Do All (Capitalist) Modes Lead to Rome?

Capitalism?

Along with non-Marxist historians of ancient society (including Tenney Frank, Rostovtzeff, Oertel and A.H.M. Jones), leftists extending from Marx and Engels themselves to Kautsky, Luxemburg, Walbank and de Ste Croix have all subscribed to a negative interpretation of the Roman Empire: not only did it decline, but its decay was due mainly to economic causes. Over the past half century, however, this negative view – the decline thesis – has been supplanted by academically entrenched revisionism, whereby the historiography of the Roman Empire has been transformed from a narrative about systemic decline to one about flourishing economic development. Many of those who oppose the decline thesis now espouse the concept ‘late antiquity’, a period which it is claimed was one of economic growth and general prosperity. This celebratory and positive interpretation – originally formulated by Peter Brown (1971, 1978) – has been accompanied not just by the erasure of leftist ‘negativity’ but also by arguments for the presence in late antiquity of capitalism itself. That Jairus Banaji, a Marxist who during the 1960s/1970s participated in mode of production debate, is an adherent not of the decline thesis but rather of late antiquity, seems to be an anomaly.

Seen from the broad perspective of Marxist theory, the difficulties with the late antiquity framework that Banaji endorses are that it promotes what amounts to a positive and a-historical image of capitalism, one that – because it is crisis-free and seemingly benign – appears systemically eternal. It is a framework purged of all the processes, which – according to Marxist theory – generate systemic transition, among them crisis, struggle and the non-development of the productive forces. No fundamental economic transformation means in turn no transition, and thus also no distinguishing characteristics separating one mode of production from another. History – as depicted by this kind of approach – becomes merely a narrative about an ever-present dynamic that is progress. To back his contention about the presence in late antiquity of an economic system akin to capitalism, it is necessary for Banaji to have to identify the forms of the exchanges that his merchants, ‘business classes’, ‘businessmen’ and ‘moderately affluent middle classes’ themselves undertake. This he does in two ways: on the one hand by stressing the multiple and positive aspects fuelling what he claims is unabated economic dynamism, and on the other by downplaying (or denying) any negative economic processes and effects. Much like Brown, therefore, Banaji (2018: 7, 54, 86) denies the existence in late antiquity both of impoverishment and of overtaxation, forms of oppression and/or appropriation central to so-called ‘catastrophist models’ informing the decline thesis.

As with so many of the concepts he deploys, what Banaji understands by the term ‘capitalism’ is theoretically problematic, and his efforts to rectify this are consequently replete with contradiction. Although he begins by insisting that in all cases ancient economy must be differentiated from modern capitalism, any distinctiveness – never strong – soon recedes into the background. Disavowing the notion of ancient society as capitalist, he (2018: 48–49) nevertheless opts instead for the presence there of ‘individual capitalists’, on the grounds that their existence was ‘well attested throughout antiquity’. For this reason, he settles for the opaque construction that around the start of the Principate an ‘unproductive capitalism’ amounted to ‘a characterization of the economic activities of particular capitalists or groups of capitalists and not of the economy as a whole’. At this point, however, Banaji (2018: 49, original emphasis) adopts a more sweeping and all-embracing definition, asserting that ‘there was surely no period of Republican, imperial or late antique history when capitalists were not active in major sectors of the economy or when indeed some of these, or parts of them, were not organized on capitalist lines’. Additional observations made by him suggest his view is that the Roman economy of late antiquity was indeed capitalist. ²

When trying to account for the presence or absence of capitalist development in European or non-European contexts, Banaji also encounters fundamental theoretical difficulties, nowhere more so than with the role of the state. Although the latter is central to his entire case, Banaji seems unsure as to precisely why, how and where. Agreeing that ‘there is nothing inevitable about capitalism [because] its emergence depends, crucially, not just on markets but on the state’, he (2020: 120) qualifies this ‘or at least a particular kind of state’, one that ‘sets out to encourage and bolster commercial expansion’. However, precisely what was ‘particular’ about this kind of state, and why it was so in some contexts and conjunctures but not in others, is not explained. Problems generated by this lacuna keep on surfacing throughout the narrative. Emphasizing the contribution to profitability of circulating capital velocity, Banaji (2020: 113–114) manages to overlook the important role of the state in providing infrastructure. ³ Having indicated that the state was itself central to the existence/success of commercial capitalism, Banaji (2020: 121) then maintains it was a political apparatus the dominance of which rested neither on imperialism nor colonialism – state-dominant economic forms regarded by Marxism as the historical sine qua non of capitalist penetration/expansion.

Methods?

It is only when the evidence Banaji claims exists is scrutinized that real difficulties emerge. Time after time, therefore, reference is made to proof furnished by archaeological data without asking what such evidence (not presented) can tell us. ⁴ Assertions (2018: 62–63) concerning the occurrence of an ‘archaeological revolution’ remain unaccompanied by explanations as to what precisely it actually demonstrates. Maybe because of this, one encounters an occasionally tentative observation (‘My own feeling is. . .’), together with equally sporadic admissions concerning the lack of evidence/data/information corroborating the argument, claim or case that Banaji is making. ⁵ Ironically, he questions the case made by the decline thesis on the grounds of ‘how do we know?’ – forgetting perhaps that this very question has been raised about the claims he himself makes.

Because of a tendency to base his account on particular sources, many of the claims made by Banaji consequently rest on an equally narrow range of opinion, the epistemology, politics and methodology of which never surface, let alone interrogated. Not only does the narrative skip from one geographical context to another, and from one historical conjuncture to another, but the focus throughout is mainly on the advantages/disadvantages of trade rivalry and business practices. ⁶ Surprisingly for an analysis deemed to be Marxist, not much is said about production and next to nothing about relations of production. Scattered throughout the narrative (2020: 89–98, 108, 119, 131) are passing references to unexplored or hastily consulted sources, along the lines of ‘[t]he following pages summarize some of the historical work. . .’, ‘as the following rapid survey of examples shows’, ‘[o]f particular note, not highlighted here’, ‘[n]one of this has been mapped here’ and ‘descriptions of this sort could be multiplied almost indefinitely if one consulted a wider range of sources than I have, but they seem quite enough to me to suggest. . .’.

This problem is itself compounded by two interrelated points. Hence, the lack of references to ‘commercial capitalism’ is ascribed by Banaji (2020: 8) to ‘Marxist reticence’ on the part of English-language historiography, the inference being that for some reason Marxists have ignored the concept. There is, however, an alternative explanation: since ‘the historians listed [included] only a handful [who] were consciously working in a Marxist tradition’, this dearth may be due to the absence from their analyses of what is a Marxist concept. Linked to this is the acceptance by Banaji that his own ‘forms of capitalism’ were not ones found in Marx, because the latter ‘had never properly discussed [them]’. In short, they too may not actually be Marxist. Underlined thereby are the difficulties raised by a failure to address the methodological and theoretical aspects of work and/or texts cited approvingly. ⁷ Dismissing what he categorizes as ‘Western Marxism’, all that remains is no longer recognizable as politically leftist, let alone Marxist. ⁸

The second point concerns difficulties linked to the general invisibility of production relations. ⁹ A failure to differentiate weaving in terms of class stems leads Banaji (2020: 60–61, 88–89) to connect the merchant as bearer of commercial capital directly to the weaver as producer, with the result that the latter appears tied to the former in an unmediated way. ¹⁰ However, there are two categories of weavers: the master-weaver owning the means of production, and the weavers who – as bonded labour – work for him. In such instances, the subject who controls/organizes/operates the means of production is not the merchant, who merely advances the cash to set the labour process in motion and collects the product at the other end, but the master-weaver. ¹¹ Moreover, and as Chayanov indicated with regard to peasant farmers (see below), some better-off producers (like master-weavers) are on occasion able to free themselves from control exercised by a merchant – especially when backed by the state, a weaving cooperative or industrial capital – and as a result generate sufficient funds to set their own labour process in motion.

Theory?

Initially depicting Marx as an adherent of the revisionist interpretation, Banaji claims that as Marx, too, saw merchant capital as dominant – even as industrial capitalism developed – he can be said to share the same view. Accepting that Marx insisted on an ‘unbreachable separation’ between merchant and industrial capital, Banaji (2020: 8–9, 10, original emphasis) nevertheless asserts both that ‘there are clear indications [Marx] would not have reacted with horror to the idea that merchant capitalists might “dominate production directly”’, and that consequently Marx ‘allowed for a more active role for commercial capital’. Nevertheless, almost immediately Banaji (2020: 11, original emphasis) accepts that Marx did not posit ‘a distinct form of accumulation that one could identify as merchant capitalism specifically’. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the effort to conscript Marx for his own cause is overturned, as Banaji subsequently reinstates his original critique. ¹² Reversing even this, and generating yet more confusion, the latter part of the book (2020: 121–122) appears to concede what it started out by denying: that industrial capital does indeed end up by subordinating its commercial equivalent.

Despite the attempt by Banaji to recruit Marx himself to his own view about the subordination of industrial capital to merchant capital, evidence suggests otherwise. In volume II of Capital, for example, Marx (1978: 497) describes both commercial capital as the ‘primary form of which is always money, since the merchant as such does not produce any “product” or “commodity”’, and money capital as ‘the object of manipulation of a special kind of capitalist, in the circulation process of industrial capital’. In the third volume, Marx (1981: 444–445, n.46) refers to Kiessellbach, who holds a view similar to that of Banaji, as ‘still living in a mental world where commercial capital is the general form of capital’, and consequently as ‘not [having] the slightest suspicion of the modern meaning of capital, as little as Herr Mommsen when he speaks of “capital” and the rule of capital in his Römische Geschichte’. ¹³ The strength of feeling Marx (1972: 399) had about this issue is also evident from his commendation of Richard Jones, who ‘by no means shares the illusion that capital has been in existence since the beginning of the world’.

Nowhere is this break with Marxist theory more evident than in the way the process of subsumption is interpreted. To begin with, Banaji links subsumption – an act of complete economic occupation – simply to commercial capital, and not to capital per se, as Marx himself argued. Speaking of mid-19th-century India, Banaji (2020: 110, original emphasis) maintains that ‘[p]easant family labour was the productive base of most of the produce trades, and its subsumption into commercial capital through the channels of circulation described here involved the appropriation of vast amounts of unpaid family labour’. However, this is not the way Marx used the term. Consequently, the large amount of unpaid labour extracted accrues not to commercial capital (as Banaji claims) but rather to capital per se (as Marx shows).

Furthermore, Banaji fails to differentiate the concept internally, between its two distinct – and historically significant – components. Accordingly, subsumption to capital is defined by Marx (1976: 1019–1038) as either formal or real. Formal refers to capital using the labour process ‘as it finds it’, with absolute surplus value extracted by the usurer who, although providing materials/tools/money, does not intervene in the production process. This variant, as Marx pointed out, is encountered in pre-capitalist systems. By contrast, real subsumption occurs when there are changes in the division of labour, machinery and technical inputs are deployed, and relative surplus value is extracted. Capital has now ‘taken over control of production’, and ‘the merchant turns into an industrial capitalist’, not the other way round, as Banaji maintains is the case. For real subsumption to be in place, therefore, ‘the capitalist must be the owner or proprietor of the means of production’. It is this variant that is confined to – and, indeed, signals the presence of – industrial capitalism.

Banaji also tries to enlist the Russian Marxist historian Pokrovsky to his cause, insisting that he, too, was an ardent exponent of the ‘commercial capitalism’ approach, suppressed by 1930s Stalinism. However, it is clear from the source Banaji cites in support of this claim that Pokrovsky did not in fact hold the view attributed to him. ¹⁴ Having tried, unsuccessfully, to co-opt both Marx and Pokrovsky, Banaji (10–12, 99) then attempts to do the same with the Russian neopopulist Chayanov (1966), claiming the latter represents not just a ‘major breakthrough of theory’ but also and somewhat contradictorily ‘an innovation in Marxist theory’. According to Banaji, therefore, Chayanov showed that merchant capital effected a vertical concentration of the peasant family farm, in the process subordinating it economically to commercial firms (‘Vertical concentration was how commercial capitals established a degree of control over rural households and their labour powers’). Not only does this ignore the antinomy between class differentiation of the peasantry that informs Marxism and the homogeneous smallholder of populism, but it also overlooks the fact that Chayanov qualified his view, indicating how the better-off agrarian unit ‘frees itself from any influence of trading capital’. ¹⁵

Sources

For some reason, trade and commerce are depicted as the efficiency/success largely of non-European agency, endeavour and/or organization. On the one hand, therefore, there are positive references (2020: 63, 78ff.) to ‘indigenous Asian capitals’ and Greek Levantine dominance. On the other, there are a number of rather less positive references: Portuguese ‘royal capitalism’ is described as being ‘cloaked in religious zeal and a great deal of both ignorance and bigotry’; the cosmopolitanism of mid-19th-century British trade expansion is questioned on the grounds that it was carried out by those of non-European identity based in England; and ‘nobody in London had any knowledge whatever of conditions in India’, while British trade efficiency was anyway down to merchants belonging to the Greek diaspora. ¹⁶ Quite why it is necessary to depict economic rivalries – which certainly existed – in precisely this non-economic manner remains something of an oddity, especially in an approach that claims an affinity with some variety of Marxism.

That some form of capitalism was historically present in the Islamic world is an issue addressed during the mid-1960s by Rodinson (1974), much of whose approach – what sort of capitalism, the role of the state, the work of Ibn Khaldun – is reproduced by Banaji (2020: 125ff.). To the same question posed earlier by Rodinson – why did a modern capitalist economy not emerge in the Islamic world – Banaji (2020: 132) answers that ‘the non-development of capitalism was less about a failure to emerge than about the failure to acquire a more collective, corporate form that could express and contribute to the solidarity of a class’. The irony structuring this view is hard to miss. Having spent many of the preceding chapters outlining how what passed for European commercial acuity was much rather down to the fact that trade was conducted efficiently on the basis of locally pre-existing social/cultural/economic networks by a whole range of non-European ‘others’ – including Middle Eastern merchants – Banaji now declares that what these same dynamic elements lacked was a ‘collective’/’corporate’ identity. A more egregious contradiction is hard to imagine.

Finally, the influence on Banaji of Hilferding (1981) is inescapable, the debt owed by the former to the latter being evident from how closely the argument made now follows that made by the Austro-Marxist in his 1910 book. Although the latter analysis is mentioned by Banaji (2020: 70, 85) only twice, much of the case Hilferding outlined a century ago, about how the economic system was developing – the increasing centralization of capital, the formation of cartels, the role of banks, finance, credit, money, joint-stock companies and the state – prefigures that of Banaji. For this reason, the same critique made by Sweezy of Hilferding’s finance capital argument – how it not only breaks with Marxism but also (and more importantly) precludes a socialist transition – applies with equal force to the present case advanced by Banaji. ¹⁷

Conclusion

All too often, the argument made by Banaji – now as earlier – is simply that wherever there is trade, there too is capitalism. In one crucial respect, however, the case he makes currently appears to have changed. Initially, therefore, the presence of capitalism was linked epistemologically to the characterization of ‘those below’, an approach based on the redefinition of peasants as workers. Conceptualizing smallholders as ‘disguised wage-labour’ enabled him to present them both as a workforce licensing capitalism, and consequently as evidence for the eternal presence historically of the accumulation process. This particular strand of the case seems to have been sidelined because of criticisms pointing out theoretical flaws in the characterization of the workforce, a result of his following a non-Marxist interpretation of production relations.

Now Banaji has adopted a different path in order to reach the same end: an analogous and similarly non-Marxist characterization, but this time of ‘those above’, whereby all capital is redefined as ‘commercial capital’, which – as before – permits him to argue that capitalism is historically ever-present. Unavoidable, therefore, is a somewhat baleful conclusion: for around four decades, he has tried repeatedly not so much to rewrite as to supplant Marxism, described by him as an ‘immobilized dogma’. In the process, all its core theoretical components have been discarded, and replaced either with reinterpretations as to what Marx really meant or (more usually) with versions of his own. On the basis of the case made in these two books, the only remaining mystery is why Banaji is still perceived by some as a Marxist.