Political Science 200A
Week 4
Marxian Political Economy
Karl Marx
(1818-1883)
Educated at Humboldt University (Berlin)
Doctorate from University of Jena
Exile in Paris, Brussels, and London (from 1849)
Communist Manifesto (1848)
Das Kapital (1867 and posthumously)
Friedrich Engels
(1820-1895)
• 1844- Beginning of collaboration with Marx
• (Co-author) Communist Manifesto (1848)
• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)
• Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
• A. Axioms / assumptions
1. Economic base and social, cultural, political
superstructure
2. Means of production is foundation for (creates?)
mode of production and exchange
3. Class structure contingent on mode of production
and exchange
4. “Human psychology” shaped by class structure
5. Science and art shaped by class structure
Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
• B. Historical epochs
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
Primitive communism
Slave-owning societies
Feudalism
Capitalism
Socialism / Communism
Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
• C. Distinguishing attributes of Capitalism
[1] Modern machinery production
[2] Commodity production (“for sale”)
[3] Social production inside individual factories
[4] Individual appropriation of product (exploitation of producers)
by owners of means of production
[5] Transformation of worker into wage-laborer
[6] Overproduction due to anarchy of marketplace
[7] Unemployment and immiseration of the proletariat
[8] General crises due to overproduction every 10 years
[9] Concentration of capital and growth of bourgeois-state property
[10] Globalization of world market
Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
• D. What moves society to next historic epoch?
[1] Rise of new productive forces
[2] Contradictions between new productive forces and
modes of production and exchange
[3] Class conflict
Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
• E. What is the remedy for problems of capitalism?
[1] Proletariat seizes power and society takes possession of
productive forces
[2] Production according to a plan ends market anarchy
[3] Proletariat ends state as instrument of class oppression
• “administration of things”
• “the state withers away”
Engels
Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State
• A. Distinguishing characteristics of state
[1] Territoriality (rather than blood)
[2] Separate public coercive forces (army, police, prisons)
[3] Taxation
• B. Relation of state to classes
[1] State above classes to moderate conflict? Briefly?
[2] State as instrument of class oppression
Even in a bourgeois democracy
Engels
Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State
• C. Class consciousness and “false consciousness”
– Objective conditions versus proletarian behavior
– Vladimir Lenin and role of the vanguard party
– Role of religion and nationalism to foster false
consciousness
Michael Hechter
• Ph.D. Columbia University (1972)
• Professor of Sociology at Universities of Arizona and
Washington, Arizona State University
• Internal Colonialism (1960)
• Containing Nationalism (2000)
Hechter
Internal Colonialism
• A. Core vs. Periphery
– 1. Cultural separation
– 2. Economic exploitation
– 3. Political subordination
• B. Cultural separation + Economic exploitation =
Cultural division of labor
Hechter
Internal Colonialism
• C. Accidental origin of economic divide
• D. Why do differences persist?
• E. Political consequences
–
–
–
–
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
Grievances from economic inequalities
Peripheral solidarity through communication
Periphery reifies cultural difference with core
Periphery withdraws grant of legitimacy
from central government
• Demand for independence
Immanuel Wallerstein
(1930- )
• Ph.D. Columbia University (1959)
• Professor of Sociology at Columbia, McGill, SUNYBinghamton
• Since 2000: Sr. Research Scholar, Yale University
• The Modern World-System (1974, 1980, 1989)
Wallerstein
The Modern World-System
• “A world system is a social system, one that has boundaries,
structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and
coherence.” (p. 229)
• “What characterizes a social system in my view is the fact that
life within it is largely self-contained, and that the dynamics of
its development are largely internal.” (p. 229)
Wallerstein
The Modern World-System
• A. Two types of world-systems
– 1. World-empire
• Presence of single dominant polity
• Multiple examples prior to 1500
– 2. World-economy
• Only one example of long-term world economy (since 1500)
Wallerstein
The Modern World-System
• B. Attributes of modern world-economy
– 1. Association with capitalism
– 2. Economic factors operate in arena larger than
any political entity can control
– 3. Division into Core States, Semiperiphery, Periphery
– 4. Hierarchy of occupational tasks
– 5. Class system structured by world economy
• The Global Class Struggle
– 6. Strong state structures in core vs. Weak on periphery
Wallerstein
The Modern World-System
• B. Attributes of modern world-economy
– “The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its
profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed.
Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as
either inevitable or just constitute the continuing
antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic
which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth
century.” (p. 239)
• C. Role of nationalism within entities
Barrington Moore
(1913- 2005)
• Ph.D. Yale University (1941)
• 1948-79. Affiliation with Harvard University
• Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966)
Moore
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
• A. Revising the Marxist class story
– Subtitle: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern
World
– Explaining alternative developmental paths to
modernity—to democracy, fascism, or communism
Moore
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
• B. Rise of bourgeois democracy
–
–
–
–
[1] Balance of crown and landed aristocracy
[2] Shift to commercial agriculture (gentry)
[3] Weakening (not elimination) of landed aristocracy
[4] Prevention of aristocratic-bourgeois alliance
against peasants and workers
– [5] Revolutionary break with the past
– Also: Rise of town-dwellers (“no bourgeois, no democracy”)
– Also: Elimination of the peasant question
Moore
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
• C. Rise of fascism
– [1] Blocked liberation of the peasantry
– [2] Stifled growth of cities (no commercial bourgeoisie)
– [3] Alliance of landed aristocracy and industrial
bourgeoisie
• Junkers
• Alliance of iron and rye
• Dependence on the crown
– [4] Mass politics and plebian anti-capitalism
Moore
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
• D. Rise of communism
– [1] Survival of traditional peasant social institutions
– [2] Failure of aristocracy to develop commercial
agriculture