M. Parelman wrote:
>The forces tending to increase competition in the United States were
>deregulation, as Jim mentioned, and the pressure from imports. The
>forces
>tending to diminish competition were intellectual property, mergers, and
>possibly government contracting. In fact, as Jim seemed to suggest -- if
>he didn't, he should have -- the pressures from deregulation and imports
>have encouraged more mergers and acquisitions. Anthony specifically
>pointed to this dialectical relationship.
I think that one should understand the capitalist economy as a whole. Too
much emphasis on competition or monopoly detracts attention from the fact
that capitalism is a regime of special priviliges to begin with.
Broadly defined, capitalism is a modern form of theft and acquisition by
illegitimate means. It does not so much matter if there are so many or few
capitalists on the market in so far as capitalists are in control of
economic activity and subordinate labor to their own class interests.
What we are dealing here is not capitalism in the abstract where monopoly
capitalism should be seen as a 'derivative form' of free market, but
_historical capitalisms_, as Immanuel Wallerstein has put it, the concrete
historical manifestations of a particular form of capitalist activity.
>From what I see among the participants of the discussion is that some
people want to see competitive markets, some emphasize increasing
centralization of economic power in the form of monopolies, oligarchic
interests and mergers. There is a misleading tendecy to see capitalism
represented by "single" (or more) capitalists. This way of seeing
capitalism is methodologically individualistic. Period. While the question
that market is competitive or monopolistic can be emprically proven by
looking at the forces tending to decrease or increase competition ( let's
say evolution of autombile industry from 1950 to 1970s or any other
specific industry), one should not focus on attiributing hyper pluralism
to capitalist class interests (Nike, Klein, etc..) ("capitalism as
the total sum of particular interests" rhetoric). If capitalism were that
competitive, capitalist class would never form a ruling class as a
hegemonic block (economically, politically, culturally speaking). It would
be exteremely fragmented and diversified. Eventhough in the overall
distribution of surplus value among capitalists specific fractions of
capital may develop, when it comes to protect their own interests,
capitalists enter into alliences and press their particular strategic
demands as a CLASS. To support this abstractly, In Volume 2 of Capital,
Marx talks about the functional differentiation of capital into
productive/industrial capital and two other forms of capital belonging to
the circulation process; money capital and commodity capital. This
distinction gives us a clue about how fractions of social capital are
formed in relation to differing interests between various categories of
capitalists: bank, commercial and industrial. However Marx later develops
a concept of "fictitious" capital to show that the distinction between
commercial and industrial capital transcends as a "total social capital"
under the overall conditions of economic activity: "money capital is not
represented by single capitalists, by the owner of this or that particle
of capital present in the market but it appears as concentrated, organized
mass, which, entirely, unlike real produciton, is subject to the control
of bankers representing social capital". Capitalist interest articulation,
in this respect, is formed by a dialectical process of class integration
in the political economy as part of the overall economic apparatus.
In his excellent book and phd thesis, _The Making of an Atlantic Ruling
class_ Kees van de Pijl describes the formation of a capitalist
class hegemony and bourgeois integration in the North Atlantic era from
the vantage point of Marxist international political economy. He does so
in such a way to pay atttention to international dynamics and social
forces within the world capitalist system operative during the periods of
Woodrow Wilson's launch for offensive cosmopolitanism in 1917, Marshall
Plan of offsetting communism in the 50s and the world economic crisis of
1974-75. Van der Pijl does not exclusively focus on the question of
whether US economy is competitive or monopolistic. One can not talk about
the US economy as if one is talking about the Norwegian or Turkish
economy, taking the nation-state as the unit of analysis, which is what I
got from the participants of the recent discussion on pen-l. The crucial
aspect of Pijl's argument is that he discusses the US economy in relation
to its role in promoting imperialism, anti-communism and
hegemonic globalization. By taking the "world system" as a unit of
analysis and combining Marxian political economy with Gramscian political
insights, Pijl shows how the state monopoly and internationalist
fractions within the bourgeoisie "are directly associated with the prime
moving forces in the international reproduction of capital" He then
continues " eventually a synthetic concept, CORPORATE LIBERALISM, would
cyystallize in the United States in the context of American control of the
Atlantic circuit of money capital and the generalization of Fordism as a
productivist class comprimise. This corporate liberal synthesis between
internationalism, a flexible format of labor relations, and state
intervention was eventually extrapolated to WEstern Europe where it served
as the vantage point from which sucessive concepts of Atlantic unity were
developed, and to which the entire Atlantic ruling class would in due
course adhere" (p. 10, Verso).
The bottom line is this: Participants of the discussion should relate
their assesments about the US economy (whether competitive or
monopolistic?) to imperialism and international political eocnomic
dynamics.
Mine Doyran SUNY/Albany
