[P2P-F] Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] The making of an Atlantic ruling class, 1984 and now

[Michel Bauwens]

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From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234 at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 6:00 AM
Subject: [NetworkedLabour] The making of an Atlantic ruling class, 1984 and
now
To: "networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org" <networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org
>


All chapters of The making of an Atlantic ruling class in HTML form
reproduced on Libcom:

https://libcom.org/library/making-atlantic-ruling-class-kees-van-der-pijl

Like to post the first part of the first chapter of Kees van der Pijl's
book below, since I believe it bears a major importance which stems from
the clear adaptation of Marx' method and understanding of capitalist
class formation, its unity in fractional diversity, at the international
/ Atlantic level, in the text. It prepares a perfect ground to develop a
perspective imo. for developing inclusive version for informational
capital and its sub-fractions, vis a vis functionally networked -by
capital- labour classes. The original edition of the book was published
in 1984. Suggest also to read the preface to the new edition:


Class formation on an Atlantic scale
1. Determinants of class formation

The concrete process of class formation in the North Atlantic area can
be broken down into several separate dynamics of class conflict, each of
which may be situated on a distinct level of analysis. In terms of the
method offered by Marx in Capital, the industrial bourgeoisie primarily
constitutes itself as a class in struggle with the working class and
landed interests, but the actual process of its formation must be
adduced at successive levels of decreasing abstraction.

(1) In the labour process, industrial capital faces the task of
subordinating living labour-power to the requirements of the
valorization of capital. Here, different modalities of the exploitation
relation yield corresponding varieties of the capital-labour
relationship in class terms: Absolute surplus-value production, in which
the rate of exploitation varies with the length of the working day and
the flat speed of work, tends to produce a rigid polarization of the
employed and the employers. Relative surplus-value production, on the
other hand, which is obtained by reducing the reproduction costs of
labour-power in relation to aggregate capital outlay, fosters
flexibility in the relations between capitalists and workers on account
of an apparently common interest in rising productivity. This illusion
of an identity of interests is part of the shift from the formal to the
real subordination of labour to capital.

The absolute (in the sense of general and abstract) unity of the
bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the working class therefore dissolves into
concrete differentiations as soon as the real relation with the workers
is taken into consideration. Lenin referred to this differentiation in
his 1910 pamphlet, Differences in the European Labour Movement. On the
side of the bourgeoisie, he distinguished between the method of
'liberalism' (in the sense of flexibility) and the method of force; on
the side of the working class these are matched by reformism and
anarcho-syndicalism, respectively.

These different modes of reproduction of the basic class antagonism,
based on absolute or relative surplus-value production, were pertinent
at various points in the overall process of Atlantic class formation. In
continental Europe, the low living standards at the turn of the century
helped to preordain the incapacity of the European bourgeoisie to
maintain a flexible format of labour relations in the 1930s. Since in
the Old World the prospect of mass consumption of durable manufactures
did not exist, 'Fordism' in all its aspects (productivity, social wage,
further subordination of labour) was not feasible and the rate of
exploitation could only be sustained by gearing to absolute
surplus-value production. Hence, whereas the crisis of the 1930s in the
United States saw 'liberalism' (in Lenin's sense) survive through the
generalization of Fordism in the New Deal and its insertion into a
strategy of internationalization, in continental Europe authoritarianism
and Fascism prevailed. The distinctions between absolute and relative
surplus-value production, and between fractions of the bourgeoisie
grouped around a concept of force and those advocating concessions, are
crucial to understanding what happened in Europe at this juncture, and
in fact have been chosen as a point of departure by several influential
Marxist analyses of the nature of bourgeois class support for Hitler's
rise to power in Germany.

These determinants of bourgeois class formation on the level of the
labour process, however fundamental, are not sufficient to analyse the
various ideological tendencies within the bourgeoisie. Although
labour-process differentiations may help to elucidate the broad
differences between, for example, the New Deal and German National
Socialism, they fail to account for such trajectories as the French
Popular Front, where a united working-class movement, partly of Fordist
inspiration, was able to ward off the threat of Fascism but failed to
realize a positive programme comparable to the New Deal.

(2) To arrive at a more complete picture, we have to proceed to the next
level of abstraction: that of circulation relations between various
categories of capitalists, or fractions of social capital. Such
fractions are bank, commercial, or industrial capital. In France at the
time of the Popular Front, the working class joined forces with the
liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, but within the capitalist class, this
'productive' alliance did not succeed in subordinating the interests of
the financial world. Since it could not move forward to full-fledged
Fordism, which would have included the partial expropriation (or as
Keynes called it, 'euthanasia') of the rentier segment in the capitalist
class, Leon Blum's Lilliput New Deal was doomed to be rolled back as a
consequence of the dynamics of circulation relations.

(3) A further dimension of the concrete fractionation of the bourgeoisie
resides in the profit-distribution process, which, in the spirit of
Volume Three of Capital, should be theorized as the third level of the
determination of class formation. In the overall distribution of
metamorphosed surplus-value between capitals, fractions of capital,
landed interests and even a segment of the working class (those paid out
of the mass of surplus-value without contributing to it directly),
specific class fractions crystallize, enter into alliances, and press
their particular strategic concepts. Moreover, the hegemony of
particular fractions in this profit-distribution pattern may help to
explain a specific political climate: e.g. the prevalence of laissez-
faire concepts in the United States during the late 1950s when the
profit- distribution process was temporarily skewed towards the
financial and rentier sphere; or the Keynesian activism of the Kennedy
Administration during a subsequent period as the resurgence of
industrial capital.

Of course the three levels of abstraction on which class formation may
be theorized as taking place, i.e., the labour process, circulation
relations, and the profit-distribution process, are in reality only
moments of a dynamic totality. This totality also encompasses sedimented
layers of older social relations, forms of ethnic and sexual oppression,
as well as the survival of elements of pre-capitalist modes of
production. And although it is the accumulation of capital which
primarily articulates and incessantly revolutionizes it, the concrete
social formation derives its external appearance in large part from
these autochtonous characteristics. Thus the internationalization of
capital, and concomitantly of class formation, in the North Atlantic
area included the mobilization of the legacies of anti-semitism,
Anglo-Saxon chauvinism and national messianism. At the same time the
actual structures of absolute and relative surplus-value production
tended to be built upon pre-existing racial, sexual and national
differentiations amongst the workers. In this fashion the modern world
struggles between the imperialist states, and their subsequent alliances
against socialism, have absorbed the 'dead weight' of the past.

Yet despite the multi-layered complexity of the political alliances
involved, a characteristic inner logic can be observed in the class
strategies evolved by the Atlantic bourgeoisies. Time and again, an
offensive, 'liberal-flexible' way of dealing with the working class or
other challenges has alternated with a defensive 'method of force'.
These strategic options have loosely corresponded with, respectively,
relative and absolute surplus-value extraction, and have been linked up
internationally (in the sense of functioning as determinants of class
formation) through specific patterns of circulation relations in which
particular fractions of capital and their ideal-typical concepts were
prominent. The money-capital and the productive-capital concepts
constitute such functional ideal-types, and we shall therefore briefly
review the distinctions from which they may be theoretically reconstructed.

Capital fractions in Marxist theory

The notion of fractions of total capital (i.e., units other than
individual capitals related to particular functions in the reproduction
of capital) provides an important clue to differentiations within the
bourgeoisie which are ideologically pertinent. The concept was developed
by Marx in Volumes Two and Three of Capital. The basic functional
differentiation of capital is presented in Volume Two. Discussing the
forms that capital assumes in the course of its reproduction cycle, Marx
distinguishes between productive capital and the two forms belonging to
the stage of circulation, money capital and commodity capital, in the
sense of capital in money and commodity form respectively.

Apart from the three functional forms, we therefore have the distinction
between the stage of circulation and the stage of production, a
distinction which is equally important for all further specification and
concretization. The stage, or sphere, of circulation comprises capital
in money and commodity form; the stage or sphere of production,
productive capital. The criterion for this bifurcation is the fact that
whereas all forms of capital represent modes of appropriation of
surplus-value, only the productive form is engaged in its creation
through the subsumption of living labour-power. As will be demonstrated
below, this distinction is particularly important when it comes to
reconstructing the ideological propensities of the functionaries of
productive capital.

This also goes for another distinction Marx deploys in Volumes Two and
Three the one between capital engaged in the production of means of
production and capital engaged in the production of consumer goods:
Departments I and II. Since Fordism in the era of Atlantic integration
rested on the dynamic articulation of relative surplus-value production
in the consumer-durables sector and a concomitant reorientation of key
'Department I’ industries towards supplying this sector with
semi-finished products (notably steel), the departmental division is
relevant in this light as well. For the moment, however, we shall
proceed from the money- commodity-productive triad.

In Volume Three, Marx again considers the basic differentiation into
functional forms of capital. This time the level of abstraction has been
reached where 'the embodiments of capital. . . stepwise approximate the
form in which they operate at the surface of society, in the action of
the different capitals upon each other, competition; and in everyday
consciousness of the agents of production'.4 Accordingly, the three
functions analysed in Volume Two are raised to a more concrete level.
Beginning with the functional form of commodity capital, Marx writes
that 'to the degree that this function of capital operative in the
circulation process is autonomized into a special function of a special
capital at all, and crystallizes as a function assigned by the division
of labour to a particular kind of capitalist, commodity capital becomes
commodity-dealing capital or commercial capital'.

The commodities in which commercial capital deals are use- values or
money, but money only to the degree it is used for the exchange of
goods. Commercial capital therefore can be sub-divided again into
commodity-dealing and money-dealing capital. The crucial element in the
definition of both is the separation from the production process. In
practical terms, because of its institutional form as bank capital,
money-dealing capital may be difficult to isolate from its counterpart,
interest-bearing capital (credit), which is also handled by banks.
Although different national banking systems sometimes, and to various
extents, reflect the functional differentiation (say, in commercial and
investment banking), some forms of credit are by themselves hybrid in
this respect, like commercial credit. In the distinction between money
markets and capital markets, the two functions are separated however.

The notion of fictitious capital transcends the distinction between
money- dealing capital and interest-bearing capital. Fictitious capital
is considered by Marx as the comprehensive counterpart of all real
economic activity under capitalist conditions. As such, it brings a
unity to these activities which turns it into the nearest equivalent of
total social capital. “To the degree that it appears on the market”,
Marx writes, 'money capital is not represented by single capitalists, by
the owner of this or that particle of capital present in the market, but
it appears as a concentrated, organized mass, which, entirely unlike
real production, is subject to the control of bankers representing
social capital'.

As an aggregate fraction, therefore, bankers, and their quasi- banker
counterparts inside integrated companies, in a sense represent a single
collective capitalist due to their joint control of fictitious capital.
In capitalist reality, this social dimension remains a form, behind
which the competition among private capitals proceeds unabated. Yet, the
special position of bank capital in this respect is brought out by its
twofold presence in the political economy: as a sector among others, and
as part of the overarching economic state apparatus.

Summarizing the main distinctions introduced so far (circulation/
production, real and fictitious capital, as well as the three functional
forms of capital and their concrete embodiments), we arrive at the
following figure.

FIGURE ONE

Apart from landed property, which represents a relation of distribution
rather than one of production, these are the fractions of social capital
analysed by Marx in Capital. Hilferding's concept of ' finance capital'
was developed to capture the twin phenomena of the institutional
interpenetration of bank and industrial capital, and of the relative
separation of a distinct oligarchical fraction of finance capitalists
from the 'simple' bankers and industrialists. Widely popularized by
Lenin's adoption of the concept in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism, the reality it conveys about the new empirical structure of
capital does not obliterate the need for distinguishing the functional,
'original' fractions. For even in a situation where the financial
oligarchy is no longer effectively challenged by a sub- ordinate,
'non-monopolistic' bourgeoisie, certain conflicts within the capitalist
class remain traceable to the different fractions persisting in the
context of an apparent fusion. 7

The conflicts of interest and allegiance which lead to class formation
cannot be reduced to their functional determinants. In order to be
effective, fractional interests have to be transcended by a formula of
reconciliation or compromise on which a temporary truce may be built
allowing the ruling classes to stay in power, or rather, allowing the
basic social conditions of the mode of production to be preserved and,
if possible, reinforced.

The economic interest associated with a dominant fraction of capital
requires a complementary formula of reconciliation of that interest with
that of other fractions in order to be an effective vector of class
formation. By itself, the political impact of a single fraction remains
within the confines of pressure-group politics, or what Domhoff calls
the 'special-interest process'. In his study of the fractionation of the
Dutch bourgeoisie in the inter-war years, Ries Bode introduces the
category of comprehensive concepts of control to capture the
transcendent formulation of class interest aggregating such special
interests and subordinating others.8 A concept of control represents a
bid for hegemony: a project for the conduct of public affairs and social
control that aspires 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. It evolves
through a series of compromises in which the fractional, 'special'
interests are arbitrated and synthesized.

The objectivity, and the potential 'general' relevance of a concept of
control, reside in the timeliness of the main elements in its programme,
combining momentarily feasible and desired - if hardly ever mutually
compatible - strategies of labour relations, competition, and domestic
and international politics. The compromises underlying the feasibility
of these various strategies are reached (in the sense of a subjective
elaboration of an objective process) by concrete compensations for the
special interests involved through the profit-distribution process,
complemented by symbolic rewards.

Comprehensive concepts of control develop in the course of capital
accumulation and class struggle as they evolve over the decades. They
can be defined from certain ideal-types related to the functional
perspective of specific capital fractions. As indicated above, the
process of class formation develops as a concrete totality through
pre-existing and simultaneously reproduced cultural and political
patterns. Besides representing particular functions in the circuit of
capital, concepts of control therefore are also reflections in social
consciousness of the circumstances in which these functions passed
through a mutation in terms of these contingent, extra-economic patterns.

The historical setting may help to explain why other capitalists, or
other classes, subscribe to the concept of control developed from a
'special interest' vantage-point which strictly speaking is not their
own. For instance, one need not develop a cosmopolitan outlook from
being engaged, as an industrial entrepreneur, in producing textiles.
Yet, the fact that this industry's original prominence coincided with
the heyday of international free trade makes it plausible that the
textile capitalists of the day developed a set of equations in their
world outlook which by and large corresponded to the
liberal-internationalist ideology espoused by hegemonic commercial capital.

At the same time, the stability of 'textile liberalism' could not be
expected to be the same as that of the mainstream liberalism of the
commercial capitalists. In the 1930s, for instance, the impact of the
world economic crisis undermined the community of interests and outlook
between the two fractions, as the textile industrialists adjusted or
even led the way to protectionism. In the postwar situation, however,
the readiness of the European natural textile producers to accept
American tutelage because of the liberal- internationalist arrangements
in the economic field which were part of the Pax Americana, showed that,
as soon as circumstances allowed it, their original preference for free
trade, which had been reproduced through family, company, regional and
political traditions, was promptly reactivated.
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