Review: 'Imperialism and the crisis': Warren, Mandel, Day and Hilferding

IMPERIALISM AND THE CRISIS

Bill Warren, Imperialism: pioneer of capitalism, NLB and Verso editions, 1980, pp274, pbk £3.95.

Ernest Mandel, The second slump, Verso editions, 1980, pp226, pbk £2.95. Richard Day, The 'crisis' and the "crash': Soviet studies of the West (1917-1939), NLB, 1981, Pp300, £9.50.

Rudolf Hilferding, Finance capital (edited with an introduction by Tom Bottomore), Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp467, £22.50. These recently published books were written over the span of 70 years. Yet in one way or another they all address essentially the same problem: the nature of the capitalist crisis in the epoch of imperialism.

All four works can be seen as alternatives to Marx's theory of crisis and Lenin's theory of imperialism. In contrast to Marx these four authors look not to the realm of production but to the sphere of competition to explain the root cause of the capitalist crisis. Their analyses begin from the point of view of the individual capitalist and then proceed to make generalisations about the different forms through which individual capitalists relate to each other.

The Marxist theory of crisis, his discussion of the overproduction of capital relative to the existing level of exploitation and of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, are alien to their tradition.

quite easily: Warren Warren's book can be dismissed denounces Lenin's work on imperialism, but his critique of Lenin is not a theoretical one. Instead he produces facts from different periods to try and prove that Lenin was an ignoramus. This presents him with few difficulties because he manages to invent positions which Lenin never held, the better to destroy them. For example, Warren often uses the 'imperialism' to mean colonialism (pp45-47). In reality this is the position of today's bourgeois-academic experts in 'dependence theory, not that of Lenin.

A clear purpose lies behind Warren's distorting of Lenin. He seeks to demonstrate that imperialism is progressive and, further, that capitalist backwardness in Africa, Asia and Latin America has nothing to do with imperialism.

Backward capitalism is explained from the point of view of Malthus, not Marx. All its evils, we are told, population growth' (p113). With this kind of vulgar apology for imperialism we should not be surprised at Warren's that capitalism and democracy are linked 'virtually as Siamese twins' (p28).

Mandel cannot be accused of sharing any of Warren's illusions in the progressive character of imperialism. On the contrary, over the past 30 years he has made himself a reputation for predicting doom for capitalism and for drawing out in vivid terms the fragility of the imperialist system. Mandel means well. He is also a good journalist.

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The second slump is full of useful information about the world recession of the 'seventies.

As a description of some of the recent developments in the world economy, The second slump provides a passable introduction for the non-specialist. Problems emerge, however, when Mandel tries his hand at Marxism. Crisis theory is not Mandel's strong point and he intuitively compensates for his theoretical shallowness by playing safe. Just in case he gets caught out, Mandel puts forward every conventional explanation for the capitalist crisis. The resulting blancmange leads him to the absurd proposition that the recession of the 'seventies 'must be understood as a focal point of five different crises' (p180).

that goes amiss in the capitalist system becomes a 'crisis'. Having covered his tracks several times, Mandel declares in a typical flourish: The conjunction of these four crises and the structural crisis of bourgeois society that has been developing under the surface for more than a decade has accentuated the crisis of all bourgeois social relations and more particularly the crisis of capitalist relations of production.' (p182) So the four crises have 'accentuated' the crisis of 'all bourgeois social relations' and in particular 'the crisis of capitalist relations of production'. Crisis leads to crisis. Every answer is correct. Everybody wins a prize. The second slump, more aptly entitled The second coming, demonstrates that the art of tautology, so well perfected by the ancient Greeks, is alive and well and living in modern-day Richard Day's work attempts to explore the important debates on the crisis that took place in the Soviet Union in the 'twenties, and in a more vulgarised form in the 'thirties.

Day's book is without doubt a valuable account of these discussions; it shows very clearly how Marxist theory was degraded as the Soviet system became bureaucratised.

The main flaw with it derives from Day's misunderstanding of Marx's theory of accumulation. Day believes that Marx saw the origins of the capitalist crisis in the disproportional growth of different departments of production. He criticises the underconsumptionist approach of Luxemburg and others from this standpoint. In reality underconsumption is itself a form of disproportion theory.

It represents a disproportion between supply and demand.

For Marx disproportional growth was merely a symptom of the crisis, not its cause.

Day's erroneous interpretation of Marx's theory leads him to establish two schools of thought in the Soviet debates: the 'Hilferding tradition' which included in its and Bukharin, and the ranks 'Luxemburg tradition', which included Varga (pp38-39). This conceptual distinction is difficult to support. Lenin's breakdown theory was based on a recognition that the overaccumulation of capital, expressed as a crisis of profitability, would result in stagnation and decay. It was developed as a revolutionary response to the neo-harmonist theories of disproportionality: it took issue not only with Kautsky, but also Hilferding and Bukharin.

reformist consequence of disproportionality theory is best expressed in Hilferding's Finance capital.

This bears some scrutiny.

Despite its theoretical defects Hilferding's book is a work of science. It attempts to probe the evolution of capitalism into imperialism and, in the process, draws out some important points. Some of these - for instance those on the concentration and centralisation of production and on the role of finance capital - were assimilated by Lenin in his work on imperialism. Unfortunately Hilferding's work fails to locate the key contradictions in the capitalist system. His shallow understanding of accumulation leads him to a subjective theory of competition. Since Hilferding saw the basic problem as one of disproportional growth it followed that some form of planning could put the proportions right. For Hilferding disproportional industrial growth is based on anarchic competition; it can thus be avoided by organising competition. All the state needs to do to bring in socialism is to remove a handful of monopolists: *Even today [1910], taking possession of six large Berlin banks ould mean taking possession of the most important spheres ( rge-scale industry, and would greatly facilitate the initial phase of socialist policy during the transition period.' (p368) Hilferding followed through the logic of his theory. He served as finance minister in two governments during the Weimar period, trying to organise competition and trying to get the proportions right. The result of his experiments was the destruction of the German working class.

Hilferding's work retains its importance today. He gave reformism a coherence which has been unsurpassed since.

All the present-day Alternative Economic Strategies owe Hilferding a debt. Moreover the influence of Bukharin's treatment of Hilferding's ideas is evident in the analysis of groups as disparate as the Soviet Communist Party and the British Socialist Workers Party. Supporters of the radical left would do well to study Hilferding. In Finance capital they would discover the substance of their 'original' and 'distinctive' theories. Frank Richards