John Girling - Capital and Power: Political Economy and Social Transformation

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CAPITAL AND POWER

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

JOHN GIRLING

CROOM HELM

London New York Sydney

1987 John Girling

Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row,
Beckenham, Kent, BR3 1AT

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Croom Helm Australia, 4450 Waterloo Road,
North Ryde, 2113, New South Wales

Published in the USA by
Croom Helm
in association with Methuen, Inc.
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Girling, John
Capital and power: political economy and
social transformation.
1. Production (Economic theory)Political
aspects
I. Title
338.001 HB241
ISBN 0-7099-3850-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Girling, J.L.S.
Capital and power.
Includes index.
1. Communism. 2. Power (Social sciences) 3. Capitalism.
4. Social change. 5. Production (Economic theory)
6. Marx, Karl, 18181883. 7. Gramsci, Antonio, 18911937.
I. Title.
HX73.G57 1987 306.34 8714086
ISBN 0-7099-3850-0

ISBN 0-203-84461-0 Master e-book ISBN

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for criticism and comments: on , I value solidarity with Arthur Burns and Vendulka Kubalkovain pursuit of normative ends and not arbitrary powers. In addition, I welcome the work of scholars attracted to the Australian National University such as Wang Gungwu, David Marr, Ranajit Guha, and Anthony Reid, who have done so much to illuminate Third World issues. And my thanks, too, for the editorial help of Peter Sowden, and for the patience and word-processing skills of Lynne Payne.

INTRODUCTION

This book comprises a critical evaluation of Marxist, Gramscian and pluralist theories, correlated with the development of capitalism, the role of the state, and the differentiation of civil society in the modern world. Apart from the first chapteran analysis of conceptual structuresmy study is not an interpretation of theory but of theory-in-practice. Whatever originality the work may possess consists in the creation of debate between Marxist and pluralist conceptions of accumulation, power and legitimacy, that is in concrete terms, the institutions of capitalism, politics, and civil society. My stance is bipartisan.

Marxs great achievement was to add a new dimension to our understanding of society by locating classes, and class rule, in relation to production. (This is the subject of the first part of the book.) But Marxs achievementrepudiating history made by kings, religion or warswas at the cost of subordinating politics and culture, which had been so prominent in thought and action from renaissance and reformation to enlightenment. My aim is to redress the balance within the framework of political economy . To do so requires an informed scrutiny of the power of production, on the one hand; and of the emergence of civil society as it mediates the extremes of capitalism and the state, on the other. This is a dual problem: how to understand modern society (capital and power); and how to transform it (to socialism with democracy).

* * *

Consider the world around us: the poverty, harsh working conditions and frequent political repression of hundreds of millions of people in the Third World, despite the continuing economic growth of a fortunate few states; and even in the advanced industrialised countries of the West the unsolved problem of cyclical crises of over-production and slump, unemployment and inflation, recovery and recession.

In analysing such conditions it is a matter of realism to take Marxism as the point of departure, on three basic grounds: the primacy of production in social existence; yet the unequal distribution of the product at the expense of the direct producers; and the ruling cultural and political ideas and institutions that serve to sustain the system. Without Marxs insights it would not be possible to understand the nature of the problems confronting the modern worldnor find ways to an acceptable solution. But the experience of a hundred years since Marxs death has also revealed the limitations of his original thesis.

The remarkable political and economic changes that have intervened suggest that Gramscis concepts represent the turning point; his insistence on historicism (appreciation of the specific conditions in which an abstract scheme is realised; hence rejection of sociological laws of development); the struggle for political and moral leadership based on popular consent; and the transformation of economic, political and social structures through the exercise of hegemony. (Accordingly, a critical analysis of Marxism, as point of departure, comprises

Let me elaborate on the two different approaches. The first emphasises the world of production, to which all else is subordinate. The second attests to the world of order, in two senses: that is, control of people and resources (power); and ordering, giving meaning to, the world we live in (culture or ideology). As for Marxs summation of production it lies in his analysis of capitalism and prognosis of revolution. (Here they are presented schematically.)

Capitalist mode of production. Its inherent contradictions are structural and social: (i) in the earlier form of manufacture, workers were unorganised (separated) while production was regulated; but in the developed capitalist system the workforce is organised in factorieslike troops in

* My approach is historical-specific in this work rather than sociological-general. (For an explanation see p. 109.) Yet the tension between the two provides the dynamic of social analysis. Political economy I regard as the interaction of economic and political factors, not the use of economic models to explain political performance. (See also Conclusion, n. 2.)

an army, trained for specialised taskswhile the production and distribution of the product is unregulated, that is, left to competition through the market, resulting in social anarchy; (ii) the workers, largely originating from the peasantry, but dispossessed from the land, have nothing but their labour-power to sell; what they produce for the capitalistthe surplus, over and above subsistence wages is partly consumed and partly invested by the owner. The law of value in effect signifies that labour has been reduced to a commodity in and by the very process of capitalist production. The result is exploitation: the product of labour profits only the capitalist, who thereby accumulates more capital, enlarges his enterprise, and hires more labour. The worker, by his own effort, creates the instrument of his own oppression.

Revolution. The contradictions of capitalism result in economic crises (over-production and slumps) and social polarisation: ruthless competition bankrupts many firms; the ruined petty-bourgeoisie, along with peasant small-holders, are forced into the ranks of the proletariat, confronting the concentrated economic power of a few capitalist magnates. The masses of workers are collectively organised in the workplace and are self-developing as they become conscious of their historic role: they act in ever-greater solidarity to overthrow an increasingly isolated, and hated, minority. The economy is technically advanced to produce in abundance; all that remains is for the producerscapable and determined by their working experienceto replace the capitalists in order to meet the needs, not of private owners, but of society as a whole.

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