Jonathan Nitzan on "Against The Grain"

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here are some exchanges with Jonathan Nitzan on LBO-Talk

Charles


[lbo-talk] New Imperialism or New Capitalism?
Jonathan Nitzan
------------

I would like to clarify a few points regarding my KPFA interview, as
well as our recent manuscripts "New Imperialism or New Capitalism?" and
"Dominant Capital and the New Wars".

http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/archive/00000124/
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/archive/00000001/
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/archive/00000125/

These works are not meant to be "provocative" or "contrarian." The key
issue is not "prediction" or "conspiracy theory". We do not seek to
accumulate intellectual capital, nor do we wish to undermine the feeble
unity that exists among radical thinkers and activists.

Our purpose is constructive. Very much in the spirit of Marx, we seek to
create a new dialectical understanding of capitalism. And a new way
indeed seems necessary.

The US invasion of Afghanistan/Iraq exposed a deep fracture in Marxism,
a fracture between a theory enumerated in invisible (and in our view
impossible) units of "abstract labor" and an observable reality of
pecuniary accumulation. Over the past several years, Marxists have
produced ample analysis of the "new imperialism", all solidly cemented
in Marxist jargon. But with the fracture unresolved, jargon has become a
fetter. The sad fact is that none of this analysis has been able to show
how, starting from value, the new global bellicosity fits into the
financial reality of accumulation (of course, unless you are willing to
take the author's word for it).

More than a decade ago, Paul Sweezy, one of the more innovative Marxists
of the twentieth century, had this to say about this fracture:

"Why did Monopoly Capital fail to anticipate the changes in the
structure and functioning of the system that have taken place in the
last twenty-five years? Basically, I think the answer is that its
conceptualization of the capital accumulation process is one-sided and
incomplete. In the established tradition of both mainstream and Marxian
economics, we treated capital accumulation as being essentially a matter
of adding to the stock of existing capital goods. But in reality this is
only one aspect of the process. Accumulation is also a matter of adding
to the stock of financial assets. The two aspects are of course
interrelated, but the nature of this interrelation is problematic to say
the least. The traditional way of handling the problem has been in
effect to assume it away: for example, buying stocks and bonds (two of
the simpler forms of financial assets) is assumed to be merely an
indirect way of buying real capital goods. This is hardly ever true, and
it can be totally misleading. This is not the place to try to point the
way to a more satisfactory conceptualization of the capital accumulation
process. It is at best an extremely complicated and difficult problem,
and I am frank to say that I have no clues to its solution. But I can
say with some confidence that achieving a better understanding of the
monopoly capitalist society of today will be possible only on the basis
of a more adequate theory of capital accumulation, with special emphasis
on the interaction of its real and financial aspects, than we now
possess" (Paul M. Sweezy, 1991, "Monopoly Capital After Twenty-Five
Years", Monthly Review, Vol. 43, No. 7).

Sweezy identified the problem, but only partly. In our opinion, the
issue is not to understand the INTERACTION between the "real" and the
"financial," but to RETHINK these very concepts. That is what we
attempted to do.

<>It may be more exciting to criticize the "imperialists" and their
ideologues, but that critique will not lead very far unless we are also
willing to criticize ourselves.

Jonathan

*******


How does such a reversal of Marx's concepts enhance the projects for
overthrowing capitalism ?

Charles


Good question.

I don't know whether understanding capital enhances or undermines the
"overthrowing" of capitalism. I do know, though, that capitalism is the
system of capital. So it seems to me that in order to answer your
question we would first need to understand what capital is. That, in any
event, was the task to which Marx devoted his entire life.
Unfortunately, his value theory of accumulation turned out to be
logically problematic and empirically impossible. We can stick to his
logic, but then what exactly are we "overthrowing"?

Jonathan

 -clip-

...what exactly are we "overthrowing"?

Jonathan

^^^^^
Either the new imperialism or the new capitalism , maybe ?

Charles

*******

What about the fact that in Vol. II of _Capital_, Marx characterizes
capitalist accumulation as accumulation of money,i.e. finances, not capital
-  M-C-M', not C-M-C' ?  Not ownership of variable and constant capital in
the form of control of material activity in the form of labor power
expressed or means of production, but of filthy lucre ?


CB


Sure, Marx saw capital accumulation as a transformation from money to
commodities to more money. But the underlying unit in which this
transformation was measured  was abstract labor, a unit that no one has
ever seen and that is logically impossible. Although Marx understood the
process of financial capitalization better than most, he also believed
that, in the final analysis, this process oscillated around the path
charted by the the production of surplus value. This is where we get the
notion that finance can get "delinked" from production -- but then how
can you get delinked from a quantum you do not and cannot know?


Jonathan

******


Jonathan Nitzan:

I'll try to clarify.

To exploit somebody is to take from him/her something that is "theirs." I
believe -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that Marx took from Locke the
notion of ownership by virtue of creativity. The worker creates the product,
which in turn makes the product "belong" to him/her. Now, in a commodity
producing society the capitalist takes from the worker part of what the
worker produces. For this reason, Marx says that the worker is being
exploited.

-clip-




Perhaps you could take a look at the thread just woven on this list. The
thread's name went "plagerism watch /LTOV/LTOP/Missing Marx". One side
argues strongly that Marx's was a contradiction of Locke's theory. :>).

Charles

^^^^^^