Re: [A-List] Michael Hudson: Super imperialism

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

James writes:

Michael's additional paragraphs seem to be making the point of the mutual
interdependence of state and economy, but does he think talk of "the
simultaneously cooperative and competitive relationship of Washington and
Wall Street" poses a problem for Marxism?

------

I don't think so, because the state itself is a product of the
contradictions of capitalism, having to legislate between competing capitals
whilst ensuring the maintenance of a capitalist hegemonic order over the
working class (to use the basic Marxist class demarcation). It gets more
complicated when, as many began to during the 1970s, you incorporate new
classes or social strata, usually filed under "petty bourgeoisie". My main
influence here is Nicos Poulantzas's "Classes in Contemporary Capitalism",
published in English in 1975, so probably a little out of date but
nevertheless exemplary in approach (imho).

With respect to Wall Street, right now we are seeing in graphic terms the
simultaneously competitive/cooperative relationship between Wall St and
Washington, as the former tries to atone for the drastic loss of legitimacy
and credibility resulting from the excesses of the 1990s, where investors
were evidently ripped off in a gigantic, systemic scam. The capitalists need
their legitimation and that of the system as a whole restored in order to
function as capitalists, hence the general, sudden acceptance of the "need"
for regulation, a sharp about-turn following the triumph of Phil Gramm et al
in their repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as late as 1999, for example. Of
course Sarbanes-Oxley went too far for some, but such was the damage done to
the credibility of the system as a whole that, in the competition between
state and capital, the state had the upper hand simply because capital had
so disgraced itself. But in "having the upper hand" that meant that the
state's efforts to legislate for capital, in keeping with its dual role as a
facilitator and legitimator of accumulation, prevailed over the strong
desire of capital for unfettered accumulation. It does not mean that the
state was, in the fashion of Weberian-style theorists of civil society,
acting as a neutral or even anti-capitalist arbiter of the law. The state
was saving the system, not junking it.

This accords with my general view of state-capital relations, that usually
the state's interventions are the result of failed strategies on the part of
capital. Hudson argues implicitly and explicitly (with respect to theories
of imperialism) that the US state operates with a far greater degree of
autonomy than I would have considered likely prior to reading his book.
Which is to say that I may yet be convinced by the argument of the book and
the resultant discussion here on the list, but for now I remain more
convinced about the state's ultimately subordinate role to the prerogatives
of capital. Fusing the two, as Hudson does, as part of a theory of a "new
kind of state capitalism/imperialism" is unsatisfactory because it elevates
the state to a status typical of the mistaken (in my view) classical liberal
dichotomy of state versus capital/civil society, a view peddled over the
years by the likes of Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Friedrich von
Hayek and more recently the legion of advisers/apologists for the looting
and destruction that has accompanied the demise of the Soviet bloc. There
you get the deeply ironic spectacle of Vaclav Havel doing all that he can to
dismantle state power only to replace a local monolith with a much greater,
global one, via his enthusiastic integration of the Czech Republic into all
the anti-Warsaw Pact institutions that are now part of the architecture of
the "Super Imperialism" that Hudson exposes in his book. And while Hudson is
himself correct to point out the overweening nature of US state power, I
would argue that this power is itself *ultimately* subservient to the
dictates of US capital, which relies on that power to achieve those ends
otherwise unachievable (e.g. Haim Saban's efforts to break into the German
television market with the help of the US State Dept). I have been careful
to qualify this view by agreeing that states do possess a degree of
autonomy -- but this is subject to ever changing constraints which reassert
themselves, sometimes violently, when, to use another old metaphor, the
superstructure becomes too disconnected from the base. Hudson, on the other
hand, appears to share with the classical liberal alarmists the view that it
is the state, ultimately, which is the enemy of liberty, and that, together
with capital, we ought to unite against it. Throughout my reading of this
book so far I've thought over and over just how much in common the book's
arguments have with the sort of position represented here by Anne W.,
because it is the state that has been elevated to the status of chief bogey,
rather than the system itself that Marxists believe is responsible
ultimately for the state's purpose and function.

Michael Keaney