Class Struggle and the Global Overaccumulation of Capital

Abstract

This chapter addresses a central theme which recurs through many analyses, particularly on the left, of the current crisis of world capitalism, which see this crisis in terms of the erosion of national forms of economic regulation by the internationalization of capital, and the corresponding failure to develop new trans-or international forms of regulation. I want to argue, from within a Marxist perspective, that the contradiction between the global character of capital accumulation and the national form of the state is not a new phenomenon, but has been a characteristic of capitalism since the earliest stages of commercial capitalism, underlying the historical development of capitalist states within the international state system. In periods of sustained accumulation on a world scale this contradiction is suspended, as the internationalization of capital opens up opportunities for capital and for the state. In periods of crisis, the contradiction re-emerges. From this point of view, the present crisis is not a manifestation of a transition from one stage of capitalism to another, but is rather an expression of the contradictory form of the capitalist mode of production, which manifests itself most dramatically in periodic crises. After a brief theoretical and historical discussion I will concentrate on the postwar cycle, which I will explore from a global perspective which focuses on the world system not as an aggregation of discrete national economies and nation-states, but as a global economy and a system of nation-states. Although this gives the chapter a high level of generality, I think that such a level has some validity in describing tendencies common to all the nation states and`nationaland`national economies' comprising the international capitalist system. 1 Capitalist crisis or regulation crisis? The instability in the world economy since 1974 has cast serious doubt on our understanding of the postwar boom and, more broadly, of the contemporary stage of capitalist development. From the late 1950s to the early 76