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The Political Economy of Declining Capitalism by Hillel Ticktin

The Political Economy of Declining Capitalism by Hillel Ticktin

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Published by hemx
Part 1: The Transitional Epoch, Finance Capital and Britain.

Part 2: Towards a Theory of Finance Capital.

Capitalism must proceed through a process of formation, maturity and decline and Britain is leading that decline. Finance capital is a declining and parasitic form of capital.
Part 1: The Transitional Epoch, Finance Capital and Britain.

Part 2: Towards a Theory of Finance Capital.


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Published by: hemx on May 08, 2011
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The Political Economy of Declining CapitalismBy Hillel Ticktin
The purpose of this article is to place the decline of capitalism in Britain within a generaltheoretical framework. Its essential argument is that all capitalism must proceed through a processof formation, maturity and decline, and that Britain is effectively leading that decline.Britain is not to be understood as that unfortunate country which is now having to cope for thefirst time without an empire, as so many people see it, rather it is to be understood as a countrywhich evolved a particular form of the class relationship with consequent specific forms of accumulation, which are now of a declining nature. Resurrection or a return to its mature form, is just as impossible as it is for the human corpse. The declining form of capital is finance capital.The corresponding form of labour which is also specific, though only in the generalized nature of that form, has been the degree of collective control over the labour process. This in turn has led toa particular politics: that of a non-political Labour Party, with non-political unions.This article will discuss finance capital in the context both of a declining capitalism and of acapitalism in transition. First we discuss the former concept and thereafter the latter, and fromthere we proceed to a discussion of finance capital itself. The discussion on the national andglobal views of political economy is still alive; there are those who still insist that the laws of 
world capitalism are the only proper subject of political economy, and for that reason it becomesnecessary to introduce the discussion with an examination of what a Marxist political economyshould really be. This naturally leads into a discussion of the interaction of the above conceptsand the reasons for the absence of an adequate Marxism.
Political economy has received a series of definitions from various Marxists depending on their school of thought, always remaining at the level of definition. Thus to "lay bare the laws of motion of modern society" may have been clear enough to Marx and his friends but it is not asclear to modern political economists
What is a law? If we use
The New Left Review
as a guide toMarxist thought then it would appear as if the concept of law has been abandoned
But even for those who continue to use the term, muddle is the commonest result. The most usualunderstanding of law is the non-marxist one of a constant ('regularity or pattern of events)
Thisclassical empiricist conception would make a nonsense of "laws of motion". Simply to describe a pattern of efficient causes cannot give the reason or driving force behind the motion; it can onlydescribe a sequence of events in which there is no necessity. This is the current conception of the political economy of development or the sociology of change, but it is not Marxist politicaleconomy. What is required to describe the necessary cause and development of that motion. Whyis the reserve army of labour necessary for capitalism, for instance? Why does it necessarily tendto grow? What consequences follow if it does not grow or is indeed greatly diminished? Thesource of this motion (to unemployment) must be found in the contradictions of capitalist society,which give rise to the general law of capital accumulation.Since the source of the movement lies in contradiction, and the unfolding of that contradictionconstitutes the content of that law, we have some understanding of law. We may say that a lawdescribes the unfolding of the contradiction or the unfolding of the process of interpenetration of the polar opposites of that contradiction. It is thus the task of political economy to discuss anddescribe this process both in its particularity and in general. In other words, the particular categories of concrete and abstract labour, must find specific mediations (as temporary solutions)unless the system is to proceed to its supersession, which it has not, of course, done. Sincecapitalism has not succumbed to its contradictions it becomes the particular task of modern political economy to describe the full evolution of these laws in all their concrete richness.The category of motion is also unclear to many people. To some it would seem that motionsimply means onwards and upwards. Thus there are many in Italy and some in Britain who seethe present as nothing but a yet more mature and developed capitalism. This has led Panzieri
, for example, to speak of planning as the highest form of capitalism, and indeed it has led the state-capitalist school to deduce all laws from a necessary global state-capitalism. Yet it was none other than a certain Karl Marx who quoted with approval the view that: "There are special laws whichgovern the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement"
Unfortunately, the same Karl Marx could not have expected that many of his modern followerswould have succumbed to these self-same laws of decay and produce theories without concretefactual analysis or genuine thought. The laws of a mature capitalism are the laws of the systemitself, but there are special laws applying to its decay or decline as well to its process of transition.It must follow that it becomes particularly important to distinguish between mature capitalismand its forms of decay, as well as forms of transition of "the invading socialist society" to use the phrase of Engels. These three different forms of motion require concrete analysis both in time and place.
It follows that only concrete analysis will yield the particular contradictions and so the particular forms existing at any one time or place. Disentangling these particular forms of the present becomes particularly complex precisely because one is dealing with three different sets of forms,or laws. This complexity, due to the fact that laws are contradicting one another, (contradictionscontradicting one another), is characteristic of any mode of production in the process of declineand supersession. It is this that enables one to speak of there being a higher level of contradictionin the present than in the mature phase of capitalism.A clear distinction has to be drawn between this form of complexity and the empiricist form,where reality is reduced to an accidental plurality of causes, none of which plays a driving role.Such empiricist complexity renders the history or sociology inexplicable. Marxist complexity isquite different. Ultimately, all the forms and laws can be traced back to the process of overcoming the capital-labour contradiction, and in a sense they are necessary consequences of the law of value, since decline and supersession must follow maturity. In any period of transitionthere has to be both the old and new orders and hence not just the contradiction within the oldform of extraction of the surplus product but also between the old form and the new form, whichin turn has its contradictions. However, it is particularly complex under conditions where bothcapitalism and socialism can only really exist as world orders. Thus socialism cannot come intoexistence,
as opposed to surrogate forms, usually monstrous forms, until (capitalismhas effectively been defeated on a world scale. As a result, all sorts of combinations of the oldorder and limited forms of its negation must first exist before the new order can in fact be born.Capitalism contains and employs its own negations such as the welfare state and nationalisationsso that it appeared to flourish for a time. But, the necessary contradictions showed themselves andthe new policy of monetarism has attempted a rollback.Just as Marx adduced a law of early capitalism: the more developed merchant capital the lessdeveloped is capitalism; so we may state that the further developed is the process of thesocialisation of labour the more limited is the operation of the law of value. The problem is thatsince each system can only exist as a total system any partial form tends to negate both itself andthe other form. Under feudalism the bourgeoisie could come into being like a chrysalis in the oldorder, but even the partial forms of nationalisation, control over the work-process, right to work etc., tend to reduce the efficiency of capitalism without bringing into being socialism. It is this peculiarity of the transitional epoch that makes it so opaque, permitting the bourgeoisie to turn themasses against both nationalisation and the concept of socialism by pointing to their obviousfailure in the social democracies and under Stalinism.Since the processes are necessarily uneven in time and space many different combinations cancome into existence and each one has to be analysed concretely in order to produce anytheoretical analysis. The short cut of deductive reasoning from an assumed posture has producedmuch rubbish, which has given Marxism a bad name
The reasons for this decadent Marxismhave much to do with the isolation of the writers and their groups in an environment of almosttotal intellectual decadence. It is most unfortunate that so many Marxists have succumbed. Thatthe USSR and its external supporters should write apologetics is to be expected, but that thosecritical of Stalinism should have degenerated in the same way, though nowhere to the samedegree, is testimony to both the complexity of the task and the harshness of the atmosphere for the genuine Marxist.

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