robert brenner, property and progress
(58): nice definition of s-p relations: "relations among direct producers, relations among exploiters, and relations between exploiters and direct producers that, taken together, make possible/specify the regular access of individuals and families to the means of production and/or the social product"
(59): evolution of a society of a given type versus transition from a society of one type to another are qualitatively different phenomenon. this is the 'closed rules of reproduction' point.
(61): the key condition is that people be subject to the competitive constraint. this is only the case if people are dependent upon the market. being involved in the market is insufficient.
(62): pre-capitalist MoP as a 'single broad type' of social-property relations
(65): ruling classes needed to organize to extract surplus (organized force). this typically required endowing subordinates with politically constituted private property, or 'rights to an income' derived from peasant wealth
(67): Smith's fatal flaw is to fail to think about the potential 'losses' incurred by new participants on a market. he sees only gains.
(70): the key pt re: Lordly rules of reproduction is not that they don't have the incentive to increase their product, but that they don't have the capacity to innovate/specialize in pursuit of that goal (there's no workforce compelled to work for them, the costs of constructing one/supervising it are prohibitive) . they can pursue extensive growth.
(76): towns, for Brenner, weren't external to feudalism -- but politically constituted communities that also shielded producers from the market [this is the source of their political conservatism, in the revolutions. cue the revisionist challenge to the Marxist orthodoxy].
(85): re: the transition, Brenner's argument doesn't allow for the accretion of micro-level intiativies/action. Smith, he's saying, doesn't understand the constraints imposed by feudal s-p relations
(86): market can consolidate a feudal mode of production (as it did E. of the Elbe)
(92-93): absolutist State as a result of the seigneurial reveneue crisis of the late 1200s (in Fr. and W. Germany, at least), because lords were to weak to stand up to monarchs. absolutist State didn't mind free peasantry (sometimes), as long as it could guarantee centralized taxes [hmm]
(96-98): in aftermath of Black Death in England English lords didn't construct a tax office State, in response, but to use their political organization (and the monarchical State) to seize ownership [here the story could be clearer; in particular the contrast with France and W. Germany]
Showing posts with label feudalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feudalism. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Thursday, July 15, 2010
alex calinicos, the modern state (1987)
15th to 18th C – centralized and bureaucratic states emerge in the form of Absolutism
prior two this, there are two main forms
(1) World Empires—monarchies that rule through military power, and have little or no relation to States of a comparable level of advancement (this is very different from the modern state, which is part of a state-system, the members of which are at a more-or-less shared level of development)
(2) City-States—a number of States co-existing, but small in size. Rely often on popular armies, and can develop 'democratic' political forms (the modern state, though, rules a much larger territory—reflecting development of political forces—rules that territory through a bureaucratic apparatus, and a standing army)
so the modern state is distinctive.
modern states form a system—they co-exist with each other, and they interact with each other.
these interactions take various forms.
one such form is trade. rise of the modern state is coincidental with the formation of the world market [hobson/blaut would have their grievances with this]
the most important form of their interaction as States, of course, is war/military competition. the European state-system was characterized by the most ruthless military competition. what this leads to is a kind of Darwinian process of natural selection—in 1500, there were 500; in 1900, there were 25.
the emergence and development of this system is often seen—especially by bourgeois sociologists—as a refutation of Marxism. why? because it emerged in a context that wasn't capitalist—in a context where the prevailing form of exploitation was feudal ('analytically autonomous' from world capitalism). the notion is that the competitive interaction of nation-states represents a logic of military competition that is autonomous from capitalist social relations—both historically and in the present (Skocpol, Mann)
the point of disagreement with this position is not over the emergence of absolutism prior to the emergence of the bourgeoisie. Marx was well aware that many of the institutions of the modern state precede the 'bourgeois revolutions.'
the argument is not an argument over the facts. it's over the explanation.
can the emergence of the modern state be explained in terms of historical materialism? the answer is yes (Brenner)
the two key elements to Brenner's argument
(1) the crisis of the late-middle ages—the 14th and 15th centuries (plagues, famines that hid Europe in the middle of the 1300s, and then in the early of the 1400s). symptoms of a deep-seated economic crisis. you have another crisis in the 1600s—the whole of Europe is swept by wars (Thirty Years' War) and famine, which climaxes in the English Revolution in the late 1600s.
this arises in the context of the feudal mode of production.
characteristic form of exploitation is lord over peasant—extraction of surplus labor on the basis of legal rights over the peasant, reinforced by his political power. unlike in capitalism, both lord and peasant have direct access to their means of subsistence—none of this is mediated by the market. the peasants have direct access to their means of subsistence, they typically have their own plots. the Lord uses his military powers, his armed retainers to get resources from the direct producers.
in this situation, in which both exploiters and exploited have direct access, neither have incentive to increase the productive forces. no one has an incentive to develop the level of the productive forces. the main developments in the level of productive forces that do occur, under feudalism, occur in the early middle ages, when feudalism first appears. after that, the main form of growth is extensive (not intensive), and runs into limits by the 1300s.
(2) the crucial point—the second aspect—is that these dynamics give rise to 'political accumulation'. the lord, to maintain and increase his consumption, must (a) squeeze his peasants harder; (b) pinch other lord's peasants. what that means is that a fierce competitive dynamic is unleashed (e.g., the Hundred Years' War). this process of military competition then gives rise to State-building. more pressure to build up professional armies, etc.
this, the argument is, will culminate in the absolutist state (Perry Anderson—the only way feudalism could persist, in the face of its economic stagnation)
far from it being the case, then, that you don't need Marxism—Marxism is central.
and the one major exception to the 'absolutist' trend, England, demonstrates the superiority of the Marxist method.
out of the crisis of feudalism, the feudal lords were able--'unintended consequences' of the class struggle in the later middle ages—to separate peasants from the land, and to transform them into wage-laborers. in the 1400-1700s, these new wage laborers didn't go to work in industry (the industrial revolution takes place in the late 1700s); rather, they become involved in capitalist agriculture. you see the emergence of the capitalist 'trinity'--the landowner, the capitalist (who rents the land), and the worker. this permits a dynamic development of the productive forces—there is a sharp increase in agricultural productivity, which in turn enables the development of industrial capitalism (without it, of course, you couldn't support an industrial workforce).
also, you have 1640-1660 and 1688-1689—the English revolution—the outcome of that process was to establish as politically dominant a capitalist landed class. in the 18th century, the dominant class were capitalist landowners. the State that they create is an odd one—the bulk of political control is still in the hand of local landowners (in the nobility and landowners—no centralized standing army or bureaucracy). the country is run through a parliament of landowners. BUT, externally, a strong state—based, above all, on the Royal Navy, created with the support of the land-owning parliament as a means of expanding Britain's influence in the world.
and so we see a period—during the 18th century—which is sometimes described as the First World War. England vs. France (which is the greatest of the absolutist monarchies). this culminates in the Napoleonic Wars.
to understand why Britain came out on top in this war is to appreciate the economic dynamism of capitalism. rapid economic development gave the British ruling-class the naval and military power to defeat the French (English also helped build up Prussia, remember, as a rival to France). internally, this involved an absolutely massive increase in military spending—between 1700 and 1815, public spending rose fifteen-fold (civilian aspects never amounted to more than 23% of total spending—the rest was military!). the centralized monarchies put the burden of taxation on their peasantries—in England, however, because of relative economic dynamism, lords were prepared to tax themselves, relatively heavily (the land tax amounted to something like 20% of the nominal gross income of landowners). they were prepared to take from their own pockets.
in the 1800s, the English pattern is generalized throughout Europe. this becomes especially true as, more and more, military power comes to depend on having a considerable industrial base.
and so you see, in Germany, the junkers encouraging development in industry, in order to win wars, etc. in other words, 'political accumulation' becomes subordinated to economic accumulation. the outcome, of course, is imperialism.
this process continues today.
this historical argument thus has an important political point—the horrific bloodshed of the contemporary interstate system can only be ended by a socialist revolution that destroys world capitalism!
15th to 18th C – centralized and bureaucratic states emerge in the form of Absolutism
prior two this, there are two main forms
(1) World Empires—monarchies that rule through military power, and have little or no relation to States of a comparable level of advancement (this is very different from the modern state, which is part of a state-system, the members of which are at a more-or-less shared level of development)
(2) City-States—a number of States co-existing, but small in size. Rely often on popular armies, and can develop 'democratic' political forms (the modern state, though, rules a much larger territory—reflecting development of political forces—rules that territory through a bureaucratic apparatus, and a standing army)
so the modern state is distinctive.
modern states form a system—they co-exist with each other, and they interact with each other.
these interactions take various forms.
one such form is trade. rise of the modern state is coincidental with the formation of the world market [hobson/blaut would have their grievances with this]
the most important form of their interaction as States, of course, is war/military competition. the European state-system was characterized by the most ruthless military competition. what this leads to is a kind of Darwinian process of natural selection—in 1500, there were 500; in 1900, there were 25.
the emergence and development of this system is often seen—especially by bourgeois sociologists—as a refutation of Marxism. why? because it emerged in a context that wasn't capitalist—in a context where the prevailing form of exploitation was feudal ('analytically autonomous' from world capitalism). the notion is that the competitive interaction of nation-states represents a logic of military competition that is autonomous from capitalist social relations—both historically and in the present (Skocpol, Mann)
the point of disagreement with this position is not over the emergence of absolutism prior to the emergence of the bourgeoisie. Marx was well aware that many of the institutions of the modern state precede the 'bourgeois revolutions.'
the argument is not an argument over the facts. it's over the explanation.
can the emergence of the modern state be explained in terms of historical materialism? the answer is yes (Brenner)
the two key elements to Brenner's argument
(1) the crisis of the late-middle ages—the 14th and 15th centuries (plagues, famines that hid Europe in the middle of the 1300s, and then in the early of the 1400s). symptoms of a deep-seated economic crisis. you have another crisis in the 1600s—the whole of Europe is swept by wars (Thirty Years' War) and famine, which climaxes in the English Revolution in the late 1600s.
this arises in the context of the feudal mode of production.
characteristic form of exploitation is lord over peasant—extraction of surplus labor on the basis of legal rights over the peasant, reinforced by his political power. unlike in capitalism, both lord and peasant have direct access to their means of subsistence—none of this is mediated by the market. the peasants have direct access to their means of subsistence, they typically have their own plots. the Lord uses his military powers, his armed retainers to get resources from the direct producers.
in this situation, in which both exploiters and exploited have direct access, neither have incentive to increase the productive forces. no one has an incentive to develop the level of the productive forces. the main developments in the level of productive forces that do occur, under feudalism, occur in the early middle ages, when feudalism first appears. after that, the main form of growth is extensive (not intensive), and runs into limits by the 1300s.
(2) the crucial point—the second aspect—is that these dynamics give rise to 'political accumulation'. the lord, to maintain and increase his consumption, must (a) squeeze his peasants harder; (b) pinch other lord's peasants. what that means is that a fierce competitive dynamic is unleashed (e.g., the Hundred Years' War). this process of military competition then gives rise to State-building. more pressure to build up professional armies, etc.
this, the argument is, will culminate in the absolutist state (Perry Anderson—the only way feudalism could persist, in the face of its economic stagnation)
far from it being the case, then, that you don't need Marxism—Marxism is central.
and the one major exception to the 'absolutist' trend, England, demonstrates the superiority of the Marxist method.
out of the crisis of feudalism, the feudal lords were able--'unintended consequences' of the class struggle in the later middle ages—to separate peasants from the land, and to transform them into wage-laborers. in the 1400-1700s, these new wage laborers didn't go to work in industry (the industrial revolution takes place in the late 1700s); rather, they become involved in capitalist agriculture. you see the emergence of the capitalist 'trinity'--the landowner, the capitalist (who rents the land), and the worker. this permits a dynamic development of the productive forces—there is a sharp increase in agricultural productivity, which in turn enables the development of industrial capitalism (without it, of course, you couldn't support an industrial workforce).
also, you have 1640-1660 and 1688-1689—the English revolution—the outcome of that process was to establish as politically dominant a capitalist landed class. in the 18th century, the dominant class were capitalist landowners. the State that they create is an odd one—the bulk of political control is still in the hand of local landowners (in the nobility and landowners—no centralized standing army or bureaucracy). the country is run through a parliament of landowners. BUT, externally, a strong state—based, above all, on the Royal Navy, created with the support of the land-owning parliament as a means of expanding Britain's influence in the world.
and so we see a period—during the 18th century—which is sometimes described as the First World War. England vs. France (which is the greatest of the absolutist monarchies). this culminates in the Napoleonic Wars.
to understand why Britain came out on top in this war is to appreciate the economic dynamism of capitalism. rapid economic development gave the British ruling-class the naval and military power to defeat the French (English also helped build up Prussia, remember, as a rival to France). internally, this involved an absolutely massive increase in military spending—between 1700 and 1815, public spending rose fifteen-fold (civilian aspects never amounted to more than 23% of total spending—the rest was military!). the centralized monarchies put the burden of taxation on their peasantries—in England, however, because of relative economic dynamism, lords were prepared to tax themselves, relatively heavily (the land tax amounted to something like 20% of the nominal gross income of landowners). they were prepared to take from their own pockets.
in the 1800s, the English pattern is generalized throughout Europe. this becomes especially true as, more and more, military power comes to depend on having a considerable industrial base.
and so you see, in Germany, the junkers encouraging development in industry, in order to win wars, etc. in other words, 'political accumulation' becomes subordinated to economic accumulation. the outcome, of course, is imperialism.
this process continues today.
this historical argument thus has an important political point—the horrific bloodshed of the contemporary interstate system can only be ended by a socialist revolution that destroys world capitalism!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
claudio katz, from feudalism to capitalism
(85-86): distinction between early and late Marx on questions of merchants and transition to capitalism.
(88): here begins his reconstruction of the classic account. worthwhile.
(90-91, and 103): question--"artillery, ocean navigation and printing" were all innovations of the late medieval epoch. how do you fit this sort of dynamism into Brenner's "rules of reproduction"? presumably you can have technological innovation that doesn't imply a move toward capitalism--but the question is still what, exactly, is the incentive structure driving this. the crux of the Brennerian response, I think, would consist in arguing that there's no competition; but what if the feudal lords are unhappy with the goods being produced? if they're ineffective?
(96): in sum
(97-98): merchant incentive structure, laws of motion that impel them
(100 and 104): question, related to putting-out system--didn't this represent an advance, in terms of a classical definition of capitalism, over previous methods of production? or is this not germane?
(100): key point--merchant 'capitalism' flourishes outside prevailing mode of production--doesn't have any relationship to the method of production, only worries about circulation. capitalism must unite production and circulation. therefore it flourishes in precapitalism.
(101): question, how do you make sense of the acknowledged development of productive forces to which merchants contributed?
(102): feudal lords pitted against merchants as an intraclass rivalry over the surplus claimed from basic producers? but isn't there something else going on here? the question of the political revolution, for example?
(103, and 114, and 116): a parallel between merchants and capitalists, and lords and serfs--well, clear question is how we relate this class struggle to the rural class struggle. because, as explicated by Katz, the urban one seems more or less autonomous (until he concludes the opposite, without evidence, in the conclusion)
(104): merchants not interested in productive investments
(107): there is a question, here, regarding crises in general--in feudalism represent a 'contraction', rather than a breakthrough of the productive forces
(107): status of absolutism -- how do we think of this, if not like Anderson did? what is the place of the absolutist state in the larger narrative? if not as a transitional form, then what? another precapitalist form?
(108): distinction between 1300s and 1600s
(110): merchants make a feudal response to the crisis of the 1600s
(85-86): distinction between early and late Marx on questions of merchants and transition to capitalism.
(88): here begins his reconstruction of the classic account. worthwhile.
(90-91, and 103): question--"artillery, ocean navigation and printing" were all innovations of the late medieval epoch. how do you fit this sort of dynamism into Brenner's "rules of reproduction"? presumably you can have technological innovation that doesn't imply a move toward capitalism--but the question is still what, exactly, is the incentive structure driving this. the crux of the Brennerian response, I think, would consist in arguing that there's no competition; but what if the feudal lords are unhappy with the goods being produced? if they're ineffective?
(96): in sum
(97-98): merchant incentive structure, laws of motion that impel them
(100 and 104): question, related to putting-out system--didn't this represent an advance, in terms of a classical definition of capitalism, over previous methods of production? or is this not germane?
(100): key point--merchant 'capitalism' flourishes outside prevailing mode of production--doesn't have any relationship to the method of production, only worries about circulation. capitalism must unite production and circulation. therefore it flourishes in precapitalism.
(101): question, how do you make sense of the acknowledged development of productive forces to which merchants contributed?
(102): feudal lords pitted against merchants as an intraclass rivalry over the surplus claimed from basic producers? but isn't there something else going on here? the question of the political revolution, for example?
(103, and 114, and 116): a parallel between merchants and capitalists, and lords and serfs--well, clear question is how we relate this class struggle to the rural class struggle. because, as explicated by Katz, the urban one seems more or less autonomous (until he concludes the opposite, without evidence, in the conclusion)
(104): merchants not interested in productive investments
(107): there is a question, here, regarding crises in general--in feudalism represent a 'contraction', rather than a breakthrough of the productive forces
(107): status of absolutism -- how do we think of this, if not like Anderson did? what is the place of the absolutist state in the larger narrative? if not as a transitional form, then what? another precapitalist form?
(108): distinction between 1300s and 1600s
(110): merchants make a feudal response to the crisis of the 1600s
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
marxism/resistance mp3's, part I
robin hood, judy cook (1993): judy cook tries to distinguish between three robin hood narratives: the ruling-class'/hollywood attempt to co-opt robin hood as a disenchanted noble who only wants a better king, the other attempt to portray him as a lawless and aimless bandit, and the third--the one she advocates--which is to put him in the context of the horribly oppressive world in which he matured (roughly by the 1200s you see the first references to robin hood in various literature)--a world in which armed banditry was a terribly attractive form of social entrepreneurship, if you like (freedom from serfdom, etc.). she makes the important, if somewhat stale point, that we couldn't have expected a lenin, insofar as there was no class ready to take over the administration of society (but that's all a bit formulaic, even if also obviously true).
bolivia, andy brown (2008): brown details the revolutionary insurrection from 2003-2005, which came on the back end of two decades of solidly neo-liberal policy ("bolivia as lab-rat for neo-liberalism"). it marked the decisive defeat of national and transnational elite. he asked the question of how to characterize the movement, whether indigenous or national-popular; settled on a developed conception of the former, i think, in the sense that the movement would have been impossible without the contribution of the indigenous campesinos--they were decisive (here some instructive history about how the traditional left in bolivia, in the 50s and 60s, neglected the indigenous movements; this created an opening for their co-option by the military, and thus the downfall of the first revolution). brown is relatively dismissive of what evo morales had accomplished thus far, identifying three key policy areas in which he has not been nearly as radical as the insurrection which took him to power (hydrocarbons--better terms, but not nationalization, land reform--only unused land, which does hurt elite interested in keeping land for speculative purposes, and the constituent assembly--quite insufficient, failing to transcend liberal logic of representation). in sum: the "first revolution of the 21st century," perhaps, but all that energy is, as of now, being only uneasily represented by evo morales in power.
simon bolivar, andy brown (2007): interesting observations about the man's thoroughly liberal commitments (which he "picked up" in Europe). some discussion over how representative he was of the elites' desires around him, which was torn between staying tied to the bourbon monarchy in spain and emulating revolutions on the mainland/to the north. bolivar's liberalism, brown argues, co-existed uneasily with his belief in the paramount importance of a highly centralized state (perhaps this was pragmatic, though), and the danger that he would be caught up in the military, almost bonapartist logic of his own rebellion. nonetheless, he was a believer in racial equality, though the new republics did not emancipate the slaves immediately. all in all, the way in which the contemporary bolivarian republics lay claim to his legacy is, of course, strategic, in the sense that he can only ever represent the bourgeois liberal in his revolutionary role.
who really ended slavery, robin blackburn and weymann bennet (2007): excellent antidote to the official propagandizing around the 200th anniversary of abolition, which celebrates the role of william wilberforce without ever theorizing the context in which this legislation occurred. primarily, blackburn and bennet emphasize that the oligarchical elite in britain were assailed by the revolutionary specter of (a) slave rebellion and resistance in british colonies in the Caribbean, given the fact that in the 1790s slaves in haiti had successfully launched their rebellion; (b) the general rebellions in europe (french revolution, of course) and the american colonies, where a "social contract" was being pursued that exposed the british oligarchy for the reactionary form of government it was (excessively limited franchise, etc.); (c) the explicit anti-slavery agitation of quakers and even working-classes at home, who had launched one of the first mass campaigns against the slave trade. in sum, their hand was forced--they needed to stave off the specter that was haunting their lands (and then, don't forget, they re-wrote this history and deployed it in the civilizing mission--cue leopold and that rubbish).
a people's history of the british empire, john newsinger (2006): the thesis of the talk was simple--"brutality" was a central part of the civilizing mission, throughout. john insisted on the importance of understanding Empire not on the basis of the pretext it provides for its invasions and occupations, but on the objective basis of actual material causes that explain this intervention, the simple barbarity that has always ensued. there are a few examples of this, that are memorable in the worst way: prisoners in the revolting jamaican colonies in 1865 being used as target practice for the new enfield rifle, the obliteration of canton in the second opium war (the fallujah of that war), britain announcing its imminent withdrawal from its seventy-year occupation in egypt on some sixty occasions, the horrors of the suppression of the mau mau rebellion in kenya where some 130 people were hung from the same tree (this is the 1950s, remember).
robin hood, judy cook (1993): judy cook tries to distinguish between three robin hood narratives: the ruling-class'/hollywood attempt to co-opt robin hood as a disenchanted noble who only wants a better king, the other attempt to portray him as a lawless and aimless bandit, and the third--the one she advocates--which is to put him in the context of the horribly oppressive world in which he matured (roughly by the 1200s you see the first references to robin hood in various literature)--a world in which armed banditry was a terribly attractive form of social entrepreneurship, if you like (freedom from serfdom, etc.). she makes the important, if somewhat stale point, that we couldn't have expected a lenin, insofar as there was no class ready to take over the administration of society (but that's all a bit formulaic, even if also obviously true).
bolivia, andy brown (2008): brown details the revolutionary insurrection from 2003-2005, which came on the back end of two decades of solidly neo-liberal policy ("bolivia as lab-rat for neo-liberalism"). it marked the decisive defeat of national and transnational elite. he asked the question of how to characterize the movement, whether indigenous or national-popular; settled on a developed conception of the former, i think, in the sense that the movement would have been impossible without the contribution of the indigenous campesinos--they were decisive (here some instructive history about how the traditional left in bolivia, in the 50s and 60s, neglected the indigenous movements; this created an opening for their co-option by the military, and thus the downfall of the first revolution). brown is relatively dismissive of what evo morales had accomplished thus far, identifying three key policy areas in which he has not been nearly as radical as the insurrection which took him to power (hydrocarbons--better terms, but not nationalization, land reform--only unused land, which does hurt elite interested in keeping land for speculative purposes, and the constituent assembly--quite insufficient, failing to transcend liberal logic of representation). in sum: the "first revolution of the 21st century," perhaps, but all that energy is, as of now, being only uneasily represented by evo morales in power.
simon bolivar, andy brown (2007): interesting observations about the man's thoroughly liberal commitments (which he "picked up" in Europe). some discussion over how representative he was of the elites' desires around him, which was torn between staying tied to the bourbon monarchy in spain and emulating revolutions on the mainland/to the north. bolivar's liberalism, brown argues, co-existed uneasily with his belief in the paramount importance of a highly centralized state (perhaps this was pragmatic, though), and the danger that he would be caught up in the military, almost bonapartist logic of his own rebellion. nonetheless, he was a believer in racial equality, though the new republics did not emancipate the slaves immediately. all in all, the way in which the contemporary bolivarian republics lay claim to his legacy is, of course, strategic, in the sense that he can only ever represent the bourgeois liberal in his revolutionary role.
who really ended slavery, robin blackburn and weymann bennet (2007): excellent antidote to the official propagandizing around the 200th anniversary of abolition, which celebrates the role of william wilberforce without ever theorizing the context in which this legislation occurred. primarily, blackburn and bennet emphasize that the oligarchical elite in britain were assailed by the revolutionary specter of (a) slave rebellion and resistance in british colonies in the Caribbean, given the fact that in the 1790s slaves in haiti had successfully launched their rebellion; (b) the general rebellions in europe (french revolution, of course) and the american colonies, where a "social contract" was being pursued that exposed the british oligarchy for the reactionary form of government it was (excessively limited franchise, etc.); (c) the explicit anti-slavery agitation of quakers and even working-classes at home, who had launched one of the first mass campaigns against the slave trade. in sum, their hand was forced--they needed to stave off the specter that was haunting their lands (and then, don't forget, they re-wrote this history and deployed it in the civilizing mission--cue leopold and that rubbish).
a people's history of the british empire, john newsinger (2006): the thesis of the talk was simple--"brutality" was a central part of the civilizing mission, throughout. john insisted on the importance of understanding Empire not on the basis of the pretext it provides for its invasions and occupations, but on the objective basis of actual material causes that explain this intervention, the simple barbarity that has always ensued. there are a few examples of this, that are memorable in the worst way: prisoners in the revolting jamaican colonies in 1865 being used as target practice for the new enfield rifle, the obliteration of canton in the second opium war (the fallujah of that war), britain announcing its imminent withdrawal from its seventy-year occupation in egypt on some sixty occasions, the horrors of the suppression of the mau mau rebellion in kenya where some 130 people were hung from the same tree (this is the 1950s, remember).
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
a history of economic thought, isaac ilych rubin (part one: mercantilism and its decline)
--- important quotes/excerpts and summary ---
(19-26): a brief history of the transition from feudalism to early capitalism in england (called the age of merchant capital by the author, standing for the period 1500-1700). insofar as this is the staple narrative against which all other history is tested, it makes sense to reconstruct this carefully.
(30): However, as "the basis of English exports shifted from raw materials (wool) to the export of finished products" (cloth) in the late 1500s and 1600s, a new merchant class is looking ever more anxiously for profitable markets in which to sell these products. "The country was now forced to purse an active colonial policy... The entire history of England from the 16th (1500s) to the 18th (1700s) centuries is a history of its struggles with these nations for commercial and colonial superiority. Its weapons in this struggle were the founding of its own colonies, commercial treaties, and wars."
(31): "And so, the money balance system, that old, outmoded set of restrictive, essentially fiscal measures, gradually gave way to the state's intervention on a broad front, as it actively fostered the growth of capitalist trade, shipping, and export industry with the aim of consolidating England's position on the world market and doing away with her foreign competitors."
(31-32): "Fully-fledged mercantlism was above all a policy of protectionism, i.e., the use of customs policies to stimulate the growth of native industry. It was protectionism which was to speed up England's transformation from an agricultural to a commercial and industrial nation. Customs duties now started to be used to further economic as well as fiscal ends. Previously, the government had, for fiscal reasons, levied duties indiscriminately on every type of export item; now, however, the state began to differentiate between raw materials and finished products. To provide English industry with cheap raw materials it required the governemtn either raised their duties or forbade their export altoghether. In the years when corn prices went up neither corn nor other agricultural products could be sent out of the country. On the other hand, when it came to finished goods, the state encouraged their export by every possible means, exempting them from duties or even offering an export subsidy... The import of wool, cotton, linen, dyestuffs, leather, and other raw materials was not only freed of customs levies, but even subsidized, and otherwise encouraged. Conversely, the import of foreign finished products was either banned or subjected to high tarriffs. Such a customs policy meant that native industry was to be shielded to the detriment of agriculture, which produced raw materials."
(32): Rubin distinguishes between mercantilist policy in England, which could only fleece agriculture so far because of the relatively speedy penetration of agriculture by the bourgeoisie, and France, where the State actively depressed trade in raw materials as part of its efforts to win the alleigance of merchants and industrialists in its fight with the feudals.
(32): Navigation Acts, issued by Cromwell in 1651.
(33): Summary of differences between early and developed mercantilism: in the former, (1) exports limited to 'staples,' (2) state exercises control over individual commercial transactions, (3) state regulates the flow of precious metals directly; in the latter, (1) policy is expansionist and colonial (aiming at maximum extension of foriegn trade and hegemony on the world market), (2) regulation is not individual but national in scale, and (3) it is understood that monetary health is acheived indirectly, by protecting the balance of trade.
(39): In the early 1800s, Rubin is saying, the bourgeoisie came into conflict with the landlords over the price of corn (the former favored a low price, because that would cheapen the price of labor-power). But in the 1600s, many English mercantilists were in complete agreement about the need for high prices of corn, since the operative problem was bringing people to work (this is the time of the maximum limit on wages, in other words).
(48-50): Thomas Mun is introduced as the first of the developed mercantilists (Hales was the represenative of the early mercantilists)--he, among other things,(1) strongly defends the carrying trade on the basis of which the East India company was making massive profits (and, in the process, losing hard currency, to the chagrin of the early mercantilists), (2) understands the link between monetary well-being and the balance of trade (so he argues that England will fix its metallic problems by crafting a strategy to export finished products, in effect).
(54-55): "The disproportionate value accorded to foreign trade by the mercantilists is to be explained not simply by its great potential for transforming products into money and attracting precious metals: the enormous profits derived from foreign trrade helped foster primitive capital accumulation by the merchant class... The process of transforming products into money was to be accompanied by the accumulation of the latter and its own conversion into profit-bearing money, that is, into capital. But for the most part, really large profits were only to be had in this period through foreign commerce, in particular through trade with the colonies... In this period the basic source of commercial profit was non-equivalent exchange. It was, then, natural that the mercantilists saw profit only in the net profit of trade, or 'profit upon alienation,' which had its source in the mark up that the merchant added to the price of the commodity."
(58): "The first person to develop a critique of the principles behind mercantilist policy was Dudley North... North is the first of the early prophets of the idea of free trade. He dedicates his tract to a discussion around two central themes: first, the restrictions which the state, in its desire to attract money into the country, has imposed upon foreign trade, and second, the legal limitation placed upon the level of interest. On both of these issues North consistently demands that the state cease its interference into economic life."
(65): Rubin takes note of a primitive labor theory of value during the age of craft production--Thomas Aquinas, for example, taught that the "value of a product depends upon the quantity of labor and the outlays expended upon its production. This, however, developed 'normatively,' and not scientifically, as the governing concern of that time was how to establish a just price for craftsmen. Beginning in the 17th century, as capitalist competition at the market congealed, these considerations ceded to a scientific appraisal of the price that was being established by supply and demand (John Locke being its pioneer)--the "process of price formation" as it occured on the market. "The normative formulation of the problem of value had given way to that of scientific theory."
(67): Similarly, as industrial capitalism became more ascendant in the 18th century, there arose a theory of price as corresponding to production costs--this was the work of James Steuart, who was one of the last mercantilists.
(69-74): William Petty, another of the last mercantilists, was developing the original insights of the labor theory of value at this time--"the magnitude of a product's value depends upon the quantity of labor expended on its production." But Petty, Rubin continues, confuses himself because of an inability to systematically distinguish between use-value and exchange-value (in the case of the former, he integrates labor and land into his argument for the source of value).
(74-75): Locke suffers from a similar confusion, though slightly inverted--for Locke, use-values are given by labor (valueless nature made valuable by labor), whereas exchange-values are determined by supply-and-demand. (Cantillon and James Steuart are insufficient in similar ways, Rubina adds)
(81): David Hume, in the 18th century, develops the "quantity theory of money" ("according to which, the value (or purchasing power) of money is determined by the latter's overall quantity"). He traces the mechanisms by which this will happen--a cascading series of consecutive increases in individual demand for various products (this introduces the temporal element into the theory, which is key).
(83-84): "Hume's theory of money is in turn a reaction against the mercantilist concept of money and a theoretical generalization fromt he price revolution of the 16th-17th centuries (when there had been a massive influx of silver and gold from America)." Yet, what is crucial, Hume doesn't understand the analytical importance of the other source of this price revolution--namely, the technological improvements in the extraction of silver/gold and the consequent fall in their value... His "nominalist conception of money as a simple token, with no value of its own but rather with a 'fictitious' value that derives from, and alters with fluctuations in the amount of money, proved to be profoundly mistaken when applied to metallic money."
(84-86): The preceding is the first revision to Hume's theory of money. The second is a complication of his understanding of causality. Hume understood that hoarded money would have no effect on prices. Rubin notes, therefore, that one obviously needs to consider what causes money to "enter circulation." One of the factors, clearly, is the price of commodities themselves. In that sense, it is not as simple as saying as "the quantity of money in circulation determines prices", is it? This was James Steuart's argument, in part: "Steuart denies that commodity prices are dependent upon the quantity of money in circulation; to the contrary, it is the quantity of money in circulation which is determined by the demands of commodity circulation, including the level of commodity prices."
(86): "The ideas that Steuart had put forward in contraposition to the quantity theory were extended in the 19th Century by Tooke, and then later on by Marx. These two theories--Hume's quantity theory, on the one hand, and Steuart's doctrine, on the other--represent in brilliant fashion the two basic tendencies in the theory of monetary circulation that even this day are vying for supremacy in economic science.
--- important quotes/excerpts and summary ---
(19-26): a brief history of the transition from feudalism to early capitalism in england (called the age of merchant capital by the author, standing for the period 1500-1700). insofar as this is the staple narrative against which all other history is tested, it makes sense to reconstruct this carefully.
1100s-1400s: the Later Middle Ages, characterized by a "town" or "regional" economy. Key is that "each town...comprised a single economic region, within whose confines all exchange between town and countryside took place." Rural economy involves peasants producing for their own consumption, giving some surplus to their lord as "quickrent", and selling whatever meagre portions were left on the market; also, of course, involved compulsorly labor that the feudals extracted from these peasants on their own manor. Urban economy organized into guild handicrafts--each master owns his own tools and instruments; as a member of the guild he is bound by its "strict code of rules on prices and output," even while he enjoys the monopoly that it affords him.(26): "The basic feature of mercantilist policy is that the state actively uses its powers to help implant and develop a young capitalist trade and industry and, through the use or protectionist measures, diligently defends it from foreign competition." Rubin further distinguishes between early mercantilism (which prioritizes the fiscal aims of the State--careful regulation of trade, ban on export of currency--and corresponds to period before 1600, when Britain in the main exported raw materials and lacked a native merchant class--for more, see pp 27-28) and developed mercantilism (which attempts to bolster capitalist trade and industry, defending it through protectionism).
1500-1700: this social structure begins to break up as a result of three distinct, basic causes:colonial trade, in particular, was instrumental in bringing money capital and silver bullion to England, at this time. this caused the famous "price revolution" (which had the effect of depressing real wages for the majority of the population, but enriching the commercial bourgeoisie). peasantry begins to be displaced (and their land enclosed), as feudals look toward cash-crops, sheep, and larger/productive farmers. the guilds begin to break up under the pressure of this trade, as opportunities are sought beyond the bounds of the regional and eventually national economy (as a result of this transition, middlemen come to play an important role--these middlemen become primitive industrialists, of course, as the cottage industry takes off). an important point often elided in the apologists' history, of course, is that this nascent commercial bourgeoisie formed a ready alliance with the absolutist state, which shared their interest in undermining the authority of independent feudals.
- the rapid development of a money economy
- the expansion of the market
- the growing stregnth of money capital
(30): However, as "the basis of English exports shifted from raw materials (wool) to the export of finished products" (cloth) in the late 1500s and 1600s, a new merchant class is looking ever more anxiously for profitable markets in which to sell these products. "The country was now forced to purse an active colonial policy... The entire history of England from the 16th (1500s) to the 18th (1700s) centuries is a history of its struggles with these nations for commercial and colonial superiority. Its weapons in this struggle were the founding of its own colonies, commercial treaties, and wars."
(31): "And so, the money balance system, that old, outmoded set of restrictive, essentially fiscal measures, gradually gave way to the state's intervention on a broad front, as it actively fostered the growth of capitalist trade, shipping, and export industry with the aim of consolidating England's position on the world market and doing away with her foreign competitors."
(31-32): "Fully-fledged mercantlism was above all a policy of protectionism, i.e., the use of customs policies to stimulate the growth of native industry. It was protectionism which was to speed up England's transformation from an agricultural to a commercial and industrial nation. Customs duties now started to be used to further economic as well as fiscal ends. Previously, the government had, for fiscal reasons, levied duties indiscriminately on every type of export item; now, however, the state began to differentiate between raw materials and finished products. To provide English industry with cheap raw materials it required the governemtn either raised their duties or forbade their export altoghether. In the years when corn prices went up neither corn nor other agricultural products could be sent out of the country. On the other hand, when it came to finished goods, the state encouraged their export by every possible means, exempting them from duties or even offering an export subsidy... The import of wool, cotton, linen, dyestuffs, leather, and other raw materials was not only freed of customs levies, but even subsidized, and otherwise encouraged. Conversely, the import of foreign finished products was either banned or subjected to high tarriffs. Such a customs policy meant that native industry was to be shielded to the detriment of agriculture, which produced raw materials."
(32): Rubin distinguishes between mercantilist policy in England, which could only fleece agriculture so far because of the relatively speedy penetration of agriculture by the bourgeoisie, and France, where the State actively depressed trade in raw materials as part of its efforts to win the alleigance of merchants and industrialists in its fight with the feudals.
(32): Navigation Acts, issued by Cromwell in 1651.
(33): Summary of differences between early and developed mercantilism: in the former, (1) exports limited to 'staples,' (2) state exercises control over individual commercial transactions, (3) state regulates the flow of precious metals directly; in the latter, (1) policy is expansionist and colonial (aiming at maximum extension of foriegn trade and hegemony on the world market), (2) regulation is not individual but national in scale, and (3) it is understood that monetary health is acheived indirectly, by protecting the balance of trade.
(39): In the early 1800s, Rubin is saying, the bourgeoisie came into conflict with the landlords over the price of corn (the former favored a low price, because that would cheapen the price of labor-power). But in the 1600s, many English mercantilists were in complete agreement about the need for high prices of corn, since the operative problem was bringing people to work (this is the time of the maximum limit on wages, in other words).
(48-50): Thomas Mun is introduced as the first of the developed mercantilists (Hales was the represenative of the early mercantilists)--he, among other things,(1) strongly defends the carrying trade on the basis of which the East India company was making massive profits (and, in the process, losing hard currency, to the chagrin of the early mercantilists), (2) understands the link between monetary well-being and the balance of trade (so he argues that England will fix its metallic problems by crafting a strategy to export finished products, in effect).
(54-55): "The disproportionate value accorded to foreign trade by the mercantilists is to be explained not simply by its great potential for transforming products into money and attracting precious metals: the enormous profits derived from foreign trrade helped foster primitive capital accumulation by the merchant class... The process of transforming products into money was to be accompanied by the accumulation of the latter and its own conversion into profit-bearing money, that is, into capital. But for the most part, really large profits were only to be had in this period through foreign commerce, in particular through trade with the colonies... In this period the basic source of commercial profit was non-equivalent exchange. It was, then, natural that the mercantilists saw profit only in the net profit of trade, or 'profit upon alienation,' which had its source in the mark up that the merchant added to the price of the commodity."
(58): "The first person to develop a critique of the principles behind mercantilist policy was Dudley North... North is the first of the early prophets of the idea of free trade. He dedicates his tract to a discussion around two central themes: first, the restrictions which the state, in its desire to attract money into the country, has imposed upon foreign trade, and second, the legal limitation placed upon the level of interest. On both of these issues North consistently demands that the state cease its interference into economic life."
(65): Rubin takes note of a primitive labor theory of value during the age of craft production--Thomas Aquinas, for example, taught that the "value of a product depends upon the quantity of labor and the outlays expended upon its production. This, however, developed 'normatively,' and not scientifically, as the governing concern of that time was how to establish a just price for craftsmen. Beginning in the 17th century, as capitalist competition at the market congealed, these considerations ceded to a scientific appraisal of the price that was being established by supply and demand (John Locke being its pioneer)--the "process of price formation" as it occured on the market. "The normative formulation of the problem of value had given way to that of scientific theory."
(67): Similarly, as industrial capitalism became more ascendant in the 18th century, there arose a theory of price as corresponding to production costs--this was the work of James Steuart, who was one of the last mercantilists.
(69-74): William Petty, another of the last mercantilists, was developing the original insights of the labor theory of value at this time--"the magnitude of a product's value depends upon the quantity of labor expended on its production." But Petty, Rubin continues, confuses himself because of an inability to systematically distinguish between use-value and exchange-value (in the case of the former, he integrates labor and land into his argument for the source of value).
(74-75): Locke suffers from a similar confusion, though slightly inverted--for Locke, use-values are given by labor (valueless nature made valuable by labor), whereas exchange-values are determined by supply-and-demand. (Cantillon and James Steuart are insufficient in similar ways, Rubina adds)
(81): David Hume, in the 18th century, develops the "quantity theory of money" ("according to which, the value (or purchasing power) of money is determined by the latter's overall quantity"). He traces the mechanisms by which this will happen--a cascading series of consecutive increases in individual demand for various products (this introduces the temporal element into the theory, which is key).
(83-84): "Hume's theory of money is in turn a reaction against the mercantilist concept of money and a theoretical generalization fromt he price revolution of the 16th-17th centuries (when there had been a massive influx of silver and gold from America)." Yet, what is crucial, Hume doesn't understand the analytical importance of the other source of this price revolution--namely, the technological improvements in the extraction of silver/gold and the consequent fall in their value... His "nominalist conception of money as a simple token, with no value of its own but rather with a 'fictitious' value that derives from, and alters with fluctuations in the amount of money, proved to be profoundly mistaken when applied to metallic money."
(84-86): The preceding is the first revision to Hume's theory of money. The second is a complication of his understanding of causality. Hume understood that hoarded money would have no effect on prices. Rubin notes, therefore, that one obviously needs to consider what causes money to "enter circulation." One of the factors, clearly, is the price of commodities themselves. In that sense, it is not as simple as saying as "the quantity of money in circulation determines prices", is it? This was James Steuart's argument, in part: "Steuart denies that commodity prices are dependent upon the quantity of money in circulation; to the contrary, it is the quantity of money in circulation which is determined by the demands of commodity circulation, including the level of commodity prices."
(86): "The ideas that Steuart had put forward in contraposition to the quantity theory were extended in the 19th Century by Tooke, and then later on by Marx. These two theories--Hume's quantity theory, on the one hand, and Steuart's doctrine, on the other--represent in brilliant fashion the two basic tendencies in the theory of monetary circulation that even this day are vying for supremacy in economic science.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
"the state of martial rule," ayesha jalal
central thesis: book makes a very convincing case that the first eleven years of Pakistan's history, preceding Ayub's coup in 1958, confirmed the dominance of non-elected institutions (specifically, the civil bureaucracy and the military) over the political process. internally, this represented a failure to transcend the inherited weaknesses of the Muslim League as a political organization (which won power in precisely those provinces where it had no real political presence, eleventh hour alliances with landed elites notwithstanding). externally, jalal demonstrates how the subordination of the political process suited the strategic designs of the British and then the Americans (though she never argues that they were "agents" of this accommodation, they unquestionably figure).
moreover, jalal makes important points, in particular, about the impact of this excessive centralization on centre-province relations. those eleventh hour alliances were never going to offer legitimacy to the State in the eyes of provincial inhabitants--what was crucially absent from Pakistan's early political scene, she suggests, was the sort of political project that could unite provincial grievances (a socialist project, we can say). without it, the centre retreated into itself. this "closing off" of all traditional means of engagement with State authority only exacerbated the problems of provincialism.
in my humble opinion, jalal doesn't make explicit the thoroughly "backward" justifications offered for this progressive centralization of State power, even while she traces them in great detail (she does make the obligatory refutation of the silly thesis that military rule stepped into the vacancies left by "bickering politicians"; indeed, her point is that these bickering politicians are the product of the same structural dynamics that encourage military dominance via the consolidation of central authority). in particular, one could stress more the continuities with colonial rule, which are truly striking to those unfamiliar with the history: Pakistan was governed according to the British Government of India Act of 1935 for the first 9 years of its existence. and even when the first constituent assembly, after those 9 years, agreed upon the first constitution in 1956, it was pressured into making huge concessions to presidential authority. in that sense, it is important to stress that pakistan never made a "break" with the colonial era (complementing this inherite political "superstructure," remember, is the patronizing of landed elites by jinnah in the time immediately preceding partition). if there's one thing jalal's book lacks, then, it is this sense of outrage at the unforgivable hubris of the project of managed, colonial democracy.
but a great read and valuable reference-book all round.
--- important quotes/excerpts ---
(introduction): good summary of her central theses
(17): "With no organizational machinery in the Muslim-majority provinces, Jinnah and the league had little option but to advocate terms largely defined by landed notables in control of local politics."
(28): "A man of unquestionable constitutional acumen, Jinnah could see the perils ahead in letting anyone other than himself exercise the vast powers bestowed upon the governor-general [in newly independent Pakistan]"
(60): "While the provincial arenas continued to serve as the main centres of political activity, those who set about creating the new central apparatus were either politicians with no identifiable bases of support or civil servants well-versed in the traditions of British Indian administration." (these pages trace also the separation of the Muslim League from the business of government)
(135): "By the time Pakistan's first prime minister became the target of an evidently hired assasin, the institutional balance had begun gravitating away from the political centre in Karachi to military headquarters in Rawalpindi. It was to take a few years and the unfolding of yet more painful domestic political and economic crises before the central government was forced to make the shift..."
(145): first elections based on adult franchise in Pakistan's history--provincial elections in Punjab, March 1951
(151): critical: anti-ahmediya riots came in a context of serious economic crisis; state did not do anything to nip them in the bud
(152): "...[T]he shift in Pakistan's foreign policy [from London to Washington] owed nothing to popular opinion. Quite the opposite. Relentless demands for military equipment by the defence establishment generated pressures for warmer relations with the United States; financial stringency and a deepening food crisis made them irresistible..."
(186): legends of the fail--proposal by ambassador to US for governor-general to change government, in efforts to stave off a "fanatical theocracy"
(200-202): story of the attempt to dismiss the first constituent assembly by the governor-general, and then consequent legal wrangling (Sindh High Court reverses, eventually Chief Justice re-reverses)
(213-222): extensive discussion of 1956 constitution and its absurdly anti-democratic (of the liberal sort, even) provisions
(236): "Yet here was the rub. Nowhere had the consequences of the disjunction between the political process and the imperatives of state consolidation been felt more acutely than in the realm of economic decision-making. The absence of stable and popularly based governments at the centre capable of keeping firm checks on the demands of military headquarters and the activities of a sprawling administrative machinery had been as great, if not greater, obstacle to sound economic planning than the shortage of finance and trained personnel."
(241-246): a useful discussion of the Harvard Advisory Group years ("Clearly then, the first five year plan was an attempt to confirm, correct, and coordinate rather than to radically change the tenor of the central government's past economic politices. The mere fact that the final verison of the plan was made public just six months before the military takeover demands a closer scruitny of the political and structural obstacles in the way of its implementation.")
(257): birth of the National Awami Party, 1956
(269-270): "Yet the centre which for so long had dodged the issue of elections was now to face them when its revenues were falling and defence and civil administration expenditures were rising. Barely able to remain solvent, the centre could meet the provinces half way only by slashing the budgets of the two institutions which were the best hope the stat had for surviving assaults from below. This double paradox--the need to dole out funds to allay some of the provincial grievances just prior to the elections and the impossibility of finding the finances without cutting back on defence and civil administration--was the crisis of the state which the October 1958 military intervention aimed at dispelling if not altogether resolving."
(272): June 1958 mobilizations
(276): As of October, Mirza gone, Ayub ascendant
(277): "The very fact that the British transferred power in India to two centralized high commands instead of the provincial and the local bosses whose support they had so long solicited and used to strengthen their raj meant that the institutionalisation and consolidation of a new political centre over the Muslim-majority areas was implicitly a question of society accomodating itself to a state whose structures of authority were as uncertain as its claims to legitimacy were vague and ambiguous... This is where Islam proved to have its uses" (this is important to complicating the assertion that we are dealing with simple continuities of colonial rule)
(278): "the ambiguities of Islam seemed to offer the best hope of lending legitimacy to a state which, because it had only the most tenuous roots in society, was coming to base its authority on an administrative rather than a political centralization."
(288): interesting reflection on the stratified socio-economic base of syncretic islam (i.e., the welding of landed powers and pirs/etc.)
(295): [GOOD SUMMARY OF WHOLE THESIS]: It was during the first decade of independence that an interplay of domestic, regional and international factors saw the civil bureaucracy and the army gradually registering their dominance over parties and politicians withing the evolving structure of the state. While allowing the state a relative autonomy of action in directing the course of political and economic developments, the shifts in the institutional balance of power by their very nature militated against forging organic links with society. With decision-making firmly in the hands of a ruling alliance drawn mainly from the top echelons of the bureaucracy and the army, although loosely tied to dominant classes and interest groups, there was no obvious equation between the actual wielding of state authority and the structures of economic power and social control. Consequently, the relative autonomy of the Pakistani state from the internal class structure came to rest in large part on the closely nurtured connections of its senior state officials--civil and military--with the centres of the international capitalist system."
(302-303): discussion of the absurdity of Ayub's "basic democracts"
(304): re: land reforms and more, Jalal writes: "Preoccupations with the growth-redistribution debate has tended to blur analyses of the state's critical role int he creation of socio-economic privilege. The overwhelming trend has been to focus on the location of dominant socio-economic groups in relation to the state structure. But the dissonance between the military and the bureaucracy's institutional interests and those of socio-economic groups makes it equally, if not more important, to investigate how positions within the state apparatus facilitate the relocation of functionaries of government at various levels in key socio-economic sectors.
(307-308): November 1968 mobilizations
(310-311): Jalal suggests reconciliation was made impossible (between Bhutto and Mujib) by the entrenched role of the "praetorian guard and the mandarins."
(311): assessment of PPP's base
(317): Jalal links Bhutto's use of the Islamist idiom to the oilboom-financed patronage of religious forces (also the beginnings of the story of migrations to and from the Gulf, for sure)
(320): Zia's call for an end to class discord in the name of Allah.
---- timeline -----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor-General_of_Pakistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_Pakistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_Pakistan
central thesis: book makes a very convincing case that the first eleven years of Pakistan's history, preceding Ayub's coup in 1958, confirmed the dominance of non-elected institutions (specifically, the civil bureaucracy and the military) over the political process. internally, this represented a failure to transcend the inherited weaknesses of the Muslim League as a political organization (which won power in precisely those provinces where it had no real political presence, eleventh hour alliances with landed elites notwithstanding). externally, jalal demonstrates how the subordination of the political process suited the strategic designs of the British and then the Americans (though she never argues that they were "agents" of this accommodation, they unquestionably figure).
moreover, jalal makes important points, in particular, about the impact of this excessive centralization on centre-province relations. those eleventh hour alliances were never going to offer legitimacy to the State in the eyes of provincial inhabitants--what was crucially absent from Pakistan's early political scene, she suggests, was the sort of political project that could unite provincial grievances (a socialist project, we can say). without it, the centre retreated into itself. this "closing off" of all traditional means of engagement with State authority only exacerbated the problems of provincialism.
in my humble opinion, jalal doesn't make explicit the thoroughly "backward" justifications offered for this progressive centralization of State power, even while she traces them in great detail (she does make the obligatory refutation of the silly thesis that military rule stepped into the vacancies left by "bickering politicians"; indeed, her point is that these bickering politicians are the product of the same structural dynamics that encourage military dominance via the consolidation of central authority). in particular, one could stress more the continuities with colonial rule, which are truly striking to those unfamiliar with the history: Pakistan was governed according to the British Government of India Act of 1935 for the first 9 years of its existence. and even when the first constituent assembly, after those 9 years, agreed upon the first constitution in 1956, it was pressured into making huge concessions to presidential authority. in that sense, it is important to stress that pakistan never made a "break" with the colonial era (complementing this inherite political "superstructure," remember, is the patronizing of landed elites by jinnah in the time immediately preceding partition). if there's one thing jalal's book lacks, then, it is this sense of outrage at the unforgivable hubris of the project of managed, colonial democracy.
but a great read and valuable reference-book all round.
--- important quotes/excerpts ---
(introduction): good summary of her central theses
(17): "With no organizational machinery in the Muslim-majority provinces, Jinnah and the league had little option but to advocate terms largely defined by landed notables in control of local politics."
(28): "A man of unquestionable constitutional acumen, Jinnah could see the perils ahead in letting anyone other than himself exercise the vast powers bestowed upon the governor-general [in newly independent Pakistan]"
(60): "While the provincial arenas continued to serve as the main centres of political activity, those who set about creating the new central apparatus were either politicians with no identifiable bases of support or civil servants well-versed in the traditions of British Indian administration." (these pages trace also the separation of the Muslim League from the business of government)
(135): "By the time Pakistan's first prime minister became the target of an evidently hired assasin, the institutional balance had begun gravitating away from the political centre in Karachi to military headquarters in Rawalpindi. It was to take a few years and the unfolding of yet more painful domestic political and economic crises before the central government was forced to make the shift..."
(145): first elections based on adult franchise in Pakistan's history--provincial elections in Punjab, March 1951
(151): critical: anti-ahmediya riots came in a context of serious economic crisis; state did not do anything to nip them in the bud
(152): "...[T]he shift in Pakistan's foreign policy [from London to Washington] owed nothing to popular opinion. Quite the opposite. Relentless demands for military equipment by the defence establishment generated pressures for warmer relations with the United States; financial stringency and a deepening food crisis made them irresistible..."
(186): legends of the fail--proposal by ambassador to US for governor-general to change government, in efforts to stave off a "fanatical theocracy"
(200-202): story of the attempt to dismiss the first constituent assembly by the governor-general, and then consequent legal wrangling (Sindh High Court reverses, eventually Chief Justice re-reverses)
(213-222): extensive discussion of 1956 constitution and its absurdly anti-democratic (of the liberal sort, even) provisions
(236): "Yet here was the rub. Nowhere had the consequences of the disjunction between the political process and the imperatives of state consolidation been felt more acutely than in the realm of economic decision-making. The absence of stable and popularly based governments at the centre capable of keeping firm checks on the demands of military headquarters and the activities of a sprawling administrative machinery had been as great, if not greater, obstacle to sound economic planning than the shortage of finance and trained personnel."
(241-246): a useful discussion of the Harvard Advisory Group years ("Clearly then, the first five year plan was an attempt to confirm, correct, and coordinate rather than to radically change the tenor of the central government's past economic politices. The mere fact that the final verison of the plan was made public just six months before the military takeover demands a closer scruitny of the political and structural obstacles in the way of its implementation.")
(257): birth of the National Awami Party, 1956
(269-270): "Yet the centre which for so long had dodged the issue of elections was now to face them when its revenues were falling and defence and civil administration expenditures were rising. Barely able to remain solvent, the centre could meet the provinces half way only by slashing the budgets of the two institutions which were the best hope the stat had for surviving assaults from below. This double paradox--the need to dole out funds to allay some of the provincial grievances just prior to the elections and the impossibility of finding the finances without cutting back on defence and civil administration--was the crisis of the state which the October 1958 military intervention aimed at dispelling if not altogether resolving."
(272): June 1958 mobilizations
(276): As of October, Mirza gone, Ayub ascendant
(277): "The very fact that the British transferred power in India to two centralized high commands instead of the provincial and the local bosses whose support they had so long solicited and used to strengthen their raj meant that the institutionalisation and consolidation of a new political centre over the Muslim-majority areas was implicitly a question of society accomodating itself to a state whose structures of authority were as uncertain as its claims to legitimacy were vague and ambiguous... This is where Islam proved to have its uses" (this is important to complicating the assertion that we are dealing with simple continuities of colonial rule)
(278): "the ambiguities of Islam seemed to offer the best hope of lending legitimacy to a state which, because it had only the most tenuous roots in society, was coming to base its authority on an administrative rather than a political centralization."
(288): interesting reflection on the stratified socio-economic base of syncretic islam (i.e., the welding of landed powers and pirs/etc.)
(295): [GOOD SUMMARY OF WHOLE THESIS]: It was during the first decade of independence that an interplay of domestic, regional and international factors saw the civil bureaucracy and the army gradually registering their dominance over parties and politicians withing the evolving structure of the state. While allowing the state a relative autonomy of action in directing the course of political and economic developments, the shifts in the institutional balance of power by their very nature militated against forging organic links with society. With decision-making firmly in the hands of a ruling alliance drawn mainly from the top echelons of the bureaucracy and the army, although loosely tied to dominant classes and interest groups, there was no obvious equation between the actual wielding of state authority and the structures of economic power and social control. Consequently, the relative autonomy of the Pakistani state from the internal class structure came to rest in large part on the closely nurtured connections of its senior state officials--civil and military--with the centres of the international capitalist system."
(302-303): discussion of the absurdity of Ayub's "basic democracts"
(304): re: land reforms and more, Jalal writes: "Preoccupations with the growth-redistribution debate has tended to blur analyses of the state's critical role int he creation of socio-economic privilege. The overwhelming trend has been to focus on the location of dominant socio-economic groups in relation to the state structure. But the dissonance between the military and the bureaucracy's institutional interests and those of socio-economic groups makes it equally, if not more important, to investigate how positions within the state apparatus facilitate the relocation of functionaries of government at various levels in key socio-economic sectors.
(307-308): November 1968 mobilizations
(310-311): Jalal suggests reconciliation was made impossible (between Bhutto and Mujib) by the entrenched role of the "praetorian guard and the mandarins."
(311): assessment of PPP's base
(317): Jalal links Bhutto's use of the Islamist idiom to the oilboom-financed patronage of religious forces (also the beginnings of the story of migrations to and from the Gulf, for sure)
(320): Zia's call for an end to class discord in the name of Allah.
---- timeline -----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor-General_of_Pakistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_Pakistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_Pakistan
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
notes on capital
chapters 26-33: primitive accumulation
(873-874): worth flagging this page, as it outlines the contrast between Marxist and liberal positions on force/conflict within capitalist production.
(874-875): "so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production."
(875): Marx making explicit the normative consequences of the transition toward the "double freedom" of the proletariat: at once free from serfdom and the "fetters of the guilds" ["and it is this aspect of the movement which alone exists for our bourgeois historians"], and at the same time "robbed of all of their own means of production." Quite clearly, here, we are speaking of the dialectics and contradictions of historical progress.
(876): The last sentence contains all that is regrettable about Marx's "universalizing" of the British experience--by making Britain the "classic form" of expropriation of rural areas, he, quite unwittingly and against his more explicit instructions, inspired failed attempts to read quite different histories through this classic, universal lens.
(877): Feudalism finished by the fourteenth century--the vast majority of the population as "small peasants."
(878): FN #3, fascinating. reflections on Japan and liberal attitudes toward the Middle Ages, possibly hinting at a contempt for Whiggish interpretations of history's march that ought to dampen the spirits of crude Marxist modernizers.
(879): here Marx, in the manner of this entire book, leaves the question of the state-society interface open to history, without compromising the thrust of his class analysis.
(880): implicit in this is an appraisal of legislation's utility in the face of history's march. and, to be honest, marx is not very generous, especially if we're speaking of big sweeps. what this implies for agency, i think, is less clear, since these are cosmetic laws authored and implemented largely by kings at the behest of tradition. (see also 885). at the same time, it is important to stress that the identity between legislation and ruling class interests is not trivially true, in that--as one sees with the reports on proletariat health after the corn laws--a class can be economically ascendant but politically (and temporarily) relatively impotent. yet of course these are exceptions that can be assimilated into the rule.
(884): the theft of state assets at "ridiculous" prices--where have we heard that before?
(886): "the identity between the wealth of the nation and the poverty of the people" -- a not-so-indirect rejoinder to liberal triumphalism.
(887-888): "'Upon the whole, the circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse.'" it should be clear, then, that we are not speaking of the Marx of the modernizers' imagination. or, at least, he does not share their totalizing fixation with the future, even if they would agree on policy forward. there is room, in other words, for a recognition of place.
(888): again, the non-identity between the "nation" and the "people" -- the bourgeois becomes the torch bearer for the "nation", a move which allows him to speak in the name of the people he dispossesses.
(889): dating enclosures: late 1400s to late 1700s
(892): hinting at the perpetual nature of primitive accumulation, much like harvey's position
(893): an interesting side-note to Marx on nature: here, in this portrayal of expropriation, the small farmer simply forms another part of the natural backdrop. he is dead to the bourgeois' history, precisely he--like all else that is "natural," precedes it. an alternative, very literal embedding of the "social" in the "natural."
(896): important passage, for two reasons: (a) prefigures the problems of the third world, in that the peasantry is being thrown onto a market that cannot properly absorb it (b) prefigures Foucault, in that the peasantry has to be disciplined into accepting an entirely new routine and set of values (cf. the listed punishments for vagabondage)--has to be "modernized." Lumpen activity is theorized in this context, and has to be done so in the contemporary Third World, as well (gangsterism, terrorism, etc.)
(899): "Even at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, the Ordinance of 13 July 1977 provided that every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, should be sent to the galleys."
(899-900): here Marx clearly seems to overstate his case, making normal a state of affairs that is highly idealized. against this passage, it is important to re-assert Harvey's reminder that primitive accumulation and the State are always important tools for the ruling class--in that sense, Marx's account is far too kind; the notion that this violence is transitional and particular to a specific epoch needs refutation.
(902): the first minimum wage, where before there were only maximum wages being proposed.
(903): the sordid history of bourgeois positions on trade unions, including the French Revolution's banning of them in 1791! liberty means, as it always has for the bourgeois, the liberty of a particular class. the timelessness of the worker's oppression, then, is here made clear.
(910): Marx's suggestion here, that observers are too ready to see the large-scale capitalist without also appreciating his dependence on a plethora of networks of smaller-scale production, resembles Arrighi's critique of the Euro-centrism of theories of the Big Corporation. We do have to ask what this means for theories of centralization/concentration--and it is not sufficient to say that it "opens them up to history", even if that is true and important.
(910-911): a further important point--expropriation is not simply important to the reconfiguration of structures of production, but it also is critical to reconfiguring consumption. it is only once the workers are divested from the right to produce their own means of subsistence that they become dependent on a market. (to this one can append Marx's Foucaultian moments--they have to be "taught" how to consume).
(915): "the author should have reminded himself that revolutions are not made with laws."
(916): Marx on violence, implicitly: "Force is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."
(916-917): Marx on the colonies, hardly an apologist for empire.
(918): Marx here makes a critical chronological intervention, in stressing that colonialism (as commercial supremacy) is coeval with manufacture, and that it helps mature industry. In other words, colonialism was critical for industrial predominance. By the late 19th century, this has changed--one can only sustain commercial supremacy if industrial forces are already sufficiently matured. This is important in better understanding the changing nature of colonialism, itself.
(920): Arrighi's narrative is here being prefigured, as Marx recounts the shifting centers of the international credit system. But, I think, there is a clear need to make it more systematic than what is presented here, as Arrighi does.
(920): Capital as "the capitalized blood of children"--unforgiving, and absolutely correct.
(921-922): These passages are key to any comprehensive Marxist theory of the state. Especially if we are going to argue that primitive accumulation is a continuous feature of life in modern capitalism, then the State--as provider of "original" capital--has a continuous, protective role to play (in other words, the bailouts can be represented as a kind of primitive accumulation).
(923): Marx's re-telling of the historical crimes of capitalism makes for important reading. Why do liberals never have to "own up" to these crimes when endorsing this system of production, the way that commies in the case of their own beliefs? There is something to be said here about Walter Benjamin and the stealthy cloaking of past crimes in the narrative of present progress.
(924): "Liverpool grew fat on the basis of the slave trade"
(926): "...capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt"
(928): Though my own obsession with the normative implications of Marx's dialectics is important, it is also moot. Because Marx is, of course, not suggesting that we stop (or try to stop) history at any given stage of its advance. It is not a case of deliberating on the principles we find superior, and working to embody them in a world of our making. Rather, history advances quite in spite of our best efforts. We can observe dialectics, amidst all this (and the implications of that attentiveness for the bourgeois historians are important), but we cannot intervene.
(929): Why the proletariat? "...with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production." Might a close-reading of this passage be in order, especially concentrating on those three words, "trained, united, organized."
(929): This is important (and was argued on preceding pages, as well): when Capital mobilizes to argue that it defends the cause of private property, it falls to us to remind the ideologues that this is one kind of private property--or, rather, the private property of one class, in particular. what's more, in the process of primitive accumulation, this system has little problem in obliterating the private property of millions of small producers and peasants. (see also 931)
(932): speaking of the colonial imperative to transform structures of production in the colony, Marx invokes the schematics of uneven development: "In the interest of the so-called wealth of the nation, he seeks for artificial means to ensure the poverty of the people."
(932): absolutely foundational to this entire process is this point that Capital is not simply a wad of cash ready to be deployed, but a wad of cash ready to be deployed in a particular social relation: "property in money, means of subsistence, machines and other means of production does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if the essential complement to these things is missing the wage-laborer, the other man, who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will... capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons which is mediated through things.
(938-939): excellent passages against which to develop a history of emigration--again, as always, this speaks of a Marx for whom theory is open to history, even if the framework's contours are established, as well.
chapters 26-33: primitive accumulation
(873-874): worth flagging this page, as it outlines the contrast between Marxist and liberal positions on force/conflict within capitalist production.
(874-875): "so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production."
(875): Marx making explicit the normative consequences of the transition toward the "double freedom" of the proletariat: at once free from serfdom and the "fetters of the guilds" ["and it is this aspect of the movement which alone exists for our bourgeois historians"], and at the same time "robbed of all of their own means of production." Quite clearly, here, we are speaking of the dialectics and contradictions of historical progress.
(876): The last sentence contains all that is regrettable about Marx's "universalizing" of the British experience--by making Britain the "classic form" of expropriation of rural areas, he, quite unwittingly and against his more explicit instructions, inspired failed attempts to read quite different histories through this classic, universal lens.
(877): Feudalism finished by the fourteenth century--the vast majority of the population as "small peasants."
(878): FN #3, fascinating. reflections on Japan and liberal attitudes toward the Middle Ages, possibly hinting at a contempt for Whiggish interpretations of history's march that ought to dampen the spirits of crude Marxist modernizers.
(879): here Marx, in the manner of this entire book, leaves the question of the state-society interface open to history, without compromising the thrust of his class analysis.
(880): implicit in this is an appraisal of legislation's utility in the face of history's march. and, to be honest, marx is not very generous, especially if we're speaking of big sweeps. what this implies for agency, i think, is less clear, since these are cosmetic laws authored and implemented largely by kings at the behest of tradition. (see also 885). at the same time, it is important to stress that the identity between legislation and ruling class interests is not trivially true, in that--as one sees with the reports on proletariat health after the corn laws--a class can be economically ascendant but politically (and temporarily) relatively impotent. yet of course these are exceptions that can be assimilated into the rule.
(884): the theft of state assets at "ridiculous" prices--where have we heard that before?
(886): "the identity between the wealth of the nation and the poverty of the people" -- a not-so-indirect rejoinder to liberal triumphalism.
(887-888): "'Upon the whole, the circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse.'" it should be clear, then, that we are not speaking of the Marx of the modernizers' imagination. or, at least, he does not share their totalizing fixation with the future, even if they would agree on policy forward. there is room, in other words, for a recognition of place.
(888): again, the non-identity between the "nation" and the "people" -- the bourgeois becomes the torch bearer for the "nation", a move which allows him to speak in the name of the people he dispossesses.
(889): dating enclosures: late 1400s to late 1700s
(892): hinting at the perpetual nature of primitive accumulation, much like harvey's position
(893): an interesting side-note to Marx on nature: here, in this portrayal of expropriation, the small farmer simply forms another part of the natural backdrop. he is dead to the bourgeois' history, precisely he--like all else that is "natural," precedes it. an alternative, very literal embedding of the "social" in the "natural."
(896): important passage, for two reasons: (a) prefigures the problems of the third world, in that the peasantry is being thrown onto a market that cannot properly absorb it (b) prefigures Foucault, in that the peasantry has to be disciplined into accepting an entirely new routine and set of values (cf. the listed punishments for vagabondage)--has to be "modernized." Lumpen activity is theorized in this context, and has to be done so in the contemporary Third World, as well (gangsterism, terrorism, etc.)
(899): "Even at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, the Ordinance of 13 July 1977 provided that every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, should be sent to the galleys."
(899-900): here Marx clearly seems to overstate his case, making normal a state of affairs that is highly idealized. against this passage, it is important to re-assert Harvey's reminder that primitive accumulation and the State are always important tools for the ruling class--in that sense, Marx's account is far too kind; the notion that this violence is transitional and particular to a specific epoch needs refutation.
(902): the first minimum wage, where before there were only maximum wages being proposed.
(903): the sordid history of bourgeois positions on trade unions, including the French Revolution's banning of them in 1791! liberty means, as it always has for the bourgeois, the liberty of a particular class. the timelessness of the worker's oppression, then, is here made clear.
(910): Marx's suggestion here, that observers are too ready to see the large-scale capitalist without also appreciating his dependence on a plethora of networks of smaller-scale production, resembles Arrighi's critique of the Euro-centrism of theories of the Big Corporation. We do have to ask what this means for theories of centralization/concentration--and it is not sufficient to say that it "opens them up to history", even if that is true and important.
(910-911): a further important point--expropriation is not simply important to the reconfiguration of structures of production, but it also is critical to reconfiguring consumption. it is only once the workers are divested from the right to produce their own means of subsistence that they become dependent on a market. (to this one can append Marx's Foucaultian moments--they have to be "taught" how to consume).
(915): "the author should have reminded himself that revolutions are not made with laws."
(916): Marx on violence, implicitly: "Force is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."
(916-917): Marx on the colonies, hardly an apologist for empire.
(918): Marx here makes a critical chronological intervention, in stressing that colonialism (as commercial supremacy) is coeval with manufacture, and that it helps mature industry. In other words, colonialism was critical for industrial predominance. By the late 19th century, this has changed--one can only sustain commercial supremacy if industrial forces are already sufficiently matured. This is important in better understanding the changing nature of colonialism, itself.
(920): Arrighi's narrative is here being prefigured, as Marx recounts the shifting centers of the international credit system. But, I think, there is a clear need to make it more systematic than what is presented here, as Arrighi does.
(920): Capital as "the capitalized blood of children"--unforgiving, and absolutely correct.
(921-922): These passages are key to any comprehensive Marxist theory of the state. Especially if we are going to argue that primitive accumulation is a continuous feature of life in modern capitalism, then the State--as provider of "original" capital--has a continuous, protective role to play (in other words, the bailouts can be represented as a kind of primitive accumulation).
(923): Marx's re-telling of the historical crimes of capitalism makes for important reading. Why do liberals never have to "own up" to these crimes when endorsing this system of production, the way that commies in the case of their own beliefs? There is something to be said here about Walter Benjamin and the stealthy cloaking of past crimes in the narrative of present progress.
(924): "Liverpool grew fat on the basis of the slave trade"
(926): "...capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt"
(928): Though my own obsession with the normative implications of Marx's dialectics is important, it is also moot. Because Marx is, of course, not suggesting that we stop (or try to stop) history at any given stage of its advance. It is not a case of deliberating on the principles we find superior, and working to embody them in a world of our making. Rather, history advances quite in spite of our best efforts. We can observe dialectics, amidst all this (and the implications of that attentiveness for the bourgeois historians are important), but we cannot intervene.
(929): Why the proletariat? "...with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production." Might a close-reading of this passage be in order, especially concentrating on those three words, "trained, united, organized."
(929): This is important (and was argued on preceding pages, as well): when Capital mobilizes to argue that it defends the cause of private property, it falls to us to remind the ideologues that this is one kind of private property--or, rather, the private property of one class, in particular. what's more, in the process of primitive accumulation, this system has little problem in obliterating the private property of millions of small producers and peasants. (see also 931)
(932): speaking of the colonial imperative to transform structures of production in the colony, Marx invokes the schematics of uneven development: "In the interest of the so-called wealth of the nation, he seeks for artificial means to ensure the poverty of the people."
(932): absolutely foundational to this entire process is this point that Capital is not simply a wad of cash ready to be deployed, but a wad of cash ready to be deployed in a particular social relation: "property in money, means of subsistence, machines and other means of production does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if the essential complement to these things is missing the wage-laborer, the other man, who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will... capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons which is mediated through things.
(938-939): excellent passages against which to develop a history of emigration--again, as always, this speaks of a Marx for whom theory is open to history, even if the framework's contours are established, as well.
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