Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value. Samir Amin

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СКАЧАТЬ an artist or a lathe-operator, they are so much utopian daydreaming. Capitalism is seen as, basically, a model for eternity, blameworthy only for the social “wastage” constituted by the capitalists’ consumption, and for the anarchy caused by competition among capitals. Socialism will put an end to these two abuses by organizing, on the basis of state-centralized ownership of the means of production, a system of “rational planning.”

      How are we to arrive at this statist mode of production—the highest stage of evolution, a wise submission to “objective laws” for the greater good of society as a whole? By the road of reformism: trade unions, by imposing a “social contract” governing the distribution of the gains of productivity, prepare the way for the formal expropriation of the unnecessary capitalists, after having first served as a school of management for the cadres and elites who represent the proletariat and whose task it is to organize and command.

      There is a second possible attitude. Reacting against this type of analysis, one proclaims the supremacy of the class struggle. Wage levels, it is held, result not from the objective laws of expanded reproduction, but directly from the conflict between classes. Accumulation adjusts itself, if it can, to the outcome of this struggle—and, if it can’t, the system suffers crisis, that’s all.

      I here put forward four theses concerning the linkage among the (economic) “laws” of capitalistic accumulation, on one side, and the social struggles, in the broadest sense, on the other. By that, I mean the totality of social and political struggles and conflicts, national and international.

      THESIS 1: These struggles and conflicts, in all their complexity, produce “national” systems and a global system, which go from disequilibrium to disequilibrium without ever tending toward the ideal equilibrium formulated by conventional or Marxian (but, in my opinion, scarcely Marxist) economists.

      THESIS 2: The inner logic of capitalism—maximization of the rate of profit and of the mass of surplus-value—gives rise to a tendency toward a disequilibrium favoring the possessing classes (the bourgeoisie in the widest sense) at the expense of labor incomes (of all diverse forms). Capitalist reproduction, by virtue of this fact, ought to become “impossible.” And in fact, the history of capitalism is not one of “continuous growth,” of a “long tranquil river” assuring continuous growth of production and consumption, flowing over accidental obstructions that are called “crises.” Like Paul Sweezy, I view this history, contrariwise, as being one of long crises (1873–1945; 1971 to today and, no doubt, stretching far beyond 2010), reducing the short periods of rapid (and problem-free) growth to historical exceptions (like the “thirty great years” between 1945 and 1975).⁶

      THESIS 3: Despite this permanent malaise, capitalism has managed so far to get out of its blind alleys and to invent effective ways for adapting to the demands posed by changes in the balance of social and international forces. This reminds us that the progress of the productive forces (its pace and the directions it takes) is not some independent exogenous factor, but one that results from class struggle and is embodied in production relations—that it is modulated by the ruling classes. This thesis reminds us that the Taylorism of yesterday and the automation and “technological revolution” of today are responses to working class struggle, as are also the centralization of capital, imperialism, the relocation of industries, and so on.

      So long as capitalism has not been overthrown, the bourgeoisie has the last word in class struggles. This must never be forgotten. It means that unless crises lead to the overthrow of capitalism—which is always a political act—they must always be solved in the bourgeoisie’s favor. Wages that are “too high” are eroded by inflation, until the working-class, exhausted, gives in. Or else “national unity” makes it possible to shift the burden of the crisis onto others’ backs.

      For a view of the matter that is not one-sided we need to appreciate that the class struggle proceeds, in the first place, from a given economic situation, reflecting the reality of a particular economic basis, but that, as long as the capitalist system still exists, this modification necessarily remains confined by the laws of economic reproduction of the system. An alteration in wages affects the rate of profit, dictates a type of reaction of the bourgeoisie that is expressed in given rates of “progress” in given directions, changes the social division of labor between the two departments, and so on. But as long as we remain within the setting of capitalism, all these modifications respect the general conditions for capitalist reproduction. In short, the class struggle operates on an economic base and shapes the way this base is transformed within the framework of the immanent laws of the capitalist mode.

      The schemata of expanded reproduction illustrate this fundamental law that the value of labor-power is not independent of the level of development of the productive forces. The value of labor-power must rise as the productive forces develop. This is how I understand the “historical element” to which Marx refers when writing of how this value is determined. The only other logical answer to that question is the rigid determination of the value of labor-power by “subsistence” (as in Ricardo, Malthus, and Lassalle).

      But this objective necessity does not result spontaneously from the functioning of capitalism. On the contrary, it constantly comes up against the real tendency inherent in capitalism, which runs counter to it. The capitalists are always trying to increase the rate of surplus-value, and this contradictory tendency is what triumphs in the end. This is how I understand what is meant by the “law of accumulation” and the “relative and absolute pauperization” by which it is manifested. Facts show the reality of this law—but on the scale of the world capitalist system, not on that of the imperialist centers considered in isolation; for whereas, at the center, real wages have risen gradually for the past century, parallel with the development of the productive forces, in the periphery the absolute pauperization of the producers exploited by capital has revealed itself in all its brutal reality. But it is there, precisely, that the pro-imperialist tendency among Marxists pulls up short. For it is from that point onward that Marxism becomes subversive. (This problem of the class struggle in relation to accumulation on the world scale will arise again in chapter four.)

      Capital overcomes this contradiction by developing a “third department,” the function of which is to take in hand the excess surplus-value, which cannot be absorbed in Departments I and II, owing to the inadequate increase in the real wages of the productive workers. This decisive contribution by Baran and Sweezy has never been and can never be understood by any of those who decline to analyze the immanent contradiction of capitalism in dialectical terms.

      Starting in the 1930s, but above all since 1945, capitalism has recorded a gigantic transformation that has borne the share of those activities called “tertiary” to heights previously unknown. The reading of this transformation by conventional economists, including Fourastié who was the first to offer an analysis of it, is uncritical—in fact, apologetic. Ours is not.

      Undoubtedly the “tertiary” has always existed, if only because no capitalist society is thinkable without a state, whose monarchical functions have a social cost, covered—outside the market—by taxes. Likewise, indubitably, the expansion of “selling costs” associated with the monopolistic competition referred to previously, along with the relative autonomization of commercial and financial activities, are those things at the origin of the accelerated growth of the “tertiary.” No less important, however, is the expansion of public services (education, health, and social security) produced by successes of the people’s struggles.

      So without here going into the labyrinth of the activities called “tertiary”—activities of fundamentally diverse natures—I will here call attention only to the theses that I have put forward concerning the linkage between the puffing up of this “Sector III” of surplus-value absorption and the imperialist fact: the concentration of control operations over the world system by the powers making up the imperialist triad (United States, Europe, and Japan) through what I have СКАЧАТЬ