Revolution and the British State
- Thread starter articul8
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I haven't read Perry Anderson on this, but surely that can't be right. Doesn't the repeal of the corn laws disprove the above thesis?
Even if the landowners have somehow shaped the UK state in a peculiar way, how does this manifest itself? What features of the state are peculiarly sympathetic to landowners in such a way that they are peculiarly unsympathetic to industrial capitalists?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Not really, no. His point was not that there a powerful bourgeosie didn't finally (belatedly) emerge in the 19thC, but that the institutions of very state which were forged largely through the powers of the interests of agrarian capitalist landowmers (and gave them special protection, incredibly, right upto 1846!) have proved remarkably durable and accommodating.
On the effects of this - where do I start? I'd suggest reading Anderson's long essay "Figures of Descent" from NLR. Very quickly a state which has long privileged the short-term profiteering of the rentier class and imperialist expanison - the City-Treasury nexus - failing to secure the long term investment necessary for boosting manufacturing productivty. Also in producing a working class that has overwhelmingly accepted that its politics need to adapt to the authority of the State and assert its interests within the existing order.
Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
The limits of demand
I think similar factors are present in different industries. Cars, consumer goods, electronics, textiles.....
You can invest all you like in "boosting manufacturing productivity" but eventually you come up against this problem.
A similar problem applies to globalisation. Western markets saturate, but sales are limited in the Far East for example, because although there are a lot of potential customers, wages and disposable incomes are low. One way of stimulating demand is through creating fashion cycles, and waves of new products like mobile phones, games consoles etc etc, but this is lubricated by credit. And we can all see where that has got us.
There are limits to this expansion though because a law of diminishing returns applies to production. You can invest in new machinery which reduces the numbers of workers employed (like the example of motor cars being produced by robots) so the wage bills go down, and you can produce more and more cars. (better access to raw materials, ruthlessly efficient manufacturing machinery and processes?) But how can you sell them? The overseas markets are saturated because the other car manufacturers in other countries are in the same game. UK markets are likewise saturated, and more to the point, the number of potential customers is reduced because the number of people employed has dropped. Robots don't buy cars.
I think similar factors are present in different industries. Cars, consumer goods, electronics, textiles.....
You can invest all you like in "boosting manufacturing productivity" but eventually you come up against this problem.
A similar problem applies to globalisation. Western markets saturate, but sales are limited in the Far East for example, because although there are a lot of potential customers, wages and disposable incomes are low. One way of stimulating demand is through creating fashion cycles, and waves of new products like mobile phones, games consoles etc etc, but this is lubricated by credit. And we can all see where that has got us.
Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
The dialectic of the Cartel
Neither of these two pictures are entirely accurate. Somewhere in the middle of these is an institutional view, where the financial institutions are something like the impersonal forces, and something like the controlling clique. Individual bankers may, on occasion jump out of the window, but the bank as an institution always continues. Like in the casino where The House Always Wins
The question I would ask here is where is the wider abstraction, the idea for example, of the Banker or Financier as a class? Because we really only have the morass of individual choices (like to buy the games console on the credit card, or to buy the house at the greatly inflated price) which collectively add up to this crisis. The individual choices could be different, people are not forced into these decisions.
I remember shortly after the previous housing slump, the 1990s "Negative Equity" crisis, and I went to London. The Evening Standard had a headline "Housing Prices set to Double". Here we go again, I thought, they have learned nothing...
There is an idea about the impersonal forces of capitalism dragging people everywhere into its maw, and to some extent this is counterbalanced by a perception of the Bullingdon Club city types as a sort of clique or "conspiracy" manipulating and controlling stuff.
Neither of these two pictures are entirely accurate. Somewhere in the middle of these is an institutional view, where the financial institutions are something like the impersonal forces, and something like the controlling clique. Individual bankers may, on occasion jump out of the window, but the bank as an institution always continues. Like in the casino where The House Always Wins
The question I would ask here is where is the wider abstraction, the idea for example, of the Banker or Financier as a class? Because we really only have the morass of individual choices (like to buy the games console on the credit card, or to buy the house at the greatly inflated price) which collectively add up to this crisis. The individual choices could be different, people are not forced into these decisions.
I remember shortly after the previous housing slump, the 1990s "Negative Equity" crisis, and I went to London. The Evening Standard had a headline "Housing Prices set to Double". Here we go again, I thought, they have learned nothing...
Not at the micro-level, but at the macro-level decisions are made for people by capital. Investing a certain amount of money in advertizing in a certain context will result in a predictable sales pattern and so forth. The point to remember is that capital has needs and interests which are separable from those of its owners. Thus it does not matter for example whether the head of the World Bank is Steigliz or Wolfowitz etc.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
no that's just nominalism. Individual decisions can demonstrate a certain stuctural affinity with each other, and share motivating factors. Otherwise, you're with Thatcher and "no such thing as society"
BORING
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
I can see your point - but then, whay do you think it came about that the UK saw the development of the power of capital at the time aricul8 is talking about?
Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
More passionate metaphors
With respect, the original poster, who used the analogy of capitalism as a corpse and the gravedigger, this is an honest attempt to try to explain things, but it is a common metaphor. The point is that today we are in a slightly different situation from the run of the mill capitalism day to day. OK there have been recessions and slumps before, they are implicit to capitalism, but perhaps this one will have some different features which make it interesting.
With respect to everyone here, I think there is a need for something a bit more passionate in your explanations. If we use the same metaphors then our thoughts may tend to flow along similar tracks as previously, when what we want, is something different. Some people made the same point by asking if this was an essay question.
How do you explain something like Capitalism? Abstract theories, straight descriptions of what is happening? You could explain it in terms of patterns, processes, networks of mechanisms, linear processes, loops, chains of causality, forces of attraction and repulsion, statistics. (this is not an exhaustive list) Some people use metaphors and analogies.
If you didn't like the previous one, try this:
The autumn bonfire analogy
After the summer, a huge pile of hedge trimmings, brambles, old newspapers, Radio Times magazines, Littlewoods catalogues, cornflakes packets, soap boxes, etc etc are put into a heap and burned. This autumn's bonfire is a normal part of the lifecycle of the garden....
Well, OK then, if these analogies are no use to you, please can you tell us how you see this?
With respect, the original poster, who used the analogy of capitalism as a corpse and the gravedigger, this is an honest attempt to try to explain things, but it is a common metaphor. The point is that today we are in a slightly different situation from the run of the mill capitalism day to day. OK there have been recessions and slumps before, they are implicit to capitalism, but perhaps this one will have some different features which make it interesting.
With respect to everyone here, I think there is a need for something a bit more passionate in your explanations. If we use the same metaphors then our thoughts may tend to flow along similar tracks as previously, when what we want, is something different. Some people made the same point by asking if this was an essay question.
How do you explain something like Capitalism? Abstract theories, straight descriptions of what is happening? You could explain it in terms of patterns, processes, networks of mechanisms, linear processes, loops, chains of causality, forces of attraction and repulsion, statistics. (this is not an exhaustive list) Some people use metaphors and analogies.
If you didn't like the previous one, try this:
The autumn bonfire analogy
After the summer, a huge pile of hedge trimmings, brambles, old newspapers, Radio Times magazines, Littlewoods catalogues, cornflakes packets, soap boxes, etc etc are put into a heap and burned. This autumn's bonfire is a normal part of the lifecycle of the garden....
Because England was the largest Protestant nation when the European economy became monetarized.
Something different eh? Alright, I say that capitalism is the work of Satan. How so? Well the concept of "Satan" develops in the C16th and C17th as a criticism of performative signs--signs that have objective effects. The witch hunts of the period are a visceral reponse to the rise to power of such signs. They ceased because Satanic magic conquered the world, by means of the performative sign known as "money." Any useful critique of postmodern capitalism will have to re-learn this theological dialect in order to be effective.
STUPID
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
again you just keep on begging the question by. At least the schematic marxists attempt to answer these questions.
Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
Sense and Sensibilia
I am not so sure how far the bit about "performative signs" gets you. Part of the problem is that within the postmodern financial system, money has become abstract. However, the mistakes made in the seemingly divorced from reality casino gaming system, have real world consequences in terms of people losing their jobs and their houses. There is a connection between their finance world games and the slump.
I'd be interested to see what you make of this connection.
This seems quite appropriate in view of the bonfire analogy:
Perhaps some people posting on here might want to see bonfires of burning bankers. A week or two back there was a cartoon in one of the broadsheets showing the City of London skyscrapers with cranes on them all with nooses.Book of Matthew said:
I am not so sure how far the bit about "performative signs" gets you. Part of the problem is that within the postmodern financial system, money has become abstract. However, the mistakes made in the seemingly divorced from reality casino gaming system, have real world consequences in terms of people losing their jobs and their houses. There is a connection between their finance world games and the slump.
I'd be interested to see what you make of this connection.
When you say that "money has become abstract" you really mean that its true nature has been revealed. Financial value always was abstract, it never had a material existence, it was always only a sign. But for most of history it managed to conceal these facts by hiding within some material substance--usually gold, but also cowrie shells, bank-notes etc. Today however everyone understands that financial value has no material existence.
And yet despite this, it rules the world. As you say, the fluctuations between entirely non-existant forms of financial value have very real world consequences. That is why I refer to financial value as a "performative" sign: a sign that has real effects in the objective world.
The monotheistic religions offer very powerful ethical critiques of the autonomous power of performative representation, which they describe under the rubric of "idolatry," and which they trace to a source in "Satan." Unfortunately this critique has largely dropped out of anti-capitalist discourse which since the nineteenth century has been almost exclusively materialist.
But I put it to you that a materialist critique is useless in understanding a phenomenon like financial value, which is quite obviously supernatural.
Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
Responsibility
People might also want to talk about guilt and responsibility in this too.
In historical terms it is not so long since Britain came off the gold standard, where a bank note was literally exchangeable for a quantity of gold. The point of money is that at some moment it is exchanged for goods or services. I think I really disagree with you about it being 'always a sign'. When it is in the bank, it is like this, but then it gets taken out of the bank and put into circulation, and starts to do economic work. Where you say "it managed to conceal these facts", I think it would be better to say that people did not have an objective view about what was happening (i.e. one of Francis Bacon's idols of the market place).
With respect, I disagree with you here too. It is not the sign, but the way people behave that is the important fact. It is the people who have made the mistakes.
This is an interesting take on the subject, and needs developing. I'd respond here with the point that the people who are in financial trouble, and the traders and so on who have got their companies and banks etc into trouble have made their own choices. It is a matter of human motivations and human actions which have brought this about. I think there would be some mileage in people looking at the detail of those motivations, decisions and deeds.
People might also want to talk about guilt and responsibility in this too.
Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
I've thought some more about this -
What is going on when people use signs? The Pounds, Dollars, Euros etc are exchanged between people in return for services and goods. The signs don’t have any independent existence. They are only active when human beings make use of them.
The transactions are activities which people agree between themselves and carry out together. They take place between more than one person, or between different groups of people. Therefore it is a social problem. We need to look at the interconnectedness here.
In regarding ‘signs’ as performative utterances, it is important to keep sight of the fact that somebody, a person, is doing the performing. This implies an audience, some recipients.
Now I think that there is a tendency within financial institutions, to regard this money system as a kind of computer game, without real world consequences. I believe that such a belief has always been false, and that this has been common knowledge throughout, and that the way such a delusion has been held and has not been effectively challenged is a large factor in the question of responsibility and guilt.
People have commonly said: “They are poor because others are rich.” Others refer to the widening gap between rich and poor, or to Third World Debts. Health statistics sometimes show that life expectancy is related to prosperity. Not even the postmodern finance traders really believed the illusion that their activities were merely ‘signs’ divorced from reality. (The apparent abstraction of his / her supposedly isolated games with money never extended to their pay or bonuses – they always demanded their rewards in real and not notional thalers.....)
Sometimes people have tried to carry out this activity with money they haven’t got. If you or I try this, we are overdrawn and the cheque bounces or the cashpoint eats our card. Real bailiffs came to evict the US sub-prime mortgage holders. If financial institutions try this, they become bankrupt, and there is a recession. If governments try this, we see a situation like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I have lost count of the number of years that accountants have refused to sign off Europe’s accounts, but eventually this too, will catch up with them. I think that a lot of people on here would like to ask the question: What happens when the whole financial system tries to behave in this way?
In a way, to ask this is to return to the OP.
What is going on when people use signs? The Pounds, Dollars, Euros etc are exchanged between people in return for services and goods. The signs don’t have any independent existence. They are only active when human beings make use of them.
The transactions are activities which people agree between themselves and carry out together. They take place between more than one person, or between different groups of people. Therefore it is a social problem. We need to look at the interconnectedness here.
In regarding ‘signs’ as performative utterances, it is important to keep sight of the fact that somebody, a person, is doing the performing. This implies an audience, some recipients.
Now I think that there is a tendency within financial institutions, to regard this money system as a kind of computer game, without real world consequences. I believe that such a belief has always been false, and that this has been common knowledge throughout, and that the way such a delusion has been held and has not been effectively challenged is a large factor in the question of responsibility and guilt.
People have commonly said: “They are poor because others are rich.” Others refer to the widening gap between rich and poor, or to Third World Debts. Health statistics sometimes show that life expectancy is related to prosperity. Not even the postmodern finance traders really believed the illusion that their activities were merely ‘signs’ divorced from reality. (The apparent abstraction of his / her supposedly isolated games with money never extended to their pay or bonuses – they always demanded their rewards in real and not notional thalers.....)
Sometimes people have tried to carry out this activity with money they haven’t got. If you or I try this, we are overdrawn and the cheque bounces or the cashpoint eats our card. Real bailiffs came to evict the US sub-prime mortgage holders. If financial institutions try this, they become bankrupt, and there is a recession. If governments try this, we see a situation like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I have lost count of the number of years that accountants have refused to sign off Europe’s accounts, but eventually this too, will catch up with them. I think that a lot of people on here would like to ask the question: What happens when the whole financial system tries to behave in this way?
In a way, to ask this is to return to the OP.
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