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"Over a hundred years since the beginning of modern imperialism, the former colonial world is still prevented from joining the club of imperialist powers. The gap between rich and poor countries is not narrowing but growing. China is usually presented as challenging the dominance of the United States and other rich countries. However, imperialist domination over the most sophisticated aspects of the labour process gives the rich countries and their corporations control over the global labour process as a whole – including in China. Third World producers are forced to specialise in the opposite types of work – in relatively simple and low-end labour, for which major price markups and large profits are rarely possible. This is the kernel of unequal exchange in world trade. The imperialist system develops two types of capital – monopoly and non-monopoly capital – and two types of societies – rich, monopoly, imperialist societies and poor, non-monopoly, ‘Third World’ societies. China’s ascendance to become the most powerful Third World country in no way threatens to topple continuing imperialist dominance. Most contemporary Marxist writing has not been focused on global income polarisation and imperialist exploitation of the poor countries. For this reason, it has been unable to explain how exactly the same countries continuously reproduce their dominance. However, the actual conditions of the neoliberal world economy have made explicit how this happens through the labour process itself. In doing so it has also shown how Marx’s labour theory of value can be concretely applied to the conditions of monopoly capital today.
of capitalism, the stage at which late capitalism (Mandel 1972, 1987 ; Jameson 1991 ) can be said to begin. As quoted above (see Chapter 3 ), Lenin stressed the transformation of free competition to monopoly as a sign of transitional nature of monopoly capitalism. By employing Ilenkov's idea of the genetically general, we are proposing to return the study of capitalism from its contemporary tendency to pose questions regarding the mechanism of the functioning of this system, to the original inclination of classical political economy and
colonial legal order and fiscal system. Hence, the Kenyan economy continued, even after independence, to be controlled and directed by its former colonial ruler. 42 Thus, being the outpost, as it was, of imperially conceived international monopoly capitalism, the Kenyan economy could not help but respond to the demands of metropolitan markets. 43 As a result, Kenya’s fiscal approach was based on its conceptualisation as a state participating within the existing economic order as opposed to intervening into
‘the vigorous competitive incentive to innovate had vanished’ 4 was a caricature (see Chapter 2 ). Yet, Warren continues, ‘the reasons why Lenin’s thesis that monopoly capitalism was parasitic and decadent is invalid are not difficult to enumerate. The rise of oligopolistic market structure – or monopolistic firms, as they are popularly called
In this broad sweep, Mayo explores dominant European discourses of higher education, in the contexts of different globalisations and neoliberalism, and examines its extension to a specific region. It explores alternatives in thinking and practice including those at the grassroots, also providing a situationally grounded project of university–community engagement. Signposts for further directions for higher education lifelong learning, with a social justice purpose, are provided.
‘the larger Lenin-Bukharin synthesis’. He accepts Warren’s caricature of Lenin’s monopoly as eliminating competition (see Chapter 7 ) and follows Warren in viewing capitalist development in the Third World as refuting dependency theory. ‘A related problem with the larger Lenin–Bukharin synthesis is its association of imperialism with “monopoly capitalism”, since
Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) returned to public discourse in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union imploded and globalization erupted. Best known for The Great Transformation, Polanyi’s wide-ranging thought anticipated twenty-first-century civilizational challenges of ecological collapse, social disintegration and international conflict, and warned that the unbridled domination of market capitalism would engender nationalist protective counter-movements. In Karl Polanyi and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, Radhika Desai and Kari Polanyi Levitt bring together prominent and new thinkers in the field to extend the boundaries of our understanding of Polanyi's life and work. Kari Polanyi Levitt's opening essay situates Polanyi in the past century shaped by Keynes and Hayek, and explores how and why his ideas may shape the twenty-first century. Her analysis of his Bennington Lectures, which pre-dated and anticipated The Great Transformation, demonstrates how Central European his thought and chief concerns were. The next several contributions clarify, for the first time in Polanyi scholarship, the meaning of money as a fictitious commodity. Other contributions resolve difficulties in understanding the building blocks of Polanyi's thought: fictitious commodities, the double movement, the United States' exceptional development, the reality of society and socialism as freedom in a complex society. The volume culminates in explorations of how Polanyi has influenced, and can be used to develop, ideas in a number of fields, whether income inequality, world-systems theory or comparative political economy. Contributors: Fred Block, Michael Brie, Radhika Desai, Michael Hudson, Hannes Lacher, Kari Polanyi Levitt, Chikako Nakayama, Jamie Peck, Abraham Rotstein, Margaret Somers, Claus Thomasberger, Oscar Ugarteche Galarza.
rivalries of giant monopolies, to their political interaction with various capitalist states, and to the antagonisms and conflicts between these states themselves – in other words, to imperialism as an aspect of monopoly capitalism. The law of value, like competitive capitalism itself, fades into history. 10
commodity production for the market and hence can never create a world were all production is monopolised. Lenin made explicit his own view of the inevitable continuation under monopoly capitalism of the category of non-monopoly capital – this was correct. In the neoliberal period non-monopoly capitalist production was greatly expanded, closely integrated into the global division of labour and
’. 10 Kidron argued, ‘In broadest outline, Lenin’s thesis was that capitalism’s maturity compels it to export capital on a large scale’. 11 Kiernan also saw capital export as the ‘entire thesis’ advanced by Lenin. 12 Barrat-Brown tells us Lenin had argued that ‘it is the export of capital that is typical of monopoly capitalism and that requires the division and redivision of