the structure at the level of social relations . The structure, however, is not itself a structure of social relations but is rather, as we have seen, a functional unity combining a technicist conception of the economic, together with political and ideological levels defined functionally in relation to the economic . The dominance of the dominant class can, therefore, only be explained by reference to technical features of the process of production itself, and specifically to an implicit technically necessary dominance of the means of production over the labour process . [311 The reproduction of the structure, which is the limit of the state's function in the whole, is therefore also and necessarily the reproduction of the dominance of the dominant class . Finally, if this dominance is a technological necessity, dictated by the requirements of production, the class relation can only be characterised as exploitative within limits set by these technological requirements, and on the basis of an external and moralistic criterion of justice . Hence in Classes in Contemporary Capitalism Poulantzas is concerned with identifying these limits between which exploitation can be said to exist, with separating the supposedly technically necessary domination of means of production or of mental labour from the superimposed, ideologically or politically defined, domination of capital over labour . The bourgeois theory of class adopted by Poulantzas is quite different from the Marxist theory . For the latter classes are not distributive groups, and so are not 'interest groups' . This is because Marx sees relations of production as themselves social, as class relations . Under the capitalist mode of production material production is strictly subordinate to the production of value, and in the production of value the labourer is subject to the domination of capital . The revenues of labourer and capitalist do not represent distributive shares in a fixed product . The revenue of the labourer is limited by the value of labour power, the revenue of the capitalist by the extent to which he is able to impose a certain productivity on this labour . The latter is not only determined by technical factors, but also by the extent to which he is able to increase the intensity of labour and extend the working day . The revenues of capitalist and working classes are not therefore inversely related, because they are not shares of a fixed product . The product is rather the sum of the necessary and surplus labour time expended . Hence at the level of distribution not only do we not have a relation of dominance, we do not even have a necessary conflict of interests . In the early Wage Labour and Capital Marx follows Ricardo in seeing wages and profits as inversely related (Marx, 1%2a, p . 96) . In the later Wages, Price and Profit he argues very strongly against Citizen Weston that this is not at all the case, using empirical examples to establish his argument that a rise in profits can perfectly well follow on a rise in wages (Marx, 1%2c, pp . 401-8) . It is this obvious fact that makes possible the 'productivity bargaining' that plays such a part in supporting the cooperative ideology which serves to justify capitalist relations of production . If distributive relations are not the basis of relations of domination and conflict, relations of production most definitely are . This does not mean that relations of production are'overdetermined' by political and ideological relations, but that these relations are themselves relations of domination between social classes . The social classes are defined not according to their relations in the immediate labour process, but in the total process of social production . The
MARXISM, SOCIOLOGYAND POULANTZAS'S THEORY OF THE STATE
17
definition of these classes and of fractions of these classes does not involve reference to the political and ideological, although the intervention of the latter affects the development of the relations between classes and introduces differentiations within classes . The relations of production dominate all social relations not because they define the most important 'interests' in play in social interactions, nor because all social relations are in some way functionally subordinated to the needs of material production . The relations of production are dominant because the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production are rooted in production, in the contradiction between the production of value and the production of use values, driven by the need of capital to expand itself . The contradictory requirements of the valorisation of capital drive capital beyond the immediate process of production, so that it tends to subsume other economic, and all other social, relations to itself, in such a way that even social relations in fields apparently distant from production come under the domination of the capital relation, and this all the more to the extent that capital encounters barriers to its self-expansion, in other words to the extent that the self-expansion of capital is itself a contradictory and crisis-ridden process . The laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production are not simply laws of the structure, they are the tendential laws which govern the development of the relations of production, in other words laws of the class struggle, and which, tendentially, subordinate all social relations to the fundamental'class relations of the capitalist mode of production . This subordination is a historical and not a functional process. The sociological approach to class, based on a view of production as a technical process, dissolves the basis of the Marxist theory of class . The distinction it introduces between the material process of production and the social framework within which it takes place, and the corresponding reconciliation of the two in a non-contradictory combination abolishes both the social character of production as production of social relations, and the material foundation of social relations constituted by the materiality of the commodity . This abolition of the contradictory foundation of the capitalist mode of production frees class relations from their foundation in production and so dissociates material production as the realm of technically determined 'economic' laws from social relations as the realm of power (PPSC, p . 102) . The laws of motion of capitalism are then assigned to the latter and simply express the development of the 'class struggle', which takes place on the basis of a given external material foundation, 1321 but is itself determined by 'social', political and ideological, facts, detached from the purely 'economic' foundation . Once the bourgeois alternative of 'reductionism' versus 'pluralism' is accepted, the rejection of dogmatism can only lead to the pluralism of bourgeois sociology .
VII POULANTZAS'S THEORY OF THE CAPITALIST STATE The theory of class which Poulantzas seeks to integrate into the structuralfunctional theory of society is quite consistent with the latter . This becomes very clear when we consider the relation between class and structure in Poulantzas's
18
CAPITAL & CLASS
theory, a relation in which class struggle appears to be condemned to reproduce the structure. The key is the relation of class to state . The analysis of the relation between class and state is really conducted on two levels . On one level, the function of the state is to guarantee the reproduction of the social formation . Insofar as this formation is characterised by the dominance of one class (and Poulantzas does not found such dominance theoretically) the state is therefore always and tautologically the representative of this dominant class, whether or not the political or ideological representatives of this class predominate in political or ideological conflicts, and irrespective of whether this class has any kind of representation at the level of the state . At this level of analysis, therefore, the state is the 'unambiguous political power of the dominant classes or fractions' (PPSC, p . 274), since it is the power of the structure to ensure its own reproduction . On the other level of analysis, which is that of the bulk of Poulantzas's work, the representation of classes through parties or other institutions at the level of the state, and-their presence through 'pertinent effects' at that level is simply an aspect of the management by the state of its specific function in the whole . At this level of analysis the power and interests of classes are defined in the context of the constraints imposed by the given structure . The concept of 'conjuncture' expresses the limits of the possibilities open to the various classes engaged in a particular conflict (PPSC, pp . 42 . 46, 76, 93-5, 102, 187) .[33) In the last analysis political practice in a particular conjuncture determines how the structure will develop within limits which the structure itself defines . In principle the conjuncture may describe the transformation of the structure as a possibility defined by that structure . However it is not clear how this could be the case, for the structure is not built on a contradictory foundation, and so does not have the possibility of its own transformation inscribed within it . Hence practice is strictly subordinate to structure and inevitably condemned to maintain the latter . This emerges clearly from Poulantzas's analysis of class relations in the conjuncture . These relations are power relations, power being an effect of the structure at the level of class relations and not a property of the structure itself . The power of a class is defined as its capacity to realise its objective interests, and its interests defined as the limit of what can be achieved by the class in the current situation . Finally, this limit is itself defined by the structure (PPSC, pp . 99, 104-12) .[341 At this level of analysis the state is defined in relation to its function in the structure, and not in relation to the dominance of any particular class . In order to sustain this structure it is necessary for the state to intervene in the field of class political practices . The operation of the state does not express the power of the dominant class in relation to other classes and to the structure, but the 'power' of the structure in relation to all classes, for it can do nothing else but perpetuate the unity of the structure to which it is functionally adapted . It is not therefore necessary for the dominant class to have control of the state apparatus itself (PPSC, pp. 100, 115-6) . The state acts politically by taking in hand the disorganisation of the dominated classes and the organisation of the dominant (PPSC, pp . 53, 137, 187) . On the one hand, 'the juridical and ideological structures . . which set up at their level agents of production distributed in social classes as juridico-ideological
MARXISM, SOCIOLOGYAND POULANTZAS'S THEORY OF THE STATE
19
subjects, produce the . . . effect on the economic class struggle of concealing from these particular agents the fact that their relations are class relations' . Poulantzas calls this the 'effect of isolation', which is the basis of competition . Because the state relates to economic relations 'in the form in which they appear' the state can appear as the unity which represents the general interest of a variety of private individual interests . The very mode of participation offered by the state is therefore a mode of class disorganisation (PPSC, pp . 130-7) .[35) On the other hand, the dominant classes are unified and their interests presented as the general interest by one of the dominant classes or 'fractions' assuming the 'hegemonic role' in the 'power bloc' (PPSC, pp . 137-41) . This can only be achieved by the state taking in hand the organisation of the power bloc . The reason is that to present itself as representative of the general interest it is necessary for the hegemonic class or fraction to recognise and make concessions to the economic interests of the dominated classes, to the extent to which the latter have the power to enforce those interests in political class struggle . Purely economic concessions are possible under the capitalist mode of production because of the separation of levels characteristic of the structure of that mode (PPSC, pp . 191-4) . In order to make them, however, the state has to dissociate itself from the economic interests of the dominant classes in order to guarantee their political interests, and so has to establish its autonomy relative to the dominant classes (PPSC . p . 282) . Hence in order to preserve the structure it is necessary for the state to express not the power of the dominant class, but the power relations of all classes in the conjuncture (PPSC, pp . 256-7, 282-8, 299) .[36) At the level of the analysis of the structure, of the relations of classes within that structure, and of the relations between classes and the state in that structure, Poulantzas simply reproduces the sociological formulations of structural functionalism . The state is a class state only in the rhetorical sense that it is the state of a structure in which a class or classes are supposedly dominant, and so a state which reproduces that dominance . In its practical relation to classes in struggle, the state does not express the dominance of the dominant classes, but the existing relations of power between the classes in struggle, and so is, the arbiter of conflicting interests . At this level of analysis the 'political dominance' of the dominant classes organised in the hegemonic block refers simply to the perpetuation of the structure and not to any specific institutionalised political relations between classes or between class and state . The 'Marxism' of Poulantzas's political sociology is reduced to the claim, which can only be an arbitrary moral claim, that the structure is characterised by the dominance of one or a number of classes over other classes . Poulantzas not only reproduces the substantive theoretical positions of bourgeois sociology . He also reproduces the conception the latter holds of the nature of theory and its relation to 'empirical' research . Poulantzas is very insistent on the distinction between general theory and the analysis of concrete situations, and on the limited possibilities of the former .(37) This distinction is based on the sterile bourgeois conception of theory as a pseudo-deductive system of general propositions which is the corollary of bourgeois theories that consist of a series of metaphysical abstractions . The theoretical framework provides general statements which attribute functions to levels, institutions, etc ., but does not provide any account of the mechanisms which determine that these functions are actually
20
CAPITAL & CLASS
fulfilled . The latter can only be demonstrated in the 'analysis' of concrete situations. The system of explanation then becomes tautological, for anything that happens in the concrete situation can be linked, ex post facto, to the functional requirements of the system . The system persists, so must have functioned . Any changes in the system must have been necessary in order to secure the persistence of the system . Because there is no theory of the functioning of the system there is no reference point in relation to which the functioning of the system can be assessed . The theory tells us that the system functions without telling us how, the analysis of the current situation shows us that the system has functioned . There is, however, no way of connecting the one with the other . The result is that the distance between the theoretical and empirical analyses enables them constantly to support one another, the theoretical account providing a rhetoric in which to cloak the empirical account and dignify the latter with the term 'analysis' . Every event becomes a victory for the system, another demonstration of the eternal character of bourgeois relations of production . The struggle of the working class against thdse relations of production is devalued, its achievements becoming simply bonds which tie the working class ever more tightly into the system, its substantive defeats having a retrospective inevitability . However the historical fact that bourgeois relations of production have persisted must not be confused with the ideological belief that this persistence is necessary .
VIII THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF POULANTZAS'S THEORY Poulantzas's work consists of an attempt to get beyond the integrationism of structural-functionalism, to give the rhetorical Marxist declarations of Althusserianism some content, by superimposing on it a theory of class. However the theory of class is itself constructed on the basis of the structural-functionalist conception of society and is inserted into the latter . Hence, despite the Marxist rhetoric, Poulantzas is unable to get beyond a structural-functionalist theory . This can be well illustrated by looking at Poulantzas's attempts to evade the political implications of what is an extremely reactionary theory by introducing the possibility of revolutionary transformation . The latter has to be introduced from outside . In Political Power and Social Classes a new mode of production is introduced through the medium of the state . In Poulantzas's functionalist theory, the course of the class struggle is determined by the function of the state, which is the preservation of the unity of the whole . Political practice which takes the existing state as its objective is necessarily condemned to perpetuate the dominance of the dominant class . Political practice which is to transform the structure, rather than maintaining it, must replace the state appropriate to the capitalist mode of production by a new state, that appropriate to a new mode of production and defined by its functions in relation to the new mode . The political practice of the dominated classes must be directed to the creation of new organs of political power if it is not to be contained by the structure . This is the significance of Lenin's analysis of dual power for Poulantzas,(38] although in Political Power and Social Classes he confines his analysis to the transition from feudalism to capitalism . The latter analysis, embodied in the account of the absolutist state, is
MARXISM, SOCIOLOGY ANDPOULANTZAS'STHEORYOFTHESTATE
21
extraordinarily contorted (PPSC, pp . 157-67) . The Problem Poulantzas faces is that he has defined a functional unity of dominant class, dominant mode of production and dominant form of the state expressed in his non-contradictory concept of structure. There seems no way in which a form of the state appropriate to a new mode of production, and so the possibility of a transformation of the structure, can emerge on the basis of the existing structure . The customary solution to this problem in radical bourgeois theories is to introduce the class subject of history . The latter would create new political institutions appropriate to its ambition of creating the new mode of production which it has constituted theoretically on the basis of its moral critique of the existing mode . The revolution is therefore made by the will of the class conscious subject of history. Such a solution is clearly appropriate to a theory in which the exploitative character of the existing mode of production is defined on the basis of a moral evaluation, for it appears to give the latter an objective foundation in the 'true consciousness' of the class subject . In Political Power and Social Classes this solution is not acceptable to Poulantzas, for it expresses that 'humanist historicism' which makes men the subjects of history . If history is to have a subject, that subject must be the structure itself . The new form of the state does not express the will of the class subject of history, but expresses the structure of the mode of production whose dominance it anticipates . Hence the absolutist state represents the selftransformation of the feudal-type state into a capitalist-type state (in violation of the functional imperatives of the feudal mode of production) in anticipation of the task to be accomplished . The absolutist state has the specific autonomy and isolation effect characteristic of the capitalist state without the presuppositions of either yet existing (which is incomprehensible so long as the latter are presuppositions) . In fact 'the chronological dislocation between the absolutist state and the economic instance in the period of transition . . . can be explained by the function of the state during primary accumulation of capital' . The state suddenly assumes the capitalist form in order to create the dominance of the 'not-yet-given relations of production (i .e . capitalist relations) and to put an end to feudal relations : its function is to transform and to fix the limits of the mode of production .' (PPSC, pp . 160-1) . Poulantzas has to resort to a metaphysical philosophy of history for the same reason as have Marxist dogmatism, 'humanist historicism' and bourgeois sociology . All these theories abolish the basis of the Marxist theory of history, which is the concept of production as a contradictory unity, and so eliminate any source of change internal to the structure they theorise . Insofar as historical change is not purely contingent, it has to be brought in from outside, expressing a metaphysical principle of development, whether that be reason, technology, the forces of production, class consciousness, culture or whatever . This principle has to be assigned a point of insertion into the structure, which can be at the level of the economy, of the state, or of ideology, and located in a particular institution or group or in a variety of different institutions and groups . If one institution or group is selected this becomes the privileged integrative centre of the structure, which alone can 'transform and fix the limits' of the structure, but which can itself know no limits . The problem with all such metaphysical philosophies of history is that they
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are unable to reconcile the effectiveness of the chosen principle of development with any limitations on that effectiveness . Because it is a transcendent principle, it cannot be limited by the given, which can only provide the raw material for its self-realisation . Hence the foundation is provided for a permanent and irresoluble debate between 'objectivist' and 'subjectivist' philosophies of history, the former locating the principle of development outside man, making human history into an extension of natural history, the latter locating it in human consciousness, making nature the means of man's self-realisation . Poulantzas implicitly relates to precisely this antinomy in his critique of 'Marxist historicism' . to which he assimilates sociological functionalism . [391 Having rejected dogmatism for its economistic evolutionism, according to which history is made anonymously by the unfettered development of the forces of production operating with the force of natural law through the economy, Poulantzas turns on 'historicism', which he accuses of a complementary reductionism . Instead of reducing the political to the economic, it is reduced to the ideological, society being reduced to a value system or to the consciousness of a class subject . This leads to the 'over-politicisation' of ideologies and the abolition of the relative autonomy of the ideological and political . Such a reductionism makes it impossible to understand the limits imposed on social action by the structure itself, the political being seen as 'the simple principle of social totality and the principle of its development' through which ideology realises itself, instead of being seen as a 'specific level . . . in which the contradictions of a formation are reflected and condensed .' (PPSC, pp . 38, 40, 60, 195-206, 208) . Poulantzas tries to get beyond these complementary reductionisms by refusing to privilege a particular level, instead making the structure itself into the developmental principle . That this represents simply the replacement of 'normative' functionalism by 'structural' functionalism becomes clear as soon as Poulantzas discusses transition . The structure which is the developmental principle cannot be identified with the concrete, actually existing, structure, but is rather the 'not-yet-given' structure, a principle as metaphysical as the 'forces of production' or 'class consciousness' . The point at which this developmental principle is inserted into the concrete structure is the state, which becomes the privileged centre of integration of the structure, subject to no limits . The result is that Poulantzas reproduces the 'historicist' overpolitiasation, but this time to the advantage of the state, rather than of class consciousness . Instead of seeing structures as the product of practice, as 'historicism' does, Poulantzas cannot see practices as anything but expressions of the structure .(40) The political implications of this theory are disastrous from the point of view of the critique of revisionism, for the revolution is to be made by the state (the appearance of a new form of state presaging the appearance of a new mode of production) and not by the activity of the exploited classes, so that the justification of revisionism is simply reproduced on a new basis . At the same time the inflated importance given to the state devalues all attempts at mobilisation within a social formation which continues to be dominated by the capitalist type of state in the face of the omnipotence of that state .
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23
IX POULANTZAS'S LATER REVISIONS This is quite explicitly the conclusion which Althusser has drawn from his work, and is quite in accordance with his political position (Althusser, 1973 . pp . 48-9) . Poulantzas is clearly uneasy about the political implications of his theory, and has subsequently attempted to revise the theory in order to eliminate them, without realising that they are inherent in the theory itself . Hence his revisions have not been fundamental, consisting in the abolition of the radical separation of structure and practice, to integrate class struggle back into the structure (Poulantzas . 1973) . This is based on a modification of the concept of production on which this distinction is founded, without breaking with the bourgeois concept of production . Poulantzas has followed the Althusserians in altering the relation between the relation of real appropriation' and the 'property relation', but not the conception of these relations themselves . It is now recognised that the labour process 'exists only in its unity with certain relations of production' so that the relation of real appropriation is no longer an unmediated relation between man and nature, but becomes a social relation with political and ideological dimensions (CCC, pp . 18 . 20, 21) .1411 This does not represent a transformation of the concept of production itself . Rather it represents the observation that production only takes place within society, so that social relations constituted outside production, on the basis of relations of distribution, invade production itself . Hence the intervention of the social in production is conceptualised as the overdetermination of the relations of real appropriation by the political and ideological levels, production is not itself seen as the primary, and inherently social, relation . The basic theoretical framework is, therefore, unaffected by the change (CCC, p . 21, 227-8) . The most significant effect is that the state now assumes functions in the reproduction of the relation of real appropriation, and especially in the reproduction of the labour force, in which the 'ideological state apparatuses' have an important part to play . The result of the change is largely rhetorical . The level of practice is reintegrated with that of structure, so that the levels of the latter are all called levels of the 'class struggle', and the functioning of the structure is now the product of the class struggle . However, insofar as Poulantzas is not simply abandoning his structuralist theory in favour of a purely voluntarist theory of class struggle, the class struggle is still subordinate to the 'hidden hand' of the functional requirements of the structure which govern it course. The modifications to the theory in no way help to resolve its difficulties . The juxtaposition of a structural theory and a class theory of the state in Poulantzas's work is no doubt the basis of its appeal to Marxists . The concept of 'conjuncture', which marks the junction between the two, is also the most ambiguous concept in Poulantzas's work . The concept expresses the impact of the structure on the field of the class struggle, and so the apparent possibility of reconciling the revolutionary potential of the latter with the limits of the former . Since Poulantzas never offers a serious analysis of a conjuncture, nor an account of the way in which one might conduct such an analysis, but rather concentrates on the relation between classes and the state in a conjuncture which he takes as given, his theory is open to many interpretations . In Fascism and Dictatorship, for example, a descriptive account of the conflicts which underlay the development
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of fascism is complemented by a very ambiguous rhetoric . On the one hand, it is not clear whether fascism was the creation of the dominant class or of the state as functional level of the mode of production . On the other hand, it is not clear whether the success of fascism was the product of the theoretical weakness of the proletariat or of the necessary functioning of the mode of production . This ambiguity enables Poulantzas's work to be interpreted as a class-based instrumentalist theory of the state in which the conjuncture is simply the institutional context in which class struggle takes place,[42] or as a structuralfunctionalist theory in which the conjuncture describes the limits within which the class struggle is confined,[43] despite the fact that the two theories are quite inconsistent with one another . The result is that Poulantzas's work can provide the authority for almost anything one wants to say about class, politics and the state . Hence we find ourselves in a situation in which almost all 'Marxist' discussion of the state is wrapped in a terminology derived from Poulantzas which is devoid of any clear theoretical content . Insofar as the terminology always has an allusive content, the latter derives from bourgeois sociology . The Marxist theory of the state thus becomes parasitic on debates in bourgeois sociology .
X CONCLUSION - POULANTZAS AND THE CRISIS OF SOCIOLOGY In conclusion I would like briefly to situate Poulantzas's work in relation to bourgeois sociology . This is important because many radical young intellectuals come to Marxism through sociology . Since Poulantzas has been integrated into courses in bourgeois sociology as the token Marxist, it is through his work, with that of Althusser, that many come to Marxism . In this paper I have argued that Poulantzas reproduces the theory of structural-functionalist sociology . From this point of view his work must be seen in relation to the 'radicalisation' of sociology, as offering a new rhetoric for a theory that has been politically discredited, but never subjected to a serious Marxist critique . The 'radicalisation of sociology has subjected structural-functionalism to a double criticism . On the one hand, its integrationist perspective made it unable to allow for the possibility of social change . On, the other hand its 'structural determinism' left no room for the autonomy of the individual or social subject . The two criticisms were associated in the sense that the introduction of a subject also introduced the possibility of structural change . Hence the various radical currents which developed within sociology were all based on variants of the bourgeois philosophy of the subject, whether expressed in a return to 'normative' functionalism, to the work of Weber . to'Hegelian Marxism, and, in its extreme, to phenomenology . These critical sociologies deal with the political conservatism of structural-functionalism, while introducing theoretic problems of their own . Firstly, they are in turn unable coherently to theorise the structural limits of social action . Secondly, they eliminate any possibility of establishing sociology as a positive science . The first criticism to which structural-functionalism was subjected was dealt with fairly easily by adding a functionalist theory of conflict according to which conflict and the associated social change are subordinate to the functioning of the structure (Coser, 1956) . The second criticism was rejected on the basis of the
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25
rejection of the metaphysical character of the bourgeois philosophy of the subject and of the argument that the category of the subject, as well as the consciousness of that subject, is socially constituted (PPSC, p . 208) . These responses were not enough to save structural-functionalism, for its fundamental weakness was rhetorical and not theoretical . It continued to be burdened with a rhetoric which was transparently extremely conservative . Althusserianism, and specifically the work of Poulantzas, rigorously reproduces the theory of structural functionalism in the framework of a rhetoric which is apparently very much more radical .[44) It thus provides the means by which structural-functionalism can enjoy a renaissance, and most particularly by which it can attack its critics . By defending the subordination of social change and of the category of the subject to the functioning of the structure in the name of Marxism and of science, the philosophy of the subject can be routed by an attack which comes, apparently, from the left and from reason, despite the fact that the effect of its theory is actually to postpone the revolution into an indefinite future, and to explain the necessary failure of any political initiatives in the present . Hence it should not be surprising that under the banner of Poulantzas are assembled not only Marxists disillusioned after the immedate failures of the late 1960s and young intellectuals attracted by the radical rhetoric of a theoreticist and scientistic formalism, but also former Parsonian luminaries who are able to communicate with their students once again . In this paper I have been concerned with the theory within which Poulantzas is ensnared . It is this theory which prevents him from developing his many undoubted insights into significant contributions to the Marxist understanding of the state . It is only by identifying this theory, and subjecting it to a Marxist critique, that the positive elements of Poulantzas's work can be identified and put on a firm foundation . Marxism must be able to theorise the specificity of the political, and the structural limits within which the state is constrained, to theorise forms of state and of regime, the nature of political crises and the role of the state in the transition to socialism . The merit of Poulantzas's work is that he does raise, although in a distorted form, these questions . The weakness of his work is that he does not provide the means even to begin to resolve them .
NOTES 1
2 3 4
Negri, (1976) . Examples of such theories range from sociologists like Vic Allen to the editors of New Left Review, notably Perry Anderson . R . Miliband (1%9), far from being 'marked by the absence of any theoretical problematic' (Poulantzas, 1976, p . 64) is dominated by such a theory . It is in relation to these theories that Poulantzas's work has been received in this country (n . 43 below) (c .f . Poulantzas . 1967) . The debate between the two is in Poulantzas (1969, 1976) and Miliband (1970, 1973) . See below, pp . 9, 21 . This is essentially Althusser's definition of 'practice' on which he bases his
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reconstruction of Marxism (L . Althusser, 1969, p . 166) . The literature on Althusser is considerable . I have argued at length elsewhere (1976) that Althusserianism rests on this same conception of production, with the theoretical consequences which I outline below . Most critical treatments of Althusser deliberately evade the question of Althusser's interpretation of Marx . A . Glucksman (1972) ; J . Ranciere (1974) provide by far the most penetrating critiques of Althusserianism . See also the devastating review of Pour Marx, written before his conversion by N . Poulantzas (1966) . 5 This is the basis of Balibar's discussion of the combination of the 'property relation' and the 'relation of real appropriation' . (L . Althusser and E . Balibar, 1970) . 6 B . Hindess and P . Hirst (1975) try to develop a general theory on the basis of this ideology, seeking to give the various pre-capitalist forms of distribution a material foundation in the development of the forces of production . The result is to establish the incoherence of this ideology by reductio ad absurdum : if the ideology is correct, the past cannot have existed . Unfortunately Hindess and Hirst prefer to abandon the past rather than bourgeois ideology! 7 'In so far as political economy is bourgeois, i .e . in so far as it views the capitalist order as the absolute and ultimate form of social production, instead of as a historically transient stage of development . . .' (K . Marx, 1976, p . 96 ; c .f . Marx, 1973, pp . 83-8) . L . Colletti, in his excellent article 'Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International' (in Colletti, 1972) argues that it is its conception of the economy, common to all the thinkers of the Second International, rather than its fatalism, which defines revisionism . He also traces this conception to later Marxism and to bourgeois sociology . However he focusses on the question of the eternisation of the commodity form of the product of labour implicit in the neglect of the theory of value, and does not bring out sufficiently clearly the derivative, but even more important, eternisation of the capital relation as a development of the eternisation of commodity relations . 8 The inability to distinguish clearly between labour and labour power is closely associated with the failure to integrate form and content in the account in K . Marx, 1973, pp . 304-8 . 9 This is why the starting point of Capital is the commodity, which is the simplest expression of the unity of form and content, of value and use-value . c .f . Mandel . Introduction to Marx (1976), pp . 20-21 . On the relation of the Grundrisse to Capital see M. Nicolaus (1968, 1973) ; M . Itoh (1975) . R . Rosdolsky's study of the origins of Marx's Capital is to be published imminently by Pluto Press . 10 The process is historical in the sense that it takes place in history . This does not imply that it expresses the self-development of some original contradictions . 11 I shall concentrate on the theory expounded in Political Power and Social Classes, (hereafter PPSC), to which Poulantzas remains committed (Poulantzas, 1976) . 12 1 Banaji : (n, d . ), offers an excellent critique of the Stalinist theory of modes of
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production, and some elements of a properly Marxist theory . The classic exposition of the theory is Stalin's Dialectical & Historical Materialism (1938) . 13 Hence Althusser believes that trade union struggle is necessarily defensive since it can only concern the rate of exploitation (L . Althusser, 1971, pp . 82-3) . In the same way for Poulantzas the contrast between economic and political struggle is that between conflict over the 'realisation of profit and . the increase of wages' and conflict over the maintenance or transformation of social relations (PPSC, p . 86) . 14 Althusser and Balibai s 'real appropriation relation' . 15 Althusser and Balibar's 'property relation' . Althusserians on occasion insist that the relation of ownership is not simply a political or ideological relation, but has a material foundation . They have, however, been unable to show what this foundation is . More important, they insist that the relation cannot be reduced to such a foundation . 16 I shan't discuss structural-functionalism in any detail, since I am only concerned with its basic principles . The similarity of Althusser's conception of theory to that of Parsons has been noted by P . Walton and A . Gamble (1972, p .110) . Poulantzas himself has compared Althussei s conception of politics to Parsons's (1966) (c . f . PPSC, p . 40) . Ranciere(1974pp, 229-30) shows that they have a common conception of ideology . 17 This need not be based on what Althusser calls an 'anthropology of needs' which bases the primacy of physical needs on the concept of human nature . I n his case it is based on the observation that society would cease to exist if it did not reproduce itself physically . This observation is not sufficient to establish the primacy of physical reproduction . For Marx in the capitalist mode of production there is no doubt that the requirements of value production dominate those of physical production . 18 Althusserians normally assert that one level is dominant, within the limits of the specific autonomy of the other levels, so that the whole is 'structuredin-dominance' . This is supposed to distinguish the Althusserian whole from anybody else's . However (i) it is never clear what dominance means in this context (ii) the 'economic', i .e . the functional requirements of material production, determines which level will be dominant, so the dominance is the expression of the functional principle, making the Althusserian totality no less 'expressive' than the Parsonian one . 19 Outlined already in the Introduction of the Crundrisse, (Marx, 1973, pp . 83100) . 20 For example, many Marxist economists get very worried about the so-called 'transformation problem' because they believe that a theory of the economic should be evaluated in terms of the elegance and simplicity with which it derives an equilibrium price system, forgetting that such a price system is no more than a fiction created by vulgar economy to conceal the tautological character of its formulae . On Marx's theory of value see : R . Hilferding, 1949 ; 1 . Rubin, 1972 ; E . Mandel, Introduction to Marx, 1976, pp . 38-46 ; L . Colletti, 1972, pp . 76-97 . On Marx's method c .f . E . Mandel, Introduction to Marx, 1976, pp . 17-25 ; M . Nicolaus, 1973, pp . 24-44 ; V . Lenin, 1961 ; F . Engels, 1962 . These works all bring out clearly the specificity of Marx's dialectic in relation to that of Hegel, and so the inadequacy of the characterisation of this
28
21
22
23 24
25 26 27
28
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30 31 32 33 34
CAPITAL & CLASS position as neo-Hegelian, or the corresponding interpretation of Marx as a 'capital-logic' interpretation . Poulantzas distinguishes an institution as 'a system of norms or rules which is socially sanctioned' from the structure as the 'organising matrix of institutions' (PPSC, p . 115n . 24) . Poulantzas recognises that this, the most fundamental definition in his theory, derives from contemporary political science (PPSC, p . 47, n . 17) and is not found in any of the Marxist classics (PPSC, p . 50) . Poulantzas makes quite explicit the foundation of his conception of the state in the contrast between material production and social conditions of production which rests on the bourgeois conception of production in his later Fascism and Dictatorship (hereafter FD) (1974, p . 302) . This use of the concept of dominance is given no coherent content . In PPSC, p . 29, Poulantzas argues that it is in some form characteristic of all modes of production . However he has subsequently renounced this position, (1965 . p . 81 ; c .f . PPSC, p . 126) . Poulantzas distinguishes between Balibar's 'homology' and his 'correspondence' (PPSC, p . 27 . n . 11) although it is not clear what the difference is . This idea is strongly reminiscent of Levi-Strauss s conception of myth . E . Laclau : (1975, pp . 100-101) makes a similar point . A . Cutler (1971) argues that Althusser avoids this reduction of the autonomy of ideology by having a 'concept of the specificity of the ideological level' (p . 12), but insofar as this is the case it is an idealist concept, for it is given no material foundation outside the Ideological State Apparatuses . The insistence that 'relations of production' are not social, but are rather a combination of 'agents of production' with the 'material-technical conditions of labour' is a clear expression of the bourgeois conception of production (PPSC, p. 65) . The whole of Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (CCC) is based on this theory of class . For example the distinction between productive and unproductive labour is based on the material character of the product and not on its subsumption under capital as productive of surplus value (ibid ., p . 221) . The division between mental and manual labour is founded on the technical division of labour, whereas Marx made it quite clear that this division expressed the appropriation of the creative powers of labour by capital . The distinction between sections of the petit-bourgeoisie is based on distinctive features of the labour process, and not on distinctive relations to capital . The unity of the pet it-bourgeoisie is constituted ideologically, and not on the basis of a common relation to capital . Since the political is once again dominant in the present imperialist era one might expect that class would have given way to estates . This dominance is inscribed in the very definition of the concept of practice for Althusser (1969, p . 184) . Hence the falling rate of profit for Poulantzas is the contingent result of the struggle over distributive shares (CCC, p . 107) . Poulantzas does not even begin to attempt to specify these limits . Again the limits are unspecified . The only factor which might explain structural determination is the level of organisation of the class . However,
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29
insofar as this is admitted as an unconditioned factor it makes it possible for the class to transcend the structural limits and so to become a class subject . This is to reproduce the 'historicism' which Poulantzas condemns . Since power relations exist at each level of struggle, it might seem that the notion of dominance is weakened . However the dominant class in the social formation is that which is dominant at the dominant level of the formation (PPSC, 113) . We still do not know what 'dominant' means in either of these cases . 35 The 'effect of isolation' is ultimately determined by the structure of the labour process (PPSC, 129), although the argument is extremely confused . In fact this isolation is characteristic not of the economic per se, but of circulation, where it depends on the relation of commodity exchange, which is a moment of the relations of total social production and not the effect of juridical or ideological structures . It is not characteristic of the moment of immediate production in which labour progressively loses its individual character . Ignoring the latter is typical of the bourgeois view of 'social relations of production' as relations of distribution . 36 The dominant classes constitute a ruling bloc under the hegemony of one fraction, around which cluster 'allied' and 'supporting' classes, fractions, strata or categories (PPSC, pp . 243-4) . These concepts do not apply to relations constituted on the 'political scene, hence the ruling class is quite distinct from the dominant class and the hegemonic class or fraction need not even appear on the political scene (PPSC, pp . 248-9) . This is very mysterious, for it is difficult to know where politics occurs, and so where political dominance is founded, if it is not on the political scene . In fact these relations of political domination seem to be constituted in the structure and are prior to the constitution of classes or class struggle . In other words the class struggle is a phantom inserted between the structure and the institutional relations of the 'political scene' which has no reality of its own . 37 Hence Poulantzas's theoretical musings are purely formal in the sense that the theory has no substantive content, indicating only the types of relationship which must pertain between various aspects of the structure and the class struggle . The specific content can only be determined by the analysis of 'concrete situations . This is the only way to distinguish secondary factors from real causes' . (FD, p . 11) . The formal elaboration is thus accompanied by a series of empirical examples, 'analyses' of 'concrete situations' . 38 This involves a gross distortion of Lenin's analysis . For Lenin the Soviets were not the means by which the revolution could be made . The period of 'dual power' was a period in which the Kerensky regime and the Menshevikdominated Soviets competed with the ambition of being the seat of bourgeois state power . For Lenin the socialist revolution depended on a destruction of the bourgeois state which could free the Soviets as the basis of a new state power . That they did not become such is another story . 39 Poulantzas's treatment of functionalism is rather inconsistent, largely because he identifies normative functionalism with structural functionalism (c .f . PPSC, p . 198) . It is only the former which can be assimilated to 'Marxist historicism' . 40 In his early review of Althusser (1966) Poulantzas interprets Althusserianism as an attempt to reconcile Sartre's reduction of structure to practice
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CAPITAL & CLASS ('historicist') with Levi-Strauss's reduction of practice to structure ('functionalist gestaltist') . In the review Poulantzas concludes that Althusser does not get beyond the latter functionalist reductionism . For some reason Reading Capital blunted Poulantzas's critical faculties . This reformulation of the relation between the property and real appropriation relations is closely associated with the work of Bettelheim . It was adopted by Balibar (1973) . It leads to an examination of modes of production in terms of the 'consistency' of particular 'property relations' with particular 'real appropriation relations', which is in fact an examination of the technical conditions under which different relations of distribution are possible . Bettelheim has concentrated on the post-capitalist mode of production . Hindess and Hirst (1975) do exactly the same for pre-capitalist modes . This is the interpretation of Althusserian purists who regard Poulantzas as an instrumentalist . (A . Cutler, 1971 pp . 7-8; Hindess and Hirst, 1975, pp . 37-9) . It is the way in which elements of Poulantzas's work have been absorbed by many 'Marxists in Britain . For example, it is easily assimilated to neo-Weberian analyses in which the 'conjuncture can be described in institutional-ideological terms . This is the interpretation of Poulantzas's work which dominates neogramscian and neo-Weberian critiques, e .g . Miliband (1970, 1973); E . Wright et al . (1975-6) . This opposition of 'structuralist' to 'instrumentalist' theories reproduces that of 'subjectivist' to 'objectivist' bourgeois philosophies of history . It is significant that all Poulantzas's criticisms of functionalism can be reduced to accusations of 'historicism' which are aimed at 'normative' rather than 'structural functionalism, and of 'integrationism', which are disposed of with a theory of the functionality of conflict, such as is presented by Coser and reproduced by Poulantzas .
REFERENCES Althusser, L . (1%9) For Marx . London . Althusser, L . (1971) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays . London . Althusser, L . and Balibar, E . (1970) Reading Capital . London . Anderson, P . (1976) Considerations on Western Marxism . London . Balibar, E . (1973) Self Criticism : Theoretical Practice, 7/8 . Banaji, J . n .d . Modes of Production in a Materialist Conception of History (mimeo) . Clarke, S . (1976) Althusserian Marxism . (mimeo) . Colletti, L . (1972) From Rousseau to Lenin . London . Coser, L . (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict . London . Cutler, A . (1971) Fascism and Political Theory . Theoretical Practice, 2 . Engels, F . (1962) Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in K . Marx and F . Engels: Selected Works, Vol . 1, Moscow . Glucksmann, A . (1972) A Ventriloquist Structuralism, New Left Review, 72 .
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Hilferding, R . (1949) Bi hn-Bawerk's Criticism of Karl Marx, in E . Bohm-Bawerk : Karl Marx and the Close of his System, New York . Hindess, B . and Hirst, P . (1975) Pre-capitalist Modes of Production, London . Itoh, M . (1975) Marx's Theory of Crisis, CSE Bulletin, IV, 1 . Laclau, E . (1975) The Specificity of the Political, Economy and Society, 4, 1 . Lenin, V .I . (1961) Philosophical Notebooks, Collected Works, Vol . 38, Moscow . Marx, K . n .d . Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow . Marx, K . (1962a) Wage Labour and Capital, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol . 1, Moscow . Marx, K . (1962b) Afterword to the Second Edition of Capital, in Marx and Engels : Selected Works, Vol . 1, Moscow . Marx, K . (1962c) Wages, Price and Profit, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol . 1, Moscow. Marx, K . (1973) Grundrisse . London . Marx, K . (1976) Capital, Vol . 1 . London . Miliband, R . (1969) The State in Capitalist Society, London . Miliband, R . (1970)'The Capitalist State, New Left Review, 59 . Miliband, R . (1973) Poulantzas and the Capitalist State, New Left Review, 82 . Negri, A . (1976) Sup quelques tendances de la theorie communiste de I'Etat la plus recente : Revue critique . ACSES Colloque sur l'Etat . Mimeo. Originally appeared in Italian in Critica dell Diritto, 3 . Pashukanis, E . B . (1951) General Theory of Law and Marxism (1924, 1927) in Babb: Soviet Legal Philosophy, Boston . Nicolaus, M . (1968) The Unknown Marx, New Left Review, 48 . Nicolaus, M . (1973) Foreword to Crundrisse, Marx (1973) . Poulantzas, N . (1966) Vers une theorie marxiste, Temps Modernes, 240 . Poulantzas, N . (1%7) Marxist Political Theory in Great Britain, New Left Review, 43 . Poulantzas, N . (1%9) The Problem of the Capitalist State, New Left Review, 58 . Poulantzas, N . (1973) Political Power and Social Classes . London (PPSC) . Poulantzas, N . (1974) Fascism and Dictatorship . London . (FD .) Poulantzas, N . (1975) Classes in Contemporary Capitalism . London, (CCC) Poulantzas, N . (1976) The Capitalist State : A Reply to Miliband and Laclau . New Left Review, 95 . Ranciere, J . (1974) La lecon d'Althusser . Paris . Rosdolsky, R . (1968) Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marx'schen Kapital . Frankfurt . Rubin, I . (1972) Essays on Marx's Theory of Value. Detroit . Walton, P . and Gamble, A . (1972) From Alienation to Surplus Value . London . Wright, E ., et al (1975-6) Some Recent Developments in the Marxist Theory of the State, Monthly Review, 27 .
ARCHIVE : MARX, CLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE PROBLEM OF DYNAMICS PART I Henryk Grossman Translated by Pete Burgess
I The dominant view of Marx is to regard him as a student of and successor to the Classical economists ; as an economist who 'completed' that work .(1) The result is a precisely formulated conception : the labour theory of value, as expounded by Smith and Ricardo, in essence leads on to socialism - a consequence left unstated by the theory's founders . Marx was the first to think Ricardo's theory through to its conclusion, completing the latter's final unstated words, as it were . (21 However, this interpretation begins to look extremely questionable when it is viewed from the vantage point provided by the crtique of political economy, which posits that 'the development of political economy and of the opposition to which it gives rise keeps pace with thereat development of the social contradictions and class conflicts inherent in capitalist production' .(3J Marx distinguishes four phases in the development of political economy : the first embraces the period of 'Classical political economy', and the remaining three the various stages of 'Vulgar Economics' . For Marx, the factor which unites the representatives of Classical political economy into one intellectual school is the basic similarity of their historical situation, despite their sometimes great individual differences, e .g . between Petty, Hume and the Physiocrats, and between the latter and Smith or Ricardo .(4J This period was that of the coming into being of modern capitalism, hence the modern working class, and consequently a time in which the 'class struggle . . . was as yet undeveloped' . (5J Classical political economy is the expression of industrial capitalism during its rise and struggle for power ; its theoretical and practical thrust is not directed against the proletariat, which is still weak, but against the representatives of the old society, the feudal landowners and out-moded usurers . The feudal -forms of ground-rent and 'antediluvian' interest-bearing capital, 'must first be destroyed as independent forms and subordinated to industrial capital' .(6) Ricardo's theory of ground-rent, as Hume's critique before it,(7) was aimed
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directly at feudal land-ownership ; at the same time Ricardo's theory of value did, in theory, announce the possibility of a struggle between capitalist and wagelabourers . The industrial bourgeoisie and its theory are still 'naive', and can afford to engage in the pursuit of truth without regard for the possible dangers and consequences, as yet unsuspected, which follow from its own principles . The Classical economists consequently expound the labour theory of value without any fear of theoretically raising the contradictions between the working class and the propertied class which can be derived from it,(8) or of establishing the distinction between productive and unproductive labour - which for them was chiefly meant to embrace the representatives of the feudal occupations . According to Marx, 'Classical' is a term which applies to those authors who make up this 'battle-front', such as John Locke in his polemic against 'unproductive' feudal land-ownership and ground-rent, which in his view, 'does not differ at all from usury . The position adopted by the Classical economists becomes particularly clear in their doctrine of 'productive and 'unproductive' labour which serves to clarify the relationship of the rising bourgeoisie to the preceding classes and ideologies . The doctrine is in stark contradiction both to the view held in the ancient world, 'in which materially productive work bore the stigma of slavery and was regarded merely as a pedestal for the idle citizen'[9) and to that of the social classes and occupations of the feudal period, which were declared to be unproductive . In Marx's view the language of Classical political economy is, 'the language of the still revolutionary bourgeoisie which has not yet subjected to itself the whole of society, the State etc . All these illustrious and time-honoured occupations sovereign, judge, priest, officer etc . - with all the old ideological professions to which they give rise, their men of letters, their teachers-and priests, are from an economic standpoint put on the same level as the swarm of their own lackeys and jesters maintained by the bourgeoisie and by idle wealth - the landed nobility and idle capitalists . They live on the produce of other people's industry' .(9) As long as the bourgeoisie has not yet confronted the 'really productive' workers in conscious and openly hostile antagonism, a class which could equally, well claim that 'they (the bourgeoisie) live from the produce of other people's industry, it can still face the 'unproductive classes' of the feudal period as the 'representative of productive labour' . When the bourgeoisie has consolidated its power in the course of economic development, partly assumed dominance over the state, and partly concluded a compromise with the feudal classes and the 'ideological professions', and in addition once the proletariat and its theoretical representatives arrive on the scene and deduce egalitarian and socialist conclusions from the Classicals' labour theory of value (the right of the working class to the full fruits of its labour), 'things take a new turn', and political economy 'tries to justify "economically" from its own standpoint, what at an earlier stage it had criticised and fought against' .(10) At this point Classical political economy disappears from the historical stage, and the hour of Vulgar Economics is at hand ; Chalmers, MacCulloch, J .B . Say and C . Harnier - the second phase of political economy . The Vulgar Economics of the 1820s and 1830s - the 'metaphysical period' of political economy(11) - was the expression of the victorious, and hence now conservative, bourgeoisie . Apologetically seeking to obscure the true nature of the prevailing order, this class
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found its theoretical representative in England in Thomas Malthus . He opposed any tendency in Ricardo's work which was 'revolutionary against the old order' .(12] Like Ricardo, Malthus did indeed wish to have' bourgeois production', but only as long as 'it is not revolutionary . . . but merely creates a broader and more comfortable material basis for the "old society"', a society with which the bourgeoisie had negotiated a compromise.[13] This was accompanied by an abandonment of the distinction between productive and unproductive labour - out of fear of a proletarian critique which had already made its demands known, - which was replaced in Say and Malthus, for example, by the view that all work is equally productive . The real meaning of Ricardo s theory of ground-rent, originally directed against the land-owners, was similarly turned into its direct opposite by Malthus, who introduced the problem of the disposal of the product under capitalism . Although Malthus does in fact point to the inevitability of generalised overproduction, affecting all branches of the economy, he only does so in order to prove the necessity of unproductive consumers and classes, i .e. 'buyers who are not sellers', so that the sellers can find a market where they can dispose of their supply of goods . Hence the necessity of waste and profligacy (including war) .(14] Finally . Ricardo's labour theory of value is also abandoned . By conceiving of wages as a proportion of the total social product (relative wages) . Ricardo simultaneously states the existence of the class relation which is inherent to capitalism .[15] The development of the real contradictions of capitalist production is accompanied by a polarisation of the theoretical class antagonism contained, in embryonic form, in Ricardo's labour theory of value . The theoretical opposition 'to political economy has (already) come into being in more or less economic, utopian critical and revolutionary forms .'[ 161 Thompson (1824), Peroy Ravenstone (1824) and Hodgskin (1825, 1827), the theoretical representatives of the working class in England, used Ricardo's labour theory of value to derive egalitarian conclusions and demands .(17] In the face of such demands - as a text by Malthus from 1832 openly admits(181 - the classical labour theory of value was progressively abandoned, and transformed into a meaningless theory of costs of production : the specific value-creating role of labour was utterly obliterated . Land and capital were now attributed with their own productivity - creation of value! - and labour was recognised as simply another factor of production alongside them . This in turn led to the overthrow of Ricardo's conception of the wage as a relation expressing the share of the working class in the total social product which it itself has created - hence justifying the capitalists' profit as the result of the 'productivity' of their capital (not labour) . In similar fashion ground-rent was justified as the fruit of the productivity of the land, which meant that the antagonism towards land-ownership which characterised Classical theory now became meaningless and irrelevant . The third phase of political economy, the period following the July Revolution, in the 1830s and 1840s, was a time of sharpening class antagonisms, and an ever growing number of proletarian critiques of the prevailing social order in England (John Cray, 1831 ; Bray, 1839) and in France (Pecqueuer) . It was a period which also saw the first attempts by the working class at political organisation : the St . Simonists, Buchez, Louis Blanc (Organisation du travail, 1839), and Proudhon's struggle against interest-bearing capital .
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The outcome was a strengthened phase in the vulgarisation and transformation of Classical political economy .[19) The last remaining vestiges of the original content of the theory were eradicated : those real contradictions of capital which were still admitted and pointed out by Malthus and Say (Malthus's theory of generalised crisis, Say's disproportionality theory) were now denied and disappeared from economic theory . In the works of F . Bastiat (1848) capitalism has been transformed into a system characterised by harmony . The fourth phase of political economy, after 1848 . falls into the period in which class antagonisms became fully developed, and unmistakably visible in the June battles in Paris, when, for the first time, the working class struggled for its own aims . The result was the complete dissolution of the Ricardian school and a departure from any real theory, which was abandoned and replaced by the historical description of phenomena (a school with W . Roscher at its head) .[201 Alternatively, economic theory was degraded to the status of a pseudo-theory, by leaving the terrain of economic reality and taking flight to the higher regions of psychology . (First attempts at a subjective theory of value by Senior and Gossen, 1853 .) Both these moves served to reach the desired end : a turning away from real class antagonisms and the granting of an equal role to capital and labour in the creation of value . The theory of costs of production, the equalisation of labour, land and capital as factors in the creation of value, was unsatisfactory as it represented a trivial circular argument . In attempting to explain the process of the creation of value, the value of products was reduced to the value of the factors jointly acting to produce the product, i .e . value is explained by value . (No such circular proof exists in Marx's labour theory of value, as it is labour which creates value, but is itself not value : it is the use-value of the commodity labour-power) . The force of the critique made by the left Ricardians necessitated the abandonment of the theory of costs of production : however, since no one wished to return to the labour theory of value a way out was found in the transformation of economics into a branch of psychology . In principle Senior had already accomplished this change in his Political Economy (London, 1836) . Basing himself on one of the two interpretations of labour provided by Smith, according to which labour is not seen as an objective expenditure of energy (measured by time) but rather the subjective effort employed in producing an article, Senior treated work as a psychological act of sacrifice . In order for capital to be granted an equal status with labour as a parallel factor in the creation of value, it must also be turned into a psychological variable . If the wage was seen as the reward for the effort of work, then the interest on capital became the reward for the subjective sacrifice of saving, and the renunciation of immediate consumption . The 'development' of the individual phases of political economy, as sketched out above, forces us to the following observation . Can Marx, the theoretician of the proletariat in a progressive stage of capitalist development, take over and complete' the doctrines and categories of Classical political economy, in particular those of Ricardo, as the prevailing view maintains, if Ricardo, like Classical economy in general, expressed bourgeois interests at a much lower stage of capitalist development, a period of undeveloped class antagonisms? We must not only reject this view, but also the thesis which proposes that Marx's original achievement consists in a 'socialist critique' of capitalism - i .e. that Marx drew the socialist conclusions inherent in Ricardo's labour theory of value ; that he was a
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'Ricardo turned socialist' . Since pre-marxist socialists also made socialist criticisms of capitalism, such criticism cannot betaken as the specific differentiating feature of Marls theory . In fact, Marx reproached the egalitarian, left Ricardians for the 'superficiality' of their critique : namely that they based themselves on Ricardo's theory and merely attacked 'particular results of the capitalist mode of production', instead of its 'manifold presuppositions' . In Marx's eyes an effective socialist critique could only be made from the basis of a new, and specific, theory, and with the assistance of new economic categories . In his critique Marx proceeds from the mystifying character of the materialised forms of value, i .e . the fact that the relations between persons in the process of production appear as relations between objects, things, in which the material form of the real relations between people becomes obscured . Marx therefore speaks of the deceptive appearance of all forms of value . In contrast to the transparent, pre-capitalist forms, the relations between exploiter and exploited in the modern capitalist form of value are made opaque by the fact that the wagerelation, i .e . a form of value which regulates the 'exchange' between the worker and the employer, gives rise to the semblance that the worker is fully recompensed for all the work performed, and carries out no unpaid labour .[21J According to the Classicals' theory all exchange transactions correspond strictly to the law of value, i . e . equal amounts of labour time always exchange for equal amounts of labour time : this principle also applies to exchange relations between workers and employers . However, for Marx it is quite evident that there is no exchange of equivalents between worker and employer . If the worker were to receive as much in wages (measured in labour) from the employer as he gives in labour then profit, surplus accruing to the employer, would be impossible, and hence too the capitalist economy which is based on this profit .)22) And since both profit and capitalism do in fact exist, no exchange of equivalents can have taken place. Marx's entire efforts were directed at showing that the transaction between the capitalist and the worker is as much an exchange of equivalents as of non-equivalents, depending on whether this transaction is regarded as being within the sphere of circulation (the market), or as taking place during the process of production . The exchange of equivalents between worker and capitalist on the market is merely a semblance arising from the form of exchange . Despite the apparent exchange of equivalents, 'the laws based on the production of commodities . . . become changed into their direct opposite . . . . The relation of exchange between capitalist and worker becomes a mere semblance belonging only to the process of circulation ; it becomes a mere form, which is alien to the content of the transaction itself, and merely mystifies it . The constant sale and purchase of labour-power is the form ; the content is the constant appropriation by the capitalist, without equivalent, of a portion of the labour of others which has already been objectified, and his repeated exchange of this labour for a greater quantity of the living labour of others .'[23J Marx considered that one of Smith's great merits was that he at least sensed that the exchange between capital and wage-labour represented a chink in the law of value; although he could not explain it he could see, 'that in the actual result the law is suspended .'[24] According to Marx it is precisely the form of exchangevalue which mystifies the real content . 'The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour,
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into paid labour and unpaid labour . '125) And just as with the wage-form, so all the other forms of value emerging in the process of exchange also serve to mystify the content of exchange.[26] The material forms of value (exchange-value, groundrent, profit, interest, wages and prices etc .) disguise and invert the real relations between people, by making them appear as the 'fantastic form of a relation between things', 'a social hieroglyphic', 'a mystery .[27] In fact Classical political economy sought to reduce the mystifying categories of value to 'labour', and thought that in doing so they had grasped the essence behind the deceptive appearance of the phenomena . Marx wanted to demonstrate that this attempt at a solution leads to contradictions which could not be overcome from the standpoint adopted by the Classical economists . Any glance backwards at earlier economic epochs shows that mystifying forms of value first arose in the period of commodity production and exchange .[28] If these forms of value are reduced to 'labour', the consequence would be that their mystifying character would be a form of appearance which would permanently accompany all social processes, as 'labour' is itself a 'nature-imposed necessity' of human existence .(29) However, experience contradicts this view, and makes this contradiction insoluble from the standpoint of the Classical economists . For Marx, who wanted to capture the 'concrete' in thought, the mystifying categories of value cannot simply be eliminated or ignored, to be replaced by other 'true' categories . Even though the phenomena of exchange-value are mystifying, they are still an important component of reality . The point is not to eliminate the mystifying factor and substitute another category for it, but rather to explain the necessary connection between the two, and hence what is deceptive in the phenomena of value . Because capitalist reality is a dual reality, possessing a mystifying and a non-mystifying side, which are bound together into a concrete unity, any theory which reflects this reality must likewise be a unity of opposites . It has become almost banal to say that Marx taught that monetary processes should not be regarded as the primary elements in economic events, but simply as their characteristic reflexive forms, and that the real processes associated with the commodity should be sought behind the monetary veil, within the process of production . The polar opposition, which is acknowledged to exist between commodity and money, is repeated within the world of commodities itself as the opposition between the value of the commodity and its use-value : the reason being that it is not the metallic existence of money which is deceptive, but rather its character as value . [301 Marx sarcastically criticises the 'crude vision' of political economy which sees what is misleading in exchange-value solely in its 'completed form as money, but not as already existing in the form of the values of commodities, to the extent that they appear as mutual equivalent forms for each other .[31] It is precisely this equivalent form which Marx regards as providing the mystery: the 'hidden contradiction of useful form and value' within the individual commodity becomes visible in the 'external opposition' of two commodities, in which one counts 'only as use-value' and the other commodity - money - 'only as exchange-value . [32] The illusion is not due merely to the money-form, but to the value-form as a whole. Consequently, one does not only have to search behind the veil of money to find the real economic processes, but also behind the veil thrown up by value in general .
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11 In the section of Volume I of Capital dealing with 'The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret'[33] Marx attempts to penetrate the mystifying nature of the form of exchange-value . Two different, but basically analogous methods are used to this end . The first is the method of historical comparison between the period of commodity production and earlier periods when there was no production or exchange of commodities, and consequently no exchange-values . Such periods did not therefore exhibit any of the later mystifications : personal relations of dependence appeared in undisguised form, and were not veiled by the process of exchange .[34] In order to illustrate this Marx takes three different noncommodity producing economic formations : Robinson Crusoe, the feudal lords with their serfs, and finally the patriarchal peasant family . In all these instances all that is produced are objects of use, for the satisfaction of immediate requirements . Since there are no exchange-values, 'all the relations between Robinson and these objects that form his self-created wealth are simple and transparent' . [351 What is mysterious and mystifying about the production of commodities clearly does not have its source in the use-value aspect of commodities, but solely in the process of exchange and in exchange-value .(36] Marx obtains the same result by the method of comparing various aspects within the production of commodities itself - for instance, the aspect of value with that of use-value, the process of valorisation with the labour-process . In short, the means of getting behind the mystifying character of the categories of exchange-value are, in fact, use-valuesl The use-values of earlier historical periods are just as much the result of human labour as the products of the epoch of commodity production . But it is only in this latter period that products assume a mystifying character . The same source - labour - cannot possibly yield such totally different results . It is not sufficient to say that commodities are simply the products of 'labour', just as those of earlier economic systems are . Rather, it is necessary to distinguish two different aspects of labour, its 'dual character : firstly, labour which is 'concrete', 'useful', creative not of value, but rather of objects of use; the labour of the joiner, tailor, weaver, which functions in the technical labour-process and is a 'purposive, productive activity' for the appropriation of the natural world and is a nature-imposed necessity for all social formations .(371 Secondly, general human 'exchange-value positing' (tauschwertsetzende) labour, which functions in the process of valorisation, and which only appears as such in one particular social formation (societies of exchange) . Not until the arrival of exchange-value does the article of use become a commodity .(38] It is evident that it is only this second aspect of labour, its 'exchange-value positing' character, which is the origin of all that is mystifying and fetishistic . The reduction of the forms of value to 'labour' pure and simple, as carried out by the Classical economists, is false because labour pure and simple is an unreal abstraction, a 'mere spectre' . (391 In this way Marx obtained the differentiation of the 'dual character' of the labour represented in the commodity, which in his own eyes constituted what was 'fundamentally new` in his theory . (401 With the kind of self-praise which he rarely expressed, Marx stressed the importance of his discovery : the examination of the dual character of labour was 'the point crucial to an understanding of political
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economy' .(41] Marx regarded this element as the decisive break between his conception and that of all his predecessors . And in fact he repeatedly used the new standpoint of a two-dimensional conception of economic processes to criticise the Classical economists, reproaching them for the fact that their theory was one-dimensional, and exclusively concerned with value . Time and again he criticised their failure to distinguish the dual character of labour . 'Classical economy in fact nowhere distinguishes explicitly and with a clear awareness between labour as it appears in the value of a product, and the same labour as it appears in the product's use-value .'(42) This general objection is made more precise in specific criticisms of Petty,(43I Adam Smith, [44) Ricardo,(45) and Hodgskin .(46] This is sufficient to show that this is the real centre of Marx's innovation in comparison to the Classical economists . The great significance of the new conception is based on the fact that Marx had found in it a means of eliminating what was deceptive in the pure categories of exchange-value, thus creating a foundation for further research into capitalist production and affording him the possibility of grasping the real interconnections of this mode of production behind the veil created by value .
III The results of our analysis are confirmed by every statement that Marx makes in which he deals with his relationship to the Classical economists and shows the place which he claims for himself in the development of political economy . Marx's comments, both in the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy and in Capital reveal that fundamentally Marx regarded Classical political economy as being concluded, with Ricardo as its final embodiment, as in Ricardo, 'political economy ruthlessly draws its final conclusion and therewith ends' .147) Marx judged Mill's attempts to develop classical political economy beyond this barrier, and accommodate its principles to the demands of the working class, as a 'shallow syncretism' and 'a declaration of bankruptcy by "bourgeois" economics' . [48] So are we then to suppose that Marx himself completed yet again what already had been completed, and 'further developed' what already had been concluded? Marx's own conception stands in stark contradiction to Classical theory, as regards not merely its specific theories (such as wages, ground-rent, crises etc .) but also its theoretical foundation . His aim is therefore not 'to develop Classical theory further' but rather to undertake a 'scientific attempt at the revolutionising of a science .[49] Marx made the nature of this 'revolutionising' quite clear : after expounding the dual character of the commodity in the first chapter of the Contribution, he proceeds, in the subsequent section entitled Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities, to provide a characterisation of its theoretical status and relation to its antecedents . 'The decisive outcome of the research carried on for over a century and a half by Classical political economy, beginning with William Petty in Britain and Boisguillebert in France, and ending with Ricardo in Britain and Sismondi in France, is an analysis of the aspects of the commodity into two forms of labour - use-value is reduced to concrete labour or purposive productive activity, exchange-value to labour time or homogeneous social labour .'[50] The
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question was therefore one of a contrast between two conceptions, one of which (the English), took exchange-value as its main object, whilst the other (the French) took use-value : that is, each only grasped one aspect of reality . Marx's real theoretical position does not emerge in all its true clarity until it is seen in the light of this historical background : we can then understand why Marx categorised the discovery of the dual form of labour as the 'decisive discovery of the research carried on for over a century and a half by Classical political economy' . Marx's theory of the dual character of labour is the critical synthesis, and as such, the further development, of these two conceptions . The following analysis is intended to show that Marx fundamentally transformed the principal categories inherited from Classical economics from the new standpoint which he had reached . In Marx's work all the categories possess both a value and a material aspect . The commodity is a dual entity, a unity of exchange-value and use-value . The commodity has this dual character because its source, labour, itself has a twofold character, 'a fact which of necessity reveals itself not only in the commodity, but in all the products of labour . The commodity is the unity of exchange-value and use-value .(51] The capitalist process of production is the unity of the technical labour process and the valorisation process .(52) Whereas the means of production, raw and auxiliary materials are transformed by human activity into material products, use-values, during the labour-process, the valorisation process is the site of the creation of new values, whose surplus over the values used in production yields surplus-value and its derivatives (industrial profit, ground-rent, profit from trade, interest etc .) . In addition, this dual character is revealed in the direction of the production-process, the necessity of which is a product of the division of labour, the increasing size of the means of production employed, and the compelling need to ensure their proper use .(53) On the one hand the function of direction is necessary in any type of economy insofar as it is a product of a social process of production characterised by the division of labour, and resembles that of an orchestral conductor . On the other hand, in the capitalist mode of production the capitalist exercises the function of management by virtue of his ownership of capital, and it is therefore 'made necessary by the capitalist and therefore antagonistic nature of that process' .[54] The process of the reproduction of total social capital is also 'not only a replacement of value, but also a replacement in material and is therefore as much bound up with the relative proportions of the value components of the total social product as with their use-value, their material shape' .(55) The category of wages has the same dual character . The worker does not sell 'labour' i .e . the actual activity, on the labourmarket, as the market is not the place where work is performed ; rather, the worker sells the commodity 'labour-power', the capacity to work, for which the worker receives as counter-value, as wage, (just as with the sale of any other commodity) an exchange-value . This labour-power is not made active, i .e . used by the employer, until later in the labour-process, and hence removed from the market .(561 Surplus-value is obtained from the use-value of the labour . By so dividing the classical category of (wage-) labour into its two aspects of use- and exchange-value, Marx was able to avoid the contradictions in which the Classical economists became entangled . Capital also has a dual character . The Classical economists already possessed
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the distinction between fixed and circulating capital . Marx took this distinction over, but gave it an entirely different meaning, in which the difference between the use-value and exchange-value aspects of fixed capital became decisive . The distinction between fixed and circulating employed by the Classicals is meaningless within the sphere of circulation : it is only valid for productive capital within the l abour-process . i .e . i n the process of production .[57] As money, or as commodity, capital is neither fixed nor circulating . 1581 The material basis of the distinction is constituted by the different character of the useful form of the fixed and circulating components in which they function as factors in the labour-process,(59) namely that circulating capital is used up in one period of labour, whereas fixed capital functions 'in a series of repeated labour processes', due to the durability of its natural form . The result of this difference in the life of different capitals - i .e. the time aspect - is the completely different manner in which fixed capital is replaced- on one hand as value,(60J and on the other as use-value, in natura, in kind, a distinction in the mode of replacement which Marx used to derive the necessity of periodic crises at the stage of simple reproduction . [61) The category of the organic composition of capital changes in a similar way . Ricardo had already employed the difference between capital-intensive and labour-intensive spheres of production, which was important in his theory of profit : but for Ricardo it was conceived of purely in terms of value . Marx divided Ricardo's category into its aspects of use-value and exchange-value, in order to reunite them in a synthesis .L62) Having been transformed in this way, the category of organic composition takes on a completely different function - not only for explaining profit, as with Ricardo, but also as the 'most important factor' in the accumulation of capital .[63) Finally, this same duality serves to reveal the category which occupies the central place in Marx's system : the falling average rate of profit, the 'motive power of capitalist production' . [64) In Capital we find it repeatedly stressed that 'the inner opposition of use-value and value hidden in the commodity, develops and grows along with the development of capitalist production .[65J The nature of the opposition between use-value and value in the commodity, and why it assumes constantly growing proportions, was never treated as a problem . However, when seen in connection with the presentation of the development of the productive power of labour in Volume I,[66] the presentation of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in Volume III of Capital(67) shows that Marx also derives this category from the dual character of labour, namely the inverse movement of the mass of use-values and values as a consequence of the increase in the productive power of labour : the richer a society becomes . the greater the development of the productive power of tabour, the larger the volume of useful articles which can be manufactured in a given period of labour; however, at the same time, the value of these articles becomes smaller . And since the development of the productive power of tabour means that a constantly growing mass of means of production (MP) is set in motion by a relatively constantly falling mass of labour (L), the unpaid portion of labour (surplus-value or profit) must also progressively fall . In capitalist terms, growing social wealth is expressed in the fact that a given capital exhibits a tendential fall in profit . The fall in profits, the regulating and driving force of the capitalist mechanism, puts the continued existence of this mechanism
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into question :[68J the greater the mass of use-values, the more pronounced the tendency for the fall (in value terms) in the rate of profit . In its interpretation of Marx's economics the dominant teaching has also expunged the theory of the dual character of labour, i .e. they have removed precisely what was specific to Marxism, and what distinguishes it from Classical theory, in order to be able, subsequently, to incorporate Marxism into the body of Classical political-economic theory . That this 'incorporation' was no accident is attested to by the fact that Benedetto Croce rated it as one of the merits of the dominant theory .1691 In demonstrating the untenability of the Classical doctrine, they can simultaneously prove the weakness of Marx's theory .[70J
IV Right from its origins Classical economic theory was a theory of abstract exchange-value : when it did concern itself with production it dealt merely with the value aspect, and passed over the labour process . (71 ] Since the rise of the theory of marginal utility and the mathematical school, the analysis of the concrete process of production has been increasingly excluded as an element of theory, and has been used only to establish its preconditions and overall framework . Analysis was directed almost exclusively at the relations between given market variables . It therefore took on a static character and was unable to explain dynamic changes in economic structure . Marx's economic theory marks a fundamental break in principle from both of these tendencies . The capitalist mode of production is governed by the relation, exchangevalue - increase in exchange-value, (M-M') . As a faithful expression of the bourgeois economy, the Classical doctrine was always simply a doctrine of abstract exchange-value .[72] Although Adam Smith did indeed begin his work on the 'Wealth of Nations' by stressing the division of labour as the source of wealth, taken to consist in an abundant supply of the products of labour - use values he nevertheless forgets use-values in the further course of his work ; they are not used in the further development of economic analysis .(731 Although there are presentations of material and structural relations they have an exclusively descriptive character . Smith's theory is one of abstract exchange-value . The social equilibrium between supply and demand, which yields the 'natural price' . is solely an equilibrium of value .[74) The same applies to Ricardo . Chapter 20 of his Principles, where he elaborates the distinction between use-value and value, and the importance of 'wealth' as use-values, remains largely unrelated to the rest of the book . Ricardo's entire theoretical gaze is concentrated on the aspect of value (profit), and the use-value of commodities plays no role in his analysis . The life of the working class depends on the mass of use-values which can be bought with a capital . However, the employer's sole interest is exchange-value, the expansion of exchange-value, i .e . profit, Ricardo expressed this in the now famous dictum, that for the employer who makes £2,000 profit on a capital of £20,000 - 10% - 'it is utterly irrelevant whether his capital sets 100 or 1000 people into motion . . as long as in all instances profit does not fall below £2,000' . Whether a given capital employs 100 or 1000 workers depends on the particular structure of the economy . Marx points out that Ricardo is indifferent to this
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structure : he is only concerned with net revenue (pure profit), the value-surplus of price over costs, and not gross revenue, i .e . the mass of use-values necessary for the subsistence of the working population . For Ricardo these figure only as costs - which are to be pushed down as low as possible . Marx writes : 'By denying the importance of gross revenue, i .e . the volume of production and consumption apart from the value-surplus - and hence denying the importance of life itself, political economy's abstraction reaches the peak of infamy' . [751 Ricardo's central interest was the theory of distribution : 'To discover the laws which determine distribution is the main problem of economic theory .' (Preface to the Principles) . In a letter to Malthus he calls political economy a theory of those laws which govern the proportional division of a given wealth among the various social classes . He regarded the determination of the mathematical relation between the parts of a given totality as 'the only true object of the sciences' . 1761 This point of departure renders Ricardo's method a prioristic and deductive : his theories can be deduced from a very small number of premisses . The Classical doctrine is more a system of logical deductions than a researching into and presenting of the real economic relations of the capitalist mode of production . In post-Classical economics this tendency to avoid the real labour-process becomes even more pronounced . In itself the principle of labour as the sole source of value contains a revolutionary element . It implies, as the Classical economists themselves explained, that in the prevailing social order the workers do not receive the full product of their labour, and that rent and profit represent deductions . The egalitarian Ricardians in England merely drew the conclusion implicit in the Classical labour theory of value when they declared that a society in which the workers would receive the full product of their labour would in fact be the only correct and 'natural' one .[77] The reaction of the right-wing of the Ricardian school to this theoretical turn exercised by the left was to become even more conservative . They scented a threat to class harmony in Ricardo's labour theory of value,(78) and avoided any analysis of the production and labour-process in order to get round the ticklish question of the labour theory of value, and the dangerous consequences i( held for distribution and the prevailing social order . Analysis was restricted to market phenomena, exchange: 'Exchange' stated Bastiat, 'is the whole of political economy . '1791 According to Leon Walras, the founder of the Lausanne school, political economy was 'the theory of value and the exchange of value : but he (Walras) forbade us from objectively studying production and distribution' . (80] Out of fear of ending up in opposition to prevailing property interests, every effort was made to give economic theory the most abstract and formal shape possible, divorced from any qualitative-concrete content .(81] In short, they tried to erect a theory of distribution based on a theory of markets, in order to furnish the proof, by means of a theory of economic coordinates, that all factors of production are rewarded in proportion to the extent to which they are involved in producing the product, and that consequently the workers receive in the wage full recompense for the work done .[82] A second line of development also began to become apparent at this time . Out of the same need to flee from reality this school urged economic theory onto another terrain, that of psychology . This started with ] . B . Say, who began with the use-value of commodities, but instead of seeing them as physical phenomena,
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conceived of them as psychological variables - the subjective utility of the object - and constructed a subjective theory of value on these 'services' . Beginning with Say, proceeding through Senior (1836) in England, Dupuits (1844) in France, and H . H . Gossen (1854) in Germany, the subjective theory of value led to the theory of marginal utility as a doctrine of general hedonism, in the course of which political economy's object of analysis shifted from the realm of things and social relations onto the terrain of subjective feelings . 'Boehm-Bawerk's subjective analysis of value contains the most precise and rational calculus of pleasure and pain that has ever been written',[83] as Boehm's special digression on the 'measurability of feelings' shows . The process of production is passed over,[84) and analysis is confined to market phenomena, the explanation of which is sought in human nature . An even higher level of abstraction is represented by those attempts to make economics into a mathematically 'exact' science, and consequently to disregard any qualitative content in economic phenomena . Market phenomena are one-sidedly regarded as mere 'economic quantities', and where possible they are expressed in mathematical equations . This tendency in modern theory is perhaps formulated most clearly in the works of Joseph Schumpeter .[851 The process of production, as in fact all real relations in the economy, are excluded from analysis . In Schumpetei s view the essence of economic relations consists of the relation 'between economic quantities', which is in fact reduced to the relation of exchange : all other relations between economic variables are neglected as being immaterial . Summarising this we can say the following : Although theoretical schools and tendencies have changed a great deal in the hundred years since Classical political economy, they possess a common feature which consists of the fact that the real labour process, and the social relations which are entered into in the course of it, have been expunged from their theoretical analysis .[86) The Marxist critique is directed against the abstract-value mode of study of political economy, as was the critique made by the historical school . But whereas the latter sought to overcome the abstract 'absolute' character of theoretical deduction by means of the external and indiscriminate introduction of concrete historical or statistical material on production, consumption, trade, tax, the position of workers or peasants etc ., and thus remained at the level of pure description, denying, in effect, the possibility of the knowledge of theoretical laws, Marx set himself the task of 'revealing the economic law of motion of modern society' .[87] This cannot be done, however, if one abstracts from the 'real world' and merely clings to its one aspect as 'economic quantities . Such a procedure is not political economy, but the 'metaphysics of political economy', which, the more it detaches itself from real objects by way of abstraction, 'the more it fancies itself to be getting nearer the point of penetrating to their core' . [881 Since reality does not consist merely of values, but is rather the unity of values and use-values, Marx's critique begins from the twofold character of economic phenomena, according to which the essential character of the bourgeois form of economy is a product of the specific connection of the valorisation process with the technical labour-process . Of course, subjectively, the sole interest of the businessman is with the value aspect, the valorisation process of his capital, profit . But he can only realise his desire for profit through the technical labour-
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process, by manufacturing products, use-values . And it is the specific character of this labour-process, as the means of meeting the requirements of the valorisation process,[89] which gives the capitalist period its particular stamp . Marx criticises previous economic theory for only looking at individual, isolated sectors, instead of grasping the concrete totality of economic relations . The monetary system of the Mercantilists merely analysed the circuit of capital within the sphere of circulation in its money-form . The Physiocrats (Quesnay) understood the problem at a deeper level : but they regarded the economic process as an eternal circuit of commodities, as the real production of commodities was not seen as the work of human beings, but Nature . Finally, the Classical economists (Smith, Ricardo) did indeed adopt the production process as the object of their analysis, but only as a valorisation process : this eventually placed them on the same path, skirting around production, and with the same formula, as Mercantilism .[90J In contrast to his predecessors Marx stressed the crucial importance of the production process, understood not simply as a process of valorisation, but at the same time as a labour-process ; this does not mean, however, that the two other forms of the circuit of capital, as money and commodity, can be ignored . Capitalist reality is a unity of circuits : the process of circulation (both money and commodity), and the process of production (as the unity of the valorisation and labour-process) . Only by being this unity of the labour- and valorisation-process does the production process, in Marx's view, constitute, 'the basis - the point of departure of the physiology of the bourgeois system - the grasping of its inner organic connection and life- process' . [911 On the other hand, if the production process is merely understood as a valorisation process - as the Classicals understood it - it has all the characteristics of 'hoarding', becomes lost in abstraction, and is no longer capable of capturing the real economic process .(92) Because Ricardo s categories of value are the expression - if one-sided - of concrete reality, namely the valorisation process, they are taken over by Marx in their basic principles and developed further . However, at the same time he modifies them by complementing their exclusively abstract value character with the material aspect, and elaborates their dual character . Marx's critique of Ricardo's categories of value, and the changes he made, closely resembles Marx's critique and transformation of Hegel's dialectic .(93) Both exhibit the same basic feature, being directed against the abstract and final character shared by Ricardo's categories of value and Hegel's dialectic, because each of these abstracts from the 'real characteristic form' . In his critique of Hegel's dialectic Marx compares, in characteristic fashion, the logic with which Hegel begins the Encyclopaedia, with money and value: it is the logic of 'money of the spirit' and the 'conceptual value of people and of nature, because it 'is utterly indifferent to all real forms' and has become 'abstract thought, abstracting from nature and real people' .(94J This is similar to the way in which money represents the 'least real' form of capital, and how capital has reached the 'pure fetishistic form' in interest-bearing capital, 'in which all the different forms . . . are obliterated, and it exists . . . as independent exchange-value' . 1951 This crucial philosophical position is also brought into play by Marx within political economy : the abstract study of value obscures the 'real forms', the qualitative content of the concrete labour process, which express the specific,
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differentiating features of the capitalist mode of production . These can only be grasped by demonstrating the specific connection of the valorisation process to the technical labour-process in each particular period of history .[96] The 'value-form', whose final shape is the money-form, is completely without content .[97] The category of exchange-value leads an 'antedeluvian existence' . [98] One can find exchange-values in ancient Rome, in the Middle Ages and in capitalism ; but different contents are hidden behind each of these forms of exchange-value .(99] Marx stresses that 'exchange-value' detached from the concrete relations under which it has arisen is an unreal abstraction, as exchange-value 'can never exist except as an abstract, one-sided relation to an already given concrete and living whole' . The use of the expression 'exchangevalue' presupposes, 'a population which produces under specific conditions' . [100] Of course, 'political economy is not technology . 1101 ] The point is not however to study the valorisation process separated from a particular labour-process, which makes up its basis and with which it constitutes a unitary whole . 'The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse' . The task of science consists in the 'reproduction of the concrete via thought' . (102 ] just as the archaeologist reconstructs the entire skeleton, and even the supposed muscles and movements, of an animal from a few excavated bones, so Marx reads off the necessary tendencies of capital which are specific to an epoch from the structure of the labour-process in a particular period, and the type of tools used in it . This is possible as 'technology reveals the active behaviour of people to nature, the immediate production process of their lives, and hence their social relations' . (103] 'The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord : the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist' . [104) Since social relations are closely bound up with the forces of production, changes in the tendencies of capital can be read from changes in these forces . The best illustration of Marx's theoretical thought is provided by Chapters 14 and 15 of Volume I of Capital, the chapters on 'Manufacture' and 'Machinery and Large-Scale lndustry' .(105] These chapters are by no means historical-descriptive depictions, whereby Marx seeks to provide a genetic exposition of the development of large-scale industry out of manufacture . Both chapters have an eminently theoretical character, which is proven by the fact that they are merely sub-sections of the part of Capital dealing with the 'Production of Relative Surplus-Value . What then characterises manufacture and 'machino-facture', large-scale industry as two different phases of capitalist production? Both have a capitalist character, both are based on wage-labour, and both are governed by the search for profit . However, since the technical labour-process is completely different in each, manufacture representing a 'productive mechanism whose organs are human beings',[106] in contrast to which modern large-scale industry is based on machines, this difference serves to distinguish the different phases of capitalism . The example of the derivation of these objective tendencies of capital from the analysis of the concrete labour-process and its instruments - machinery - is intended to illustrate the key distinction between Marx and other theoretical tendencies in the study of economic processes : later we shall analyse the additional consequences which arise from this method of study for the problem of crises and (economic) dynamics .
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Whereas changes in the mode of production during manufacture begin with labour, in large-scale industry they proceed from the instruments of labour, machinery .(107) The process is as follows : machinery makes muscle-power dispensible, and thus facilitates the introduction of women and children into the production process on a massive scale . The price of labour-power is lowered and surplus-value increased, as the wages for the entire 'parcellised' family, for a greatly increased amount of work, are no higher now than they were previously for the individual bread-winner alone . The degree of exploitation of labour increases enormously .( 108) In addition, the tendency towards the employment of young people and the simultaneous strengthening of the despotism of capital through the extensive employment of women and children works to break down the resistance previously put up by the male workers .[109] The material consumption of the machinery, which represents a large capital-value and which must be depreciated and have interest paid on it, does not only occur through use, but also through its non-use, as a result of the destructive effects of the natural elements . This explains the capitalists' tendency to make work continue day and night, a tendency reinforced by the fact that every new invention threatens to devalue the machinery ; hence the capitalists' striving to minimise the danger of the 'moral' wear and tear of the machinery by reducing the period in which it produces its total value .[110J 'Hence too the economic paradox that the most powerful instrument for reducing labour-time suffers a dialectical inversion and becomes the most unfailing means for turning the whole lifetime of the worker and his family into labour-time at capital's disposal for its own valorisation .'(111) A further incentive to the prolongation of labour-time is therefore the possibility of saving on the otherwise normal expansion of the scale of production through buildings . An expansion in the scale of production without these additional outlays implies an increase in the mass of surplus-value, with a simultaneous reduction in capital expenditure per unit of commodity produced, which further increases the mass of profit .[112] Machinery leads to the tendency to intensify work, and in particular in those areas where the resistance of the working class has made the excessive prolongation of the working day impossible because of legal prohibitions . In the factory, 'the dependence of the worker on the continuous and uniform movement of the machine creates the strictest discipline' .(113] The increased speed of the machinery forces the worker to a greater degree of attentiveness and activity .[114] This is the point at which the tendency towards a falling rate of valorisation and the creation of an industrial reserve army begin to play a role. At a higher level of capitalist development, and with the universal application of machinery, this machinery, the use of which has the task of enlarging relative surplus-value, and hence the mass of surplus-value, begins to operate in the opposite direction, i .e . towards a fall in the rate of valorisation . This is because the mass of surplus-value which can be obtained is dependent on two factors : the rate of surplus-value, and the 'number of workers simultaneously employed' .(115] In his hunt for an increase in relative surplus-value the capitalist is driven to the constant development of the productivity of labour through an increased use of machinery in relation to living labour ; and he can only 'attain this result by diminishing the number of workers employed by a given amount of capital' . (116] .A portion of the capital which was previously variable, and produced surplus-value, is progressively transformed into
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constant capital, which produces no surplus-value . The result is shown in the creation of a superfluous working population, and the tendency towards a reduction in the mass of surplus-value attainable in relation to the size of the capital employed . 'Hence there is an immanent contradiction in the application of machinery to the production of surplus-value, since, of the two factors of the surplus-value created by a given amount of capital, one, the rate of surplus-value, cannot be increased except by diminishing the other, the number of workers .'[117] Finally, Marx stresses the dynamic impulses which flow from the use of machinery . Whereas manufacture traditionally 'sought to retain the form of the division of labour which it found',(1181 and was consequently unable to seize hold of society to its full extent, and change it in depth,[119] large-scale industry based on machinery is forced, by the fall in the rate of profit, continually to revolutionise the technology of the labour process, and therefore the structure of society .
NOTES 1 V . Pareto, Les systemes socialistes, Paris, 1902, Volume II, Chap . 13 'L'economie marxiste, p . 340. Arturo Labriola, Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx, London 1914 . Joseph Schumpeter, Economic Doctrine and Method, 1934 . R . Wildbrandt, K. Marx, Leipzig, 1920 . p . 101 . Oskar Englaender, Boehm-Bawerk and Marx, in Archiv fuer Sozialwissenschaft and Sozialpolitik, Vol . 60 (1928) p . 380 . 'It was Karl Marx who, as a value theorist, was indeed the last great figure in the classical school' . (Paul H . Douglas), Smith's Theory of Value and Distribution in J .M . Clark, P.H . Douglas, Jacob Viner and others, Adam Smith 1776-1926, Chicago 1928, p. 91 . The Socialists, Mehring, Conrad Schmidt, and above all Hilferding, held very similar views too : Hilferding did not only regard Marx as an opponent and conqueror, but also the perfector of 'Classical Economy, which begins with William Petty, and finds its highest expression in Marx' . See F . Mehring, Ceschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, Stuttgart, 1921, Vol . 11, p . 305. F . Mehring . Aus dem literarischen Nachiass von K. Marx and F . Engels, Stuttgart, 1920 . Vol . p . 557 . Conrad Schmidt, Die Durchschnittprofitrate auf Grundlage des Marxschen Wertgesetzes Stuttgart, 1889, p . 112 . R . Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital, Vienna, 1910 Preface p . VII . Maurice Dobb, as well, does not go beyond this traditional view in his book Political Economy and Capitalism, London, 1938 . If Marx offered no adequate 'proof of his theory of value, this was because he was not dealing with a new or unknown doctrine . 'Marx was adopting a principle . . . . The essential difference between Marx and classical political economy lay, therefore, in the theory of surplusvalue' . (Chap . III op . cit . 'Classical Political Economy and Capitalism' . p . 67, 68, 75) . 2 'Smith's formulation of the problems of exchange-value and of the distribution of the national product . . . was such as almost inevitably gave rise to the doctrines of post-Ricardian socialists and to the labour theory of value and the exploitation theory of Karl Marx .' (P . H . Douglas, op . cit . p. 77) . Prof.
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Frank H . Knight (Chicago) says much the same thing . '(Marx) is certainly the thinker who above all others worked out the classical (Ricardian) theory to its logical conclusions', (Cf . The American Journal of Sociology, Vol . XLVI July 1940, No . 1, p . 105) . 3 Theories of Surplus-Value, III, p . 501 . 4 Ibid . p . 22-3 . 5 Postface to the Second Edition of Capital Vol . I . p . 96 . (Penguin edition) . 6 Theories of Surplus-Value, III, p . 468 . 7 Ibid . 11, p . 118 and I, p . 22 . 8 E .g . Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Book IV Chap . VII/2, where he states that ground-rent and profit eat away the wage . 9 Theories of Surplus-Value, I, p . 306-7 . 10 Theories of Surplus-Value, J, p . 301 . 11 Ibid. III, p . 22 . Cf . also the Postface to the second edition of Capital Vol . I, p . 97 in which Marx states that 1830 marked the death of scientific bourgeois economics . 12 Theories of Surplus-Value, III, p . 53 . 13 Ibid . p . 52 . 14 Ibid . p . 22-50 passim . 15 Ibid. p . 23-26. 16 Ibid . p . 501 . 17 See 'Opposition to the Economists (Based on the Ricardian Theory)' . ibid . p . 238-319 . 18 Theories of Surplus-Value p . 63-4 . 19 See 'Essential Difference between Classical and Vulgar Economy', ibid . p . 498-523 . 20 Ibid . p . 502 . 21 'On the surface of bourgeois society the worker's wage appears as the price of labour, as a certain quantity of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour' . Capital, I, p . 675 . 22 Ibid . p . 676 . 23 Ibid ., p . 729-30 . 24 Theories of Surplus-Value 1, p . 87 . 25 Capital I, p . 680 . 26 Ibid . p . 169, 173-4 and Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, p . 34-5 . 27 Capital I, p. 165-67 . Theories of Surplus-Value III p. 453, 456, 483 . 28 Capital I p. 153-4 . 29 Ibid . p . 175 . 30 Collected Works, London 1975, Vol . III p . 213-14 . 31 Capital, I p. 148 . 32 Ibid . p . 153 . 33 Ibid. p . 163 . 34 Ibid. p . 169 . 35 Ibid. p . 170 . 36 'The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour on the basis of commodity production, vanishes therefore as soon as we come to other forms of production .' Capital I p . 169 .
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37 Ibid . p . 175 . 38 Ibid . p . 153 . 39 Theories of Surplus-Value p . 131, 138 . 40 Letter from Marx to Engels, 8 January 1868, Selected Correspondence p . 186 . 41 Capital I p . 132 . Marx stressed in a number of places that this theory comprised his original contribution to the understanding of economic processes, it was 'what was fundamentally new' in his work . See for example, the Contribution, 1859, and Capital 1867 . 42 Capital I Note 38 p . 173 . 43 Theories of Surplus-Value I p. 354-62 . 44 Against Adam Smith : 'He does not distinguish the two-fold character of labour itself : of labour which creates value by expending labour-power, and of labour as concrete useful work, which creates articles of use (use-values) . Capital II p. 381 . 45 Against Ricardo : 'He does not clearly distinguish between the various aspects . between the exchange-value of the commodity, as it manifests itself, appears, in the process of commodity exchange, and the existence of the commodity as value as distinct from its exiAence as an object, product, use-value .' Theories of Surplus-Value . I p . 125 . 46 Against Hodgskin : 'In his investigations into the productivity of capital, Hodgskin does not distinguish between how far it is a question of producing use-values or exchange-values .' ibid . III p . 267 . 47 Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy p . 61 . 48 Capital I p . 98 . 49 Marx, Letter to Kugelmann, 28 December, 1862 . 50 Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy p . 52 . 51 Capital I p . 131 . 52 Ibid . p . 293 . 53 Ibid . p . 449 . 54 Ibid . p . 450 . 55 Ibid . II, p . 398 . 56 Ibid . I, p . 292 . 57 Ibid . II, p . 163, 156, 170-71 . 58 Ibid . p. 169-71 . 59 Ibid . 60 Ibid . p . 186, 173-6 . 61 Cf . Capital I I 'Replacement of the Fixed Capital' 1 . in the Form of Money 2 . in Kind . pp . 553-62 . 62 'The composition of capital is to be understood in a twofold sense . As value and as material, as it functions in the process of production . . . I call the former the value-composition, the latter the technical composition of capital' . The mutual relation between the two is called the organic composition'in so far as it is determined by its technical composition and mirrors the changes in the latter' . (Capital I p . 762) - See too Capital III p . 46, 145-6, 154, and Theories of Surplus-Value II p . 433 . 63 Capital I p . 762 . The importance of the distinction between the technical and value composition is revealed by the fact that Marx creates a specialised terminology to express it : the technical composition becomes the symbol .
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MP :L (Relation of the means of production to labour, and the value-composition c :v (relation of constant to variable capital) . 64 Capital 11 p . 259 . 65 Ibid . I p . 153 . 66 Ibid . p . 431, 438 . 67 Ibid . III p . 211 et seq . 68 For a more precise proof of this deduction Marx comments : 'With the development of the productive power of labour, which 'is always the productive power of concrete use-ful labour', this same labour produces a growing mass of useful goods, of material wealth, which can, nevertheless, correspond to a fall in the quantity of value of this growing mass of useful objects . 'This opposite motion is the result of the two-fold character of labour' . It is an empirical law of the capitalist mode of production that its development is accompanied by a relative decline in variable capital in relation to constant . 'This is just another way of saying that . . . the same number of labourers . . . set in motion by a variable capital of a given value, operate, work up, and productively consume in the same time-span an everincreasing quantity of means of labour, machinery and fixed capital of all sorts, raw and auxiliary materials . (Capital Ill p .212)'It is likewise just another expression for the progressive development of the social productivity of labour (ibid .) . Looked at in terms of use-value, constantly growing masses of useful articles arise, which represent ever smaller amounts of value . 'Since the mass of the employed living labour is continually on the decline as compared to the mass of materialised labour set in motion by it . . . it follows that the portion of living labour, unpaid and congealed in surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the total amount of value represented by the invested total capital' . (ibid. p . 213) 'The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall is, therefore, just an expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of production of the progressive development of the social productivity of labour .' (ibid .) 69 'One could have also incorporated to the permitted economic doctrines those of Marx, which appear to be revolutionary, but which are only schemas of a particular casuistic kind' . (Croce, Philosophie de la pratique, Paris 1911, p . 235) . 70 In a 'book published on the 150 anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations, P . Douglas tries hard to show that 'the contribution of Adam Smith to the theory of value . . . (was) not great', which necessarily led to the failure not only of the Classical, but also of Marx's theory . But, 'the failure was not the failure of one man, but of a philosophy of value, and the roots of the ultimate contradiction made manifest of the world in the third volume of Capital lie embedded in the first volume of the Wealth of Nations' (Paul H . Douglas Smith's Theory of Value p . 95) . 71 'The crux of any theory of economic events is composed of theories of value and interest . . . and four fifths of theoretical economic literature consists of research into or controversies about these subjects' . Joseph Schumpeter, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk in Neue oesterreichische Biographie Vienna 1935 Vol . I I p . 67 . 72 Marx consequently speaks of the 'accentuation of quantity and exchange-
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value' by the Classical economist, in striking contrast to the writers of classical antiquity (Plato, Xenophon), 'who are exclusively concerned with quality and use-value' . (Capital I p . 486) . 73 Cf . Elster : Smiths Lehre and die Lehren der sogenannten 'Klassiker der Volkswirtschaftslehre' in Elster Voerterbuch der Volkswirtschaft Jena 1933 Vol . III p . 213 . See too : G . H . Bousquet Essai sur !evolution de la pensce cconomique Paris. 1927 . p . 199 and Gunnar Myrdal, Das politische Element in der .nationaloekonomischen Doktrinbildung Berlin, 1932 p . 95 . 74 Elsters Smith Lehre. 75 Marx, ME & A p . 514 et seq . 76 'Political Economy you think is an inquiry into the nature and causes of wealth - I think it should be called an inquiry into the laws whch determine the division of the produce of industry amongst the classes who concur in its formation . No law can be laid down respecting quantity but a tolerably correct one can be laid down respecting proportions' . Letters of David Ricardo to Malthus 1810-1823 ed . Bonar, Oxford, 1887 . Letter of 9 October 1820 . 77 See the sharp formulation of the workers' rights to the full product of labour in Hodgskin's Labour defended against the Claim of Capital . By a Labourer . London 1825 . 78 See for example the work by Charles Knight, The Rights of Industry, Capital and Labour 1831, which attacks all opponents of the prevailing rights of property, including Hodgskin, and characterises them as 'enemies of the people', 'destroyers' and 'servants of despoilation' . Carey formulated this view the most clearly a little later : 'Ricardo's system is one of discord . . . . It has a tendency to create animosity between the classes . . . . His book is a handbook of demagogues who seek power by the confiscation of land, war and plunder. Carey The Past, the Present and the Future Philadelphia, 1848 . p . 74-5 . 79 Bousquet op . cit . p. 226 . 80 ibid . p. 208 . Walras's analysis is in fact confined to the exchange-relation . He deals with the entire 'production process' with one word . The production process is replaced by a symbol, the concept of 'coefficients of production', meant to mean those amounts of productive goods used in the manufacture of one unit of output . Each unit of production is then allotted a corresponding 'production coefficient', and in this formal manner, disposed of for Walras . 81 August Walras makes this quite clear in a letter to his son (6 February 1859) : 'One thing which I find especially pleasing in the plan for your work is the project which you have, and which I approve of totally, of keeping to the least offensive limits as far as property is concerned . This is very wise and very easy to observe . It is necessary to do political economy as one would do accoustics or mechanics' . 82 J . B . Clark constantly tried to prove the principle that the formation of prices under free competition would allocate everyone exactly that which corresponds to their productive efforts . 'Natural law so far as it has its way, excludes all spoliation .' In a polemic against von Thuenen he assures that 'the natural law of wages gives a result . . . (that is) morally justifiable' . The Distribution of Wealth New York, 1931 p . 324 .
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83 Cf . Myrdal op . cit . p . 152 - See too Boehm-Bawerk, Positive Theorie des Kapitals, Jena 1921, Abteilung 11/2 pp . 202-5 . 84 One could counter to this that Boehm-Bawerk deals with production in the Positive Theorie des Kapitals in the unknown sections on 'Produktionsunwege' (p . 15) and 'the capitalist production process' (p . 81) . However, it would be deceptive to expect that Boehm really does deal with production . All that one discovers are general concepts which do not seem to capture the specific features of the capitalist period of production, but which are rather intended to apply, in their abstract universality, to all periods : thus for example, the statement that objects of use can be made in two ways : directly, such as picking wild fruits from a high tree : or indirectly, by first cutting a branch from another tree, and then knocking the fruits down . (p . 87) The creation of such an 'intermediary product' means the creation of a 'capital', and hence the carrying out of 'capitalist production', which for Boehm is identical with any form of indirect production . This confusion rests on a trivial confusion of the technical labour-process with the valorisation process, such that for Boehm any tool is 'capital' : hence the Red Indian or Zulu who uses a boat for catching fish is a capitalist and carries on 'capitalist production' . (p . 86) According to Boehm's terminology capitalist production already existed at the most primitive levels of culture . 85 Joseph Schumpeter, Das Wesen and der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationaloekonomie Leipzig 1908 pp . 50 et seq . 86 With the possible exception of the historical school in Germany led by Schmoller, which, however, because of its descriptive and eclectic character, and rejection of theory, can be passed over here . 87 Capital I p . 92 . 88 Poverty of Philosophy, New York, 1%3 p . 106 . 89 'In the capitalist mode of production the labour-process only appears as a means for the valorisation process' . Capital II . 90 In Marx's view the deep similarity between capitalist production and the Mercantilist system is particularly evident in crises . When all -values and prices are subject tQ enormous disturbances, suddently there is a hunt for a stable metallic currency - hoarding of gold -, as the one secure thing in the midst of general insecurity, as the 'summum bonum"just as it is understood by the hoarder' . This hoarding of gold then acts to express that in a mode of production based on abstract exchange-value, 'the actual devaluation and worthlessness of all physical wealth' is the natural consequence, because alongside abstract exchange-value 'all other commodities - just because they are use-values - appear to be useless, mere baubles and toys' . (Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy p . 146) . Although political economy imagines itself to be above Mercantilism, and assails it as a 'false theory', as illusion, it shares the same basic assumption as Mercantilism . As a consequence the Monetary system does not only remain . 'historically valid but retains its full validity within certain spheres of the modern economy' . (ibid, p . 159) . 91 Theories of Surplus-Value 11 92 Accordingly, for Marx, the only 'real' labour is the concrete labour which functions in the technical labour-process . (Contribution p . 36, 38) : whereas
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abstract labour which produces exchange-value is simply the 'bourgeois form' of labour . (ibid . p . 48, 54) . ' . . . the labour which posits exchange-value is a specific form of labour' (ibid . p . 36), and it is this exchange-value-positing labour which is responsible for all market catastrophes, devaluations, overproduction, stagnation . (Poverty of Philosophy p. 68) . 93 Capital I p . 103 . 94 MECA p . 154 . 95 Theories of Surplus-Value III p . 464 . % Hegel had already criticised this tendency to mathematicisation, which only captures one side, the relations between quantities, in the concrete totality of reality, and neglects all the remaining qualitative aspects . 'Its purpose or principle is quantity . This is precisely the relationship that is non-essential, alien to the character of the notion . The process of knowledge goes on, therefore, on the surface, does not affect the concrete fact itself, does not touch its inner nature or notion, and is hence not a conceptual way of comprehending' (Phenomenology of Mind, London 1931 p . 102-3) . He consequently emphasises that the task of political economy consists, not only in representing quantitative relations and movements, but also the qualitative side of their element in their 'realisation' (Verwirklichung) . 97 Capital I p . 94 . 98 Grundrisse ( Introduction) p . 101 . 99 libd . 100 Ibid. p . 101 . 101 Ibid . p . 86 . 102 Capital I p . 493-494 . 103 Poverty of Philosophy p . 109 . In a letter to Kautsky (26 June 1864) Engels criticises him for not having paid sufficient regard to the role of the labourprocess . 'You should not separate technology from political economy to the extent that you have . . . . The tools of natives condition their society just as much as more recent tools condition capitalist society' . (Kautsky, Aus der Fruehzeit des Marxismus . Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky Prague 1935 p . 124 . 104 It is no accident that such a large part of the presentation in all the volumes of Capital is devoted to the technical labour-process . The chapter on machinery and large-scale industry on its own encompasses nearly 150 pages ; in addition a lot of space is given over to the presentation of the technical labour-process in connection with the valorisation process . 105 Capital I p . 455 and 492 . 106 Ibid. p . 457 . 107 Ibid . p . 544 . 108 Ibid . p . 518-9 . See pp . 489-90 on the insubordination of the workers in manufacture . 109 Ibid . p . 526 . 110 Ibid . p . 528 . 111 Ibid . p . 532 . 112 Ibid . p . 548 . 113 Ibid . p. 549-51 . 114 Ibid . p . 531 .
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115 116 117 118 119
Ibid . p . 531 . Ibid . p. 531 . Ibid . p . 531 . Ibid . p . 530 . Ibid . p . 490 Cf . Jean Weiller La Conception classique dun equilibre esconomique, Paris 1934 . p. 11 and John M . Clark The Relation between Statics and Dynamics in Economic Essays in Honour of 1 .8 . Clark New York, 1937 p . 51 .
PUBLICATIONS DISTRIBUTION CO-OPERATIVE At last, the British Left has got itself together enough to distribute its own publications co-operatively and efficiently throughout the United Kingdom . Dozens of periodicals and even more books and pamphlets are now obtainable from a central depot . Operating fortnightly runs . the Co-Op is democratically controlled by its member publications and staff workers . To contribute resources or make enquiries . write to : PDC, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London ECI Tel : 01-251 4976 RADICAL PUBLICATIONS GROUP "The division of labour is first and foremost the prevention of access to the totality ." The RPG meets quarterly (March . June . Sept . . Dec .) to discuss theoretical and practical problems shared by radical publications . attempting to increase solidarity and to combat sectarianism . The Group provides advice . workshops, information . and exchanges about adverts and outlets . Recent discussions have included the politics of appearance and of vocabulary . techniques for improved layout . and foreign distribution . The Group maintains close liaison with the Publications Distribution Co-Operative . which it was instrumental in founding . For information, contact : RPG, 5 Cardozo Road, London N7 9RJ Tel : (01)-607 3492
WORLD MARKET COMPETITION AND RESTRICTIONS UPON INTERNATIONAL TRADE-UNION POLICIES Werner Olle Wolfgang Schoeller Translated by Robin Mann
INTRODUCTION The discussion within the trade unions of multinational corporations, starting in the U .S .A . at the beginning of the S0's and taken up by the unions in Western Europe since the mid 60's, has - at least in the short term - led to a somewhat euphoric evaluation of the opportunities for trade-union internationalisation . Such euphoria is attributable to the assumption that the process of 'internationalisation of capital' within the framework of the multinational corporations has, for the first time in the history of capitalism, provided objective conditions for the division of the trade-union movement into national fractions to be superceded . "The objective conditions exist . They are in fact much more advanced than the subjective ones The difficulties lie largely with the unions themselves" (Levinson 1972a, p . 141) . For the trade unions, this reduces the question of the possibilities for and constraints on an international trade-union policy to a mere "waiting game" (Matthofer 1971, p . 475) . They simply have to catch up in the politico-legal sphere with what economic development has already achieved . We argue that such a view is problematic in several respects . Firstly, any talk of 'newer' more objective conditions implies a completely negative attitude to the history of trade-union internationalisation . If we allow our evaluation of historical experience to be deformed by such premises, the course of trade-union internationalisation since the First International necessarily appears as an "idealistic undertaking"(1J, since it follows that, in contrast to contemporary development it had no 'objective' basis at its disposal . Instead of opening up perspectives for a systematic treatment of the historical experience of trade-union internationalisation, such a procedure blocks any approach whatsoever to that history . Since as yet any accounts of this kind have tended to take the form of
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histories of particular associations which have attempted to describe the history of trade-union internationalisation in isolation from the development of its context of social conditions, such a negation of history is all the more serious . Secondly, the attempt to base trade-union internationalisation on some connection with the multinational corporations is problematic in so far as it bases the possibilities for a reduction in international competition between workers(2) upon purely economic models . There are two lines of argument here . The first holds that it is possible to deploy an international trade-union strategy which is an analogue of the organisational structure of the multinational corporations . Sometimes this analogy is carried to such extremes that the threestage analysis of the various phases of development of multinational corporations (ethnocentric, polycentric and geocentric) is seen to imply a "similar three-step process" as "the probable trade union route towards the creation of an international, global counterforce" (Levinson 1972a, p . 110)131 . This analogy refers not only to the organisational forms of trade-union internationalisation, but also, and more importantly, to the subsequent internationalisation of the content of tradeunion policies . This leads to a second argument, concerning the change in international competition between workers brought about by the mobility of capital beyond national frontiers . There are two central theses here : first, that an equalisation in the different national levels of reproduction of the workers minimises such competition ; and secondly that favourable conditions for such an equalisation which is traditionally one of the demands of international trade-union federations - are created by the multinational corporations . Thirdly, there is in the back ground of the discussions of trade-union strategy a position of syndicalist internationalism which must be closely examined . This conception involves a call for "completely new trade-union structures" (Levinson 1972b, p . 46) (internationalisation at the level of the corporation) and for an internationalisation of trade-union demands (international wage agreements) . This is at present being most strongly advocated by the International Federation of Chemical Workers (ICF) . This conception entails a dual restriction upon tradeunion policy : on the one hand an organisational restriction to particular groups of employees, and on the other a concentration only upon the 'negative effects of the international mobility of capital which at the same time are seen as being 'harmonisable' within the framework of capitalist relations of production (Piehl 1974, p . 70)[4] . These particular political consequences have been the object of marxist criticism for some considerable time . Thus attention has been drawn to the danger of organisational segmentation inherent in the concept of syndicalist internationalism (Altvater 1973, p . 13) ; the necessity for trade unions to act together and in concert internationally in spite of their membership of politically different trade-union federations (Nehls 1973, p . 146) ; and the duty of "uniting the economic internationalisation of the class struggle . . . with a political internationalisation" (Mandel 1975a, p . 29)[5] . This point-by-point criticism has not, up to the present, led to any systematic analysis of the opportunities for and constraints on trade-union internationalisation . Thus some writers on trade-union theory ignore the very question of tradeunion internationalisation, or declare it to be possible in principle without
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subjecting the idea to any searching analysis(6J, treating it as if it were analogous to trade-union relations on the national level . It seems to us that such positions are based on a conception of the world market, which, both methodologically and empirically, takes an extensive internationalisation of the reproduction of capital as its starting point(7J, and thus analyses relations between nations as exclusively economic phenomena . This is not to say that such views exhibit the triviality of syndicalist conceptions, but there is a definite methodological affinity . In what follows, our methodological approach will be to develop a critique of attempts to base trade-union internationalisation upon economic factors . There is no intention to provide a comprehensive analysis of the various problem areas within international trade-union politics . Rather, we aim to show that an analysis of the framework of social conditions leads to conclusions which diverge markedly from those drawn by the advocates of a deliberate strategy of trade-union internationalisation in harmony with 'objective' developments . This is not to demonstrate the impossibility of international trade-union politics[81, but rather to draw attention to the restrictions resulting from social relations to which any attempt at trade-union internationalisation is subject . If trade-union politics do not keep these restrictions in mind they risk unconsciously reproducing the conditions of international competition between capitals, and thus perpetuating the division between workers of different nations . The contemporary euphoria as to the possibility of trade-union internationalisation could then change to resignation and national pragmatism, so that every move towards trade-union internationalisation would appear as "self-deception" [91. The first signs of this are already in existence .
1 . THE HISTORY OF TRADE-UNION INTERNATIONALISATION The euphoria as to the opportunities for international trade-union politics in connection with the multinational corporation finds its legitimation in the claim that the latter provides the first 'objective' basis for trade-union internationalisation . Such a view relieves us of any obligation to consider earlier attempts at trade-union internationalisation, the analysis of which, under certain circumstances, could have consequences for contemporary trade-union activity . Instead the established general weakness, and from time to time total failure, of tradeunion internationalisation is, it is suggested, to be explained by a model which traces these back to the 'immaturity' of the objective conditions, or accounts for them voluntaristically as the result of "the petty-bourgeois reformism" of the union leadership (Becu 1962, p . 5) or associates them with totally unspecified "vicissitudes and strokes of misfortune" (Bolze n .d ., p . 26) . In order to try to remedy this glaring omission we will attempt in the following extremely superficial account to develop an initial set of hypotheses intended to provide a possible approach to structuring the history of trade-union internationalisation . Here the immediate question is what phases of trade-union internationalisation can be distinguished and how they are to be established . If one starts out from the relatively superficial level of organisation . three phases may be distinguished : - an initial period of trade-union internationalisation starting in about 1860,
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during which trade-union and, political organisations participated jointly in an internationalisation of the working-class movement ; - a second period from about 1890 during which separate attempts were made to achieve trade-union internationalisation at the level of the national central organisations and branch unions ; - a third period from about 1965 characterised by the introduction of new forms of trade-union internationalisation at the level of the corporation or business (in addition to the traditional dual structure) . The question now is whether this threefold organisational division corresponds with qualitatively distinct phases of economic and trade-union development which would justify speaking of a 'new' phase in trade-union internationalisation starting in the mid-1960's . 1 .1 The Beginnings of Trade-Union Internationalisation Although the International Working Men's Association (the First International) was neither organisationally, nor in terms of its programme, a 'Trade-Union International' in the strict sense, any historical consideration of trade-union internationalisation must take it as its starting point . The International Working Men's Association can in any case not be reduced to part of some 'anticipatory' tradition, an interpretation which sees it as a mere continuation of those international associations such as the 'Democratic Friends of All Nations' or the 'Fraternal Democrats' which had formed themselves in England in 1845 from English Chartists and political refugees from France, Italy, Poland and Germany (Rothstein 1913) . Whereas these international associations were "the product of an epoch stamped with the revolutionary wave of 1848 and the German and Italian nationalist movements" (Kriegel 1975, p . 187), the International Working Men's Association was the first in which trade-union organisations participated and to which they became attached because of specific interests . This can be shown particularly in the case of the English trade unions who played an initiating role in the foundation of the IWMA . Here some facts on the origins and practical activities of the IWMA are necessary (see Riazanov 1973, ch . 7) . In 1859/61, as a result of the general economic crisis, which hit the building industry particularly hard, a strike movement broke out among the London building workers in opposition to the employers' attempt to reduce wages and increase the hours worked . This strike movement gained wide support from workers in other industries and expanded into a general strike movement of the English workers aimed at securing some measure of Rights of Combination . In the course of this struggle there emerged not only the first organisational links between the various occupationally oriented trade unions (as to some extent in the London Trades Council), but more importantly the foundations for the unions' later involvement in the IWMA which was founded in 1864 . "The wave of strikes in the years 1859-61 had a further important consequence . The employers, who had always justified their resistance to trade-union demands by reference to foreign competition, now threatened to import cheaper foreign labour . . . .Thus international propagandising for trade-union association was a matter of life or death for the English workers, and in their most advanced areas there was an urgent need
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to forge relationships with continental workers, particularly those of France, Germany and Belgium" (Riazanov 1928, p . 137 ff .) . This aim was no mere programmatic principle for the English trade unions, but was an important characteristic of the practical activities of the IWMA . A whole series of actions of international support between 1865 and 1869 testify to this . "The General Council (of the IWMA - author's note) in fact intervened in countless strikes threatened by foreign strike-breakers, for example, the strikes of the London wire-workers, the Edinburgh tailors, the London tobacco-workers, the Manchester tailors, the London basket-makers and the London tailors ." (Braunthal 1%1, p . 128r. There are also reports that "in strikes of the English zinc-workers, tailors and railway employees" foreign strike-breakers were boycotted by French workers and even prevented from embarking for England (ibid .)(10) . The attempt deliberately to use foreign workers as strike-breakers at a time when a trade-union struggle over rights of association was going on must be seen as the decisive factor in the development of trade-union internationalisation, the content of. which was in this phase, concentrated principally upon the introduction of the elementary preconditions of trade-union struggle . In this the IWMA's interventions were in no way confined to England . The fact that it was already necessary to employ foreign workers as strike-breakers in England is simply a reflection of the relatively developed state of the English trade-union movement, which had enjoyed limited rights of association since 1824/25(11) . In contrast, in the countries of continental Europe where trade-union development was still characterised by extensive local fragmentation and a total lack of the politico-legal conditions for trade-union struggle, every labour struggle represented a struggle for the political rights of the workers . This can be seen in every labour struggle supported by the General Council of the IWMA, and in the objectives it pursued, such as the recognition of trade unions, shortening of hours of work, protection against wage reduction, struggle against lock-outs and the use of the police and military to break up strikes . As examples we may cite the disputes of the Paris bronze-workers, the Geneva building-workers, the Lyon silkspinners, the Rouen cotton-workers, the Leipzig type-setters, the Paris foundryworkers, the weavers from Vienne in France, the German and Belgian tobaccoworkers, the Waldenburg miners, the silk-dyers and ribbon-weavers of Basle and the miners of Charleroi and St . Etienne . All these disputes elicited demonstrations of solidarity and support between 1867 and 1869 (Braunthal 1961, pp. 128-131) . After this no further actions of support are recorded . Admittedly the delegates to the Basle Congress of the I WMA in 1869 unanimously recognised "the necessity for an international trade-union organisation" (Kriegel 1975, p . 202), but the gradual withdrawal of the English trade unions removed any basis for this . This withdrawal was certainly not only the result of ideological differences, as for example with the question of support for the Paris Commune, where the refusal of support by the English trade unions is documented by the IWMA (ibid ., p . 215) . More importantly, a changed framework of social conditions for trade-union development emerges, and this must be integrated into the interpretation of the failure of this initial phase of trade-union internationalisation . As this first phase of trade-union internationalisation was principally determined by efforts to achieve trade-union combination and the battle for tradeunion rights, so this ultimately meant the creation of the preconditions for the
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establishment of national trade unions . This seemingly paradoxical relation between the national constituting of trade unions and trade-union internationalisation is explictly formulated in the Rules of the IWMA itself . There the IWMA describes itself as "an international agency between the different national and local groups of the Association", one of its aims being "to combine the disconnected working men's societies of their respective countries into national bodies, represented by central national organs" (Provisional Rules of the IWMA, quoted in Riazanov 1973, pp . 163-5) . This interest was a common one which could, however, be pursued within the framework of the IWMA only for as long as all the participating trade-union organisations were at this particular stage of development . The achievement of these goals at different times destroyed this first attempt at trade-union internationalisation . "In fact one noticed a growing 'nationalisation' of the workingclass movement, the tendency towards strengthening one's own proletariat and securing its own means of livelihood, first as proletarians in general and later as the proletariat of a particular nation" (Droz 1975, p . 244) . If one interprets this 'securing their livelihood as proletarians in general' to mean necessary alliances of workers aiming to realize the value of their labourpower, we may take the dates of the foundation of national trade-union coordinating organisations, or of the achievement of rights of association, as giving some empirical evidence for the uneven development of this process . It can be seen that in England both of these stages were reached during - the lifetime of the IWMA (TUC founded in 1868, repeal of restrictions on rights of association in 1871), whereas on the whole neither was achieved in other capitalist countries before the 1890's (e .g . American Federation of Labour founded in 1886 . First Congress of the Genera lkomission der Gerwerkschaften Deutschlands in 1892, Confederation Cenerale du Travail founded in 1895[12)) . Several conclusions may be drawn from this conjuncture of trade-union internationalisation and establishment of national trade unions : - firstly, it may be seen that the principal content of international trade-union politics was primarily concentrated upon the achievement of politico-legal preconditions for the representation of economic interests, and thus upon the constituting of trade unions nationally; - secondly, the absence of any simultaneity in the 'nationalisation' of the trade unions, as expressed in the withdrawal of the English unions, led to the disintegration of the IWMA and made the achievement of similar results in the continental European countries all the more difficult . As a result it was not until the '90's that any new attempt at trade-union internationalisation was made ; - thirdly, the foundation and consolidation of national trade unions in general marked the end of the phase of significant political internationalism, and led in the '90's or thereabouts to a new period of trade-union internationalism based on new foundations and to an international trade-union politics with new concerns . 1 .2 International Trade-Union Politics in the Period after the Constituting of National Trade Unions It is of extreme importance for this phase of trade-union development that, as a
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result of the consolidation of the nation state, the struggle for the 'nationalisation' of the trade unions led to the unions from that time becoming the representatives of the economic interests of the workers, acting autonomously and without connection to the political movements of the working-class which came into being at the same time . This can be documented at an international level . In contrast to the First International, the fresh attempts at trade-union internationalisation which now appear are manifested in purely trade-union bodies . These are on two levels of organisation : at the level of branch unions, all important branches and industries had formed international associations in around 1890 (the International Trades Secretariats) (for data see Gottfurcht 1962, p . 99 ff . ; Furtwangler 1956, p . 42 ; Kral and Venerova 1967, p . 186) ; and the national co-ordinating organisations came together in the International Trade-Union Federation in 1913 . This separation of the representation of the political and economic interests of the workers also manifested itself in the changed objectives of trade-union internationalisation . Whereas in the previous period trade-union internationalisation covered issues ranging from the political rights of the worker to the representation of his economic interests, the economic interests themselves now come to the fore . This "confining of international trade-union work" (Gottfurcht 1912, p . 34 ff .) to the field of representation of economic interest has determined the content and procedural form of trade-union internationalisation ever since, and marks a profound change of function . We will develop some hypotheses concerning this . The first consideration concerns the changed economic foundations of international trade-union politics, as a result of the formation of the bourgeois nation-state in the second half of the nineteenth century . In our view the 'nationalisation' of the trade unions is not just an act of political and ideological integration, but itself has a material foundation . Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to support our hypothesis with detailed empirical data, such as an international comparison of real wages in the nineteenth century, it can be assumed that it is only with the constitution of the capitalist class and the introduction of the nation-state as the context for capital accumulation that national average conditions of labour come into being which at the same time present a material basis for a national level of reproduction of the working-class . Parallel to this formation of a national 'average worker', international comparison reveals a differentiated pattern of development . As a result of different conditions of accumulation, variations in the homogeneity of the capitalist class, different political policies pursued by the various nation-states, differing strengths of the proletariat in the class struggle, etc ., an international graduation in national levels of reproduction occurs at the same time as these national levels of reproduction become established . This not only places limits upon any international tradeunion policy of 'representing economic interests', but also consciously or unconsciously transforms the politics of the national trade-unions . This thesis may be empirically illustrated by the fact that attempts at trade-union internationalisation in this second phase since about 1890 have generally remained rather feeble and have led in part to open national fractionalisation within the International Trade-Union Federation (Gottfurcht, 1962) . A second consideration arises out of the trend of international trade-union
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activity since 1890 . If one compares this with long-term tendencies of economic development, such as can be observed empirically in the 'long waves' of development (Mandel 1975b, p . 108 ff .)[13], then we can see a connection between periods of accelerated or depressed economic growth on the one hand, and stagnation or progress in trade-union internationalisation on the other . Thus the 'long wages' of economic prosperity from about 1890 to World War I and from World War II to 1966/67 were phases of relative stagnation with regard to trade-union internationalisation . Although there were organisational advances in the international trade-union movement (in the first period the establishment of numerous International Trade Secretariats and the International Trade-Union Federation, in the second the foundation of the World Federation of Trade Unions and later of the Federation of Free Trade Unions) these were of almost no practical importance . The opposite is true of the periods of economic stagnation between the two World Wars (though here modified in its effect by specific circumstances) and since the mid-60's . These, and the contemporary period of stagnation in particular, show a relative increase in international trade-union activity . This economically conditioned course of the second phase of trade-union internationalisation - which may also be differentiated on this level from the initial stage of trade-union internationalisation, which corresponded with a period of economic prosperity - shows the change in function of international trade-union politics previously mentioned . For it can be shown that trade-uriion internationalisation remains insignificant in phases when national trade unions are, as a result of economic conditions, able to maintain an established level of reproduction or to raise it . In contrast, international trade-union politics only become activated in periods when particular national trade unions find themselves under pressure from altered economic circumstances . The function of international trade-union politics must therefore be interpreted as an attempt to defend an established national level of reproduction from any threat to it throughout any period when the national trade unions are relatively weak . In this sense the content of trade union internationalisation can be described as being a trade-union form of 'national protectionism' .
2 . NEW FORMS OF TRADE-UNION INTERNATIONALISATION THROUGH MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS This short sketch of the history of trade-union internationalisation provides us with a methodological approach to the present discussion of the opportunities for a politics of international trade-unionism . This discussion is characterised by its optimistic assertion that the multinational corporations will automatically lead to trade-union internationalisation[14], and that the new organisation forms which have arisen in connection with the multinational corporations will provide the foundation for a new phase of trade-union internationalisation[15] . If these theses are true, two consequences follow : firstly it must be the case that the multinational' corporations have created economic conditions which present new possibilities for trade-union internationalisation ; secondly this 'new quality' of trade-union internationalisation should be evident in the emergence, objectives and practical activities of the so-called World Corporation Councils,
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the new organisational forms of trade-union opposition which have developed in connection with the expansion of the multinational corporations . 2 .1 The Genesis of the World Corporation Councils The trade-union World Corporation Councils (WCC) which have been constituted since the mid-60's should primarily be seen as part of a general revival of tradeunion internationalisation occasioned by the onset of a period of economic stagnation . This does not however explain the novel organisational form of the WCC which act as co-ordinating bodies for the national unions at the level of the corporation . This must be interpreted in the light of a structural change in the formation of the world market since the end of World War II, in particular a sectoral change in the structure of foreign direct investment . In contrast to the preceding phase of capitalist development, in which the world market formation was overwhelmingly constituted by the export of commodity capital, and in which private direct investment abroad was a tiny proportion of total capital exports, the expansion of the world market particularly in the '50's and '60's was based above all upon an internationalisation of productive capital . This decisive change in the international inter-relations of the capitalist industrial nations since the end of World War II consists above all in the fact that in comparison with the export of commodity capital, the export of capitalisable profits and investable money-capital has shown a quantitatively enormous increase . This has led to the growing circulation of international commodities being itself increasingly based upon production abroad . Thus for example in 1971 the foreign production of US capital was more than three and a half times greater than the export of commodity capital . For British capital the ratio was more than two to one . In contrast the foreign production of the FRG still occupies a relatively weak position (only about 40% of commodity capital) so that its involvement in the world market is still predominantly expressed in commodity export . In total, the foreign production of the most important industrial nations already stands at 130% of their export of commodity capital, a figure which expresses the degree of internationalisation of productive capital (United Nations 1973, p . 159) . Along with this development there is a concentration of foreign direct investment in manufacturing industry rather than - as in other historical phases of capitalist development - almost exclusively in the raw materials sectors(16) . This can be exemplified in US investment : in 1929 24% of US direct investment (or only $1,800m .) went to manufacturing industry ; by 1970 this was attracting 41 .2% ($32,000m .) of American capital exports[17) . If we consider manufacturing industry branch by branch, it can be seen that US direct investment is predominantly involved in the chemicals industry (25% of investment), in motor vehicle manufacture (13%) and in engineering (13%) (Scharrer, 1972, p . 106) . These are the sectors in which the process of internationalisation of productive capital mentioned above is most fully developed . A similar picture of the sectoral division of US direct investment emerges using net plant capacity as an indicator . This gives an approximation for fixed capital and is thus important as an indication of the average technical conditions under which labour is employed(18) . This growth is direct investment abroad and its progressive concentration in
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branches of manufacturing industry can also be taken as an indicator of the expansion of the multinational corporations, but without these two processes being completely identical . This is at least in part a question of the quantitative specification of the concept 'multinational' . It is frequently assumed that the criteria for'multinationality' are fulfilled when 25% of the turnover, investment or manpower of a corporation is engaged in foreign-based production (Rolfe and Damm 1970, p . 17 ; See also Kindleberger 1%9, p . 180 ff) . For our purposes the general data given above are quite adequate . They at least sketch in the background of significant US foreign investment in manufacturing industry, which was from the outset criticised by the American unions as involving the danger of 'job export' through multinational corporations [19) . By the mid-'50's this had led the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), the most important US branch-union, to the idea of the World Corporation Council . to be realised within the framework of the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) (ICFTU, 1971, pp . 11, 24) . From the outset the notion of the WCC contained the idea of creating wage parity, particularly between the American and European plants of the US automobile corporations, in order to deprive the acceleration in foreign production of its basis . This'protectionist' aim of the UAW[20) encountered resistance from the West European unions up to the mid-'60's, with the result that the UAW tried to make contacts at the factory level at Ford and Opel 'behind the back' of IG Metall (the West German Metalworkers Union) in order to achieve this decrease in wage differentials (Etty and Tudyka 1974, p . 363) . IG Metall's refusal to participate in the planned WCCs and to press for parity as UAW demanded was certainly not primarily determined by considerations of wage policy (the intention to create 'high wage centres') (Brenner, quoted in Etty and Tudyka 1974, p . 363), but rather by the totally different world market positions of US and West German branch capital, as expressed for example in the non-simultaneity of the expansion of direct investment abroad . It was only in the late '60's, when the tendency towards foreign production also made itself felt in Western Europe, that the West European unions (particularly the West Germans) were prepared to constitute WCCs . These have been set up in rapid succession since 1%6, particularly in the motor vehicle, chemical and electrical branches, as can be seen from the following table : Table I : World Corporation Councils of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) (Etty and Tudyka 1974, p . 388) Year and place of foundation 1966
1967
Detroit Detroit Detroit Wolfsburg Geneva Geneva
Corporation
Instigating Body
General Motors Ford Chrysler-Simca-Rootes Vokswagen/Daimler-Benz International Harvester etc. Working Committee on MNCs in the
IMF IMF IMF IMF IMF IMF
CAPITAL & CLASS
66 Table I continued Year and of foundation
1967 1969
1971
1972
1973
1974 (Key :
Brussels Geneva Paris Brussels London Geneva Geneva Geneva Geneva Istanbul Geneva Geneva Bielefeld Geneva Geneva Geneva London London Geneva Paris Paris Geneva Geneva Geneva Gothenburg Geneva
Corporation Electro and Electronics Industry Philips Saint Gobain C .I . des Wagons Lits et du Tourisme Fokker/VFW BLMC, Fiat/Citroen, Renault-Peugeot, Nissan-Toyota Rhone-Poulenc Kimberley Clark Corp . Michelin Dunlop-Pirelli Shell, Gulf Oil etc . W . R . Grace & Co. Nestle Oetker Giba-Geigy Hoffmann-La Roche Akzo Shell British Petroleum Pilkington Goodyear Firestone Unilever Permanent Council Tobacco Industry (BAT, Rupert/Rembrandt, Reynolds, etc . St. Regis Volvo-Saab Du Pont de Nemours
Instigating Body
EMB ICF IUF EMB IMF ICF ICF ICF ICF IFPCW ICF/IUF IUF IUF ICF ICF ICF ICF ICF ICF ICF ICF ICF/IUF IUF ICF IMF ICF
EMB European Federation of Metalworkers ICF International Federation of Chemical and General Workers' Unions IMF International Metalworkers Federation IUF International Union of Food and Allied Workers' Associations IFPCW International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers)
In the case of West Germany it can be shown that this phase of forming WCCs coincides with a sharp rise in direct investment abroad . About 78% of the present foreign investments of West Germany (about DM40,000m .) dates from the period after 1965 (von Saldern 1973, p . 70)(21) . From this it can be seen that the tradeunion WCCs were not some quasi-natural offshoot of the multinational corporations, but arose under specific historical conditions at precisely that point in time
WORLD MARKET COMPETITION AND RESTRICTIONS
67
at which the protectionist interests of the American unions corresponded with those of the West European (and in particular the West German) trade unions . So far we have explained the new form of trade-union internationalisation in terms of the change in the sectoral structure of foreign direct investment, and the timing of the establishment of trade-union WCCs in terms of the non-simultaneity of the implementation of this process . A third factor should also be considered : the trend towards regional changes in structure within the process of internationalisation of productive capital . In general the trade unions saw the WCCs as a way of counteracting the threat of loss of employment by means of trade-union internationalisation . In a statement by the Michelin Corporation Council the interests motivating them are expressed as being to avert "injustice, hardship and the threat to jobs and wages in affluent parts of the world" and the "potential threat to high-seniority employees" (our emphasis) presented by the multinational corporations (Levinson 1972a, p . 138-9) . This specific conflict between workers of the developed industrial nations and those of countries which are in a stage of industrialisation aimed at catching up with the West, poses a clash of interests for the trade-union organisations in other corporations as well[22) . What specific factors determine this confrontation? The bulk of foreign direct investment continues to be deployed within the developed capitalist industrial nations, but this in no way implies that the countries of the Third World stand outside this general trend towards the internationalisation of productive capital . In fact the development of US foreign direct investment shows that the rate of growth in the manufacturing industry of, for example, Latin America is greater than the average over all the countries in which US corporations invest . Between 1960 and 1968 US direct investment abroad increased in total by 11 .5% . In Latin America in the same period it increased by 12 .8% . Such a rate of growth in Latin America puts it ahead of the development in Canada (7 .4%), and only slightly behind Western Europe (13 .9%) (CEPAL 1970, Ch. 1 ; Fainzylber 1971) . This pattern in the rates of growth of direct investment abroad is also evidenced in the recent developments in West Germany(23) . Without considering the possible causes of this empirically demonstrable tendency to shift production increasingly to the so-called low-wage countries, which can be established for a limited group of industries within the broad spectrum of manufacturing industry as a whole, the varying effects of this direct investment upon the possibilities for trade-union internationalisation must be considered . Two factors seem to be of significance : firstly, the impossibility of establishing an identity of economic interests given the enormous differences in conditions of production which exist ; and secondly, that the possible negative effects upon employment for the workers in the developed capitalist industrial nations cannot be compensated for by reciprocal direct investment, as might be the case in due course with displacements of production within the industrial nations, as a result of 'cross-investments' . If we draw together the three strands of the argument developed so far, we can make the following summary assessment of the origins and aims of the World Corporation Councils as new forms of trade-union internationalisation : - their new organisational form is based upon the internationalisation of productive capital . Within the multinational corporation this leads to the
66
CAPITAL & CLASS competition arising from different national conditions being manifested
within a single capital formation ; - the content of even this form of trade-union internationalisation is characterised by the protectionism of national trade unions ; - in this context a specific conflict of interests can emerge between the national trade unions of the developed and under-developed countries . Against this background an internationalisation of the trade unions - at least as far as the unions of the developed capitalist industrial nations are concerned seems to be "a condition for national trade-union survival" (Levinson 1972a, p . 141) ; it remains for us in what follows to investigate the practical substance of this new form of trade-union internationalisation . 2.2 A 'New Phase' of Trade-Union Internationalisation through Multinational Corporations? The World Corporation Councils were created as a new form of trade-union internationalisation - alongside the existing Internationals of national coordinating bodies and of branch unions - with the intention of providing a 'third force' of trade-union internationalisation . (Piehl 1974, p. 304) . There were in fact very exaggerated expectations about the consequences : they were to make possible a 'transnational mobilisation of the rank and file' and a reconciliation of ideological divisions in the trade-union movement(24( . Such expectations have been balanced in the meantime by more pessimistic evaluations of their role : the WCCs are organisationally sub-organs of the existing branch internationals ; their composition in terms of personnel shows them to be organs 'remote from the rank and file' ; they have remained relatively insignificant in disputes at the plants of multinational corporations ; trade-union members are unlikely to have heard a word of their existence, etc . (Etty and Tudyka 1974, 1975) . This realism in the subsequent evaluation of trade-union WCCs has, for its part, led to an argument which sees opposition within the trade unions between bureaucracy and rank and file as the decisive obstacle to trade-union internationalisation (e .g . Brumlop 1972 . p . 9) . In view of the practices of, for example, the West German unions which have meanwhile explicitly banned international contacts at the level of the firm(251, such criticism is understandable . But the relative lack of significance of the WCCs cannot be fully explained in these terms . In our view it is much more a case of a structurally conditioned weakness of the WCCs themselves . This is grounded in the form of the real implementation of different national conditions of production at the level of the firm, and in the persistence of such differences in spite of the multinational corporations . The variety of national conditions of production and reproduction, which is the decisive factor governing the movements of multinational corporations, only appears in a direct form at the level of the firm in, for example, cases of displacement of production through plant closures . The international division of labour brought about by the multinational corporations is achieved only to a very limited extent by the direct displacement of productive capital . The predominant form is rather through a relative reduction in new investment (particularly in investment for expansion) in the country of origin . The WCCs, concentrating as they do upon the 'spectacular special case' of direct displacement of production, thus lose some of their significance, since the process of the international division of labour
WORLD MARKET COMPETITION AND RESTRICTIONS
69
proceeds mainly through the indirect displacement of productive capital . This can be illustrated by the West German electrical firms AEG and Siemens . Table II : Domestic and Foreign Employees 1964-1975 (in thousands) 1964
65
AEGTelefunken Domestic Foreign
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
127 5
128 126 124 133 148 160 146 144 150 6 12 12 13 16 18 21 22 25
Siemens Domestic Foreign
212 35
221 218 202 211 220 234 234 227 222 221 207 36 39 40 45 52 67 72 74 81 88 90
Sources : AEG-Telefunken, Geschaftsbericht 1973 p . 72 (end-December figures) ; Siemens, Geschaftsbericht 1972/73, Siemens-Mitteilungen No. 11/74 and 11/75 (end-September figures) . Both firms show (with the exception of a fall during the '66/67 crisis) a similar rise in domestic employment over the period 1964-73 . At the same time the rise in the number of those employed overseas is proportionately (ahd in the case of Siemens, absolutely) greater than the domestic increase . From 1970, when in both cases domestic employment was at its maximum, to 1973, domestic employment shows an absolute decline (AEC -10,000 : Siemens -12,000) while foreign employment increases (AEG +7,000 : Siemens +14,000) . The more recent data for Siemens show an acceleration in this development . This means that since 1970 a displacement of productive capital has taken place which has brought about a significant decrease in domestic employment a displacement achieved however without any spectacular closures taking place . Alongside the factor of the assertion of international competitive relations within specific firms, there is a second factor : the continuing existence of differing national conditions of production . The multinational corporations allow the competition caused by differing national conditions of production to emerge all the more clearly in that they are manifested within a single capital formation . This does not give rise to a qualitatively new form of competitive relationship ; nor is the existence of differing national conditions of production modified decisively so as to provide a new 'objective basis' from which trade-union internationalisation might follow . Finally, we would like to present some considerations relating to the empirical content of the equalisation thesis, its theoretical implications and its significance for trade-union internationalisation . Recent empirical research[26) has shown that, although the gap is closing between the USA and several other industrial nations such as the FRG, if an average is taken over manufacturing industry as a whole, looked at branch by branch, important differences persist in the technological levels and ages of the industrial sectors . This picture of international differences in productivity of labour and technology differentiated by branch and industrial sector is equally true of the sector of the multinational corporations . Here it can be seen that
70
CAPITAL & CLASS
although this sector maintains its dominant position in the individual branches, there is just as much an international ranking by labour productivity within this sector as in any other (Schoeller 1976, p . 107 ff) . Alongside this factor of differentiation in conditions of production between branches, even in those countries where the global tendency towards an equalisation in the conditions of production can be observed, an additional and general process of uneven development takes place between the industrial nations themselves . Studies show that even for the EEC countries economic development retains its uneven character . "This is not only supported by the important variations in the rate of economic growth between individual countries, the persistent differences in the structure of production and the degree of concentration of capital and production, but above all by persistent disparities in productivity between national capitals . . ." (Deppe 1975, p . 232) . From the observable tendencies towards partial equalisation between individual industrial nations during the world market's phase of expansion in the '50's and '60's (particularly in comparison with the dominant USA), no empirical evidence can therefore be found to support the view that real social relations came into existence which would be equivalent to an extensive internationalisation of the accumulation and reproduction of capital . This leads to a second consideration, namely the methodological question of what preconditions are needed for an 'internationalised' reproduction of capital . In our view, just as the process of constituting a total national capital was the result of functions of the national state, so even the tendency towards the constituting of a "true historical world capital" (Neususs 1972, p . 187) logically and historically presupposes supranational statehood . Such a supercession of the national state cannot therefore be thought of in terms of some economic mechanism, but implies politico-military action, which may well have its ultimate roots in economic relations, but which can in no way be described as an exclusively economic phenomenon[271 . Here we finally come to the central methodological problem and to the nub of the controversy in the present discussion of new possibilities for trade-union internationalisation . The argument of the 'new objective basis' is ultimately an implicit attempt to find a superficial economic basis for the necessity and possibility of international trade-union politics . The evidence of persistent differences in national conditions of production and reproduction can only lead to an immanent rejection of the thesis of a 'new phase' of trade-union internationalisation . Over and above this one must firmly reject the idea that the tendency towards equalisation is, in the first place, identical with a real 'internationalisation' of capital reproduction ; and in the second place, that it contains within itself even a starting point for trade-union internationalisation aimed at reducing international competition between the workers themselves . Even a much more extensive equalisation tendency in the national conditions of production of the individual nations, which could be the material basis for a strategy of wage equality, would in no way limit competition between workers . Any process of promoting 'internationalism' which is economically based and is, for example, superficially orientated towards wage differences, as is the case with the notion of syndicalist internationalism, can only reproduce the competition between nationally different conditions of production in the form of
WORLD MARKET COMPETITION AND RESTRICTIONS
71
a latent national fractionalisation within the trade-union movement(28) . In this sense nationally different conditions of production present an obstacle for tradeunion internationalisation, which, in its present form, can only have a transitional character because of its immanent contradictory nature . This transition could be made in either one of two directions ; either in the direction of a subjective 'national isat ion' of the trade-union movement, consisting of conscious competition between workers of different nations and nationalities (to this extent trade-unionism always contains the germs of nationalistic and racialist behaviour), or in the direction of a politicisation of trade-union activity combining the struggle for the maintenance and raising of the level of reproduction of the commodity labour power with the perspective of developing the power of the proletariat( 29 1 . Within the range of particular trade-union policies from the policy of the American trade-union federation, the AFL/CIO, through the recently intensified protectionist stance of the West German and also the English trade unions, to the autonomous attempts at trade-union internationalisation, e .g . in Italy[30) - these historical alternatives are already taking on a concrete form today .
NOTES 1 "The 'Internationals' were an idealistic undertaking . . . . Today's discussion of trade-union opposition (to the MNCs - authors' note) belong to this tradition, but with the decisive difference that today a real and challenging foundation for an international organisation of the workers is provided by the production process itself" .(Tudyka 1973, Introductory Note, p . xvii - retranslated) . 2 In the text, 'competition between workers' refers exclusively to competition between workers of different nation-states . On the question of competition between workers of different nationalities within a single nation-state and its effect on trade-union politics, see Hildebrandt & Olle 1975 . 3 This tripartite division, devised by the US economist Perlmutter (1965, pp . 151 ff .), can easily be refuted empirically, since the relationship between foreign and domestic employment in MNCs of various countries of origin are extremely diverse and determined by the particular national conditions of capital accumulatign (Figures for individual firms may be found in United Nations 1973) . 4 See Piehl 1974, p . 70, where these 'negative' effects will be overcome by "multinational corporations which are at least democratically structured and which work in the interests of mankind" . 5 In our view, Mandel takes a much too optimistic view of the international labour disputes at St . Gobain, AKZO and Glaverbel . 6 "But even when a trade-union organisation has established itself as an organisation of all the workers, it remains above all an organisation of the national working class' (Redaktionskollektiv Gewerkschaften 1974 p . 59) . 7 This is the case with Neususs 1972, and also in a modified form with Busch 1974 .
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CAPITAL & CLASS
8 This is the conclusion Emmanuel 1970 draws because of the way he employs the concept of unequal exchange . For a critique see Bettelheim 1970 . 9 This has recently been propounded by Tudyka 1976, who on the basis of enquiries among workers in MNCs concludes that an international trade-union strategy "has no adequate basis among the workers" (p . 61) . 10 Unfortunately we cannot give a clear-cut answer to the question of what significance the qualification structure of the immigrant labour might have . It can however be established that the leading members of the London Trades Council and the General Council of the IWMA came from the ranks of the skilled hand-workers (e.g. carpenters, joiners, painters, paper-hangers, stuccoworkers, tailors, shoemakers, book-binders and printers) . Skilled or unskilled factory operatives were not represented on the London Trades Council or on the General Council of the IWMA . In the history of the English trade-union movement up to this time, there were only occasional attempts made at the trade-union organisation of skilled or unskilled factory hands, in 1824-5 and 1829-31'. These efforts were destroyed in the course of the 1833-4 strikes (see Pumpiansky 1912) . 11 The 'Combination Laws' of 1799/1800, which sanctioned a general ban on any association of workers, were repealed in 1824-5 . Although trade-union organizations were no longer illegal, restrictions on the rights of combination existed up to 1871 . See Bedarida 1975, p . 80 ff . 12 On this point see the relevant national references and the entry'Koalition and koalitionrecht' in Heyde 1931 . 13 As a theory of long waves, Mandel's attempt at an explanation cannot be seen as more than a first step, since he cannot account for the changes in international competitive relations within the history of capitalism . 14 Piehl 1974, p . 23 formulates the analogy thus : "Just as the national organisation of capitalism has led to the national organisation of those dependent on it for employment, so the MNC as the modern form of the international capitalist economy will bring about the internationalisation of the tradeunion movement" . 15 See Gallin 1973, p. 33, who sees the MNC as making it necessary for "the international trade-union movement to give an increasingly practical and concrete content to the old concept of labour internationalism" . 16 See Dunning 1970, p . 18, according to which up to the economic crisis of 1929 private direct investment made up barely 10% of (money) capital exports . 17 This development may also be seen for other countries : in 1970 about 40% of British foreign direct investment, 33% of French, 27% of Japanese and 75% of West German went to branches of manufacturing industry (von Saldern 1973, p . 19) . 18 Of the net plant capacity at the disposal of US capital abroad in 1970, within the manufacturing sector alone, 22% was in chemicals, 12% in non-electrical engineering, 8% in metal-working and 6% in foodstuffs . From U .S . Senate Committee on Finance 1973 . 19 According to the estimates of the AFL/CIO about 500,000 jobs were lost between 1%6 and 1%9 as a result of the change in the structure of foreign trade, particularly through reimports from American affiliates abroad . For a discussion of 'job export' see jungnickel and Matthies 1973, p . 20 ff . 20 This example is evidence of the problem of discussing trade-union
WORLD MARKET COMPETITION AND RESTRICTIONS
73
internationalism and 'protectionism' as if they were mutually exclusive tradeunion strategies . 21 For further details see the article'Zur lnternationalisierung der westdeutschen Wirtschaft' in WSI-Mitteilungen no. 4, Koln 1976 . 22 . Thus at the 6th Scientific Colloquium of the AFK, the IUL representative Horst Stasius reported a shift of production by the Nestle Group from France to Madagascar, which resulted in a considerable reduction in both production and employment in France and caused unreconcileable clashes of interest between the affected unions within the IUL . 23 Although West German direct investment in developing countries is declining as a proportion of total foreign direct investment (39 .1% in 1%1, 28 .1% in 1971, about 25% in 1975), its yearly growth rate has recently been disproportionately high . Thus in the first half of 1975 direct investment in the developing countries accounted for 32% of the net capital outflow, well above its 25% share of the total stock of investments (von Saldern 1973, p . 71 ; WSIMitteilungen no . 4, 1976, p . 232 ; Handelsblatt 1/12/75) . 24 This argument is employed by Matthofer, Nehls, Piehl and others . 25 IG-Metall delegate at the 2nd . General Assembly of the European Metalworkers Federation in Frankfurt, October 1974 . See also Olle 1975 . esp . p . 169 ff ., and the reports from firms in Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte no . 7, 1971 . 26 See Maier 1973, esp . pp . 214, 222, and Nabseth and Ray 1974 ; also the findings of U .S . Senate Committee on Finance 1973, United Nations 1973, and the U .S . Tariff Commission report of 1970 . 27 For this discussion see Axt 1976 and Olle and Schoeller 1976 . 28 In this sense Gorz 1974, who advances the thesis that it is not possible to overcome national fractionalisation at the level of trade-unionism, is also to be supported . 29 The only attempt of which we are aware, in the whole of the literature on the multinationals, to state the limits on and potential of trade-union internationalisation is that by Babson 1973 . 30 Thus the shop-stewards' International Steering Committee at Dunlop-Pirelli has come out decisively against the idea of international wage contracts and multinational corporation trade unions .
REFERENCES Altvater, E . (1973) Multinational Corporations and the Working Class, in Tudyka 1973 . Axt, H-) . (1976) Westeuropiische Integration, Nationalstaat, and Arbeiterbewegung, in F . Deppe led), Arbeiterbewegung and West-Europilische Integration, Koln . Babson, S . (1973) The Multinational Corporation and Labor, Review of Radical Political Economics, no . 1 . Becu, O . (1%2) Preface, in Gottfurcht 1962 . Bedarida, F . (1975) Der Sozialismus in England bis 1848, in Droz 1975 .
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Bettelheim, C . (1970) Economic Inequalities between Nations, Monthly Review, no. 2 . Bolze, W . n .d . Der Weg der Gewerkschaften, Bremen (Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik) . Braunthal, ) . (1%1) Geschichte der Internationale, Vol . I, Hannover . Brumlop, E . (1972) Internationale Arbeitersolidaritat : Streik bei Dunlop-Pirelli, Express, Offenbach . Busch, K . (1974) Die Multinationale Konzerne : Zur Analyse der Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals, Frankfurt/Main . CEPAL (1970) Estudis economicos de America Latina, E/CN 12/868, Santiago de Chile . Deppe, F . (1975) Zur i konomischen and politischen Struktur des Integrationsprozess, in F . Deppe, led), EWC - Zur politischen Okonomie der westeuropaischen integration, Reinbek . Droz, 1 . (1975) Geschichte des Sozialismus, Vol . III : Sozialismus and Arbeiterbewegung bis zum Ende der 1 . Internationale, West Berlin . Dunning, 1 . (1970) Studies in International Investment, London . Emmanuel, A . (1970) The Illusions of Internationalism, Monthly Review, no . 2 . Etty. T . & Tudyka. K . (1974) Wereldconcernraden - Vakbonden en hun'kapitaalgerichte' strategie tegen multinationale ondernemingen, Te Elfder Ure, no . 16 . Etty, T . & Tudyka, K . (1975) Paper to 6th Scientific Colloquium of the AFK, Hannover, October . Fajnzylber, F . (1971) La empresa international en la industrialization de America Latina, Santiago de Chile (MS) . Gallin, D . (1973) Counterstrategies of the Employees, in Tudyka 1973 . Gorz, A . (1974) Introduction, in D . Anselme et . al ., Die Fremdarbeiter, Gaiganz . Gottfurcht, H . (1962) Die internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung im Weltgeschehen, Koln . Heyde, L . (1931) Internationales Handwdrterbuch des CewerkschaItswesens, Berlin . Hildebrandt, E . & Olle, W (1975) Ihr Kampf ist unser Kampf, Offenbach . ICFTU (1971) The Multinational Challenge, World Economic Conference Reports, no . 2, Brussels . lungnickel, R . & Matthies K . (1973) Multinationale Unternehmen and Gewerkschaften . Hamburg . Kindleberger, C . (1969) American Business Abroad, London . Kral K . & Venerova, K . (1967) ABC der Internationalen Gewerkschaftsbewegung, East Berlin . Kriegel, A . (1975) Die Internationale Arbeiterassoziation (1864 bis 1876), in Droz 1975 . Levinson, C . (1972a) International Trade Unionism, London . Levinson, C . (1972b) Die Gewerkschaften begegnen der Herausforderung der Multinationalen, in ICF Bulletin : Ausschusse fur multinationale Konzerne, Geneva . Majer, H . (1973) Die 'technologische Liicke' zwischen der BRD and den VSA, Tiibingen . Mandel, E . 1975a) Folgen der Weltwirtschaftskrise auf die Entwicklung der Arbeiterkampfe im EG-Bereich, Monthly Review (German Ed .), no . 5 . Mandel, E . (1975b) Late Capitalism, London .
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Matth6fer, H . (1971) Internationale Kapitalkonzentration and Gewerkschaftsbewegung, Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte no . 8, Koln . Nabseth . L . & Ray, G . (1974) The Diffusion of New Industrial Processes : An International Study, Cambridge . Nehls, K . (1973) Internationale Konzerne - Monopolmacht - Klassenkampf, IPW-Forschungshefte 1/73, East Berlin . Neusiiss, C . (1972) Imperialismus and Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals, Erlangen . Olle, W . (1975) Internationale Gewerkschaftspolitik am Beispiel der IG-Metall, Kritik der politischen Okonomie no. 3/4 . Olle, W . & Schoeller, W . (1976) Weltmarket, nationale Kapitalreproduktion and Rolle des Nationalstaats, Handbuch no . 5 (Europgische Verlaganstalt) . Perlmutter, H .V . (1%5) L'entreprise internationale - trois conceptions, Revue dconomique et sociale, no . 2 . Piehl, E . (1974) Multinationale Konzerne and internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung, Frankfurt/Main . Pumpiansky, L . (1913) Zur Geschichte der Anfange des englischen TradeUnionismus . Supplement, Neue Zeit no. 13 . Redaktionskollektiv Gewerkschaften(1974) in Probleme des Klassenkampfs no . 13 . Riazanov, D . (1928) Zur Geschichte der ersten Internationale, Marx-Engels-Archiv Vol . 1, Frankfurt/Main . Riazanov, D . (1973) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, New York . Rolfe, S .E . & Damm, W . (1970) The Multinational Corporation in the World Economy, New York . Rothstein, T . (1913) Aus der Vorgeschichte der Internationale, Supplement, Neue Zeit no . 17 . von Saldern, S . (1973) lnternationaler Vergleich der Direktinvestitionen wichtiger IndustrielAnder, HWWA-Report no . 15 (Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung Hamburg) . Scharrer, H . E . (ed) (1972) Fdrderung privater Direktinvestitionen, Hamburg . Schoeller, W . (1976) Weltmarkt and Reproduktion des Kapitals, Frankfurt/Main . Tudyka . K . (ed) (1973) Multinational Corporations and Labour Unions, Nijmegen . Tudyka, K . (1976) Illusionarer Internationalismus, Osterreichische Zeitschrift for Politikwissenschaft no . 1 . United Nations (1973) Multinational Corporations in World Development, New York . United States Senate Committee on Finance (1973) Multinational Corporations : a Compendium of Papers Submitted to the Subcommittee on International Trade.
CAPITAL, CRISIS AND THE STATE* John Holloway and Sol Picciotto
As capitalism has moved into a period of open crisis and reconstruction, the necessity has increasingly been forced upon the working class movement to sharpen our understanding of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation and its relation to class struggle . One crucial aspect of this is the question of the relationship between capital and the state, since the state plays a vital part in the maintenance and reproduction of capital as a relation of class domination . Under the influence of reformism, revisionism and dogmatism, which for a number of reasons dominated Marxist thought from the 1930s to the 1960s, the analysis of the processes of capitalist accumulation became separated from that of class struggle and the state . The analysis of capital accumulation came to be thought of as 'economics' in a narrow sense, reified into the investigation of the relations between 'things', instead of between "social processes appearing in a thing-like shell" (Rosdolsky, 1974, p . 66) . The contradictions of accumulation have too often been thought of as 'economic laws' operating from the outside upon oplitical class relations . The state has been thought of as "the state in capitalist society", rather than as being itself one aspect of the social relations of capital, and therefore stamped throughout, in all its institutions, procedures and ideology, with the contradictions of capital . Hence, there has been a constant undertow towards a reformist conception of revolution as being aimed essentially at the seizure of the existing state apparatus . At the same time, the failure to relate the developing contradictions of accumulation to the changing forms of class struggle within and around the state has made it difficult to develop a political approach to the crisis . Although, in economic terms, it has been recognised that crises are not only the effect of the developing contradictions of capital but also their temporary solution, little progress has been made in understanding the relation between the economic and political processes and the changing forms and functions of the state through which the ruling class attempts to control the outcome of the crisis .
*This paper is the product of discussions in many CSE dayschools and working groups . We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of participants in those discussions, and particularly of our comrades in the Coventry and Edinburgh working groups .
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Our basic argument in this article is that a theoretical and practical understanding of the present crisis and of the role played by the state can be gained only by seeing the crisis not as an 'economic crisis', but as a crisis of the capital relation, i .e . as a crisis of an historically specific form of class domination, a crisis of accumulation which involves the totality of capitalist social relations and therefore a struggle waged on every front and through every mechanism, economic, political, ideological etc . In this view, the question of the relation between the crisis and the state is not a question of an external relation : it is not a question of how the state reacts to crisis, or of whether 'economic crisis' is accompanied by 'political crisis' . The development of the state must rather be seen as a particular form of manifestation of the crisis of the capital relation . Put more generally, the state must be understood as a particular surface (or phenomenal) form of the capital relation, i .e . of an historically specific form of class domination . In the two parts of this article, we shall try first to explain and develop this argument and then to draw some consequences for an understanding of the historical development of the state and of the current crisis .
I CAPITAL AND THE STATE (a) The state as a form of the capital relation The starting point for a socialist theory of the state must be class struggle . "The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle" (Communist Manifesto), and the development of the state is clearly no exception . Marx's great contribution to the struggle for socialism, however, was not merely to show that social development is a process of class struggle, but to show that class struggle assumes different historical forms in different historical societies and that an understanding of these forms is essential for an understanding of class struggle and its development . In each society, the historically determining form is the form assumed by the focal relation of class struggle, the relation of exploitation . "The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of the direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled . . . Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form" (Capital, Vol . III, p . 791) . To understand capitalist development, therefore, it is not enough to think simply in terms of class struggle : it is necessary to understand the particular historical form of class struggle in the capitalist mode of production, based on the particular historical form assumed by the relation of exploitation . This is why 'Capital' is such an important starting point for developing a materialist theory of the capitalist state (or any other aspect of . capitalist society) - not as some economic textbook of Marxism, not because it analyses the 'economic base' to which the 'political superstructure' must be related, but because it is the work in which Marx analyses the particular historical form taken by class exploitation in capitalist societies - surplus value production - and shows that inherent in this form are certain determined contradictions and therefore tendencies of development . It is a peculiarity of capitalist society that social relations appear not as what
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they are (relations of class domination), but "assume a fantastic form different from their reality" (Capital, Vol . I, p . 77) . In 'Capital', Marx developed his analysis of surplus value production not in isolation but in the context of a critique of these 'fantastic forms', or, to be more precise, a critique of the categories of political economy - a materialist critique which did not simply show that the bourgeois political economists were wrong, but showed that the nature of exploitation in capitalist society is such as to generate certain determined forms of social relations, forms which appear on the surface and are apprehended by the economists in the categories of money, price, profit, rent etc . "The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms (value, money, etc) . They are forms of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production" (Capital, Vol . I, p . 76) . The task of a materialist critique of these categories was not just to decipher them as forms in which the relations of production present themselves, but also to show what it is about the relations of production in capitalist society (unlike other societies) which makes them present themselves in this way . [1) 'Capital' is thus a materialist critique of the surface forms apprehended by political economy, a critique necessarily rooted in an analysis of the historical form of class struggle in capitalist society - surplus value production . It is our argument that a materialist theory of the state must extend and develop this critique of the 'fantastic forms' assumed by social relations under capitalism . Just as the analysis of the categories of political economy must show them to be surface forms which have their genesis in suplus value production as capitalist form of exploitation, so the analysis of the state must show it to be a particular phenomenal form of social relations which has its genesis in that same capitalist form of exploitation . This implies, firstly, that a materialist theory of the state begins not by asking in what way the 'economic base' determines the 'political superstructure', but by asking what it is about the relations of production under capitalism that makes them assume separate economic and political forms. Secondly, it follows that, in analysing the capitalist state, it is not enough to start from class struggle : it is necessary to start from the capitalist form of that struggle, surplus value production . That is why Engels's treatment of the state in 'Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State', in which he relates the origins of the state simply to the emergence of class conflict, does not provide an adequate basis for a materialist understanding of the capitalist state . That is also why the work of Gramsci, Poulantzas and Miliband (whatever their respective merits) also fails to provide a systematic basis on which to construct a theory of the state . The problem is not simply to locate the state in the context of the relation between dominant and dominated classes, but to locate it in the context of the historical form taken by that relation in capitalist society, the capital relation .[2) Hence, the beginnings of a theory of the state must lie neither in the specificity of the political, nor in the dominance of the economic, but in the historical materialist category of the capital relation . What is it, then, about class domination in capitalist society (i .e. the capital relation) that generates the 'fantastic form' of the state, [3) that makes the state assume a form apparently separated from the immediate process of production? Or to quote Pashukanis's classic formulation :
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"Why does the dominance of a class not continue to be that which it is - that is to say, the subordination in fact of one part of the population to another part? Why does it take on the form of official state domination? Or, which is the same thing, why is not the mechanism of state constraint created as the private mechanism of the dominant class? Why is it disassociated from the dominant class - taking the form of an impersonal mechanism of public authority isolated from society?" (Pashukanis, 1951, p . 185) . The important distinguishing feature of class domination in capitalist society is that it is mediated through commodity exchange . The worker is not directly subject physically to the capitalist, his subjection is mediated through the sale of his labour power as a commodity on the market . "For the conversion of his money into capital . . . the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power" (Capital, Vol . I, p . 169) . just as the latter freedom (the separation of the worker from control of the means of production) makes possible the abstraction of the direct use of physical force from the immediate process of exploitation, so the first form of freedom, i .e . the fact that exploitation takes place through the free sale and purchase of labour-power, makes this abstraction of direct relations of force from the immediate process of production necessary . The establishment of the capitalist mode of production necessarily involved the establishment of both sorts of freedom - the expropriation of the peasantry and the abolition of direct relations of dependence, sanctioned by force, on individual members of the ruling class . This abstraction of relations of force from the immediate process of production and their necessary location (since class domination must ultimately rest on force) in an instance separated from individual capitals constitutes (historically and logically) the economic and the political as distinct, particularised forms of capitalist domination . This particularisation of the two forms of domination finds its institutional expression in the state apparatus as an apparently autonomous entity . It also finds expression in the separation of the individual's relation to the state from his immediate relation to capital, in the separation of the worker into worker and citizen, in the separation of his struggle into 'economic struggle' and 'political struggle' - whereas this very separation into forms determined by capital, involves therefore an acceptance of the limits imposed by capital . (b) The autonomisation of the state and the fetishisation of social relations This real, historically determined separation of the economic and the political as two forms of class domination gives rise to illusions about the autonomy of 'the state from 'the economy' . The state, like other social forms in capitalism (rent, interest etc) is seen as a 'thing' standing apart from other 'things' rather than as an historically determined form of the social relation of capital . The so-called autonomy of the state is but one aspect of commodity fetishism . Under capitalism, social relations are continually reproduced in a fetishised form, for in commodity production (and only under capitalism is there generalised commodity production), "the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of
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the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things" (Capital, Vol . I, p . 73) . The reproduction of social relations in fetishised form, i .e . in a 'fantastic form' which conceals their reality as relations of class domination, is an essential part of the reproduction of that domination . The autonomisation of the state must be seen as part of this fetishisation, as part of the process through which reproduction imposes the dead hand of capitalist 'reality', a false reality of fantastic forms, upon the struggles of the working class . The essential inequality of the capital relation is transformed in the political sphere into the fantastic form of equality before the state : for it is a complement to the 'freedom' of the worker that in capitalism (unlike other societies) the political status of the individual is in no way determined by his place in the relations of production . The equality of political status enshrines and reinforces the inequality of its essential basis . "For, as distinct from other forms of exploitation, the capitalist form consists precisely in converting labour power into a commodity which circulates freely . The coercive character of the society consists in ensuring that the possessors of the commodity labour-power are in a position to take only its exchange-value to market . Hence the class character of the bourgeois state is also established as soon as the state does not distinguish between the possessors of different 'revenue-sources" (Gerstenberger, 1977) . Seen through the prism of the state, the capital relation is concealed, class struggle is defused, classes are atomised into a mass of individual citizens - 'the public', class consciousness is broken down into 'public opinion' to be expressed individually through opinion polls or the ballot box . The autonomisation of the state is, like all forms of fetishism, both reality and illusion, the reality depending ultimately on the successful struggle of the ruling class to maintain the complex of social relations on which the illusion rests . The autonomisation of the state, which forms part of, and is a necessity for the accumulation of capital, involves not only the necessity of separate political institutions, but also a constant class practice involving the structural and ideological separation and fetishisation of economics and politics and of the private and the public . The survival of the political institutions and hence of capital depends on the success of that struggle in maintaining this separation, by channelling the conflicts arising from the real nature of capitalist society into the fetishised forms of the bourgeois political processes . Thus the very separation of economics and politics, the very autonomisation of the state form is part of the struggle of the ruling class to maintain its domination . It is thus the task of the working class constantly to combat fetishisation as a bourgeois class practice, to transcend those fetishised forms, transforming the fragmented 'economic' and 'political' struggles into a total class struggle, and through the seizure and transformation of the state, to turn state power into working class power . It is therefore not only scientifically unfounded to speak of a "characteristic autonomy of the economic and the political" which "permits us to constitute the political into an autonomous and specific object of science" (Poulantzas, 1973, p . 29), it also runs counter to the task of working class theory . It has ever been characteristic of
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reformism that it emphasises the reality and not the illusion of the fragmentation of social relations, that it accepts as given the fetishisation of class struggle into distinct economic and political channels . The dialectic method has always been "a scandal and abomination to [reformism) and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up ; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence ; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary" . (Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital, Vol . 1 . p . 20) . (c) Fetishism, "Marxist political theory" and "Marxist economics" [4] The analysis of the state as a particularised surface form of the capital relation of class domination gives us not only a basis for relating the development of the state to the development of the contradictions of capital (see Part II below), it also provides a basis for criticising both bourgeois theories of the state (which fail to pierce beyond the surface appearance of the state's autonomy and are thus unable to understand the relation between the state and 'the economy', an inability not without its practical consequences) and other Marxist approaches . It is on these latter that we concentrate in this section . In our view, there are two tendencies which underlie most of the Marxist analyses of the state current in this country . One tendency is to argue (or more often assume) that the actions of the state flow more or less directly from the 'requirements of capital' : such analyses are sometimes accused of 'reductionism' or 'economic determinism', and their failing in our view is to overlook the necessary particularisation of the state as a discrete form of the capital relation . The other tendency, often basing itself on a criticism of the simplifications of 'reductionism', is to insist on the 'relative autonomy' of the political, denying (or more often overlooking) the need to relate the forms, functions and limits of the political to capital accumulation and its contradictions . In our view, this tendency, which may be referred to as'politicist', falls prey to the fetishised illusions created by the real particularisation of the social relations of capitalism . What both tendencies have in common is an inadequate theorisation of the relation between the economic and the political as discrete forms of expression of social relations under capitalism, and the failure to found both the specificity of the political and the development of political forms firmly in the analysis of capitalist production . The discussion in Britain of the Marxist theory of the state has tended to become stuck in the rather infertile rut of the Miliband-Poulantzas debate . This debate has given rise to an illusory polarity between the approaches of these two writers, between what has sometimes been called the 'instrumentalist' and the 'structuralist' approach (cf Gold, Lo and Wright, 1975 ; Poulantzas, 1976), a false polarity which has done much to delimit and impoverish discussion . From our perspective it is quite wrong to regard Miliband and Poulantzas as representing polar alternatives in the Marxist analysis of the state : for all their real differences, that which Poulantzas and Miliband have in common is at least as significant as that which separates them . Both authors focus on the political as an autonomous object of study, arguing, at least implicitly, that a recognition of the specificity of
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the political is a necessary pre-condition for the elaboration of scientific concepts . To some extent, this is a matter of emphasis : clearly neither Poulantzas nor Miliband would deny the validity of Marx's dictum that 'political forms' can be understood only on the basis of the 'anatomy of civil society' (Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, p . 20), but neither of them considers it important to analyse this relation with greater precision . An important consequence of this is that neither tries to build systematically on the historical materialist categories developed by Marx in his analysis of that . 'anatomy' in 'Capital' in order to cbnstruct a Marxist theory of the state . On the contrary, for Poulantzas (explicitly) and for Miliband (implicitly), 'Capital' is primarily (although not exclusively)[5] an analysis of the 'economic level' and the concepts developed there (value, surplus value, accumulation etc) are concepts specific to the analysis of that level . In the same way as 'Capital' analysed the economic as an "autonomous and specific object of science" (Poulantzas, 1973, p . 29), the task of Marxist political theorists, in this view, is to take the political as an "autonomous and specific object of science" to elaborate new concepts specific to the 'political level' (concepts such as 'hegemony', 'power bloc', 'governing class' etc) . In so far, therefore, as these authors base themselves on Marx's writings, they consider it necessary to develop not the 'economic concepts' mentioned above, but the 'political concepts' developed in fragmentary fashion in Marx's 'political writings' and the more 'political' parts of 'Capital' (the discussion of the 'Factory Acts' etc) . Such an approach rests, in our view, on a misunderstanding of Marx's great work, which is not an analysis of the 'economic level' but a materialist critique of political economy, i .e . precisely a materialist critique of bourgeois attempts to analyse the economy in isolation from the class relations of exploitation on which it is based . The consequent failure of both Miliband and Poulantzas - and much the same can be said of Cramsci - to base their analyses of the state in the contradictions of the capital relation leads, it can be shown,[6] to two consequences of fundamental importance : firstly, they are unable to analyse the development of political forms, and secondly they are unable to analyse systematically the limitations imposed on state action by the relation of the state to the process of accumulation . It should not be thought that what we have termed 'politicism' (i .e . overemphasis on the autonomy of the state from the process of accumulation) is peculiar to those who consider themselves to be 'political theorists' . The distinction between the two tendencies which we mentioned at the beginning of this section depends not on the starting point of the analysis but on the conception of the social totality which underlies it . The superficiality (i .e . the failure to go beyond the surface and analyse social forms as forms of the capital relation) which is characteristic of Miliband and Poulantzas is equally the hallmark of the 'Neo-Ricardians' . The 'Neo-Ricardian approach is characterised above all by an emphasis on surface categories such as price, profit, wage etc . The materialist categories developed by Marx to explain the movement of these phenomenal forms are either rejected completely or considered to be 'mere abstractions', of no practical significance for concrete analysis . Starting as they do from surface categories, it is not surprising that the 'Neo-Ricardians' accept as a positive datum the distinction between economics and politics . It is symptomatic that Ian Cough, in his article on 'State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism'
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(1975), probably the most elaborate treatment of the state from this particular perspective, begins with an economic analysis of state expenditure and then turns for an understanding of the general character of the state to the expert political theorists, Miliband and Poulantzas . He quotes them as authority for emphasising the autonomy of the state : "For both Poulantzas and Miliband the capitalist state is a relatively autonomous entity representing the political interests of the dominant classes and situated within the field of class struggle" (1975, p . 64) . Since the state is thus liberated, on the authority of theorists of the political, from the exigencies imposed by capital accumulation, Gough is also liberated from the need to analyse the limits imposed on state action by its structural relation to the process of capitalist production . For him (and for the 'Neo- Ri card ians' in general), the determinants and limits of state action arise not from the contradictions of the capital relation, but from "the impacts of both sets of factors . . . : the 'demands' of contemporary capitalism and the state of the class struggle' (1975, p . 73) . As with Poulantzas, Miliband and their followers, so too for the Neo-Ricardians class struggle is a process extraneous to capital accumulation : the latter is seen essentially as economic, the former as political . Since the relation of the economic and the political is never systematically derived from their unity as forms of the capital relation, the determinants of state action can never be understood except as an eclectic combination of 'factors' . (7) If those approaches which start from the autonomy of the political are to be rejected as necessarily failing to provide an understanding of the determinants and limits of state action, does this bring us back to the 'iron economic determinism' (Gramsci, 1971, p . 223) which these authors criticise? If we insist on starting with the category of capital because it is the contradictions of the capital relation (as the basic form taken by class antagonism in capitalist society) which provide the basis for understanding the dynamic of social and political development in capitalism, the problem of the nature of the relation between the actions of the state and the accumulation of capital remains. Or should this problem simply be dismissed as being no problem, the autonomy of the political denied, the correspondence between the actions (and structure) of the state and the requirements of capital accumulation taken for granted? Certainly this assumption is present in the work of many Marxists, among them the so-called 'Fundamentalists' . (8) Thus Yaffe, for instance, has correctly laid great stress on the role of state expenditure in the present crisis; in criticising the'Neo-Ricardians', he has correctly pointed out that state expenditure is not a panacea which will cure the ills of capitalism, that there are limits to the extent and effect of state expenditure which result from its unproductive nature and hence the requirements of accumulation . This is important and a great advance on the common 'leftist' view which gets no further than pointing to the capitalist content of state action without considering the limitations inherent in the form of that action . What is significant, however, is that, although he attributes great importance to state expenditure, Yaffe does not find it necessary to consider further the analysis of the state . What results is a rather monolithic view of the state in which the growth of the state apparatus is attributed simply to the state's post-war commitment to full employment, and in
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which the effect of state expenditure is seen as being adequately grasped by its classification into the categories of 'productive' or 'unproductive' expenditure . While Yaffe's analysis may be valid in crude outline, it leaves many problems unsolved . The question of the way in which the interests of capital are established through the political system is not even posed . For him, "the intervention of the bourgeois state arises directly from the needs of capital" (Bullock and Yaffe, 1975, p . 33) . But then how are we to understand the role of bourgeois democracy, and how are we to see individual state actions which apparently do not correspond to the interests of capital? Again, the problem of contradictions within the state apparatus is not posed : "This apparatus is simply an increase of unproductive expenditure" (1975, p . 34) . Yaffe's great advance on the analyses of the NeoRicardians is to point out that, although the actions of the state favour capital in their content, there are certain limitations inherent in the form of the state, limitations imposed on state action by the nature of its relation to the process of accumulation . However, Yaffe focuses exclusively on one aspect of these limitations, namely on the fact that state expenditure represents a deduction from total social surplus value and is thus limited by the competing claims of private capitals on that surplus value which must be met if accumulation is to continue . Within these limits it is assumed that the state acts rationally in the interests of capital . However, this is surely only one aspect of the limitations on state action : for a fuller understanding of the state, it is necessary to analyse the other limitations arising from the nature of the state's structural relation to, and separation from the immediate process of exploitation - limitations which greatly restrict or render impossible state action in the rational interests of capital, irrespective of the limits of state expenditure . [9) Fine and Harris attempt to transcend the Neo-Ricardian-Fundamentalist debate and to take the analysis of the state a step further in their critique of Cough (1976a) and their review of recent debates (1976b) . Correctly they criticise Cough for not starting from the category of capital ; correctly too, they nevertheless emphasise the specificity of the political and the importance of developing a materialist theory of the state . They do not progress very far, however, in analysing the relation between capital and the state, basically because they appear to see capital as an economic category and adopt a simple basesuperstructure model of society in which the economic base is determinant . Capital and the economic are thus posited a priori as being separate from the political, so that it is not clear how the unity (and interrelation) of the separate spheres can be analysed . We would argue that this starting point is incapable of yielding a solution : what is required is not an economic but a materialist theory of the state . The economic should not be seen as the base which determines the political superstructure, but rather the economic and the political are both forms of social relations, forms assumed by the basic relation of class conflict in capitalist society, the capital relation, forms whose separate existence springs, both logically and historically, from the nature of that relation . The development of the political sphere is not to be seen as a reflection of the economic, but is to be understood in terms of the development of the capital relation, i .e . of class exploitation in capitalist society . The starting point must be not the specificity of the political nor the reduction of state action to the "logic of capital", but an analysis which founds the specificity of the political in the nature of the capital
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relation .(10) Without taking this as a starting-point, it seems to us impossible to progress beyond the inherent failings of 'politicism' and the over-simplifications of 'economic reductionism' .
II THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORM AND FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE In the first part of this article we emphasised the importance of seeing the state as a form of the capital relation, i .e . as a particular surface form of an historically specific form of class domination . It is essential, however, to understand the capital relation as an historical materialist and not just a logical category . To emphasise the importance of starting from the analysis of the capital relation is not to reduce the analysis of the state to the analysis of the 'logic of capital' . The failing of the so- called 'capital-logic' approaches to the state(11) is that, while they emphasise the importance of seeing capital as a social relation, they do not stress sufficiently that this is a relation of class struggle ; or, in those cases where capital is presented as a relation of class struggle, class struggle tends to be subsumed totally into its form . This over-estimates the possibilities of form analysis and consequently leads to an over-determinist and one-dimensional view of social development . It is important, however, to understand the limits of form analysis : while the class struggle cannot be understood except in relation to its contradictory form (capital), this does not mean that it can simply be reduced to its form . Form analysis is essential to give us an understanding of the limits and dynamic of class struggle under capitalism, but if we are to understand the actual development of that struggle (of which the state is but a form), this must be complemented by conceptually informed historical research . As Hirsch puts it : "The investigation of state functions must be based on the conceptual analysis of the historical course of the process of capitalist accumulation ; It must be borne in mind, however, that this is not a question of the logical deduction of abstract laws but of the conceptually informed understanding of an historical process" (1977) . As Rubin points out, Marx's method consisted in analysing the totality of social relations in a logical-historical manner, working from the most basic and elemental category to relations of increasing complexity . "Marx's system examines a series of increasingly complex 'economic forms' of things or 'definitions of forms' (Formbestimmtheiten) which correspond to a series of increasingly complex production relations among people" (Rubin, 1972, p . 37) . Rubin correctly emphasises two crucial aspects of Marx's method : first, that it is a logical analysis, beginning with the most basic category (carefully isolated, of course, by a prior process) and proceeding to categories which are logically dependent and express relations of increasing complexity (Rubin, 1972, p . 31 ff) ; but also that "the power of Marx's theory does not reside in its internal logical consistency as much as in the fact that the theory is thoroughly saturated with complex, rich socio-economic content taken from reality and elucidated by the power of abstract thought" (p . 91) . Marx's categories are thus not to be treated as mere logical abstractions but as
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attempts to elucidate "by the power of abstract thought" the changing forms of class struggle as they develop historically : "Marx's logical mode of conceptualising the economy, as Engels says, 'is ultimately an historical one, stripped of its historical form and disturbing accidents' . It provides therefore - albeit abstractly - a mirror image of the real historical process, a corrected mirror image, but corrected according to principles which permit us to grasp the real historical processes so that every moment can be viewed at the developmental point of its full maturity, at the moment of its classical perfection" (Rosdolsky, 1974, p . 65) . In developing the analysis of the state from the contradictions of capital, therefore, we are not concerned with a purely logical exercise of 'derivation', nor are we putting forward a metaphysical view of capital : capital is a social relation of exploitation, and the accumulation of capital is the form taken by the class struggle to recreate, develop or destroy that relation . But this relation has certain contradictions and therefore tendencies of development inherent in its form and a proper understanding of these tendencies is important for the outcome of that struggle . "Men make their own history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing" . In the remainder of this part of the article, we try to outline a framework for analysing the development of the state and its relation to the changing forms of capital . The development of the struggle to accumulate capital itself takes on particular historical forms, conceptualised by Marx in the categories of absolute and relative surplus value production : we suggest that it is on the basis of these succeeding dominant forms of surplus value production that the development of the established capitalist state should be understood . Before that, however, it is necessary to establish the theory of the state at the general level of commodity production, historically the original and logically the most general determination of capital as a social relation . (a) The generalisation of commodity production : the establishment of the preconditions of accumulation The first moment of the capitalist state, and therefore its first limitation, is the establishment and maintenance of generalised commodity production . The centralised state, in which political status is separated from economic activity, results from and reinforces or reproduces the fetishised social relations which are produced by commodity production . The capitalist state results from the separation of production and consumption ;( 12) its first function therefore is to guarantee exchange as the mediation of production and consumption . Exchange in developed commodity production (as opposed to the peripheral trade of petty commodity production) exhibits a basic contradiction : it involves on the one hand reciprocal advantage but also the compulsion deriving from the need to exchange . This contradiction is overcome by the separation of the 'political' aspect of the exchange relationship and its control by a central power - the state. So it is the state through which the general terms on which exchange is conducted are established, leaving the individual 'economic' bargain to be struck by individuals . The separation of production from consumption also involves the creation of
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individuals as economic subjects and therefore the establishment of a system of private property . This individualisation of private property historically consisted of the dissolution of the various 'feudal' systems of communal property, and thus the separation of the labourer from the means of production (mainly the land), whereby the labourer is left with only labour power to sell . Historically, the spread of commodity production was from the 15th and 16th centuries dominated by the European Absolutist states, which in fact developed to contain the political conflicts created within feudalism by the very growth of commodity production and mercantile trade . (131 It was during this period that the broad framework of the state system, national and international, was initially established . The establishment of a political unity as a result of and in order to further the development of production for exchange occurred historically within different defined social, economic and geographical conditions . Thus the history of different nation states is initially strongly influenced by the different particular circumstances of their origins - geography etc . It is with the increasing accumulation of capital that there begins to occur some convergence : as a result of the effects on the political system of combined and uneven development, as well as of the effects on the pattern of economic activity of conscious political direction resulting from imitation .(14) The political unity is defined in terms of geographical boundaries, since these are what is left after exchange has dissolved the social unities based on production for use over a settled'geographical area . The abstracted political processes become dominated by the particular power emerging from conflict as the best able to secure such a political unity over a social space defined geographically . This, then, is the origin of the nation-state system, dominated from its inception by the European states . We have said that the initial moment of the formation of the capitalist state is dominated by the spread of commodity relations . However, until commodity production becomes fully established (when labour power becomes a commodity and primary accumulation of capital achieved), social relations and state forms are by no means dominated by equal exchange, but rather by its opposite : compulsion . Thus the mercantile state is structured around trade privileges, monopolies and regulations of commerce . It facilitates the commercialisation of agriculture and the consequent expropriation of the labourer from the land . A major feature is the direct management of the 'surplus population' thus created as a labour force, by various systems of direct and forced labour : vagabondage laws, houses of correction, deportation to the colonies etc . All the forms, policies and ideology of such a state exhibit the startling contradictions of a state power purporting to be the state of society as a whole, but continually exercised to favour commercial privilege and the accumulation of property . The mercantile state, therefore, is characterised not by equal exchange but by unequal relations of appropriation backed by authority and force . We differ here from Heide Gerstenberger's view that the mercantile/absolutist state represented a conflict between form and function, in that the functions of the state were bourgeois but its form was not yet . In our view, both form and functions represented the first moment of development of the capitalist state, imperfectly developed . The transformation of the state does not stem from the developing conflicts between form and functions, but derives from the contradictions of the mode of production driving beyond the limits of the forms in which
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it had so far developed, and the emergence through struggle of capitalist production on a more adequate basis . It is as part of this that we must see the struggles over the changing forms and functions of the state . We must also emphasise here that the analytical moments remain an aspect of the capitalist state, since they remain an element of the capital relation, although overlaid and dominated by its subsequent development . It is because these moments cannot be analysed as purely abstract concepts logically deduced from the capital relation that we trace their development as an historical movement, but in terms of a conceptually informed, stylised analysis of that history . Hence, since the primitive accumulation of capital continues to be an element of the movement of capital, in combination with other generally more dominant elements, aspects such as the paternalistic and authoritarian state form, the very national basis of the state and functions such as the privatisation of property continue to be elements of the state form . This is not to say, however, that specific institutions, such as the monarchy for example, established as part of an earlier historical movement, remain unchanged, nor that they alone embody these more primary and now dominated moments of the capital relation . (b) The primary contradictions of accumulation and the liberal moment of the state Where the preconditions for capitalist accumulation are established, the more rigorously equality of exchange can be enforced the more effectively will accumulation itself reproduce social relations, or so it appears . Capitalist accumulation is marked by the unification of the opposition of production and circulation, and from the point of view of accumulation the circulation of commodities is simply the sphere in which commodity-capital is realised as money-capital and returns to the sphere of production, in the shortest possible time . Thus it is no accident that classical economics as well as liberal political theory were formulated in Britain from the end of the 18th century overtly to reform the policies and structures of that dominant capitalist state in such a way as to give the freest scope for accumulation . This completes the separation of politics and economics . "The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance . . The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist" (Capital, Vol . I, o . 737) . We pointed out above that the emergence of the liberal ideal of equal exchange was only possible through the application of its opposite : compulsion . And of course, the application of this ideal of equality produces its opposite : inequality . The principle of equality operates only in the sphere of circulation : "This sphere within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labourpower goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man . There alone rule freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham . Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will . They contract as free agents and the agreement they come to is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will . Equality, because each enters into relation with the other as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent .
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Property, because each disposes only of what is his own . And Bentham, because each looks only to himself . The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each" (Capital, Vol . I, p . 176) . Things look very different when we venture into the realm of production, for there we see that : "the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite The ever-repeated purchase and sale of labour-power is now the mere form ; what really takes place is this - the capitalist again and again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the previously materialised labour of others and exchanges it for a greater quantitiy of living labour" (Capital, Vol . I, p . 583) . The contradictions of accumulation derive from the need to extract surplusvalue from living labour . The immediate contradictions of this process consists of the continual undermining of the appearance of equality of exchange in the sphere of circulation by the inequality in the sphere of production . These are the contradictions of liberal capitalism and of the liberal moment of the state . Marx's analysis of the struggles over the length of the working day provide the classic insight into the nature of these contradictions . He points out (Capital, Vol . I, p . 510) that it was only after the capitalist mode of production in the developed form of modern industry became the generally dominant form of production that the rapaciousness of capital took the form of a thirst for absolute surplus-value and the excessive prolongation of the working day . The struggle between capital and labour over the length of the working day (absolute surplus-value) exposes most clearly the contradictions of exchange equality (Capital, Vol . I, pp. 234-5) ; the social relations of production having been established on the basis of wagelabour and the apparent equality of exchange of wages for labour-power, the working class finds capital pressing to the limits of extraction of absolute surplus value from that labour-power . The class struggles of that period resulted in the integration of the working class and the recomposition of capital in forms, including forms of state, which permitted the continuation of accumulation of capital while inevitably leading to a further heightening of the contradictions of capitalism . The forms of the liberal moment of capitalism essentially involve the attempt to overcome the contradictions deriving from capitalist production by resolving all conflicts in the sphere of circulation and in terms of relations of exchange . The liberal capitalist state is therefore engaged in a continual process of upholding the principles of freedom and equality, while constantly modifying their application in practice, in order to overcome the contradictions continually created by the central contradiction at the heart of the relations of production . Hence its ideologies and institutions, based on the equivalence of exchange in the sphere of circulation, are constantly riven by the contradictions engendered by the lack of any such equality in the sphere of production . One example of the constantly renewed liberal dilemma : does the 'freedom of the individual'
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entail unrestricted rights to form trade-union combinations?(15j Small wonder that liberalism generally shrinks into the pragmatism of ideologies such as the 'shopkeeper's philosophy' of utilitarianism . However, so long as politics can be confined to the sphere of circulation and separated from the 'economic' spheres of production, liberalism has achieved its object . Liberal state structures exhibit the same basic contradictions as liberal ideology. The mechanism which most clearly reflects the ,contradictions of commodity exchange is the juridical process . In the pre-bourgeois period this apparatus developed as part of the process of fostering the generalisation of commodity exchange under the domination of the increasingly mercantile centralised autocracies of the Absolutist period : in England the 'King's justice' in its various ramshackle ramifications ; elsewhere the Reception of a glossated socalled 'Roman' law which combined the ideals of petty commodity production with a procedural and ideological guarantee of the dominance of a 'Sovereign' central state power (see Anderson 1974, p . 26 ff) . The Napoleonic and earlyVictorian reforms of juridical procedures bring them closer to reflecting the ideal of equivalent exchange which becomes dominant as the sphere of circulation becomes the sphere of realisation of industrial capital rather than the sphere of primary accumulation of mercantile capital . The juridical process serves to provide procedures and ideologies for the recuperation of market transactions that have failed : the availability of adjudication of a dispute between two individual 'parties' by a judge 'neutral' to that dispute . This also serves to establish general conditions to facilitate circulation by preventing breakdown in individual transactions : the parties themselves must carry through or reconstitute the terms of disputed transactions in anticipation of the probable outcome of the recourse to the available procedure (Weber gives appropriate emphasis to the characteristics of predictability etc which make juridical procedures appropriate to 'market' capitalism) . However, from the very start of the domination of capital accumulation the basic contradiction of inequality in production creates contradictions in the sphere of circulation . Thus there begins at the same time the development and propagation of juridical procedures under the banner of the 'rule of law' simultaneously with their progressive breakdown and recuperation . The reference of social conflict situations to adjudication cannot be left to individuals, but is supplemented by the growth of bodies of state officials who can selectively initiate state intervention to impose exchange equivalence (notably in the growth of the Inspectorates - Factory, Education, Poor Law etc in Britain) . Furthermore, legal ideology can no longer be elaborated on a case-by-case basis from general principles such as 'justice'. 'reasonableness', 'foreseeability' etc . Increasingly what is required are specific codes, i .e . legislation . Parliamentary legislation is thus the classic form of liberal state action, utilising the individualistic but 'egalitarian' institutions of bourgeois representative democracy to establish generally applicable but specifically formulated regulations ensuring social welfare : i .e . the containment of the immediate contradictions of accumulation . We see therefore that the forms of state are re-established, supplemented or reformed as part of the process of containment of the new contradictions created by the new stage of development of capital, to re-create or re-compose the capital relation in new forms . Equally, the functions of the state are also revised and supplemented, since they too are inflected by the dominant contradictions of
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each moment of capitalism . For instance, we have seen that the control of money and systems of commensuration was first centralised in the state as a means simply of fostering commodity exchange and primary accumulation . In relation to the accumulation of capital these functions are transformed, since industrial capital requires the closer control of money-capital and credit to minimise speculation and facilitate the rapid realisation of commodity-capital on the basis of equivalence of exchange. (c) The socialisation of production and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall From the last part of the nineteenth century onwards, accumulation becomes increasingly dependent upon relative surplus value production as the dominant form of exploitation . The extraction of absolute surplus value had rapidly come up against natural limits - the exhaustion of the latent reserve army and the danger of physical destruction of the labour force . Historically, this created conflicts which led to the imposition on individual capitals of restraints necessary in the interests of capital in general, and the undertaking through the state of activities which would permit the continued reproduction and accumulation of capital . But accumulation based on relative surplus value is no less contradictory than accumulation based on absolute surplus value : it tends not to destroy the labour force physically, but relatively to expel living labour from' the process of production . Again, capital tends to eliminate (not physically, but from the valorisation process) the basis of its own accumulation . This contradiction expresses itself in a tendency for the rate of profit to fall . Those who read "Capital" as an economic text rather than as a materialist critique of political economy (and of the "discipline" of economics as a fetishised form of thought) often fail to grasp that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not an economic law : it is not the same as a "falling tendency", as it is cometimes referred to (e .g . by Gough, 1975, p . 57), nor does it necessarily manifest itself as an empirically observable decline in the rate of profit due to a measurable increase in the value-composition of capital (cf Mattick, 1959) . The law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is nothing but the value-theoretical expression of the contradictions inherent in the form taken by class exploitation in advanced capitalist society . In capitalism the ruling class is compelled, in the pursuit of relative surplus value, constantly to expel from the production process the class whose exploitation is the essential pre-condition of its own existence, constantly to undermine its own basis . This expresses itself as a tendency for the organic composition of capital to rise and a consequent tendency for the rate of profit to fall . In order to survive the consequences of this tendency, capital must unceasingly strive to reorganise and intensify the relations of exploitation of labour, and also to reorganise the distribution of social surplus value among individual capitals and other capitalist instances . For the purposes of understanding class struggle and the development of the state, it is this unceasing and crisisridden (and in essence unplanned and unconscious) struggle by capital to erode or counteract its effects which is the significant manifestation of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall . It is wrong, therefore, to think of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as an "economic law" : it is merely the economic expression of a process of class
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struggle - a process inherent in, and structured, by, the form of capital, a formdetermined process of class struggle . What worries the bourgeoisie about the tendency of . the rate of profit to fall, says Marx, is that the historical, relative nature of the capitalist mode of production "comes to the surface here in a purely economic way - i .e . from the bourgeois point of view, within the limitations of capitalist understanding, from the standpoint of capitalist production itself' (Capital, Vol . III, p . 269 - our emphasis) . If, then, the contradictions of capitalist class conflicts come to the surface in an economic way as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and if class relations in capitalism necessarily assume, as we have argued, two particular forms - an economic and a political - the question necessarily arises as to how the contradictions of capital express themselves in political form and what is the relation between the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (and the underlying crisis tendency of the capital relation) and the dynamic of political development . This problem is often approached through a discussion of the relation between "economic crisis" and "political crisis" . Many authors argue against the widespread but simplistic assumption that economic crisis leads more or less automatically to a crisis of the political system (cf especially Gramsci's critique of Roas Luxemburg : 1971, p . 233) . In countering this view, however, these authors either evade the problem by emphasising the relative autonomy of the political or, in the better cases (c .f . Autorenkollektiv, 1976), suggest that whether the crisis in the economic base gives rise to a "political crisis" and "ideological crisis" will depend on the organisation and militancy of the class struggle, an organisation and militancy which cannot be derived from the capital form . Superficially, of course, that is correct . It does, however, lead to a voluntarist notion of political and ideological crisis, which is apparently precipitated by working class struggle, unlike economic crisis which is inherent in the nature of capitalist domination and is, in this sense, precipitated by capital . This seems unsatisfactory in a number of ways . The crisis (i .e . the periodic crisis of capitalism) is neither an economic nor a political crisis : it is a crisis of the capital relation, a crisis made inevitable by the inherent contradictions of that relation . The crisis inevitably involves a restructuring of the capital relation, a restructuring which necessarily takes on economic and political forms . What is involved on both levels is an assault by capital to maintain the conditions of its own existence . Whether this process manifests itself in open crisis depends on the resistance of the workers, the degree of its organisation and militancy etc . The precise form taken by the restructuring of the political system will of course depend on the nature of working class resistance, but the impetus to political reorganisation arises not from working class struggle (detached from the "economic base") but from the dynamic forces of capital accumulation as form-determined class struggle . It is not a question of seeing class struggle as providing a mediating link between economic base and political superstructure, but rather of seeing the economic and the political as separate forms of the single class struggle, a single class struggle informed and bounded by the exigencies of capital accumulation . The question of the relation between political development and the contradictions and crisis of the capital relation seem to us to be best approached not through a discusssion of the relation between economic and political crisis but through a development of the notion of restructuring . The contradictions of
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relative surplus production impose on capital the constant necessity to reorganise or restructure the social relations on which its existence is based - a process of reorganisation which brings into play the counteracting tendencies to the falling rate of profit . To some extent this process is a continuous one, but the inherent anarchy of capital ensures that it cannot be a planned, rational process, that it must take place essentially through a process of fierce competition where capitals meet as "hostile brothers" (Capital, Vol . III, p . 253), and in response to a crisis of profitability. Periodic crisis is inevitable not because of the inherent weakness of the counter-tendencies, but because it is the only way in which the countertendencies can operate effectively . As Marx says of the counter-acting tendencies : "These different influences may at one time operate predominantly side by side in space, and at another succeed each other in time . From time to time the conflict of antagonistic agencies finds vent in crises . The crises are always but momentary and forcible solutions of the existing contradictions . They are violent eruptions which for a time restore the disturbed equilibrium" (Capital, Vol . III, p . 249) . How is the equilibrium restored? What is involved in the restructuring of the capital relation? From the formal analysis of capital and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall we can derive the basic, formal conditions for the restoration of "equilibrium", i .e . of the process of accumulation . The crisis of accumulation results from the inability of the rate of surplus value to rise sufficiently rapidly to counteract the effect of the rise in the organic composition of capital . It follows that the two elements essential for the restoration of the total social rate of profit are the lowering of the organic composition of capital (e .g . by the devalorisation of constant capital) and the raising of the rate of surplus value . Further, since the effect of the crisis of surplus value production on individual capitals and on capital accumulation will be affected by the distribution of social surplus value, particularly as between the centres of accumulation (productive capitals) and those instances which will not employ the surplus value for further accumulation (the state, unproductive capitals etc .), the restoration of accumulation may be affected by the redistribution of surplus value to the centres of accumulation . This tells us, however, only the formal requirements for the restoration of accumulation . Even if, for the sake of exposition, we leave aside the myriad extraneous circumstances which affect the way in which the crisis presents itself and may provide escape routes for particular national capitals - analysis of the world market is particularly important here - even if we leave these aside, it is clear that the basic, formal requirements cannot realise themselves automatically . The outcome of the crisis cannot be read off from the requirements of capital in general . It is clear that what is involved is a process of struggle, a struggle primarily between capital and labour but, flowing from that, also between different capitals and fractions of the capitalist class . It is on the outcome of these struggles that the restoration of accumulation, and the new pattern of accumulation relations, will depend . The struggle is not just an economic struggle but a struggle aimed at the reorganisation of the whole complex of social relations of production . As Hirsch puts it (1977) :
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"Mobilisation of counter-tendencies means in practice the reorganisation of an historical complex of general social conditions of production and relations of exploitation in a process which can proceed only in a crisisridden manner" . Thus, to take an obvious example, it is clear that the present attempt by British capital to raise the rate of surplus value does not simply mean the introduction of new technology or the announcement of wage cuts by individual employers ; what is involved is rather a very long and extremely complex struggle conducted at all levels, embracing such elements as the repeated attempt to restructure the relations between trade unions and the state and within the trade unions themselves (Donovan Commission, In Place of Strife, Industrial Relations Act, Social Contract), massive ideological campaigns (on productivity, inflation etc .), changes in state expenditure and taxation, the complex interplay of political parties, plans to introduce worker directors, etc ., etc . The ramifications of the restoration of accumulation thus go far beyond what is immediately apparent from the analysis of the formal requirements of this restoration . Firstly, the fulfilment of those requirements will normally require farreaching changes in the patterns of social organisation . Secondly, such changes can be wrought only through class struggle, the outcome of which can never be predicted with certainty . But if social and political development cannot simply be derived logically from the formal analysis of capital, this does not mean that the formal analysis is irrelevant : for it explains not only the inevitability of class struggle, it provides also the point of reference and framework for that struggle . What is required for an analysis of restructuring is thus not just a formal analysis of capital, nor an empirical analysis of the course of class struggles, but an analysis which embraces both moments, which tries to understand social development in the dialectical interaction of the form and content of class struggle . It is in this context of the ever-renewed reorganisation of the social relations of capital that the development of the state must be situated . The "mobilisation" (to adopt Hirsch's expression) of the counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit takes place increasingly through the state form . As the forces of production develop under the impulsion of the contradictions of capital, as the working class grows and the structurally intensified conflict of classes expresses itself in growing difficulties of accumulation, capital is less and less able to reproduce directly its own existence as class rule : increasingly that reproduction must take place through the mediation of the state, and the state apparatus must grow to ensure that reproduction . We cannot here trace the growth of state activity (cf Cough, 1975 and esp . Hirsch, 1977), but it would be necessary to trace historically how each crisis imposes on capital a new relation between its economic and political form of domination, a new relation shaped in practice by concrete class struggle. This changing relation was discussed already at the turn of the century by Bukharin, Lenin and Hilferding, and it has clearly undergone major changes since then, most notably under the slogan of Keynesianism . It is important to realise however, that this is not a smooth or unilinear process, nor clearly does it represent the growth of either a neutral state or an "instrument" of capital ; it is, rather, a shift in the form of capital's rule imposed upon capital by the pressure of class struggle expressing the contradictions of its own domination, a shift in the
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form of capital's crisis-ridden struggle to accumulate and one which is by no means necessarily irreversible . If the growth of state activity is seen merely as a shift in the form of capitalist domination (and in no sense a shift away from capitalist domination), it is clear that it can do nothing to escape from the fundamental contradictions of that domination . The difficulties of capital accumulation arise not from capitalist anarchy but from the capital relation itself; even if capital could "organise" itself through the state, the basic contradiction of capital accumulation would remain - the fact that the pursuit of surplus value implies the tendential destruction or elimination of the basis of surplus value production - the productive worker . Far from solving capital's problems, the growth of state expenditure diverts an increasing amount of surplus value away from the centres of accumulation, making it unavailable for the direct exploitation of more labour power (c .f. Bullock and Yaffe, 1975) . But although surplus value production marks the final bounds to capital's domination (whatever form it takes), this is not the only limitation on the effectiveness of state intervention . Firstly, the state does not do away with the anarchy of capitalism : its political form is as anarchic as the economic - here too capitals meet as "hostile brothers" when social surplus value is scarce. In so far as the state intervenes in the equalisation of the rate of profit, it does not simply negate competition, it acts merely in a different manner to redistribute surplus value among individual capitals . The inherent antagonism of individual capitals in the market place necessarily duplicates itself, reproducing itself within the state apparatus . In the liberal state of the nineteenth century, where monopolisation had not yet developed to any great extent and the "dull compulsion of economic relations" had not been sufficiently established to make possible the political integration of the working class through parliamentary means, the ideal forum for reconciling competing capital interests was parliament . With the extension of the franchise to the working class, the growth of monopolies and the growing intervention of the state in the reproduction of capital increasingly by means of individual, discriminatory measures of the bureaucracy - the competition between capitals reproduces itself in more intense form and increasingly within the bureaucracy itself, in such "political" forms as lobbying, pressure group activity, institutional ties with specific ministries and departments etc . The increased intervention of the state in the reproduction of capital necessarily creates closer ties between capitals and the state, thus providing the material basis for theories of state monopoly capitalism . However, in so far as they assume that this makes capitalism more organised, more capable of being planned, such theories clearly overlook the fact that the development of closer ties between capital and state does not replace capitalist anarchy, it merely ensures that capitalist anarchy is increasingly reproduced within the state apparatus itself .[18) One consequence of this is that even within the bounds set by surplus value production, it cannot be assumed that the state will act rationally in the interests of capital in general . On the contrary, the reproduction of competition within the state apparatus ensures an inevitable dislocation, an inevitable tension between state' activity and the interests of capital in general - an inevitable arbitrariness and imbalance in the way that the state ensures the reproduction of caoital .[19) This reproduction of antagonistic relations within the state apparatus comes to the fore in time of crisis when the bourgeoisie bemoan
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the "inefficiency" of the state[20) and attribute the contradictions to a failure of the techniques of public administration . The problem is perceived as a technical one and the solution (Fulton, Redcliffe-Maud, Bains Reports etc .) presented as a technical one : in fact the problem is a necessary reflection of the antagonistic relations of capitalist society and the "solution" necessarily plays a part in the struggle between individual capitals as well as between capital and labour .(21) The other major limitation on state activity results simply from the separation of the political and the economic . If this separation gives the state more freedom of action than an individual capital (since it is not directly subject to the constraints of profitability (cf Altvater 1973)), it also imposes constraints in that the state must remain essentially external to the process of accumulation . While the purpose of state action must be to promote the accumulation of capital, it must, by reason of its form, remain external to that process . Its action on accumulation is essentially of a mediate nature - mediated basically through the forms of law and money . [22] This imposes a certain bluntness on state measures to restructure capital : the lack of specificity of the effects of the restriction of credit and of the money supply in the present crisis situation in Britain provides a good illustration of this. Both the necessity and the limits of state activity are inherent in the state form . As capitalism advances, the state develops through the contradictory interaction of the necessity and limits arising from the contradictions of capitalist reproduction . This contradictory development is expressed not in a smooth, even growth of state activity, but in the constant crisis-ridden attempts to overcome the limits of state activity and render it more 'functional' for capital accumulation .1231 What is significant in the present 'cuts' in state expenditure is not so much any reduction in state activity as the attempt to 'functionalise' the state for the accumulation of capital . The denunciation of state expenditure by the bourgeoisie goes hand in hand with demands for more aid to industry . The cuts involve not only a reduction of unproductive expenditure : this is an important element in the analysis, but it is not sufficient, for the necessity of the state form implies the necessity of unproductive expenditure : what is involved is the attempt to make this unproductive expenditure serve more closely the reproduction needs of capital . The restructuring of capital thus involves a necessary struggle to restructure the relation between state and society and to restructure the state apparatus itself : a struggle that involves a major offensive not just on the working class but also on sections of capital, a struggle whose bitterness is well evidenced by the reactions to each announcement, by the -repeated attempts of the Chancellor 'to get it right' and by the repeated reactions of the press - 'Always Too Little' (Times, December 16, 1976) . This reorganisation of the state is expressed not so much in the overall figures on state expenditure, nor just in the shift of resources from, say, education to industrial aid - it is reflected also in the way each function performed by the state is remoulded . Thus the crisis has led not only to an increase in aid to industry, but also to a reorganisation of the way in which such aid is administered - a move away from blanket assistance to selective aid based on specific needs . And of equal importance to the cuts in education expenditure is the attempt to gear education more closely to the needs of industry - by condemning 'progressive methods', encouraging industrial scholarships etc .
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"Crisis is the forcible establishment of unity between elements that have become independent" (TSV, Vol . 11, p . 513) . The autonomy of state action from the immediate demands of the valorisation process, implicit in the particularisation of the state as a distinct form of capitalist domination here comes up against its barriers . As capital is forced, in the struggle for accumulation, to strive to overcome the limitations of the state form, it tendentially undermines that particularisation of the state which is a precondition of its own existence . Increasingly the state intervenes directly in the production process, taking over particular industries and reorganising the actual process of value creation and exploitation (cf Fine and Harris, 1975, 1976c). Increasingly the state breaks through the generality implicit in its form in its attempts to respond to the necessity of and limitations on its activity by complementing general measures (e .g . the restriction of credit) by selcctive measures to exempt or assist the chosen few (industrial aid, tax concessions etc) - thus giving rise to intensified political competition as each section of capital seeks to identify the 'general interest' with its own particular interests, to growing animosity on the part of the many less favoured capitals towards the state and 'socialism', to heightened tensions between the executive and the judiciary as upholders of the rule of law and generality . This trend finds its expression too in apparently technical, administrative changes in the state apparatus in the interests of 'efficiency' as the state apparatus adapts its structure to the new pattern of closer ties with monopoly capital .(24) It is in this context, i .e . in the light of the development of the state through the contradictory tension between the necessity and limits of state activity (rather than in the context of any view which suggests a unilinear growth of state activity in support of a declining capitalist industry) that we must approach a critique of theories of corporatism and state monopoly capitalism . The tendential undermining of the separation of state from society does not mean that that separation is overcome : even in the most extreme forms of corporatism, there has not been a fusion of state and monopolies, and indeed there cannot be such a fusion as long as social reproduction is based on the production of surplus value . The undermining does, however, pose a threat to the mystification of the political, to the fetishised appearance of the neutrality of the state . The state is increasingly identified with capital, reformism - the strategy of using the state against capital - is increasingly abandoned, even as a justificatory ideology used by the traditional reformist parties (cf Callaghan's speech at the labour Party Conference, 1976) . The appeal for popular support is no longer based on a claim to gradually transform social relations, end inequality etc, but on the assertion that there is just no alternative to capitalism (communism being ruled out and identified with Russia, loss of human rights, etc, 'socialism' being identified with state intervention, thus establishing a phoney alternative) . The problem is to assess the importance of this erosion of the basis of reformism . It is now clear that those who saw bourgeois domination as being largely dependent on the apparent neutrality of the state (e .g . Flatow/Huisken, 1973 ; Muller/NeusUss, 1975) held, as Gerstenberger (1977) has pointed out, an inflated view of the importance of that apparent neutrality. Its erosion has clearly not dealt a death blow to capitalism, but it does place new problems on the agenda .
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NOTES 1 Marx distinguished his analysis from that of the bourgeois economists on precisely these grounds : "Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely, value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms . But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value" (Capital, Vol . I, p . 80) . 2 The starting point for the analysis of the capitalist state is thus capitalist society, not the state in general : on this see MUller/Neusi ss, 1975 (extracts in Holloway and Picciotto, 1977) . The state in pre-capitalist societies did not, in any case, exist in the same form as a particularised relation of class domination separated from the immediate process of production . 3 The state must be derived from the historical form of class domination and not simply from commodity exchange or the relations between individual capitals . The latter approach neglects the essence of the state as a relation of class domination and can lead to illusions in the possibilities of bourgeois democracy . For an expansion of this point, see our criticisms of Flatow/Huisken and of Altvater and the 'Berlin school' in our Introduction ('Towards a Materialist Theory of the State) to Holloway and Picciotto, 1977 . The combination of the two derivations of the state in our critique of Cough (Holloway and Picciotto, 1976a) now seems to us eclectic . 4 For a much fuller discussion of Marxist theories of the state current in Britain, see our Introduction to Holloway and Picciotto, 1977 . 5 It is seen by Poulantzas as being also a more general work embracing the overall articulation of the capitalist mode of production and the development of basic concepts such as mode of production, relations of production, etc . Our point of criticism, however, is that the categories developed specifically in 'Capital' (value, surplus value, accumulation etc) are seen as being concepts specific to the analysis of the economic level . 6 On this, see our Introduction to Holloway and Picciotto, 1977 . 7 Thus, for example : "So the interaction of long-term socio-economic trends, the political strategy of the capitalist state and the ongoing class struggle rule out any simple, single-factor explanation of social policies" (Cough, 1975, p . 76) . Superficially, this is of course true, but the interconnection of these three 'factors' and how they relate to the contradictions of the capital relation remains unexplained . 8 Cf Fine and Harris, 1976a . We do not use the term in a derogatory sense . We might also have cited Mandel's work as an example of the 'reductionist' tendency . This is particularly clear in his treatment of European integration, in his argument that the future of European integration depends entirely on the form taken by the centralisation of capital . For a discussion of Mandel's theory which points in this direction, see Holloway, 1976 . 9 For a fuller discussion of the limitations on state action, see particularly Blanke/Jurgens/Kastendiek, 1977 and Hirsch, 1977 . 10 The great merit of the debates in West Germany, whatever their own limitations and blind-alleys, is that they have started from the capital relation and sought to found the specificity of the political in that relation . For a translation
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of some of the major contributions to the German debate and a discussion of the main strands of argument, see Holloway and Picciotto, 1977 . Here we have in mind particularly the work of Altvater, Muller/Neusiiss and Blanke/)iirgens/Kastendiek . It is by no means justified, however, to regard all the recent German work as following a 'capital-logic' approach . This is not simply a logical point but an actual historical movement . See E .P . Thompson's famous article on 18th century food riots (Thompson, 1971) for an excellent account of the class struggles surrounding the commercialisation of bread production and how these were reflected in changes in the form of the state, state action and ideology . Thus there is only an apparent contradiction between Anderson (1974) who insists on the feudal nature of the political structure of the capitalist state and Gerstenberger (1973) who stresses that during the mercantile period all the basic functions of the capitalist state and the preconditions for accumulation were established, but that the liberal forms of the classical Rechtsstaat remained to be fought for in the bourgeois revolutions . This point is well made by Gerstenberger, 1975 . This should be borne in mind in relation to European integration, which is in some ways the institutionalisation of a process of transplanting or coordinating political structures in response to or in order to foster combined economic development . For an elaboration of this, see our earlier paper relating much-of the argument presented here to the process of European integration : Holloway and Picciotto, 1976b . Marx gives one example where equal-exchange ideology was oddly pressed into service : the legislation attempting to limit child labour was apparently at one point rationalised in Parliament as the prevention not of the 'free' sale of labour, but because the selling of children's labour by their parents is not 'free' but equivalent to a form of slavery . Cf Capital, Vol . I, p .397 . This clearly shows the limitations of liberal ideology . On this, see Roberts, 1960 We do not intend here to examine the whole controversy surrounding the tendency of the rate of profit to fall . It seems clear that once the relations between c, v and s are understood as social and not just mathematical relations, there is little difficulty in establishing that there is indeed such a tendency . The actual movement of the rate of profit will depend on the outcome of the class struggle focused on what Hirsch terms the 'mobilisation' of the counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit . Cf Hirsch 1977 . On this and much of the argument here, see Hirsch, 1977 . Hirsch's approach seems to us one of the most fruitful to have emerged from the German debate . This does not mean, however, that the development of the state's functions can be understood solely in terms of an interplay of competing groups or fractions, can be reduced to a Marxified pressure group analysis in which one fraction simply battles it out with another . Firstly, the political influence of the competing capital groups will be established in large measure by their place in the process of capital reproduction . Secondly, there are limits (established in practice through class struggle) to the extent to which the state can pursue the interests of any particular group or function over against the requirements of the reproduction of capital as a whole . The analysis of
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conflicts between fractions of the capitalist class (and also of the structure of the 'power bloc') is important, but only if placed very firmly in the context of the analysis of the form-determined struggle between capital and labour to accumulate, to exploit . Hence the development of state functions will be determined not by competition between powerful capitalist interests, nor simply by the logic of capital, but by the contradictory tension between the partial interests of capital groups and the reproduction demands of capital as a whole . Moreover, in considering contradictions within the capitalist class, it is important not to confuse competing 'capital groups' with class fractions . In the very brief fragment on Classes at the end of Vol . III of Capital, Marx makes it clear that one cannot constitute an analysis of social classes by establishing "the identity of revenues and sources of revenue" . In the remainder of that section of Vol . III, he had shown that nothing can be understood about the relationship and movement of profit, rent and wages if they are treated at the fetishised level of 'revenues' : "They have about the same relation to each other as lawyers' fees, red beets and music" (p . 814) . So equally he began to demonstrate in the unfinished fragment that it is not possible to understand social classes by establishing an external relationship between the revenues as they appear in the narrow 'economic' sphere and social groups constituted by the social division of labour as owners of different revenue sources . 20 The apparent inefficiency or wastefulness of much of state activity thus results not only from the fact that the labour process is not directly subject to the law of value, but also from the inherent anarchy of the state apparatus . Perhaps one should distinguish between the two sorts of 'inefficiency' by referring to it as 'inefficiency' in the former case, 'irrationality' or'inconsistency' in the latter . 21 This suggests that a materialist critique of the discipline of 'Public Administration might throw considerable light on conflicts within the bourgeoisie and on changing forms of class rule . 22 This point is argued at length by Blanke/)urgens/Kastendiek, 1977 . While their argument is not totally convincing, the generally mediate nature of state activity is a very important limitation on its effectiveness . 23 What is 'necessary' or 'functional' for capital in general (or a particular national capital) can, of course, be derived only in the most general terms . What is perceived as being in the interests of capital in general, the strategies actually pursued to achieve those interests, and a fortiori the actual performance of functions by the state are all established through class struggle . 24 See in particular the interesting discussion of the introduction of PPBS in O'Connor, 1973, ch . 3 .
BIBLIOGRAPHY Altvater, E . (1973) "Some Problems of State Interventionism", Kapitalistate no . 1, 2 Anderson, P . (1974) Lineages of the Absolutist State, New Left Books, London . Autorenkollektiv, (1976) "Klassenbewegung and Staat in der Bundesrepublik", Gesellschaft no . 8, 9 .
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Blank, B ., JGrgens U . & Kastendiek, H . (1977) "On the recent Marxist discussion on the analysis of the form and function of the bourgeois state", in Holloway and Picciotto 1977 . Bullock, P . & Yaffe, D . (1975) "Inflation, the Crisis and the Post-War Boom", Revolutionary Communist no . 3/4 . Fine, B . & Harris, L . (1975) "The British Economy since March 1974", Bulletin of the CSE, no . 12 . (1976a) "State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism : A Critique", New Left Review, no . 98 . (1976b) "Controversial Issues in Marxist Economics", Socialist Register . (1976c) "The British Economy : May 1975-January 1976", Bulletin of the CSE, no . 14 . Gerstenberger, H . (1973) "Zur Theorie der historischen Konstitution des bGrgerlichen Staates", Probleme des Klassenkampfs, no . 8/9 . , (1977) "Class Conflict, Competition and State Functions", in Holloway and Picciotto 1977 . Gough, I . (1975) "State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism", New Left Review, no . 92 . Cramsci, A . (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Lawrence and Wishart, London . Hirsch, J . (1977) "The State Apparatus and Social Reproduction : Elements of a Theory of the Bourgeois State", in Holloway and Picciotto, 1977 . Holloway, J . (1976) "Some Issues Raised by Marxist Analyses of European Integration", Bulletin of the CSE, no. 13 . Holloway, J . & Picciotto, S . (1976a) "A Note on the Theory of the State : In reply to Ian Gough", Bulletin of the CSE, no . 14 . _, (1976b) "Capital, the State and European Integration", mimeo . Holloway, 1 . & Picciotto, S . (eds), (1977) The State and Capital: A Marxist Debate, Edward Arnold, London (forthcomine) . Marx, K . Capital, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1%5 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1971 Theories of Surplus Value, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1%9 . Mattick, P . (1959) "Value Theory and Capital Accumulation", Science and Society, Vol . 23, p . 27 . Miliband, R . (1%9) The State in Capitalist Society, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1%9 . MGller, W . & Neususs, C . (1975) "The Illusions of State Socialism and the Contradiction between Wage Labour and Capital", Telos, Fall . O'Connor, J . (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State, St . Martin's Press, New York . Pashukanis, E . (1951) "The General Theory of Law and Marxism", in Babb and Hazard (eds), "Soviet Legal Philosophy", Cambridge, Mass . Poulantzas, N . (1973) Political Power and Social Classes, New Left Books and Sheed and Ward, London . Roberts, D . (1960) Victorian Origins of the Welfare State, London . Rosdolsky, R . (1974) Comments on the Method of Marx's Capital, New German Critique, Vol . I, no . 3 . . Rubin, I . (1972) Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, Black and Red, Detroit. Thompson, E .P. (1971) "The moral economy of the English crowd in the 18th century", Past and Present, Vol . 50, pp . 76-136 .
DOCUMENT : A WORKERS' ENQUIRY INTO THE MOTOR INDUSTRY The Institute for Workers' Control committee of enquiry into the Motor Industry
The Workers' Enquiry is a document drafted by a committee set up after the Institute for Workers Control Conference in January 1976 at Birmingham . It now consists of shop stewards from the Midlands and Northwest, who have been assisted by members of the Coventry Workshop and the CSE in the drafting of the draft document published here . The draft report and questionnaire is being taken to workers at all levels in the motor industry for discussion . We want to do two things in these discussions : (i) collect information and opinions about the industry from those who work in it, and (ii) stimulate political discussion within the motor industry about the current situation . At the end of a long series of discussions we hope to be able to produce a report on the development of the motor industry and a working class strategy for it which is both unrivalled in its depth and width of information and a political reflection on the industry by workers in it . The document is deliberately part report and part questionnaire . It is neither a sociological inquiry (a collection of information to be organised by our theory) nor an uncritical collation of what workers think about the industry (an acceptance of workers' implicit or explicit theories) . We have put forward certain views to provoke political discussion and reflection on immediate experiences, and the final report will be the product of these discussions and further analysis based upon the information obtained in the course of the Enquiry . The report will be partly distributed within the industry through the network of contacts we have established while producing it . So far, responses have been encouraging . There have been some good, long discussions, and workers have been willing to oppose the points of view expressed in it, while accepting the usefulness of the document as a whole . In discussion, the division between text and questions has been broken down, new questions being raised and old ones refined and extended . Most importantly, workers have been anxious to see the final results (even though we cannot offer results so soon) and to find out about situations in other plants . The process of producing the report is creating the demand for it, and we hope to avoid producing yet another
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report that appears to come 'from outside' . After a first round of discussions we intend to improve the document in the Summer and approach an even wider section of workers in the industry . The preliminary results and experiences coming from our work will be discussed in the motor industry workshop at the CSE July Conference in Bradford If your comments, criticisms, suggestions etc . cannot wait until then, send them to John Bennington, Coventry Workshop, 40 Binley Road, Coventry .
INTRODUCTION The motor industry world-wide is now going through a period of reorganisation and dislocation . Here in Britain over the last 18 months or so we have seen all kinds of publicity about what is wrong with the British car industry . Yet neither the government reports and enquiries nor the hysterical attacks in the media have ever given the workers' point of view . It seems plain that the problems of the car industry are part of the general world-wide crisis of capitalism . The giant car firms are pushing hard to improve and sustain their rate of profit, and the government reports and 'rescue' plans are designed to help them to do this . For the workers in the industry this means increasingly open pressure for higher productivity, speed-up, declining wage levels, and a shake-up of the labour force involving mass redundancies . With government backing, we are being told by management that we must accept this or face unemployment - even though the money invested by government and the companies is the result of our effort social resources created by working people . For car workers to understand the causes of the pressures they are facing, and to take appropriate action to defend and advance their interests, requires both the pooling of information and the widening of the debate . This discussion document tries to make a contribution to both .
PART ONE THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL ON THE SHOP-FLOOR Car workers have been hit particularly hard at plant level by the international restructuring of the motor industry . They have faced mass redundancies, the reorganisation of jobs both within and between plants, reduced manning levels, faster track speeds, harsher discipline and tighter supervision . This is all part of the drive by the employers to reduce their costs and risks by increasing the 'productivity' of labour: i .e. ; more work for less pay . a) Cutting the workforce and intensifying the work The number of jobs in the car industry fell, according to official figures, from 519,000 in 1970 to 457,000 in 1974 . In 1975 another 50,000 jobs were lost - not just as a result of the crisis at Chrysler which accounted for 5,800 of the job losses, but also because of the less well publicised loss of 28,000 jobs in British Leyland in the same year, and the loss of a further 16,000 jobs in the rest of the industry . These moves to shake out 'surplus' labour are being supported by the (Labour) government . Both the Think Tank and the House of Commons Select Committee
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reports called for up to a 50% reduction in the industry's workforce - well over 200,000 more jobs to go! Each instalment of government money for British Leyland is dependent on agreements from the unions to a reduction in manning levels as well as an increase in productivity . This is the key : cuts in labour costs even on this scale can only help the car moguls to retain their rate of profit if they can force a higher output per person from the remaining workers . Apart from simply making people work harder, one of the current methods of achieving this is to lengthen the working day - by increasing overtime and shiftworking, and by reducing or eliminating tea breaks. washing, cleaning up and waiting time . In the first six months of 1976 overtime in the industry increased by 10% - a jump of 450,000 hours a week . This allows the employers to keep their equipment working continuously for the longest possible time, with the smallest possible labour force . The employer not only reduces his overall wage costs (even taking overtime rates into account) but also gains greater flexibility, since it is much easier and quicker to increase or reduce overtime than to take on or lay off labour . Moves on this scale to cut the workforce and intensify the work in the motor industry are not simply economic, but have widespread political implications . We have seen mass redundancies at plants such as Chrysler Stoke followed a few months later by an expansion and re-hiring . This shakeout and reorganisation of labour makes it easier for the companies to bring about the changes they want in the industry . The high unemployment rate thus caused puts pressure on those in work to accept change, and on those out of work to take whatever is offered . Questions 1 Has the workforce been cut over the past 18-24 months in your section / plant / firm? 2 Why do you think this has been happening? 3 If there have been cuts, how have they been brought in? Have you been able to maintain any controls over the cutting of manpower? 4 How has the composition of the workforce changed over the past 2 years? What kinds of new workers have been taken on : young / old, men / women, migrant / local, unemployed / from other jobs, green labour / motor industry labour? Has turnover been high? How has shopfloor organisation been affected? 5 How much has overtime working increased / decreased? Has there been pressure on free time such as breaks? 6 Has the high level of unemployment affected your conditions and level of organisation? b) Flexibility, mobility and interchangeability of labour Another familiar feature of the current reorganisation is the demand (by both management and government) for greater flexibility, mobility and interchangeability of labour both within and between plants . Increasing use is made at Ford, for instance, of pools of 'floaters' . Thousands of assembly workers at the Triumph plant at Coventry are having to transfer to the Rover plant at Solihull or to retrain' for the manufacture of engines and transmissions . In addition up to 3,000 redundancies are rumoured . Reorganisations of this kind take no account of the skills which have been
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built up over a period of time in a particular plant or region ; or of the workers' ties to either the job or to the local community . In fact the aim is the very opposite : to blur over specialisation of skills and to reduce as far as possible the social factors which prevent employers from shifting workers around as conveniently as machines . Since Chrysler took over Rootes in 1%5 all new employees (apart from a few specialists such as electricians and toolmakers) have been taken on as 'general operatives' to be moved from job to job as needed . Greater transferability and interchangeability of labour obviously allows a more 'efficient' use of a given supply of labour power, and reduces the employer's reliance on any one group of workers . The breaking down of the craft skills associated with 'one man, one job' and the organisation of workers into collective grades and interchangeable units of production allows employers to gain greater control over the costs and use of labour . It reduces workers' abilities to determine the conditions under which they will sell their labour, and degrades men into machines . Questions 1 Has your company applied pressure to get more labour mobility? 2 What problems have arisen over flexibility both within and between plants? 3 Has there been any new job evaluation or regrading scheme? 4 What problems have arisen over gradings, skill levels and differentials? c) Production output, wages and productivity Under piecework and other systems of payment by results, increases in productivity resulted in a steady drift upwards in wages . The individual worker had some degree of control over his rate of work and his earnings . Firms initially tolerated this because of their need for incentives for high production (when they sold everything they could produce) . However, as competition increased and market conditions tightened this situation became critical for employers, and Measured Day Work was introduced to restore managerial control over earnings and over shopfloor organisation . The ratio of foremen to production workers increased from about 1 :140 to 1 :25, and direct control was attempted by management over the hour by hour rate and content of work . Management gained control over wage drift by these methods, but shopfloor organisation was used to make manning and production levels negotiable . It is precisely this area of control that is the target of the current reorganisation . In addition, these management attempts to regain control over productivity and to erode shopfloor organisation are directly assisted by the state . Government 'rescue' plans for the car industry have not been limited to financial assistance, but include specific requirements for reductions in manning levels, increased productivity, acceptance of greater mobility and interchangeability of labour, and more 'harmonious' industrial relations . The purpose of these measures is not only to increase productivity but also to increase the predictability of the workers' part in the production process and to make them as 'efficient' as machines, without losing their capacity to adapt . Questions 1 What have been the changes in your plant as regards money, this includes MDW / incentive payments systems, pensions, layoffs, sick pay, etc . What effects do you think these changes have made?
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2 What are the main differences between staff and hourly-paid workers as regards pay and security, and what efforts have been made to get staff status for other groups? What is your view on this question? d) Automation and capital investment Between 1948 and 1959 all the major motor firms introduced transfer automation for machining, turning, grinding and boring operations, pressing and assembly . Output increased by 180% as a result, but employment in the industry rose by only 18% over the same period . This gives some indication of the total labour saving achieved . New types of automated machinery since 1959 have resulted in savings of up to 50% on manning, and increases of productivity of 100%-200% . Automation not only reduces the unit costs of production, but reduces further the control which the worker can exercise over the use of his skills and time . In order to use the expensive equipment to the full, employers increasingly demand that workers specialise in very specific routine operations . This kind of specialisation in many cases de-skills them to the level of machine minders . The gradual introduction of computer-controlled machines and computer-aided design will have a permanent effect on the number and the kind of jobs both on the shop floor and in the design and drawing offices . Automation is also likely to move to the ultimate robot stage within the next decade ; there are now over 1,000 industrial robots in use internationally, and the majority of these are in the motor industry (for instance at Volvo and Fiat), where they are used for jobs like paint spraying, body welding and handling castings . The most common robot is the 'Unimate', produced in Connecticut, U .S.A . Its economic 'wage' is just over 50p an hour, and it can work 400 hours at a stretch on average, in almost any conditions . The makers predict that a 2-arm robot will be putting together assemblies from gearboxes to mileometers within two years . By trying to transfer human beings' skills to the machine and making workers into machine-minders, companies try to make the work process easier to control, in the interests of profit . Technological developments of this kind can be used to liberate human beings from the worst forms of drudgery and monotony at work ; or they can be introduced to increase the level of exploitation of one class of people by another - by undercutting wages or by displacing workers from employment altogether . Which of these alternatives is the outcome in the motor industry depends upon the level of working class organisation and its effectiveness in questioning in whose interests advanced technology is applied . The Think Tank Report summarises the management philosophy towards automation and investment as follows :it is clear that there are specific areas of British Leyland where underinvestment is a serious problem . In particular, the ages of presses at Cowley and machine tools in certain power train operations, do have an effect on productivity and quality . However, replacing this type of equipment can only be justified if manning levels are reduced ." Questions 1 Is the company investing new capital in your plant?
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2 What changes are being planned to your knowledge? Why are they being introduced, and what implications do they have? - e .g . on types of workers needed for new machines ; effects on skills, wage levels, control over the product and over the output . e) Health, safety and stress The various forms of plant level reorganisation described above all turn workers into disposable machines . Lower manning levels, faster track speeds, de-skilling of jobs all result in a very serious rate of death, accident, injury and stress in the motor industry . Every day in the U .S .A . 65 car workers die at their jobs . On average 16,000 die in the plants every year, over half of them from heart attacks . Taking into account disabling diseases and lost or impaired hearing, the car industry takes as heavy a toll on the American working class as did the Vietnam War . Figures for industrial accidents which do not result in death are less easy to log because of differences of definition and reporting . The official figures for U .K . firms show a terrible toll of injury . In 1974 the number of accidents per 10,000 employees was :Vauxhall : 142 Chrysler : 110 B . L . Cars : 138 228 . Ford : The high figure for Ford may be explained by the high proportion of more dangerous engine and foundry work carried out by the company . It is even harder to measure the stress of working in the car industry - the stress and boredom of repetitive work on the track, shift working, heat, noise and oil levels, insecurity over redundancies, etc . The emotional and mental effects on car workers are deep and wide-ranging, from mental breakdowns and a shortened working life to emotional and sexual disturbances . Exploitation of the workers' health (as well as of his time and skill) follows logically in a system geared to production for profit rather than for social need . Questions Since the facts of health and safety in the motor industry are generally concealed, the enormity of the problem needs to be researched . Please give the impressions of yourself and your workmates on :a) the number of deaths caused by working in the industry b) the extent and causes of industrial accidents at your plant c) the extent and causes of stress of all kinds d) the adequacy of health and safety measures at the plant e) the strength and effectiveness of the trade union health and safety structure at the plant .
PART TWO NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL REORGANISATION I n this section we intend to discuss the reasons why car firms all over the world are taking unprecedented steps to rationalise production and to reorganise capital .
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As at previous stages, this reorganisation has been forced upon the motor industry firms by the need to maintain and increase their rate of profit . At each stage the ruthless drive for profits has led to ever more fundamental changes in the lives of working people :The 1920's saw the development of mass production techniques, especially by Ford, which cut production costs and drove out of business hundreds of small firms which could not afford to re-tool . It also meant the beginning of the tyranny of the assembly-line and the stop-watch ; and of the workers' fight back through mass unionism . The post-war period saw these mass production techniques really come into their own, with rising demand . This demand was further fuelled by consumer credit, vast social investment on motorways, and the boom in company cars and fleets . The car firms expanded in order to compete and maintain profitability, mainly by multinational expansion . They built up overseas sales either by exports from the home base (Germany and Japan), by setting up semi-independent subsidiaries in other countries (e .g : ford and British Leyland), or by taking over foreign competitors (e .g : Chrysler) . At the same time, the expansionary situation made it possible for the strength of workers' organisation to grow . The current stage takes the form of a global rationalisation of production on an unprecedented scale, as competition between the firms bites hard, now that demand has levelled off . In order to reduce and to spread both the costs and the risks now involved in car production, the multi-national motor giants have begun to reorganise their financial operations and their relationships with the labour force on a global basis . They are centralising, co-ordinating and integrating the whole production process at an international level, in such a way that they can treat the world as one giant factory in which different firms and subsidiaries are allocated separate jobs as part of a single production line! As a direct effect at each stage management has tried to carry out a massive reorganisation of the industry in order to :a) achieve a much tighter control over the workforce, b) incorporate the workers more closely into the management process, c) manipulate their multinational capital more profitably . The main features of these processes are noted below . a) The trend to overcapacity In order to improve their rate of profit firms have had to reduce unit costs by undertaking more massive investments of fixed capital than ever before . This makes it essential for them to achieve very long production runs, and these can only be achieved by both increased production and increased market penetration on an international scale . (See Ford Fiesta example below) This in turn increases competition . The firms are helpless in the grip of the market . For each one to survive it must invest ; yet each new investment increases the total overcapacity . Despite the levelling-off in demand and the uncertain future, they continue to create massive new overcapacity with the introduction of each new model in volume cars . 'Average capacity utilisation' in Europe is at present between 60% and 70% . This represents an immense waste of manpower and resources . Competitive pressure forces firms to reduce production costs per unit by the
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increased centralisation and integration of production on a world scale . This means that the social power of labour is now exploited on a global scale . Question In our experience, since the motor industry moved into large-scale assembly-line production, 'waste' has been a characteristic feature (e .g : machinery lying idle, raw materials and spares being cleared out as scrap, senseless and costly subcontracting and out-sourcing of work) . What examples are you aware of in your own plant? Have these increased or decreased during the present crisis? What effect has this had on your section and plant? Has it been used against you in particular ways? b) Economies of scale From the firms' viewpoint the integration and rationalisation of production is necessary to achieve 'economies of scale' and higher productivity . From the viewpoint of the workforce they mean an attempt to control the exploitation of labour more intensively and more extensively . These economies of scale are being achieved by all the car firms in a number of ways :i) integrating different parts of the production process : different sections of the car assembly process have different optimum production levels, and in order to achieve massive economies of scale the process must be integrated at an international level, so that all the different plants can operate at near optimum size . This kind of rationalisation necessarily involves increasing cross-border exchanges of parts and components, and gives companies increased opportunities for reducing tariff duties and tax payments, through the device of transfer pricing . This form of integration and rationalisation is the cornerstone of Chrysler's rescue deal ; but Ford have always been the front runners in this field, and the Fiesta involves the most advanced form achieved so far . ii) reducing the number of separate parts used in the production of a vehicle (see the Fiesta example) . iii) companies embark on joint ventures to share research and development costs and production costs. (E .g: Citroen and Audi/N .S .U ./Auto-Union agreed joint development of the Wankel engine; a joint research company between Daimler-Benz and V .W . ; common production between B .M .W . and Daimler; etc) . iv) companies arrange interchangeability of identical parts for different cars (e .g : a common body for Vauxhall Chevette and Opel City ; the Citroen LN uses a Peugeot 104 body shell and Citroen Ami mechanical components ; the Peugeot 604 and Renault R30 share the same engine) . v) firms are rationalising their model ranges towards only having one basic model per size class, which can then be produced in many different variations and which gets periodic face lifts, for a world-wide market (e .g : G .M . Chevette, Ford Cortina/Taunus) . These moves reduce research and development costs, increase economies of scale through larger production runs, ease double sourcing and interchangeability of parts as a protection against strikes, and reduce the cannibalisation of sales by having two or more models in a similar engine-size class or price range . vi) agreement between companies to develop joint retail sales facilities (e .g : Citroen and Auto Bianchi ; Alfa Romeo and Renault) .
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Question Can you give more examples from your own experience of ways in which economies of scale are being sought by your firm? a) integration of the production process and transfer pricing . b) reducing the number of parts . c) joint ventures in research, development and production . d) interchangeability of parts . e) rationalisation of model ranges . f) joint retail sales . c) The organisation and power of the car workers The level of organisation achieved by car workers since the war has greatly obstructed the ability of the various car firms to reduce unit costs . The firms have been hindered in their attempts to control their labour costs and to increase productivity . Since the flow-line principle of car assembly is very vulnerable, shop floor power can lead to large-scale interruptions in production, and has led to improvements in pay and conditions despite attempts by management to turn workers against each other by layoffs etc . The current reorganisation is consequently designed to use the increased flexibility not only against competitors but also against car workers, so that the companies can claw back some of the improvements won over the post-war boom period . ` i) Some labour-intensive parts of car production have been exported to cheaplabour countries (V .W . in Mexico ; Renault using engine blocks from Spain ; G .M . assembly in Belgium ; Renault importing wheels from Mexico and gearboxes from Rumania ; Ford assembly in Belgium, Eire and Portugal ; Chrysler assembly in Eire, Malta and Portugal) . ii) The car firms create double sourcing of car and component supplies, in order to be flexible in the case of strikes . This is accompanied by a deliberate policy of standardisation and interchangeability of parts, in order that supply sources can be switched . iii) Production is reorganised between locations and plants in order to break up workforces where strong labour organisation has been built up . This occurs both within and between countries . (e .g : the reorganisation of Leyland Cars ; Chrysler's reorganisation of its U .K . production and its integration into the Simca and Iranian operations) . iv) Mass redundancies and a conscious drive to increase labour mobility and productivity (e .g : V .W . sacked 25,000 workers, B .L . did the same, Chrysler U .K . sacked 7,000, and there were massive plant closures in the U .S .A . - in 1975 alone) . We dealt in the first section with the consequences of such rationalisations for working people in the car plants and design offices ; but an underlying reason for the reorganisation being attempted now in the motor industry is the reestablishment of management control over the production process and over the people involved in it . Questions Do you have examples of ways in which your control over work has been challenged or eroded in any of the ways described?
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a) the shift of work to cheap-labour countries b) double-sourcing of car and component supplies, and switching from one to the other when faced with strikes or interruptions in supplies c) the reorganisation of work from one location to another (both within and between plants) to break up well-organised work forces d) other methods of pressing for increased mobility, interchangeability and productivity by the labour force .
THE EXAMPLE OF THE FORD FIESTA 1 The decision to produce a small car In the late 1960's the success of the Mini and other firms' announcements of plans to produce small cars (Renault, V .W ., Fiat, etc) led Ford to set up a 3-year task force to study the future prospects for the European small car market . The outcome was a favourable report . A small Ford car would also allow penetration into markets where small cars are already popular and where Ford has a very low market share - France, Spain, Italy, etc . So in 1971 Ford decided in principle to build the Fiesta . 2 Research and Development It is estimated that Ford spent E580 million on research and development alone for the Fiesta . (Daily Telegraph 15 .7 .76) . The aim was to produce a car which would compete with the V . W . Polo, Renault R5 and Fiat 127 . This would require a) lower price, b) less weight, c) less fuel consumption, and d) all the major parts should show higher quality results than those of the major competitors . Ford went through the most rigorous and costly testing programme ever, involving the building of hand-made prototypes and mechanical prototypes for the testing of new design and components . A major part of this money was invested in minimising the number of separate parts needed in the Fiesta ; while the Escort needs 2,140 parts the Fiesta needs only 1,394 . There are 42% fewer electrical connections, fewer sub-assemblies in the body, the seats are simpler, and the under-bonnet wiring is all contained in a onepiece loom (Financial Times 26 .6 .76) . This was part of Ford's drive to simplify and automate the labour process, reduce the amount of production on which direct manual labour would be needed, and gain economies of scale . 3 Economies of scale There is already significant overcapacity in the European small car market - but on the other hand the launching of any small car must be on a scale of at least 500,000 units a year in order to make it profitable . The V .W . Golf achieved 420.000 units in 1975, with a 500,000 target for 1976; the Fiat 127 had 490,000 units in 1975, and the R5 350,000 units. The Fiesta is planned at an output of 500,000 units a year from 1977, despite an average overcapacity of 30% in the European motor industry . This involves considerable risk and makes it very important for Ford to get the maximum economies of scale . a) The cutting down of the number of separate parts is one way (see above) . b) Ending the policy of double-sourcing is another, though it was always thought
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necessary in order to avoid the effect of strikes . Ford's policy now is to reorganise its relations with component suppliers by giving them orders more in advance and by applying a policy of tougher control over them . The fact that Ford is taking the risk over double-sourcing means that it will be trying to avoid strikes (it has already proposed to the C . B . I . a participation agreement with the unions), and will clamp down much more strongly on unofficial stoppages (at Halewood and Dagenham there have been mass layoffs, suspensions, stricter work rules, extensive use of warning letters, reduction of overtime, and the use of shop stewards and union officials to discipline workers) . c) The most important source of economies of scale is the unprecedented level of international integration of production which is planned for the Fiesta . In this regard Ford has always been a front-runner in Europe ; the Fiesta takes the already high level of integration another step forward . By assembling the Fiesta in three plants (Dagenham - 100,000 p .a . ; Saarlouis - 150,000 p . a ., Valencia 250,000 p . a .) the component factories can be run at an optimal level . This allows massive automation, since component plants are easier to mechanise than assembly plants . Belfast produces all the carburettors and electrical distributors ; E10 million was spent on modernising this factory in 1976 . The Bordeaux plants (two) produce gear boxes, transmissions and axles . Both these plants are highly automated, and are the most 'productive' of Ford's plants in Europe, and have a yearly production capacity of a million gearboxes . Dagenham will produce all the engine blocks ; E50 million has been spent here . The new plant at Valencia will handle engine machinery and assembly, and Saarlouis the body pressings . Assembly plants are labour-intensive, and cannot easily be managed beyond a size producing 250,000 units a year ; which is why assembly is divided between three plants . Valencia is a new plant, representing investment of over E250 million . It is still intended to be the main assembly plant, although its original role has been reduced because of "the tense political situation in Spain which represents a significant insecurity factor" (Financial Times 14 .7 .76) . The Spanish Government has been persuaded to undertake a huge expansion of Valencia's port facilitites and to invest in the largest training programme ever for industrial workers in Spain . Dagenham was not planned as a major Fiesta assembly plant, but devaluation of the E and a cheaper labour force played their part, while the proposed shift of Granada and Escort production out of Dagenham gave it the capacity as the third assembly plant required . The decision also took into account the U .K . government's worries about the import/export balance of trade, since the Fiesta should stop a large part of the present small-car imports, and also help to build up exports from the U .K . 4 marketing Ford will produce the Fiesta in 10 variations, including a Ghia with a clip-off back for use either as a saloon or an estate . The engines are specifically designed to fall below critical break-points in Italian and French tax structures, and the Ford plans to build up massive sales in these countries as well as in Spain . They intend to become the biggest producer of cars in the U .K . with a market share of 30%, breaking B. L .'s position, particularly as the new Mini will not be on the market for three years . Ford also plans a 1 .6 litre version for the U .S .A ., where they do not want to take the risk of starting up production of a small car .
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5 Conclusion Ford, as American capital in Europe, is taking a huge risk with the Fiesta, involving a massive addition of production capacity into a market which already has overcapacity . But their methods of production open a new terrain of rationalisation and international centralisation . They also take considerable political risks, by ending double sourcing, investing in Spain, expanding Dagenham, shifting towards one model per combine, as well as placing considerable faith in transportation workers servicing their European network . They are determined to use their potentially increased flexibility not only against their competitors, but also against the Ford workers .
PART THREE NOTES ON THE RESPONSE OF LABOUR ORGANISATIONS In the first two sections of this discussion document we have tried to examine and highlight first what is happening to us as workers in the motor industry ; and second, why it is happening . This third section will question how we are responding as workers to this latest stage of development of the motor industry and to the rationalisations that the reorganisation of capital is demanding . a) Demands for nationalisation Many groups of workers have demanded nationalisation as their companies have suffered the crisis, to safeguard their jobs and livelihoods ; and in 1975/76 the British state intervened massively in the U .K . manufacturing industry, especially by semi-nationalising British Leyland, finding the Chrysler re-structuring, and buying into Alfred Herberts . The effects of this must be examined because nationalisation (partial or full) has been accompanied by a smattering of worker participation, thrown in to enlist workers' co-operation in the process of production, so as to ensure a smooth period of transition for the reorganisation of production which is taking place in the name of efficiency . The motor car and the car worker are now such basic foundations of the economy that they cannot be allowed to disappear ; but whilst providing funds for restructuring the industry it falls to the state to do a'Beeching', and this is what British Leyland is experiencing after the Ryder Report . The actual role of the government in restructuring and rationalising is evident from the nature of its involvement ; which is limited to the virtual nationalisation of the least profitable sector of the industry (the mass production, volume car sector) on which other sectors such as components or plastics still make their dependent profit . The demands made of the government by workers faced with the crisis, however, are very different . They are not just seeking to rejuvenate the industry on the same old lines with a little more state involvement . They have been seeking a fundamental change in workers' relationship to the production process .
Questions 1 In those firms which have been nationalised/rationalised, what difference has state intervention made to :- money
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- pressures for increased productivity? 2 What alternatives do you see from the shop floor? b) Participation in management The employers and government are openly stating that they need effective Combine organisations of labour to deal with, in order to carry out the reorganisations . They need a pyramid of representation throughout a Combine so that participation and information can be efficiently distributed . However, the sophisticated industrial relations set-ups and 'original, unique and novel' networks of consultative devices being introduced by management - who are setting the terms for the whole process - simply provide a veneer beneath which is concealed all the inevitable ruthlessness of a large corporation involved in frantic international competition . However, the protective attitudes of the traditional labour organisations, whether intentional or otherwise, are resulting in the absorption of the trade union leadership (the T .U .C .) into the corporate structure of the country by virtue of the 'social contract' ; and of senior stewards and convenors in the plants into the managerial structure of the companies through worker participation and directorship schemes . For workers a major consequence of this process is the gradual erosion of their trade union organisation and shop floor power, built up over many years . At the very time when the workforce needs to take the offensive to protect their interests in this reorganisation they are forced onto the defensive by new forms of management initiative - planning agreements, worker participation schemes, trips to overseas plants, and so on - as well as the reorganisation of the labour process, and renewed attacks on pay, productivity and conditions . This brings about a major contradiction, because as growing numbers of trade union leaders nationally and locally are being absorbed into 'managerial' roles to direct and police their members' activities, they are faced with more and more lay members asking fundamental questions about the society we live in, and demanding both that their standard of living be maintained and that their leadership should represent the interests of working people rather than those of management . Stewards who decide to work within these schemes find themselves increasingly divorced from their members, and also very ill-equipped to influence any major issues because of their lack of resources . On the other hand, stewards who refuse to involve themselves in the affairs of management face immense pressure from management, other stewards, and some of their members to change their policy . Either way, it is the trade union organisation which is being weakened by the conflict - its effectiveness and its credibility to defend the interests of working people . Questions 1 Has the Company put forward a worker-participation scheme? Why do you consider it has done so? 2 If so, what has happened ; who is involved ; and what effect has it had on your relationships with your members / your trade union representatives?
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c) Planning agreements As part of the government involvement, the trade unions are also faced with the requirement for tripartite planning agreements - the substance of the state's current approach to control . The government suggests that guarantees should be sought covering such areas as industrial relations practice, manpower plans, intracompany trading, financial practices, and research and development activities . The agreements are to be monitored through regular consultations between workers' representatives, the government and the multi-national firms on their corporate plans, so as to integrate these with overall national economic planning . These discussions have so far been heavily dominated by the productivity and manning requirements of the companies . British Leyland is a good example of this . The agreement itself is drawn up between only two out of the three parties government and management - with the trade unions involved only in a 'consultative capacity', which means being told about preconceived management policies and decisions . Matters are discussed in the language of corporate management, which makes it very difficult for workers' representatives to understand and relate to the concerns and interests of those they represent . The government 'Think Tank' Report makes it quite clear that "the role of government would necessarily be limited to mitigating the social effects of plant closures and the manning reductions resulting from higher productivity" . The full implications of such agreements, and the way in which they will be drawn up and acted upon, has yet to be discovered . There is already a considerable belief by many stewards that taking part in this set-up, and gaining 'inside knowledge' (which will be constrained by confidentiality agreements) is parallel to participation programmes in its implications of isolating senior stewards, staff representatives and convenors from their membership, and compromising the interests and values they are supposed to represent . Question What has been the trade union response in your plant to planning agreements? What is your view? d) Demands for import controls Each crisis the industry faces is predictably greeted with a chorus of demands from various workers' organisations, trade union leaders and M .P's for import controls . With imported vehicles currently taking 46% of the U .K . market, the pressure for this is increasing . Its advocates claim that import controls would provide a breathing space for reflation, re-investment and modernisation, and would provide a means of coping with unemployment by encouraging jobs in firms producing goods to replace lost imports from abroad . On the other hand, the effect of import controls generally (not just in the motor industry) would be an increase in prices as cheaper imported goods are taken off the market, and the resulting fall in living standards would reduce other purchases which, with the resulting fall in demand, would reduce employment in those industries at least as much as the marginal improvement in employment in the other industries . Without doubt workers overseas would be thrown out of work, and at best import controls would remove employment from one country to another . It is this international aspect which is most significant,
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as we have already stressed that the crisis is not only applicable to British workers . Inevitable retaliation would also lead to unemployment in our export-led industries, and the fact is that the British car industry exports twice as much as it imports even now ; so car workers would in fact be among the first to be hit . The demand for import controls consequently tends to be divisive . Workers from plant to plant, industry to industry, and across national boundaries are set against each other at a time when they should be working together . This debate will continue, but in our view the demand for import controls provides no answer for working people . Questions 1 Please comment on the view expressed in this section . 2 Should a campaign for import controls be supported?
e) Hire and fire Our main concern is not merely that car workers should have the right to work in car factories, but that they should have a continuous adequate income to live on, regardless of the employers' political tactics . The lesson of the past two years has been that the employers are increasingly able to lay-off and sack workers at will . The motor industry in many areas is becoming virtually a casual labour industry, with a very high labour turnover . Many workers do not stay in the industry long enough to see themselves as 'car workers' - they are there for the money, as long as it lasts and they can survive . But with the casualisation that seems to be planned for the motor industry workforce, will we be able to maintain sufficient organisation to ensure basic security and adequate pay? The labour organisations have the stark choice of either accepting the right of companies, whether publicly or privately owned, to 'hire' and 'fire', and simply co-operate with the company in making redundancy and reorganisation easier ; or to perform the task for which they were founded, and use all their resources to defend their members' interests and to offset the worst effects of management policies . Our response to the threat of unemployment and the use of hire and fire tactics is obviously central to our future in this industry . Questions 1 What shop floor and union controls exist in your plant over the companies' power to hire and fire, lay off, discipline and make redundancies? 2 What additional shop floor and union controls are needed and should be fought for?
f) Trade union organisation The traditional trade union organisations, despite the radical aims that fired their growth earlier this century, have become very defensive, and respond in a slow and protective way . The present union structures, based in the main on branch, district and national levels, adequately represented the trade union response to the entrepreneural factory owners and their associations in the 19th Century . Now this form of organisation cannot cope, except in a purely defensive way, with the huge multi-national companies with plants in all parts of the world, with their
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increasing centralisation of decision-making which leaves national management simply to carry out decisions based on profit calculations made elsewhere . Despite the obvious build-up of multi-national and multi-plant companies over the past 50 years, only 14 of the largest 100 U .K .-based companies have functioning Combine committees, let alone international links with workers facing the same or worse problems in other countries . Despite a growing awareness by people working in the plants and offices that the traditional trade union structure based on crafts and districts is divisive, there is less than enthusiastic support by unions generally to the establishment of multi-union, joint manual/staff organisations based in the industry . The AUEW (Engineering Section) policy, for example, is that "while they had no objection to regular meetings of Combine Committees or to the adoption of constitutions by committees, there must be no attempt to charge expenses against the Union . There must also be no attempt to take over the functions of any of the properly constituted bodies in the Union, with respect to policy-making, national negotiations or the powers of District Committees on the regulation of wages or conditions, or for example the control of overtime" . This demonstrably leaves Combine Committees with nothing they can do except exchange information . At the same time management takes advantage of the fact that shop floor strength is limited to sections and plants by pressing for national agreements negotiated with officials and convenors . Although these national agreements may be modified by informal arrangements at plant and section levels, the company can at any time withdraw these concessions and insist on the implimentation of the letter of the national agreement, 'blue book', or whatever . What we need is to increase shop floor power at the Combine level, without losing any power at section and plant level . Without underestimating the substantial organisational problems, the trade unions are slowly developing organisations built on the widest possible range of workers, with a unified policy and strategy based on democratically accountable shop stewards, and rooted in the realitites of working in the industry . These are becoming the voice of the total workforce on a number of sbjects, providing a series of advisory services on such subjects as health and safety, pensions, new technology, community rights, company accounts, legislation relating to the industry, and international contacts . There are of course very real dangers in centralising activities through one body ; and Combine committees can easily become just another layer of bureaucracy - consider for example the British Leyland Combine Committee and its involvement with the Ryder Plan and worker participation . This bureaucratisation and integration into management must be fought, with an emphasis on trade union democracy and the need to extend and consolidate lay membership control of the trade union movement at all levels, and to ensure the accountability of all officials, both national and plant, to the rank and file . Questions 1 What is the main structure of workers' organisation operating at your plant/ office, and in your company? (e .g : section committees, line committees, joint stewards and office committees, combine committees, etc) . 2 How could existing organisation be made more effective?
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3 What are the most relevant forms of organisation for car workers to take forward struggles at the level of :- a) section, b) factory, c) company, d) international? Please describe recent experiences . 4 Have any links been built up between issues in your plant and surrounding industry or community? (e .g : unemployment, rents and housing, racialism, etc) . Comments please . 5 Do you feel that the motor industry is moving into a period of greater unity or division among workers? Please comment . 6 What would be the most important steps forward, in general, for car workers, in the coming period?
WORKING PAPERS IN CULTURAL STUDIES 10
The first pan of this issue will seek to analyse alternative concepts of ideology, from "common sense" formulations to more theoretically developed models within the Marxist tradition . The theorists considered will include Gramsci, Althusser and Poulantzas . Part I I will look more closely at specific ideologies and their areas and modes of operation (eg . in State schools, in "Community Studies", and in relation to the construction of the "subject") . CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM BIRMINGHAM 15
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REPRODUCTION AND PATRIARCHY : A CRITIQUE OF CLAUDE MEI LLASSOUX, "FEMMES, GRENIERS ET CAPITAUX"[1] by Maureen Mackintosh
The ruling class in contemporary capitalism is well aware of a direct link between the maintenance of the family and "stability" i .e . the reproduction of the social relations in their present form . The women's movement has generated a great deal of debate upon the same theme : the necessity of the family to the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production . This debate has made clear to many women the consciousness has yet to filter down to much of the male left - the inadequacy of an analysis of the family which centres attention on the necessity of housework for capitalism, while failing to give an adequate characterisation of the social relations under which women work in the home, social relations generated by the reproductive role of women . Claude Meillassoux's latest book, Femmes, Greniers et Capitaux ("Women, Grain Stores and Capital")(2( is therefore important, and is at present being widely discussed, because it purports to be a contribution to this debate on the nature of the family . Meillassoux is a French economic anthropologist whose work on lineage societies has contributed a great deal to our knowledge of non-capitalist modes of production . Now he has gone on to attempt to draw out of this work a theoretical exposition of the role of human reproduction, and of work done in some "domestic" sphere of life, in the reproduction of all modes of production including capitalism . In this review article I shall argue as follows . First, that Meillassoux fails to advance our theoretical understanding of the family and of reproduction . Secondly, that this failure, and the confusions that the book embodies, can be traced to his failure to understand or confront the feminist problematic : that is, the fact and implications of women's subordination to men, and of women's struggle against that subordination . And thirdly, that this feminist problematic provides a necessary basis for the integration of the social relations of human reproduction within modes of production . This last part of the argument makes clear my reason for writing a review which is essentially negative in tone : a critique of a book which is a serious attempt at theoretical advance can provide the best basis for further theoretical work .
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"DOMESTIC COMMUNITY" AND "DOMESTIC RELATIONS" Meillassoux's thesis in this book concerning the reproduction of people and of social systems is as follows . There exist a set of definable "domestic relations" which have existed from pre-history to the present day ; these relations, existing in an original form in an early "domestic agricultural community", have persisted through all subsequent modes of production and have been the basis for the reproduction of those modes of production . The family in modern capitalism can thus only be understood in the light of this history . I begin in this section therefore by describing and then criticising the model of the "domestic agricultural community", since this model, constructed in the first section of the book, is intended to stand as the basis for all that follows . The domestic agricultural community is a subsistence-level, grain-growing society consisting of a number of separate "domestic communities" . These communities are patrilineal and patrilocal ; the women marry out of one community into another . Each community has also to be sufficiently large to contain at least one agricultural work group which is able to provide subsistence for the whole community . Meillassoux's argument is that, in order to understand the production relations in this society one has to work back to them from the "relations of reproduction" . These relations of reproduction are based in relations of filiation, that is, the relation of progeny to parent . The relations of filiation pass through the men, and crucially not through the women . "Only the man possesses the capacity to reproduce the social relation . Filiation operates only through him" (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 118) . " . . filiation, that is, the rights over progeny, are always established between men" (Meillassoux 1975, p . 119) . Thus control over the domestic community becomes identical with control over the location of women . Women are reduced to mere passive objects for the conception of children, since it is implicitly assumed that women bring up their own progeny only, and thus the relation of a child to certain men depends on its mother's relation by marriage to those men . Women are married and reproduce outside their own kin group, and the children gain their social position from their father's, not their mother's kin . This position in turn determines, for a boy, on whom he will depend for production and for access to a wife, and for a girl, on whom her disposal in marriage will depend ; that is, who controls her fertility . This movement of women is controlled by the male elders in each domestic community . These elders also -- and this link is crucial to Meillassoux's theory control the stores of grain which take the community from one harvest to the next . This dual control of the "means of subsistence" and of women Meillassoux sums up as control of the "means of reproduction", and the control of these means of reproduction by the elders in the interest of the continuance of the domestic group constitutes the relations of reproduction of the society : 11
power in this mode of production depends upon the control of the means of human reproduction : means of subsistence and women" (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 81) .
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The production relations, finally and derivatively, consist of the cooperation of the "producing" members of the "productive cells" which seem to be coterminous with the domestic community . In my opinion, this concept of the relations of reproduction embodies a theoretical confusion between, on the one hand, the relations of human reproduction ; and on the other hand, the process of reproduction of the whole society, that is of both the relations of production and the relations of human reproduction . Meillassoux, in this section of the book, slides between these two concepts ; between control of the "means of reproduction", i .e . social reproduction, and the reproduction of human beings . The extent to which he assimilates the two concepts is seen when he comes to account for the emergence of the social relations he has specified . By his method of exposition - an apparent historical progression from the hunting and gathering "horde" to the grain-growing domestic community - he appears to deduce all social relations from the sole level of the forces of production . The small groups necessary for agricultural production, the need to store grain over the year, and the fact that women, but not men, have limited fertility (only one child in nine months), are made to bear the explanatory burden of the shift from looser fluctuating groups associated with the "horde" to the stable patriarchial family . Meillassoux defines this shift as a shift between two "social modes of social organisation", adhesion to fiiiation . In fact of course, such a deduction has no force : there is nothing in the need to store grain as such which implies hierarchical control of those stores : nor is there anything in women's limited fertility to imply male control of it . The attempt to imply that some such deductions can be made is spurious, and furthermore, misspecifies the theoretical problem . A materialist analysis does not consist in deducing social relations from some "material" fact such as the productive forces, and indeed an attempt to make such a deduction will block any attempt to grasp the mutual determinations, the sources of power and the nature of oppression, within any mode of production . A search of this kind for original sources of oppression is in any case doomed . Meillassoux of course admits female subordination within his domestic community (indeed, as we shall see, he assumes it as unproblematic) but he attempts to account for it in terms of a historical parable, of the seizure of women by alien hordes(3), and the gradual shift from immobility of women to their mobility between families . But to ask, what is the historical source of female subordination, is the same as asking, what is the historical source of the exploitation of man by man, as such . And in precisely the same sense, both are pointless questions : we should seek rather to grasp the way in which specific forms of these oppressions operate, how they are maintained and reinforced, how they are overthrown or why they are not overthrown . This is the level at which we should seek to construct theory . Meillassoux therefore, in attempting to ascribe all social relations to a common source, cannot specify the mutual determinations between those relations . The result is confusion : "The dominant character of the relations of reproduction is at the same time strengthened, relations which, although subordinate to the relations of production, tend to become imposed as the essential "values" in an unequal class society" (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 79) .
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Here the relations of reproduction are reduced to kinship, but in what way the relations of production are supposedly independent of kinship, and supposedly dominant, is quite unclear . To begin to sort out this confusion one has to admit to the relations of human reproduction some autonomy of content . The characteristic relation of human reproduction is patriarchy, that is, the control of women, especially of their sexuality and fertility, by men . The first necessity is to separate the fact of this control from the question of the form in which it is exercised : e .g . through a patrilineal and patrilocal system or in some other way ; through ideology; through various forms of economic subordination . This then specifies clearly the theoretical problem : what are the forms taken by patriarchy in this society, and how are they interrelated with the social relations of production? How, in other words, do changing modes of production change the forms of patriarchy without destroying its existence? From this point of view we can make little sense of Meillassoux's patrilineal lineage society, for too many elements are missing . The production relatons are those of an oppressive male age hierarchy controlling the output of the familybased production groups . The power of older vis a vis younger men is maintained through control of younger males' access to wives and thus eventually to a source of power through their own progeny . Younger men acquiesce in a system which gives them hopes of high status and power in the end . But the women have no citizenship : their subordination takes the form of exile at a young age from their kin relations ; their persons are at the disposal of the male elders . They are defined out of kin relations which give access to power . But how is this oppression, so much more complete than that of the younger men, maintained? Do the women have no role in production? If they do, how is the product appropriated? Do they retain no relations to their own kin, and if they do is this not a source of tension? Is there no opposition to, no tension within, this reduction of half the population to the status of object? Does it constitute no contradiction within the society? None of this can be answered from Meillassoux's text : he is constructing a model, not reporting field data (so his evidence - not contained in the text - cannot be used against him), and so he leaves out all such details : for him, female subordination is a fact, not a problem, it is something which exists, not something which the dominant groups have to struggle to maintain . So his discussion of the economics and ideology of the society is quite incomplete ; no complete theoretical treatment of a patrilineal, lineage society could possibly be constructed from it . The importance of this should be emphasised, since it is the major theoretical point that I am making against Meillassoux . While apparently discussing female subordination in the context of the domestic group, Meillassoux in fact cannot analyse this subordination because he assumes that it is unproblematic . He takes that opposition between men and women, and women's subordination within that opposition, as a given, he does not analyse it as a contradiction . If he did not do this, he would be quite unable to assume, as he does, that the male elders, by controlling the location of women, also control their fertility with no further problems . Similarly, he is not led to analyse the forms of power that men have over their particular wives and children, and the way in which that power is maintained . Nor is there any discussion of how the forms of the subordination of women might act, not merely to reinforce the elders' control of the cadets (that is,
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the younger, dependent men) but to reconcile the younger men to that control . The relations of human reproduction, and hence women in so far as they are people with volitions rather than objects to be moved around, vanish . The result is that no theory of the relation of human to social reproduction can be constructed for this "domestic agricultural community", because the problem of the reproduction of the relations of human reproduction has been eliminated or ignored . The theory of the mode of production is incomplete . And it cannot be completed because Meillassoux's construction is never located in time or space, it is supposed to be some universal first society . "The domestic mode of production . . . exists no longer" (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 135) . So it cannot be criticised or completed with reference to the society for which it is supposed to be an explanatory abstraction . At this point in the paper, I shall discuss rather briefly the implications of this critique of the "domestic agricultural community" for Meillassoux's discussion of the family under capitalism in the second half of the book, before returning to the general implications for the analysis of the reproduction of modes of production .
THE FAMILY AND CAPITALISM The absence of a theory of the nature of the relations of human reproduction, which we have traced in the first section of the book, becomes obvious when the discussion moves to the family within contemporary capitalism . Meillassoux purports to demonstrate that, while the domestic mode of production has vanished, nevertheless : crushed, pressured, divided, counted, taxed, recruited, the domestic " community . . wavers but still resists, for the domestic relations of production have not completely disappeared" (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 135) . But nowhere in this section is there to be found a definition of the domestic relations of production which explain either how they relate to those of the "domestic agricultural community" nor how they have changed since . Therefore, throughout the discussion of the relation of the family to imperialism and capitalism, no theory of the family can be developed which would allow us to analyse the evolution of domestic relations, and to explain why and how the "archaism" of the family has been maintained . Meillassoux has the merit of recognising that the fact that labour power is reproduced in an institution organised under "domestic relations of production" means that we have to re-examine this reproduction in detail . He is however unable to decide whether the relations within the family under capitalism are relations of production or solely relations of reproduction . He appears to deny to the family any role in the production of use values, since he does not grasp the relation between such production by women, and reproduction . This comes out most clearly in his discussion of the wage . Meillassoux argues that the capitalist pays only the immediate subsistence of the labourer : "the direct hourly wage paid to the worker pays only for the labour power furnished during the working period" . This is "calculated on the cost of support of the worker
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during, and only during, his period of work ." From this position, which embodies a confusion between the value of labour power and the calculation of the wage, he goes on to argue that "the bourgeoisie overcomes these contradictions" (i .e . the failure of capital to pay for reproduction) by social security : indirect family allowances and other "indirect wages" to the family . The work of women within the home, and the reasons for womens' economic dependence on men have vanished . If only family allowance and other social security payments were sufficient for a woman and children to live on at a reasonable standard! In fact of course the way in which the "bourgeoisie overcomes these contradictions" is through the work of women within the family . The family under capitalism is a producing unit : production of use values by the wife, who is maintained in a subordinate social, economic and legal position, with an overwhelming emphasis on production for children's needs . The relations of human reproduction - the subordination of women, the control of her sexuality, her fertility and her children - are the means by which the reproduction of labour power and the insertion of individuals into the class structure are controlled under capitalism .(4] Thus without the concept of patriarchy Meillassoux can develop no theory of the family in either mode of production . The maintenance of female subordination within the family is a process involving struggle and contradiction of which he is completely unaware . Thus though he can write : "Although deprived of all other productive functions one finds in the conjugal family the same paradox of an organic association of the domestic relations of reproduction and the capitalist relations of production" (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 214) - he does not know why this is a paradox . He is making a literary rather than a theoretical point . An understanding of the patriarchal nature of the relations of human reproduction would allow the paradox to be analysed . It is highly relevant in this context that Meillassoux has written a book on the subject of women where no piece of feminist writing on women in developed capitalism appears in the bibliography . I inally, and briefly, the same problem appears in Meillassoux's discussion of migration . He argues that through the use of cheap migratory labour power capital "exploits the domestic community" in underdeveloped countries . But there is no discussion as to whether this is the same "domestic community" as in the first section of the book . There are differences in social and economic organisation between a stable lineage society and a fragmented peasant farming system where the men are trequently absent and the women burdened with most of the farm work . Whether or not these differences make a crucial difference to the nature of "domestic relations" cannot be analysed since the nature of these relations is not fully specified I shall end this paper with some comments on the implications of the general theoretical point made above for the analysis of modes of production .
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REPRODUCTION AND MODES OF PRODUCTION Meillassoux remarks in a footnote that the statement that all modes of production are "dependent on domestic relations for their reproduction" : 11
is sufficient to remove from the expression 'mode of production' all rigorous scientific content and limits its use to that of a first approximation designating the totality of the relations of production and reproduction which are associated in an organic way with a given level of development of the forces of production" (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 146) . I shall argue that while Meillassoux's failure to give an adequate definition of the relations of reproduction means that he cannot pursue this point, he is right to suggest that reproduction and the family pose some severe problems for the currently most elaborated definitions of modes of production . To do this I shall briefly consider the criticism by Hindess and Hirst of Meillassoux's earlier work (1964, 1972) from which the material for Femmes, Greniers et Capitaux is taken . Hindess and Hirst discuss the lineage system described by Meillassoux as the complex redistribution variant of their primitive communist mode of production .(5) But while they emphasise kinship as the social ideology which governs "redistribution of the product" they have -no discussion of the relations expressed through this ideology . For Hindess and Hirst, the relations of human reproduction are not problematic : "All that is required for the economic level is some system of social relations where children are reared by adults" (Hindess and Hirst, p . 74) . This forms part of a comment on the distinction between kinship as a social ideology and as genealogy, but it is typical of the absence of exploration of the social nature of the kinship relation in their discussion . For Hindess and Hirst human reproduction is a process governed by no specific relations : social relations occur between adults, children just are brought up somehow . This is reflected throughout their discussion . Women are invisible, the sexual division of labour unproblematic : "Production is organised at the level of the band on the basis of a technical division of labour among the sexes and simple or complex cooperation" (Hindess and Hirst, p . 64) . For a society which, in their theory, not only has kinship as its ideological level, but in which this ideological level is dominant in shaping the form of redistribution of the economic product, the authors offer no specific discussion of the sexual division on which such a kinship system must be built . "The reproduction of a labourer under conditions of primitive communism is a function of his membership of a redustributive system (My emphasis, MM). (Hindess and Hirst, p . 63) .
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Yes : but also of his position in a sexually-based, hierarchical kinship system . The authors' view is that the nature of the kinship ideology is entirely contingent : it can contain any social relations . In divorcing it from genealogy, they have in effect divorced it from all basis in social process . It is pure ideology, dependent on nothing . This, finally, is why discussion of lineage society is important for discussion of reproduction in other modes of production . Here we have the problem of the specification of family relations within a mode of production at its sharpest . The family, or domestic group, and the productive unit appear to be identical . Kinship, as the ideological expression of family relations, that is, of the relations of human reproduction, appears to be equally part of human reproduction and of economic production . The problem, that the family appears in other modes of production as a separate set of production relations, related in some way to the main relations of production through which surplus is extracted, has vanished . The society is a homogeneous collection of families . And this is in effect the line taken by Hindess and Hirst : in "primitive communism" the family is all there is in the society ; in other modes of production (see for example the discussion of the feudal mode of production) the family, and hence the reproduction of the labourer within the social hierarchy, have vanished .[6) Thus if one can show that even within so-called primitive communism we require a separate definition of the relations of human reproduction, and of the range of variation which these patriarchal relations can show within this mode of production, in order to be able to understand the reproduction of the mode of production, then it is clear that no theory of a mode of production is complete without a theory of the relations between men and women within the family . This is the case I argued in the first section of this review article . One might see Meillassoux and Hindess and Hirst as two ends of a spectrum : the latter seeking a general theory, leave the issue of human reproduction out of account ; the former in seeking to approach the question takes only a special case and can construct no general theory . We can now sum up this discussion in general terms . No conceptualisation of a particular mode of production is complete unless it can account for the reproduction of the people within the system and of the system as a whole . In order to do this, three elements have to be considered : the social relations of production, the social relations of human reproduction, and the method by which the reproduction of the system is ensured or enforced . The form taken by the social relations of human reproduction is the patriarchal relation of men to women which dominates the relations of human sexuality and reproduction . Without this element, an important contradiction within the mode of production is missing, and the reproduction of the system and of the people within it is not explained . It is not the "domestic community" which has existed from pre-history, but female subordination . Control of women's fertility and sexuality, labour and progeny, has always been sought by dominant groups and classes as one means of control of reproduction of the social system . And this control has always had to be fought for, and maintained by political, economic and ideological means . The continuance of the family is not a "paradox", it is the form taken by the .oppressive relations of human reproduction, under capitalism, and as such the specific oppression of women which it embodies is an object of feminist struggle within
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capitalism . Unless we address ourselves to this struggle it is all too possible that advanced communism, like Hindess and Hirst's "primitive communism", will reproduce itself through the continued oppression of women .
NOTES 1 I would like to thank Barbara Bradby, Diane Elson and Kate Young for detailed comments on an earlier draft . 2 All quotations from Meillassoux, 1975, are translated by Maureen Mackintosh . 3 "Seizure of women sums up and contains within it all the elements of the undertaking of the reduction of women to inferiority, and is the prelude to all the others . It is men banded together, who seek to surprise a woman who is isolated " (Meillassoux, 1975, p . 52) . 4 Marxist theory emphasises that the bourgeois concept of capitalism as a society of free contractual relations is mere ideology . It is relevant in this context that class position is still largely inherited through the family . 5 "In fact we have shown that the use of land as an instrument of labour itself requires a determinate structure of relations of production as its condition of existence . It cannot be responsible for generating these relations" (Hindess and Hirst, p . 62) . 6 Paul Hirst has contended in another context that the family is not "a scientific field for Marxism" (Hirst, p . 29) .
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hindess, B . & Hirst, P .Q ., Pre-capitalist Modes of Production, London, 1975 . Hirst, P .Q ., 'Marx, and Engels on law, crime and morality', Economy and Society, Vol . I, no. 1, 1972 . Meillassoux, C ., Anthropologie Economique des Gouro de CBte d'Ivoire, Paris, 1964 . , 'From reproduction to production', Economy and Society, Vol . 1, no . 1, 1972 . , Femmes, Greniers, et Capitaux, Paris, 1975 .
THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT : FROM COMINTERN TO COMINFORM . A REVIEW . Simon Mohun
INTRODUCTION [1l It is a commonplace that the history of the international Communist movement is inextricably linked with the foreign policy of the USSR . For the non-Communist Party left, the latter history is one of a sequence of policies which abandoned the revolutionary struggle in order to seek a modus vivendi with capitalism . While the motive for such policies was to preserve the position of the Soviet bureaucracy, their consequence was to facilitate the preservation of world capitalism . Moreover, the circularity of cause and effect in this instance has long been recognised on the left, albeit with different degrees of emphasis . Thus for his publishers to claim that Fernando Claudin s book The Communist Movement is the first Marxist attempt to come to terms with the tragic history of the international Communist movement, is nonsense, and does Claudin himself a disservice . For revolutionary Marxists the world over the analysis of this history constitutes the first step in a reclamation of that heritage that was largely lost with the triumph of Stalinism in the USSR in the 1920s . That the heritage was not destroyed completely was due to Trotsky, and, following his assassination, to the Trotskyist movement, but the isolation of such a tradition from the struggles of the proletariat confined its influence primarily to the revolutionary intelligentsia . The great merit of Claudin's book in this context is that he correctly sees his work as a step in the direction of the creation of a new Marxist revolutionary vanguard . The comprehensiveness of his analysis and the large number of questions he poses as to revolutionary strategy and tactics can therefore only be warmly welcomed . Claudin was a member of the Spanish Communist Party . A student of architecture and leader of the Young Communists in Madrid, around 1933 he became a full-time revolutionary . As for so many others, the year 1956 was for him a watershed . The revelations of that year prompted the question : "what sort of Marxism was this of ours, with its two sides, theoretical and practical, which, instead of helping us to interpret reality, had hidden it from us and disguised it? In my own case, the answer to this fundamental question
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came to light through a long and painful settlement of accounts with twentyfive years of education in Stalinism, and through a series of conflicts within the leadership of the Communist Party of Spain, to which I had belonged since 1947" (Claudin 1975, p . 8) .[2) Expelled from the Party in 1%5, Claudin was free to devote his energies to the search for a solution to his question . His book is the first outcome of this search, a contribution to the Marxist analysis of the political theory and practice of Marxism since the Bolshevik Revolution . And his starting point is the identification of a general and irreversible crisis in the world Communist movement, a crisis commencing during the 1950s and affecting all Stalinist parties, whether they be instruments for the exercise of power or instruments for the struggle for power . This identification is coterminous with a critical examination of Stalinist ideology qua revolutionary ideology and hence an examination of the organisation and history of the Communist International for the causes of the crisis .
THE CRISIS OF THEORY Claudin begins with an account of the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 . He contrasts the Stalinist justification for this drastic step - to cement the alliance of all freedom-loving nations against the common Nazi enemy (Stalin), to act upon the recognition that the Comintern's historical experience had revealed the inadequacy of its structures (ECCI)(3) - with the reality . The International was dissolved in order to facilitate the success of Stalin's negotiations with Roosevelt and Churchill, negotiations whose aim was both to secure the Nazi defeat, and then to partition the world into spheres of influence between the Big Three . But Claudin considers that Stalin could only dissolve the Comintern because the latter's analyses of the capitalist world had continually been at variance with capitalist reality . Moreover, these contradictions had already existed in Lenin's lifetime . Thus the liquidation of the Comintern, at a crucial moment in world history for the socialist movement, was premised on what Claudin calls "the plane of the conceptions that served as the theoretical foundation for the Comintern's political activity and organic structures" (p . 40) . At the time of the Comintern's inception, these conceptions had seemed compelling enough . The contradictions of imperialism had engendered the complete maturation of the objective conditions for international revolution ; this would be triggered by revolution in that country where both the concentration of contradictions was greatest (weakest link in the chain) and there existed a political instrument adequate theoretically, politically and organisationally, to the task of the seizure of power, that is, where there existed a Bolshevik Party . Given that- the victory of revolution in the more advanced capitalist countries of Europe would determine the successful conclusion of world revolution, it was critically important in these countries to establish a revolutionary party of the Bolshevik type . Since the inevitable ebb of the revolutionary tide could not be predicted with certainty, the Bolsheviks had to encourage and facilitate the formation of such vanguards with the utmost urgency .
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Claudin s attack on this schema is two-pronged, both considering the adequacy of the Leninist party as an instrument for the seizure of power in conditions very different from those of Tsarist Russia, and assessing the coherence of the Bolshevik schema for international revolution in the immediate post-war years . The prongs together thereby expose for him a theoretical crisis in revolutionary Marxism . The examination of the particular conditions within which the Bolsheviks had to work is clearly a necessary part of any assessment of the lessons to be learnt from the Bolshevik experience . In Russian society, a society which exhibited strong centrifugal tendencies because of Great Russian domination over oppressed nations and minorities, the proletariat was a tiny fraction scattered in small concentrations amidst an overwhelmingly peasant population ; hence, in a milieu of illegality and repression, the structure and activities of the Bolshevik group could not but develop the almost military features of hierarchical centralisation and rigid discipline . In the Russian context however, these were not, in Claudin's opinion, negative developments . The Bolshevik Party was the distinctive product of the circumstances in which it had to operate ; moreover, its effectiveness and cohesion were formed and structured by ceaseless political and ideological struggles both against capital and against the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries . Thus the revolutionary process was characterised by vigour but also by depth ; revolutionary intellectuals fought for the successful assimilation of Marxism in the Russian labour movement, and this struggle reveals "the permanent tension between the tendencies to ultra-centralism and military discipline on the one hand, and the party's intense theoretical and political life on the other . Lenin's unusual personality, in which a will to scientific rigour was combined in remarkable fashion with a will to effectiveness in struggle, contributed in no small degree to maintaining this dynamic tension in unity" (p . 117) . However, such "dynamic tension in unity" was peculiarly a product of Russian conditions, and while the "Twenty-One Conditions" (which the Second Congress of the Comintern decided should determine the admission of parties to its membership) attempted an international assimilation of the Bolshevik experience, in fact these conditions comprised, for Claudin, an organisational solution to the political problem of internationalising the Russian Revolution . Thus his criticisms are essentially concerned with the organisational centralism which was established, and with the policy of Bolshevisation through splitting ; they constitute the first prong of his attack on the Bolshevik schema . The points about organisational centralism are fairly obvious . The ECCI was perforce based in Moscow and was financially dependent primarily on the Soviet state . The Russians had a wealth of talent upon which to draw for any particular issue and invariably put forward a single and consistent viewpoint . By contrast the other principal delegations, many having had to travel to Moscow secretly, were by no means unanimous and could thereby by played off one against the other in both inter- and intra-delegational disputes . Much more important initially, though, was the theoretical and political authority enjoyed by the Russians, an authority naturally accruing to those who had successfully demonstrated their revolutionary
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abilities . Thus Serrati (of the Italian Socialist Party) asked at the Second Congress, "What am I compared with Comrade Lenin? He is the leader of the Russian revolution . I represent a tiny communist socialist party" (Cited in Carr 1953, p . 199) . Clearly premised in such an attitude was the absence of any contradiction between this system of leadership on the one hand, and, on the other, the complex nationaF reality of each country to which each national section of the Comintern had to adapt in order that prospects of revolutionary success be anything other than remote . For Claudin, the contradiction is anything other than absent and in his support he cites Lenin of 1906 . Lenin wrote an approving preface to an article of Kautsky's on the driving forces of the Russian revolution in which he emphasised how essential to the international revolutionary movement was the help of such authorities as Kautsky, but Lenin then qualified his remarks in the following way : "Important though this authority is in widening the horizon of the fighters, it would be impermissible in the workers' party to claim that the practical and concrete questions of its immediate policy can be solved by those standing a long way off . The collective spirit of the progressive class-conscious workers immediately engaged in the struggle in each country will always remain the highest authority on all such questions" (p . 116) . But Claudin fails to recognise sufficiently the relative immaturity of the various national sections of the International ; such immaturity impelled the ECCI to intervene in the national sections over questions of revolutionary politics which should have been axiomatic . It was this same immaturity which the Bolsheviks considered dictated the necessity of the twenty-first condition for admission to the International . The point of the splitting policy was not, as Martov claimed, "to erect a solid wall against the invasion of elements capable of claiming a share in the taking of decisions for themselves and for their own parties" (Cited in Care 1953, p. 200) . Rather it was to expose the connection between imperialism and opportunism in the labour movement, a connection which had fatally flawed the Second International .(4] It was to discredit and expel from the revolutionary workers' movement those such as Kautsky, Hilferding, Turati, Longuet and MacDonald, who had capitulated to social chauvinism . Hence a divorce had to be effected within the centrist parties, particularly the German USPD, the Italian PSI and the British ILP, splitting the leadership from the rank and file, and thereby attracting the latter into the ranks of the Third International . However, Claudin makes some trenchant criticisms of the practice of the splitting policy . Clearly there is nothing undesirable about a split in the labour movement if it emerges as the outcome of a sustained political and ideological struggle against capital, as indeed it must emerge if that struggle is to be successfully pursued . But the practice of the adherents to the Third International, on the
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basis of the "Twenty-One Conditions", was to organise splits in a mechanical way, and thereby, according to Claudin, "to create chemically pure Bolshevik parties overnight" (p . 109) . To engage in such a procedure was seriously to misunderstand the relationship between leaders and rank and file in the cultural milieu of Western Europe . Of course such splits were necessary, even critical, but as the outcome of a political struggle rather than the imposition of an organisational' procedure . The pursuit of the latter in Western European conditions could only have the effect of splitting communists, not from the opportunists, but from the body of the labour movement, because the basis of such a movement was "a working class which had for decades been trained in the reformist spirit, in parliamentary and trade-union activity - a working class which, in its great majority, had supported the 'traitor' leaders in entering into union sacree with their respective bourgeoisies" (p . 109) . This then is the burden of the second prong of Claudin's attack on the Bolshevik schema : the Bolsheviks overemphasised the possibilities of revolution in the West because of an underestimation of the depth of reformism in the working class. The issue is not simply a question of recognising that the conditions of bourgeois legality, democracy and constitutionalism pertaining in Western Europe required a different strategy and tactics from that appropriate to Tsarist Russia . Indeed, on one level, Lenin explicitly denied the meaningfulness of such a difference : his "ultra-left" writings on parliamentary tactics were developed not only in response to Russian conditions but also in implacable hostility to the reformist illusions of German Social Democracy and thereby of the Second International . For example, he declared that after the imperialist war of 1914-18, "defence of direct or indirect alliances with the bourgeoisie of one's own country against the revolutionary proletariat and the 'Soviet' movement, and defence of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliamentarianism against 'Soviet power' became the principal manifestations of those intolerable and treacherous compromises, whose sum total constituted an opportunism fatal to the revolutionary proletariat and its cause" (Lenin, Vol . 31, p . 69) .(5] Of course Lenin was not arguing that communists should not use bourgeois parliaments ; but the only point of such parliamentarianism was to win mass support . Yet since the parliamentary game in each country was played according to different and constantly changing rules, it was unlikely that the pursuit of a single set of instructions from Moscow would facilitate success in that game . Recollections of Bolshevik tactics towards the Tsarist Duma, and a uniform instruction from the Second Congress to "utilise bourgeois state institutions in order to destroy them" (Cited in Carr 1953, p . 200) - just as British Communists were to support Labour leaders with their votes as the rope supports the hanging man, since Labour in power would destroy all illusions as to the true political function of Labour leaders - were no substitute for a detailed analysis of the ways whereby the loyalty of the Western proletariat to their social democratic order and its state institutions could be subverted in each country . Thus the problem was not merely one of organisational over-centralisation . It
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was also that the bourgeoisie had for decades "educated" its proletariat into a proper understanding of the theory and practice of bourgeois democracy . Hence a tabula rasa conception of political backwardness could not be ascribed to the proletariat in the bourgeois democracies . Rather, in these countries the establishment of a revolutionary consciousness involved the active transformation of an already well-developed political consciousness, since this latter was encapsulated by an acceptance of the validity and appropriateness of bourgeois democracy . . (6] Western workers did not perceive themselves as having nothing to lose but their chains . They had a standard of living, tenaciously won through trade union struggle, which they were unwilling to sacrifice lightly to what they saw as the chimera of revolution, involving as it must war and civil war . Hence, as Claudin points out, with the ebb of the revolutionary tide, economist and reformist attitudes reasserted themselves among the majority of workers . Consequently, Communist Parties could either maintain doctrinal purity at the expense of political isolation from the labour movement, or could enter existing Social Democratic Parties in order to win influence from within ; but the latter course involved the compromise of loyalty, albeit temporary and conditional, to the bourgeois world, thereby inviting the charge of treachery and dishonesty so damaging to Communist prospects of mass support . Accordingly, the practice of the "Twenty-One Conditions" meant that to break with reformism in the prescribed manner also meant to break with the mass of the workers . Communists appeared as splitters, as responsible for divisions within the working class, and, on the whole, Communist Parties were confined to minority sections of the working class . The Comintern's response was the united front tactic, adopted by the ECCI in December 1921, following the Third Congress in June and July of that year . But this tactic implied a situation in which Communist Parties, formed through the break with reformist traitors, were instructed to form common fronts with these same traitors . The policy of theunited front seemed more than a tactical adjustment to a new situation - with no fundamental analysis of the problems of post-war capitalism or of the roots of reformism to guide them, some revolutionaries became disillusioned with what they saw as the betrayal of Comintern principles . Many others, however, never wholly convinced by Bolshevism, were much happier with the united front tactic, interpreted as the reinstatement of the well-tried maximum-minimum principle of pre-war social democracy. Claudin's argument is therefore that "This underestimation of the penetration of reformism into the Western proletariat was a symptom of theoretical shortcomings that were to have an effect on the political plane in the way that the new revolutionary party was created, the way its structures and mode of working were conceived and its tasks worked out" (p . 58) . For Lenin and the Bolsheviks the 1914-18 War provided evidence enough that world capitalism in its imperialist stage had arrived at a terminal situation . However, Claudin considers that too much stress was placed on the destructive aspect of the contradictions of capitalism, and too little recognition given to the role of these contradictions in adapting capitalism to its own dynamic through a transformation of its elements via the restructuring of capital . Thus it was not only
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imperialism qua colonial exploitation which provided the material basis for reformism in the labour movement ; such a basis was also provided by the structural transformation of capitalism through the development of the productive forces . The Bolshevik conception of a capitalism which was "moribund", with a revolutionary proletariat which merely lacked a party capable of organising and directing the irresistible revolutionary process, was refuted by the historical process itself, refuted both in the specific conjunctural sense and, for Claudin, in a general theoretical sense . Claudin sees this as a crisis in theory, pointing to the objective immaturity, not of the capability of the productive forces to provide the adequate material basis for the socialist transformation of society, but rather of revolution itself . Necessary conditions for the maturity of revolution are both the existence of productive forces which can support the new order and the inability of capitalism to develop new productive forces . The immaturity of revolution in Western Europe is shown by the failure of the second condition, and it is this which constitutes the material basis of reformist ideology : reformism is "secreted organically by the system's capacity to develop the productive forces" (p . 100) . Hence what is necessary is that the system be revealed incapable of further developing the forces of production without a revolutionary transformation of the relations which structure such development . Only then do sections of the intelligentsia search for a theory adequate to the solution of the crisis . Thus midnineteenth century Germany had Marx and Engels, early twentieth century Russia had Lenin, and China from the late 1920s had Mao . However, the terminal nature of all these societies was the result of contradictions between capitalist and precapitalist elements . In the nineteenth century German case, the working class had not yet developed sufficiently to prevent a capitalist resolution of these contradictions, but in the twentieth century imperialist world, permanent revolution ensured their resolution in terms of an uninterrupted transition from autocracy to proletarian revolution . By contrast, advanced capitalist countries lack a complete theory of revolution . Such is the thrust of Claudin's argument - the Bolsheviks failed to recognise this absence, and hence failed to recognise the existence of a crisis in Marxist theory, its material content and its practical consequences . Claudin's argument is thus a complex one, relating on the one hand the splitting policy adopted by the Comintern towards the European working classes, with, on the other hand, the theoretical paucity of the Comintern's analysis of reformism among those same working classes . However, his argument is centrally ambivalent . For if the splitting policy was a mistake, then either the European Social Democratic Parties were not in fact irreversibly tied to their own bourgeoisies, or, if they were, there was no alternative to reformism since the objective conditions did not allow of the possibility of socialist revolution . Either approach capitulates to reformism through an inability to comprehend the nature of the state and the processes, pace Claudin's argument, whereby bourgeois rule is maintained . It thereby fatally compromises the ideological independence of the working class, for everyday politics are constrained to conform to the limits defined by the self-expansion of capital . Claudin never confronts this difficulty . Instead, on the one hand, he correctly criticises the tendencies towards fatalistic and catastrophic Marxism which emerged in the first years of the Comintern ; and he demonstrates, as a precondition for the determination of revolutionary strategy and tactics in the West, the
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necessity of an account of reformism in those social formations in which bourgeois rule engenders mass consent to its continuance . On the other hand, he proceeds to link these correct points to an attack which caricatures the Leninist theory of the party, interpreting Marx's view of revolution as the self-emancipation of the class and contrasting it with what he sees as Lenin's substitution of the party for the class as prime mover (pp . 624-38) . Hence thus far, Claudin's theses amount to a stimulating and sophisticated apologia for a left social democracy .
THE CRISIS OF POLICY But Claudin's book is very much more than this . For it is also a detailed and convincing account of the consequences of the transmission of the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party through the Comintern to the latter 's constituent national sections . Claudin rightly points out that until 1922-3, there was a consistent attempt to apply the principles of proletarian internationalism to Comintern activity . Indeed, as long as revolutionary Marxism remained the method and world revolution the goal, internationalism survived, despite the "impermissible" interference of the Bolsheviks in the political activity and internal organisation of the various national sections . The contradictions between the general theory of world revolution and the specificity of historical development, and between the centralised structure of the Comintern and the national differences of its sections - these contradictions were essentially attenuated by the genuine commitment to revolutionary Marxism . Hence while for Claudin, "The Cominterni s theoretical paralysis may be explicable 'in the final instance' by the objective immaturity of the revolution in advanced capitalist society . even so, we must concern ourselves above all with those other 'instances' that contributed to accentuating and aggravating the effects of the 'final' one" (p . 102) . These other "instances" are dominated by the consequences of the theory of socialism in one country, the subordination of revolutionary internationalism to a reactionary national standpoint . Now these consequences have been drawn in the past, especially by Trotsky 1928, 1930, and by Deutscher 1%7, and have been related to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the 1920s .[7) Of this latter process itself, Claudin gives the most cursory treatment . His analyses of the mode of production in the USSR are slight and limited to remarks rather than to argument . Thus he talks of "the Stalinist model, in which the abolition of capitalist property did not mean the taking over of the means of production by the workers themselves, but their exploitation by a new privileged social group, whose bureaucratic domination was based on ideological mystification, the abolition of political liberties and the most enormous police apparatus in history" (p . 389) . And his most detailed analysis runs as follows :
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His lack of clarity thus produces a phraseology that is very loose, particularly as regards this "new ruling class which established itself on the ruins of the democracy of the soviets" (p .641) .[8) It is not at all clear from Claudin s analysis why such a rapid development of the forces of production took place in the USSR, for he has no analysis of the dynamic of post-capitalist societies upon which to predicate a discussion of their social structure . Consequently, it is not clear why, for example, "At the end of the 1940s . . the socio-political structures had already come into contradiction with the level reached by the productive forces and with the needs of their further development" (p . 599) . Now in fairness to Claudin, it should be said that it was not part of his intention to write a general analysis of the Soviet regime under Stalin, because he identifies the general crisis of the Communist movement as occurring historically at its periphery, being exposed by the failure of the Comintern . This failure was further cumulated by the failure of the Western Communist Parties after 1945 ; and only when the internal contradictions of the Soviet regime came to a head in 1956 did the partial and peripheral crises merge with the crisis at the centre to form one single generalised crisis of the whole Communist movement .[9) Within this framework, Claudin quite correctly remarks that Stalin's triumph "signified, in the last analysis, that the world revolution, in all of its phases and episodes, was to be subordinated to the requirements of building socialism in the USSR . Let us be clear about this . Revolution, wherever it really appears, does not bow to any authority or theory . What was made to bow was the political and theoretical activity of the Comintern, of its national sections . The Comintern's ultra-centralised structures, with its all-powerful Executive Committee at the top of the pyramid, itself supervised by the Soviet party leadership, constituted the ideal mechanism for ensuring this subordination in practice" (p . 57) . And the great majority of his book is devoted to an immanent critique of the theory of socialism in one country . In considerable detail he analyses the German
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experience from 1918 to 1933, and this, together with a critique of the Comintern's politics in the "third period", amply confirms Trotsky's comments of 1936: "The fact is that in its capacity as leader of the Communist International the nationally limited and conservative, ignorant and irresponsible Soviet bureaucracy has brought nothing but misfortune to the workers' movement of the world . As though in historic justice, the present international position of the Soviet Union is determined to a far higher degree by the consequences of the defeat of the world proletariat than by the successes of an isolated socialist construction . It is sufficient to recall that the defeat of the Chinese revolution in 1925-7, which untied the hands of Japanese militarism in the East, and the shattering of the German proletariat which led to the triumph of Hitler and the mad growth of German militarism are alike the fruits of the policy of the Communist International" (Trotsky 1937, p . 183) . Following the turn to popular front politics via the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, Claudin examines the ensuing debacles in Spain and in France, considers the Comintern's policy towards colonialism, and details the catastrophic effects of its policies in China . He then concludes his analysis of the pre-war period with a discussion of the Nazi-Soviet pact, which Claudin regards as having facilitated the German conquest of Europe through its contribution to the demoralisation of the opponents of Fascism . He cites Molotov's speech of 31 October, 1939 : "Our relations with Germany have radically improved . Here development has proceeded along the line of strengthening our friendly relations, extending our practical cooperation and rendering Germany political support in her efforts for peace . . . We have always held that a strong Germany is an indispensable condition for durable peace in Europe" (p . 296) . And in August 1940 Molotov announced to the Supreme Soviet, "The good neighbourly and friendly relations that have been established between the Soviet Union and Germany are not based on fortuitous considerations of a transient nature, but on the fundamental interests of both the USSR and Germany" (p . 297) .(10) Since Soviet archives are not freely open to historians, Claudin speculates that Soviet policy towards Hitler from 1939 to 1941 was no different from his policy towards the USA from 1943 to the present - that is, a policy aimed at partitioning the world between the USSR and the dominant imperialist power of the time, and then conserving that partition . As regards this particular case, Claudin remarks, "Of all the 'turns' made by the Comintern, none was more contrary to the interests of the working class movement or more prejudicial to the Comintern itself than the one that resulted from the Soviet-German pact of August 1939" (p. 294) .
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Each thematic episode in the history of the international Communist movement vividly demonstrates the practical consequences of the theory of socialism in one country . If Claudin shows this clearly in the period to 1941, he is especially convincing in the period after World War Two . He begins his account of the "zenith of Stalinism" with a discussion of the reformism of the PCF and the PCI, and its role in a post-war settlement which made Western Europe safe for capital . His analysis of the period after 1943 when the Red Army had decisive military superiority in Europe and when the radical wing of the Resistance had reached the peak of its influence is especially illuminating . Under directions from Moscow, the authority of the Gaullists was recognised in France, and that of the Christian Democrats in Italy ; no hindrance was placed in the way of the crushing of the Greek Revolution ; and only the independence of the Communists in Yugoslavia enabled them to withstand Soviet pressure . Thus, as Claudin comments, "Stalin, with the help of Western Communist leaders who faithfully applied his policies, made an invaluable contribution to solving the difficult problem which faced the leaders of Anglo-American capitalism from 1939 onwards how to defeat their dangerous German rivals while still avoiding the danger of revolution in the vital centres of European capitalism" (p . 435) . Claudin then continues with an examination of the relationships between the USSR and other Eastern and South-Eastern European countries, and with an analysis of the Chinese Revolution . Finally, he considers the policies pursued by the USSR towards the West from 1943 through to the early 'fifties . The unifying theme of all of these concrete analyses is how Stalin's policies involved "sacrificing the possibilities created by the defeat of the Fascist powers and the bankruptcy of the other capitalist states of Continental Europe, in favour of a lasting partition of the world into 'spheres of influence' of the USSR and the USA" (p . 304) .
NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM AND REVOLUTION Undoubtedly, Claudin is sympathetic to the Trotskyist perspective ; but critically sympathetic . He contrasts Stalin's subordination of the process of world revolution to the building of socialism in the USSR with Trotsky's view of the dependence of the latter on the former in the immediate future . However, what was wrong with Trotsky's analysis was that it viewed class antagonisms, whether national or international, as absolute, and underestimated the complexity of the mediation of such antagonisms. For example, the historical experience of the Second World War showed how inter-imperialist rivalries could, within limits, supercede national and international- class contradictions ; that Stalin could operate within these limits, making concessions not at the expense of a restoration of capitalism in Russia as Trotsky thought inevitable without European revolution - but at the expense of that revolutionary struggle in capitalist countries, shows what Claudin calls "the real basis" (p . 83) giving substance to Stalin's national socialism . Rather than
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European revolution deciding the fate of the USSR, the historical experience to date of the converse demonstrates the relative autonomy of the October Revolution from world revolution . Trotsky's weakness . according to Claudin, is to reduce this autonomy to its most modest proportions, whereas Stalin's theory of national socialism, itself an empirical generalisation of this autonomy, renders it absolute . For Claudin, the recognition of relative autonomy is another aspect of the crisis in revolutionary theory, a crisis which the Fourth International has ignored as much as the Third, a crisis exposed by the fidelity of the majority of the proletariat in the West to social democracy and by the proofs given by capital of its ability to restructure itself (both politically and economically) through its crises . Consequently, what is required is the conscious recognition of the reciprocal relative autonomy of revolutions and the conscious recognition of the limits of that autonomy . The major problem of "defence of the USSR" could then be posed in terms not of the unconditional acceptance of the Soviet model, but of mutual collaboration and support, in terms appropriate to the different concrete conditions within which each Communist Party has to operate . It is here that the tension within Claudin's book is most apparent . For his concrete analyses vividly relate the antithetical substitution of Stalinism for Marxism to the failure of the Comintern's theory and practice, and demonstrate how the substitution of the national for the international framework situates Communist Parties firmly upon the terrain of reformist ideology . And yet his theoretical analysis propels Claudin himself in the direction of reformism, in the direction of rendering relative autonomy absolute . For he sees the roots of the problem - an essentially pre-Stalinist overcentralisation of the Comintern in conditions in which the latter's view of the world was blinkered by experience of Russian conditions which were of little relevance to revolutionaries elsewhere as Leninist rather than Stalinist . Instead of sharply drawing the dividing line between Lenin and Stalin, the drift of Claudin's argument forces him to attempt, in his conclusion, to draw it between Marx and Lenin, thereby ascribing the Bolshevik experience to the primordial nature of Russian civil society . But this is the first step of a slide into the politics of the Second International . It follows that there is a danger that, despite its damning historical analyses, Claudin's book might be quite acceptable to those Communists who are rapidly distancing themselves from the Soviet Union . For it could be used as justification for the progressive abandonment of the Leninist emphases on the dictatorship of the proletariat, democratic centralism, the class nature of the state, and revolutionary internationalism . In their place appear inter-class alliances in governments of advanced democracy, a supra-class concept of democracy, •a dangerous flirtation with pluralist theories of the state, and a moralistic internationalism coupled with the belief in national solutions to economic crisis . Thus the ambivalence at the heart of Claudin's book is ultimately a treacherous one ; it would indeed be ironic if his book contributed to that very substitution of nationalism for internationalism which his concrete analyses so eloquently condemn . And yet Claudin's book is by no means the failure that this suggests . For he repeatedly demonstrates just how the tactic of the popular front before the War, and the anti-monopoly alliance after the War constituted an elementary class
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betrayal . Electoralism, parliamentary cretinism, class collaboration on a national scale; peaceful coexistence, class collaboration on an international scale ; such was and is Communist politics .[11) At the Nineteenth Congress of the CPSU in October 1952, Stalin advised the various Western Communist leaders present, "If you wish to be patriots and become the leading force in your countries, you must raise the banner of national independence and national sovereignty, of bourgeois democratic freedoms and peace" (p . 597) . The strategy of perfecting bourgeois democracy, of regulating the anarchy of capitalist production, of distributing differently surplus value, is a strategy upon which Rosa Luxemburg trenchantly commented in 1899 : "Revisionism does not expect to see the contradictions of capitalism mature . It does not propose to suppress these contradictions through a revolutionary transformation . It wants to lessen, to attenuate, the capitalist contradictions . So that the antagonism existing between production and exchange is to be mollified by the cessation of crises . . . The antagonism between Capital and Labour is to be adjusted by bettering the situation of the workers and by the conservation of the middle classes . And the contradiction between the class State and society is to be liquidated through increased State control and the progress of democracy" (Luxemburg 1972, pp . 66-7) . In contrast, what is required is a strategy directed not against capitalists, but rather against capital . In the absence of such a strategy, capital can use Communist politics to recreate the conditions for its reproduction ; it can make seeming political compromises (thus France and Italy, 1944-7) which in fact re-establish rather than sacrifice the interests of capital . And as for the performance of the bourgeois allies sought by Western Communist Parties, alliances across class lines which seek to supercede the class struggle itself in varieties of "historic compromise", the stage is continually set for a repetition of the situation which Trotsky described with regard to Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang : "they betrayed not their class but our illusions" (p . 282) . The history of the international Communist movement is a tragic lesson in the consequences of the abandonment of the fundamentals of revolutionary internationalism, and Claudin's book exposes this in its entirety . On these grounds alone, and despite its internal contradictions which it ultimately fails to surmount, Claudin's book deserves the widest possible readership .
NOTES 1 Fernando Claudin, The Communist Movement : From Comintern To Cominform . Peregrine, Harmondsworth, 1975 . 831pp . E4 .75 .
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7
8 9
10
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I am grateful for referees' comments on an earlier draft, but all responsibility for content must remain my own . All page references hereafter are to Claudin 1975 . unless otherwise stated . Executive Committee of the Communist International . See, for example, Lenin, Collected Works, Vol . 31, pp . 42, 43 and 46 . But see also Lenin, Vol . 33, pp . 430-32 . Varga in 1922 and Bordiga in 1926 also forcefully pointed out the differences between Russian conditions and conditions elsewhere . See Carr 1964, pp. 498 and 501-3 . This relation is not to date a completely successful one . Its rigorous establishment requires an analysis of the Soviet mode of production, its dynamic, and its relation to the world economy . This is a task which remains to be performed with the requisite degree of precision . See also pp . 395, 452 and 618-19 . This general crisis is to be the subject of two further volumes by Claudin, the first covering the period from the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU to the SinoSoviet split, and the second, from that split to the present . It may be objected that a Marxist analysis should focus on what people do and not on how they rationalise their actions . In this case, see Medvedev 1972, pp . 440-52 . Which is not of course to say that revolutionaries are against alliances and in favour of nuclear war . It is another merit of Claudin's book that he demonstrates that such canards have no place in any serious discussion of the strategy and tactics of revolutionary struggle .
REFERENCES Carr, E .H . (1953) The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Vol . Three. Macmillan, London . (1964) Socialism In One Country 1924-1926, Vol . Three . Macmillan, London . Claudin, F . (1975) The Communist Movement : From Comintern To Cominform . Peregrine, Harmondsworth . Deutscher, l . (1967) Stalin, A Political Biography, Oxford University Press, London . Lenin, V .I . (1960-70) Collected Works, Vols . 31 and 33, (Fourth ed .) Lawrence and Wishart, London . Luxemburg, R . (1972) Selected Political Writings, Ed . R . Looker, Jonathan Cape, London . Medvedev, R . (1972) Let History judge, Macmillan, London . Trotsky, L.D . (1928) The Draft Programme of the Communist International - A Criticism of Fundamentals. In The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1970 . (1930) Introduction to the German Edition of The Permanent Revolution .
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In The Permanent Revolution & Results And Prospects, Merit Publishers, New York, 1969 . Trotsky, L .D . (1937) The Revolution Betrayed, Faber and Faber, London .
Radical Science Journal No. 5 now available £1 .00 136 pages Contents : PATRICK PARRINDER-The 81ack Wave : science and social consciousness in modern science fiction ; DAVID TRIESMAN -The Institute of Psychiatry Sackings ; 808 YOUNG-Science Is Social Relations . Letter : LOUP VERLET-La Course ou la Vie (Publish or Live) No . 4 still available 60p 104 pages Contents: SIMON PICK VANCE-"Life" in a biology lab ; LUKE HODGKIN-Politics and physical sciences : CHARLIE CLUTTERBUCK-Death in the plastics industry . Reviews : BOB YOUNG -'Labour and Monopoly Capital', by Harry Braverman . DAVE ELLIOTT-'Alternative Technology and the Politics of Technical Change' by David Dickson .
Subscription : £3 .00 (individual), £9 .00 (institutional) for 3 issues post paid . Individual copies : please add 15p each for postage, etc . Bulk orders : one-third reduction on 10 or more copies . RSJ CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY The RSJ Collective has prepared an annotated bibliography which includes the resources which we think are relevant to the development of a revolutionary politics of science . It contains over 500 books, articles, and pamphlets-all categorised according to disciplines, critical traditions, and current and historical controversies, e .g ., Marxist Critiques of Physics ; Reification : Fetishism ; Scientific Management ; Deviance Theory ; Althusser ; Science and Ideology ; Biologism ; Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science ; Hazards of Work ; Labor Process ; Trade Union Issues . To order a copy, send 60p plus 15p postage . Sorry-we have to ask for 50p extra for cashing cheques in foreign currency, since That's what the bank charges us . Radical Science Journal, 9 Poland St. London W 1
NOTE
COMPUTERS AND CAPITAL Fear about computers seems to focus on the ways they can be used to intervene in "private life", to invade the sphere of civil rights, i .e . their uses by credit investigators and police, secret or otherwise . But computers are also increasingly being used in the control of people at work . Work is a sphere in which capital does not need to worry too much about civil rights . Capital has the "right" to know as much and to control as rigorously as it can get away with . We'need to do a lot more research about the use of computers in the control of labour processes . And first of all we need to overcome the illusion that computers are used only in the control of material processes ("automation") ; for they are used also to control labour . In a recent Financial Times article about the Volvo group work experiments there is some discussion about the way in which computers control the movements of trolleys which convey the work through the shop on electromagnetic tracks in the floor . But on the use of computers in the surveillance of labour, which is at the very heart of the system, all we are told is that "they have had some grumbles about the way computers have been used" . Here is one story about how computers can be used to keep labour in line . As it happens it is clerical and administrative labour that is involved . The story takes place on the outskirts of Paris . at La Defense, an area of large modern office blocks . One of these, the Franklin Tower, is the headquarters of a big insurance company, Assurances Generales de France . The general information department of the company occupies four floors of the block, and in this department the general atmosphere is one of struggle and suspicion, mutual hostility between management and union . Union representatives are sent warning notes if they are caught distributing union leaflets . Overactive unionists are assigned jobs where a careful eye can be kept on them by selected supervisors . They look for any excuse to give them the sack . In 1975 the Department installed an IBM 3750 processor . Its job was to monitor all telephone calls . It produced a monthly report detailing the time, duration and number dialled of all calls for each telephone . This in itself would be pretty worrying, of course, given the general atmosphere of "surveillance" in the Department; it would not have been technically difficult for the system to have recorded the contents of the telephone calls, without anyone knowing . But the IBM 3750 is a versatile device and its uses were to be extended in another direction .
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Glass partitions were installed on all the landings, and exits and entrances to the four floors occupied by the department were fitted with glass doors with no handles . At each door there was installed a small gadget which would automatically open the door when instructed to do so by the insertion of a plastic card . Each employee was issued with his or her individual card and the IBM processor would thereby receive information about each person's movements, entrances and exits . This traffic information was stored and processed and used to provide management with a weekly printout for each employee giving full and detailed information on each employee's movements into and out of the different zones, the duration of time spent off the job etc . Any time greater than five minutes spent in unauthorised absence from the job is then deducted from the employee's work count for the week (the system operates together with a flexi-time system) . Shorter "disappearances" are not deducted but they are recorded and printed out for management information, and this is supposed to encourage people to feel nervous about moving around too much . It is necessary to pass through a door and have your movement recorded in order to get a coffee from the machine, to go to the lavatory or to go and read the union notice board . The 3750 has yet other possibilities . When connected with a computer, and this with a visual display system, it allows a supervisor to call up at any moment information as to the whereabouts of any individual employee . It can also, according to the IBM publicity brochure, be used so as to prevent, at any moment, entry to any designated parts of the building to any specified personnel . Pressure from employees has, at this particular office, dissuaded the boss from activating these latter uses of the gadget . Moreover he has agreed to the introduction of a more complex system involving two different kinds of plastic cards - one individualised, used for timekeeping, the other nonindividualised, used for opening doors . Furthermore exit can now be achieved without using a card, the doors having been fitted with interior handles . It is still technically possible for management to use information from the "nonindividualised" cards for surveillance purposes because they do in fact still contain an individual code number . But this is in practice prevented by the employees who swop their cards around among themselves as a defensive measure . Is this IBM 3750 in use in the UK? Used for what, by whom? Have struggles centred around its use as in France? Any information please to the Brighton Labour Process Group, 41, Colbourne Rd ., Hove, Sussex .
REVIEWS
DEVELOPMENT AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT : A MARXIST ANALYSIS By Geoffrey Kay Macmillan (London, 1975) pp . 194, £7 .50 (hardback), £3 .95 (paperback) Reviewed by John Humphrey Geoffrey Kay has attempted to set out the basis for Marxist analyses of underdevelopment by using concepts derived from Capital in a rigorous manner . There is no doubt that such work is badly needed, because the development field is dominated by radical critiques of conventional development theory and theories of unequal exchange . Kay criticises these approaches in the course of his argument, but the major focus of attention is towards the construction of a Marxist analysis of underdevelopment . The book does not assume previous knowledge of Marxism . In spite of the complexities of the argument at certain points, the concepts used are developed from the introductory chapters, where the author explains the concepts of production, circulation, value, surplus value, profit, accumulation and socialisation of production . Having spent almost half of a short book (under 200 pages) on this exegesis, the author is constrained to pitch his analysis at an abstract level . The history of relations between the developed world and "what came to be the underdeveloped world" is divided into two phases . The first is when merchant capital related to the underdeveloped world, in the first instance in its own right, and later as an agent of industrial capital when the latter had become dominant in Europe . Kay characterises merchant capital as being based on control of markets . It is incapable of entering directly into production and must depend on others to organise it . Merchant capital can break down the old structures of societies, and yet it depends on them, because it must itself always remain at the level of circulation . Kay argues that after merchant capital was displaced in Europe, it maintained its sway in the underdeveloped world, acting as an agent of industrial capital . Even when production was reorganised, it is argued, the low levels of capitalisation and the unstable labour forces employed allowed merchant capital to perform this function on behalf of industrial capital . In spite of some uncertainty as to the intervention of merchant capital in the sphere of production, the chapter on merchant capital is the best in the book . It is lucid and stimulating, and one is left with the feeling that the chapter on industrial
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capital will get to grips with some of the problems of industrialisation in the underdeveloped world . Given the failure of radical development theory to come to terms with current industrialisation in the underdeveloped world, it might be hoped that a rigorous Marxist approach would start to shed some light on these questions . Unfortunately, Kay makes no attempt to deal with them . The analysis of industrial capital is almost completely confined to a proof of the need for industrial capital to employ techniques requiring a high organic composition of capital irrespective of the price of labour-power . In spite of the usefulness of such an argument, as it counters theories of intermediate technology and shows that local capitalists would employ the same techniques, it does not provide a basis for characterising the present stage of accumulation in underdeveloped countries . The argument is reduced to one of employment creation, and the dynamics of capitalist accumulation are taken to be identical in all parts of the world . Much of the discussion in the latter part of the book, in fact, is drawn from Italian theories of the development of capitalism in Europe and the United States . This is a serious weakness . More generally, the book suffers from the division between merchant capital and industrial capital - in two senses . Firstly, the circuit of capital can cross national boundaries at different points - not merely at the point of realisation . Kay appears to assume that if industrial capital has penetrated the underdeveloped world, it must have done so in its entirety and at the level of capital in general . Secondly, it seems incorrect to use the contrast between merchant and industrial capital as a basis for periodisation . 1930 cannot be taken as the dividing point . To do so overestimates the the unity of the phase of merchant capital and fails to come to terms with imperialism . At the same time, it confuses the analysis of industrial capital : Kay makes the absurd claim that Brazil only started to industrialise in the Thirties (p . 126), and no distinction is made between industrialisation in the Thirties and the present stage of accumulation . The problems mentioned here are compounded by the author's attempt to draw political conclusions from his analysis at the end of the book . He sees industrial capital's failure to provide employment as entailing repressive regimes . Such a crude analysis fails to understand the nature of these regimes, ignores the history of populism in Latin America and provides little basis for determining Left strategy in underdeveloped countries . In spite of these criticisms, Kay has written a book which is an immeasurable improvement on most books on development, and the criticisms reflect the high hopes placed on it . Perhaps I was unreasonable to expect one small book to solve all my difficulties in this area, but I feel that the author's aims were fairly ambitious and that this justifies the criticisms made at the same level .
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AN ECONOMIC THEORY OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM TOWARDS A MODEL OF THE POLISH ECONOMY, 1500-1800 By Witold Kula New Left Books (London, 1976) pp . 186, E5 .75 FEUDALISM, CAPITALISM AND BEYOND Edited by K . Kamenka and R .S . Neale Edward Arnold (London, 1975) pp . 144, E3 .95 (hardback), E1 .95 (paperback) Reviewed by Chris Scott It is now fifteen years since Kula's book first appeared in Polish, and the English reader is still left two steps removed from the original because this edition by NLB has been translated from the Italian . However, its publication is greatly to be welcomed and one should be grateful that it has not shared the fate of other classic analyses of European agrarian history, such as Kautsky's The Agrarian Question, which still lack an English edition . Kula's study is important not only as a contribution to historical method and to Polish historiography, but also as an indication of the re-emergence of creative intellectual writing in Poland after the Stalin era . The author's objective is to theorise "feudalism" understood as " . . . a socioeconomic system which is predominantly agrarian and characterised by a low level of productive forces and of commercialisation ; at the same time, it refers to a corporate system in which the basic unit of production is a large landed estate surrounded by the small plots of peasants who are dependent on the former both economically and juridically, and who have to furnish various services to the lord and submit to his authority" (p . 9) . After discussing the types of questions which such a theory must answer, Kula argues that his purpose is to formulate laws "governing the volume of the economic surplus and its utilisation, and that these problems have to be explained in the short term and in the long term" (p . 16-17) . Most of the book is concerned with an examination of the short term dynamic of the feudal system . The analysis centres on the problems of economic calculation in a dual economy (natural and monetary), and on appraising the consequences of harvest variability for price fluctuations, changes in the volume of agricultural commodities on local and export markets, national income determination, the distribution of income btween lord and serf, and between town and country . This section contains many imaginative suggestions, such as the contrast in the behaviour of the general price level associated with national income fluctuations under feudalism and capitalism, and the role of the export trade in "levelling off" movements in grain prices . Nevertheless, at several points the analysis appears more concerned with a study of markets and circulation, than with surplus appropriation and disposal . Kula's examination of the long term dynamic of the Polish economy over three centuries is much briefer than his short term analysis, as well as being less rigorous and overly schematic in presentation . The issues are much more complex, and the lack of adequate source material acts as a severe limitation on the argument which suffers from insufficient elaboration . In consequence, assertions
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are made which appear prima facie inconsistent. for example, it is argued that an important cause of the breakdown of feudalism was the growth of commodity production by the serfs . This may be correct, but it is also alleged that over the same period, the land area to which the serfs had access was reduced, rural population density increased, labour and !and productivity on the peasants' plots fell, and the average burden of servile obligations to lords increased . The major difficulty with Kula's work is his method, apart from queries regarding the quality of his sources and his use of them . The distinction between short and long term analysis, although illuminating in many respects, raises several problems which the author has not adequately solved . Firstly, there is the question of relative emphasis . Kula devotes the greater part of this study to the analysis of the short term dynamic of feudalism . However, it is not clear whether this represents a theoretical priority, or merely indicates that the current state of research on Poland provides more empirical data on the issues of harvest variability, price fluctuations and commodity market interdependence than on other topics. The weakness of the long term analysis may be shown by reviewing those factors which are effectively omitted from the book . There is virtually no discussion of the nature and causes of demographic and technological change . Nor is there more than passing mention of the nature and extent of class conflict under feudalism, particularly in its waning years . Developments in the towns are excluded from the text, nor is there any analysis of the emergence of the State and the growth of the labour market . To have examined all these issues would certainly have required a longer book, but they are all crucial for obtaining answers to the ambitious questions Kula sets himself at the outset . Secondly, Kula fails to synthesise adquately his two levels of analysis . Indeed, to this reviewer, it is intriguing that a work, regarded by many as a Marxist classic, is based on microeconomic theory which is predominantly marginalist (and sometimes explicitly Chayanovian), and macroeconomic theory which has strong traces of Keynesianism (Kalecki-ism?) . This lack of theoretical completeness is illustrated by the absence of any mention, let alone discussion, of a 'mode of production' . At the time of writing, Kula was apparently unaware of the "transition debate" in Science and Society, and no reference is made to Dobb or Sweezy . This is unfortunate because this book has much to offer this recently revived controversy, while a familiarity with this literature might have corrected the imbalance between his short term and long term analysis, and provided theoretical insights for a more satisfactory synthesis . Turning from Kula to Feudalism, Capitalism and Beyond is to move from structure to superstructure . This volume contains six essays by academic historians who participated in a seminar at the Australian National University to examine "Capitalism - the emergence of an idea" . It is claimed that the common theme is the role of property and law in the transition from feudalism to capitalism "and beyond", yet the approaches of the various authors are disparate and the volume as a whole lacks theoretical coherence . A majority of the contributors are unsympathetic to Marxist analysis and 'straw men' abound, whether they be Weber and Tawney on the Protestant Ethic, or a simpliste Marx on the 'transition to capitalism' . There is no discussion of modes of production nor of the nature of ideology .
REVIEWS
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THE LABOUR ARISTOCRACY IN VICTORIAN EDINBURGH By Robert Q . Gray Clarendon Press (Oxford, 1976) pp . 220, £8 Reviewed by Roger Penn The concept of a labour aristocracy has been central to Marxist analyses of concrete class structures, from Engels' comments on the "bourgeois" characteristics of the nineteenth century English working class, through Lenin's theory of imperialism, to contemporary theorists like Poulantzas and Arrighi . It is perhaps indicative of the paucity of concepts that have been developed within the Marxist tradition of conjunctural analysis that the content of the concept can vary from divisions (often of different kinds) within national working classes to divisions on an international level whereby nations themselves take on similar characteristics, so that, for example, for Hobsbawn the labour aristocracy is identified as skilled craftsmen in Britain whereas for Fanon the entire Western European working class is seen as a labour aristocracy vis a vis Third World nations . Robert Gray is clear enough about what he means by the labour aristocracy in late Victorian Edinburgh . It refers to the structural division between skilled artisans and nonskilled workers that is manifest in economic and "social" relations and most importantly in the cultural mediation of these relations ideationally through the accommodation to the dominant bourgeois ideology of the period . The research is not as particularistic as the title to this book might suggest, since Gray's approach does not involve traditional historical fetishisation of "facts", for his conceptual framework is informed by contemporary Marxist theorising . Most importantly . Gray attempts to elucidate and apply Gramsci s theory of hegemony to explain the nature of capitalist domination of the Edinburgh working class in the second half of the nineteenth century . However, there is a difficulty in his use of the concept, which varies from a predominantly cognitive orientation, involving the ability of ideology to make the knowledge of how society works or how to transform it highly problematic, to an evaluative orientation (informed by a consensus perspective) which sees ideology as a mechanism for producing shared understandings and legitimations for members of society . Similarly, he is unclear about what heuristic power he gives to his concept of socialism, which hovers around in the shadows of the period which he analyses . For, as James Hinton (1973) has demonstrated in his analysis of the first-world war shop stewards movement, the meaning of socialism for skilled craftsmen was quite different from that for nonskilled workers . Indeed, one might plausibly argue that a shared rejection of capitalism by different sorts of sellers of labour power (e .g . intellectuals, technicians, craftsmen, labourers) within a shared socialist rhetoric does not imply necessarily a shared agreement about the content of socialism . This point has been made forcibly by Bernard Moss (1976) in his recent analysis of syndicalism among nineteenth century French skilled workers . Gray uses his concepts to explain the origins of reformism among the British working class . In a traditional fashion he sees reformism as carried by skilled unions into the wider working class movement, yet as Pelling (1968) and Hinton have shown, and the Leyland toolroom dispute supports, skilled manual workers have traditionally been in the vanguard of class militancy in Britain and there is little evidence, as yet, of any potentially revolutionary force submerged beneath the institutional dominance of the labour aristocracy .
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For any C .S .E . member interested in examining the issues of class struggle in Britain as prompted by l . W ickham's review of Erhard Lucas in Capital and Class 1, Grays study must form a major historical bench-mark . Much of his book suggests the possibility of a fundamental examination of the historical development of the labour market under capitalism, its variant forms and the strategies and tactics employed by different types of workers within this structure, and by implication the political and ideological conditions necessary for its transcendence .
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hinton, J . (1973) The First Shop Steward's Movement, London . Moss, B . (1976) The Origins of the French Labor Movement, California . Pelling, H . (1968) Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian England, London, Fontana .
SCIENCE, CLASS AND SOCIETY By G . Therborn New Left Books (London, 1976) pp . 461, £8 .50 Reviewed by Simon Clarke This book offers a "historical social-scientific study of social thought", focussing on the formation of what it regards as the three established social sciences ; economics, sociology and historical materialism . The bulk of the book consists of a series of sketches of the significant figures in the development of economics and sociology, with particular emphasis on the latter . The originality of the presentation, when compared with most bourgeois accounts, lies in the importance attached to the social and political background of the thinkers under review . While these sketches often contain original insights and useful information which is not readily available elsewhere, by and large the attempt to be encyclopaedic leaves us with an account which is neither grossly misleading nor particularly illuminating . The central argument of the book, which serves as its guiding theme, is only tenuously and often uncomfortably connected with the exposition of the thought of particular social scientists . The book therefore juxtaposes uneasily a very general and fundamentally ahistorical thesis and a mass of particular studies, without ever integrating the two or developing either satisfactorily . The first chapter of the book establishes the definition of science which guides Therborn's enterprise . Therborn defines a science, loosely_ following Althusser, in terms of the "discovery-production" of specific "patterns of determination" . The central argument of the book is that in the past two centuries three such "patterns of determination" have emerged to define three social sciences . Economics is defined by its focus on the "market", sociology by its focus on the "ideological community", and historical materialism by its focus on society as "social arrangements determined in the last instance by a specific combination of forces and relations of production" . The specificity of historical materialism in
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relation to the other two sciences is defined in terms of its abondonment of bourgeois positions in favour of a commitment to the working class . The second chapter surveys the history of economic thought in order to establish its connection with the rise of capitalist society and with the bourgeoisie . A very rapid survey concludes with the assertion that the "scientificity" of economics rests on its "discovery of the market as a determinant of regularities in the social world of human beings" . No distinction is made between classical and vulgar economy . The following three chapters discuss the rise of sociology . The first wave of sociology is seen as a product of the transformation of political theory in the wake of the bourgeois revolution, focussing on the "social context of forms of government" and so discovering a "new and evolving social reality" . The subsequent development of sociology is seen as the product of a critique of economics in the face of the proletarian revolution, the "ideological community" providing the means to effect the social integration for which the economists' market was manifestly insufficient . By contrast with the economists, the sociologists tended to be "part of an alienated bourgeois intelligentsia" and so combined a commitment to bourgeois society with a concern for social reform . The final chapter considers the development of historical materialism, emphasising the crucial importance of Marx's affiliation to the working class movement in determining the break in his work which established the new science of historical materialism . The argument of this chapter is tortuous and confused, essentially because it starts off with an Althusserian conception of Marx's work, which is modified and abandoned in the course of the exposition as it fails to match up to the task of establishing the specificity of Marx's thought . This chapter is much the weakest in the book . The conclusion argues that although economics, sociology and historical materialism are distinct sciences, they are related in determinate ways, the first two being subordinate to historical materialism . Thus the task is to complement Marx's critique of economics with a critique of sociology which will make historical materialism the science of society . The final conclusion is one with which I would wholeheartedly agree . The question is whether the book makes a significant contribution to the task in hand . The most fundamental problems of the book derive from the Althusserian conception of science with which it begins . Since a science is defined by its creation of a particular object, the identification of a new science involves the identification of a common and particular object in the works of a series of thinkers . This approach leads to serious difficulties . Firstly, it leads to a presentation of the sciences as though they had a homogeneity and continuity which they manifestly do not have . Thus Therborn is very hard pressed to establish that the "market" is the defining feature of classical political economy or the "ideological community" that of pre-Durkheimian sociology . In both cases the history of the disciplines is written in the "future anterior", projecting onto the past a definition which only emerged late in the history of the sciences . Thus "sociology" as defined by Therborn was only constituted by Talcott Parsons, and "economics" by the "marginalist revolution" . This is why, despite his emphasis on the social context of the emerging sciences, Therborn simply produces another bourgeois history which can only see the past
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in relation to the present. Secondly, sociology and economics are defined independently of one another . Although Therborn discusses the relation between the two, it is an external one : in the first phase of sociology there is supposedly no relation, in the second phase sociology constitutes a critique of economics . However we cannot understand the significance of sociology unless we grasp its more fundamental complementarity to economics (Therborn hints at this, but only in his conclusion, p . 424) . Thus the emergence of classical sociology is a direct response to the marginalist transformation of economics which replaced the classical focus on distribution by the vulgar focus on circulation . The fetishism characteristic of the latter involves the reduction of social relations to relations between things . The relation of the individual to society then becomes the relation of a subject to a thing . It is this latter relation that sociology focusses on, reinventing society in order to re-establish the social relations abolished by neoclassical economics . This leads on to the third problem with Therborn's definition of science . Because the object of a science is invented by the science there is no way of distinguishing sciences which are defined by imaginary objects, such as theology, from those defined by real objects, such as geology . This is a critical weakness here for sociology deals with an object which is doubly imaginary : conjured into existence as the complement to the fetishised object of economics . Finally, Therborn's definition of science makes it impossible for him to establish the priority of historical materialism without dissolving the objects of the other sciences and so negating their specificity . In short this book is organised around a conception of science which leads Therborn to treat the sciences in question as they present themselves, in their isolation from one another . He therefore has no basis available on which to construct that fundamental critique which he regards as being essential, but to which his book has little to contribute . Although Therborn's book is superior to most bourgeois accounts in its emphasis on the social and political context in which sociology developed, and in its tentative recognition of a relationship between the rise of sociology and the state of economics, it does not begin to uncover the ideological foundations of the bourgeois social sciences by subjecting them to that critique which alone can establish the specificity of Marxism as a theory of society . Therborn's book provides further testimony to the urgent need for such a critique .
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