GETTING TO THE ROOTS
If the Marxist understanding has a unique role to play in the debate on where to go from here and how to get there, it lies in an unparalleled sense of structure: of the need to get behind the sensory overload and (literally) superficial impressions that rule our consciousness in any given moment — including, of course, the present — to grasp underlying connections and tendencies. The need is ever more urgent. That is what motivates this inquiry. There is only one goal: to lay secure foundations for the struggle against the tightening vice of capitalist domination, polarization and destruction, in all parts of the world.
The Guest Editor for this issue, Renate Bridenthal, deserves our deepest thanks, not just in the usual pro forma sense: she is a powerhouse organizer, working in detail with authors, seeking out areas of weakness in coverage, looking for common threads. The result, in the pages that follow, is, we believe, a major contribution to an effort that must span much more than one project, one journal, one point of view, and indeed any one continent. Pay it forward!
D. L.
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INTRODUCTION
The Deep Structure of the Present Moment
WHEN WE CALLED FOR PAPERS to re-examine the fundamentals of our
current situation, beyond the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and
beyond the turning point of the 1989-91 demise of the Soviet Union, we suggested
many different aspects for consideration of the deeper underlying structures to
noticeable political events. We also encouraged a diversity of views and did not —
and do not — expect to arrive at settled conclusions. Predictably, then, we received
a number of wide-ranging excellent essays, from which we have selected a few, not
all aligned in perfect agreement. They put forward some of the ongoing debates
about the relationship of capitalism in its long-term globally transformative stage to
the institutions of the national state, the structural components of capitalism's
current crisis, the effects of such transformations on the most and the least
competitive non-core areas — China and Africa — and strategic ponderings about
social structures by civil society activists and organized feminists.
As we did not aim for nor could we have accommodated an encyclopedic
perspective, we do not here include material on other burning issues that demand
analysis on a deeper structural level, such as the war in the Middle East, the
reorganization of the former Soviet Union, and the cautious resurgence of the left in
Latin America. We hope that readers will feel encouraged to submit essays on these
topics for future issues. For now, we hope to be meeting your thirst for Marxist
theorization of our very troubled, fast-moving times.
Part I takes a fresh look at the stadial foundations of the present moment.
David Laibman begins by reminding us that Marxism, to remain relevant, must
always be self-critical. In our impatience to realize socialism in our lifetime, we may
have foreshortened time and thereby blinded ourselves to the slower tectonic
movements of capitalist development. A theoretical, rather than purely descriptive,
approach to stages requires an understanding of the precise prerequisites of each
stage from the previous one and contributions to the next one. This, in turn, means
acknowledging that none of these stages is realized in a pure form anywhere in the
world, yet still bear some relationship to one another in our increasingly
economically integrated world. Thus Laibman develops a stadial model in which
capitalism is explained as evolving through alternating periods of diffusion and
accumulation, with transitions spurred by crisis and by sometimes halting long-term
cycles of advance and retreat. He proposes that we may currently be finding
ourselves in a stalled transition to a global diffusion of capitalism and a potential
global world state with the political potential of becoming socialist.
William I. Robinson develops the notion that in this stadial transition
transnational capital has penetrated national capitals, such that they are in critical
tension with one another. He finds the notion of a system of nation-states and
territorially based imperialism anachronistic. The power of transnational
corporations and a transnational capitalist class allows it to free itself from total
dependence on any single state to handle intra-capitalist rivalries. The current crisis
of these rivalries, as manifested in the current war, provides an opportunity for
political opposition, beginning also to organize as transnational civil society.
Jerry Harris offers a synthesis of the interpenetration of national and
transnational elites. Acknowledging that "the outside is inside," he notes more
specifically that different nations are going through different stages of
transformation and therefore are responding variously to these. Thus, China's
national interests challenge those of the United States, even while both states need
to cooperate with one another. However, their national working classes experience
new and different forms of stratification that hamper their united efforts. Like the
other authors in Part I, Harris is cautious about predicting the immediate future.
George Liodakis argues more strongly that the nation-state form is
metamorphosing under the pressures of globalizing capital and the formation of
supra-national social classes. As a result, states that cooperate as often as compete
with one another may produce regimes that combine economic integration with
repressive political and social practices. Such a "totalitarian capitalism" is, however,
incomplete and unlikely to evolve into a full-fledged global state.
The authors in Part II, "The Political Economy of Crisis," grapple more directly
with the current stage of capitalism. Robert Went sees this in the enlarged role of
global finance, to which much productive capital has fled from its realization crisis.
Like Laibman, for whom capital is stalled in a transition phase, Went predicts a
vicious cycle of deepening stagnation after capitalism's postwar "golden years." Like
Robinson, he cautiously envisions the attendant political crisis as an opportunity for
global resistance to growing inequalities.
Anastasia Nesvetailova examines the financial crisis in depth, positing debt as
a prime mover in contemporary capitalist global expansion. The increase in financial
products has led to new forms of credit, ballooning liquidity and asset prices into
non-sustainable bubbles that periodically break into crises. The underlying
contradiction between a relatively stagnant real economy and a debt-driven
investment pyramid, which she likens to a Ponzi scheme, is "a deep-seated flaw of
capitalism." She notes that dollar-denominated debt is greatest among the
wealthiest nations, but those in the developing world suffer the greatest risks in
times of crisis. Thus, in Laibman's stadial terms, any capitalist diffusion that may
seem to be taking place is based on illusion.
By contrast, Minqi Li explores various scenarios of China experiencing such
diffusion to the point of possibly claiming the 21st century as its own. He points out
that China is not only the world's largest saver and major source of finance for the
U. S. current account deficit, but also the target of the largest foreign direct
investment of global capital. If this accelerated development does not turn out to be
a bubble, China's growth may out-compete and destabilize other peripheral and
semi-peripheral nations, leading to dangerous political instability in the region.
Further environmental degradation would contribute to global crisis. The only
solution — admittedly not on the horizon — would be socialist revolution, first in
a further proletarianized China, followed by global reversal of the worldwide system
of capital accumulation and by global redistribution of wealth such that basic needs
are met equally and in an environmentally sustainable way.
If China is the most competitive of non-core areas, Africa is arguably the least
so in the present moment. In Part III, "Constituencies in a Polarizing World,"
William Minter exposes the double standard of supposedly neutral market forces
that continue to disadvantage Africa in the world economy. He traces the invisibility
of global apartheid to denial of the link between past and present, namely the
structural inequalities created and maintained by the inherited wealth of former
colonizers, whose accumulation by violence and slavery had lasting effects. Their
political influence continues not only in new institutions like the World Bank, but
even in international civil society, which is controlled by representatives of rich white
countries. However, like the "miner's canary," Africa's troubles presage those of the
larger capitalist system.
Nira Wickramasinghe delves more deeply into the problematic of civil society.
Far from seeing it as a source of possible opposition, as does Robinson, she agrees
with Minter, arguing that the concept of civil society has been depoliticized over time
and instrumentalized to create new dependencies, notably of the global South on the
global North. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have formed a chain of
global to local aid bureaucracies that privilege some groups while marginalizing
others. They create patronage hierarchies and an elite which, by claiming the status
of a unified civil society, disguises social differences and inequities. Far from being
the Gramscian forum for competing ideas, civil society in the South is emerging as
a normative set of institutions, funded by private wealth and having a non-confrontational attitude toward global capital, precluding social change.
Similarly, Hester Eisenstein finds that one subset of civil society, the women's
movement, is in dangerous liaison with global capitalism. On the one hand,
outsourcing to formerly third-world countries of manufactures such as textiles and
electronics, that employ mainly women, has enabled these countries to break free of
traditional patriarchal relations. At the same time, the growth of service sector jobs
in the United States has brought married women into the labor market, offering
them some degree of independence as well. On the other hand, the convergence of
the goals of both the women's movement and capital, for independence and cheap
labor respectively, has led in the United States to abolition of the male family wage
and to gutting of the welfare state in the name of "workfare," even for mothers of
young children. In third-world countries, the contradiction of exploitation and
liberation for women presented by global capital is also reflected in the development
of microcredits, small interest-bearing loans to women entrepreneurs, that trap them
in the very policies of financialization that impoverished them in the first place.
Eisenstein concludes that some aspects of feminism have been co-opted to mask the
radical restructuring of the world economy that is widening inequalities.
As we noted at the beginning, these essays, while deeply searching, by no
means exhaust the need for further theorizing of the deep structures of the present
moment. The very concept of a "deep structure" suggests a "going behind" what we
see as reality. The empirical data and subjective impressions of today's capitalism-dominated world have a foundation — the capitalist mode of production. This is
embedded in a network of social formations at varying but given stages of evolution.
The foundation is at least partially unperceived, and sets "objective" limits to what
is possible. This, of course, raises a question: does studying the deep structure mean
downplaying or ignoring conscious struggle and opposition by working-class and
social movements?
We will let our contributors grapple with this open-ended question in their
own ways, but we would like to briefly affirm, or re-affirm, three points. First, the
binary deep/surface (essence/appearance in an older terminology) should not be
conflated with being/consciousness (objective/subjective). Both lived reality and the
conscious apprehension of that reality have "deep" and "surface" aspects. Seeking
undergirding principles is not a matter of leaving the sphere of human agency and
thought, and entering some material objectivity that exists elsewhere. Second, the
pair capitalist/worker should be distinguished from objective/subjective. Structure
and consciousness are both important, on both sides of the class divide. Finally,
study of each pole of these related pairs — deep/surface, objective/subjective,
oppressor/oppressed — enriches our grasp of the other pole. Learning about the
"really existing" social landscape, as a reality independent of perceptions, enhances
the possibility of building effective opposition, objective and subjective, by
illuminating paths that can really work. There is — or should be — no conflict
between the scientific and the emancipatory moments of the Marxist project.
Capitalism's objectivity contains within it the material base for struggle and
consciousness. Its objectivity is also concrete, historical, and evolving — which
brings us back to our overall project. We invite readers to contribute their attempts
to further deepen our understanding of these underlying structures with the intent,
as Marx inspired us, to change them.
Renate Bridenthal, Guest Editor
David Laibman, Editor
c/o Science & Society
John Jay College, Rm 4331
445 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019
rbriden1@juno.com
dlaibman@jjay.cuny.edu
