Capitalist Class Formation and U.S. Imperialism

The present volume is a 2012 republication of Kees Van Der Pijl’s classic The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (MARC, originally published in 1984) with a new preface. A major part of the book is devoted to the analysis of class formation processes and hegemonic struggles within the U.S. bourgeoisie, from the Woodrow Wilson administration to the New Deal era. According to Van Der Pijl, the hegemonic configuration of bourgeois-capitalist fractions draws its strength from particular concepts of control, defined as “project[s] for the conduct of public affairs and social control that aspire[s] to be a legitimate approximation of the general interest in the eyes of the ruling class and, at the same time, the majority of the population, for at least a specific period” (Van Der Pijl 2012: 7). The author associates the liberal internationalist concept of control with the financial divisions of capitalists who unconditionally opt for a laissez-faire capitalism and democratic pacifism. In turn, he relates the state-monopolistic concept of control to the bourgeois fractions whose strategy of expansion relies on spheres-of-influence and inter-imperialist rivalry.

In the first half of his book, Van Der Pijl mostly focuses on the changing meanings of Atlanticism as put forth by different bourgeois fractions of the United States, including J. P. Morgan’s liberal internationalist support for Wilson’s cosmopolitanism, Wall Street’s support for the Dawes Plan, as well as the Rockefeller group’s support for a state-monopolistic vision of Atlanticism, which sought to compete with Britain and cooperate with Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Van Der Pijl maintains that the hegemonic cohesion and strength of U.S. capitalism was indebted to the corporate liberal concept of control originating from Fordism, namely “the growth in the United States of a strongly internationalist automotive complex supporting a new mode of accumulation which for the first time in history allowed a class compromise between capital and labour to be constructed around a common interest in a rising rate of exploitation” (Van Der Pijl 2012: 90). Effectuated between 1933 and 1941, the Fordist corporate liberal strategy corresponded to a synthesis of laissez-faire capitalism and state intervention, which allowed for balancing the liberal international drive of “money capital” and the state-supported “productive capital” in the Euro-Atlantic zone.

Van Der Pijl contends that three tactical-offensive breakthroughs stand out in the history of corporate liberalism: the idea of “Atlantic Universalism” derived from the Rooseveltian New Deal era (marked by the internationalization of Fordism and revival of Wilsonian internationalism) bearing on both Britain and the Soviet Union; the idea of an “Atlantic Union” marked by the Marshall Plan for a united Euro-Atlantic alliance against the Soviet Union; and the idea of an “Atlantic Partnership” promulgated by President Kennedy in front of an “emancipated” Europe seeking for its own sphere of interest. The Roosevelt offensive came to establish a Fordist mode of accumulation in the United States and generated the political conditions for a universalistic/ultra-imperialist Atlantic coalition, without however initiating an economical restructuring of class structures in Europe. Economic restructuring was initiated following the Marshall Plan, which sought to lay the “material conditions for an Atlantic economy based on the generalization of Fordism” in Europe against communism (Van Der Pijl 2012: 148-49). Europe’s economic regeneration of the Marshall Plan era eventually led to the development of its self-confidence and aspirations for a more independent path vis-à-vis the United States. As such, the Kennedy offensive witnessed the continuation of the Atlantic alliance under a mutual partnership strategy. By the 1970s, however, U.S.-driven corporate liberalism could not escape from being disintegrated following the fading away of the Euro-Atlantic industrial capacity, rising unemployment levels, the disorganization of the working class, and the bourgeoning of money capital; having all together contributed to the retreat of Atlantic integration and the end of Fordism.

A chief merit of Van Der Pijl’s classic volume is that it offers a sophisticated and well-grounded Antonio Gramsci-informed analysis of capitalist class fractions and hegemonic regroupings. Reasserting the centrality of class formation and the positioning of fractional elites in political analysis, Van Der Pijl reveals that ruling classes do not constitute a fixed entity, and class formation is thus a continuous and contentious process. Furthermore, his analysis also suggests that a fuller grasp of class formation process is inconceivable without taking into account the interaction of international class forces beyond the boundaries of nation-states. This being said, it would be relevant to briefly address a major problematical issue regarding Van Der Pijl’s supplementary framework as it is presented in the new preface. The author seems to rely on the assumption that contemporary capitalism is characterized by a so-called “transnationalist” capitalist class, or a “global ruling class,” which implicitly means that European bourgeoisies have merged with U.S. imperialism, having eroded all the “national” differences once and for all: “Capital in this sense is extra-territorial and cannot be internalised by states” (Van Der Pijl 2012: xxii). The transnationalist assumption that contemporary capitalism has become extra-territorial and states do not matter anymore in the political-economic sense is diametrically opposed to the author’s original thesis in MARC. On the contrary, the book itself is a sweeping contribution to the territoriality of capitalism and the state’s role in class formation processes.

In the final analysis, it is one thing to talk about the historical emergence of a “trans-Atlantic” class alliance under the U.S. hegemony and another to claim the formation of a “transnational capitalist class,” which is more explicitly championed in Van Der Pijl’s later work that associates capitalist globalization with the rise of some kind of masonic “transnational cosmopolitanism” and “transnational planning groups” (Van Der Pijl 2005). As far as the so-called transnationalization of capitalism is concerned, the home-base of most U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) remains a major determinant in the their share of assets, ownership, management, strategic decisions, employment, and research & development (Petras 2003: 40; Weiss 1998: 185). Similarly, European capitalism is far from becoming transnationalized, since German, French, and British capitalisms have preserved their national character, continuing to be dominated by national business elites (Hartman 2007: 85-88). Furthermore, outside of the context of the Atlantic relations, Van Der Pijl’s thesis of the global ruling class and extra-territoriality of capitalism seems to be invalidated by China’s model of economic growth and its ascendancy in Latin America and Africa (Campbella 2008; Ding 2008) as well as the concomitant U.S. military aspirations to encircle Iran, Russia, and eventually China (Nazemroaya 2012). In this sense, Van Der Pijl’s crude distinction between the socialization of relations of production and that of spatial (foreign) relations as a “separate trajectory” (Van Der Pijl 2012: xviii) does not sound like a convincing argument. This distinction contributes to nothing but superficially asserting the imaginary, or metaphysical existence of a “transnational capital” regulated by a nation-ness “managerial cadre” (Van Der Pijl 2007). The contemporary relevance of Van Der Pijl’s MARC rather lies in its potential to provide an extensible conceptual framework that accentuates the inherent territoriality of both capitalist relations of production and imperialism in order to understand the emerging class coalitions and hegemonic concepts of control against the U.S. and European hegemony in the Third World.