Capital & Class

The Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) and Capital & Class were central in creating the conditions for a labour process debate. However, while the journal has continued to publish some articles on labour process issues, the debate has become associated primarily with the annual International Labour Process Conference. This article explores shifts in the nature and focus of debates, emphasizing continuity between the traditions as well as change. By contrasting early attempts in the journal to uncover ‘immanent laws’ of the capitalist labour process to more recent writings on core theory, contemporary trends in labour power and capitalist political economy are outlined and evaluated.

The crisis of 2008 is said to have brought the state back in, and its resurgence, in turn, is seen as revealing post-neoliberal tendencies. This analytical framework implies a conception of market and state as two distinct modes of social organization, and the perennial question about such a conception is whether the market has autonomy vis-à-vis the state, or the state vis-à-vis the market. Their social constitution as distinct forms of social relations is not raised. This paper argues that the capitalist state is fundamentally a liberal state. This conception entails class as the determining category of its form and content.

This article enlivens Marxist state debate by clarifying and furthering the appraisal of a series of interventions on the subject linked with Open Marxism. It highlights four particular weaknesses in Open Marxism, arguing that they stem from the same source: a totalizing ontology that takes the capital relation as the singular constitutive source of human social practice. This universal focus on the capital relation leaves Open Marxism ill-suited for the task of offering a critique of transformations and reorganizations of class power within state forms and specific phases of capitalist development.

The period from the 1970s to the 1990s saw much discussion about the declining power of national states in the face of internationalization and, later, globalization. This topic has been explored within the Conference of Socialist Economists since its founding meeting in October 1970, as well as in many issues of its Bulletin and, later, in Capital & Class. The global economic crisis has reinvigorated this debate, and invites a return to some of the first principles of historical materialism. Starting with Marx and Engels’ discussion of the world market and national states, I explore the impact of neoliberalism on both aspects of this relation and then draw some general conclusions.

Marxists have been engaging with nationalism from the days of Marx and Engels until the present, generating much debate (for an overview, see Lowy, 1998, Munck, 1986 and Nimni, 1991), but also considerable confusion. This article traces the genealogy of Marxist engagement with nationalism in the work and practice of Marx and Engels; in the later response by the communist movement following the Russian Revolution of 1917; in relation to the unorthodox theory of nationalism produced by the Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer; and, finally, in some of the debates within the broad Marxist/post-Marxist strands of political thought that seek to place nationalism in the era of globalization.

This article re-examines the relevance of ‘left nationalism’ as a form of progressive response to globalization, and argues that despite the considerable work that has been done to revise the concept of nationalism in the light of orthodox Marxist criticisms, such moves ultimately fall into the same divisionary trap that dogged the nationalist struggles inherent in post-colonialism.

This paper argues that the renewed relevance and strengthened theoretical foundations of Marxian value theory will not matter unless the long-term disintegration of Marxian economics is reversed, and that this disintegration has largely been caused by internal factors. These include a lack of common standards and criteria of justification; an ‘every man his own Marxist’ ethos; the quest to make Marxian economics respectable; the pursuit of ‘product differentiation’; a reliance on the resources of academia; and an instrumental approach to ideas. Finally, the paper proposes several measures to halt and reverse the process of disintegration.

This paper addresses two important, conspicuous topics for the understanding of contemporary capitalism: the world market and the knowledge economy. By locating these within Marx’s value theory, its authors take issue with other interpretations that explicitly reject or misinterpret Marx’s value theory in light of these themes. More generally, these exercises point to the need for value theory and the fact that it should and can move beyond its traditional terrain, collaborating with other strands of critical thought in understanding developments within contemporary society.

The most severe economic crisis since 1929 has produced a level of intellectual disarray probably not seen since 1968. In one crucial respect, the climate is different: Marxism’s intellectual impact is negligible. The culprit is not Marx but ‘Marxism without Marx’—a systematic attempt to divorce his conclusions from his economic theory. The demise of western Marxism marks the failure of this project. This note signals a first attempt to assess Marx’s real relevance to the crisis of 2008.

This article examines the main lines of argument developed within the autonomist or Open Marxist tradition, focusing especially on the work of Holloway and Negri. Referring to the experience of workers in the film industry, its author finds that some themes, including the concept of class composition, have much to offer. But he criticizes Negri’s overall schema, including his categories of social labour and immaterial labour. He suggests a different interpretation of key passages in the Grundrisse to argue instead for continuity with Marx’s analysis, and for the continuing relevance of trade unions in the struggle around class composition.

This article takes as its theme the global restructuring of capital and its impact on worker organization. It argues for a reassertion of class in any analysis of global solidarity, and assesses the opportunities and barriers to effective global unionization. Rooted in the UK experience, the article analyzes the impact of the European social dimension on trade unions, before taking the discussion into a global dimension. It concludes by suggesting that there are reasons for cautious optimism in terms of solidarity building, despite difficult historical legacies and the common replacement of action with rhetoric.

Drawing on a 2004 survey of 501 low-paid, non-unionized workers with problems at work, this paper explores the types of difficulties encountered and responses to these, including expressions of collectivism. It finds that not only did most workers take action to resolve their problems, but a quarter did so collectively. However, such spontaneous collectivism did not develop into effective mobilization of power. The paper also explores workers’ views on trade unions. While most workers were broadly pro-union, this was no more likely among those who attempted collective resolutions than it was among others. The relationship between collectivism in consciousness, and action and positive attitudes to union representation, remains as complex a problem among today’s unorganized workers as ethnographic studies demonstrated several decades ago.

This article provides a brief evaluation of the state of workplace union reps’ organization in Britain as we approach the second decade of the 2000s. It documents the severe weakening of workplace union organization over the last 25 years, which is reflected in the declining number of reps, reduced bargaining power and the problem of bureaucratization. But it also provides evidence of the continuing resilience, and even combativity in certain areas of employment, of workplace union reps organization, and considers the future potential for a revival of fortunes.