overaccumulation-imperialism

Thoughts on overaccumulation-imperialism 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood"
> I'd love to see more rigorous analysis
> of just how overaccumulation is at the root of the Iraq war, and why
> the agenda seems traceable to a particular set of U.S. right-wing
> interests (closely allied with the Israeli right) rather than U.S.
> capital as a whole.

Well I don't have it, aside from a few very tentative speculative thoughts
below -- and we look to you, Brenner, plus some of the people whose short
articles were reposted last week for that kind of rigorous analysis, Doug.

I think the Monbiot simplification of Harvey was ok (except note that he
excludes Sweezy/Magdoff military Keynesianism as an explanation, since
Harvey looks more at the underlying laws of motion than the contingent
features of capitalism for his rap). But what Harvey did best in thinking
through the geographical displacement of overaccumulation crisis was
describe territorial alliance-formation in resisting/deflecting the
devalorisation of overaccumulated capital as the lynchpin to understanding
geopolitics. Apologies for resorting to jargon, but each of the concepts
needs a couple of pages of explanation so I'm just using shorthand for now.
I can lay out the deeper logic of Kapital for anyone who wants it offlist
(but best is to read the new edn of Harvey's *Limits to Capital*, Verso
1999).

By the way, I don't think we get all that much from the Hobsonian reading of
imperialism as the export of capital (which Lenin took as an important
empirical, not theoretical point); nor does the Hilferding Finance Capital
concept make so much sense (see Grossmann for the antidote), and again it
was probably merely as descriptor that Lenin emphasised this. I like the
focus by Luxemburg and Trotsky on the desperation search for new terrains of
commodification/accumulation, leaving what some have termed "articulations
of modes of production"; these are being generated all the time, in new ways
that involve superexploitation of women and the environment, it seems to me
(but I haven't seen too much on this except for some notes by Harvey used
for an LSE talk last year).

Likewise, some other distractions should be interrogated. "US capital as a
whole" isn't so useful a concept, for reasons you've regularly pointed out,
Doug. Neither at the other extreme is Poulantzian fractions theory much use,
with its excess focus on the Texas oil mafia, the military procurement
community, etc. If one goes this route, it's probably important to discuss
it in terms of *circuits* (not fractions) of capital. The model for this, it
seems to me, is the Kees van der Pijl study of *The Making of an Atlantic
Ruling Class* (Verso 1994), whose appendix is a terrific methodological
guide to consideration of how changes in profit-making in some sections of
the economy can be used to "read off" broader political processes.

"Rightwing interests" are crucial of course, and in my schema of "five
tendencies in global ideology" (Resurgent Right; Washington Consensus;
Post-WashCon; Third World Nationalism; Global Justice Movements), I sense
that we are in a crucially dangerous moment thanks to the linkage within the
Bush admin of these rightwingers with the unreconstructed neoliberal
agenda -- somewhat weakened ideologically by diversions such as US budget
deficits, steel tariffs and ag subsidies but no less strong in practical
application of bankers' remedies elsewhere. (A good article on this, by the
way, is by Aronowitz in his new coedited collection *Implicating Empire*.)

So to sum up the relationship of overaccumulation to the Iraq war, it
probably works like this. Overaccumulation has been a dilemma in the North
for roughly 30 years, notwithstanding the rise of various spatio-temporal
fixes: e.g., Third World debt, East Asian investment, shifts in the
production structure of the North as rustbelts gave way to service-sector
booms, the opening of many new financial-speculative markets, the
intensification of trade and foreign investment, and the dot.com boom which
allowed some bogus reinvestment but basically represented a desperate search
for computer-aided relative surplus value. In all of this, the working class
was reconstituted in important ways (see Harman's analysis in Int'l
Socialism a couple of issues ago for the numbers) and class struggle
heightened thanks to the recombination of New Right state rulers and
class-war capitalists -- mainly of a labour-intensive sort in the US, UK,
Germany, etc. Aside from workers gaining access to financial markets to ease
their woes (consumer-credit Keynesianism), this was no real solution for it
mainly represented the search for absolute surplus value -- with, e.g., US
workers forced to take a 20% hit on their direct wage and probably more on
their social wage from mid-1970s-mid-90s.

Hence, at the end of the day, all these sorts of crisis-displacement
mechanisms and countervailing tendencies to falling profits didn't really
restructure relations of production -- comparable, say, to the last two
rounds in the 1880s-90s and 1940s-50s. So the fake rise in US corporate
profits at the end of the 1990s and the financial boom reflected desperation
not strength (I know you don't buy this Doug but let's debate it sometime --
I more or less like Brenner's new book on this theme). In short, putting it
all together, the crisis displacement process simply exacerbated
uneven/combined development, leaving persistent overaccumulation in some key
circuits of capital (financial, heavy industrial, consumer-goods retail,
real estate, etc), and paving the way for a new round of strong-man
politicians who favour military adventures both as distractions and as
potential geopolitical solutions to deep-seated economic problems.

Hence, the period ahead presents itself as an opportunity for the
"devalorisation" (destruction) of overaccumulated capital -- best described
in mainstream terms as the controlled management of a major economic
slump -- via intensified US military, productive-capitalist, financial and
commercial hegemony. The last time a major devalorisation occurred --
WWII -- it entailed the massive war-related pulverisation of "economic
deadwood" -- European and Japanese -- associated with the generalised 1930s
overaccumulation problem. In coming weeks/months, maybe if oil prices climb
to $40/50 or higher a barrel temporarily, the same result will occur, given
the overall shakiness of the G8 economies.

To that end, US imperial interests are, pretty obviously, to remain at the
front of the queue in several ways: a) with primary access to the long-term
oil reserves of the Gulf; b) with a strengthening of the kind of US
financial clout that was witnessed in the devalorisation of Korean capital
in 1998, whereby Wall Street cleaned up in the bargain-basement sales of
firms; c) US productive capital gets a respite from int'l competition
(devastated by the coming economic problems especially in Japan/Europe); d)
the high-tech wing of US military-related capital gets to use the next
generation of toys and to intimidate the hell out of any cheeky Third World
or European states, at a time when the potential for such cheekiness -- from
Lula to Gaddafy to Chirac -- is on the rise. But there's lots left out here
I haven't worked through: probably the City of London and British
military-related capital see their interests as more aligned to their US
brethren than to Europe which *helps* explain Blair's poodle routine.
Probably the coming eviction of French capital (especially oil) from Iraq
helps explain the territorial-defensive posture Chirac has taken, and his
Africa gambits the last few days and weeks reflect a search for a
geopolitical re-alignment favourable to French interests. But this may be
way too reductionist, I don't know.

However, in sum, the overaccumulation problem -- and the
territorial-defensive interests that are lining up in diverse ways -- gets
translated into geopolitical blocs and into the need for devalorisation in a
controlled manner. The prevailing balance of forces in global capital
reflects the power of US imperialism in this way: a general convergence of
interests between Wall Street/City capital -- i.e., US/Brit financial
circuits of capital, plus "free-trade" commercial capital and
export-oriented productive capital -- and the oil/military circuits in
merging WashCon and ResurgentRight agendas. Devalorisation of global
overaccumulation in a manner conducive to US hegemony *might* include
visiting short-term oil price increases on the US' competitors, especially
since the EU powers (France, Germany, Belgium) aren't with the programme
(war), and since Japan hasn't found a way to sort out its effective demand
shortfalls by itself.

The key contradictions are, as ever, the US balance of payments deficit and
the overall rising financial bubble. That probably means the contradictions
will heighten because the financial circuits will insist on a relatively
strong dollar but that in turn makes US producers ever more vulnerable, and
in need of those quotas/tariffs that Washington prohibits anywhere else...
And if there is enough pressure from the global left both against the war
and in terms of resistance to ongoing domination by the WB/IMF/WTO in the
Third World -- i.e., more Feb 15s and more Argentinas -- then a slightly
less tilted playing field for the devalorisation of overaccumulation could
leave those US achilles heels naked for other rising power blocs to trip up
in the next 5 years or so.

Unfortunately, the country that was once (1994-2002) best positioned to lead
a new international power bloc of progressive resistance -- South Africa --
has suffered from these mediocre characters in Pretoria who remain prone to
kissing Washington's ass (except nowadays when it's a bit easier -- and for
domestic reasons increasingly important -- to Talk Left on the war). So we
have to look, perhaps, to Brazil/Venezuela/Ecuador and maybe soon Uruguay.
China, India, Russia and South Korea remain crucial wild cards. So do the
Muslim countries, and whether the Israeli rightwing agenda of mass
Palestinian removals gets going will have a major impact, of course. The
Global Justice Movements have got to keep working overtime to weaken the
power centres in global/local capital cities and set up prefigurative
post-neoliberal economic arrangements through well-known, increasingly
popular decommodification strategies.

This is just Sunday AM brainstorming after too much Bvumba coffee, so don't
quote me... but do correct me...