Abstract
The term ‘globalisation’ has been central to public debate ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union signalled an end to the ‘three worlds’ of the post-1945 world order; its common-sense understanding has not surprisingly been shaped by the prevailing ideology of neoliberalism. By and large, left debates on the political economy of global capitalism have been framed in terms of the antinomy of ‘state versus market’, the only difference being that this was now redefined as ‘nation-state versus world market’, tending to end up with little more than a tired re-run of the 1930s split in the Third International over socialism in one country. As Lucia Pradella argues at the outset of this very interesting study, it was only the general systemic crisis of 2007–2008 that made it possible to escape from the limitations of methodological nationalism and develop a truly global critique of political economy. In response to the crisis, the fiscal and monetary tools supposedly rendered obsolete by the magic of the market were hastily dusted off and applied with considerable vigour, but directed to the preservation of the rule of capital, rather than the living standards and security of the working classes. This in turn has led to the spread of political and social tensions across the world, albeit as yet with little unity of purpose.
In the 150 years since the first volume of Capital appeared, and in due course became the core text of Marxism, every crisis has led us back to Marx’s writings in search of conceptual tools that might help us make sense of its historically specific features. Pradella has done us a great service in reconstructing from Marx’s newly available drafts and notebooks a much more comprehensive understanding of how he came to see the world economy as he developed his critique. This is significant because for over a century, the predominant view of scholars was that Marx had somehow not got around to analysing the world economy, which famously had been intended as the final volume in his incomplete project. The book makes it abundantly clear that the critique set out in Capital drew not only on Marx’s studies of Britain as the pre-eminent capitalist power, but equally on contemporary developments throughout the world economy, which he clearly conceived as a single entity.
The opening two chapters of the book set the scene. Chapter 1 sets out ‘the dynamics of emerging capitalism and European expansionism’ (p. 13) from the 15th to the 18th centuries, shaping the understanding of world economy from mercantilism to classical political economy. Proper account is taken of the emergence of the modern state and political thinking from their origins in the ancient and medieval worlds. Chapter 2 then turns to the always controversial issue of Hegel’s influence on Marx, showing that in relation to imperialism and world history, just as in the well-known more ‘theoretical’ issues of civil society and the state, that influence was deep and complex, opening up for Marx a radically new investigative journey.
The remaining three chapters cover the period from 1842 to 1867. Chapter 3 charts how Marx’s critique shifted from a critique of the state in the manner of Hegel, to the critique of political economy. Living through the gestation of Germany as a nation-state, Marx saw the transformations taking place in Europe and across the world as constitutive elements in the new capitalist order, and indeed in his own journey from Cologne to Paris and eventually to London. Chapter 4 examines in detail Marx’s notebooks of 1850–1853, which record his deepening engagement with political economy and the available statistical data and narrative accounts against which it might be judged. Pradella shows that alongside his highly original critique of prevailing thinking about money, value, wages, rent and population, Marx took extensive account of the colonial system and its predecessors across the world. Finally, chapter 5 examines the remaining period up to 1867. Marx’s conceptual approach shifted increasingly towards its eventual foundation in the theory of value, an approach which appears to be expressed as a closed or ‘national’ economic system. Pradella argues, however, that this ‘more mature conceptualisation of value … presupposes his analysis of capital reproduction as a globalising process in the 1861-63 Manuscript’ (p. 153).
As the author suggests in her conclusion, despite appearances, Marx’s critique of political economy was global in scope and drew on a clear understanding of world trade, imperialism and the colonial system, albeit within the limitations of the materials at Marx’s disposal. It thus offers a corrective to the widely held idea that he was just another Eurocentric, and therefore irrelevant in our ‘globalised’ world.