Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T05:56:24.380Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Internationalization of capital and international politics: a radical approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

Get access

Summary

To be radical, or to be a scientist, is the same thing; it is a question of trying to go to the root of the matter. For Marx, this meant trying to uncover the “economic laws of motion of modern society,” that is, first of all, seeing society as an organism in motion constantly changing and developing as it moves from its beginning to its end, and second, searching in the economy, i.e., in changing conditions of production and exchange, for the underlying basis of this motion.

In this chapter, I wish to follow Marx's approach by viewing the present conjuncture of international politics and economics in terms of the long-term growth and spread of capitalist social relations of production to a world level. More concretely, I want to try to relate the current crises in national and international politics to the world market created during the last twenty-five years by the American Empire, first by examining Keynes's 1933 warnings of the difficulties and dangers for the development of modern society posed by the world market, and second, by using Marx's analysis of the general law of capitalist accumulation, and, in particular, his theory of the reserve army to go deeper into the roots of our present difficulties.

Type
Chapter
Information
Growth, Profits and Property
Essays in the Revival of Political Economy
, pp. 189 - 203
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×