Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis PDF
Preview Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis
DEVELOPMENT AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT A MARXIST ANALYSIS Also by c<offrry Kay THE POLlTICA.L "C()~OM'I O't C.O"\...O~\.l--."\"'\'';,,~ \.':\. ""'~"""~ (with S/cphm HymtT\ THE. E.CONOM\C '\\¥.OR,{ O~ "'\'n'i. ~~~~"\.';:\." '-"\..l-..."::."::. POLITICAL ORD~R ~~~ "\Wt. . u...~ ~'i "\..}..~~~~ (with James Mott, Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis GEOFFREY KAY Lecturer in Economics The City University, London 81 33. KAY GEOFFREY DEVELOPMENT AND U~DERDEVELO PMENT: A "ARXIST ~NAlYSIS A 88004977 M © Geoffrey Kay 1975 All rights reserved. No pan of this publication may be reproduced or transmiued, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1975 Reprinted 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982 Published by THE MACMILlAN PRESS LTD l.ontkm and Basingstoke Companies and representatives througlwut the world ISBN 0 333 154029 (hardcover) ISBN 0 333 21297 5 (paperback) Printed in Hong Kong The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold. hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consem, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser TO ROGER GENOUD STEPHEN HYMER ROBERT SERESWESKI Contents Preface lX Introduction 1. PRODUCTION, CONSUMPTION AND SURPLUS 13 The law of social reproduction 15 1. 2. The circuit of production and consumption 19 3· The social relations of production 21 2. SURPLUS VALUE AND PROFIT 26 Commodity and value 26 1. 2. The circuit of capital 30 3· The magnitude of value 33 4· Profit 39 5· Surplus value 44 6. Wages and the circuit of labour 47 7· Real wages and the value of wages 50 3· THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL 56 I. The pursuit of pure quantity 56 2. Accumulation and money 60 3· Accumulation and simple commodity production 63 4· Commodity production and capitalist production 67 5· Accumulation and the socialisation of labour 72 6. Accumulation and the socialisation of capital 75 Note: Social capital and the transition to com- munism 82 4· PRODUCTIVE AND CIRCULATION CAPITAL 86 I. lJnequal exchange 86 2. Circulation capital in capitalist society 89 3· Circulation capital in non-capitalist society 93 5· MERCHANT CAPITAL AND UNDERDEVELOPMEl\T 96 I. The transition to industrial capitalism 98 Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist AnalYsis Vlll 2. British colonialism 105 3. The theory of unequal exchange 107 4. l\'lerchant capital and the development of under development 119 6. INDUSTRIAL CAPITAL AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT 125 I. Fixed and circulating capital 130 2. The effect of turnover on the rate of profit 137 3. Turnover and employment 145 4. Accumulation and employment 148 5. The formation of the proletariat 153 7. THE ACCELERATION OF CAPITAL I. The intensification of labour 2. Fordism 8. CRISIS AND RECOMPOSITION I. Crisis 2. Recomposition 3· Democracy and repression List of Works Cited 188 Index 190 Preface Since 1968, the myth that Capital is unreadable has been ex ploded. Marxist literature, including Marx's own writings, now proliferate as never before. This recrudescence has a real basis in developments during the sixties: the collapse of consensus politics; the decomposition of the affluent society and the failure of the Americans to win a decisive victory in Vietnam. It also has ideological roots, for as the world has moved on academic social science has stood still. Economics is no exception. Faced with developments they cannot grasp, the economists have retreated behind a veil of obscurantism and statistics vainly hoping that by measuring and correlating the appearance of effects they will get some clue as to causes. As their conventional orthodoxy, nco-classical theory, has collapsed under the weight of its own internal incon sistencies, economists have desperately appropriated terms and methods from the natural sciences in the hope that this guise of science might be mistaken for the real thing. Some students may be taken in by it, but many are bored and frustrated. Those students who turn to economics in the hope of finding some ex planation of the developments they sce around them: develop ments such as rising affiuence and increasing stringency; growing wealth and grinding poverty; not to mention urban decay, pollution and underdevelopment -developments, in short, which threaten the very existence of civilisation: these students are still taught the key to analysis lies in understanding the way an isolated individual chooses whether to buy an overcoat or spaghetti. The study of underdevelopment, it is true, has always been broader than that of other problems, and even orthodox development economists have been forced to take other so called non-economic factors into account and reco~nise a historical dimension. But this has only highlighted their ideo logical prejudices. As I argue in the Introduction, orthodox development theory was llever morc than elaborate apology for x Del,elopment and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Anab'sis colonialism, and for this reason quickly came under attack from the supporters of the nationalist movements that spread so rapidly around the underdeveloped world. This criticism was soon generalised against an even more fundamental proposi tion of orthodox theory, that underdevelopment was an original condition for which capitalism could not be held responsible. By the mid-sLxties a whole school of radical development economists had emerged which held the opposite view. Glaring inconsistencies in orthodox theory were brought to light and historical studies were produced to show how important capitalist penetration had been. But this is as far as it went. As none of the major works produced by this school was firmly based on the law oJvalue which Marx discovered and elaborated, little progress could be made beyond this point. The radical critics of orthodox development theory were so keen to prove the ideological point that underdevelopment was the product of capitalist exploitation, that they let the crucial issue pass them by: capital created underdevelopment not because it ex ploited the underdeveloped world, but because it did not exploit it enough. I have written this book with the intention that it should be understandable to readers with no previous knowledge of Marxism or economics. The opening chapters consist of an introduction to Marx's economic thought and all the concepts that are subsequently used in the later chapters are explained sufficiently for even the technical sections of chapters 5 and 6, which contain the heart of my argument to be followed. If this work achieves its goal of comprehensibility without compromise to the complexity of its subject, much of the credit must go to Susan Bennett who took the time and trouble to work through it with me on a line by line basis. I should also like to thank Antonio Bronda, Charmian Campbell, Peter Cusack, Feruccio Gambino, Alex Macdonald, John Merrington, Roger Murray and lan and Beryl Tolady for their intellectual and moral support. My colleagues at The City University cased my teach ing load at a crucial time and Marian White and Mary Keane worked wonders with a ragged manuscript. GEOFFREY KA Y The City University, London, Decem ber 1973 Introduction The concepts, development and underdevelopment, have only been widely used in their present sense since the end of the Second 'Vorld War. For most of modern history the economic and social divisions of the world were understood as expressions of natural differences in race and climate. Differences in income were treated in much the same way as differences, say, in rain fall, and as late as 1930 a senior British administrator could blandly comment that average per capita income of £30 in Ghana compared not unfavourably with £80 in Britain.1 In the colonial mind the world was divided into civilised men and natives and the gulf that divided them was considered un bridgeable - at least in the foreseeable future. Attitudes have now changed, and the view of the world embodied in the con cepts of development and underdevelopment no longer holds the division to be permanent and fixed. Underdevelopment implies development in a way that barbarism never im plied civilisation. The differences between an underdeveloped country and a developed one are of degree rather than kind; and the very use of these terms suggests that they are differ ences that can and should be overcome. It is, to say the least, a more positive outlook. The immediate explanation for this radical departure in thought is the rise of nationalism in most parts of the under developed world after 1945. For national sovereignty can have no real meaning unless it is joined to the idea of development as progress towards a social and economic equality from wbch no nation is debarred for natural reasons. National sovereignty and development defined in this way adhere to each other as closely as the principle of equal rights adheres to that of the freedom of the individual. In fact they can be correctly inter preted as a projection of these eighteenth-century principles on to an international stage. In this sense contemporary A. W. Cardinal, The Gold Court, 1931 (Accraj Government Printer, I 1931).
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