[lbo-talk] New Imperialism or New Capitalism?

Michael Dawson MDawson at pdx.edu
Tue Dec 28 10:21:44 PST 2004



> We are great admirers of Sweezy, although we can also see his
> limitations. Sweezy did not get EVERYTHING right. The monopoly capital
> school took a giant step forward by introducing power into the analysis,
> and therefore abandoning value as a yardstick for pecuniary
> accumulation. But this approach stopped short of thinking through the
> implications of power for the very concept of CAPITAL. If you allow
> power, you cannot measure capital in terms of value or utility. And when
> you lose your basic "substance" of measurement, the entire notion of
> "production" as the quantitative basis for accumulation is gone -- along
> with all the historical "tendencies", "laws of motion", "expanded
> reproduction", "overaccumulation" etc., etc. Such theoretical collapse
> requires a new theory altogether.

Sweezy would strongly disagree with you that the division you think is there is there. Why can't you talk about capital as BOTH power and value? Power maintains a system in which money (an abstract numerical category) is accepted as the measure of value, and accumulated money directs power. But having money is not a dream. It's real. And capital represents "savings," meaning that is functions as a way of tying future investment and work to past investment and work. It's a form of counting, but it counts, albeit with serious slippage, real activities.

And, if this is true, your whole argument collapses.


> Incidentally, where did we argue that nobody foresaw the "new economy"?

In the first few pages of your paper, you treat the "new economy" as if everybody who looked at it was convinced it was a genuine structural change in the system. But Sweezyists certainly did not. Neither did or does Doug Henwood. In fact, I doubt any major Marxist observers thought so.

Treating all Marxists as "new economy" believers appears to be the basis for your whole argument. You say only your new perspective can explain the implosion of the "new economy" and current geopolitical trends. You can only say this by folding Sweezy and others into the school of "new economy" dupes.


> >Personally, I also find your presentation of Veblen to be radical
> >inadequate.


> I'm not sure what you refer to in this statement. Veblen was the first
> one to see power ("sabotage") as a basis for understanding capital.

Not true! Marx was the first one. And my objection to your treatment of Veblen is that you try to pass him off as somebody who claimed you could only understand the system by means of some ultra-abstract "overall" appreciation of capital. In reality, Veblen viewed the relations of capitalism as but a "covert regime" for applying to age-old means of class coercion -- "force and fraud."


> >Veblen and Sweezy retain immense explanatory power for the present day.
> Why
> >do you deny this?
> >
> >
> We don't deny that at all. On the contrary. A note: Sweezy adopted
> Veblen's insight into power, but missed entirely his suggestion that
> capital itself should be thought in terms of power.

Well, by zooming past the explanatory power they have, you deny it. And you also obscure the fact that you are very, very close to claiming to have invented the idea that capital is power. That idea goes back farther than Marx. Adam Smith knew capital is power. He just thought it was mostly just power. Marx disagreed.



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