Nasser Paydar December 2000
“Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a specific stage of the development of productive forces and, to that extent, transcends the state and the nation; yet, on the other hand, it must assert itself in external relations as a nationality and organize itself internally as a state.” (The German Ideology)
Capitalist society embodies the material interactions of individuals based on the buying and selling of labour power. According to Marx, these interactions manifest externally as nationality and internally as the state. The historical evolution of capitalism and the continuous expansion of the globalization of capital constitute, at the same time, an ongoing process of reproducing all civil, political, legal, and social superstructures in accordance with the dictates of capital and the requirements for expanding the capitalist mode of production. The fate of the state and nationality as well as the nature of the bourgeois state regarding the national question can only be understood within this context. For the working class, grasping the relationship between these institutions and the essence of capital, and recognizing the organic link between their transformations and the exigencies of capitalism’s historical development, constitutes a vital part of class knowledge and a material weapon of struggle. Viewing the issue’s significance in this light, I focus my discussion on the globalization of capital, nationality, and the state around the following points:
1. The international development of capitalism;
2. The globalization of capital, the bourgeoisie, and nationalism;
3. Global capital and the nation-state;
4. The internationalization of capitalism and the proletariat;
The International Development of Capitalism
The history of capitalism is the history of the development of accumulation, market expansion, and the international extension of the sphere in which capital exploits labour power. Globalization the expansion of the realms of accumulation to the farthest corners of the globe is an inherent tendency of the capitalist mode of production. Capital is value that exists through a process of self-valorisation, achieved by exploiting labour power and converting newly produced value into additional capital. This process entails a drive toward overproduction, continuous self-expansion, and the ever-increasing globalization of accumulation. It is a tendency accompanied by the constant concentration of capital, competition among individual capitals, the emergence and growth of massive monopoly poles, and the subordination of all these dynamics to capital’s internal contradictions. In the process of concentration and alongside rising social labour productivity capital enhances its capacity to reduce “necessary labour” in favour of “surplus labour,” thereby deepening and intensifying the exploitation of labour power. This inherent tendency of capital drives an upward trend in the organic composition of capital and a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Moreover, the reproduction of capital in each turnover cycle requires the existence of conditions necessary to convert the generated surplus value into additional capital. For all these reasons, capital routinely needs to open up new spheres for investment in order to, firstly, transform new surplus values into tied-up, profit-generating capital; and secondly, invest portions of the total capital with a lower organic composition, thereby exploiting an ever-greater number of workers and expanding the source of profit generation as much as possible. Capitalist production is a contradictory blend of these opposing internal tendencies. The inherent and inescapable crisis of capitalism itself an organic phase in the upward trajectory of the organic composition of capital and the falling rate of profit in turn deepens and intensifies the process of capital concentration, the severity of subsequent crises, and, concomitantly, capital’s ever-growing need for international expansion and the opening of new spheres of accumulation. The globalization of capital contrary to the deceptive clamour of the capitalist system’s defenders is not a new phenomenon in the life of capitalism; rather, it is the inevitable reflection of capital’s inherent contradictions. Secondly, its intensification over recent decades reflects the ever-deepening historical decay and incapacity of capitalism to reproduce the conditions of its own production through previous methods.
The accelerating pace of the globalization of capitalism represents an unprecedented intensification of the scope of capitalist exploitation, the stripping away of rights, and capitalist barbarism worldwide. I shall limit myself to a very brief mention of the historical trajectory of this process.
Industrial revolutions, the rise in the social productivity of labour, the increase in the organic composition of capital, and the onset of cyclical capitalist crises particularly from the 1800s onwards placed immense pressure on the concentrated capital of advanced capitalist nations to seek mechanisms to counteract these crises. Foreign trade, the export of commodities, and the further expansion of the global market were among the effective levers and mechanisms that capital adopted to address this situation. This period encompasses the years leading up to and, in particular, the second half of the nineteenth century an era during which the Gross National Product (GNP) of developed capitalist nations grew roughly a hundredfold. During this time, the volume of commodity exports and the value of foreign trade for Western nations saw their annual growth rates rise from 0.9 percent to over 4 percent.
The impact of commodity exports and the expansion of global trade on mitigating crises was like any other factor both limited and deeply contradictory. The relentless drive of capitalist overproduction, coupled with the rapid concentration of capital and the rising organic composition of capital, accelerated the conditions for crisis to such an extent that the expansion of global trade could not exert a lasting counteracting effect on the onset of crises. Marx observes in this regard:
“We have repeatedly drawn the reader’s attention to the unparalleled growth of British industry since 1850. Yet, even amidst this astonishing economic boom, clear signs of an impending industrial crisis were readily apparent. Despite the developments in California and Australia, and notwithstanding unprecedented levels of emigration and without the occurrence of any specific triggering event a moment would inevitably arrive when the expansion of markets could no longer keep pace with the expansion of British industry; this imbalance would, as in the past, inevitably precipitate a new crisis. Of course, should a major market be suddenly lost, the onset of the crisis would thereby be accelerated.”
As the final years of the nineteenth century approached, the capacity of foreign trade in commodities to avert crises diminished. Between 1880 and 1913, French and British capitalism each plunged into crisis five times. Concurrently, the rapid process of capital concentration led to the formation of vast industrial and financial monopolies. The living labour of millions upon millions of workers exerted over centuries and successive generations accumulated as “dead labour.” The output of the world’s wage-slaves was routinely and daily transformed into capital. Capital became increasingly concentrated. The closing years of the twentieth century saw the rise of massive industrial and financial monopolies, emerging from the ceaseless concentration of social capital within major capitalist nations. As capitalist production evolved, the role of banks shifted from mere intermediation to direct involvement in capital accumulation and the acquisition of large industrial enterprises.
In this way, they became big investors, each of them independently or through joint-stock companies, owned the biggest workshops and industrial centres. The tremendous achievements of industrial and technical revolutions, the continuous concentration of industrial and banking capital in an increasing, mixed and internal process became a powerful factor for the international development of more and more capitalism. The all-round expansion of the role of banks in various forms of industrial accumulation and the ownership of production units or the control of a part of social capital by them opened the way to the ever-increasing supremacy of financial capital over industrial capital and their direct and universal participation in industrial accumulation. At the beginning of the 20th century, the world was facing a situation where the stable part of constant capital in advanced industrial countries was increasing in leaps and bounds. In every round of return of the monopoly capital of big industrial countries, huge amounts of raw materials and auxiliary equipment are transformed into production tools and technology. The organic composition of capital was peaking in monopolies and considering the very high density of monopoly capital in the total social capital of advanced countries, it effectively put pressure on the mechanisms of neutralization of the tendency of falling profit rates in these societies. Under such conditions, the export of capital serving as the most effective lever for countering crises emerged as a defining feature of capitalist existence. This practice facilitated the development of the general foundations of capital accumulation within colonies and semi-colonies (or, more broadly, the non-capitalist nations of that era). For the monopolies and the aggregate capital of advanced capitalist societies, the direct consequences of capital export included the creation of new spheres of accumulation, the exploitation of cheap labour in the recipient regions, and owing to a lower organic composition of capital higher profit rates in these new areas; furthermore, it lowered the costs associated with the circulation of constant capital by securing inexpensive raw materials, land, and similar resources.
The process outlined thus far continued with the same momentum and characteristics throughout the greater part of the twentieth century. Throughout this period, we witnessed the extensive globalization of capital, the accelerating concentration of capital, a staggering rise in the productivity of social labour, the increasing integration of massive industrial and financial monopolies, the ever-growing dominance of banks in the planning of labour and production, and the occurrence of increasingly severe and devastating crises all while the globalization of capital continued unabated. In the final quarter of that century, this process entered a new phase with the advent of the information technology and computer revolutions. The productivity of social labour surged to levels far surpassing those of the past; the labour time required to manufacture a mobile phone dropped from three hours to just eight minutes between 1993 and 1997 alone meaning that the labour force needed to set in motion the capital producing these phones shrank tenfold in absolute terms over those four years. The process of replacing living labour with dead labour or, in effect, the transfer of labour power to machinery has proceeded at a breakneck, historically unprecedented pace, particularly over the last two decades. The monetary value of the capital set in motion by each worker at AstraZeneca (following the merger of the Astra and Zeneca monopolies) now exceeds 15 million kronor; this figure is undoubtedly far higher for the workforce of monopolies such as Microsoft. Alongside the unprecedented growth in the productivity of social labour, the processes of capital concentration and the merger of giant financial and industrial monopolies have also accelerated at an entirely unprecedented rate during these two decades. The colossal volume of capital accumulated by these trusts and monopolies defies description, even in astronomical figures. In 1996, the daily volume of corporate investment on global stock exchanges surpassed $18 billion.
This new phase characterized by concentration and monopolization, rising social labour productivity, and a staggering upward trajectory in the organic composition of capital has coincided with specific historical conditions under which international capital’s capacity to open up new spheres of industrial accumulation via traditional methods is at an all-time low. The new frontiers for capital investment in this era are no longer the feudal countries or non-capitalist societies of the early twentieth century. Capital export no longer advances against the backdrop of the mass dispossession of serfs and peasants, or industrial accumulation based on a low organic composition of capital. The factors governing the reproduction of labour power both within these societies and globally no longer present the same simplicity for capital that they did in past eras. This new phase of globalization has intensified capital’s internal contradictions in every respect, significantly deepened the preconditions for crisis, and drastically diminished the efficacy of mechanisms that counteract the falling rate of profit. To reproduce the conditions of production and achieve further valorisation, a vast portion of global capital requires such colossal amounts of surplus value that securing them necessitates the ceaseless deepening of the exploitation of workers and the continuous, minute-by-minute erosion of the living standards of the working masses everywhere and particularly across a vast swathe of the globe. Microsoft’s annual profit equals the combined annual income of over 500 million Asian and African workers. The current trend of the internationalization of capital represents an all-out massacre of humanity at the very threshold of the seat of capitalist barbarism.
The Globalization of Capital, the Bourgeoisie, and Nationalism
Nationalism is a distorted analysis of human existence within capitalist society; it is the intellectual sublimation of the material requisites for reproducing capitalist relations, as well as a platform for the demagoguery and stratagems employed by the bourgeoisie to deform and subjugate the working class, and to persuade it to accept the yoke of wage slavery. The bourgeoisie entered history under the banner of nationalism; it stepped into the arena of social conflict with the slogan “Long live the nation” a slogan whose true substance was “Long live the unity of exploiter and exploited” and “Long may the yoke of wage slavery rest upon the shoulders of the workers.”
Nationalism acts upon human thought, perception, intellect, and belief in the same way that religion does. Religion is an inverted image of the truth regarding humanity and the universe; nationalism, likewise, is a false interpretation of the existing social order and the human position within the dominion of that system. The bourgeoisie regardless of its specific orientation or circumstances is nationalist to the core; it strives with all its might to prevent the international labour movement from pursuing its class struggle by entangling it in the web of nationalist illusions. Viewed in the broadest terms, the true foundation of nationalism rests upon two fundamental pillars: First, highlighting the exploitative nature of capitalist production and the class antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; second, striving to increase and expand the share of a society’s social capital within the total surplus value generated globally by the international working class. Concepts such as “homeland,” “nation,” and “ancestral soil” or national language, culture, and traditions regardless of the connotations they held in earlier epochs of human history, serve the bourgeoisie merely as consequences of the two fundamental pillars mentioned above; in short, they are prerequisites for intensifying the exploitation of the working class. “Nationality” and “homeland” represent the outward-facing aspect of the bourgeoisie, just as the “state” represents its inward-facing aspect. Through the “state,” it imposes the system of wage slavery upon workers; through “nationality,” it leverages the power derived from the labour of wage slaves as a stake in its rivalry and contest with adversaries, aiming thereby to secure a larger share of the exploitation of the world’s workers. The bourgeoisie’s nationalism stands in no contradiction whatsoever to the all-out efforts by various segments of this class to further globalize capitalism, form broad state alliances, or even establish a unified global pole of political power and economic planning; rather, these are precisely two interconnected sides of the same coin. The history of the international development of capitalism is everywhere the history of the dominance and rampaging of nationalism the history of the bourgeoisie’s varied use of this weapon in the struggle against communism and the labour movement.
Social democracy, left-wing nationalism, and Russian socialism have relied on nationalism to advance their anti-worker and anti-communist agendas just as heavily as liberalism, neoliberalism, and other segments of the global bourgeoisie have employed this weapon. At the very time when representatives of monopoly capital driven by the aim of redividing the global economy, securing new spheres of accumulation, and capturing a larger share of the exploitation of the global working class were inciting the downtrodden masses across the globe to slaughter one another in the most savage imperialist wars under the banner of “national interests” and the grandeur of this or that “nation,” social democracy was using the ruse of nationalism to demand that the working class within the zones of monopoly capital exploitation sacrifice themselves to the furnaces of capital. During those same years, left-wing nationalism also strove with all its might to mire the nascent labour movements of capital-exporting societies in the quagmire of nationalist anti-imperialism, thereby preventing them from making any attempt to form an independent socialist front against the bourgeoisie. A look at the course of class struggle and the approach of the global labour movement throughout the twentieth century clearly demonstrates a bitter reality: globalization or the imperialist expansion of capitalism has, for a certain period, effectively bolstered the capacity of the global capitalist camp to harness nationalism in order to crush the working class’s communist movement, even as the contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production have deepened. Across a vast portion of the contemporary world, the dynamics of capitalist development and the struggle between right-wing and left-wing nationalism over how to realize this prospect effectively subsumed the entire class struggle. “National liberation movements” became the graveyard of the nascent labour movement; representatives of the lower or non-monopolistic strata of capital operating under the false banner of socialism and relying on the global state-capitalist camp (the Soviet bloc) substituted the Russian model of capitalism for the vision of workers’ socialism as the path forward for the labour movement. Those segments of the working class or dispossessed peasants transformed into capital’s reserve army of labour that managed to escape recruitment by the left-wing nationalism aligned with the state-capitalist camp inevitably fell prey to the delusions propagated by right-wing nationalist tendencies aligned with either that same camp or the Western capitalist pole. In short, in various forms and across all these regions, nationalism diverted the nascent labour movement away from any genuine communist or class-based orientation.
At the same time, the imperialist conditions of capitalist production created favourable circumstances for Western European social-democratic parties and the syndicalist movements in those countries to play this very role. In this context, social democracy and syndicalism on the one hand opposed the working class’s communist orientation and surrendered the labour movement, bound hand and foot, to the planning and policy-making of capital; on the other hand, they aligned themselves with the aggressive nature of global capital to increase the share of surplus value generated by the international working class accruing to the social capital of their “own” societies. A fundamental and decisive point in this regard is that the widespread rise of nationalism during this era cannot be attributed solely to the emergence of imperialist production conditions and the globalization of capital. Although nationalism was effectively fuelled everywhere by the globalization of capital, its rise during this period was decisively shaped by the defeat of the October Revolution, the emergence of the Soviet bloc, and the displacement of the pole of working-class socialism by that of state capitalism. Nationalism engulfed the global labour movement in its quagmire because the defeat of the October Revolution and the emergence of Russian socialism under the banner of communism obliterated any prospect of establishing a genuine communist society from the view of the proletariat. These two factors the imperialist conditions of capitalist production on the one hand, and the defeat of the October workers’ revolution in Russia on the other organically combined to create the necessary conditions for nationalism to dominate the contemporary global landscape. The Russian version of socialism, nationalist anti-imperialism, the national-populist analysis of the capitalist mode of production and society, the vision of establishing “independent national capitalism,” the prospect of a “people’s democratic republic,” and the bourgeois interpretations of “autonomy-seeking” and “national liberation movements” all emerged from the situation shaped by these two components; meanwhile, “Left nationalism,” operating under the banner of communism, cloaked all these social-reformist illusions in the guise of communism and Marxism!!. The globalization of capitalism and the defeat of October combined to create conditions that derailed the international labour movement diverting it from the path of communism, from Marx’s solutions regarding class struggle, from the prospect of abolishing wage slavery, and from the vision of a society free from wage labour, the state, and class divisions and ensnared it in the quagmire of nationalism, nationalist anti-imperialism, Russian socialism, and social-democratic illusions.
The bourgeoisie has made and continues to make maximum use of the weapon of nationalism during the globalization of capital; yet, in this very process and driven by its own contradictory nature, capital has also brought the shelf life of this cunning charade close to its end. In its international expansion, the capitalist mode of production has divided the contemporary world into a realm of capital and a realm of workers. While nationality, homeland, and national illusions might have once up until the first half of the twentieth century evoked a sense of “anti-imperialism” for deluded working masses in parts of the world, today they conjure up nothing but the vast, grim graveyards of Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo; the bleak wasteland of capitalist barbarism; hunger, death, and the most savage wars; and the displacement and homelessness of hundreds of millions. The bourgeoisie will sound the deceptive trumpet of nationalism until its dying breath, but today, its tune serves only to signal the roar of a deadly storm to the working people of the world. While capital in the process of globalization sowed the deadly toxins of nationalism in the minds of the working masses and the downtrodden, it simultaneously expanded the material foundations of working-class internationalism far beyond what they had ever been. In the current situation, the cancer of capital has intertwined itself not only with every single cell of human existence but with every molecule of the natural world; to such an extent that the frenzied high priests of this system’s greatest temples at the EU summit pray for Al Gore’s victory over Bush out of sheer terror at the looming perils! In this phase of capital’s cancerous domination over the entire globe, the importance of forging internationalist ties within the labour movement must occupy the very fibre of the workers’ being more than ever before.
Global Capital and the Nation-State?!
Following a brief review of the process of capital globalization and its impact on the rise of nationalism, one must examine the decisive effects that the global expansion of capitalism has had on the function and role of states. The internationalization of capitalism was inevitably contingent upon capital securing a comprehensive, global division of labour. To ensure the reproduction of labour power at the lowest possible cost, the capitalist development of societies serving as destinations for capital export had to be rigidly anchored within a framework of ironclad structures and agreements. The imposition of rock-bottom wages across all sectors of the working class, the brutal suppression of the labour movement, the stripping of all social rights and freedoms from workers and the downtrodden, the strict avoidance of any social safety net, the denial of the right to organize, form parties, or engage in political activity, along with substandard education, a lack of welfare provisions, the disenfranchisement of women, child labour, and the soul-destroying, gruelling nature of domestic labour all of these elements had to find their specific place within capital’s institutional framework and the prevailing capitalist division of labour.
The necessity of a lower organic composition of capital in the societies of the export sphere in turn compelled aggregate capital to adopt specific approaches. The expanded development of the consumer goods sector relative to the capital goods sector was one of the most significant of these components a phenomenon that, for its part, had to be transformed into a specific element of the global capitalist division of labour. The regulation of relations between various sectors of global capital; the distribution of the total surplus value derived from the exploitation of the working class across all these territories; the realization of desired profit rates for the more concentrated and monopolistic sectors of capital; the replacement of naked military coercion with ostensibly benign civil institutions and the consequent control of the labour movement in certain parts of the world; the dominant role of massive financial and industrial monopolies in planning labour and production on an international scale; and any other such phenomena all had to find their definitions, locations, arrangements, instruments, and modes of operation within the overarching structure of the capitalist division of labour. Ultimately, the existing bourgeois state that inward-facing aspect of the capitalist system had to integrate all the laws, agreements, institutions, principles, and particulars of this global division of labour with its own class function and role. The contemporary state is an institution that embodies the convergence of all the aforementioned functions vis-à-vis global capital. At one time for instance, in the nineteenth and part of the twentieth century the role of the bourgeois state was generally cantered on the existence of a capitalist police and military apparatus of coercion. I will discuss later how a dogmatic understanding of this formulation contributed, over many years, to leading communists and the labour movement astray into the path of reformism. The fact is that the Marx’s conception of the state has, from the very outset, drawn a clear line of demarcation against this social-reformist narrative. This distinction is vividly and clearly illustrated in the brief passage from Marx that I quoted at the beginning of this text. The state particularly in its contemporary form is a complex assemblage of social institutions, legal contracts, bodies for maintaining order, civil organizations, planning centres, repressive apparatuses, legislative bodies, and systems that can only be understood as organic, interconnected components of the capitalist division of labour.
The state is no longer merely an apparatus composed of a handful of police, military personnel, ministers, representatives, and the retinue of capital; rather, it is capital personified. It embodies the social capital of each nation and indeed global capital manifesting in legal, civil, political, managerial, planning, military, and police forms, while acting as the linchpin for the entire global division of labour. States incorporate the dictates of social and global capital along with the conditions required for capital’s profitability into the ongoing substance of their routine planning. They undertake the task of nurturing, educating, and preparing the workforce for capital at various levels, doing so in a manner that best meets the imperatives of social capital’s reproduction and self-expansion. They regulate the working and living conditions of the entire working class and other downtrodden masses strictly within the framework of capital’s profitability requirements, imposing these conditions upon them with the full force of police and military brutality. As the social capital of any given nation plunges into crisis, it is the states across the entire geography of capital that, utilizing their specific institutions and methods, shift the full burden of these crises onto the meagre livelihoods of the workers. Governments harness the full scope of human knowledge in technology and management to orchestrate and transform into culture, ideology, social norms, and standards of “normal” human life the processes necessitated by the dominance of the capitalist mode of production: the exploitation of labour by capital; the continuous deepening and intensification of that exploitation; the imposition of total disenfranchisement upon workers to maximize capital’s profits; the cultural subjugation of the working class to dehumanizing wage-slavery relations; the ever-deepening alienation of workers from the fruits of their labour; and the distortion and dissolution of their human essence within the process of capital reproduction. The state is, in practice and in substance, capital itself: it makes decisions, enacts laws, and issues decrees regarding workers’ livelihoods, education, life, and death all determined by the imperatives of profitable accumulation and the ever-deepening exploitation of the workforce. The state is responsible not only for the police and military repression of the labour movement and the imposition of capital’s political order upon the working class, but it is itself an all-encompassing element of the civil, political, cultural, educational, and legal structures as well as every form of control exercised by social capital over the labour movement. The state acts as an institution that dissolves or disintegrates the working class’s expectations, demands, and horizons within the quagmire of the capitalist class’s profit-seeking and the process of capital valorisation.
Given all these points, it is abundantly clear that the definition of the existing state cannot be reduced to formulations such as “the state is an instrument for capital’s exercise of police and military coercion” or “the state is the enforcer of capital’s political order.” Even the correct and principled definition “the state is an instrument of bourgeois class rule” cannot be grasped in its true depth and substance without considering the historical evolution of capitalism, the shifts in the capitalist division of labour corresponding to that evolution, and the role played by states within that division of labour. With all these points in mind, we can return to the discussion of the globalization of capital and the phenomenon of the “nation-state” or, more precisely, examine the state of this or that country (whether the US, France, Iran, India, or any other) in terms of its general function within the current phase of global capitalist development. If we have paid close attention to the specific characteristics and components of the imperialist development of the capitalist mode of production, this task will not prove overly complex. We have established that the existing state serves as the centre of gravity for the capitalist division of labour, and we have explained the specific features and attributes that this division of labour has assumed under current conditions. The state of any given country is an institution that imposes the requirements for the reproduction of that society’s social capital dictated by the imperatives of capital itself upon the working class of that specific society; furthermore, depending on the standing of that society’s social capital, it imposes these same requirements upon the working masses across the globe.
The primary task of any government in this regard is to plan for the total dissolution of the working class in every aspect of their human existence within the process of capital’s value augmentation. The goal is to ensure that workers become convinced, deep within their minds and consciousness, of the permanence of wage slavery; to ensure they believe capitalist society represents the ultimate horizon of human existence; and, consequently, to ensure they align all their demands, expectations, lifestyles, and standards of living in short, the very basis of their existence with the survival of the capitalist system, the profitability of capital, and the capacity for the reproduction of society’s aggregate capital. Workers must completely abandon any demand or expectation that conflicts with the fundamental mechanisms of capital’s reproduction and self-expansion. This is the primary duty of any “nation-state” a task that must be planned and executed based on the specific position of a given society’s aggregate capital within the international capitalist market and the share it secures of the total surplus value produced. In a country like Sweden where, on the one hand, the share of social capital in the overall returns on global capital is high, and on the other, the labour movement pursues higher welfare expectations by leveraging specific historical conditions fulfilling this role hinges on embracing syndicalism and upholding certain civil and social rights for workers. Conversely, in a society like Iran and similar societies where the working class is compelled to generate the surplus value required not only for the reproduction of social capital but also for the reproduction of other segments of global capital, the denial of all political, civil, and social rights, the imposition of the lowest possible standard of living, and the use of naked police and military force against the labour movement are orchestrated as integral, interconnected components of the state’s mandate.
The second task of any “national state” or the state of any given country is to address the requirements for enhancing the value of that country’s social capital within the sphere of global capital reproduction, taking into account the dominant role played by international monopolies in the current phase of capitalist globalization. Regardless of the approximate or hypothetical rate of exploitation it realizes within its immediate sphere of reproduction, and regardless of its specific organic composition, the social capital of any society secures only a specific share of the total surplus value generated globally; this share is determined by the role it plays based on the factors constituting its production conditions in the process of forming the general rate of profit. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, the social capital of each country occupies a specific position within the global capitalist division of labour. The bourgeois state of any society acts as the local state for global capital within that society. How this “national state” responds to the reproduction requirements of a country’s social capital is a question answered by the interplay of two forces: on the one hand, global capital and massive international financial and industrial monopolies; and on the other, the pressure exerted by the struggles and protests of the labour movement, both domestically and globally.
Let me clarify this point a bit further. The working class in Southeast Asian societies much like the working class in many other nations across Asia, Africa, Latin America, or Eastern Europe is compelled, due to the specific position of these societies’ social capital within the global capitalist division of labour, to produce vast quantities of surplus value. This production must serve two purposes: first, meeting the requirements for the reproduction of social capital within those nations; and second, satisfying the profitability demands of massive global industrial and financial monopolies. The South Korean state and similar states must function as the instrument for organizing the relationship between labour and capital in accordance with this specific characteristic. Here, the “nation-state” acts as a representative of international capital, not merely of South Korean capitalists. South Korea’s position within the global capitalist division of labour inevitably shapes the content of the state’s political, civic, and social planning. When the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that highly concentrated hub of monopoly capital power and a key institution for global capital planning issued its so-called “stabilization program” to a large number of its 151 member nations with the aim of engineering necessary adjustments to the international division of labour, the national governments of these societies felt compelled to accept every single one of the proposed conditions. These governments all pledged in exchange for the loans they received to devalue their domestic currencies, cut government spending, drive down wage levels as far as possible, raise bank interest rates, remove barriers to foreign investment, and implement various other similar measures. The influx of surplus capital from massive global monopolies into the domestic markets of these societies was just as important if not far more so for the more concentrated sectors of international capital (or the aggregate capital of the societies driving IMF policy) as it was for the aggregate capital of the Asian, Latin American, and African nations belonging to the Fund. By imposing the most severe pressure imaginable on the living standards of the working class in these societies, national governments diverted a vast portion of the surplus value generated by local workers into the profit-hungry maw of major imperialist monopolies, all while driving up the rate of return on aggregate capital within the borrowing nations themselves. National governments played a similar role when they adopted the World Bank’s proposal known as the “Structural Adjustment” program (SAIS). In this instance, too, they committed to dedicating the bulk of their domestic capital accumulation to the production and export of consumer goods and simple commodities required by the global market such as textiles, apparel, and footwear. “Rationalizing the price system,” “revising investment priorities,” and “budgetary reform and the creation of new institutions” were among the key measures implemented by these twenty-nine nations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America measures whose entire burden of implementation was shifted onto the shoulders of their respective working classes. In all these cases which are merely simple manifestations of the routine, day-to-day functioning of capitalist states we observe that every “nation-state” acts simultaneously as the state for a country’s social capital and as a local agent for global capital. This is an intrinsic feature of capitalism; as the scope of capital’s globalization expands, the intertwining of the state’s local and global roles driven by the imperatives of capital reproduction and the imposition of all the miseries and hardships inherent to capitalism upon the international working class becomes increasingly intense.
The Internationalization of Capital and the Proletariat
The primary objective of this paper was to examine the impact of the current phase of the globalization of capital on the prevailing course of the international labour movement. I address this matter here in a schematic fashion; however, before doing so, I must summarize my previous observations regarding the effects of the globalization of capital and the current state of capitalism. The broad outlines of this summary are as follows:
1. Compared to the past, global capital’s capacity to open up new spheres of industrial accumulation has significantly diminished. The world is sufficiently saturated with capital. There is no corner of the globe left where capital does not operate as a pervasive force and a dominant economic and social relation. No feudal society remains, nor any country where the workforce has not been extensively commodified. Precisely for this reason, there is no new, restorative prospect for capital to transform fresh, additional capital into productive capital at least not in the manner of the past (such as prior to the 1970s).
2. With the shrinking of new arenas for global industrial accumulation on the one hand, and the colossal rise in the productivity of social labour on the other, the productive sector of global capital is in decline relative to its non-productive sector. This factor has led to a decrease in the number of productive workers compared to the non-productive workforce in recent decades. This phenomenon is interpreted by the bourgeoisie (including the “Left” bourgeoisie) as the emergence of a new information and technological society; in reality, however, it is merely a new phase of capitalist barbarism designed to intensify the exploitation of the international working class.
3. The organic composition of capital has risen to a historically unprecedented level on an international scale; given the first factor namely, the narrowing of new arenas for industrial accumulation and the upward trend in the organic composition of capital global capital’s capacity to counteract the actualization of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall has been severely diminished.
4. As competition among its various sectors intensifies, global capital has reached a point of saturation regarding the integration and merging of their respective reproduction processes. Any shift in the conditions of accumulation or the rate of profit for any segment of international capital rapidly and profoundly impacts the entire global capital market. Price fluctuations within the sphere of capital occurring in any corner of the globe cause the “heartbeat” of capital as a whole to spike and plummet violently.
5. The crisis of capitalism is no longer cyclical or regional; it is permanent and structural. Global capital is ceaselessly caught in the vortex of crisis. Any easing of crisis pressures in one part of the world is merely the result of shifting that burden onto other segments of capital in other regions.
6. In this context, international capital faces only one path to confront these crises. Intensifying the exploitation of the global working class and imposing ever-increasing forms of disenfranchisement upon the masses of that class constitute capitalism’s sole effective means of countering the onset and spread of crises.
7. The role of existing states whether in countries suffering under the yoke of a savage and naked capitalist dictatorship, or in societies where the dictatorship of capital is exercised through parliaments and other organs of civil or political order is to address the imperatives of the reproduction of social capital based on the requirements of the reproduction of international capital. The globalization of capital has effectively globalized the function of capitalist states as well. The social capital of any given country appropriates a portion of the total surplus value generated by the global working class, and the state of each society serves as the planning and policy-making organ for that social capital, aiming to secure the largest possible share of this surplus value. Put simply, this relationship means that the function of any “national state” is determined, first and foremost, by global capital and the conditions governing the reproduction of capital as a whole. This matter has nothing to do with whether or not the governments of certain regions are subservient to governments in other parts of the world. Rather, it is the intertwining of the value-valorisation processes of various segments of global capital, the differing organic compositions of these segments, the role each territory plays in determining the rate of profit, and each segment’s capacity to influence the global distribution of total surplus value among different capitals that define the function of a capitalist state in any given sector. The specific share of this total surplus value that a country’s social capital manages to capture is a subsequent issue; within the framework of relationships between various segments of international capital, the “national state” strives to enhance its social capital’s capacity to secure a larger share.
8. The current state of the global division of labour and the overwhelmingly dominant role played by massive industrial and financial monopolies in determining profit rates and the distribution of total surplus value during the present phase of capitalist globalization has created conditions wherein the most concentrated and powerful segments of global capital. In the latter societies, the entire burden of the global capitalist crisis is shouldered by the working class. A glance at reports from international bourgeois statistical bodies reveals that, in some instances, the annual profit of a single massive capitalist monopoly far exceeds the annual government budget of a nation with a population of 40 to 50 million.
9. The relative decline in the number of productive workers compared to unproductive ones a result of the unprecedented rise in the organic composition of capital and the immense productivity of social labour, particularly in the current phase of global capitalist development has not, contrary to the widespread delusions propagated by bourgeois circles, created an objective basis for the subsiding of the working masses’ class struggle against capitalism; on the contrary, it has intensified and deepened that struggle in every respect.
10. Nationalism, in any form or guise, is the opium of the working class and a tool used by the bourgeoisie to persuade workers to accept wage slavery. The history of the globalization of capital is, at the same time, the history of the unfolding and deepening bankruptcy of all hollow nationalist perspectives vis-à-vis the working class and the downtrodden masses of the world. continuously offload the burden of volatile, destructive capitalist crises onto other segments of capital. This implies that a crucial part of the task of any “nation-state”! Demands for autonomy, national liberation movements, nationalist anti-imperialism, and all similar phenomena serve today more than ever as instruments to bombard the proletarian class struggle; their rottenness and repulsiveness have, to a greater extent than ever before, stifled the very breath of the working class’s fight to abolish wage slavery.
The globalization of capital is intertwined with these components and various other characteristics. In its struggle against capitalist exploitation and barbarism, the global labour movement must take into account the features of this new phase of global capital development and align its class struggle strategy accordingly.
The primary communist conclusion drawn from current capitalist conditions is the increasing invalidation of all syndicalists, social-reformist, and “national-left” solutions. The labour movement is inherently internationalist in nature; however, the intensifying globalization of capitalism has vastly magnified the importance of the movement’s internationalist role and responsibilities. The profit that global capital secures as the basis for reproducing the conditions of its own value-expansion in various parts of the world is the surplus value produced by workers across the globe. The astronomical profits amassed by colossal industrial and financial monopolies in North America, Western Europe, and Japan consist of surplus value derived to a vast extent from the exploitation of extremely cheap labour in the societies that serve as destinations for capital export. Capital in the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, and elsewhere shifts the burden of its devastating economic crises not only onto the working class of its own societies but equally onto the shoulders of the working masses in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Every economic resurgence of capital in the former societies is the product of intensified, simultaneous pressure exerted by capital upon the entire international working class. Neither can the Swedish, German, or British worker within the confines of trade unionism and a pitiful resignation to the permanence of wage slavery maintain even their current standard of living and welfare, nor can the Iranian, South Korean, or Chilean worker, merely by engaging in trade union activities, secure even a fraction of the meagre living conditions enjoyed by the Western European worker. If the reformist socialist Left is incapable of grasping the bankruptcy of trade unionism, global capital in the throes of its own historical barbarism is itself lashing the very flesh and blood of the world’s workers, forcing them to feel the reality of this situation. Faced with this sweeping and savage onslaught by capital, there is no other path to salvation for the working class not even in the short term save for opening a socialist battlefront and organizing a nationwide struggle to put an end to the very existence of capitalism.
A second communist conclusion is that, given the current state of the capitalist system and the fundamental relations between social classes, many of the labour movement’s conventional slogans or demands despite their radical appearance offer no genuine class potential for steering the movement toward a true socialist orientation. Slogans such as “Down with the capitalist state” or “Seizure of political power by the proletariat” no longer carry the heavy class-based connotations they once did. When the state in its entire structure and range of functions is inextricably intertwined with the existence of capital and the process of social capital reproduction within a given country, separating the objective process of abolishing wage labour from the dismantling of the bourgeois state ceases to be a mere conceptual distinction. If the state is not reducible to a handful of ministers, MPs, parliaments, armies, police forces, and prisons, but rather encompasses the entire civil and political structure as well as the organizational prerequisites of the capital-labour relationship, then what meaning does “overthrowing the state” hold without simultaneously dismantling the capital relationship? Let us imagine for a moment what the smashing of the capitalist state apparatus would tangibly entail in a society like Sweden, Germany, France, Britain, the US, Iran, Egypt, or Chile. The answer is not particularly obscure: it means eliminating the single most decisive nationwide institution that imposes the conditions of capital reproduction upon the working class. If the political power replacing the state apparatus is not to become yet another governmental institution that imposes wage slavery upon workers, then it must take a form that corresponds to the abolition of the buying and selling of labour power. In any case, it appears that a slogan such as “Down with the Islamic Republic government” if unaccompanied by the call for “Long live socialism,” and if all of this lacks the call for “Long live the council-based organization of labour and socialist civilization,” and if these three are not backed by a powerful communist labour movement ready to actively replace wage-slavery relations with the council-based organization of labour and communist civilization will prove to be utterly hollow. Any effort that does not aim to invigorate, foster, and empower this movement will lead nowhere and will fail to resolve any of the working class’s problems.
A third conclusion is that contrary to the views of ardent proponents of internationalism even in the current phase of global capitalist development, the struggle of a society’s working class to abolish wage slavery within that specific society is not only possible but serves as a stepping stone for the socialist revolution to spread worldwide. Undoubtedly, eliminating the capitalist mode of production in a single country does not fundamentally guarantee the complete liberation of that society’s working class from exploitation by global capital. No society not even the most advanced can simply close its doors to the capitalist world following a workers’ socialist revolution and the abolition of the wage-labour system. Engagement with the capitalist world entails enduring the pressures of the international capitalist division of labour and submitting to the capitalist system’s laws regarding the general rate of profit; this, in turn, allows a portion of the socialist proletariat’s labour output to be converted into profit for global capital. Nevertheless, the communist interpretation of this objective reality stemming from the capital-labour relationship certainly does not imply that the proletariat of any given country should neglect the actual, practical struggle to dismantle the capital relationship within its own society while waiting for the international working class to prepare for a global revolution. Conversely, the establishment of the organization of labour and socialist civilization in any given country represents the capture of a capitalist stronghold, the rupture of wage-slavery relations in a part of the world, a decisive weakening of the global capitalist system, and the laying of a cornerstone for the world socialist revolution by a detachment of the all-encompassing proletarian army.
Sources:
*The German Ideology*
*Capital*, Volumes I and III
*On Colonialism* (Iran and China), Marx and Engels
*Dagens Nyheter* newspaper (Year1997, published in Sweden)
*Ettela’at-e Eghtesadi* (Economic Information) (Year 76, published in Tehran)
*Phases of Capitalist Development* – Angus Maddison
*Economic History of the United States* – Dudley and Dillard
*Marxismen Idag* (Marxism Today), No. 1 – Theoretical journal of the Swedish Socialist Justice Party