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The ‘Art’ of Colonisation: Capitalising Sovereign Power and the Ongoing Nature of Primitive Accumulation

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13563460701661553

1469-9923

Tim Di Muzio,

State Capitalism and Financial Governance

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size I would like to thank Adrienne Roberts, Robbie Shilliam, Stephen Gill and Jonathan Nitzan for the many conversations that have helped shape this paper. The comments and suggestions of three anonymous reviewers also considerably strengthened the piece. All errors are of course my own. Notes 1. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 (Penguin Group, 1976), pp. 931–40. 2. Michael Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 324–31. 3. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Oxford University Press, [1776] 1998), p. 208. 4. Matthew Sparke, ‘American Empire and Globalisation: Postcolonial Speculations on Neocolonial Enframing’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2003), pp. 376–81. 5. Mark T. Berger, ‘From Nation-Building to State-Building: The Geopolitics of Development, the Nation State System and the Changing Global Order’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2006), pp. 5–25. See also, Adam David Morton, ‘The Failed State of International Relations’, New Political Economy, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2005), pp. 371–9. 6. National Security Strategy of the US, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf (accessed 4 October 2006), p. 1. 7. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars (Zed Books, 2001), pp. 29–39. 8. For an analysis of British taxation from the Restoration to the early nineteenth century, see Patrick K. O'Brien, ‘The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815’, The Economic History Review, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1988), pp. 1–32. On taxation and debt as a mechanism of primitive accumulation in the periphery, see Matthew Forstater, ‘Taxation and Primitive Accumulation: The Case of Colonial Africa’, Research in Political Economy, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2005), pp. 51–64. Also Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times (Beacon Press, 1975), p. 164. 9. On their power theory of value see sections IV, V and VI in Jonathan Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler, ‘New Imperialism or New Capitalism?’, Review, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2006), pp. 1–86. 10. Jonathan Nitzan, ‘Differential Accumulation: Towards a New Political Economy of Capital’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1998), pp. 169–216, and Jonathan Nitzan, ‘Regimes of Differential Accumulation: Mergers, Stagflation and the Logic of Globalization’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2001), pp. 226–74. 11. Stephen Gill, ‘Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1995), pp. 399–423. 12. Massimo De Angelis, ‘Marx and Primitive Accumulation: The Continuous Character of Capital's Enclosures’, The Commoner, No. 2 (2001), pp. 1–22, and Massimo De Angelis, ‘Separating the Doing and the Deed: Capitalism and the Continuous Character of Enclosures’, Historical Materialism, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2004), pp. 57–87. 13. Julian Reid, ‘The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: A Critique of the “Return of Imperialism” Thesis in International Relations’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2005), pp. 237–52. 14. By sovereign power, I mean the capacity of the federal government and its agencies to shape and reshape the terrain of social reproduction both at home and abroad through various policies and techniques of government. However, in my view, the most important aspect of US sovereign power is force, particularly, though not exclusively, military force. 15. Robbie Shilliam, ‘Hegemony and the Unfashionable Problematic of “Primitive Accumulation”‘, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2004), pp. 59–88; William Sites, ‘Primitive Globalisation? State and Locale in Neoliberal Global Engagement’, Sociological Theory, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2000), pp. 121–44; David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 2005); David Moore, ‘Neoliberal Globalisation and the Triple Crisis of “Modernisation” in Africa: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 6 (2001), pp. 909–29; De Angelis, ‘Marx and Primitive Accumulation’; De Angelis, ‘Separating the Doing and the Deed’, Massimo De Angelis, The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital (Pluto Press, 2007); Paul Zarembka, ‘Primitive Accumulation in Marxism, Historical or Trans-Historical Separation from Means of Production’, The Commoner, March (2002), pp. 1–9; Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia, 2004). 16. John R. Commons, Legal Foundations of Capitalism (University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), and Polanyi, The Great Transformation, p. 38. 17. Ellen Meiksins Wood, Empire of Capital (Verso, 2005), pp. 6–7. 18. Zarembka, ‘Primitive Accumulation in Marxism’, p. 6. 19. Jonathan Nitzan & Shimson Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel (Pluto Press, 2002), p. 31. My discussion of Nitzan and Bichler's framework primarily derives from this text. 20. We should note here that by production the theorists mean ‘the entire spectrum of human activity’, not simply factory work. 21. Nitzan & Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel, p. 38. 22. Ibid., p. 10. 23. Ibid., p. 9. 24. Data on market capitalisation derived from charts found at: http://fortboise.org/top100-history.html (accessed 15 March 2006). 25. Nitzan & Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel, p. 9. 26. On Exxon Mobil lobbying, see http://www.opensecrets.org/pubs/lobby00/topind04.asp and http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid = 294 (accessed 4 October 2006). On Exxon Mobil's lobbying to lift sanctions in Libya, see ‘US business urging Bush to drop Libya sanctions soon’, Reuters, 23 January 2004. On training Iraqi oil workers, see Justin Blum, ‘Big oil companies train Iraqi workers free global companies offer services to establish goodwill, win business’, Washington Post, 6 November 2004. On Exxon Mobil's funding of institutions that challenge global warming, see Jennifer Lee, ‘Exxon Backs Groups that Question Global Warming’, New York Times, 28 May 2003. On Exxon Mobil in Aech, see http://www.laborrights.org/projects/corporate/exxon/index.html (accessed 4 October 2006). On Exxon Mobil and the World Bank, see Miren Gutierrez, ‘World: Murky Business in Oil’, Inter Press Service, 20 August 2003. On Exxon Mobil's exploits in Alaska, see ‘Alaska group files antitrust suit against Exxon Mobil, BP’, Dallas Business Journal, 20 December 2005. On the Exxon Valdez spill settlement, see Evelyn Nieves, ‘Court overturns jury award in ‘89 Exxon Valdez spill’, New York Times, 8 November 2001. On Exxon Mobil and Cheney's energy taskforce, see Dana Milbank & Justin Blum, ‘Document says oil chiefs met with Cheney task force’, Washington Post, 16 November 2005. On Exxon Mobil and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, see Justin Blum, ‘Exxon Mobil Profit Soars 75%’, Washington Post, 28 October 2005. 27. Harvey, The New Imperialism, pp. 145–52. 28. Nitzan & Bichler, ‘New Imperialism or New Capitalism?, p. 37. Indeed, there appears to be a glaring methodological difference between Nitzan and Bichler's framework and traditional Marxists. However, in their work they seem to suggest that using the term ‘primitive accumulation’ necessarily implicates one in Marx's theory of accumulation as surplus labour. My own view is that this need not be the case, since the term ‘primitive accumulation’, as I understand it, only implies transformations in social property relations whereby the market comes to determine more and more of social life and its chances. 29. Nitzan & Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel, p. 35. 30. Robert Brenner, ‘The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism’, New Left Review, Vol. 104 (1977), pp 25–92; George Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution (Verso, 1987); Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism (Verso, 1999); David McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism: A Reinterpretation (University of California Press, 1988). 31. Shilliam, ‘Hegemony and the Unfashionable Problematic’, pp. 59–88. 32. De Angelis, ‘Separating the Doing and the Deed’, pp. 57–87, and Henry Bernstein, ‘The Peasantry in Global Capitalism: Who, Where and Why?’, in Leo Panitch & Colin Leys (eds), Working Classes, Global Realities (Merlin Press, 2000), pp. 25–51. 33. De Angelis, ‘Separating the Doing and the Deed’, p. 60. 34. For a discussion of active and passive dimensions of differential accumulation, see Shimshon Bichler & Jonathan Nitzan, ‘Dominant Capital and the New Wars’, Journal of World-Systems Research, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2004), pp. 266–8. 35. Oscar Olivera & Tom Lewis, Cochabamba: Water War in Bolivia (South End Press, 2004), and Susan Spronk, ‘Roots of Resistance to Urban Water Privatization in Bolivia: The “New Working Class”, the Crisis of Neoliberalism, and Public Services’, paper presented for the workshop ‘The Dynamics of Non-Traditional Protest Politics’, annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, York University, Toronto, 3 June 2006. 36. Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times (Verso, 1994). 37. Doug Henwood, Wall Street: How it Works and For Whom (Verso, 1997), pp. 22–7. 38. Peter Starck, ‘World Military Spending Topped $1 Trillion in 2004’, Reuters, 7 June 2005. 39. P. W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatised Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003); US Space Command, Vision for 2020, 1997, http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usspac/index.html (accessed 3 October 2006); Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan Books, 2004). 40. Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘The Curve of American Power’, New Left Review, No. 40 (2006), pp. 77–94; Giovanni Arrighi, ‘Hegemony Unravelling – I’, New Left Review, No. 32 (2005), pp. 23–80. 41. Marx, Capital, p. 916. 42. Marx, Capital, pp. 915, 919. 43. Carolyn Webber & Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (Simon and Shuster, 1986), p. 252. 44. Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). 45. Michael J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 44. 46. Webber & Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World, p. 256. 47. Braddick, The Nerves of State, pp. 21–48. 48. Marx, Capital, pp. 915–6. 49. See Bichler & Nitzan, ‘Dominant Capital and the New Wars’, pp. 33–41. My main point of divergence with the authors here is my consideration of England as the birthplace of capitalist social property relations. In their writings on the state and debt they tend to speak generally and schematically rather than offer a historically specific account of the rise of capitalism. 50. Nitzan & Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel, pp. 13–14. 51. Braddick, The Nerves of State, pp. 27–34; Peter G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756 (St. Martin's Press, 1967), pp. 65–75. 52. Timothy J. Sinclair, The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness (Cornell University Press, 2005); Stephen Gill, ‘The Global Panopticon? The Neo-liberal State, Economic life and Democratic Surveillance’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1995), pp. 1–49. 53. Phillip McMichael, ‘Food Security and Social Reproduction: Issues and Contradictions’, in Isabella Bakker & Stephen Gill (eds), Power, Production and Social Reproduction (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 169–88. 54. Here it should be noted that food service corporations have an interest in profit generation, not food production. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that corporations will keep food out of the market in order to ensure sufficient pricing for their profitability. One example is the fact that in most industrialised countries farmers are paid not to produce. See Susan George, How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger (Allanheld Osmun, 1997). 55. Nitzan & Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel, pp. 14–15. 56. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map, p. 5. 57. Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (Harper Perennial, 2002), p. 506. 58. Simon Dalby, ‘Political Space: Autonomy, Liberalism, and Empire’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2005), pp. 415–42; Stephen Gill, ‘The Contradictions of US Supremacy’, in Leo Panitch & Colin Leys (eds), The Empire Reloaded, Socialist Register 2005 (The Merlin Press, 2004), pp. 23–46; Andrew Harvey, Ian Sullivan & Ralph Groves, ‘A Clash of Systems: An Analytical Framework to Demystify the Radical Islamist Threat’, Parameters, Vol. 35, No. 3 (2005), pp. 72–87; James R. Holmes & Toshi Yoshihara, ‘China and the Commons: Angell or Mahan?’, World Affairs, Vol. 168, No. 4 (2005), pp. 172–92; Barry C. Lynn, ‘War, Trade and Utopia’, The National Interest, No. 82 (2005), pp. 31–39; Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin, ‘Global Capitalism and American Empire’, in Leo Panitch & Colin Leys (eds), The New Imperial Challenge, Socialist Register 2004 (The Merlin Press, 2003), pp. 1–38; Michael Wesley, ‘Toward a Realist Ethics of Intervention’, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 2 (2005), pp. 55–73. 59. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map, pp. 308, 310. 60. Carl Hulse, ‘Senate approves budget, breaking spending limits’, New York Times, 17 March 2006. 61. ‘Long Ranger: Return of 30 year Treasury Bonds’, The Economist, 4 February 2006, p. 67. Some analysts believe that increasing the rate of maturity by introducing the bond makes good financial sense since the costs of long-term borrowing are currently low. 62. While I deal exclusively with Iraq here, accounts of similar processes can be found in Haiti and Afghanistan. On Haiti, see Steve Lendman, ‘Closing Haiti's open veins: Rene Preval's impossible mission’, ZNET, 2006, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID = 55&ItemID = 9847 (accessed 3 July 2005). For an overview of recent neoliberal reforms to Afghanistan, see World Bank, The Investment Climate in Afghanistan: Exploiting Opportunities in an Uncertain Environment, 2005, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTAFGHANISTAN/Resources/AF_ICA_Report.pdf (accessed 4 October 2006). 63. David Bacon, ‘Iraqi unions defy privatization’, The Progressive, October 2005, http://www.progressive.org/?q = mag_bacon1005 (accessed 5 April 2007). 64. The ensuing discussion on Iraq's provisional constitution draws on the country study of Iraq commissioned by US Department of the Army and published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. The country studies, which previously appeared in book form, are now accessible online. Iraq's overview can be accessed at http://countrystudies.us/iraq/ (accessed 25 January 2005). 65. On the oil contracts likely to be implemented in Iraq see, Greg Muttitt, Crude Designs: The Rip-off of Iraq's Oil Wealth, PLATFORM, November 2005, http://www.carbonweb.org/documents/crude_designs_large.pdf (accessed 5 April 2007). 66. Jamie Wilson, ‘Iraq War could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel Prise-winning economist’, The Guardian, 7 January 2006. 67. Glenn E. Robinson, ‘The Battle for Iraq: Islamic Insurgencies in Comparative Perspective’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2007), pp. 261–73. 68. Bacon, ‘Iraqi Unions Defy Privatization’. 69. Charles Clover & Roula Khalaf, ‘Dislocation, Loss and Tragedy’, Financial Times, 22 October 2003. 70. Floyd Norris, ‘Foreigners May Not Have Liked the War, But They Financed It’, New York Times, 12 September 2003. 71. Cited in O'Brien, ‘The Political Economy of British Taxation’, p. 1. 72. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849, http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html (accessed 15 April 2007). 73. http://www.nwtrcc.org/mtap07/mtap0407.pdf (accessed 15 April 2007).