Jessop 2002

Outline

(this as an outline and notes written for the Core Theory neo-marxism session in 2010)

The division between the “economic” and the “extraeconomic” is historical, and therefore, social. It is not objectively given.

• The economy rests on social and political preconditions, the shaping of which the state undertakes.
• Yet, the extraeconomic is not just a functional correlate of the economic (“no grudging functionalism”, Agnew 2004: 311).
• Rather, the economic and the extraeconomic are a product of the strategic-relational operation of the capitalist state. relational: capital is a social relation, accumulation is a social goal.

From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, the Keynesian welfare national state (KWNS) was the standard configuration of the rich, developed world.

• featuring full employment (Western Europe averaged at 2.3% unemployment!)
• featuring a demand-side bias in macroeconomic policy (Keynes), Fordist mass consumption (?!?, c.f. Agnew 2004: 312).

From the early 1970s on, the KWNS shifted to Schumpeterian welfare postnational regime (SWPR) / Schumpeterian Competition State (SCS).

• transition to a “learning economy”, such as embodied in the Lisbon Strategy
• featuring a supply-side bias in macroeconomic policy (Neo-classical economics)
• a move from “government to governance” (Cox 2003: 775).
• the logic of competition is extended to new areas (Agnew 2004: 312).

Propelling this change was not some exogenous “globalization”, but an endogenous evolution in the dynamic of capital accumulation.

Jessop’s epistemological (?) bias:

• is “critical realist, therefore pluralist (...) in what makes things happen” (Cox 2003: 775), not simple historical materialism (the history of the world is the history of class struggle)
• borrows heavily from regulation theory.

Jessop’s theory of social production and social change:

1. (Capitalism cannot be purely reproduced through market relations, see above, c.f. Jessop 2002: 298)
2. Labor power is a fictitious commodity
3. As capital accumulation expands, it becomes more ecologically dominant

• Capital is a social relation.
  • Capitalist production: all value is added by labor (the labor theory of value).
• Some commodities are fictitious:
  • Labor, because human beings are not produced themselves following a profit motive.
  • Land or natural resources, because they cannot be produced at all.
  • Knowledge, because it is non-rival. (in “orthodox” economics, a natural monopoly, or public good).
  • Money, because it depends on extra-economic coercion.
• Capital “self-valorizes”, a.k.a., it generates a profit.
• Capital is an object of regulation.

Criticism

Non-Parsimoneous, Hermetic Ideology?

“Exchange value refers to a commodity’s market-mediated monetary value for the seller; use-value refers to its material and/or symbolic usefulness to the purchaser. Without exchange-value, commodities would not be produced for sale; without use-value, they would not be purchased.” (ibid.: 16).

“Ideologies are closed belief systems that change very little. They are closed to contradictory evidence, and use circular reasoning. Ideologies are logically ‘slippery’ and prevent falsification. (...) In ideology, lines between assertions about what is the case and beliefs about what should be the case blur together”. (Neuman 2003: 46).

I do not understand the “contradictions”, and “exploitation” essential to market production (c.f. ibid.: 20, table 1.1)

Can we maybe save critical structuralism without Neo-Marxism?

• The distinction between exchange-value and use-value is “money illusion”.
• There is no bias in the division of returns to labor and capital essential to capitalism.
• Accumulation is not a capitalist phenomenon (Stalinist Russia)

| | Capitalism | Socialism | | Consume (small or negative real savings rate) | Bush Jun. US (Mortage and credit bubble) | Honecker GDR (Foreign debt) | | Invest (high and positive real savings rate) | Germany ("Thatcherism", supply-side bias) | Stalinist Russia ("electrification in one generation") |