I think I mentioned my turn towards Marxism lately, particularly Neomarxism in International Relations. This scholarship involves the three-volume work of Immanuel Wallerstein and Christopher Chase-Dunn. I want to briefly summarize neo-Marxist theory and then draw links to Thomas Barnett’s work.
Neomarxists begin from the fundamental assumption of historical materialism: the history of the modern world is driven by the capitalist pursuit of surplus value through the exploitation of labor divorced from the means of production. As capitalism creates new exploitive relationships between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, it ultimately creates contradictions that bring down the entire system in a socialist revolution.
Whereas Marx conceptualized his theory in terms of a single society (drawn from observations of Great Britain), Neomarxists study the entire capitalist world-system as a single unit of analysis, with specific attention to the historical evolution of the system leading up to its present form. Of particular importance are the contradictions created by the relationships between states that lead to their rise and fall within the global capitalist system. Thus, Wallerstein shows how capitalism emerges from feudalism through the death of the Hapsburgian bid for world-empire and the decline of the commercial Italian city-states, such as Venice and Genoa. While these survived the wars of the early 16th Century, political economic supremacy gave way to the United Provinces of the Netherlands, the first hegemonic nation-state to possess a comparative advantage in a series of commodities (herring, wooden ship-building). Thus, the Netherlands becomes the first hegemonic state in the capitalist ‘core’ and exploits several ‘peripheries’ and maintains a favorable division of labor. In this way, the political apparatus that is the Dutch ‘state’ creates opportunities for the Dutch bourgeoisie to amass a surplus of capital. The construction of a favorable market requires a strong state, and this historical period sees the increasing strength of the Dutch Republic. At the same time, political organizations in the peripheries remain weak and are made dependent upon relationships with the core state. This is the political dimension of hegemony in a capitalist world-system.
However, all hegemonic states eventually decline as their comparative advantage in a set of commodities gives way to rising hegemonic states and their development of a comparative advantage in new commodities. In this way, ‘core’ status within the world economy shifts from one state to another as rising hegemons discover new and more efficient modes of production. The Netherlands declines in the late 17th Century and gives way to England, whose industrial mode of production and comparative advantage in textile production propelled it to the core of the capitalist world-economy and the incorporation of new peripheries into the world-system, namely New World colonies and Eastern Europe, particularly for foodstuffs imported by England. The terms of state strength, England experiences increasing state strength and the formation of a globe-spanning Navy and colonial administration while Poland remains a weak constitutional monarchy. Real power remains in the hands of feudal aristocrats who import their agricultural products to the core. The industrial ‘development’ of core states and the feudal ‘backwardness’ of peripheral states are thus interrelated phenomena of the global capitalist system.
To make a long historical story more relevant to contemporary events, the 19th Century saw competing capitalist European states industrialize and all gain colonies, thereby spreading the capitalist world-system across the entire globe. British hegemony ends with the challenge posed by Nazi Germany’s bid for world-empire, and hegemony then passes to the United States whose power peaks in 1945. We have been in decline since then, and given the economic turmoil of the past year, it should be clear that our hegemony is finally slipping away. The contradictions of our capitalist economy have collapsed on themselves and we are no longer at the center of the capitalist world-economy. This is obvious given the last twenty years of American capitalism. After the Wall fell, we created capitalist relations throughout the East with the onset of a new commodity, namely information. This led to capitalist overinvestment and speculation that could not be met by the consumption of information products: hence the dot-com bubble at the turn of the millenium. Instead of truly facing our own contradictions, we created new ones by lowering interest rates and exploiting two much older commodities: real estate and finance capital. The story is still the same. We exploited these commodities to the point at which their consumption could no longer support the massive amount of investment needed to sustain this economic system and the bubble collapsed, except this time that bubble was our entire economy. Hence, 10.2% official unemployment. The Empire State, formerly the center of late 20th Century capitalism, is now broke and the federal government faces massive budget deficits. Whether or not we experience complete social disorder as predicted by John Robb is a possibility, depending of course on how we deal with our own contradictions.
Whereto from here? The short term answer is that hegemony shifts to a new state with a more efficient mode of production and more profitable comparative advantage. The most obvious answer is China, or at least some other state that can manufacture goods more cheaply or develop new technology permitting the exchange of a new commodity (maybe energy, maybe information, etc). New semiperipheral states thereby increase in state strength and become core states, while older Core states seek to guard their economic and political stability via protectionism and socialist concessions to the proletariat, if they can afford them (universal education, universal health care). Yet, the same contradictions will lead to the decline of future core states and the rise of new ones which exploit new peripheries and control their weak states. Instability within the global system is thereby continually reproduced if the logic of the system is left unchanged.
However, there are moments in world history where agents (in this case, capitalist states) reflexively realize how their own actions reproduce instability. In weak states, such instability takes the form of terrorism and insurgency which can become global forms of political violence (see 9/11). At this reflexive moment, core states purposefully establish new relationships with peripheral states that are not exploitive but are mutually reciprocal. If true, then reflexive core states must develop a grand strategy to recognize the right of peripheral states to engage in capitalist development on their own terms, and encourage the development strong peripheral states that can propel themselves into the semi-periphery. As core states conceptualize a reflexive grand strategy, they do so as a means of resolving the contradictions created by their own participation in the global capitalist economy.
This is why Thomas Barnett’s grand strategy is so important. He argues that the United States should ensure that globalization engulfs the entire world-system. However, he also recognizes that capitalism creates in own instability within weak states that can only be resolved with strong bureaucratic institutions. Therefore, reflexive core states (America) must purposely support state-building throughout the world. Neomarxist terms are also deeply embedded his entire vision of grand strategy. Core states are considered ‘the Old Core’, semiperipheral states are considered the ‘New Core’, while peripheral weak or failed states exist in ‘the Gap’. To resolve this contradictions Barnett calls for the creation of System Administration, or the SysAdmin, a bureaucracy that regulates the capitalist world-system by creating conditions that permit the emergence of strong states in the periphery, thereby ‘sealing the Gap’. The new relationships between Core and peripheral states becomes less exploitive and more reciprocal as each recognizes a ‘right to capital’ and the ability to regulate capitalism within its own borders.
I am not saying that the emergence of the SysAdmin will resolve all contradictions within the global capitalist economy. Far from it, as capitalism will produce new ones. However, the SysAdmin does work to create new state agents that jointly regulate the capitalist world- economy. This has already begun to happen with the emergence of the G-20, as the executive committee of the global bourgeoisie, including both old and new Core states (I think Barnett has said something to this effect, so it is not my terminology). If the G-20 acts reflexively, then it can jointly manage the contradictions produced by global capitalism and support of strong states in the periphery, leading to a ‘new’ new Core whose states are recognized by all other states as having a right to make decisions about their participation in global capitalism. In this way, a reflexive international state system overcomes capitalist contradictions by developing the bureaucratic capacity to reproduce itself.
The point of all this is not that Barnett is a Neomarxist. . However, his grand strategy is consistent with the long-term rise and demise of the world-capitalist system. Neomarxists don’t believe that capitalism will end in a grand moment of revolution, but through a process of incremental steps in which capitalism is tamed by global political organization. Thus, the long-term outcome for Neomarxists is the emergence of a democratic world-state, one that can regulate global capitalism according to the collective action of all of humanity. If this is the outcome (some non-Marxists using a constructivist teleology even say it is inevitable), then the formation of a System Administrator is one significant step in the eventual formation of a world state. It is the administrative kernel whereby humanity begins to tame capitalism and check its own contradictions by building regulative state institutions across the globe. And, if states can reflexively recognize each other and paradoxically transcend their own boundaries (like the European Union), then the long-term development of the world state becomes something other than a mere utopian fantasy.
So whither capitalism? Absolutely, before it withers us. But whence the SysAdmin? Whence a reflexive grand strategy? Time will tell, but hopefully sooner rather than later.
An interesting post. It was hard to follow for me, so I apologize if these questions are obvious.
Here are the parts I did not understand.
1. What is a “contradiction”? In the context of this article, it appears to be a “bad thing.” Is that all that is meant?
2. What is “exploitation”? In the context of this article, it appears to mean an economic relationship the author dislikes
3. What is meant by ” The industrial ‘development’ of core states and the feudal ‘backwardness’ of peripheral states are thus interrelated phenomena of the global capitalist system.” This sentence is written as if it is the conclusion of an argument, but appears not to follow from anything that was previously written
In conclusion, good show picking up on the relationship of Barnett’s writings to Marxism. I had fun with the same idea four years ago
http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/10/22/marxism-barnettism-tpbms-marxist-roots.html
Dan
Dan,
Thank you for the comments. I remember you discussing this topic as well but could not find a post to link, my apologies. You’ve also exposed the limits of my argument, and so I will try to clarify these points but I admit I am not absolutely certain in these definitions and examples, which weakens the post as a whole. To clarify:
1. By contradiction, I was referring to the system of social and economic relationships that are formed in the pursuit of surplus capital. These relationships serve to commodify labor and all products, making them convertible for sale on the market. Marxists argue that these relationships are unsustainable and eventually collapse under their own weight if they are pursued without reflection. The commodification process destroys itself as it restructures the subjective value of objects for sale on the market and distorts them. At the end of the process, this distortion becomes so obvious to all buyers and sellers that they can no longer reliably trade commodities, and all previous investments in the (over)commodification process lose value. I believe that this understanding of ‘contradiction’ is consistent with the existence of ‘market bubbles’, like the dot-com and housing-financial varieties which with we are familiar.
This is not to say that contradictions are only economic, but might also be cultural and ideational. I think this tendency in Marxism goes back to Hegel and dialectical materialism, which is the term I should have used instead of ‘historical materialism’. Again, I’m sure of this because I’ve only read portions of Marx, and none of Hegel. This post was more inspired by my recent reading of Neomarxists.
2. By exploitation, I try not to refer to my own subjective views on economic processes. I understand exploitation in terms of the production relationship between the capitalist (who owns the means of production (factories, raw materials, etc) and the worker (who owns nothing but his labor). In this relationship, workers sell their labor to capitalists for the production of commodities. This is an exploitive relationship because the the surplus value added to the commodity by the worker (realized in the sale of the commodity on the market) exceeds the compensation provided to that worker by the capitalist, who himself pockets the surplus-value of that commodity. In brief, workers are not given their share of the market-value of the products that they produce.
Personally, I don’t think that all forms of this relationship are exploitative, but a ‘fair’ relationship requires that the capitalist know his own limits with regard to what share of the surplus-value of commodities he should withhold from the workers. However, given that capitalists live in a market system, there is a constant temptation to always extract more surplus, and this tends to result in the exploitation of workers.
3. Yes I should’ve elaborated this point. Wallerstein argues that core capitalists begin to amass surplus-value by exploiting entire geographical regions of workers. He basically frames the Marxist model of the production relationship in geospatial terms. Thus, as Core ‘states’ gain more economic power which funds a bureaucratic apparatus, they exploit peripheral ‘states’ and deprive them of socioeconomic development and the emergence of a stronger state apparatus. Wallerstein uses Britain and Poland in the 17th Century to illustrate this. In this period, Britain began its hegemonic ascent and the developed a capitalist society while Poland fell back in the international system and developed a feudal society, one in which the mass of workers (serfs) labored in the production of foodstuffs, a commodity sold on the world-market by the Polish nobility and bought by the British. Poland thus becomes more ‘backward’ because the British demand for cheap grain empowers the Polish aristocracy and blocks the development of a Polish, middle-class bourgeoisie.
Anyway, Marx is fun because of his critique of capitalism. His political solutions (immediate revolution) were a flawed means to deal the modern economic system. Instead, Wallerstein shows how Maoist thinking abandons the idea of a ‘moment’ of revolution and begins to think about revolutionizing the system as a long historical process, one the proceeds in incremental steps. If the long-term outcome and resolution of global capitalism’s contradictions is the emergence of a socialist world-state, then it would seem that the development of the SysAdmin would be a strong step in that direction. So, that was what I was trying to convey with Marx and Barnett.
Stephen,
Thanks for the kind reply!
I do not understand what is meant by contradiction, as the economic, cultural, ideational, etc., meanings of the term don’t seem like they can be the same. Perhaps it is just a hold-over from the thesis-antithesis-synthesis cyclce of the Hegelians? I don’t know.
I would disagree with the term “exploitation.” It is a relic of the labor theory of value — the idea that the market price of a product is equal to the sum of the labor that went into it. The explanation you gave is an echo of this — the worker adds value to a product, in other words, at every step in production, the raw material has value equal to the sum of the labor required to produce it, and subsequent to the step, the value of the latest work is added to it.
This may have been a justifiable assumption when Marx began writing, but it is completely destroyed by the the foundation of modern economics, marginal price = marginal utility. “Their share” is not the value added by the worker — rather, the marginal price of a unit of labor or a unit of capital is the marginal utility of that unit of labor or capital. Marxist economics completely collapses when marginal utility is considered.
Very interesting thoughts! Thanks for sharing!
[...] Neomarxism and Thomas Barnett The point of all this is not that Barnett is a Neomarxist. . However, his grand strategy is consistent with the long-term rise and demise of the world-capitalist system. Neomarxists don’t believe that capitalism will end in a grand moment of revolution, but through a process of incremental steps in which capitalism is tamed by global political organization. Thus, the long-term outcome for Neomarxists is the emergence of a democratic world-state, one that can regulate global capitalism according to the collective action of all of humanity. [...]
For starters, I’m an anti-imperialist, and Marxists have usually been really good about being anti-Imperialists, except for when the Soviet Union was manifestly acting imperialistically.
I’ve read most of Marx, some Engels, some Lenin, even some Stalin. To call Barnett a Marxist strikes me as very odd. He, like you perhaps, is an imperialist. It has been done in the name of the gods, tradition(Khan), empire(Britain), liberation(Napoleon) and many other reasons, Barnett wants to expand Capitalism.
By the way, I’m no slouch at 16th century history, and I’ve simply never heard anyone call the Netherlands the hegemon of that age. Simple put, France and Spain called the shots for most of that century. Sure, the “Dutch” bankers loaned the King of Spain a lot of loot, and when France and Spain defaulted in 1557 they had to stop their war, but that never made the Netherlands the hegemon, after all, until 1568, it was the Spanish Netherlands, part of Spain, and so, if anything, you’d be talking about Spanish hegemony, which would be somewhat accurate, except they could never really take France, so that would mean it was more like the more recent cold war, a map with two major powers and alliances. Then, from 1568-1648, the Netherlands was fighting a civil war, the Eighty Years War. How could a hegemon be in a nearly non-stop civil war?
I’m not going to tell you again, Barnett is a dangerous man, and I don’t mean dangerous like Ghenghis Khan, more like a bus driver wearing sunglasses and blinders and who is trying to see how fast the bus will go.
Joshua,
Thank you for the comment. I want to be clear that I am not calling Barnett a Marxist or a Neomarxist. Instead, I merely want to contextualize his policy recommendations with a Hegelian-Marxist view of history. Yes, Barnett wants to expand capitalism, and in this Barnett’s vision of warfare itself has a place in the context of historical materialism: namely, it is a method by which the capitalist system can correct its own contradictions. These take the form of instability and insurgency, partly borne from the poverty produced by capitalism. However, Marxism tells us that any such ‘fix’ to the the problems of capitalism will eventually produce their own contradictions, and over time these contradictions will undermine and destroy capitalism. As an ‘imperial’ solution, what Barnett is advocating will ultimately lead to the reproduction of strong nation-states that are institutionally capable of regulating capitalism in their borders. More importantly, these states can engage in collective action to regulate capitalism at the global level. This would ultimately be the beginning of capitalism’s slow death, as capital could no longer have any ungovernable parts of the world economy to which it could find refuge and produce surplus-value greater than more regulated parts of the economy. Again, the capitalist system’s attempt to solve its own problems lead to its own destruction, or less dramatically, regulation on a global scale. Barnett is likely well-versed in political theory and IR, so I’m willing to bet he is aware of these Marxist implications of his theory. In this sense, Barnett is ‘dangerous’ only in relation to the long-term viability of capitalism and the integration of decision-making with regard to political economy.
As for the Netherlands as a hegemon, I recognize that the history of the United Provinces invites questions as its world-historical position. However, Netherlands qualifies as the first capitalist hegemon because of role within the development of global capitalism, and less so with regard to its pure military power. Although the military hegemon at this time was Spain, who was persistently at war with the Netherlands, Amsterdam retains its economic position as the world-capitalist metropole, leading it to experience a Golden Age characterized by colonial trade. Spain was a capitalist hegemon for only a short period after Charles V’s bid for world-empire and his division of the Hapsburg empire, and their hegemony would cede to the Dutch because of the insurgency. Thus, the civil war was part of the Netherlands rise and Spain’s fall.
Stephen,
You may or may not already know, but there is some conspiracy afoot. I do not come to your website often, but, no matter what other websites I visit, or how often, yours remains near the top of my location bar. I am not sure why.
I got to go to a great, small college, where, although irrelevant to our current discussion, it might be pointed out that all of the humanities staff were some form or other of Marxists. Only one school, by the way, of the main three I learned about then, believed the idea you are presenting exactly. Another believed that technological change would make so many workers redundant that they’d have to rise up.
Anyway, at this wonderful little school, I was good friends with the entire coterie of “punks” that we had. One told me something that sounds exactly like what you are saying today… “A real communist would vote Republican, to hasten the revolution.” I’m sure he didn’t use the word hasten, but the rest is right.
There are many problems here, but I want to deal with two. The first is the question of the unknowability of the future, combined with past history, the second is the moral question.
Even assuming a coherent global capitalist system begins crumbling over well-theorized internal contradictions, there’s no guarantee anything better will replace it. In fact, more than likely, some sort of military government would replace it. That’s usually what happens, because everyone is under the impression that everything can be fixed up with a simple solution if only someone would do it, and usually only the military is in that position. Left or Right, a dictator is a dictator is a bloody red dictator.
Then there is the simple question… how much evil are you willing to allow to happen to the members of your species in the hope that in the future this will all, somehow, be fixed? I should backtrack a little, since I know you aren’t in charge of anything (however, see conspiracy theory above, who knows?) but, really. I have a great life, I’m not quite an elite, but, apparently, I can chat for hours each day, in earshot of my boss, about things like extra-solar planets, the Hohenstaufens, this or that coup of the day, anything. That means I have the utmost in job security (because I’m so damn good at what I do it would make a nun’s eyes bleed? Not quite that good).
We happen to enjoy living under a government which can perform self-corrections. The Constitution is amendable, the laws are mutable. It is a regrettable fact that the press is inherently plutocratic and, effectively, against us all (if their motive is their own profit, then their motive is in direct conflict with that of everyone else), which means that recent changes are moved by changes in election results which are shit-besmirched, but that’s happened before, and will likely happen again (someday a President _worse_ than George Walker Bush will be elected!). If the system will, admittedly begrudginly, be willing to change itself, we never need callously let people suffer in the short term and wait for a revolution after, a revolution whose course we can neither predict nor control.
If the current system is infinitely amendable, the ultimate in systemic freedom, why do you think we need a revolution?
By the way, I never said Spain was the capitalist hegemon. Although, it must be pointed out, that silver imports (it was always silver, not gold) from the New World into the coffers of the Cortes peaked around 1600, and had been increasing for decades. This means that Spain’s role in the world of feudal coinage wasn’t really ever surpassed by the Netherlands. Compare the loans each year made out of Amsterdam/Antwerp/Bruges/Wherever, I’m sure it was less that year than the output of the mines of the Americas.
Change “Only one school” to “Only one of the schools of Marxist critiques of capitalism” I learned about. I remember one was called “Social Structure and/of Accumulation.” for example.
Joshua,
Before I respond to your two points, let me clarify that I am not a Republican, nor would I vote Republican to speed up the Revolution. This would assume that Republicans (or at least some faction within the Republican party, I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush) would screw everything up and sharpen the contradictions of capitalism. I voted for Obama and not McCain for proactive solutions and not knee-jerk ones, which effectively define almost every American policy decision in between Sept. 11 and last year’s financial crisis.
Regarding the first point about the unknown of the future, I fully concede that the eventual formation of a world state could lead to a dictatorship, or at least happen because of a military dictatorship. In my head I’m trying to think about situations that would predicate such an event, but again, its completely unknown. So let me just say it is a dangerous possibility.
Regarding the moral question about waiting for the revolution, this is an important point. If the system is capable of change and self-corrections, then why not be the agent of change now? I fully agree with this sentiment and would characterize it as a Bolshevik tendency.
However, some sense of Menshevik moderation is also needed, especially to prevent revolutionary agents from overplaying their hand given the changing configuration of political forces. Yes, we shouldn’t wait to further communism, yet if we act too soon and at the wrong moments, we will only set the cause backwards. David Harvey makes this point in his talk at Marxism 2009 (see link below): there are only certain moments when the configuration of institutions and contradictions permits real action that can change things, in a dramatic sense. These are the events that eventually propel history forward ‘so to speak’ towards an eventual (hopefully) democratic world state. While Harvey is speaking to revolutionaries, I also think that the importance of such events on the path towards a world state extends beyond them, and even mainstream policy makers will participate in such events for their own short-term instrumental goals, unrelated to world state formation. For example, Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin worked together to prevent the emergence of a Nazi world-empire. Today, we will see Obama escalate the Afghan war, thereby forcing the US government to reconfigure its bureaucracy to maximize its capacity for state-building.
Yes, people will suffer in the mean time, and we should do everything possible to mitigate their suffering. I don’t mean this as simply a consolidation prize or something of second-order importance. But, we should also recognize how the failures of the system which produce suffering also constitute its possibilities for change. What is required, then, is to draw attention to those instances of suffering. That act of mobilization itself is revolutionary and should also be pursued.
“The Fabian Society is a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary means.” –wikipedia
They beat the Mensheviks to the punch by a couple decades (1884 vs 1903).