Marxian Political Economy
Marx
was a contemporary of Mill, but it is not clear that the latter had ever heard of the former or read his work (Hunt
2002, p. 204). Marx
, on the other hand, thought of himself as a rival of Mill in that he was offering a radical revision of classical political economy to counterpoise Mill’s bourgeois liberalism (Deane
1978). The men did have much in common intellectually, however. From classical political economy, both Marx
and Mill imported the labour theory of value, belief in the falling rate of profit in capitalist industry, ideas about technologically induced unemployment, and the tendency to begin the analysis of economy with the assumption of three groups: landlords, capitalists (bourgeoisie), and labourers (proletariat). Marx
, like all the classical political economists, was a holistic social scientist of the economy, as explained by Deane (
1978),
The salient characteristic that Marx shared with Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and JS Mill and which distinguished him from Ricardo … was that he was a philosopher first and an economist second—a social scientist rather than a ‘pure’ economist. For Marx, political economy was merely one branch … in the study of human social behaviour. (p. 126)
Perhaps, then, it is more useful to note the strong division between Marx
and the neoclassical economists that would appear after his death, than to overly emphasize a schism between him and the classical political economists. The ahistorical, reductionist, methodological individualism of the neoclassical economists seems much more at odds with Marxian method than is the historically, politically, and ethically infused method of the political economists.
Despite his aversion to Ricardian economic reductionism, the theoretical cornerstone of Marx’s work—the labour theory of value—was imported from Ricardo. He then mixed this theory of value with the Hegelian concept that history is propelled by conflict. The result was a materialist concept of history. Whereas Hegel’s dialectic posited that social change stemmed from a conflict over ideas as the world was apprehended in different ways, Marx created a dialectic method that assumed the opposite—that history is driven by inherent conflict within the mode of material production, and that ideas emerge essentially as reflections of this material arrangement.
For Marx
, “development” in Europe had been a process of historical change that was rooted in the social mode of production. In
The German Ideology (
2001), he argued that history passed through a number of phases. The first was a tribal phase—where production and consumption were based on kinship relationships and “the natural division of labour existing in the family” (p. 44). Population growth, however, intensified the aggregate “growth of wants,” providing an impulse for increased trade and the establishment of a system of slavery (p. 44). Complexity, class divisions, conquest, slavery, and serfdom were intensified as European societies passed through periods of “primitive communism” and feudalism (pp. 44–46). The seeds for the transition to capitalism were planted in the feudal period—and this transition was largely made possible by the exploitation of colonial territories and the people that inhabited them. As Marx
expressed in
Das Kapital:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production
. (Marx
1867/1961, p. 751)
The bulk of the wealth expropriated through colonization was amassed by a merchant class. This process of amassing private wealth, along with the creation of a class of landless labourers, was called by Marx
, the process of “primitive accumulation
” (Marx
1867/1961, Part VIII). The warlike feudal aristocracy became increasingly indebted to the merchant class, and, as a result, the latter experienced increased political power. This, according to Marx
, culminated in multiple revolutions that sought to replace the feudal system with one based on private property during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The resultant privatization of feudal lands required the displacement of serfs who had no means left for survival beyond the sale of their own labour power—serfs, then, were transformed into a class of landless labourers:
The spoliation of the Church’s property, the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the robbery of common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into private property under the circumstance of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalist agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a “free” … proletariat
. (Marx
1867/1961, pp. 732–733)
For Marx
, the existence of this landless labour force, the sanctification of private property, the accumulation of wealth from colonial pillage, and the productive technological innovations of the industrial revolution were the necessary preconditions for the existence of a capitalist society. Due largely to his adoption of the labour theory of value, however, Marx
predicted that this system would end in a culmination of repeated crises that were rooted in its own internal contradictions. The culmination of these crises would see the marginalized, impoverished, and numerous proletariat expropriate capitalist industry, thus ushering in an era of socialism which would eventually transform itself into communism
(Marx
1867/1961, Part VIII).
Starkly brandishing the enlightenment positivism that he, along with his contemporaries, was immersed in, Marx
explained of his major contribution,
Das Kapital, “it is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society” (p. 10). This method is evident in the teleology presented earlier. Marx’s
positivism did not, however, begin with an unqualified assumption about human nature similar to that which is embodied in homo economicus. Quite the reverse, he assumed that human activity was conditioned extensively by the material environment in which he existed, and that this material environment resulted from the technological method with which society produced the goods that it consumed. Deane (
1978) explains regarding the seeming veracious greed of the capitalist; in the Marxian model, “accumulation is stimulated not by an innate psychological propensity on part of entrepreneurs, but by the social pressures of competitive society” (139). As Marx
argued, the capitalist “shares with the miser the passion for wealth. But that which in the miser is a mere idiosyncrasy, is in the capitalist the effect of the social mechanism of which he is but one of the wheels” (
1867/1961, pp. 236). Furthermore, regarding both the working class and the capitalist class, Marx
and Engels assert in
The Communist Manifesto (
1848/1965) that the capitalist system made possible,
no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. (p. 15)
For Marx
, then, self-interested behaviour was a cultural expression of capitalist relations of production.
Culture entered Marx’s
theory in two additional but interrelated ways—through the concept of ideology and the concept of fetishism. For
Marx (
1846/1968), ideology represented,
ideas which increasingly take on the form of universality. For each new class which puts itself on the place of the ruling class before it is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to present its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and present them as the only rational, universally valid ones. (chpt 1A, para. 21)
Which ideas would become dominant in such a way depended entirely on the social structure of production in a given society. Since, “the class which has the means of mental production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production,” it follows that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (ibid., para. 1). In such a way, Marx
argued, the sanctity of private property, and liberal values in general, became part of the “hegemony of the spirit” that existed in capitalist society. These ideas were naturalized—rendered unquestionable—even though they so obviously (for Marx
) benefitted only one class at the expense of another (ibid., para. 25). Ideology, then, was an image of society that was produced by the powerful and internalized by all (except for critical thinkers such as Marx
himself apparently). It presented a mythical conception of reality that obscured to the proletariat the true nature of the exploitation that it was suffering, and called upon the working class to act voluntarily in the interest of the bourgeoisie and therefore against its own interest. Escape from this mystical snare was not possible through thought, due to Marx’s
assumption that it was the economic base that dictated through itself. The end of this delusion would be assured, however, as the contradiction in the material relations of production yielded the system’s inevitable collapse
(Marx
1867/1961).
Marx’s
concept of fetishism is also important if we are to explore the nature of culture in development theory. The period of high capitalist development that is to precede socialism, as we have noted, is typified in Marxian thought by an unprecedented capacity for the industrial production of commodities. These commodities, however, take on a mystical form, according to Marx
, when they enter the sphere of exchange. Regarding the commodity:
So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it … It is clear as noon-day that, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him … But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It no longer stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities. (Qtd in Heilbroner
1999, p. 165)
Upon encountering a commodity, a consumer is estranged from any knowledge of the nature of its production, and importantly, from the labour involved in its creation. Since Marx
assumes all use value to be the measure of the labour used up in a commodity’s production, it follows that the consumer has no means with which to judge the true value of the good. The commodity, then, has no obvious relation to the materiality of its production and becomes suspended in a relative system in which its value becomes arbitrarily designated. The exchange value which emerges is a “fetish”—a phantasm that is disconnected from the tangible reality of use value. Furthermore, since humans in a capitalist society come to relate to one another more and more solely through the purchase of commodities, they increasingly live life in relation to the sphere of exchange, with little understanding of the realm of production. As a result, they come to see their existence falsely as a competition with others for a limited supply of goods
(Marx
1867/1961, Chpt. 1, Sct. 4).
To summarize Marx’s
ideas as they relate to our present topic, he sees development as a unidirectional ascent from tribal society through feudal and capitalist epochs, finally to socialism and then to communism. All this movement is propelled by contradiction inherent in each stage. This transition is typified, at least until the socialist period, with the expansion of industrial output, but the change to capitalism that made this possible in Europe was predicated on the exploitation of colonized territories and peoples. Culture appears in Marx’s
thought as a form of “false consciousness,” to use Engels’ term (qtd in Eagleton
1991, p. 89). It is a naturalized worldview that supports the maintenance of a system of exploitation, it is a natural-seeming selfish form of action that is in fact the result of the conditioning of a system of production, and finally it is an imaginary relation to commodities which serves to obscure their true values of commodities. Culture, in Marx’s
thought, appears to us either as a mere reflection of an underlying power relation which compels humans to act against their own interests, or as a fanciful cloak which obscures from us a view of the hard reality of material production.
Marxian Theories of Imperialism
In
The Communist Manifesto,
Gundrisse, and
Capital, Marx
noted the tendency for capitalist nations to expand colonial territories in search of cheaper resources and to relieve negative pressures related to overproduction of commodities, through the establishment of new markets. This thesis was expanded upon later by Marxist scholars—most notably Hobson, Luxemburg, and Lenin. Marx
had described the vital role that early colonialism played in providing the means of “primitive accumulation” that made European capitalism possible in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early 8eighteenth centuries. Hunt (
2002) explains, however, that this period was followed with a cooling of the drive to conquest as capitalist systems became entrenched and increasingly concentrated in the colonial centres themselves. In the final third of the nineteenth century, however, all of that changed as Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Italy, and the United States embarked on intense and violent colonial expansion throughout Africa and Asia, and the Americas.
It was within this context that perhaps the three most notable Marxian thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century published their work on imperialism. The theories of Hobson, Luxemburg, and Lenin are remarkably similar in most respects.
1 All claimed that the pressure for colonial expansion was a symptom of the contradictions inherent in the capitalism system. Hobson (
1965), like Keynes, argued that the extreme concentration of wealth that had occurred in capitalist Europe and North America created an unstable economic situation. He argued that poor workers did not have enough wealth to purchase the commodities that were produced, and, since the wealthy could not possibly spend all of their huge earnings, there was at once a glut of consumer goods on European markets and excess capital available for investment. Hobson argued that this pressure led directly to colonialism:
Everywhere appear excessive powers of production, excessive capital in search of investment. It is admitted by all businessmen that growth of the powers of production in their country exceeds the growth in consumption, that more goods can be produced than can be sold for profit, and that more capital exists than can find remunerative investment. (p. 81)
As a result, Luxemburg (
1972) adds, “capitalism needs … a market for its surplus value, a source of supply for its means of production and … a reservoir of labour power for its wage system” (pp. 368–369). Colonial expansion serves this purpose, but it is necessarily a culturally and materially destructive action as Luxemburg explains:
Capital is faced with difficulties because vast tracts of the globe’s surface are in the possession of social organizations that have no desire for commodity exchange or cannot, because of the entire social structure and the forms of ownership, offer for sale the productive forces in which capital is primarily interested.… Since the primitive associations of the natives are the strongest protection for their social organizations and for their material bases for existence, capital must begin by planning for the systematic destruction and annihilation of all non-capitalist social units which obstruct its development. (pp. 370–371)
Wealthy capitalists, argues Hobson (
1965), whose economic power and political influence put them “in a unique position to manipulate the policy of nations” (p. 53), pressure imperial governments to “create new public debts, float new companies, and to cause constant considerable fluctuations of values” (p. 53), and, finally, to generate “an enthusiasm for expansion” (p. 59). Lenin (
1967), demonizing the banking industry primarily in this respect, agrees, writing that,
As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilized not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap. (p. 724)
Thus, according to Hobson, Luxemburg, and Lenin, capitalism breeds violent colonial expansion, and this, in turn, incites cultural destruction.
Gramsci
Another important expansion on Marxian thought was introduced by Gramsci (
1957). As we discussed earlier, Marx
had assumed that the cultural beliefs, ideas, and moors in a society were more or less a mere reflection of the power structures in its economic base. Ideology, in this perception, served only the dominant class in the maintenance of its power. Gramsci certainly agreed that this ideological hegemony tended to serve the maintenance of existing structural inequalities, but accorded a degree of autonomy to the world of ideas vis-à-vis the economic base. Ideological dominance, according to Gramsci, was often necessary for a dominant class to maintain its power. The ideological realm could, then, become a field in which the subaltern could resist its own marginalization. Despite the immense power the “dominant class” has in “maintaining, defending and developing the theoretical or ideological ‘front’,” Gramsci (
1985) argued, an innovative subaltern group could counteract this with its own ideological production via the creation of,
The spirit of scission, in other words the progressive acquisition of the consciousness of its own historical personality, a spirit of scission that must aim to spread itself from the protagonist class to the classes that are its potential allies—all this requires a complex ideological labour. (p. 389)
Gramsci’s formulation is important because it introduces for us the space of “civil society”—a third sector that is interwoven with the state and the economy. Ideology and culture are the same things for Gramsci; these exist in this third sector, and so do ideological or cultural resistance. Resistance in the third sector would become central to many conflict-conscious concepts of development that would emerge later in the twentieth century.
Conclusion
It was the purpose of Chaps.
2 and
3 to explore the rich intellectual traditions that underlie the post-WWII development thinking, which will be discussed in the next two chapters. Particular attention was paid to the ways in which the concepts of culture and development appeared in these traditions. This pre-WWII thought was divided into four major groups for the purpose of this exposition: classical political economy, neoclassical economics
, (the topic of Chap.
2), critical political economy, and sociological approaches (the topic of the current chapter). For the classical political economists, development clearly implied an increase in material wealth, but this was a quest that was to be tempered with ethics, and the knowledge that social conflict may emerge from divergent class interests. Human behaviour was depicted as atomistic and self-interested in the economic realm, but this was realized to be an abstraction from the cultural situation of human values, and this cultural situation was actively explored by the classical political economists themselves.
The marginal revolution, Marx’s
critique, and the inception of the science of sociology emerged at approximately the same time. This may be viewed as the splitting of the older holistic study of political economy into three different traditions. To the neoclassical economists went the classical political economist’s appreciation for the market and the tendency to sever economic action from culture and ethics. To the Marxists went the labour theory of value and the social conflict that was implied. To the sociologists went the larger questions of the ways in which social interaction and cultural situation formed human values and economic action. All inherited the concept that human societies progress as they gain material wealth through technological innovation (although this was qualified substantially by the institutionalists). Not to do so was, for all, to be stuck in a “barbarian,” “primal,” or “traditional” form of existence. In this form of society, it was assumed humans were subject to the whims of nature instead of dominating it to their own ends. Such a life had been described to all of these thinkers by one of their most notable intellectual forbearers, Thomas Hobbes (
1651), as being “nasty, brutish and short” (p. 52). There is little wonder, then, that each if the theorists discussed in Chaps.
2 and
3 tacitly or explicitly defined progress as any movement away from this condition. As we will see in the next chapter, this definition will be refined substantially by the post-WWII development theorists.