Lucia Pradella

Imperialism and Capitalist Development in Marx’s Capital

AbstractThis article aims at contributing to current debates on the ‘new imperialism’ by presenting the main results of a reading of Marx’s Capital in light of his writings on colonialism, which were unknown in the early Marxist debate on imperialism. It aims to prove that, in his main work, Marx does not analyse a national economy or – correspondingly – an abstract model of capitalist society, but a world-polarising and ever-expanding system. This abstraction allows the identification of the laws of development of capitalism and its antagonisms, and reflects the tendency of the capital of the dominant states, by making permanent recourse also to methods of so-called ‘primitive accumulation’, to expand and increase the exploitation of workers worldwide, and, at the same time, the cooperation between them. What, for Marx, was later defined as imperialism is the concrete form of the process of ‘globalisation’ of the capital of the dominant states. With the development of his analysis, Marx became increasingly aware of the economic and political consequences of imperialism. In his activity within the First International, with regard to the question of Irish independence, he affirmed the fundamental importance of building a real solidarity between class struggles in imperialist countries and anti-colonial resistance in colonised and dependent countries. His examination of imperialism and internationalist perspective were downplayed, denied, if not completely reversed in the interpretation and systematisation of his thought by reformist leaders within the Second International. In their attempt to react against this tendency and develop an analysis and a political strategy adequate to the new phase of generalised imperialist expansion, increased inter-imperialist rivalries and rising anti-colonial resistance, Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin reaffirmed the centrality of the critique of imperialism at the economic and at the political levels. Even if they were partially unaware of this, they thus developed and expanded on some aspects already present in Marx’s work.

New Developmentalism and the Origins of Methodological Nationalism

This article analyses the origins of the methodological nationalism that characterizes the new developmental economics by examining Friedrich Lists work. It argues that the international sphere had a primary importance in political economy from the sixteenth century onwards, and that classical political economists elaborated, although contradictorily, elements of a theory of uneven and combined development. List reinforced a vision of development as non-antagonistic, invoking extra-economic factors in order to present late industrialization as beneficial for the nation as a whole. Affirming the centrality of labour, Marxs critique of List offers deep insights into the political economy of development.

Immigrant labour in Europe in times of crisis and austerity: An international political economy analysis

This article develops an international political economy analysis of immigrant labour in Western Europe, with a focus on Italy and the UK in the period following the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 2008. Seeking to overcome the problem of methodological nationalism, the article places cross-national comparison against the backdrop of the broader process of international accumulation of capital. In this light, it examines the causes of the differential effects of the economic crisis upon EU member states and various sections of the workforce. In both the UK and Italy, labour conditions and trade unions are under attack; immigrant workers have been particularly affected by the rise in levels of unemployment, the worsening of working conditions, and the heightening of anti-immigration practices, legislations and discourses. The article concludes with a discussion of how the main trade unions in the UK and Italy are responding to these economic, social and political challenges.

Beijing between Smith and Marx

In Adam Smith in Beijing, Giovanni Arrighi attempts to outline the possible consequences of the growth of China through a rereading of the work of Adam Smith and a critique of Marx. This article analyses and sheds light on the limits of this reading, upon which Arrighi bases his prediction of a possible peaceful growth in collaboration amongst the various nations within the world-market. It also seeks to identify what makes Marx’s work so timely for the understanding of the contemporary phase of capitalist globalisation, with its escalation of the exploitation of ever more globalised labour-power, and of international competition. 1

Labour, Exploitation and Migration in Western Europe: An International Political Economy Perspective

In Western Europe (the EU15), the economic crisis erupted in 2007/08 and consequent austerity programmes are leading to a general, but uneven, worsening of labour conditions (Hermann, 2014). Unemployment levels have reached record high inter-country differences: in the second half of 2014, they ranged from 5 per cent in Germany to 6 per cent in the UK, 12 per cent in Italy and around 25 per cent in Spain and Greece (Eurostat). Between 2010 and 2012, real wages declined by more than 3 per cent in Italy and the UK, by almost 7 per cent in Portugal and Spain, and by 23 per cent in Greece (Schulten, 2013). According to the European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), between 2007 and 2012, the number of the poor increased by 8.5 millions, reaching nearly 92 millions (almost one-fourth of the population). In 2012, poverty affected 9 per cent of workers (+1 percentage point greater than in 2007), increasing also both in Italy (10 per cent) and the UK (9 per cent). Trends in severe material deprivation are even more dramatic, with an increase by 125 per cent in the first five years of the crisis (from 1.9 per cent in 2007 to 4.3 per cent in 2012).

Marx's Capital and contemporary capitalist development

This paper presents the Marxian law of impoverishment of the working class, defined in Capital as the absolute, general law of capitalist development. It argues that this law must be understood in all its dimensions and on a global scale, as Marx considered international investments, imperialism and migration as structural elements of capital accumulation. The paper discusses then the reasons why the current crisis, far from opening an era of cooperation and peace, is a prelude to a phase of turbulent international competition and major international tensions, that are the international dimension in which this law expresses itself.

Libya and Europe: imperialism, crisis and migration

Abstract This article examines the recent dynamics of European imperialism in Libya in the light of Marx’s theory of the global reserve army of labour. It analyses the limited advance of Western imperialism in Libya in the decade before the 2011 uprisings, the interactions between local, regional and international forces during and after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention, and, finally, the evolving migratory patterns from Libya. In this light, the instability along the southern and eastern Mediterranean coastline – a product of the uprisings and the forms of political reactions they unleashed – is simultaneously a security threat and a channel of migratory movements to European capitalism.

Marx and the Global South

This article interrogates Marx’s critique of political economy in the context of the global South and southern epistemologies. It first traces the contradictory roots of a non-Eurocentric conception of history within Adam Smith. Recovering Marx’s silenced sociologies of colonialism in his writings and notebooks, it then shows that Marx incorporated colonialism and imperialism into his analysis of accumulation. The antagonism between wage-labour and capital needs to be understood as a global tendency, encompassing a hierarchy of forms of exploitation and oppression. Marx’s support for the Taiping revolution (1850–1864) played a crucial, albeit often ignored, role in his theorisation. It allowed him to recognise the living potential for anti-colonial struggles and international solidarities, thus breaking with Eurocentric accounts of history. The article concludes that it is crucial to sociology’s global futures that it reconnects with the critique of political economy, and actively learns from the anti-imperialist South.

Postcolonial Theory and the Making of the World Working Class

This article addresses the two main roots of postcolonial criticisms of Marx as a Eurocentric thinker, that is, the closely interrelated views that his value theory is restricted to a national level and that his concept of AMP implies the inferiority of Asia. The article first investigates how classical political economy set the stage for a materialist understanding of capitalism and of history, while contradictorily grounding methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism. Drawing on the still partially unpublished Marx’s London Notebooks (1850–53), the article then argues that Marx consistently developed the labour theory of value at the international level. In the summer of 1853, moreover, he put in question Bernier’s theory of Oriental despotism, paying increasing attention to the concrete situation of the population in India and to forms of anti-colonial resistance. By overcoming atomistic and unilinear views of development, the article argues, Marx was able to recognize the material seeds of interdependence and collective power of an emerging world working class.

The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato: A critical engagement:

If one had to name an innovation policy book that made it into mainstream political debates, Mariana Mazzucato’s 2013 The Entrepreneurial State would surely come to mind. The book expands on a 2011 pamphlet with the same title (Mazzucato, 2011) that had an impact among top officials both in the European Union and the United Kingdom. The book’s success – it has been praised by figures such as Martin Wolf, David Willets and Liam Byrne, and was awarded the 2014 New Statesman SPERI Prize in Political Economy – undoubtedly contributed to Mazzucato’s appointment to Jeremy Corbyn’s economic advisory board. The Entrepreneurial State seeks to answer the right questions at the right moment. If years of fiscal consolidation and austerity have miserably failed to promote growth and prosperity, Mazzucato aims to criticize the very roots of these policies. She demolishes the idea that diminished state intervention will reduce fiscal deficits and enhance innovation in the private sector. Behind many of the innovations commonly attributed to market dynamism – she shows – one actually finds state interventionism. The main goal of her book, then, is ‘to change how we talk about the state’ as ‘the most effective way to defend its existence, and size, in a proactive way’ (Kindle location 419).