In David Harvey’s early work The Limits to Capital, he develops the foundations of his spatial analysis of capitalism through a reading of all three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital. This post focuses on the sections devoted to the centralization of capital and finance capital.
While Harvey provides a series of insightful analyses regarding the mechanics of the credit system, financial cycles and imperialist spatial fixes, his analyses of the centralization of capital and finance capital do more to disrupt the Marxist project of overthrowing capitalism than to deepen our insight into the economic processes that constitute capital. Harvey ignores Marx’s argument that the centralization of capital is an inherent tendency in capitalism and that, as such, it gives rise to heightened class antagonisms and predatory capitalist class formations—in a word, imperialism. At every step of the way, he attempts to disrupt a clear, unified Marxist view of the ruling class in favor of a “sophisticated” academic analysis of the economy. In doing so, he conceals from view the barbarity of the imperialist ruling class.
Centralization of Capital
First, we need understand what Marx actually said about these phenomena. He makes the point in Capital that the tendency toward centralization of capital is the fundamental process that gives rise to finance capital and imperialism. Basic features of the accumulation process drive this fundamental tendency toward centralization.
Marx introduces the centralization of capital in Capital, Volume I, chapter 25, “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.” The relevant section is “2. A relative diminution of the variable part of capital occurs in the course of the further progress of accumulation and of the concentration accompanying it.” The title of this section is relevant because the process it references is not addressed in Harvey’s Limits. In summary, Marx argues that capitalists are compelled to constantly apply new technology and technical methods to increase the rate of surplus-value extraction from workers and therefore gain greater profits than their competitors. He continues that this becomes the “most powerful lever of accumulation,” (772) so capitalists use whatever means they can to apply new technology and achieve economies of scale. The general tendency, driven by the coercive laws of competition, is for concentration of capital and capitalist productivity to advance together. Concentration of capital refers to the individualized growth of firms in a capitalist economy in the context of expanded reproduction, i.e. the reinvestment of surplus-value by the capitalists into greater productive capacity and expansion. This is reflected in a “diminution of the variable part of capital,” i.e. the amount capitalists pay workers per unit of production. While there is no clear one-to-one relationship between concentration of capital and productivity gains, and while there may be other mitigating factors, this basic tendency exerts force on the development of capitalism.
Marx elaborates further: “The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of commodities depends, all other circumstances remaining the same, on the productivity of labour, and this depends in turn on the scale of production. Therefore the larger capitals beat the smaller.” (777) Here he introduces the related phenomenon of centralization of capital, the process whereby firms in a capitalist economy redivide the available capital between themselves so that certain firms control larger amounts at the expense of others. The larger capitals beat the smaller through a process of mergers and acquisitions. Centralization does not necessarily (although it can) consist of the augmentation of the total social capital. Here is the genesis of the subtitle to V.I. Lenin’s work on imperialism: “The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” Lenin notes that imperialism is marked by the need by capital to “redivide the world,” an analogous concept to Marx’s redivision of the available social capital. Centralization of capital is the tendency that characterizes the accumulation process when capitalism has reached full maturity.
One tool of centralization is the joint-stock company or the modern corporation. Marx writes, that the formation of joint-stock companies involves, “Tremendous expansion in the scale of production, and enterprises which would be impossible for individual capitals. At the same time, enterprises that were previously government ones become social.” (Volume III: 567) Likewise, the corporation enables the centralization of production and of social power as a result of the competitive drive by capitalists to control the accumulation process.
The Credit System and Bank Capital
In this same chapter from Volume I on the law of capitalist accumulation, Marx introduces the role of the credit system. He writes, “Commensurately with the development of capitalist production and accumulation there also takes place a development of the two most powerful levers of centralization—competition and credit… Today, therefore, the force of attraction which draws together individual capitals, and the tendency to centralization, are both stronger than ever before.” (778-9; my emphasis) First, with respect to competition, the coercive laws of competition are the force that drives accumulation and, by extension, centralization. It is the drive by individual capitalists to control more and more of the accumulation process. Subjectively, this appears as the desire for greater social power.
As for credit, his point is that the credit system becomes incorporated into the coercive laws of competition and accelerates the accumulation and centralization processes. In other words, the credit system is just an extension of the inner logic of capitalism. To this point, Marx writes, “…it soon becomes a new and terrible weapon in the battle of competition and is finally transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the centralization of capitals.” (778) What does he mean here? To get more detail on this, we need to look to Part Five of Volume III, on interest-bearing capital (I have summarized some of the arguments here, here and here).
Marx elaborates that this credit-driven centralization consists of the drive by capitalists for increased social power. In Volume III, he writes, “…credit offers the individual capitalist, or the person who can pass as a capitalist, an absolute command over the capital and property of others, within certain limits, and, through this, command over other people’s labour. It is disposal over social capital, rather than his own, that gives him command over social labour. The actual capital that someone possesses, or is taken to possess by public opinion, now becomes simply the basis for a superstructure of credit.” (570; my emphasis) As credit enables the increase in the mass of capital in society, it also increases the amount of capital that can be controlled by individual capitalists or small groups thereof.
This ability to command the capital and labor of others is magnified by banks, which are able to channel social power most efficiently through pooling of resources. The most concise summary of bank capital provided by Marx in Volume III is the following: “A bank represents on the one hand the centralization of money capital, of the lenders, and on the other hand the centralization of the borrowers.” (528) Banks pool money from surplus holders (not surplus-value, but surplus money, whether it be in the form of surplus-value held by capitalists or savings held by workers) and channel it to borrowers, largely in the form of capitalist enterprises that seek expanded reproduction or centralization of capital. The centralization Marx refers to here is idiosyncratic: he is not referring to the centralization of production or ownership per se, but the centralization of control over the accumulation process, i.e. power. We have the interesting phenomenon whereby thrifty workers deposit their savings in banks and the banks lend those savings to the very enterprises that exploit the workers. So, ownership of the capital is split between the workers and the bank, but this ownership by the workers does not translate into social power. The banks are able to use the centralization process to control greater amounts of capital without necessarily owning it. While the old Marxist saying, “Money is concentrated social power,” is true, we can add the corollary, “Centralized money is centralized social power.” This is as true for a bank as it is for a trade union or a revolutionary workers party that pools the dues of its members in support of a particular political program.
But Marx continues the development of the concept of centralization in the context of bank capital and conceives the germ of Rudolf Hilferding’s concept of finance capital. Marx writes, “On top of this, with the development of large-scale industry money capital emerges more and more, in so far as it appears on the market, as not represented by the individual capitalist, the proprietor of this or that fraction of the mass of capital on the market, but rather as a concentrated and organized mass, placed under the control of the bankers as representatives of the social capital in a quite different manner to real production.” (491) Marx is describing here the development of social power under the highest stage of capitalism. Finance becomes a mechanism to control greater and greater portions of the accumulation process. As we saw above, the centralization process is driven by the coercive laws of competition and finance becomes the central tool in achieving centralization.
The commodity fetish is the principle ideological tool by which the capitalist class hides its exploitation of the working class; this fetish reaches its apotheosis in the context of bank capital. Marx writes, “The fetish character of capital and the representation of this capital fetish is now complete. In M-M’ we have the irrational form of capital, the misrepresentation and objectification of the relations of production, in its highest power: the interest-bearing form, the simple form of capital, in which it is taken as logically anterior to its own reproduction process; the ability of money or a commodity to valorize its own value independent of reproduction—the capital mystification in the most flagrant form.” (516) This ideological mechanism further consolidates the social power of capital by erasing commodity production as the central value-producing process in capitalism and positing that value originates in finance. These days, we are led to the absurd mystification that the Federal Reserve somehow controls commodity production simply by buying and selling financial assets, when in fact, the Fed is more like the Wizard of Oz—the expression of a decaying financial oligarchy that seeks to ideologically stave off the growing crises of capitalism.
Marx’s Dialectics of the Economy
Now that we know what Marx actually said about centralization and finance capital, it is helpful to summarize the theoretical base that Marx establishes in Capital, a particular application of dialectical materialism to the economy. We will see below that this theoretical orientation has significant implications for revolutionary politics. A simple working definition of capital that Harvey derives from Marx is “value in motion.” There is not much to dispute here because Marx emphasizes, particularly in Volume II that there is a strong imperative in capitalism for constant movement of value from one form to another. That said, Harvey often bases his analysis on the idea that capitalism is a process and that all static formations are temporary. This is not wrong, but it is only one side of a contradictory situation.
In the first three chapters of Volume II, Marx lays out the three forms of capital and their behaviors: commodity capital, money capital and productive capital. Value moves through these three forms constantly: as finished goods, it is commodity capital; as the universal abstract equivalent, it is money; as productive capital it is means of production and labor power in motion at the site of production (I explain this in more detail here). However, Marx spends an equal amount of time in Volume II emphasizing that capital can easily fall into stasis, anywhere along the way: too many commodities can be produced, locking the value in the stage of distribution; money can be withdrawn from the economy and hoarded, leading to a lack of investment; productive capital in the form of labor power can withdrawn in a strike, leading to a cessation of production. The picture that emerges is of a constant oscillation between flow and stasis. We can also see this oscillation at work in his depiction of elements like fixed capital, e.g. machinery, which is described as both the fixed element of the means of production (static) and constantly giving up its value to the commodities it helps produce through wear and tear (in motion).
In addition to the oscillation between flow and stasis, the dialectic encompasses a fractal pattern where instances of flow contain many static elements in fluid relationship, which each contain flow and so on. The capitalist state, a fixed formation, contains within it many elements in fluid relationship while it is also an element within a larger context of global capitalist relationships. These relationships have varying levels of stability and contradictions permeate their existence, leading to the possibility of fixed elements breaking apart and flows forming new stable configurations. This dialectical interplay of opposites pervades Marx’s thinking and is extremely productive in providing insight into capitalism’s laws of motion.
But Marx pushes dialectics beyond material reality to the level of human abstraction as well. He writes, “Capital, as self-valorizing value, does not just comprise class relations, a definite social character that depends on the existence of labour as wage-labour. It is a movement, a circulatory process through different stages, which itself in turn includes three different forms of the circulatory process. Hence it can only be grasped as a movement, and not as a static thing. Those who consider the autonomization of value as a mere abstraction forget that the movement of industrial capital is this abstraction in action.” (185; my emphasis) First, we can see why Harvey may have been sidetracked by this passage as Marx explicitly states that capital is not a thing, but a process. However, the final sentence of the quotation is the heart of Marx’s point and it refers to a different phenomenon. In rejecting the description of capital’s autonomy as “mere abstraction” he is referring to vulgar materialists who dismissed the role of human consciousness in the unfolding of reality. As a dialectical materialist, when Marx describes the circulation of capital, he is saying that capital is a very real thing that shapes our social reality—the abstraction itself has a power that does work. The abstraction of capital—the consciousness we all have that there is value and that it increases, decreases, circulates, etc.—has a significant effect on the world. It is an ideological code that governs our interactions, survival behaviors and political aspirations. (Ultimately, it takes a back seat to the material processes that serve as the fundamental base for human society. The abstraction also cannot stray too far from this base without causing a disruption to the relationships of production.)
So, while capital is indeed a movement and not a static thing, the capitalist system is governed by this static thing: the abstraction that is ideology. While that abstraction is an illusion, a false consciousness, it is real—it does the work of maintaining the system of exploitation.
The ideological mechanism of the commodity fetish demonstrates this dimension of the dialectic most clearly: a static concept instantiated in the minds of the masses that conceals a plethora of hideous and exploitative social relations of production—motion concealed by a fixed concept. Marxist propaganda has the goal of smashing these static concepts—but critically, not just to destroy the concepts and leave an amorphous flow in their place. Instead it seeks to forge new conceptual tools and weapons that the workers need to defeat capitalism. In his work, “On the Concept of History,” (1940) Walter Benjamin writes, “The materialist writing of history for its part is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the movement of thoughts but also their zero-hour [Stillstellung]. Where thinking suddenly halts in a constellation overflowing with tensions, there it yields a shock to the same, through which it crystallizes as a monad. The historical materialist approaches a historical object solely and alone where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he cognizes the sign of a messianic zero-hour [Stillstellung] of events, or put differently, a revolutionary chance in the struggle for the suppressed past.” (my emphasis) Benjamin’s term “Stillstellung,” is translated here as “zero-hour” and the translator for this English version of the text describes it as an “objective interruption of a mechanical process.”
The point is that Marxist propaganda and revolution (indeed intentional action of any kind) are impossible without the strategic application of fixed concepts. While nature is an unending oscillation between stasis and flow, humans have the power to harness and direct that oscillation, often by intentionally demobilizing it—both physically and conceptually. We do this with the use of tools and the production of commodities and buildings just as we do it with mathematics, science, ideology and propaganda. The task of Marxist propaganda is to intervene into class struggle to halt the flow of capitalism and provide the workers with the conceptual weaponry necessary for victory.
The Emergence of Finance Capital
Finance capital had begun to emerge while Marx was writing Capital, but it did not reach full dominance until the late nineteenth century. This embryonic finance capital formed out of the coagulation of those elements of the capitalist class that gained control over capital without necessarily owning it.
We saw above how the mechanisms of credit and bank capital allow for greater levels of centralization in the economy. Marx explains that when the level of centralization reaches the point where entire industries are subordinated to a crude central planning, the growing contradiction between ownership of capital and control of capital leads to the emergence of a parasitic class formation at the top of the economy. Of this contradiction, he writes, “It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new kind of parasite in the guise of company promoters, speculators and merely nominal directors; an entire system of swindling and cheating with respect to the promotion of companies, issue of shares and share dealings. It is private production unchecked by private ownership.” (Volume III: 569) Again, while Marx lays strong emphasis on the processual nature of capital, he also emphasizes the fixed formations that grow out of that process and that turn around and influence it. In this emergent world, financial leverage allows capitalists to not only increase their wealth, but also to control vast spheres of production. In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin quotes Hilferding’s definition of finance capital as follows: “Thus, to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ‘finance capital’… Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists.”
Lenin continues with a brief history of the rise of imperialism: “Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage [i.e. initial centralization of capital as per Marx’s analysis above]. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism.” (my emphasis) The key point is that capitalism changes form in its highest stage to the point where centralization of capital becomes a defining feature. It would be hard to dispute that economic life is still dominated by massive centralization today. Indeed, it is impossible to compete in the international economy without centralization of capital.
Harvey’s Confusion on Centralization
Harvey takes up the question of the centralization of capital in chapter 5 of Limits, arguing that, while there may be a tendency toward centralization of capital, there is also a countervailing tendency toward decentralization. This results in the search by capital for an equilibrium point between centralization and decentralization. Explaining the mechanics behind this tendency, Harvey writes, “Increased vertical integration decreases the value composition (which is advantageous for profit-making) but increases the turnover time (which diminishes the prospects for profits). The degree of vertical integration can, in the first instance, be interpreted as the product of these two opposed incentives.” (140) Leaving aside for now what Harvey means by “vertical integration” (his interpretation of centralization), we can see that his first point above is consistent with Marx’s argument that centralization allows for the capitalists to increase productivity. His second point, that centralization leads to greater turnover time due to the existence of a small capitalist command center governing a much larger production base, is not made by Marx. Is Harvey introducing a novel idea that Marx did not think of, or is he referencing a different phenomenon?
Looking at what Harvey means by vertical integration can clue us in. He references the “multidivisional corporate structure” as a revolution in the corporation that is synonymous with decentralization. This discussion contains some important points about how the structure of production in an enterprise can affect productivity and efficiency, but drawing on Marx’s description of centralization, it seems Harvey is discussing a different concept. The following quotation clues us in: “The interesting point, of course, is that this decentralized structure is so organized that each division (whether it be a product line or a territory) can be held financially accountable. The managerial performance of each division can be measured in terms of a rate of return on capital from each division. The function of central management is to monitor performance and to allocate resources—labour power, managerial skills and finance—in relation to the present or estimated future profitability of each division.” (148; my emphasis) Nowhere in this discussion of centralization does Harvey define what he means by “central management” and how they hold the “decentralized” corporation accountable.
Lenin had to respond to a similar argument in 1916 that looked at the same process Harvey identifies but in reverse: “We see the rapid expansion of a close network of channels which cover the whole country, centralizing all capital and all revenues, transforming thousands and thousands of scattered economic enterprises into a single national capitalist, and then into a world capitalist economy. The ‘decentralisation’ that Schulze-Gaevernitz, as an exponent of present-day bourgeois political economy, speaks of in the passage previously quoted, really means the subordination to a single centre of an increasing number of formerly relatively ‘independent’, or rather, strictly local economic units. In reality it is centralization, the enhancement of the role, importance and power of monopolist giants.” (213) So, Harvey is just recycling an argument from over 100 years ago made by a bourgeois economist, and omitting Lenin’s Marxist refutation.
Harvey goes on to say that the modern corporate structure is ideal for maximizing the coercive laws of competition and application of the law of capitalist value within the enterprise and thus achieves the greatest possible economies of scale and productivity gains. Now, Harvey does not state this, but this is exactly what Marx meant when he wrote that centralization allows for maximized productivity. If we look closely we can see the sleight of hand that Harvey—as with Lenin’s bourgeois opponent—uses to hide the fact that the multidivisional corporate structure is in fact an innovation made possible by massive centralization of capital. The key distinction is made by Marx: “The technical management remains in the same hands as before, but financial control is concentrated in the hands of the general management.” (Volume III: 569; my emphasis) While management of specific corporate divisions may be devolved somewhat to introduce competition and efficiency, this is only possible due to the centralized command structure that controls the allocation of capital at the level of the corporation. We return here to Marx’s underlying point: the coercive laws of competition lead capitalists to seek greater control over accumulation and this leads to a progressive centralization of power. Does this centralization have limits? Of course, but this does not change the fundamental class dynamic of a tendency toward centralization of capital.
It is the unaccountable power of the capitalist class that Marx despises and he sees the centralization of capital as heightening the tyranny of capital. If anything, he sees the “vertical integration” of the joint-stock company and its ability to allocate resources and engage in relatively long-term investments such as building railways to be an innovation of capital that should be preserved by a workers revolution. So the problem is not the massive integration of production that centralization brings about, but the class contradictions which it deepens. Similarly with Amazon today: Marxists can appreciate the productivity gains of a centralized corporate structure in delivering packages efficiently across the country and meanwhile recognize that capitalists such as Jeff Bezos bust unions and hideously exploit the workers who make this system function.
Harvey’s Obfuscation of Finance Capital
When we move on to chapter 9 of Limits, “Money, Credit and Finance,” Harvey begins to change his tune on centralization somewhat. Reflecting Marx’s description of bank capital, Harvey waxes orthodox: “Secondly, financial institutions concentrate the ‘money savings and temporarily idle money capital of all classes’ and convert this money into capital. ‘Small amounts, each in itself incapable of acting in the capacity of money capital’, can thereby ‘merge together into large masses and thus form a money-power’. The concentration and centralization of capital can proceed apace.” (262) Further on, he writes, “The centralization of capital via the credit system unleashes the full power and potential of technological and organizational change as a prime lever for accumulation.” (271) Again, this is very much in the vein of Marx’s analysis of centralization in his chapter on the law of capitalist accumulation.
Harvey later takes it to another level, writing, “The central banks are, therefore, not only the pivot of the modern credit system, but a central control point within the state apparatus.” (281) This jibes with his reference to the credit system as the “central nervous system” of capital (270). Where is Harvey’s countervailing force of decentralization now? Not even Lenin went so far as to attribute a “central control point” to the capitalist state. We can find more clues as Harvey delves deeper into finance capital.
In taking up this task, he changes his color again, writing, “The implied definition of finance capital [from Marx’s scattered writings] is of a particular kind of circulation process of capital which centres on the credit system. Later writers have tended to abandon this process viewpoint and treat the concept in terms of a particular configuration of factional alliances within the bourgeoisie—a power bloc which wields immense influence over the process of accumulation in general.” (283) So, is finance capital an omnipotent force that controls the accumulation process, or a diffuse circulation process? He continues, “The aim of this chapter is to contrast the process view of finance capital with the power bloc view, and to show how an exploration of the former, with particular emphasis upon its internal contradictions, helps identify the countervailing forces that simultaneously create and undermine the formation of coherent power blocs within the bourgeoisie.” (283) As Harvey noted in his discussion of the tendency toward the centralization of capital that decentralization is a countervailing force, he makes the analogous argument that while finance capital power blocs exist, there are countervailing forces that undermine them. In brief, bankers and industrialists each have their own profit-making interests: bankers make profit through interest-bearing capital, i.e. lending money; and industrialists make profit through industrial capital, i.e. commodity production. While bankers and industrialists may find their interests united for a time, those alliances are only temporary and they wax and wane with the fluctuations of the accumulation cycle. When money is in relatively high demand, bankers have the upper hand; when commodities are, industrialists have the advantage.
So Harvey believes the process view is important because it unearths these contradictions that are hidden by Hilferding and Lenin’s power bloc views: “The unitary conception of finance capital Hilferding advances has to be judged, therefore, as too one-sided and simplistic because he does not address the specific manner in which the unification of banking and industrial capital internalizes an insurmountable contradiction.” (321) For Harvey, Hilferding’s theory is “too one-sided and simplistic,” not because it is an inaccurate view of the world, but because he does not explicitly address certain contradictions. On the same page, Harvey settles on a definition of finance capital from Thompson: “‘an articulated combination of commercial capital, industrial capital and banking capital’ within which banking capital is dominant but not determinant.” Given that Hilferding’s conception of finance capital is “one-sided and simplistic,” should we assume Thompson’s is multifaceted and sophisticated? Or is something else going on?
What Is to Be Done?
Returning to the discussion of Marx’s dialectics of capital, we are reminded that economic reality is made up of alternations between flow and stasis. Capital relies on speed of production and circulation, but it cannot survive without extracting and freezing in place hoards and power blocs through processes like centralization. The rule of capital, after all is an example of stasis and it is maintained by a fairly long-lasting power bloc: the capitalist class. It is not inaccurate to say, as Harvey does, that these power blocs are temporary and internalize contradictions—that is clear. The real question is, why focus attention on the process view and undermine the power bloc view? What is at stake for Harvey in attempting to cut down the orthodox theory of finance capital? Where is he going with this analysis? What types of contradictions are we missing when we neglect process, as he argues? The problem is that Harvey does not say why elevating the process view is important.
But Lenin did say why emphasizing the power bloc view was important—namely, to break the working classes of all the imperialist countries from their “own” capitalist ruling classes. The Second International had collapsed in 1914 because almost all the national workers parties in the imperialist countries supported their national ruling classes in the inter-imperialist slaughter of World War I. By contrast, Lenin and the Bolsheviks adopted the policy of revolutionary defeatism: opposing the Russian ruling class in order to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, i.e. a workers revolution. Imperialism had become the main source of opportunism in the workers movement, as the capitalists bribed a section of the workers with their super profits and thus won them over to national chauvinism. Now, as Harvey might point out, there are certainly contradictions in any alliance between the labor aristocracy and the imperialist ruling class; that is ABC to any Marxist. But the point is to focus the attention of the masses on this power bloc to show that the main enemy is at home in the form of the national ruling class.
Harvey is silent on this aspect of Lenin’s theory and politics because he caters to reformist social democracy, the opportunism that Lenin was fighting against. While Harvey does say on occasion that we need a completely new economic system, a cursory look at his work will show that he is a Keynesian and not a Marxist. And while it is clear that the Leninist view is consistent with a revolutionary defeatist policy, Harvey’s process view serves to obfuscate where the class power actually lies, what its politics are and how to oppose it. To return to fundamental Marxist principles, for Lenin, the main point was to show that capitalism had developed to the point where a tiny group of people could centralize capital to control massive sections of the global economy and use that power to pit the workers of different nations against each other. Importantly—and against Hilferding—this had become an integral feature of capitalism, which was not going away. The task was to dispense with the entire system—not try to roll back its excesses. The question of whether industrialists, bankers or commercial capitalists hold the upper hand at any particular time is a detail and a sidetrack.
In Imperialism, Lenin included a polemic against German centrist Karl Kautsky’s concept of “ultra-imperialism,” the notion that the imperialist powers could peacefully unite and jointly exploit the world instead of resorting to war and barbarism. The inanity of this argument can be seen simply by the fact that it was made on the eve of World War I. Lenin wrote, “…the best reply that one can make to the lifeless abstractions of ‘ultra-imperialism’ (which serve exclusively a most reactionary aim: that of diverting attention from the depth of existing antagonisms) is to contrast them with the concrete economic realities of the present-day world economy. Kautsky’s utterly meaningless talk about ultra-imperialism encourages, among other things that profoundly mistaken idea which only brings grist to the mill of apologists of imperialism, i.e., that the rule of finance capital lessens the unevenness and contradictions inherent in the world economy, whereas in reality it increases them.” (272; my emphasis)
As with Lenin’s opponent who charged the economy was in fact decentralizing (above), Harvey makes a similar argument to Kautsky’s, but from a slightly different angle. In the guise of accusing Hilferding and Lenin of oversimplifying the internal contradictions of finance capital, he diverts attention from the deepened class antagonisms brought about by centralization of capital with the use of his “process” view. The earnest reader is left with a destabilized picture of the imperialist ruling class that diverts their attention away from the class enemy and toward a diffuse process instead. The effect is to aid the enemies of the working class in their attempt to claim that imperialism does not exist. As with Kautsky, “The result is a slurring-over and a blunting of the most profound contradictions of the latest stage of capitalism, instead of an exposure of their depth; the result is bourgeois reformism instead of Marxism.” (Lenin, Imperialism)
By contrast, Lenin argued in “What Is to Be Done?” (1902) that the role of the revolutionary was to be the “tribune of the people” who is “able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation.” (my emphasis) Harvey, by contrast, is de-generalizing capitalist exploitation. Viewed from different angles, a particular social formation like finance capital, the state, the ruling class, the working class, etc. can be seen as unified or internally contradictory. Indeed, Harvey tries to disrupt unified Marxist conceptions of the capitalist state and the working class as well. But as with with the centralization of capital: it is the job of Marxist propaganda to paint a unified picture of capitalist exploitation, to crystallize it in the minds of the workers in order to call forth revolutionary action—not endless academic contemplation.
Lenin’s goal in writing Imperialism was to show that the imperialist ruling classes were the mortal enemies of the workers of the world and that they needed to be defeated through a series of workers revolutions. Were these ruling classes unstable and contradictory? Yes. Was the basis of imperialism in finance capital the confluence of a series of economic processes between constantly shifting sub-class alignments? Of course. But for Lenin, that was not the main point—to belabor these details would have been a distraction from the task at hand.
See how far you’ll get if you tell striking workers that the ruling class is an unstable and conjunctural array of class and circulatory dynamics that is at once emergent and decaying. Huh? You’d probably be told to leave because you’re not helping.
Personally, I prefer, “Defeat imperialism through socialist revolution!”
World of Lenidzky 