A Japanese Approach to Stages of Capitalist Development

334 Pages·1991·34.55 MB·English

by  Robert Albritton (auth.)

A JAPANESE APPROACH TO STAGES OF
CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT
Also by Robert Albritton
A JAPANESE RECONSTRUCTION OF MARXIST THEORY
A Japanese Approach
to Stages of Capitalist
Development
Robert Albritton
Associate Professor of Political Science
York University, North York, Canada
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21778-6 ISBN 978-1-349-21776-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21776-2
© Robert Albrinon 1991
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1991
All rights reserved. For information write:
Scho1arly and Reference Division,
SL Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-06577-5
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Albritton, Robert, 1941-
A Japanese approach to stages of capitalist development / Robert
Albritton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-06577-5
1. Capitalism. 2. Uno, Kozo, 1897-1977-Views on capitalism.
3. Marxian economics. I. Title.
HB501.A527 1991
330. 12'2-dc20 91-12796
CIP
Für Jennifer
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
2 The Theory of a Purely Capitalist Society 11
The economics of a purely capitalist society 14
Ideology in a purely capitalist society 22
Law in a purely capitalist society 24
Politics in a purely capitalist society 27
3 Stage Theory 30
Stage-theoretic economics 35
Stage-theoretic ideology 39
Stage-theoretic law 41
Stage-theoretic politics 42
4 Historical Analysis as a Level of Political Economy 48
5 The Stage of Mercantilism 66
Mercantilist economics 69
Mercantilist ideology 99
Mercantilist law 109
Mercantilist politics 114
Summary 121
6 The Stage of Liberalism 124
Liberal economics 126
Liberal ideology 150
Liberallaw 160
Liberal politics 166
Summary 173
Vll
vüi Contents
7 The Stage of Imperialism 177
Imperialist economics 182
Imperialist ideology 198
Imperialist law 210
Imperialist politics 214
Summary 221
8 The Stage of Consumerism 225
Consumerist economics 228
Consumerist ideology 246
Consumerist law 255
Consumerist politics 259
Summary 264
9 Stage Theoretic Trends 266
10 Conclusions 276
Notes 280
Bibliography 307
Index 319
Acknowledgements
A great deal of time and effort has gone into this book. It would have taken
a good deallonger but for York University's Faculty of Arts Fellowship,
which relieved me of teaching duties for a year in order to write this book.
So many individuals have enriched my thought on issues relating to this
book that it is only possible to thank a few of those who contributed
most directly. I have received encouragement and feedback from many
professors in Japan. I particularly want to thank Professors Nagatani and
Mawatari, who not only commented directly on parts of the manuscript,
but also organized a number of Japanese Professors to translate Uno's
work on stage theory: Types 0/ Economic Po/icies Under Capitalism. I
want to thank Professors Takahashi, Yamamoto, Hoshino, Haruta, Kuzuu,
Yamane, Sugiura, Fujikawa, Mawatari, and Nagatani for translating parts
of Types 0/ Economic Policies Under Capitalism. Also I want to thank
Professors Ouchi, Hoshino, and Miyashita, who went to the trouble to give
me written comments. I had useful discussions with Professors Watanabe,
Itoh, Yamamoto, Shirogane, and Kasai. On the Canadian side there are also
many who have contributed to this book. I want to thank Nick Rogers,
Colin Duncan, Marc Weinstein, Ricardo Duchesne, and Claude Danik for
their written comments. The main parts of the manuscript were diseussed
systematically in a study group consisting of Tom Sekine, Mare Weinstein,
John Bell, Brian Maclean, Stephen Stropple, Makoto Maruyama, Rafael
Indart, and Colin Dunean. Also I had helpful and extended discussions of
the manuseript with Randali Terada and Stephanos Kourkoulakos. Sinee I
do not read Japanese, most of what I know about Uno's thought I have
leamed from my colleague Tom Sekine, and for this I am deeply indebted.
Finally I want to thank my wife, Jennifer Welsh, for her emotional support
and for her help in making the manuscript more readable.
ROBERT ALBRITTON
ix
1 Introduction
After an initial fascination with Althusser and his claim made in the
1960s that Marx's Capital was the founding work of a new science,
the trend amongst many marxists (and especially ex-Althusserians) has
been to do an about-face and march as rapidly as possible away from this
claim, usually with the intention of saving marxism from economism.1
The efforts to exorcise the devilish economism from possession of the
body of marxism have been many and diverse. Some of them have
been.constructive, improving the analytic powers of marxist theory, while
others have pursued the exorcism with such single-mindedness that they
discovered little left of marxist theory once all the economism was purged.
"Economism" has become such a reviled word and the reaction against it
has been carried to such absurd lengths, that I am inclined to say, with
so me trepidation, that a litde economism may not be a bad thing.
I argued just this in my previous book, A Japanese Reconstruction 0/
Marxist Theory. Whatever problems there may be with many of Althusser's
formulations, I argued that his above-mentioned claim is basically correct:
Capital is the founding work of a new science. Where I differed with
Althusser, was both in his understanding of Capital and his understanding
of science. Based on the work of Japanese political economist Kozo Uno,
I attempted to show that it is possible to maintain the scientificity of
Capital, while at the same time avoiding economistic reductionism (and
essentialism in most senses of the concept). The key to achieving this is
Uno's levels of analysis approach to marxian political economy.2
According to Uno, marxian political economy can fruitfully be divided
into three levels of analysis: the theory of a purely capitalist society, the
theory of stages of capitalist development, and the analysis of capitalist
history. Each of the three levels, in its own way, is ultimately based
on history. The theory of pure capitalism is possible because up to a
point capital is, by its own logic, self-purifying in history. Stage theory
is necessary because the inner logic of capital only has a partial grasp
on history, with the result that, at a more concrete level of analysis, the
inner logic of capital needs to be translated into qualitatively different
forms of capital accumulation specific to distinct stages of capitalist
development. In other words, at the level of stage theory the abstract
economic law of pure capitalism is refracted by historically given social
1