Marx, international political economy and globalisation

Marx, IPE and globalisation 103 Marx, international political economy and globalisation Peter Burnham It is perhaps understandable that until the fall of the Soviet Union, the study of Marxism within the discipline of international relations was restricted largely to discussion of the state ideology Marxism-Leninism. The events of 1989, and the spectacular rise of the sub-discipline of international political economy in the context of globalisation, have, somewhat paradoxically, led to a resurgence of interest in critical, open forms of Marxism. Attempts to break away from the dogmatism of Marxism-Leninism whilst avoiding the complementary error of humanistic subjectivism have, of course, a long tradition in marxist thought. 1 Consistent with the open, critical tradition is the work produced by, amongst others, Luxemburg, Korsch, Bloch, Rubin, Pashukanis, Rosdolsky, the Italian tradition of autonomist Marxism and the work of contributors to debates on value and the state held in the early years of the Conference of Socialist Economists. 2 This paper briefly outlines the contribution the CSE tradition offers to the study of international relations and the fashionable analysis of globalisation. THE HALLMARK of the open, critical tradition fostered within CSE debates is the emphasis placed on recovering Marx s analysis of class, capital and the state as outlined in Capital and the Grundrisse. Class, in this view, is not to be understood in sociological fashion as

104 Capital & Class #75 a static, descriptive term applied to groups of individuals sharing common experiences or life-chances or workplace relations. Rather it is recognised that the separation of labour from the means of production, and thereby the existence of private property, indicates that we are all born into a class society. The class relation between capital and labour is already present, already presupposed, the moment the possessor of money and the possessor of labour power confront each other as buyer and seller (Marx, 1978: 114). As Clarke (1978: 42), in a pivotal contribution, clarifies, it is the concept of class relations as being analytically prior to the political, economic and ideological forms taken by those relations (even though class relations have no existence independently of those forms) that makes it possible for a marxist analysis to conceptualise the complexity of the relations between the economic and the political, and their interconnections as complementary forms of the fundamental class relation, without abandoning the theory for a pragmatic pluralism. Class relations, in this sense, are of course antagonistic relations. Class struggle therefore lies at the heart of Marx s account of accumulation as capital must not only extract surplus from labour daily in the production process but must also ensure the successful reproduction of the total social circuit of capital through its three principal forms. This calls for constant intervention from state managers and for the establishment of international regimes and institutions. If the circuit of capital is understood in terms of struggle and potential crisis then determinism of all kinds is rejected. Struggle, as Holloway (1991: 71) points out, by definition is uncertain and leaves outcomes open. In essence this version of Marxism, based on an understanding of the complexities of the rotation of capital, focuses on resistance to the imposition of work and thereby points to the fragility of capitalism as a system of class domination. Capital, as self-valorizing value, is moreover understood as movement, as a circulatory process, not as a static thing or structure (Marx, 1978: 185). Money capital and commodity capital do not, for instance, denote branches of business that are independent and separate from one another. Rather they are simply particular functional forms of industrial capital, modes of existence of the various functional forms that industrial capital constantly assumes and discards within the circulation sphere (Marx, 1978: 136). Accordingly, this tradition refuses to fetishize either the market or the state.

Marx, IPE and globalisation 105 Instead, focus is on the changing character of the form of the political in relation to the circuit of capital. This presents a powerful alternative to deterministic base/superstructure images of Marxism. Monocausal economism is replaced with the dialectical notion that social relations of production only exist in the form of economic, legal and political relations. It is not simply a case of arguing in Weberian fashion that each of these relations exercise reciprocal and causative influence. Rather, Marx is at pains to stress that antagonistic class relations are always manifest in economic, political and legal forms. In this way economics rests as firmly on politics and law as vice versa (Meiksins Wood, 1981). The fundamental error of determinist schools is that they understand the social relations of production in terms of technical economic relations, thereby replicating the fetishism that Marx s critique of classical political economy sought to dispel. In opposition therefore to most international relations theory, the CSE tradition understands the state as an aspect of a wider and more fundamental set of social relations based on the separation of labour from the conditions of production. The state should not be seen as autonomous or as determined by a supposed economic base. Rather, the starting point is that provided by Evgeny Pashukanis (1978: 139) who posed the question, why does class rule not remain what it is, the factual subjugation of one section of the population by the other? Why does it assume the form of official state rule, or which is the same thing why does the machinery of state coercion not come into being as the private machinery of the ruling class?; why does it detach itself from the ruling class and take on the form of an impersonal apparatus of public power, separate from society? Similarly in relation to the market, why do goods and services take the form of commodities? Why do the products of labour confront each other as commodities? Marx indicates that our first task is to focus on the relationship between the direct producers and the owners of production to ascertain how the ruling class secures the extraction of surplus value. The particular form and mode in which the connection between workers and means of production is effected is what distinguishes the various economic epochs of the social structure (Marx, 1978: 120). On this basis it is possible to introduce consideration of the state, since as Clarke (1983: 118) clarifies, the state does not constitute the social relations of production, it is essentially

106 Capital & Class #75 a regulative agency, whose analysis, therefore, presupposes the analysis of the social relations of which the state is regulative. The analysis of the capitalist state conceptually presupposes the analysis of capital and of the reproduction of capitalist relations of production, despite the fact that in reality, of course, the state is itself a moment of the process of reproduction. The character of the capitalist state, and by implication the international state system, is therefore to be analysed against the background of the tensions and contradictions inherent in the development and reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. Towards a critique of IPE When turning to analyse global relations, a number of CSE theorists have argued that it is fundamental to switch our focus and level of abstraction from the state (capitalist state form) to particular national states and more broadly to the political management of the global circuits of capital (Holloway, 1995; Picciotto, 1991; Burnham, 1991; 1995). The fragmentation of the political into national states, which from their very inception comprise an international system, has developed in an uneven fashion alongside the internationalisation of capital. As Picciotto (1991: 217) clarified, the transition from the personal sovereign to an abstract sovereignty of public authorities over a defined territory was a key element in the development of the capitalist international system, since it provided a multifarious framework which permitted and facilitated the global circulation of commodities and capital. The capitalist state thus originated in the context of an international system of states establishing a framework for the generalisation of commodity production based (initially) on petty commodity production and a world market. This view, which locates the development of the capitalist state in the establishment and maintenance of generalised commodity production, offers a distinctive way of understanding the emergence of the global political economy. Whereas world systems theorists similarly emphasize the absolute dependence of the world economy on the state system, in taking a global perspective it is neither necessary nor helpful to start from the market. As Picciotto (1991) again outlines, in Wallerstein s schema it is the world market and the

Marx, IPE and globalisation 107 consequent international division of labour that allocated a particular role to each region, from which flowed the relationship of exploitation and hence the form of the state. However it was not trade that transformed production relations, but the contradictions of feudal and post-feudal production relations that led to transformations both of the world market and the form of the state (Brenner, 1977; Rosenberg, 1994). By viewing national states as political nodes in the global flow of capital, it is possible to avoid both the Smithian bias introduced by focusing uncritically on the market and the mistakes of orthodox IPE which treat state and market as independent variables. In this light, class relations do not impinge on the state, they do not exist in domestic society and make their presence felt by influencing the state which operates in the international realm. Rather the state itself is a form of the class relation which constitutes global capitalist relations. These relations appear, for example, as British relations on the world market. Yet as Marx clarifies in The Civil War in France, struggles between states are to be understood, at a more abstract level, as struggles between capital and labour which assume more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour. National states exist as political nodes or moments in the global flow of capital and their development is therefore part of the antagonistic and crisisridden development of capitalist society. The state itself cannot resolve the global crisis of capital. National states can, however, enhance their position in the hierarchy of the price system by increasing the efficiency of capitalist exploitation operating within their boundaries (Bonefeld, Brown and Burnham, 1995). The CSE tradition thus suggests that the apparent solidity of the state masks its existence as a contradictory form of social relationship. The state is not only an institution but a form-process, an active process of forming social relations and therefore class struggles channelling them into nonclass forms citizens rights, international human rights which promote the disorganisation of labour (Holloway, 1991: 75-76). The key to comprehending capitalist society is that it is a global social system based on the imposition of work through the commodity-form (Cleaver, 1979: 71-86). The reproduction of bourgeois social relations at all levels (from the overseer, to the managing director, state managers, international agencies, and alliances between states) rests

108 Capital & Class #75 upon the ability of capital (in all its forms and guises) to harness and contain the power of labour within the bounds of the commodity-form. The struggles which ensue over the imposition of work, the regulation of consumption through the commodification of labour time as money and the confinement of the production of use values within the bounds of profitability produce constant instability and crisis. It is the everyday struggles in and against the dominance of the commodity-form which are manifest as national economic crises or balance of payments problems or speculative pressure on currency. This approach to international relations does not reject the state as a category but rather sees relations between national states in terms of the antagonistic social relationships which constitute states as political moments of the global composition of class relations. 3 Globalisation and the political management of global circuits of capital A number of implications flow from the view that states should be conceptualised as political nodes in the global flow of capital. The first relates directly to current debates on whether capitalism has entered a new stage characterised by globalisation. If we theorise the class relation as a global social relationship and national states as political nodes active in the reproduction of global circuits of capital, then globalisation loses some of its mystique. States are not to be thought of as thing-like institutions losing power to the market. Rather, in a context characterised by the intensive and extensive development of the global circuits, state managers have been able to reorganise their core activities using market processes to depoliticise the management of difficult aspects of public policy (Burnham, 1999). It should be no surprise that a global system resting on an antagonistic social relationship will be subject to dynamic change as both state and market actors seek to remove what they perceive to be blockages in the flow of capital. In essence, state managers are above all circuit managers. Globalisation presents serious problems for approaches based on national conceptions of capitalism and for those frameworks which insist on regarding states and markets as fundamentally opposed forms of social organisation. However for this particular marxist tradition globalisation simply represents

Marx, IPE and globalisation 109 a deepening of existing circuits and a broadening of the political as regulative agencies (both public and private) beyond the national state are drawn into the complex process of managing the rotation of capital. To develop this point further it is necessary to review aspects of Marx s discussion of the total circulation process of capital. 4 In Capital Volume 1, Marx introduces the general formula of capital. Capital in its most general form is defined as value that expands itself, the value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains intact while in circulation, but increases its magnitude, adds to itself a surplus-value, or is valorized. And this movement converts it into capital (1976: 252). Whilst passing through the sphere of circulation (as money-capital and commodity-capital) there can be a redistribution of value but its magnitude cannot be increased. Hence Marx identifies the commodity which when purchased can be used in production to create new value labour power. In Capital Volume 2 Marx continues this discussion emphasizing that capital, as self-valorizing value, is a movement, a circulatory process that passes through a sequence of transformations, a series of metamorphoses that form so many phases or stages of a total process (1978: 132). Two of the phases, or forms of capital, belong to the circulation sphere (money capital and commodity capital), one to the sphere of production (productive capital). As Marx summarises, the capital that assumes these forms in the course of its total circuit, discards them again and fulfils in each of them its appropriate function, is industrial capital industrial here in the sense that it encompasses any branch of production that is pursued on a capitalist basis (1978: 133). Hence, Marx s basic representation of the circuit: M C(LP+MP)... P... C' M'(M+m) For our purposes two important points emerge from this very brief overview of the circulation of capital. First, the determining purpose, the driving motive common to all three circuits is the valorization of value, the basis of which is the exploitation of labour power. Each particular circuit presupposes the others and although in reality each individual industrial capital is involved in all three at the same time, the circuit is a constant process of interruption as capital

110 Capital & Class #75 clothes itself in its different stages, alternately assuming them and casting them aside (Marx, 1978: 109). Hence, capital is simultaneously present and spatially coexistent in its various phases or modes of existence. If however a breakdown occurs in one part of the circuit, the whole process may be brought to a standstill. The cycle of accumulation therefore is fraught with the possibility of crisis at every stage. As Marx indicates, every delay in the succession brings the coexistence into disarray, every delay in one stage causes a greater or lesser delay in the entire circuit, not only that of the portion of the capital that is delayed, but also that of the entire individual capital (1978: 183). Since the circuitry of modern capitalism is both intensive and extensive (in terms of the interpenetration of capitals and the global domination of this mode of production) the potential for interruption and crisis is immense. Each of the three phases of the total circuit is prone to disruption (in a multitude of ways ranging from financial crisis to industrial unrest and lack of effective demand experienced as overproduction ). At the most basic level the circulation of capital is undermined by any process which potentially reunites labour with the means of production and subsistence. This understanding of capitalism points to the permanence of crisis and the necessity for crisis management at both national and international levels. Secondly, this framework establishes a clear break with realist state-centrism and with crude Leninist state as capitalist trust theories. As political nodes in the global flow of capital, states are essentially regulative agencies implicated in its reproduction but unable to control this reproduction or represent unambiguously the interests of national capital. Rather, state managers seek to remove barriers to the capital which flows in and through their territories. The fundamental tasks of state managers (from welfare to the management of money, labour and trade etc.) therefore relate directly to ensuring the successful rotation of capital both nationally and internationally. However, the difficulties of containing conflict and enhancing the accumulation of capital have led to a more diverse process of circuit management involving a range of actors, agencies and regimes seeking to regulate aspects of the metamorphosis of capital. 5 Marx s theory of capitalist society rooted in the concepts of value, surplus value, capital and class remains the single most important contribution to developing a sophisticated radical analysis of the contemporary global economy. By

Marx, IPE and globalisation 111 rescuing Marx s critique of political economy from the clutches of bourgeois social science, the CSE tradition has played a major role in furthering the aims of Capital. Notes 1. For an overview see Anderson, 1980 and Bonefeld et al (eds), 1992. 2. See Bonefeld et al (eds) 1992. On autonomous Marxism, see Witheford, 1994; Cleaver, 1979; and Negri, 1984. 3. For further details see Holloway, 1995. 4. Palloix, 1975 remains a useful starting point. The best recent study is Arthur and Rueten (eds), 1998. 5. See the thought provoking study by Van der Pijl, 1998. References Anderson, P. (1980) Considerations on Western Marxism. Verso, London. Arthur, C. and G. Reuten (eds), (1998) The Circulation of Capital, Macmillan, London. Barker, C. (1978/1991) A Note on the Theory of Capitalist States, Capital & Class 4 pp.118-127 and in S. Clarke (ed) The State Debate. Macmillan, London: pp.204-213. Bonefeld, W., Gunn, R. and K. Psychopedis (eds), (1992) Open Marxism. Volume 1. Pluto, London. Bonefeld, W., Brown, A. and P. Burnham (1995) A Major Crisis. Dartmouth, Aldershot. Brenner, R. (1977) The Origins of Capitalist Development, New Left Review, 104, pp.25-92. Burnham, P. (1991) Neo-Gramscian hegemony and the international order, Capital & Class no 45, pp.73-93. (1994) Open Marxism and vulgar international political economy, Review of International Political Economy Vol.1, Number 2, pp.221-231. (1995) Capital, crisis and the international state system, in W. Bonefeld and J. Holloway (eds), Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money. Macmillan, London, pp.92-115. (1999), The Politics of Economic Management in the 1990s, New Political Economy, 4, 1, pp.37-54. Callinicos, A. (1992) Capitalism and the state system: A reply to Nigel Harris, International Socialism 54, pp.133-144 Clarke, S. (1977) Marxism, Sociology and Poulantzas Theory of the State, Capital & Class, 2, pp.1-31.

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