Kees Van Der Pijl

The resurgence of German capital in Europe: EU integration and the restructuring of Atlantic networks of interlocking directorates after 1991

ABSTRACT European integration is interpreted in this paper as the route by which (West) Germany, profiting from close ties with the English-speaking West, was able to restore its full sovereignty and economic pre-eminence in Europe. Yet in shaping the actual integration process, it was France which played the key role. Most of the landmark steps towards the current EU were French proposals to pre-empt Anglophone–German collusion; creating European structures in which a resurgence of Germany (politically and economically) was made subject to permanent negotiation. German unification in 1991 removed the one reason why successive governments of the Federal Republic had gone along with this. Paradoxically, sovereign Germany today finds itself bound by the dense networks of consultation and decision-making which make the EU unique in the field of regional integration. The paper shows that between 1992 and 2005, German capital has moved to the centre of the network of corporate interlocks in the North Atlantic area. This helps to explain why in the post-1991, post-Soviet era of neoliberal, finance-driven globalisation, Germany is increasingly ‘speaking for Europe’, as its corporations have become nodal points in the communication structures through which the responses to the challenges facing the EU and the West at large are being shaped.

Two faces of the transnational cadre under neo-liberalism

This article argues that the integration of capitalist society at both national and international levels is coming about as a result of two processes of the ‘socialization of labour’ — market socialization and planned socialization. All relations of power in contemporary society are established through these two forms of social cohesion in combination, one operating blindly, the other involving conscious management and control. Politics is the process of mediating between them, both nationally and internationally. In articulating the sphere of actual control with the uncertainties of the market, politicians tend to rely on implicit frameworks of rule, or concepts of control, in which a particular national/international balance of what is managed and what is left to the market is laid down for a longer period. In the 20th century, a new class of managerial cadre emerged in between the property-owning capitalist class and the working class; displacing an older middle class of state- or self-employed notables. This new cadre is entrusted with managerial tasks and tends to favour non-market solutions over market solutions even when employed to foster the latter. While the current neo-liberal concept of control apparently shifts the balance towards transnational market socialization compared to the preceding corporate liberalism with its managerial emphasis, non-market forms of socialization are therefore continuing to develop even under neo-liberal globalization. Although the world faces a crisis of the exhaustion of society and nature, the potential for re-regulation and manageability does exist and can be identified by reference to this cadre.

Is the East Still Red? The Contender State and Class Struggles in China

Contemporary China here is understood as a ‘contender state’ resisting subordination to the liberal West. Previous contenders, from France, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, all have had to submit to the West in the end, but the Chinese state class, by allowing a controlled capitalist development to energise its society and financing the US deficit from the proceeds of export-oriented industrialisation, has so far succeeded in neutralising Western aggressiveness. The article makes the case for continuing to see China as a distinct economy that, far from being the miracle saviour of a capitalism in crisis, may well veer back to a state-socialist line of development. The main grounds for such a turn are the continuing contender role and the incomplete subordination to capital, with labour locked in so-called ‘formal subsumption’ and the persistence of state control even as planning has withered. Caught between a strong state and an increasingly militant working class, the (semi-)private bourgeoisie afte...Contemporary China here is understood as a ‘contender state’ resisting subordination to the liberal West. Previous contenders, from France, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, all have had to submit to the West in the end, but the Chinese state class, by allowing a controlled capitalist development to energise its society and financing the US deficit from the proceeds of export-oriented industrialisation, has so far succeeded in neutralising Western aggressiveness. The article makes the case for continuing to see China as a distinct economy that, far from being the miracle saviour of a capitalism in crisis, may well veer back to a state-socialist line of development. The main grounds for such a turn are the continuing contender role and the incomplete subordination to capital, with labour locked in so-called ‘formal subsumption’ and the persistence of state control even as planning has withered. Caught between a strong state and an increasingly militant working class, the (semi-)private bourgeoisie after the Tiananmen repression of 1989 has apparently lost its interest in further liberalisation. A la China contemporánea se la ve hoy como un ‘estado contendiente’ que se resiste a la subordinación del occidente liberal. Los contendientes anteriores como Francia, Alemania, Japón y la Unión Soviética, finalmente tuvieron que someterse todos al occidente, pero la clase estatal de la China ha logrado tener éxito en neutralizar la agresividad occidental, al permitir un desarrollo capitalista controlado, para energizar a su sociedad y financiar el déficit de E.E.U.U. con los ingresos de la industrialización orientada a la exportación. El artículo se fundamenta en seguir viendo a China como una economía distinta, que lejos de ser el milagro salvador de un capitalismo en crisis, puede más bien regresar a un desarrollo de estado de línea socialista. Los motivos principales para tal giro, es la continua función contendiente y la subordinación incompleta al capital, con el trabajo denominado ‘subordinación formal’ y la persistencia del control estatal incluso como planificación, que se ha desvanecido. La burguesía semiprivada después de la represión de Tiananmen de 1989, aparentemente ha perdido su interés en una mayor liberalización, atrapada entre un estado fuerte y una clase trabajadora militante en aumento. 当代中国在这里被理解为“竞争者国家”，抵制对自由主义西方的从属。以前的竞争者，从法国、德国到日本和苏联，最终都不得不顺从西方，但中国的国家阶级，通过允许受控的资本主义发展以加强其社会，并通过出口导向的工业化为美国的赤字提供资金，到目前为止已成功地化解了西方的攻势。本文如此立论，继续把中国视为与众不同的经济，它远非危机中的资本主义奇迹般的救世主，而是很可能回转到国家社会主义的发展路线。这一转向的主要理由，是竞争者角色的持续和对资本的不完全附属，而劳工则锁定于所谓的“正式包含”内，即使计划已消亡，但国家控制仍在持续。在强国家和日益好斗的工人阶级之间，（半）私人资产阶级在 1989年天安门事件之后显然丧失了对进一步自由化的兴趣。 현대 중국은 여기에서 리버럴한 서구에 종속되는 것을 거부하는 ‘도전 국가’로 이해된다. 프랑스에서, 독일, 일본과 소련에 이르기까지 이전의 도전자들은 결국 서구에 굴복해야 했지만, 중국 국가 계급은 사회를 활성화시키기 위해서 통제된 자본주의 발전을 허용하고 수출 지향적 산업화로 미국 적자에 재정을 조달하면서 지금까지 서구의 공세를 중화시키는데 성공하였다. 이 논문은 중국을 위기에 처한 자본주의의 기적적인 구세주가 아니라 국가사회주의의 발전으로 방향을 바꿀 독특한 경제로 바라본다. 이러한 변화의 주된 근거는 지속적인 도전자 역할과 노동의 ‘형식적 포섭’으로 인한 자본에 대한 불완전한 종속과 계획이 사라진 이후에도 계속되는 국가 통제이다. 1989년 천안문 사태 이후의 (반)사적 부르주아지는 강한 국가와 점차 전투적으로 변화고 있는 노동계급 사이에 포획되어 분명히 더 많은 자유화에 대한 관심을 잃어버렸다.

Capital and the state system: a class act

This paper is set up as a critique of Alex Callinicoss contribution, ‘Does capitalism need the state system?’ It challenges his understanding of the relationship between capitalism and the state system and the theory of imperialism, before presenting an alternative view that conceives the connection between capitalism and the state system as embodied in the formation of a transnational capitalist class holding power in an English-speaking, liberal Atlantic core or ‘heartland’, facing a series of ‘contender states’, which developed under state auspices. This constellation has to be analysed in its own right by applying the method of historical materialism to it, rather than confining that method to the analysis of capital and then bringing in state-centric International Relations. Today, the rise of China as the new contender illustrates how the combined process has evolved. The response to China comes from the larger constellation of the West and not just from the United States: the capitalist class acts to ensure the sovereignty of capital in the process.This paper is set up as a critique of Alex Callinicoss contribution, ‘Does capitalism need the state system?’ It challenges his understanding of the relationship between capitalism and the state system and the theory of imperialism, before presenting an alternative view that conceives the connection between capitalism and the state system as embodied in the formation of a transnational capitalist class holding power in an English-speaking, liberal Atlantic core or ‘heartland’, facing a series of ‘contender states’, which developed under state auspices. This constellation has to be analysed in its own right by applying the method of historical materialism to it, rather than confining that method to the analysis of capital and then bringing in state-centric International Relations. Today, the rise of China as the new contender illustrates how the combined process has evolved. The response to China comes from the larger constellation of the West and not just from the United States: the capitalist class acts...

Neoliberal Entrenchment of North Atlantic Capital. From Corporate Self-Regulation to State Capture

After the financial crisis of 2007–8, neoliberal capitalism by all appearances has entrenched instead of being displaced. Its political–economic programme or ‘comprehensive concept of control’ continues to hold society in thrall. This was different in the crisis of 1974–5 when the corporate liberalism of the postwar years and its industry-centred class compromise were beginning to be replaced by finance-led neoliberalism and a compromise with asset-owning middle classes. Under corporate liberalism, real capital accumulation was protected from the ‘rentier’/‘money-dealing’ fraction of capital associated with speculative investment; neoliberalism has allowed its resurgence. Large corporations in the first phase of the transition (‘systemic neoliberalism’) embarked on a strategy of transnational restructuring no longer dependent on 1960s-style state support. In the process, financial group formation, here measured by dense director interlocks (≥2) amongst the largest corporations in the North Atlantic economy (where this type of corporate governance obtains), was intensified. The resurgence of money-dealing capital and rentier incomes in the 1990s led to a decline in real accumulation (‘predatory neoliberalism’), and after the crisis of 2007–8, to a demise of the financial group structure of Atlantic capital as the network of dense interlocks radically thins out and capital comes to rely on states again, this time to protect it from a democratic correction of the neoliberal regime and with state autonomy greatly reduced by public debt.

Gramsci and Left Managerialism

Abstract This essay argues that one way of understanding Gramsci today is as an organic intellectual of a class of managerial cadre which develops in advanced capitalism. With the growth of monopolistic structures and a deepening state role in capitalist society, a separate class of mediating functionaries emerges, entrusted with managerial tasks in running the economy and the state. The problems of conquering power from the perspective of this ‘new middle class’ that concerned Gramsci, were also those of the neo‐Machiavellian thinkers, Mosca, Michels, Pareto and Sorel around the turn of the twentieth century. From opposed political angles, they and Gramsci shared the concern with occupying the centre ground and mediate the extremes in a complex society. Today’s Gramscianism appeals to the same set of concerns.

A theory of global capitalism: Production, class and state in a transnational world

William Robinson has made a name with key writings on democratic struggles in Latin America, on the propagation of electoral democracy as a tool of US contemporary foreign policy and, more recently, with a range of articles on the transnational capitalist class. In A Theory of Global Capitalism he presents his core argument on the process of globalisation of class and state in the contemporary period. The book is set up with a didactic purpose, ‘in a manner accessible to the student of globalization and to concerned members of the lay public’ (p. xiii). In this aim the author succeeds admirably, for the book is a model of accessibility and clarity, a pleasure to read. Robinson develops his argument in three steps. First, it is not ideas, or politicomilitary factors which underlie globalisation, but the rise of a global economy (p. 10). Second, ‘transnational capital has become the dominant, or hegemonic, fraction of capital on a world scale’ (p. 21). Third, this entails the formation of what Robinson terms the transnational state. States in his view are not actors as such. ‘It is classes and groups acting in and out of states [that] do things as collective historical agents.’ ‘State apparatuses are those instruments that enforce and reproduce the class and social group relations and practices embedded in states’ (p. 98). The transnational state is merely the highest form of this configuration of forces, with the transnational capitalist class in the driver’s seat. This in a nutshell is what the book is about. As with all of Robinson’s writings, it is well-documented, well-written and very persuasive. If I make a number of reservations about the argument of the work reviewed here, it is in the spirit of constructive engagement and of the commitment to progressive politics that William Robinson has made the hallmark of his writing. My main criticism is that we have to allow, in the analysis of any process of social development, a much greater latitude for people’s mental make-up and ideas as they are shaped by the complex interactions between the dominant mode of production and the New Political Economy, Vol. 10, No. 2, June 2005

Atlantic Rivalries and the Collapse of the USSR

The aim of this chapter is to provide a framework for understanding the policies of different Atlantic states and social forces in the circumstances that accompanied the demise of the Soviet bloc. It is an argument of this chapter that ultimately, the collapse of the USSR and the defeat of the rapprochement between important segments of West German capital (and implicitly, segments of organized labour) and the tottering Soviet giant, may be seen as part of a single process.

Restoring the Radical Imagination in Political Economy

and ‘Virtual capitalism: some proposals’, in: J. Carrier & D. Miller (Eds), Virtualism: The New Political Economy (Berg, 1999), pp. 161–86. 8. See Carrier & Miller, Virtualism generally. 9. As argued in Nigel J. Thrift, ‘Performing Cultures in the New Economy’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 90, No. 4 (2000), pp. 674–92. 10. See A. McCarthy, Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space (Duke University Press, 2001). 11. See C. Lury, ‘Branding Time’, Public Culture, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1999), pp. 673–90. 12. See Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access (Tarcher/Putnam, 2000). 13. See J. Pine & G. Gilmore, The Experience Economy (Harvard Business School, 1999) and Thrift, ‘Performing Cultures in the New Economy’. 14. See T. DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge University Press, 2000). 15. See, for example, D. Miller, P. Jackson, N. J. Thrift, B. Hobson & M. Rowlands, Shopping, Place and Identity (Routledge, 1998). 16. These are discussed in Naomi Klein, No Logo (Flamingo, 1999). 17. See A. Barry, Political Machines (Athlone Press, 2001). 18. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh University Press, 2000). 19. See A. Appadurai, ‘Grassroots Globalisation and the Research Imagination’, Public Culture Vol. 12, No. 2 (2000), pp. 1–20. 20. P. T. Clough, Auto Affection: Unconscious Thought in the Age of Tele-technology (University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 21. See Karel Williams, ‘Trajectories of Inequality’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2001), pp. 1–6.

The elusive ‘International’

This contribution to the forum on Alex Anievas’ Capital, the State and War takes issue with its reliance on a ‘lite’ version of Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development (UCD) cut out of the theory of permanent revolution. It argues that if Trotsky’s theory would have been taken seriously, a quite different reading of the world wars comes into view, in which ‘permanent counterrevolution’ as the overriding dynamic suggests an understanding of war as a link in that process. Permanent war as under the current War on Terror would fit into this. In Anievas’ version of UCD, the notion on the other hand functions in a quasi-Weberian actor theory of ‘the international’, which, like ‘the market’ in neoclassical economics, is assumed to be an ultimately unfathomable, regulatory instance. UCD then would serve as a reminder that there is social substance to ‘the international’—without specifying what that substance is. As a result, the entire procedure works to block the ability to really open up the inner workings of the global political economy as a process of class formation and struggle mediated by foreign and international relations.