Os Cangaceiros
8th September 2011, 00:35
I finished this book recently, and I thought that it had some interesting implications for Marxism/Leninism (as well as a very explicite critique at the end of the book, regarding some of the writings of Marx & Engels, as well as Max Weber.) Even though it was published back in the 60's, about a time period about sixty years prior, one can still see the same sort of phenomenon described in the book today.
The premise of the book argues that, at the beginning of the 20th century in the USA, the trend of industry was actually one of decentralization, and of larger business/corporations/trusts rapidly losing power due to being undercutted by competitors. This was contrary to the official ideology of business, who believed that monopoly and trust control was not only beneficial to the economy, it was inevitable and a natural evolution of capitalism. They were joined in this belief by many socialists, who in publications like The Weekly Worker even praised the likes of JP Morgan as inadvertently aiding in the creation of socialism by helping consolidate industry (!).
But the ideology was not squaring with reality, in any number of industries, including copper, steel, the meat packing industry, insurance, etc. So business turned to the state for assistance to rationalize the market and eliminate competition from smaller businesses who were benefiting from localized state regulations. This is where many of the so-called "progressive era" regulations came from, including the famed meat inspection acts, which had been argued for by the meat packing industry for decades before Upton Sinclair. The book also details how supposedly "progressive" figures within the burgeoning capitalist economy like Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party were practically taking orders from power players in finance and industry, JP Morgan especially. Suprisingly people are still taught in school (or at least I was) that Roosevelt et al stood up to the power of business, when the reality couldn't be farther from the truth.
Honestly most of the book is pretty boring and the writing is turgid, complete with exhaustive accounts of deconsolidation of industry, etc, but it does have a few extremely interesting quotes and facts here and there, and the implications for a very mechanistic, purely economistic view of monopoly capital like, say, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" seems obvious. Kolko says:
Marx saw total centralization as the conclusion of the capitalist economic process, and he had no intermediate theory of the nature of prices and competition in what is now referred to as an oligopolistic market in which the total economic victory of one large competitor over another is extraordinarily difficult...[Marxian explanations] could not explain collusion based on solidarity among capitalists and a rationalized pursual of mutual interests and profits. In the American context, Marx was wrong in predicting that an ever smaller number of capitalists would share the market, for the rapid growth of the market and continuous technological innovations kept the economy sufficiently fluid to require the intervention of something more decisive than long-term impersonal natural economic processes.
Kolko makes the (IMO valid) argument that, while Marxism may have a valid analysis of many aspects of capital, Marx overlooked the crucial role of the state in maintaining a stable business climate long after "the process of primitive accumulation is more or less accomplished." (Capital) Engels' wishy-washy definition of the state in Anti-Duhring as some kind of entity that's totally removed from the economic expansion of capital (almost a non-class entity, in fact, in contrast to the state as the instrument of the ruling class), rather than look at something like the English Banking Act of 1844, long after primitive accumulation, and draw a some-would-say obvious conclusion, is also discussed.
Anyway, I'm not sure what Kolko's politics are (he briefly positively mentions Paul Mattick in the book), but I thought this was a worthwhile read in a subject that I'm very interested in (i.e. what the state's role in a functioning capitalist economy is.) There's a lot of good info and quotes related not only to that subject, but also the sense of impending doom and social unrest/disorder that gripped America's business community at the turn of the century. Sorry if this is tl;dr
The premise of the book argues that, at the beginning of the 20th century in the USA, the trend of industry was actually one of decentralization, and of larger business/corporations/trusts rapidly losing power due to being undercutted by competitors. This was contrary to the official ideology of business, who believed that monopoly and trust control was not only beneficial to the economy, it was inevitable and a natural evolution of capitalism. They were joined in this belief by many socialists, who in publications like The Weekly Worker even praised the likes of JP Morgan as inadvertently aiding in the creation of socialism by helping consolidate industry (!).
But the ideology was not squaring with reality, in any number of industries, including copper, steel, the meat packing industry, insurance, etc. So business turned to the state for assistance to rationalize the market and eliminate competition from smaller businesses who were benefiting from localized state regulations. This is where many of the so-called "progressive era" regulations came from, including the famed meat inspection acts, which had been argued for by the meat packing industry for decades before Upton Sinclair. The book also details how supposedly "progressive" figures within the burgeoning capitalist economy like Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party were practically taking orders from power players in finance and industry, JP Morgan especially. Suprisingly people are still taught in school (or at least I was) that Roosevelt et al stood up to the power of business, when the reality couldn't be farther from the truth.
Honestly most of the book is pretty boring and the writing is turgid, complete with exhaustive accounts of deconsolidation of industry, etc, but it does have a few extremely interesting quotes and facts here and there, and the implications for a very mechanistic, purely economistic view of monopoly capital like, say, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" seems obvious. Kolko says:
Marx saw total centralization as the conclusion of the capitalist economic process, and he had no intermediate theory of the nature of prices and competition in what is now referred to as an oligopolistic market in which the total economic victory of one large competitor over another is extraordinarily difficult...[Marxian explanations] could not explain collusion based on solidarity among capitalists and a rationalized pursual of mutual interests and profits. In the American context, Marx was wrong in predicting that an ever smaller number of capitalists would share the market, for the rapid growth of the market and continuous technological innovations kept the economy sufficiently fluid to require the intervention of something more decisive than long-term impersonal natural economic processes.
Kolko makes the (IMO valid) argument that, while Marxism may have a valid analysis of many aspects of capital, Marx overlooked the crucial role of the state in maintaining a stable business climate long after "the process of primitive accumulation is more or less accomplished." (Capital) Engels' wishy-washy definition of the state in Anti-Duhring as some kind of entity that's totally removed from the economic expansion of capital (almost a non-class entity, in fact, in contrast to the state as the instrument of the ruling class), rather than look at something like the English Banking Act of 1844, long after primitive accumulation, and draw a some-would-say obvious conclusion, is also discussed.
Anyway, I'm not sure what Kolko's politics are (he briefly positively mentions Paul Mattick in the book), but I thought this was a worthwhile read in a subject that I'm very interested in (i.e. what the state's role in a functioning capitalist economy is.) There's a lot of good info and quotes related not only to that subject, but also the sense of impending doom and social unrest/disorder that gripped America's business community at the turn of the century. Sorry if this is tl;dr