National Capitalisms and Collective Imperialism

Capitalism cannot simply be reduced to a sum of capitalist companies in exist­ence. Conventional economics places emphasis on the functions of markets while abandoning the global political economy, and in doing so, systematically distorts reality, only providing a misleading picture that is ultimately incorrect.

Capitalism is an historic and a social reality (and not only economic) that ought to be studied by examining a collection of capitalist societies (rather than a collection of capitalist economies, and especially not a collection of capitalist firms).

When analysing these national capitalisms, today, as in the past, the empha­sis within research should not neglect to examine the realities presented to us by capitalist corporations. However, the research must go much deeper than that and examine: (1) the nature of social formations; (2) how the bourgeoisie (the domi­nant capitalist class) corresponds with these social formations; and (3) the role of the state responsible for organising the political set-up of these social formations.

I have always claimed—and I stand by this position—that the social forma­tions of central capitalism create autocentric and integrated production systems, even if they are internationally open, or even aggressively open. The concept of an autocentric system is in itself rather complex and links together several different elements: (1) technical interdependence between the various branches of produc­tion (as shown on input-output tables); (2) methods for managing the conflicting relationship between capital and labour; (3) links relating the dominant monopo­lies to the other branches of production submitted to the first and integrated within the reproduction of capital (since the end of the twentieth century), or integrated within capitalism; (4) methods for managing money as a means for putting over­all capital interests before the conflicting interests of the individual capitalist; and (5) the nature of the (aggressive) opening of the economy to globalisation and the methods for managing the asymmetric transnationalisation which accompanies it.

Clearly this type of holistic analysis—specific to the political economy (I pre­fer to say ‘specific to historical materialism’)—does not give us a one-size-fits-all explanation.

From this point of view the indicator chosen by Carroll to represent the exchanged representations between boards of directors is incapable of providing answers for any of the questions if it is taken alone. It does not allow us to say that emerging transnational capitalism replaces national capitalism—or that it submits them to its logic—nor does it permit us to believe the contrary—that national capi­talisms are determinant in the shaping of transnationalisation. It doesn’t explain whether a ‘transnational capitalist class’ is emerging or not.

There can be no question here of developing the empirical arguments (the emphasis being on ‘empirical’) that we would need to collate and analyse in order to advance with answering the six questions put forward just now. A great deal of what I have written over the course of the last 50 years has gone towards my mod­est contribution to responding to these questions. However, this type of contribution is sadly becoming more and more rare, the repercussions of placing the ‘markets’ at the centre of our focus being fatal for a realist analysis and critique of capitalism.

Sklair is aware of the impossibility of drawing a conclusion on the emergence of a ‘post-national’ capitalism. He writes, ‘we should speak of a transnational cap­italist class only if there are structural conditions that reproduces a transnational corporate community independent of its national home base’ (Carroll: 19). And yet these ‘structural conditions’ are far from being reunited, notwithstanding transna­tionalisation, which has had the wind in its sails for 30 years.

In 1993, UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) proposed methods for measuring this transnationalisation by creating the simple and practically self-explanatory ‘transnationality index’ (TNI). This index links together three related elements: the number of foreign workers contributing to a firm’s total workers; the total volume of exports in comparison to a firm’s over­all trade; and the amount of work that is sub-contracted externally compared with the total amount of work available.

Beyond the narrow conclusions we can draw from Carroll’s recordings of the cross-representation between boards of directors, he does make important observations:

1. The economies of the global South, including emerging countries (even the most successful among them, China) have been marginalised thanks to the intensifying transnational interdependence of the global North. Carroll goes so far as to say, ‘the network seemed to present one facet of a collective imperial­ism, organised to help manage global capitalism’ (ibid, p. 55). I note here the return to my thesis concerning the emergence of collective imperialism, a term more appropriate in my opinion, than the extremely vague ‘globalisation’.

2. Transnationalisation only truly holds the interest of the economies within the North Atlantic (US, occidental Europe), whereas Japan seems only to participate very marginally in this process.

The first of these observations provokes debate as to what I perceive the collec­tive imperialism of the triad (US, Western Europe and Japan) to be.

Globalisation is an inappropriate term. Its popularity is commensurate with the violence of ideological aggression that has prohibited henceforth the utterance of ‘imperialism’. For me, the deployment of true historical capitalism has always been globalised and has always been polarised and to this end, imperialist. Thus, collective imperialism is simply an old and enduring phenomenon in a new guise.

This new form of imperialism is clearly built upon objective foundations and its character is determined by the strong transnationalisation of the leading corpo­rations.

The analysis of political convergences within the triad and the conflicts that accompanies them are outside Carroll's field of vision. I have placed it back at the centre of my analysis of the current long and systematic crisis of widespread monopoly capitalisms (I refer here to my book entitled Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?, 2010).

The national partners within the triad (and I am insistent on this point, even with respect to Europe) are quite clearly unequal.

Debates surrounding hegemony—in the Gramscian sense—and particularly the declining hegemon that is the United States, are important here. Carroll's analysis cannot simply be constrained to looking at competitive inequalities of the produc­tion systems in concern (United States, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and France etc.). It must include political, ideological and military dimensions as well.

Debates regarding the spread of financialisation and its effects are equally important. Again I refer the reader to my work on ‘The Crisis'. Financialisation is in my estimation not a product of ‘error', nor is it the product of ‘ramblings'; it demonstrates how what I call generalised monopolies must manage capital during the crisis. Nevertheless, this financialisation does conflict with the requirements for finance-management at the national level (even in Europe with the euro, as I will explain later on).

Nevertheless, transnationalisation clearly weakens the coherence of the national production systems concerned, even those of the most powerful partners. Yet it does not substitute the emergence of a coherent transnational production system (not even a trans-European one) to which national systems are forced to submit themselves to. To this end, the global system is instable and will become increas­ingly so, as remarked in passing by Carroll.

Japan's position within the triad seems somewhat marginal if we are to believe Carroll's deductions. I think that there is an error of judgment here and that Carroll's choice of indicator (the cross exchanges between boards of directors) distorts reality. Japanese capitalism has never been particularly transparent and its main concern, and it is well known, is to remain its own master, even if more for show than anything else. Despite this, in other ways (including of course, political and military plans), Japan's membership in the triad of collective imperialism is in no doubt, in my mind.

Generally the frontiers of this triad seem to me to be clearly demarcated. I will return later to the boundaries within Europe. But what of Canada or Australia? These two national capitalisms are—for reasons I am unable to develop upon here—what I would label ‘exterior provinces' of the United States. Japan is in a similar position in its own way, but Mexico, to which I will return later, is not.

Due to the reasons laid out above, major conflict within the global system is divisive and in the foreseeable future it will inevitably continue to divide the ‘North' (the imperialist triad) and the ‘South' (in particular China and other emerg­ing countries).

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