Wk 7 - INT235 - Marxism and World-Systems Theory: Globalization, Imperialism, and Revolution

Industrial Military

Complex

Yemen today?

Why is there so little coverage of this war and humanitarian crisis?

Why is the West supporting Saudi Arabia - a known human rights violator?

* Networks of money and patronage between legislators, state and arms manufacturer

* Does this lead to fabrication of enemies?

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex."

- President Eisenhower, 1961

Marxism and World-Systems Theory:

Observer, 2018: study finds arms manufacturers are paying millions to influence school-children to promote the defence sector and arms development (i.e. French MBDA tests missiles and a missile simulator for pupils to “play with”

Lenin

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

* The imperial ambitions of each states capitalist and finance class generated WWI

* Finance capital sought imperial colonialism to generate greater profits than the domestic market could yield

* World divided by monopoly companies

and the Great Powers who controlled them

... Conflict inevitable...

*“Thousand million people” of the colonies

and semi-colonies would lead to world

revolution

* Zapatista's today?

Gramsci

The Prison Notebooks

Activity 3:

We will break into five groups and answer questions on the reading from Robert W. Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders”

Colonial wars

of 'Liberation'

* Italian Communist imprisoned by fascists

* Hegemony: Cultural and ideological patterns by which the bourgeoisie maintain power... leads to

formation of 'Historic Bloc'

* War of Position: Slow movement of

social forces away from capitalist

hegemony, towards revolution

* Occupy Movement as means of moving

away from political hierarchy or a new civil society?

Historical links b/w Marxism and

anti-colonial struggles

Globalization, Imperialism,

and Revolution

World-

Systems and Dependency

“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.”

- Antonio Gramsci

Activity 1 & 2

We will first break into groups and answer each question on Andrew Linklater's “Marxism”

Secondly, we then read a short passage from the Communist Manifesto and discuss this in small groups

Historical Examples

Uneven and Combined Development

Paris Commune (1871)

* Human society does not develop through uni-linear stages of

development but evenly...

* Human society does not develop independently but in combination

and relation with other states and communities

* Capitalism intensifies this process; some states are advanced in some

areas, but remain backward in others

Russia (1917-1918)

* Core states: North and West states; high-skill, capital intense production; mass consumption; high industry and services

* Periphery: low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials; low

consumption; poverty and inequality

* Semi-periphery: buffer zone,

serves to stabilise core divide

* Capitalism uses antagonistic methods

in its development, creating further

inequality...

World Social Forum; Rojava; Zapitistas (?)

The Panama Papers

"... the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development. Capitalism finds various sections of mankind at different stages of development, each with its profound internal contradictions."

- Leon Trotsky, The Third International

Critiques of Marxism

Communism

Problems of History

The problem of the state...

Can the state be 'captured' for emancipatory purpose?

Historical memories of tyrannical communist regimes now associated with Marx and Marxism...

Uneven and combined development -

International Relations (5/7)

* Systematic and structural theory. Is change possible?

The Anarchist Critique

The problem of order...

Marx's Critique of

World Capitalism

Can we have a non-hierarchical form of political life?

Does the justice sought by Marxism endanger international order?

Can the state be 'captured' for emancipatory purpose?

11.5 million leaked documents detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities

The use of offshore financial centers is to avoid taxes; launder; bribe

Estimate loss of 1 trillion in tax

for EU alone (1,000,000,000,000

= one trillion)

IMF estimates profit shifting by multinational companies costs developing countries around US$213 billion a year, almost two percent of their national income

Oxfam: tax havens responsible for much of the widening gap between rich and poor

* Abolition of private ownership of the means of production; direct democracy; capture of state

* Production based on need; democratically and rationally planned

* Labour for self-development; expansion of free-time;

* Dictatorship of the proletariat... to full communism and the 'withering away of the state'?

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=BYBgsrbwOpY

Activity:

using Marxism for critique of IR

Dependency Theory

In small groups I want you to use what you have learned of Marxism to make one critique of (a) realismt and (b) liberal theories of IR. We will share your discussions to class

Overcoming the limits of the 'Real'

Economic Reductionism

Can IR be reduced to economics?

How can the structural constraints of the state-system and global capitalism be overcome?

Does the emancipation of labour necessarily mean emancipation in all other spheres?

Is World-Systems theory to static?

"From each according to his ability,

to each according to his need."

- Marx, Critique of the

Gotha Programme (1875)

Is the state or the people really sovereign?

Alienation: of man by man; of man by object

Conclusion

* More focused on resources and consumption

*Core has exploited the Periphery through colonialism and imperialism

* Core continues exploitation through unfair and imbalanced trade (i.e. resource extraction)

Extraction of surplus value

“If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization. The technological processes of mechanization and standardization might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity. The very structure of human existence would be altered; the individual would be liberated from [capitalism’s imposition of]... alien needs and alien possibilities. The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own.”

- Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man

Capitalism prone to crisis

Capitalism as

a Fetter on Production

Species-Being

Capitalism as fetter on

production

Production based around profit, not needs or use value

Waste!!!

The idea of 'scarcity' is a fabrication. We produce far more than human's can consume. BUT this produce is destroyed to ensure market prices remain high for profit making! Links to environmental destruction... and the 'non-rational' society

* Not a fixed conception of human nature but a reflection of our capacities as a unique species that changes historically

* Our sociality, or being 'with others'

* For Marx, species-being was reflected in our capacity for free, conscious creation and production

* We co-create our society; we produce objects and ourselves

For clipe of strawberry waste in Australia:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-08-22/strawberry-glut-waste/10146520

Marx

(and Engels)

Examples:

* Bangladesh Famine: adequate production but distribution 'failures'

* Application of technology to

production (Luddites)

Intellectual Property

* TRIPS: Intellectual Property Rights reduce innovation, creates monopoly, developing states with little or no access

"Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity... Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being."

- Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844).

Famine

Bangladesh (1974): famine due to

distribution rather than crises

Market command of food by elites

Exported grain rather than feed

the people

* Young Hegelian (Left)

* Radical Journalist and humanist ethics

* Developed ideas on communism around

1842-1843

* Scientific engagement with capitalist relations (Das

Capital, 3 Vols.)

* Formed The International Workingman's Association (1867)

* Exiled... and Exiled, again...

Marxism

and Methodology

Historical Materialism

Alienation

Change is inherent to social life

Labour has become a commodity to be

bought/sold

We are alienated from our work and its product

Capitalism Prone to Crisis

* Materialism: philosophical school of thought that gives primacy to matter over mind, spirit and metaphysics

* A naturalistic, empirical, scientific explanation of historical events, which takes industrial and economic factors as basic

* The structure of society and its historical development are reliant on "the material conditions of life" that frame its

possible development

* Emphasis on: (1) productive forces; (2) relations

of production; (3) superstructure; (4) ideology

We are alienated from each other

* Contradicts Neorealism's 'system perpetuation thesis'

* Contradicts rationalism's

acceptance of existing order

Surplus Value

Worker creates new value that is in excess of their own labour-cost. This portion is appropriated by the capitalist as 'surplus value'

Dialectics; historical materialism; species-being

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

- Karl Marx, The Eighteenth

Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Surplus value that is appropriated by the capitalist then pools into accumulation of capital... leading investment and to further surplus-value and profit... This is why Marxism attempts to end PRIVATE and not PERSONAL property!

* Growth and recession

are cyclical

Dialectics

... Leads to monopolisation

and periodic crisis...

"Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream"

- Heraclitus

Hegel and Marx

* Hegel: logical movement of thought

and ideas.

NO: 'Thesis, Anti-thesis, Synthesis'

YES: 'Abstract-Negative-Concrete'

Marx: 'turning Hegel on his head.'

Social forces and relations are a catalyst for change

* The idea that everything is in flux (change)

* History and change is a 'spiral'

* Change takes place through internal dynamics of objects/beings and how things relate to

each other. Internal dynamism and interconnection

* As tensions or contradictions form between two

or more things, change (or sublation) may occur

Dialectics and World Order Project

Every account provides the premise for its successor which may (or may not) transcend it. Search for theoretical syntheses and look for order out of disorder, as well as the disorder within order.

Interrelationships are pervasive, changing, and often identity-modifying.

Change and non-equilibrium situations are

the central foci of analysis.

- Thomas Biersteker

Monty Python "Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune"

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=R7qT-C-0ajI

create new value that is in excess of their own labour-cost and it is this portion that is appropriated by the capitalis

Pyramid of the

Capitalist System

... Some Statistics

Theory not ideology!

Inequality within States...

The example of America

The

International

Charlie White, "Wealth Inequality in America", March 3, 2013

http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/wealth-inequality/

... The International, unites the

human race...

No more deluded by reaction

On tyrants only we’ll make war

The soldiers too will take strike action

They’ll break ranks and fight no more...

Inequality between States...

http:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=suVB3YGIUk0

Global Wealth Inequality - What you never knew you never knew

4 random examples

https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSxzjyMNpU

Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

Foundations of Marxism