Capital & Class

http://cnc.sagepub.com/ Marxism, Post-Marxism and Development Fetishism

Ray Kiely Capital & Class 1995 19: 73 DOI: 10.1177/030981689505500104 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/19/1/73

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Ray Kiely

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Marxism, Post-Marxism and Development Fetishism

I. INTRODUCTION Over the last few years, there has been an intense debate around the impasse in development studies (Booth 1985; Mouzelis 1988a; Sklair 1988; van der Geest and Buttel 1988; Watts 1988; Peet 1989; Corbridge 1990; Kiely 1992). Some writers have argued that the discipline has stagnated because it is dominated by a Marxism which is too theoretical, too structuralist and too determinist, and have called for a post-Marxist approach (see for instance Booth 1985: 776). This critique has in turn been met by defensive responses from orthodox and structuralist Marxists, who criticise the pluralism of so-called post-Marxism (Watts 1988; Peet 1989, 1991). The purpose of this article is to question the approaches of the orthodox Marxists, the structuralists and the post-Marxists. I do so by returning to the work of Marx, and in particular his account of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England. The purpose of this discussion is not to establish a new Marxist dogma, but to show that Marxs work is characterised by a methodology which is far more flexible and empirically open ended than either the structuralists or postMarxists appear to recognise. This in turn has important implications for transcending the impasse in development sociology, both at the level of theory and in the real world.
This article examines the impasse in development studies and takes issue with the contention that the roots of this impasse lie in the work of Marx. It does so by examining orthodox and structuralist versions of Marxism, and argues that these determinist approaches actually fetishise, in Marxs sense, social reality. This argument is outlined by an extended examination of the historical and social significance of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England. It is also argued that post Marxism, in replacing a theoretical determinism with an atheoretical empiricism, has not necessarily transcended the impasse. Finally, some suggestions are made for transcending the impasse in development studies.

74 Capital & Class G 55 In arguing my case, I divide the article into four main sections. In section one, the reasons for the impasse are briefly discussed. Section two, examines two schools of thought which have contributed to the impasse orthodox and structuralist Marxism. In discussing these views, I am not suggesting that they do not represent the interests of specific social groups, but for the purposes of this article, I will focus on the ideas, and their common themes, which can be found in the work of Marx. However in section three, it is argued that these schools, in common with so much development theory, actually fetishise key categories in Marxs thought. It is also argued in this section that post-Marxism also fetishises Marxs concepts for similar reasons. Finally, in section four I draw on my discussion to suggest some research agendas through which the impasse in development studies may be transcended.

1. THE IMPASSE IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES It is now widely recognised that there is a need for new methodological and theoretical initiatives in radical development geography and sociology. David Booths important 1985 article clearly spelt out that the discipline has reached a point of almost complete stagnation in theoretical development, which was seen to be the result of a generalised theoretical disorientation affecting in different degrees all of the main positions in the radical development debate (1985: 776). The last twenty-five years have seen the rise and fall of underdevelopment theory, world systems theory, orthodox Marxism, modes of production theory, and the theory of the new international division of labour (dependency theory, which differs from underdevelopment theory, is further discussed in section four below). All of these have been characterised by sweeping over-generalisations, circular reasoning, and a tendency most visible in world systems theory to read off development in the periphery from the actions of core countries. For example, underdevelopment has been regarded as both the cause and consequence of a lack of self-sustaining industrial growth, and this theory implicitly posits an ideal model of capitalist development (ibid: 7623; see also Phillips 1977; Bernstein 1979; Barone 1984). On the other hand, the orthodox Marxism of Bill Warren proposes a unilinear and similarly ideal model of capitalist development, which ignores the great variety of forms that capitalism takes (Booth 1985: 7667). Lower level

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theories such as modes of production theory have failed to resolve these problems, because it is characterised by a functionalist methodology, which explains the preservation of non-capitalist modes of production in the periphery solely by the needs of the dominant capitalist mode (ibid: 7746). Theories which focus on the international economy, such as the new international division of labour (Frobel et al 1980), replicate these errors by explaining peripheral industrialisation largely by reference to the needs of transnational companies based in the core countries. Booths identification of an impasse, reinforced by the work of other writers (Corbridge 1986; Mouzelis 1988) is undoubtedly correct. What is less clear however, are the explanations for why the impasse has occurred, and the proposals that he and others have made for transcending it. The blame appears to lie at the door of Marxist theory, which has a metatheoretical commitment to demonstrating that what happens in societies in the era of capitalism is not only explicable, but in some stronger sense necessary (Booth 1985: 773). The way out of the impasse is for development geography and sociology to be freedfrom Marxisms ulterior interest in proving that within given limits the world has to be the way it is (ibid: 777). These arguments are reinforced by the equally impressive work of Stuart Corbridge, who argues that the impasse can best be transcended by a postMarxism which rejects the functionalism and determinism of Marxist theory (1990: 628). The rest of this paper will focus on the extent to which Booth et als conception of Marxism is an accurate one, and the related question of the utility of a post Marxist alternative in development studies. The next section considers the question of determinism in Marxist theory, and focuses on two strands of Marxist thought which can accurately be described as determinist orthodox and structuralist Marxism. Section three, on the other hand, argues that these determinist versions of Marxist theory, which have dominated development studies, are in fact largely incompatible with Marxs method.

2. ORTHODOX AND STRUCTURALIST MARXISM In this section, I examine two interpretations of Marxist theory, orthodox and structuralist Marxism. The focus is on these two approaches because the methods they adopt are indicative of a

76 Capital & Class G 55 great deal of radical development geography and sociology they are functionalist and/or determinist. I therefore agree with Booth, Corbridge and others that such approaches need to be rejected in development studies and social science more generally. However, it will become clear in section three that I believe that these schools of thought are largely caricatures of Marxs work, and indeed are guilty of the fetishism which Marx applied to other theories. Moreover, it may be the case that post-Marxism will replicate this very same fetishistic analysis. The characteristics of orthodox Marxism are well-known among so-called Marxologists. This version of Marxism has a stagist view of history, based on the view that the productive forces evolve, and new relations of production arise out of their functionality to developing the forces of production (Cohen 1978). Orthodox Marxism encompasses a wide field of Marxist theories, and although they may be said to represent specific social interests, the different views are all united in their emphasis on finding an agency which can best develop the forces of production. Such Marxists may disagree on who or what this agency is, but they all share a methodology which is based on the search for such an agency. For the Second International, the agency was capitalism; for the Bolsheviks and the Comintern it was the state (in the Soviet Union) or the anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie (in the colonies); for Warren and like-minded thinkers, it is imperialism. What each of these views share then, is an approach to history and development which seeks to replicate as closely as possible the English experience of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, which in turn will facilitate the development of the productive forces. The implications of this approach for development studies should be clear. Backward societies are at a pre-capitalist stage of development. The task for Marxists is to support the development of the productive forces in the periphery. Therefore, some Marxists (Warren 1980; Sender and Smith 1986) support the promotion of capitalist relations of production in the periphery because this facilitates the expansion of the forces of production. Such support is justified on the grounds that capitalism is far more progressive, and revolutionary, than any previous mode of production that has existed in history. As Marx (1967: 37) argued: Only the capitalist production of commodities revolutionises the entire economic structure of society in a manner eclipsing all previous epochs.

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It is a short step from this notion that capitalism represents progress in history to the view that capitalist penetration of precapitalist modes of production should be supported. It was on this basis that Marx and Engels supported the colonisation and annexation of the non-capitalist world by the capitalist powers. For example, Marx in his early writings (Marx and Engels 1974: 40) supported British colonialism in India, arguing that English interferenceproduced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia. The modernising influence of western capitalism was contrasted with backward India, which has no history at allWhat we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society (ibid: 81). This led Marx to argue that England has to fulfil a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia (ibid: 82). Engels similarly supported the United States annexation of parts of Mexico for similar reasons (see Larrain 1986: 86), and argued that the failure of democratic revolutions in Europe in 1848 could be attributed to the counterrevolutionary role of non-historic nations (see Lowy 1977: 13840). What lies at the heart of this approach is that capitalist relations of production can most effectively develop the productive forces, and therefore Marxists must support the replication of the English model, and its transition from feudalism to capitalism. According to orthodox Marxism, precapitalist relations of production may have functioned in history to develop the productive forces, but it is capitalist relations which most effectively develop the productive forces. It is at this point that the technological determinism of orthodox Marxism may actually break down, because there is a strong implication that it is capitalist relations of production which develop the forces of production, rather than vice versa. Nevertheless, orthodox Marxism interprets this development in a particular (and unilinear) way, so that capitalist relations are assessed on the continued orthodox basis of their functionality to developing the productive forces. Capitalism is therefore unique in that it leads to an unprecedented development of the forces of production. This is because the foundation of capitalism is the existence of specific

78 Capital & Class G 55 relations of production, whereby the exploited class (the proletariat) is deprived of direct access to the means of production, and so is forced to work for the owners of the means of production (the capitalist class) in order to live. The details of this process are examined in section three below. For the moment, it should be stressed that these relations of production in turn give rise to the generalisation of production for the market (commodity production). In other words, pre-capitalist societies were based firstly on production for use. Commodity production certainly existed, but it was secondary to production for direct use. In capitalist society, this is no longer the case and so goods are produced for a competitive market. This in turn has enormous implications for the development of the productive forces, because production is now geared to a market-place, and so this gives rise to competition between the owners of the means of production. Therefore, to stay ahead of competitors, each individual capitalist is compelled to invest in new technology, increase labour productivity and to search for new markets, otherwise they risk being left behind and going out of business. Writing in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels (1977: 224) argued that: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. It is for this reason that Marxists have often given their support to colonialism and imperialism. As stated above, the modernising forces of capitalism, and its tendency to develop the productive forces in an unprecedented way, was contrasted with the stagnation of pre-capitalist, stagnant, non-historic societies. According to this interpretation of Marxism, imperialism and colonialism may be exploitative, but they are also necessary. This of course is the thinking behind Bill Warrens (1973; 1980) defence of imperialism as the pioneer of capitalism. Imperialism is thus seen as the most effective mechanism for repeating the transition from the non-capitalist to capitalist mode of production.

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So, it should by now be clear that orthodox Marxism sees capitalism as a necessary stage of development in humanitys path towards a communist future. Capitalism develops the productive forces but in the process also creates a class which will eventually overthrow class society. For the first time in history (at least since primitive communism), the material basis exists for a classless society because capitalism eliminates scarcity, and thus the functional need for social classes. The class which fulfils this historic mission is the working class, which overthrows its exploiters, the bourgeoisie, and thus creates the subjective basis for communism. The structuralist Marxism associated with the work of Louis Althusser distanced itself from the stagism and economism of orthodox Marxism. This school of thought distinguished between social formation and mode of production the former referred to a combination of economic, political and ideological practices, or levels, while the latter referred only to the economic level. Structuralists argued that the mode of production, or the economic level, determined which of the other levels would be dominant in the structural totality which constituted the social formation. The economic level sets limits on the other levels, the latter of which carry out functions which necessarily reproduce the former. Therefore, the non-economic levels only had a relative autonomy from the (economic) mode of production (see Althusser and Balibar 1979: 17880, 319). According to structuralists, in the periphery, any social formation in the periphery may be constituted by more than one mode of production, and so therefore the effects of capitalism differed in time and place. It was not necessarily the case that capitalism would lead to an unprecedented promotion of the productive forces, because it may benefit from the preservation of non-capitalist modes of production (Laclau 1971; Bettelheim 1972; Taylor 1979: 10542). Thus according to Bradby (1975: 129) (c)apitalism has different needs of pre-capitalist economies at different stages of development, which arise from specific historical circumstances, e.g. raw materials, land, labour power, and at times of crisis, markets. So, to take two examples: peasant modes of production may be preserved because capital benefits from cheap produce from the peasant sector, or pays the peasant low wages when the latter works in the cash economy (Cliffe 1982); petty commodity modes of production serve the requirements of the capitalist mode by providing a reserve army of labour, and by providing cheap goods to workers in the

80 Capital & Class G 55 capitalist sector (Moser 1978). Similarly, the preservation of a domestic mode of production is regarded as a means to preserve high imperialist profits, through the exploitation of female labour. Thus, according to Meillassoux (1981: 95): It is by establishing organic relations between capitalist and domestic economies that imperialism set up the mechanism of reproducing cheap labour power to its profit a reproductive process which, at present, is the fundamental cause of underdevelopment at one end and of the wealth of the capitalist sector at the other. The great strength of this school of thought is its attempt to overcome the evolutionism of orthodox Marxism, and its attempt to specify the mechanisms of underdevelopment, which are so obviously lacking in the underdevelopment and dependency schools. However, it will become clear below that modes of production theory fails to accomplish these tasks, and replicates the errors of orthodox Marxism.

3. A MARXIST CRITIQUE OF ORTHODOX AND STRUCTURALIST MARXISM The orthodox approach to Marxism outlined above is now widely rejected in social science, although it still enjoys some influence in development studies (see for example Sender and Smith 1986). It has rightly been identified as an example of the worst kind of modernist hubris, in which the superior West 1 looks at the inferior Rest as a backward, stagnant and incomprehensible other (Said 1978: 1536; Hall 1992). More generally, and not unrelated to this point, it has also been argued that Marxism rests on a narrow account of social change, which is rooted in a technological approach to the study of history (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 778). It is therefore a short step from arguing for the primacy of the productive forces to arguing that the West, where these forces are most developed, is the model for the Rest to follow. The structuralist account on the other hand avoids the worst excesses of the stagist approach, but still shares some of the key weaknesses of orthodox Marxism. In this section I want to reject the orthodox and structuralist Marxist accounts outlined in section two. However, rather than

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propose a post-marxist alternative (Laclau and Mouffe 1985), I will argue that orthodox and structuralist Marxism are largely caricatures of, and indeed they fetishise, Marxs method. Although not ignoring Marxs critical views on colonialism, and his critique of a stagist approach to history (for more details, see Shanin 1984; Larrain 1989), I will focus my attention on the significance of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and why this is so important, but also so misunderstood, in Marxs work. It will be argued that orthodox Marxism and structuralist Marxism both fetishise Marxs account of the transition into a general law of history, through which all societies (including the contemporary Third World) must pass. However, in rejecting such a grand theory of history, I also reject the post-Marxist alternative, which is to deny the significance of the transition altogether. This will be done by dividing this section into two sub-sections. First, I will provide a critique of orthodox and structuralist Marxism, and second, I will examine and question the utility of a post-Marxist alternative. (i) Orthodox and structuralist Marxism: a critique In section two above I briefly outlined the reasons why capitalism has a tendency to develop the productive forces in an unprecedentedly rapid fashion. I now want to explain this tendency in more detail, by examining the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England. After outlining this process, I will assess both the orthodox and structuralist accounts of the significance of this process. The key to understanding the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism is the class struggle between lord and peasant. This took the form of lords striving to increase the surplus from peasants, so that they could improve their position as rulers. On the other hand, peasants resisted this process, either through trying to enforce a reduction in rent, increasing the productivity of the land, or by enlarging the land-holding without a corresponding increase in rent (Hilton 1976: 116). It was on this basis that surplus production under feudalism increased, which in turn led to an increase in commodity production, and even international trade. The result was an increase in the significance of the market, which further hastened the differentiation of the peasantry. This differentiation led to the slow development of a small class of capitalist farmers, which employed a steadily growing class of wage labourers, who were displaced from the land by these same developments.

82 Capital & Class G 55 However, despite peasant resistance, in England the landlords maintained control of the land. This victory for the landlord class paradoxically led to an intensification of the processes described above. From as early as the sixteenth century, small landowners began to gradually disappear, as landlords, using their political power, enclosed demesnes and vacant peasant plots (Hobsbawm 1968: 80). This process was intensified from the eighteenth century, when the law itself now becomes the instrument by which the peoples land is stolen (Marx 1976: 885; see also Thompson 1963: 23743).This development had the effect of increasing the number of landless labourers, and therefore increasing the labour supply available to capitalist tenant farmers. In the long run, this meant that peasants were proletarianised, and, by one and the same act, commodity production was generalised, which gave rise to the competitive accumulation of capital. So, for Marx (1976: 874), the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the so-called primitive accumulation of capital, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. This does not preclude colonial plunder as a factor which contributes to capital accumulation, as Marx made clear (see 1976: 925; Marx and Engels 1974: 340; Larrain 1989: 49), but this process of surplus extraction on its own cannot facilitate a transformation to capitalism (see Brenners still unsurpassed 1977). It is the emergence of the capital-labour relation which is the key to the emergence of capitalism, and it is ultimately this relation which leads to important changes in the development of the productive forces. As Brenner (1986: 42) argues, it is the capitalist property relations per se which account for the distinctive productiveness of modern economies not any particular advance in the productive forces and this is because capitalist property relations impose the requirement to specialise, accumulate, and innovate or go out of business. This contrasts with non-capitalist modes where there may be some development of the productive forces, but there is not the same tendency to continuous revolutionising of the means of production. Again Brenner (1986: 28) makes this clear: in allowing both exploiters and producers direct access to their means of reproduction, pre-capitalist property forms (as patriarchal forms) freed both exploiters and producers from the necessity to buy on the market what they needed to reproduce, thus of the necessity to produce for exchange, thus of the

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necessity to sell competitively on the market their output, and thus of the necessity to produce at the socially necessary rate... It should already be clear that, contrary to the claims of orthodox Marxism, the relations of production cannot be analysed solely on the basis of their functionality to the development of the forces of production. I return to the implications of this point in a moment, but first I should comment again on how orthodox Marxism relates to this transition process. Whilst orthodox Marxists may accept the account of the transition outlined above (even though it undermines the thesis of the primacy of the productive forces), the implications of this process in England are mapped on to an analysis of the transition elsewhere. Because capitalist relations in agriculture promoted the development of the productive forces in England, Marxists should support the promotion of capitalist relations in agriculture elsewhere. Marxs account of the genesis of capitalism (1976: chs.2432) in English agriculture is therefore imposed on other countries. In other words, in this case orthodox Marxism asserts the primacy of the productive forces through the back door. This in turn leads to a stagist theory of history (because all countries must pass through the capitalist stage) and an apology for colonialism and imperialism (because they break up pre-capitalist modes of production). For contemporary accounts along these lines, see Warren 1980, and Sender and Smith 1986. There is considerable support for these views in Marxs writings, as well as in the writings of classical Marxists. In the Preface to the first edition of Capital, Marx (1976: 91) clearly spelt out a stagist view of history when he wrote that (t)he country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future. However, Marx was also extremely critical of a unilinear account of the historical process. Indeed, in his statements on the transition from feudalism to capitalism he was most explicit on this point. In his famous (but still neglected) letters to the Russian Marxist, Vera Zasulich, Marx stated that his account of the evolution of capitalism was expressly restricted to the countries of Western Europe (Marx 1984: 124). Marx also criticised those Marxists who insist on transforming my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in western Europe into a historico-philosophic theory (Marx 1982: 109110). Textual evidence therefore suggests that Marx was clear that his account of the transition from feudalism to capitalism was not

84 Capital & Class G 55 intended as a general theory of development, but as a theoretically informed historical analysis of the process in England. Analysis of the transition process in England is of such great significance because it demonstrates that capitalism, rather than being the natural state of things, is actually a product of social struggles rooted in English history. As Marx (1976: 273, my emphasis) argues: nature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production. Two comments can be made about Marxs argument here. The first point is that there is no good reason to expect anything else other than variety. The quotation above makes it clear that Marx was arguing that transitions are not products of a uniform process, but are bound up with certain historically specific patterns of the development of the contending agrarian classes and their relative strength in the different European societies: their relative levels of internal solidarity, their self-consciousness and organisation, and their general political resources (Brenner 1986: 36). This means that no particular transition can be taken as a model for another, because each transition has its own particular history of struggle. Orthodox Marxism, on the other hand, abstracts from these historically specific social struggles, and so presents a fixed model for all societies, irrespective of time and place. In the process, transitions are no longer seen as social forms, but instead become natural models. Thus Cohen (1978) argues that new relations of production will emerge on the basis of their functionality to the productive forces. But this again fetishises the transition, conflating its historical emergence as a social form with its necessity to develop the forces of production. As Meiksins Wood (1984: 104) argues, (w)hen Marx speaks of the historical task of capitalism, he is not identifying the causes or explaining the processes that gave rise to capitalism; he is making a statement about the effects of capitalist development The emergence of capitalism rested on the emergence of a specific

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class relation, which may, or may not, emerge elsewhere. This will depend on the particular balance of class forces, and this cannot be determined a priori, but can only be examined on an empirical basis. Hence my second, closely related point concerning Marxs statement above: since Marxs day, he has been proved right, and the transition to capitalist relations in agriculture has taken different forms in different places. Indeed, in some advanced capitalist countries such as the USA and France (until 1945, or even later), the capital-labour relation is the exception rather than the norm in agriculture. This observation is even more true in the so-called Third World, including in the most successful newly industrialising countries in east Asia (for a very useful survey of agrarian transitions, see Byres 1991). Orthodox Marxism, on the other hand, transforms Marxs account of the transition from a historical process into an ahistorical model, and so cannot account for the great variety of social relations in agriculture. It is at this point that one can begin to understand the commonalities between orthodox and structuralist Marxism. The latter rejects the formers evolutionary approach, but it can only offer in its place a theoretical analysis divorced from real history. Althusser (with Balibar 1979: 105) made this clear when he wrote that we must once again purify our concept of the theory of history, and purify it radically, of any contamination by the obviousness of empirical history, since we know that this empirical history is merely the bare face of the empiricist ideology of history. Althussers former British followers similarly argued that (c)oncepts are formed and have their existence within knowledge (Hindess and Hirst 1975: 1). For structuralist Marxism, the concept which is given determining status is the mode of production, which is defined as an articulated combination of relations and forces of production structured by the dominance of the relations of production (ibid: 7). Theories and concepts therefore become a priori constructs, which are derived from theoretical practice, and are completely divorced from the empirical (and especially historical) world (Althusser and Balibar 1979: 316). The result of such a methodology one that is so common in theories of development and underdevelopment is that human beings are reduced to being the passive bearers of structures, and the empirical world is reduced to a theoretical

86 Capital & Class G 55 model. This in turn leads to the assumption that capitalism can automatically secure its own reproductive requirements. The result is that, insofar as there is variety within global capitalism, this is assumed to be the exclusive product of an all-pervasive capitalist mode. Structuralist Marxism correctly points out that capitalism takes a great many different forms in different parts of the world, and that it draws on unfree forms of labour control such as peasant production and slavery, as well as free wage labour, but it assumes (rather than explains) that this is the case because capitalism needs these non-capitalist forms. Moreover, such circular reasoning begs the question of why non-capitalist modes broke down in any society Corbridge (1986: 63) has pointed out this basic problem: If the PCMP (pre-capitalist mode of production) survives (as in the Bantustans) then that is evidence of its functionality for capitalism; and if it does notthen that too is evidence of capitalisms functional requirements. (see also Booth 1985: 7746) The unilinear account of history propounded by orthodox Marxism is thereby replaced by a unilinear account of capitalism by structuralist Marxism. Human beings are the passive bearers of structures in both accounts either to the historical development of the productive forces (orthodox Marxism), or to the omnipotent logic of capitalism (structuralist Marxism). Both accounts therefore conflate real history with grand theoretical models. As Corbridge (ibid: 67) argues: there is nothing in the concept of capitalism itself which should lead us to expect that it must have X, Y or Z development (or underdevelopment) effects. Such contingencies are not forged at this macro-theoretical scale. The reproduction of capitalist relations of production clearly presupposes the existence of definite conditions of existence (private property relations, for example, and free wage labour), but it tells us nothing about whether they will be secured, or about the all-important forms in which they are made flesh. However, contrary to the implications of both the structuralists and post Marxists, Marx (1989: 48, second emphasis is mine) was himself equally clear on this point:

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To present the laws of the bourgeois economy, it is not necessary to write the real history of the production relations. But the correct analysis and deduction of these relations as relations which have themselves arisen historically, always leads to primary equationswhich point to a past lying behind this system. These indications, together with the correct grasp of the present, then also offer the key to the understanding of the past a work in its own right It is at this point that we can begin to see how both orthodox and structuralist Marxism actually fetishise key categories of Marxs thought. According to Marx (1976: 165), in capitalist society the relationship between human beings assumesthe fantastic form of a relation between things. This is the basis for his analysis of commodity fetishism, in which the products of social activity take the form of appearance of being natural phenomena. Therefore, fetishism can be defined as the conflation of the material and formal or natural and social (Sayer 1987: 40). This can be seen most clearly in the case of money, which plays a key social role in any economy where exchange exists, but actually appears as a natural phenomenon. As Marx argues (cited in Sayer 1987: 41), fetishism is a process whereby a social relation, a definite relation between individuals, appears as a metal, a stone, as a purely physical, external thing. This naturalisation of the social also entails a second fetishism, which is the universalisation of the historical. If one naturalises social phenomena then one automatically strips them of any meaningful historical content. The consequence of such fetishism is that capitalist relations of production are both naturalised and dehistoricised. So, to return to the example above, the transition from feudalism to capitalism loses its historical and social significance, and is therefore seen as an ahistorical and asocial model. This in turn leads to a peculiarly narrow definition of class, which is reduced to a purely economic and technical concept, confined to the immediate process of production, and, as a consequence, to the assumption that capitalist rationality is eternal (Colletti 1972: 65). The result is that capitalism is assumed in order to explain the onset of modern economic growth, while precapitalist property relations somehow magically disappear. (Brenner 1986: 36; see also Clarke 1980; Duquette 1992). This fetishises the capitalist mode of production because it becomes a natural, universal phenomenon, rather than a historical and social

88 Capital & Class G 55 one. The alternative scenario within orthodox Marxist thought, discussed above, is to accept the importance of capitalist relations of production for the development of the productive forces, but to then posit the English case as a model for the developing world. But this account also fetishises the capitalist mode of production, because relations of production are measured solely on the basis of their utility in developing the forces of production, and in isolation from the real, concrete social struggles to be found in different places at different times (Larrain 1986: 81). Structuralist Marxism, by assuming the omnipotence of capitalism and the passivity of human beings in the face of this power, similarly denies the historical and social significance of the transition process. Thus, in rejecting these Marxisms and focusing on economic development as the outcome of historically specific class struggles, one is simultaneously rejecting the idea that these outcomes can simply be mapped on to other societies. Therefore, there must be a considerable amount of indeterminacy (Brenner 1986: 36), or uncertainty, in any convincing marxist account. Marx himself made this clear in his late writings, as I have already showed. Historical materialism is therefore best characterised as a middle range theory, and not as a theory of history in general (orthodox Marxism), or a theory of capitalism in general (structuralist Marxism). What this means, contrary to the interpretation of Marxs leading critics (see Popper 1986; Foucault 1980), is that marxism does not propose a philosophy or transcendental account of the necessary course of history but is concerned with history in the sense that it constructs the concepts necessary to render historical processes intelligible (Larrain 1986: 98). Capital should not therefore be seen as an a priori theoretical work, based on a general theory of transition, but as an account of capitalism as a social phenomenon, and how certain forms in particular, the commodity appear as natural, but are in fact the product of historically constructed social relations (see Williams 1978). One must therefore distinguish between the historical and social methodology used in Capital (which may be useful in understanding other societies), and the assumption that Marxs work is an account of how every society develops, irrespective of time and place. (ii) Back to the impasse: a post-Marxist alternative? 2 My discussion so far suggests that Marxism is in fact far more flexible and open ended than critics such as Booth and Corbridge suggest. While they rightly condemn the structuralism of radical

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development studies, the danger is that their proposed alternative may lead to the replacement of an abstract theoreticism with a simple empiricism. This is most apparent in Corbridges recommendation (1986: 66-7; 1990: 6289) that development studies begin to utilise the post-Marxist work of Hindess and Hirst and their collaborators (Hindess and Hirst 1977; Cutler et al 1977, 1978). The problem with the work of Hindess and Hirst is that social scientists are only presented with two choices either general determinism, or absolute autonomy from this determinism. Such an either/or, black and white approach pervades their work; for instance, Hindess (1978: 96-7) has argued that (t)he choice for Marxism is clear. Either we effectively reduce political and ideological phenomena to class interests determined elsewhere (basically in the economy)Or we must face up to the real autonomy of political and ideological phenomena. Similarly, in more recent work, Hindess (1987: 101) has argued that (w)hen we examine the forces engaged in particular struggles, we do not find classes in the literal sense, lined up against each other. Instead we find political parties and fractions within them. (see also Cutler et al 1977: 226) This approach throws out the baby with the bathwater in correctly moving away from a theoreticism divorced from the empirical and historical world, we are left with an empiricism which takes for granted, and therefore equally fetishises and dehistoricises, historically constructed social forms. In the above quotations, Hindess proposes that there is a separate, autonomous political sphere divorced from economic or ideological levels, but fails to see that these levels are forms of appearance of capitalist social relations. So, to return to the example I have used in this article because the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England is not a model for other societies to follow, it follows (for the post Marxists) that the historical significance of this transition must be denied. In other words, the fetishism of theory divorced from history (structuralism) is replaced by the fetishism of facts divorced from historically informed theory (post-Marxism). Larrain (1989: 199) makes this point in his discussion of David Booths work: He (Booth) seems to be unaware of the existence of any Marxism other than the orthodoxy defended in different but convergent ways by Warren, Althusser and Cohen. He first reduces Marxism to a deterministic economism and then, having constructed the straw man, he proceeds to destroy it.

90 Capital & Class G 55 Structuralist Marxism, and the post-Marxist alternative, therefore repeat each others errors, and this is because of their common starting-point. Both approaches segment society into discrete, separate levels: structuralism argues that one level the economic determines the others, the political or ideological, whilst post Marxism argues that one level has absolute autonomy from another. Separate economic and political levels, or instances, are in fact forms of appearance of capitalist social relations, which did not exist in feudal society. By separating social phenomena into compartmentalised units, both approaches automatically take things as they are, and so reproduce the phenomenal forms of capitalist social relations. This is hardly surprising given that both approaches misinterpret the significance of the transition process, and therefore the uniqueness of capitalism. Such a methodology is radically different from that of Marx and Engels (1982: 42), who argued that: The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can be verified in a purely empirical way. It does not necessarily follow that the post-Marxists in development studies will automatically follow an empiricist route indeed, it is doubtful that we can yet talk of a post-Marxist theory of development. Nevertheless, there are strong grounds for suggesting that they have not proposed a convincing account of the relationship between theory/practice and structure/agency. For example, Booth has rightly criticised grand theories of development and underdevelopment, but also has a rather idiosyncratic view of the alternatives. In his critique of Brenners justly famous essay The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo Smithian Marxism, Booth (1985: 770) complains that it does not give us what many people have looked for in the mode of production literature, namely, a genuine third position in the debate over colonial and contemporary development in the Third World. But this is precisely one of the great strengths of Brenners work it is not a search for a new position, forged at

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the level of a grand theory, because such a theory will automatically subsume practice to theory and agency to structure. Booth (ibid: 770) again displays his ambiguity over theory when he assumes that Brenner shares Warrens optimism concerning the prospects of capitalist development in the periphery. However, the whole thrust of Brenners article is to challenge the developmental logic which assumes that the effects of capitalism can be considered purely at the level of theory, and independently of the action of human beings. In other words, Brenners article reconstitutes the unity of structure and agency which structuralism and post-Marxism continue to separate (see also Gulalp 1986). The work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 1689) also suffers from similar weaknesses. At the heart of their work is a rejection of Marxism or a crude caricature which more or less corresponds to the orthodoxy outlined and criticised above as an essentialist doctrine which gives a privileged position to the working class as the agent of social change (ibid: 845). They argue that Marxism is an essentialist doctrine because it attempts to determine a priori agents of change, levels of effectiveness in the field of the social and privileged points and moments of rupture (ibid: 1789). However, without wishing to argue that all forms of oppression are reducible to class, it is the case that class and class struggle remain indispensable categories for an understanding of the modern world. In their headlong rush to reject all forms of essentialism, Laclau and Mouffe on the other hand are in danger of rejecting the utility of class analysis altogether, and of therefore providing us with pure description, rather than explanation. As Mouzelis (1988b: 115) argues, what they (Laclau and Mouffe) do not seriously consider, is the possibility of assessing the centrality of certain positions within a social formation without resorting to essentialism and without ascribing ontological and epistemological privileges to certain subjects. In their rejection of essentialism, Laclau and Mouffe can only offer us analysis based on the belief that everything is contingent, with the result that description substitutes for explanation and therefore social reality becomes fetishised. For example, while they correctly point to the fragmentation and the transience of the modern world (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 153), what is not clear in their work is how this state of affairs has come about. A nondogmatic Marxist approach on the other hand, shows how the

92 Capital & Class G 55 uncertainty and transience of modernity is rooted in capitals search for profit, which in turn is closely linked to the class struggle between capital and labour (Harvey 1989: 102-4). Therefore, in emphasising plurality and heterogeneity, exploitation tends to be neglected (Chilcote 1990: 6-7; Meiksins and Meiksins Wood 1985: 154). An over-emphasis on the politics of difference, without an analysis of class based exploitation and struggle against this form of power in other words, a recapturing of the politics of similarity (Harvey 1993: 114; see also Kiely 1995) leads to a fetishised analysis which takes things as they are. Once again, given that there is little emphasis on the historical development of social forms, such neglect is hardly surprising. Meiksins Woods (1990: 789) critique of post-Marxism is especially eloquent: The final irony is that this latest denial of capitalisms systemic and totalizing logic is in some respects a reflection of the very thing which it seeks to deny. The current preoccupation with postmodern diversity and fragmentation undoubtedly expresses a reality in contemporary capitalism, but it is a reality seen through the distorting lens of ideology. It represents the ultimate commodity fetishism, the triumph of consumer society, in which the diversity of life-styles, measured in the sheer quantity of commodities and varied patterns of consumption, disguises the underlying systemic unity, the imperatives which create that diversity itself while at the same time imposing a deeper and more global uniformity. None of these negative comments are intended to protect Marxism from important challenges to its central concerns. A renewed focus on democracy, civil society, new social movements, discourse analysis and ethics are all important, as I have argued elsewhere (Kiely, forthcoming). However, what is disturbing about current post-Marxist approaches is their tendency to examine these factors in an uncritical and ahistorical way, and to fail to go beyond the fragments of alienated forms of social power. While it may be the case that the variety of forms of oppression in society are not reducible to social class, it is also the case that class and class struggle remain indispensable categories for understanding the historical development of different societies. Such neglect remains the central weakness of most post-Marxist approaches (a significant exception is the work of Nicos Mouzelis, see his 1986; 1990).

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So, to return to the main focus of this article: in divorcing the theoretical and empirical world, post-Marxism repeats the errors of structuralist and orthodox Marxism, and so similarly naturalises social forms. The result is that the capitalist mode of production is eternalised, and the historical significance of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is denied.

4. Transcending the Impasse: Class Struggles and Suggestive Contrasts It should by now be clear from my discussion that the impasse can be transcended by the use of a Marxist methodology which stresses the open-ended nature of development (Cammack 1988). Development must be seen as an uncertain process, precisely because the actions of human beings are so uncertain. However, this does not mean that we simply celebrate contingency, and lose sight of the long term processes that have created a highly unequal world. On the other hand, neither should we return to the impasse and simply assume that the interests of the powerful are all-pervasive and automatically secured. Instead, development studies can best transcend its impasse by closer attention to history, a comparative analysis and the variety of development processes in the global order. This is not to lose sight of the structures of global inequalities and power relations, but neither is it to reify these (the mistake of structuralism) as somehow beyond the control of human agency. In particular, development studies needs more comparative analyses of class formation within specific localities the different transitions alluded to above and to examine how these processes impact on, and are themselves influenced by global capital. This should be contrasted with the errors of world systems and underdevelopment theory, which have adopted a kind of global functionalism just as structuralist Marxism utilised a form of local functionalism whereby westerndominated capital was assumed to automatically secure its interests in the global order, and so reduced exploited classes to the status of passive victims. Such an analysis confuses unequal power relations in the global order an irrefutable fact with the belief that imperialism always wins the day. The latter view is far too pessimistic, as it neglects the struggles that have gone on throughout the periphery, and it is Eurocentric because

94 Capital & Class G 55 it homogenises a very diverse set of countries that are still rather clumsily described as the Third World. This is not to deny that there are tendencies operating in the global order which lead to competitive disadvantage for some countries. As well as obvious factors such as military power and dominance of international institutions, the West enjoys the competitive advantages of early capitalist development, which itself is a product of the class struggles that have taken place in those countries. These advantages include the utilisation of mass production techniques (labour specialisation, machinery, knowledge), substantial infrastructural facilities, and the organisation of Research and Development facilities (Kiely 1994). These factors ensure that the rate of extraction of relative surplus value in the First World is more than enough to counteract the rate of extraction of absolute surplus value in the Third World. Therefore, it is not surprising that most capital tends to be attracted to existing areas of capital accumulation in other words, it tends to concentrate in existing localities. It is in this sense that the Third World can be said to be in a subordinate, or dependent, position in the global order. However, these global tendencies are not absolute, as underdevelopment theory would have it, and they impinge on particular localities in very different ways. Hence the need for an analysis which accounts for differentiation (the post-Marxist strength but underdevelopment theorys weakness), but that does not lose sight of global power relations (underdevelopment theorys strength but post-Marxisms weakness). How particular countries deal with the problem of competitive disadvantage will vary in time and space, and will ultimately be determined by the class struggles and state forms that exist in particular countries. Such a methodology can for example be used to explain the rise of the newly industrialising countries in east Asia, where developmental states protected domestic industry from unequal competition in the national market and agriculture provided industry with a surplus for industrial capitalism. These factors were however only made viable because of the class struggles of the late 1940s and early 1950s which paved the way for land reform and a peculiarly developmental state, and favourable conditions in the world economy for industrial exporters (Kiely 1994). These observations do not however mean that east Asia is a model for others to follow precisely because the outcome of class struggles varies in time and place, and the conditions in the

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world economy for industrial exporters are now far less favourable than they were in the 1950s and 60s (Hamilton 1987). It is of course debatable whether this is actually a new methodology for development studies at all. What is interesting in the work of those writers that have identified an impasse is how little attention they have paid to the historical writing of many Marxists one thinks of Marx and Engels on Germany, Lenin and Trotsky on Russia and Gramsci on Italy (see Cammack 1988). What is particularly impressive about these works is their attempt to concretise uneven development, not on the basis of an a priori logic of capital, but on the basis of the actions of human beings. Perhaps an even more serious omission (with the exception of Corbridge 1986), is the almost complete neglect by Booth and others of the work of Latin American dependency writers, who have all too often been lumped together with the crude underdevelopment theories of Andre Gunder Frank (a notable exception is Slater 1990). The work of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1979; 1987; see also Kay 1990) constitutes the most impressive attempt to formulate the specific forms of capitalist development in various Latin American countries. For Cardoso, the key factor in explaining uneven development in the region is not the needs of global capitalism, but the conflicts between different classes and social movements within particular nation-states (Cardoso and Faletto 1979: xvii). In particular, the slow penetration of capitalism into the countryside was a result of the continued strength of non-capitalist landowners who were largely successful in maintaining the hacienda system. Therefore, absolute surplus value tended to be extracted and so development of the productive forces was slow (ibid.). Although there are problems with the specificities of Cardosos arguments, and in particular his excessive focus on dominant rather than exploited classes (Roxborough 1987; OBrien 1987), his basic methodology is sound. Post-impasse development studies therefore must recognise that (i)nstead of accepting the existence of a determined course in history, there (should be) a return to conceiving it as an open-ended process. Thus, if structures delimit the range of oscillation, the actions of humans, as well as their imagination, revive and transfigure these structures and may even replace them with others that are not predetermined (Cardoso 1987: 13). These examples show that attention to specific historical processes, and how these are linked to developments within the international political economy, is the most effective way for

96 Capital & Class G 55 development studies to transcend its impasse. In doing so, attention to class and class struggle remains vital to an understanding of capitalism and the specific forms that it takes in different places. It is in this respect that an examination of the transitions (rather than singular transition) to capitalism remains a very fruitful methodology for the concrete analysis of different forms of capitalism in the world today. Writing the real history of the production relations does not entail, as structuralist and post-Marxists claim, reducing history to class or to economics. Such an approach conflates Marxs method of abstraction with concrete, divergent historical processes (Sayer 1987). In writing such real histories, attention must be paid to how concrete social actors both interpret the world, and so thereby actively construct class, gender, ethnicity, nation, caste, and so on, but also to how these actions are themselves a product of historically constructed social inequalities (Harriss 1994: 192). Such an approach explains the diversity of differing experiences of concrete development, but does not lose sight of the relations of power which exist within the global system (and localities within that system). As Buttel and McMichael (1994: 56) contend, there is ample evidence that the divergent paths taken by various Third World formations have their origins in recursive interactions of both national phenomena and dynamics (class and state structures, resource endowments, and so on) and global dynamics (world economy, geopolitics, international regimes), in which national responses are shaped by, and reshape, the global whole. 3

CONCLUSION: MARXISM AND THE IMPASSE IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES There is undoubtedly an impasse in development studies. At its root is the persistence of theories which are based on a priori conceptualisations which are too easily divorced from the empirical world. Post-Marxists have laid the blame for these problems firmly at the door of Marxism, and called for a new, post Marxist alternative. In this paper, I have accepted the contention that radical development studies is too often dominated by a Marxism which is theoreticist, structuralist and too dogmatic. However, I have argued that these versions of Marxism, in emphasising structure over struggle, and theoretical models over historical practice, actually fetishise in Marxs sense social reality. This

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in turn leads to the danger that post-Marxism will repeat this dualism between theoretical and empirical practice, and will emphasise the latter at the expense of the former. The impasse is therefore best transcended by a nonstructuralist, historical sociology which is informed by some of the key insights of Marxs materialist and historical method, but which is also sensitive to the open-ended, and therefore never completely determined, process that we describe as history. Engels (cited in Thompson 1965: 275) once complained that the materialist conception of historyhas a lot of friends nowadays to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying historyOur conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelians. If the word history is replaced by the word development, then we have no better description of the reasons for the impasse, and the most effective way of transcending it.
______________________________ 1. The terms West and Eurocentric are of course problematic ones, which need to be deconstructed as much as the term the Rest. It should be clear from the arguments of this paper, that the terms are not used in a sense that homogenises particular regions in the world today. The terms are used in a descriptive rather than conceptual sense, to refer to the view common, both in the social sciences and more generally, that the advanced capitalist societies constitute a model for the rest of the world. 2. The term post-Marxist is a problematic one, especially as there is not yet a recognisable post-Marxist theory, or theories, of development. Nevertheless, I use the term in the text to refer to those writers (Booth, Corbridge et al) that have identified an impasse in development studies, and have called for a break from at least some parts of Marxs methodology. I do not wish to become bogged down in a debate about semantics, and the utility or otherwise of the term post. I largely share the view that development studies has reached an impasse, and remain impressed with the work of these writers. My specific disagreements with post-Marxists are discussed in the text. My broad disagreements are over their presentation of Marxist methodology, and their related approval of other postMarxists, discussed in the text. 3. Such a position constitutes a challenge to Third Worldist conceptions of politics. Such notions, revitalised by some versions of post-modernism, rest on the idea of a homogenous North exploiting a homogenous South. These (Eurocentric) fallacies and their political implications are challenged by Corbridge (1994) and Kiely (1995).

Notes

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