Capitalism and Catastrophe: A Critical Appraisal of the Limits to Capitalism

153 Pages·1979·1.77 MB·English

by  Stephen Rousseas

Capital.isnt and catastrophe

Ca italism and catastro he
p p
A critical appraisal of the limits to capitalism
STEPHEN ROUSSEAS
Vassar College
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1979
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1979
Reprinted 1980
This digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Rousseas, Stephen William.
Capitalism and catastrophe.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Capitalism. 2. Marxian
economics. I. Title.
HB501.R765 335.4'01 78-11996
ISBN 978-0-521-22333-1 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-06851-2 paperback
To
Claude
and
Philip

Contents
Preface page ix
Part I: Marxian theories of advanced capitalism
i. Science, technology, and Marx 3
2. The limit to capitalist growth 17
3. The limitless accumulation of capital in postcapitalist 33
society
Part II: Neo- and non-Marxian theories of advanced
capitalism
4. The problem of capitalist legitimation 49
5. Beyond advanced unplanned capitalism 71
6. Beyond capitalism? 98
Notes ll5
Selected bibliography 127
Index 129
vii

Prefaee
This book is intended as a critical essay on the nature of advanced
capitalism. Its origin was a paper written for a conference held at
Rutgers University in April 1977 on "Post-Keynesian Theory: The
Unexplored Issues." The conference was a gathering of economists
who identify themselves with what has come to be known as the
post-Keynesian revolt. Among the first to mount the barricades in the
early sixties was Joan Robinson. Her attack on "pre-Keynesian
economists after Keynes," to use her well-suited phrase, was devastat­
ing. She questioned not only the meaning of 'capital' in bastardized
Keynesian theory, but also its use in a neoclassical theory of income
distribution where the rewards of labor and capital are based on their
relative contributions to the total output of goods and services under
competitive market conditions. She accused them, in effect, of push­
ing the ideological bias of their neo-neo-classicism, namely, the ideol­
ogy of the status quo, into the background while parading stage front
in the pseudoscientific garments of a neutral, wertfrei economics. She
was particularly severe on neoclassical equilibrium analysis and its use
of static comparisons in logical time to analyze what is essentially a
process taking place in historical time - where the past is opaquely
dark, the future is unknown if not unknowable, and the present is the
stomping ground of the intellectual mandarins.
The taming and the mechanical bowdlerization of the original
Keynesian revolution had become a sore point with Joan Robinson,
herself a contemporary of John Maynard Keynes and an influential
contributor to his General Theory. While the 'New' Cambridge-New
Haven axis reacted to the frontal attacks of Joan Robinson and other
post-Keynesians by flooding the moats and lifting up the drawbridges
of orthodoxy, the 'Old' Cambridge, on the other side of the Atlantic,
undermined the neoclassical foundations by reviving an interest in
the earlier theories of Ricardo and Marx and their concern over the
class distribution of income.
In its simplest terms, the 'New' Cambridge neoclassicals see distri­
bution as an aspect of pricing in a free market economy subject to the
IX
Preface
'laws' of supply and demand. For Joan Robinson's 'Old' Cambridge,
pricing is an aspect of distribution. Given the monopoly determina­
tion of prices, distribution is consequently a matter of power in a class
society where the struggle over relative shares undermines the stabil­
ity of the capitalist system. Because growth is the fundamental charac­
teristic of capitalism, and because it is based on the profit expectations
of capitalists, any serious attempt by labor to achieve a larger slice of
the pie is bound to have an adverse effect on profits and thus on the
viability of the system. In this schema, prices are determined by an
historically set wage level, itself the result of the class struggle over
relative shares. The theory of distribution therefore takes priority
over an historically timeless theory of value operating in the vacuity of
equilibrium analysis.
Building as she did on Ricardo, Marx, Michal Kalecki, and Pierro
Sraffa, Robinson restored Keynesian theory to its original critical
purpose and gave rise to what is now called post-Keynesian econom­
ics. She also tried, in the course of her work, to reformulate Marxian
thought, but in her effort to demystify Marx she found that the fun­
damentalists put up a solid wall of resistance, as firm and as rocklike
as that of 'bastard' Keynesians. Vulgar Marxism and vulgar
Keynesianism clearly share one thing in common: a vulgarity based
on scientific pretension and the 'discovery' of universal social 'laws'.
With the exception of Robinson, however, most post-Keynesians have
avoided excursions into the murky waters of Marxian theory; they
have been too busy attacking the vulgar Keynesians on their own turf
and from within the fold.
My concern in writing this book is that post-Keynesians, much as I
agree with them, have neglected to review critically some fruitful
neo-Marxian theories of advanced capitalism, particularly those of
Jurgen Habermas and other members of the Frankfurt School of
critical thought. It is this gap in their analysis that this book attempts
to fill. In the process of trying to do so, I found it necessary to exam­
ine certain neo-Marxian theories on their own terms, just as the
post-Keynesians did with their 'bastard' variety. I view my approach as
complementary to post-Keynesian theory as it is evolving. My overall
argument, though focused on the neo-Marxians, is in support of the
post-Keynesian critique of vulgar Keynesianism from another direction,
and it is for that reason alone that I have not presented a detailed
exegesis of the post-Keynesian position.
In preparing the shorter paper for the Rutgers conference, I found
myself forced to step back and look at Marxian theory itself and the
schisms that were quick to appear after the death of Engels in 1895.
The towering figure who emerges from these unseemly squabbles is
x