The Concept of Political Capitalism
Discuss about the Political Science and Political Elites.
Political capitalism referred as an economic as well as political system whereby the economic and political elites collaborate to achieve mutual benefits. While political capitalism being referred as an economic system has not often been recognized, the fundamentals that establishes a theoretical foundation for political capitalism has been well-established and accepted. Domains of political science and sociology have recognized the ideas of elite supremacy and dominance along with the biased pluralism are termed as mainstream concepts that are regarded as an essential part of political capitalism (Rioux 2015). The term ‘Political Marxism’ has developed as a response against the ahistorical frameworks of the analysis of Marxism in the debate based on the transition from feudalism to capitalism. This reaction regarded as a critique has brought social agency as well as class conflict to the heart of Marxism. In order to recognize the importance of political Marxist perception of the transition it is crucial to initiate by discussing about the substantial approaches offered by prominent theorist of Political Marxism, Ellen Meiksins Wood by further classifying the ‘commercialization model’(Post 2013). This essay will intend to cast light on the origins of capitalism and political Marxism by focusing on the exploration of Marxian political economy. Further to this, the paper will explore the level of political engagement in relation to socialism and democracy further by analysing the ‘Political Marxism’ development laid by Wood through the focus on the fragmentation of social life in capitalism.
The foundation for political Marxists depended on capitalism followed by Marxism whereby it has been conceptualized not as monetary resources available for profit seeking investment or based on an amalgamation of tools which can be utilized in the production process but has referred to the context of based social relationships. Karl Marx has explained the laws of motion of capitalism as a procedure defined by the interminable accumulation of resources (Ince 2014). The concept of “Capital or resource accumulation’ provided in Marxist lexicon was not only referred as a synonym for efforts to acquire profitability through the means of trade and fabrication for market-exchange, nor does it signifies to the conditions of competitive gathering that has been persisting before capitalism whereby various groups of exploiters engaged into conflict among themselves over the oppression of productive assets along with the defeaters of the conflicts experiencing dismal outcomes (Rioux 2013). The concept of capital accumulation has further been utilized to describe the specific structural coerce by which capitalists were forced to involve in the enduring struggle of cost reduction and further enhance the market share to profit augmentation in relation to their competitors. Furthermore, the emergence of such imperatives has accepted the shift towards the typically capitalist modes of exploitation established on the generalization of market reliance (Abele, Comninel and Meiksins 2016). Acts of exploitation under capitalism had its occurrence through market mechanisms whereby in the sale of labour power, labourers are simultaneously supporting to forfeit an excess product that has been generated by their own labour. The compliance of workers in order to acknowledge this circumstance has been derived from the fact of their reliance of these labour wages for their own endurance (O’neil 2015). It is significant to recognize that capitalists were obligated in order to exercise the substitutive machines as their core strategy in order to secure an increased surplus from the labour that had been exerted from the workers to evade any form of insulation in comparison to other efficient labourers who were motivated by continuous reinvestment from the revenues they gathered into the process of production.
Marxian Political Economy
The inception of generalized market reliance shifted the characteristics of labour exploitation. However what vetoed the pre capitalist societies from rising the inimitable explanation related to capitalism was not the result of underdevelopment of the effective forces or limitations on the growth of trade and commerce (Ferguson et al. 2016). Furthermore, it was related to the fact that the significant groups of direct manufacturers preserved the availability of non-market resources to their private means of survival. Thus, several capitalist classes which had its existence before capitalist inception were unable to utilize their oppression over the accessibility to the means of production. For instance, the peasant class originating from feudal Europe owned customary accessibility to their private land properties which they further could utilize for their survival (Berg 2018). As a result, their dependence on alternate means for power preservation over the excess product was based on the connotation that the Political Marxists had made on the ‘extra-economic coercion’ (Tansel 2015). The immense reliance of pre-capitalist authoritarian classes on the undeviating coercive power wielded a decisive effect over the strategies implemented in order to enhance the level of their competitive position. Further to note that in property had always been signified as politically represented specifically in the perspective of pre capitalist modes of production. Thus, there has been a persistent imposition of the pre capitalist ruling classes in order to accumulate an immensely increased amount of resources to exert greater means of coercion for the utilization against the land lords and exploited peasant class (McChesney 2013). In the context of pre capitalist propensity for augmenting the ‘absolute’ surplus production, the exploited peasant class engaged in an unending disagreement with lords over the generality of their own expectations whereby their primary purpose lied on the reduction of the levels of dues which were further needed to provide and ascertain their own land authority (Levi-Faur 2017). However, the specialized production for market exchange failed to make any implications whereby peasants restricted their private means of subsistence. It is further to note that, peasants had no causes to concern themselves in market turmoil in the absence of market dependency (Anievas and Nisancioglu 2013). This led to the concept of ‘rules of production’ that was associated with pre-capitalist societies be lacked any equivalent methods which were competent of producing the type of profitable productivity development that is regarded as the essential characteristic of capitalism.
The Origins of Capitalism
In the context of capitalism, it has always been pre-supposed that the economic domain is segregated from the ‘political’ sphere further resulting to raise various relative arguments related to the separation that takes place in order to augment the rate of production of the resources (Rioux 2015). In contemporary societies it has been further claimed that collapsing the economic fabrication into the political domain would create obstructions in the process of industrial production. However, this conceptualization has supported several debatable issues in contradiction to trade unionism as well as relative activities such as disputes, strikes and several other means of assembling and organizing labourers (Hornborg 2014). The engagement of Ellen Meiksins Wood with the record of political theory has further led to evaluate the history of capitalism as well the historical evolution of the state and class associations. Furthermore, in assessing the historical perspective of the emergence of political theory, Wood has developed a pioneering analysis of the pre-capitalist class societies along with the inception of capitalism. It was further noted by Wood that the decline of Soviet Union as well as the global triumph of capitalism, a strange responsive attitude was noticed in the Left thinking (Esping-Andersen 2013). Wood has further developed a incisive critique of what is known as the new true socialism that has a excessive rate of inclination to discard the importance of the working class in particular as well as the class in general. Wood further reviewed primary elements of the ‘new true socialists’ rejection of class whereby there is very less tendencies of labour class to develop any radical social change within the society (De Giorgi 2017). Socialist movement that has been further supported by Wood focuses on extend its domain to incorporate the issues related to ‘new social movements’ which further would build coalitions with the social movements in order to be immensely hegemonic. Her detailed analysis on social property approach searched for the material realities of class. It must be noted that Wood further emphasized that the rejection of the relevance of working class cannot be construed as a reaction to the working class serenity due to an increase that has been noticed in the working class militancy during the late 1960’s, during the popularization on New Left ideas. Further dealing with the imminent invasion of Iraq by the United States, Wood has further shifted her focus in comprehending the characteristics of US imperialism (Post 2013). She further demonstrated that the majority sections of the imperialisms shifted economic resources and wealth from the poorer sections to the affluent ones in ways that reflected immense transparency through the power exertion and political authority related to conquest and taxation. However, along with the evolution of British imperialism the characteristics of the imperial project that began to make transform that began to create coercion at its core ‘invisible’. However, this concluded in the imperialism of US of the later phase of twentieth century whereby, the direct military as well as opinionated power has been reinstated by the immense market force. Furthermore, it was noted by Meiksins Wood that even most of the Left thinkers have expressed despair of the project of condemning this type of dominant imperial capitalism. She further claimed that transformations in the form of imperialism do not necessarily signify that the conceptualizations of Marx are significant to the conception of contemporary society (Tansel 2015). However, it is significant to note that in contradiction to it, a critique developed by Marx on modern imperialism exposes chief contradictions that provide both anticipations as well as potentialities for its transcendence.
Political Marxism and Ellen Meiksins Wood
The Marxist theory further points out the fundamental correspondence between the distinctiveness of contemporary empire along with the fundamental social associations of capitalism that focuses on the relationship between capitalist and the labour class (O’neil 2015). However, it has been further argued by Wood that regardless to the non-occurrence of contemporary imperialist appropriation directly through obligation, it is dependent on force to maintain the situation on which it is reliable. Wood’s approach on social relations further signified that the nation state is crucial and does not bear any relevance to the execution of contemporary imperialism whereby for the mass of globalizing predispositions of capitalism, the world has transformed into a consequence of national liberation efforts but further under demands of imperial authorization. However, the article’s incompetence to develop sufficient account of capitalism’s peculiarity forces to position an explanatory burden on the alterations within capitalism whereas at the same time depriving of the means evidently to characterize and further elucidate those refurbishments (Anievas and Nisancioglu 2013). Wood’s arguments in her approach clearly claim that capitalism that surfaced in the process of internal social changes in association among the agrarian classes in the enduring procedures of growth and development along with the global context of commercial as well as geographical and military associations (Tansel 2015). However, Wood stated a complex relation between modes of capitalism along with its own distinctive imperatives as well as the commercial, geo political and military demands of non-capitalist states. Furthermore, the era of ‘classic’ imperialism has not been explicitly motivated by a capitalist explanation and was further complicated by a convergence of capitalist social relations along with the non-capitalist modes of surplus appropriation (Kaldor 2013). Though Wood’s approach has explicitly fabricated its own particular forms of economic oppression whereby then dominance or supremacy is not simply led by the means of surplus economic coercion but rather by means of daunting market dependence that has experienced persistent development and gradually surpassed non-capitalist modes of production (Ferguson et al. 2016).
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that regardless to the agreement on the reasons and causes of political capitalism, there has been no prevalent agreement on policies to deal with the social economic relations. However, on the Left there were ranging declarations for more administrative supervision and oversight, several government programs whereas the Right claimed to develop critics that conclude that government is the issue. The essay has effectively evaluated the origins of capitalism as well as political Marxism by further analysing the strengths and limitations of Wood’s approach of social property relations in order to comprehend the segregation of the economic as well as political in the capitalist mode of production.
References
Abele, F., Comninel, G. and Meiksins, P., 2016. Socialism and democracy: the political engagements of Ellen Meiksins Wood. Studies in Political Economy, 97(3), pp.320-336.
Anievas, A. and Nisancioglu, K., 2013. What’s at Stake in the Transition Debate? Rethinking the Origins of Capitalism and the ‘Rise of the West’. Millennium, 42(1), pp.78-102.
Berg, S., 2018. Intellectual Radicalism after 1989: Crisis and Re-orientation in the British and the American Left. transcript Verlag.
De Giorgi, A., 2017. Re-thinking the political economy of punishment: Perspectives on post-Fordism and penal politics. Routledge.
Esping-Andersen, G., 2013. The three worlds of welfare capitalism. John Wiley & Sons.
Ferguson, S., LeBaron, G., Dimitrakaki, A. and Farris, S.R., 2016. Introduction. Historical Materialism, 24(2), pp.25-37.
Hornborg, A., 2014. Technology as fetish: Marx, Latour, and the cultural foundations of capitalism. Theory, Culture & Society, 31(4), pp.119-140.
Ince, O.U., 2014. Primitive accumulation, new enclosures, and global land grabs: A theoretical intervention. Rural Sociology, 79(1), pp.104-131.
Kaldor, M., 2013. Global civil society: An answer to war. John Wiley & Sons.
Levi-Faur, D., 2017. Regulatory capitalism. Regulatory Theory, p.289.
McChesney, R.W., 2013. Digital disconnect: How capitalism is turning the Internet against democracy. New Press, The.
O’neil, P.H., 2015. Essentials of Comparative Politics: Fifth International Student Edition. WW Norton & Company.
Post, C., 2013. Capitalism, laws of motion and social relations of production. Historical Materialism, 21(4), pp.71-91.
Rioux, S., 2013. The fiction of economic coercion: Political marxism and the separation of theory and history. Historical Materialism, 21(4), pp.92-128.
Rioux, S., 2015, January. Embodied contradictions: Capitalism, social reproduction and body formation. In Women’s Studies International Forum (Vol. 48, pp. 194-202). Pergamon.
Tansel, C.B., 2015. Deafening silence? Marxism, international historical sociology and the spectre of Eurocentrism. European Journal of International Relations, 21(1), pp.76-100.
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