Pieces of Samir Amin, 2009, Capitalism of
Oligopolies
At the Heart of Today's Problem: Capitalism of
Oligopolies
Which Has Been Generalized, Globalized, and Financialized
Capitalism
has reached a stage of centralization and concentration of capital out of all
comparison with the situation only 50 years ago, and I thus describe this
capitalism as one of generalized oligopolies.
"Monopolies" (or, better, oligopolies) are in no way new
inventions in modern history. What is
new, however, is the limited number of registered oligopolies
("groups") which stands at about 500, if only the colossal ones are
counted, and 3,000 to 5,000 in an almost comprehensive list. They now determine, through their decisions,
the whole of economic life on the planet, and more besides. This capitalism of generalized oligopolies is
thus a qualitative leap forward in the general evolution of capitalism.
The reason
given for this evolution - and usually it is the only one - is that it is the
inevitable result of technological progress.
This is only very partially true - and even so, it is important to
specify that technological invention is itself commanded very largely by the
requirements of concentration and gigantism.
For much production, efficiency not only does not demand gigantism but,
on the contrary, "small" and "medium" enterprises. This is the case, for example, with
agricultural production, in which modern family agriculture has proved to be
far more efficient. But it is also true
of many other types of production of goods and services, which are now
subordinated to the oligopolies that determine the conditions of their
survival.
In actual
fact, the most important real reason is the search for maximum profits, which
benefits the powerful groups who have priority access to capital markets. Such concentration has always been the
response of capital to the long, deep crises that have marked its history. In recent history, it happened for the first
time after the crisis that started in the 1870s and for the second time,
exactly a century later, in the 1970s.
This
concentration is at the origin of the "financialization" of the
system, as this is how the oligopolies siphon off the global surplus value
produced by the production system, a "rent monopoly" that enables
oligopolistic groups to increase their rate of profit considerably. This levy is obtained by the oligopolies'
exclusive access to the monetary and financial markets which thus become the
dominant markets.
"Financialization,"
therefore, is not, in any way, the result of a regrettable drift linked to the
"deregulation" of financial markets, even less of
"accidents" (like subprimes) on which vulgar economics and its
accompanying political discourse concentrate people's attention. It is a necessary requirement for the
reproduction of the system of generalized oligopolies. In other words, as long as their (private)
status goes unchallenged, the talk of bold "regulation" of the
financial markets is in vain.
The
capitalism of generalized and financialized oligopolies is also
globalized. Here, again,
"globalization" is in no way a new characteristic of capitalism,
which has always been "globalized."
I have even gone further in the description of capitalist globalization,
stressing its inherently "polarizing" character (producing a growing
gulf between the "developed" centers of the system and its dominated
peripheries). This has taken place at
all stages of capitalist expansion in the past and present, and it will in the
foreseeable future. I have also advanced
the thesis that the new phase of globalization is necessarily associated with
the emergence of the "collective imperialism of the Triad" (the
United States, Europe, and Japan).
The new
globalization is itself inseparable from the exclusive control of access to the
natural resources of the planet exercised by collective imperialism. Hence the center-peripheries contradiction -
the North-South conflict in current parlance - is central to any possible
transformation of the actually existing capitalism of our time. And more markedly than in the past, this, in
turn, requires the "military control of the planet" on the part of
the collective imperialist center.
The
different "systemic crises" that have been studied and analyzed - the
energy-guzzling nature of production systems, the agricultural and food crisis,
and so on - are inseparable from the exigencies of the reproduction of the
capitalism of generalized, financialized, and globalized oligopolies. If the status of these oligopolies is not
brought into question, any policies to solve these "systemic crises" -
"sustainable development" formulae - will just remain idle chitchat.
The
capitalism of generalized, financialized, and globalized oligopolies has thus
become an "obsolete" system, in the sense that the socialization of
oligopolies, that is the abolition of their private status, should now become
the essential strategic objective in any genuine critical analysis of the real
world. If this does not happen, the
system by itself can only produce more and more barbaric and criminal
destruction - even the destruction of the planet itself. It will certainly mean the destruction of the
societies in the peripheries: those in the so-called "emerging"
countries as well as in the "marginalized" countries.
The
obsolete character of the system as it has reached the present stage of its
evolution is itself inseparable from changes in the structures of the governing
classes ("bourgeoisies"), political practice, ideology, and political
culture. The historical bourgeoisie is
disappearing from the scene and is now being replaced by the plutocracy of the
"bosses" of oligopolies. The
drift of the practice of democracy emptied of all content and the emergence of
ultra-reactionary ideological expressions are the necessary accompaniment of
the obsolete character of contemporary capitalism.
The
domination of oligopolies is exercised in the central imperialist Triad under
different conditions and by different means than those used in the countries of
the peripheries of the system. It is a
decisive difference, essential for identifying the major contradictions of the
system and then imagining the possible evolutions in the North-South conflict,
which will probably increase.
The
collective imperialist Triad brings together the United States and its external
provinces (Canada and Australia), Western and Central Europe, and Japan. The globalized monopolies are all products of
the concentration of national capital in the countries that constitute the
Triad. The countries of Eastern Europe,
even those that now belong to the European Union, do not even have their own
"national" oligopolies and thus represent just a field of expansion
for the oligopolies of Western Europe (particularly Germany). They are therefore reduced to the status of
the periphery. Their asymmetric
relationship to Western Europe is, mutatis
mutandis, analogous to that which links Latin America to the United States
(and, incidentally, to Western Europe and Japan).
In the
Triad, the oligopolies occupy the whole scene of economic decision-making. Their domination is exercised directly on all
the huge companies producing goods and services, as well as on the financial
institutions (banks and others) that pertain to their power. And it is exercised indirectly on all the
small and medium businesses (in agriculture as in other fields of production),
which are often reduced to the status of subcontractors, continually
subordinated to the constraints that the oligopolies impose on them at all
stages of their activities. The
oligopolies of the Triad operate in the countries of the periphery using
various methods that will be described later on.
Not only do
the oligopolies dominate the economic life of the countries of the Triad. They monopolize political power for their own
advantage, the electoral political parties (right and left) having become their
debtors. This situation will be, for the
foreseeable future, accepted as "legitimate," in spite of the degradation
of democracy that it entails. It will not
be threatened until, sometime in the future perhaps, "anti-plutocratic
fronts" are able to include on their agenda the abolition of the private
management of oligopolies and their socialization, in complex and open-endedly
evolving forms.
Oligopolies
exercise their power in the peripheries in completely different ways. It is true that outright delocalization and
the expanding practice of subcontracting have given the oligopolies of the
Triad some power to intervene directly into the economic life of various
countries. But they still remain
independent countries dominated by local governing classes through which the
oligopolies of the Triad are forced to operate.
There are all kinds of formulae governing their relationships, ranging
from the direct submission of the local governing classes in the
"compradorized" ("re-colonized") countries, above all in
the "marginalized" peripheries (particularly, but not only, Africa),
to sometimes difficult negotiations (with obligatory mutual concessions) with
the governing classes, especially in the "emerging" countries - above
all, China.
There are
also oligopolies in the countries of the South.
These were the large public bodies in the former systems of actually
existing socialism (in China of course as in the Soviet Union, but also at a
more modest level in Cuba and Vietnam).
Such was also the case in India, Brazil, and other parts of the
"capitalist South"; some of these oligopolies had public or
semi-public status, while others were private.
As the globalization process deepened, certain oligopolies (public and
private) began to operate outside their borders and copy the methods used by
the oligopolies of the Triad.
Nevertheless, the interventions of the oligopolies of the South outside
their frontiers are - and will remain for a long time - marginal, compared with
those of the North. Furthermore, the
oligopolies of the South have not captured the political power in their
respective countries for their own exclusive profit. In China the "statocracy" of the
Party-State still constitutes the essential core of power. In Russia, the mixture of State/private
oligarchies has returned autonomous power to the State that had lost it for a
while after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In India, Brazil, and other countries of the South, the weight of the
private oligarchy is not exclusive: power rests on broader, hegemonic blocs,
including mainly the national bourgeoisie, the middle classes, the owners of
modernized large estates (latifundia)
and rich peasants.
All these
conditions make it impossible to confuse the State in the Triad countries
(which functions for the exclusive use of the oligarchy and is still
legitimate) and the State in the peripheries.
The latter never had the same legitimacy as it has in the centers and it
may very well lose what little it does have.
Those in power are in fact fragile and vulnerable to social and
political struggles.
The
hypothesis that this vulnerability will be "transitory" and likely to
attenuate with the development of local capitalism, itself integrated into
globalization, is, even for the "emerging countries," unquestionably
mistaken - a hypothesis that derives from the linear vision of "stages of
development" (formulated by Rostow in 1960). But conventional thought and vulgar economics
are not intellectually equipped to understand that "catching up" is
impossible in this system and that the gap between the centers and the
peripheries will not "gradually" disappear.
The
oligopolies and the political powers that serve them in the countries of the
Triad pursue their sole aim of "emerging from the financial crisis"
and basically restoring the system as it was.
There are good reasons to believe that this restoration - if it
succeeds, which is not impossible, although more difficult than is generally
thought - cannot be sustainable, because it involves returning to the expansion
of finance, which is essential for the oligopolies if they are to appropriate
monopoly rent for their own benefit. A
new financial collapse, still more sensational than that of 2008, is therefore
probable. But, these considerations
apart, the restoration of the system, designed to expand the fields of
activities for the oligopolies again, would mean aggravating the process of
accumulation by dispossession of the peoples of the South (through seizure of
their natural resources, including their agricultural land). And ecologist discourses on "sustainable
development" will not prevail over the logic of expansion of oligopolies,
which are more than capable of appearing to "adopt" them in their
rhetoric - as we are already seeing.
The main
victims of this restoration will be the nations of the South, both the
"emerging" countries and the others.
So it is very likely that the "North-South conflicts" are
destined to become much greater in the future.
The responses that the "South" will give to these challenges
could thus be pivotal in challenging the whole globalized system. This may not mean questioning
"capitalism" directly, but it would surely mean questioning the
globalization commanded by the domination of the oligopolies.
The
responses of the South must indeed focus on helping to arm their peoples and
States to face the aggression of the oligopolies of the Triad, to facilitate
their "delinking" from the existing system of globalization, and to
promote multiple substantial alternatives of South-South cooperation.
Challenging
the private status of the oligopolies by the peoples of the North themselves
(the "anti-plutocratic front") is certainly an absolutely strategic
objective in the struggle for the emancipation of workers and peoples. But this objective has yet to become
politically mature and it is not very likely to happen in the foreseeable
future. Meanwhile, the North-South
conflicts will probably move to center stage.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Post a Comment