Transcript Capitalism - DCU Moodle 2011

Capitalism,
(Neo)Colonialism and
(New) Imperialism &
Globalisation.
Democracy, Culture & Communication(CM515)
A Timescale for CM515
Premodern
Classical era
Feudalism- ‘tributary mode’
Colonialism
Modern (modernisation, modernity)
Capitalism
Imperialism- ‘New Imperialism’
Industrialism
The Enlightement/Project (science, reason, progress)
Postmodern
Information/Knowledge Society
One Question (leading to others……….)
How does Capitalism, (Neo)Colonialism and (New) Imperialism
& Globalisation impact on democracy…………………………….
debates and issues.
Economics/Political Economy
‘Oikonomikos’, the title of Xenophon’s text, gives us the origin
of both ‘economist’ and ‘economics’.
Written in c.370 BC.
‘Oikos’ means household > estate.
So we get Estate Manager or Estate Management.
The term ‘political economy’, which was used from the 1700s,
highlights the relationship between economics and politics.
e.g. taxes.
Economics and socio-cutural power are intimately connected
and are directly relevant to the way democracy is excercised.
Economic Systems
For Karl Marx the main economic systems were slavery,
feudalism, socialism, capitalism, communism …
Marx’s ‘modes of production’ > ‘modes of communication’
Production organised, property ownership, wealth distribution.
W.W. Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth: A NonCommunist Manifesto include:
1.Traditional Societies;
2. Preconditions to Take-off;
3.Take-off,
4. Drive to Maturity,
5. Age of High Mass Consumption (see Ch 2 online)
Capitalism
Opinions divided- evades definition- not always called
‘capitalism’ (Enterprise System, Free Market, Market System)
sometimes to conceal its exploitative aspect/history.
So lets talk about capitalisms – with key common features
Casino, competitive, consumer, corporate, crony, disaster,
financial, Fordist, global, industrial, laissez-faire late, merchant,
monopoly national, neo-liberal, new, Post-Fordist, techno,
Property, market and pursuit of profits remain central
Cycles (boom and bust)- is this a cyclical or structural crisis.
Current features: dominant, global, casualisation, de-skilling,
de or re-regulation etc.
Adam Smith (1723-90)
Focused on the factors which led
to increased wealth. For him
capitalism a natural progression of
‘truck, barter and exchange’.
Rejected the Merchantilist notion that economic prosperity
was based on hoarding gold.
For Smith political economy “proposes to enrich both the
people and the sovereign”.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations (1789) established Smith as the father of modern
economics. Borrowed from other economic analysts.
Smith’s writings coincided with the English Industrial
Revolution (late 18th and early 19th centuries).
Favoured the development of manufacturing industry,
thus questioning the dominance of the agrarian economy.
Smith believed that the economic system was harmonious
and essentially self- regulating.
It therefore required minimal state interference. For Smith
freedom from state regulation was the essential ingredient of
an efficient economy.
Advocated ‘free trade’ or 'laissez-faire'.
Smith accepted that aspects of individualism ran contrary to
the spirit of Christian Paternalist Ethic (CPE).
With the development of capitalism individualism and egoism
were accepted and state interference critiqued, leading to a
new ideology- namely:
Classic Liberalism
Celebrated self-interest, ambition and the ‘free market’.
The Adam Smith Institute (online) maintains his general
perspective today.
Contemporary Critiques of Capitalism
Battle of Seattle- 1999
Ellen Meiksins Woods questions the naturalisation of
capitalism and rejects the idea of it simply been a culmination
of earlier developments. Not to know its origins limits hopes
for a post-capitalism. But wasn’t socialism tried and failed?
“Capitalism is a system in which goods and services, down to
the most basic of necessities of life, are produced for
profitable exchange, where even human labour-power is a
commodity for sale in the market. This is true not only of
workers, who must sell their labour-power for a wage, but
also of capitalists, who depend on the market to buy their
inputs, including labour-power, and to sell their output for
profit” Ellen Meiksins Woods(2002:2).
Karl Marx (1818-83)
Land [property]
Labour (power)
Capital
Believed that the process of production (exchange and
consumption) occurred within various modes of production.
Different modes of production (slavery et al) have different
instruments/forces of production and relations of production.
Together the forces and relations of production formed the
basis/foundation of society. This Marxist metaphor is
sometimes referred to as the ‘Base/Superstructure’ model.
In "Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy"(January 1859) Karl Marx wrote that the:
"The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once
reached, became the guiding principle of my studies, can be
summarised as follows.
In the social production of their existence, men enter into
definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their
will, namely, relations of production corresponding to a
determinate stage of development of their material forces of
production.
The totality of these relations of production constitutes the
economic structure of society, the real foundation on which
there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which
there correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
The mode of production of material life conditions the social,
political and intellectual life-process in general.
It is not the consciousness of men that determine their being,
but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their
consciousness.
At certain stage of their development, the material productive
forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of
production or - what is merely a legal expression for the same
thing- with the property relations within the framework of which
they have hitherto operated.
From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetter. At that point an era of social
revolution begins.
With the change in the economic foundation the whole
immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly
transformed.
In considering such transformations it is always necessary to
distinguish between the material transformation of the
economic conditions of production, which can be determined
with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
religious, artistic or philosophic, in short, ideological forms in
which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out".
The Marxist concept of 'totality' includes all the processes
within a Mode of Production.
Listen to the Communist Manifesto (1848) online
Taking commodities as another of his starting points Marx
distinguished between:
Use-value and Exchange value.
Also introduced the concept of ‘fetishisation of commodities’.
The concept of commodification has remained significant.
Labour or ‘labour power’ crucial to the Marxist analysis.
Frederick Engels examined labour in human evolution.
A key human characteristic and not the ‘propensity to truck,
barter and exchange’ (Smith)
The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1876)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm
According to Marx’s theory of labour, ‘labour power’ is also a
commodity which the worker sells for a salary/wage.
But in the relations between capital and labour a percentage of
the worker’s labour power remains unpaid- which is the source
of profit and the basis of worker’s exploitation.
See Moodle for extract on ‘labour theory of value’.
“Capital is not a thing, but a definite social relation. Things, means of
production and all other kinds of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie
in themselves are not capital. Only a definite social system makes these
things into means of exploitation, converts them into carriers of that social
relation which we call capital” Marx
Capital (First English Edition- 1887) - not ‘Capitalism’.
The study of capital remains the key question vis a vis the
cyclical/structural crisis of contemporary capitalism.
Marx rejected the view that capitalism arose from ‘primitive
accumulation’ and according to Ellen Woods(2002) saw its
origins in the “transformation of property relationships that
generates capitalist ‘laws of motion’: the imperatives of
competition and profit-maximisation, a compulsion to reinvest
surpluses, and a dynamic and relentless need to improve
labour-productivity and develop the forces of production”.
In the English countryside “landlords increasingly derived
rents from the commercial profits of capitalist tenants,
while many small producers were dispossessed and
became wage labourers”.
See Ellen Woods on Ireland and the development of
capitalism (The Origins of Capitalism).
(Neo)Colonialism
For Albert Memmi (Tunisia) a dialectical relationship existed
between coloniser and colonised.
(The Coloniser and Colonised)
For Franz Fanon (Algeria [ex.Martinique]) colonialisation left
a deep imprint on both coloniser and colonised, which must
be erased in a struggle for national liberation.
(The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks)
For Ngugi Wa Thiong (Kenya) its about moving the centre
from the “West to the multiplicity of spheres in all the cultures
in the world” and away from the elites. Univeralism.
(Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms,
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African
Literature).
How many cultural works of African, Asian, Latin American
artists, film makers, photographers, writers, do I know?
Aime Cesaire(Martinique),
Pablo Neruda (Chile),
Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine).
Ernesto Cardenal (former Nicaraguan Minister of Culture)
stated that the democratisation of culture in Nicaragua was
part of the "national struggle for liberation" and
inseparable from economic development and that: "culture
within any given society depends on the capacity the
members of that society have to develop their potential. If
the members of a society are not given this opportunity,
then there can be no democratization of culture. There can
be no culture, nor democracy".
Anti-colonial nationalism as mobilising ideology.
Race and tribe can supercede the nation-state as a weak
national middle class lead and assume leadership acting as an
intermediate, while the national bourgeoise is happy to become
the ‘business agent’ of the western bourgeoisie.
“The colonised man [sic] who writes for his people ought to
use the past with the intention of opening the future, as an
invitation to action and a basis of hope” (Fanon, 1971:187)
Hybridisation
Colonisation > Postcolonialism
Diaspora
Opposing nationalism, going beyond binary oppositions.
What was/is Imperialism ?
Imperialism (c.1870-1945 ->) is/was essentially a politicoeconomic phenomenon, intimately interwoven with cultural,
linguistic [English], military, racial, sexual, social etc. factors.
English economist J. A. Hobson imperialism meant ‘the export
of capital’. Imperialism, A Study (1902). Over accumulation.
Cecil Rhodes (1890s).
“We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw
materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour
that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies
[will] also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods
produced in our factories”.
Economic development -> ‘development of underdevelopment’.
Imperialism, differs from colonialism- i.e. the export of
commodities. Enormous ‘benefits’ of colonialism to Europe,
and the transition from feudalism to capitalism at the cusp of
1500. Shipments of precious metals, African slavery (labour)
and the establishment of plantations (sugar, tobacco etc.).
James M.Blaut (1993)
questioned the ‘European
miracle’ pointing to 1492the year Christopher
Columbus landed in the
Americas.
The
imperialist
‘Scramble
for Africa’:
Generalised view that imperialism is about
the domination of a country, narrower
understandings are advanced by Marxists.
For example:
Lenin’s 5 features of imperialism:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Concentration of production and capital -> monopolies.
Merging of bank and industrial capital -> finance capital.
Export of capital, rather than commodities.
International capitalist monopolies which share the world
among themselves.
5. Territorial division of the world among greatest capitalist
powers completed.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) see online
Max Weber (1864-1920)
In one of his major studies The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5),
identified a statistical correlation in
Germany between the success in capitalist
enterprises and Protestantism.
Distinguished between ‘adventurer’ and
‘bourgeois’ capitalism.
That the amassing of wealth not linked to pursuit of pleasure,
thus arguing that capitalism was underpinned by a religious
ethic which found its expression in asceticism/self denial.
The ‘spirit’ of capitalism embodied by devotion to amassing
wealth, commitment to work/self-denial and not using one’s
wealth for personal pleasure.
That John Calvin had shaped the capitalist spirit.
In predestination salvation was unknown - offset by hard work
bringing one closer to God, an acceptance rather than a
rejection of everyday life. One declared one’s faith in one’s
work.
The Protestant Ethic sets out to understand how a particular
type of religious ethic came to influence economic behavior,
thereby making it more technically-rational.
According to Weber the values of Puritanism/Protestant middle
class became the dominant economic values.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) :
In the face of economic crisis’ during the 1930s Keynes
(British Treasury) proposed increased state spending to offset
economic crisis following the Wall Street crash of 1929.
Keynesianism based on the theory
that consumption would rise with
investment. Applied in Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s New Deal and the
British ‘welfare state’.
Supported by social democratic
parties in the face of fascism.
John Maynard Keynes
Keynes policies seemed to work as
inflation and unemployment
generally remained in single figures
during the 1950s and 60s.
Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the ‘depression’ and
the de-stabilisation following WW2, representatives of 45
countries came together at Bretton Woods in 1944 to develop
a framework for re-construction and the world economy.
Established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank in 1945. (See website)
International trade rules agreed under the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 1947. (See website)
World Trade Organisation (WTO) succeeded GATT in 1995.
Formulates rules for trade between nation-states. (See website)
With the ‘oil crisis’ of 1973, Keynes model was rejected by many
economists in the face of ‘stagflation’.
And so entered the neo-liberal economists:
i.e. the monetarists and supply-siders.
Monetarists waged war on inflation (rather than unemployment)
and advocated cutting the money supply, favoured higher rates
of interest, a cut in government spending and a reduced
dependency on credit.
For Milton Friedman (a Chicago School Monetarist) political
economy is about what is, rather than what ought to be.
Judged on its ability to predict and non-advice to governments.
But Friedman was an adviser to the Chilean government
(Pinochet).
Neo-liberals associated with supply side economics argued
for a reduction of taxation on investments-> growth in
production and in turn a rise in consumption.
Thatcherism tapped into dissatisfaction with perceived
government intervention and inefficiency. Nationalised
industries services sold off and public services rolled back.
Confrontation with
the trade unions
e.g.
• Fleet Street Press
workers.
• Coal miners (1984).
The shift from Keynesian to neo-liberal theory parallels a
number of transformations:
• The transition from Fordism to post-Fordism;
• The rise of Information/knowledge based economy.
‘Information Society’.
• The ‘crisis of modernity’ or the emergence of the
postmodern discourse;
• The rise of the service industries against the decline of
industrial/ manufacturing industry inaugurating the
•‘post-industrial society’ (Daniel Bell);
Irish Political Economy- Irish Capitalism
The Programme for Economic Expansion (1958) as
envisioned by Kenneth Whitaker and acted upon by Sean
Lemass et al coincided with end of post-WW2 boom and
several catalysts of modernisation. The ‘industrialisation by
invitation’ economic strategy bore fruit in the 1958-73 period.
Internal and External Modernising Factors
• Ireland applied to join EEC in 1961, entered in 1973;
(CAP and Structural Funds)
• Second Vatican Council -1962-5;
• Opening of Radio Telifis Eireann in 1962;
• Investment in Education published in 1965
• Tail end of the post WW2 economic boom
Telesis Report (1982) and Culliton Report (1992).
The ‘Celtic Tiger’
The concept of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ started with a question in a
Morgan Stanley(MS) Euroletter (August 31 1994) asking
whether Ireland was a ‘Celtic Tiger’ due to its recent growth
rates, low inflation, growth in exports and firm exchange rates.
Chemical, computer and electrical engineering the key players.
Morgan Stanley’s analysis tallied with those of:
• Garret Fitzgerald’s (Irish Times Saturday column) and
• David Mc Williams (Irish economist and broadcaster).
Denis O’Hearn argues that
the central reason for the
Republic’s success was
that Ireland had become
one of the few international
locations for ‘agglomerated
foreign investment’.
This followed Intel’s two
stage move to Dublin (1991
& 1995). £70m of I£1billion
punt investment paid in
grants by the Irish state.
Each Intel job cost £75,000 against the average Industrial
Development Authority (IDA) figure of £12,000.
So ‘Tigerhood’ was bought and the other big names followed.
In the 1990s TNCs made up 45% of Irish economic growth.
While these figures highlight the continuing dependency of the
Irish economy, a parallel growth in software production has
occurred.
Between 1993-1995 exports in the sector rose by 60%, form
I£1.8b. to I£2.8b and jobs from 9,000 to 11,784.
400 indigenous companies.
A key contributory factor in the success story from the mid1990 was the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, a
partnership arrangement that has continued with the current
Sustaining Progress (2003-5) deal negotiated by the ‘social
partners’.
‘Social partnership’ dates from 1987.
Partnership reinforced by
government plans and
strategy documents as well
as the establishment of the
National Economic and
Social Forum in 1998
(www.nesf.ie).
Labour and the Irish Economy
James Plunkett (former trade union official and author of
Strumpet City) identified three stages in the development of
Irish trade unionism.
1. The stage associated with legal and
industrial recognition.
2. The stage in which the union/employer
relationship dominated.
3. The stage in which unions form an
‘economic trio’ with employers
organisations and government.
In 1996 ‘Social partnership’ was extended to include
community and voluntary organisations.
But according to Fitzgerald it
could “abruptly end”.
The Irish Times
Jan. 24 1998.
In 2001 900 jobs lost with
the closure of Gateway in
Clonsaugh Industrial Estate,
Coolock, Dublin.
Slow down rather than ‘end’.
Have the commentators
been proved wrong?
What is Globalisation?
Defined as “those processes, operating on a global scale,
which cut across national boundaries, integrating and
connecting communities and organisations in new space-time
combination, making the world in reality and in experience
more interconnected”
(Modernity and its Futures Edited S Hall et al. p.299 ).
Due to reduced cost of transport/communication ‘goods,
services, capital, knowledge’ and people move more freely.
Globalisation finds expression in the new communication
conglomerates (e.g. Rupert Murdock’s News Corporation)
whose limbs are the global (digitised) cable and satellite
networks. 24 hours global news coverage.
Railways ->satellites.
Images of Globalisation:
Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the
‘global village’.
NASA’s Earth Rise satellite image.
American Express’s ‘global reach’.
The increase in ‘world’ foods, fashions,
music, tourism etc. World Wide Web
‘Collapse’ of the Soviet Union ends
international polarisation between US
and USSR. End of (one) bi-polar world.
Berlin Wall,1989.
Background to Globalisation debate:
While globalisation’s genesis can be traced back to the growth
in international trade from the 16th century, its essence was
captured by Marx and Engels:
“The need of a constantly expanding market of its products
chases the bourgeoisie over the surface of the globe. It must
nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections
everywhere”
Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
Available as text and audio online
For Anthony Giddens (On the Edge, 2001) globalisation is:
• linked to the “world-wide communications revolution” from the
1960s;
• the arrival of the “weightless economy”;
• the fall of “Soviet communism”;
• changes in everyday life (women and men, family).
Globalisation represents a reworking of local/global relations
with a sense of centre and periphery transformed as borders
become more open and the once central role of the
nation-state is challenged.
Globalisation and Nation-States
Widely acknowledged that states played a very significant
role in the development of capitalism, but some believe that
that with globalisation states are less important.
Ellen Meikens Wood argues that the state remains essential
to the operation of global capitalism both as facilitator and a
regulator. Believes that the state is also a site of opposition to
global capital.
Globalisation/Imperialism & the Developing World
Between the 1940s and 1980s participants in UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation) rose from 40 to 160.
Non-Aligned Movement (N-AM) and UNESCO called for a
New International Economic Order (NIEO).
Approximately $180 billion transferred from ‘Third World’ to
commercial banks between 1984-1990.
Nike trainers cost $80 in the USA, while Indonesian factory
workers get 12 cents for the labour-power expended on one
pair.
Just under half the world’s
population live below $2 a
day. Inequality continues to
rise on a global level.
UN Department of Economic and
Social Affairs
Desi earns 83 pence for
each pair of boxer shorts
she makes during a 12
hour day in Jakarta. They
sell for £8 in England.
By the mid to late 1990s 500 multinational corporations
account for 80% of the world’s trade and 75% of investment.
63,000 multinational corporations exist.
$1.5 trillion traded on the world’s foreign exchange markets
every day.
World economy marked by a persistence of uneven
development and exchange (e.g.the predominance of the
dollar, the English language etc.)
United Nations- Millennium Goals
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
Giddens’s (Runaway World,1999) identifies radical and
sceptical perspectives on globalisation:
Radicals: those who promote the potential of globalisation (e.g.
the sharing of knowledge, campaigns around the environment,
international civil rights etc. Amnesty, Greenpeace etc.
Sceptics: see it as retrogressive- a new form of imperialism.
Project for a New American Century (see web) includes the
neo-conservatives Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage and Perle.
Where to after the Bush administration?
‘The US has a military presence in 140 countries’
(Woods,2003).
Approximately 1 million US troops have passed through
Shannon Airport.
David Harvey (The New Imperialism) starts
by examining the US relationship to oil and
then examines its socio-economic power.
Capitalist imperialism as ‘a diffuse politicaleconomic process in space and time in
which command over and use of capital
takes primacy’.
Primitive accumulation (Marx) to
‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey).
Interviews with David Harvey:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con0.html
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/lilley190606.html
http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/harvey.htm
What is Neo-Liberalism?
Neo-Liberalism: from the Classical Liberalism of Adam Smith,
first theorised by organisations such as the Adam Smith
Institute (England) and the Heritage Foundation (USA) et al.
Politically articulated during the 1980s. Reagan and Thatcher.
A reorganisation of capitalism.
Broadcasting and telecommunication deregulation represented
a move away from monopoly and state control towards a
combination of:
1. privatisation (of public sector communications industries)
2. deregulation (of private sector communications industry).
Neo-liberalism “a theory of
political economic practices
that proposes that human
well-being can best be
advanced by liberating
individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an
institutional framework
characterised by strong
property rights, free markets,
free trade. The role of the
state is to create and
preserve an institutional
framework appropriate to
such practices” p.2.
Neo-Liberalism
“Neo-Liberalism is in the first instance a theoy of political
economic practices that proposes that human well-being can
best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills with an institutional framework
characterised by strong private property rights, free markets,
and free trade. The role of the state is to create and
preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such
practices”
David Harvey A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (2005) p.2
A critique of neo-liberalism:
• The rule of the market and non-state intervention irrespective
of the social damage this may cause.
• Greater openness to international trade/ investment.
• Wage reduction by de-unionisation and the elimination of
workers' rights.
• The removal of price controls.
• Total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services;
• The cutting of public expenditure on social services;
• The reduction of government regulation that hinders profit
making;
• The sale of state-owned enterprises etc. to private investors;
• The elimination of the public good or notions of ‘community’.
Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia
(peace and justice activists)
Web address: http://www.doublestandards.org/martinez1.html
Cornel West (Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism-2004)
Problems plaguing American democracy (‘three dominating dogmas’):
• Free-market fundamentalism
• Aggressive militarism
• Escalating authoritarianism
‘The Deep Democratic Tradition in America’
• Historical: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman etc.
• Contemporary: Toni Morrison, voices from faith groups, Rap etc.
According to West, for Emerson the core of being a democrat was to think,
trust, rely for oneself and be “serene in one’s own skin- without being self
indulgent, narcissistic or self-pitying” (p.70)
“Democracy is not just a system of governance…but a cultural way of being”
(p.68)
“…the great dramatic battle of the twenty-first century is the dismantling of
empire and the deepening of democracy” (p.22)