Karatani Beyond Capital Nation State

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Rethinking Marxism
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Beyond Capital-Nation-State
Kojin Karatani
Online Publication Date: 01 October 2008
To cite this Article Karatani, Kojin(2008)'Beyond Capital-Nation-State',Rethinking Marxism,20:4,569 595 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08935690802299447 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935690802299447
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RETHINKING MARXISM
VOLUME 20
NUMBER 4
(OCTOBER 2008)
Beyond Capital-Nation-State
Kojin Karatani
This essay proposes to abandon the architectural metaphor of base/superstructure that has come to inform historical materialism since Marx and reconstruct a Marxian theory of social formation around the notion of exchange (Verkher). With different degrees of dominance, different historical social formations are composed of four modes of exchange (reciprocity/gift exchange, redistribution/plunder, commodity exchange, and X) and their corresponding institutional forms. A discussion of the capital-nation-state as a particularly modern form of articulation of commodity exchange, reciprocity, and redistribution is followed by a proposal for a world republic as a regulative idea. Key Words: Capital, Nation, State, Social Formation, Mode of Exchange, Associationism
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If we wish to address the questions of capitalism, state, and nation in a fundamental way, we simply cannot avoid Marx, for it was he alone who grasped them as interrelated structures. But what I would like to take from Marx is different from socalled historical materialism. Marx wrote: The general result at which I arrived and which, once won, served as a guiding thread of my studies, can be briefly formulated as follows: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. (2000, 425) It was not Marx but Engels who designated this view historical materialism, which, after Marxs death, shaped Marxism as a theoretical system. Thus, the architectural metaphor of economic base and political superstructure prevailed. However, such a view was not original to Marx, but rather, was anticipated by Engels. Marx contended it was no more than a guiding thread of his studies, and wrote Capital using a completely different formula.
ISSN 0893-5696 print/1475-8059 online/08/040569-27 2008 Association for Economic and Social Analysis DOI: 10.1080/08935690802299447
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Marx stressed that commodity exchange began between communities. This was an explicit criticism of Adam Smith, who assumed that commodity exchange began between individuals. Marx asserted that such a view was a projection of the modern capitalist economy onto previous social formations, a projection that blinds us to the historicity of the capitalist economy. For Marx, concepts of historical origins are shaped by a projection of the present onto the ancient. Previous critics of historical materialism have asserted that the notion of the state as superstructure, which stands over the economic infrastructure, is valid only within a capitalist society. In previous social structures, there was no clear distinction between the economic and the political (or, in more general terms, the extraeconomic). In feudal society, for instance, the relation of production between feudal lords and serfs was both economic and political. Such a distinction between the economic and the political is even less useful with regard to primitive tribal communities. Jean Baudrillard and other critics of historical materialism have dismissed Marx while it was actually Marx himself who first criticized such a perspectival inversion as a simple projection of the present onto the past.1 As Capital shows, Marx was fully aware of the difficulty of dealing with historical becoming. Observing the origins of money and capital, he never adopted a historicist method. Rather than empirically trace such origins back to the ancient period, he transcendentally followed them back to the value form as such. In addition, the critics of historical materialism claim that the notion of the state as superstructure is misleading in the case of capitalism since it fails to capture the integral role that the state plays in the capitalist social formation. Moreover, this lack of understanding has led to devastating adventures in social transformation. According to a well-known Marxist dogma, the state will cease to exist when the economic class antagonism comes to an end. The truth, however, is far from this. Indeed, this optimistic view on the impending demise of the state has led Marxist practice to ruinous outcomes. In response, Marxists have come to concede that the state as a political superstructure has a degree of relative autonomy over the economic base. Nevertheless, so long as this architectural metaphor persists, so will the theoretical difficulties. As a result, historical materialism seems to have been more or less rejected. The economic base as the last instance is occasionally invoked simply out of respect for the Marxian tradition.
1. In The Mirror of Production, Baudrillard (1975) criticized Marx for projecting the view afforded by capitalist society onto primitive society. However, he, too, projects the view afforded by todays capitalist society, despite his assertion of casting light on capitalist society through primitive society. It is not accidental that the phenomenon of focusing on the gift and consumption in primitive society took place in the 1930s, when the capitalist economy found a way out of the Great Depression in Keynesian policies, characterized by creating effective demand through the gifting of the government. In fact, Georges Bataille (1991) proposed a general economy, based on the anthropological data, which values consumption, in the form of sacrifice and potlatch, more than production. Based on this insight he viewed the Marshall Plan (the European Recovery Program), the postwar American policy to reactivate the world economy by aiding Europe gratuitously, as akin to a gift or potlatch (La Part). Similarly, beneath Baudrillards criticism of Marxs notion of production lies the fact that capitalist economy entered the stage of consumer society. General economy ultimately is particular and historical.
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It is not necessarily wrong to abandon the architectural metaphor, but it is wrong to thereby abandon all that Marx stood for. As he wrote in a preface to Capital, My standpoint, from which the development of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he remains, socially speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them (1976, xx). This was Marxs position from his early period onward: history is to be viewed from the vantage point of the relations between human and nature as well as the relations between humans. This is tantamount to a natural historical view since humans are also seen as part of nature. To put it differently, the relation between humans and nature is inseparable from the relation between humans. When humans relate to nature, it is by way of their mutual relation. In tribal societies, for instance, work is performed together and products are shared. In class societies, some have others work for them either by force or for money. Now let us consider the relation between humans and nature, which historical materialism conceived through the notion of production. What is important, however, is that Marx regarded the relation between humans and nature as Stoffwechsel (metabolism)*/that is, as material exchange. This is based upon the view that production necessarily entails waste (entropy, in thermodynamic terms). Nature must somehow dispose of this waste; hence the recycling relations between humans and nature. For example, Marx praised Liebig, a German agricultural chemist, for his discovery of a chemical fertilizer that destroys natural ecosystems, and wrote: All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the working, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards the more longlasting sources of that fertility. The more a country proceeds from largescale industry as the background of its development, as in the case of the United States, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all-wealth*/the soil and the worker. (638) Robbing the soil entails the destruction of the cyclical exchange between humans and nature, neglecting the effort to sustain it. Here Marx specifically states that capitalist agriculture develops by humans robbing nature as well as by humans plundering humans. But this theft is not unique to large-scale capitalist agriculture. The same can be witnessed in the ancient Asiatic states, which introduced large-scale agriculture with irrigation, resulting in the desertification of land and ultimately the ruin of an entire civilization. This implies that the exploitation of nature by humans began with the exploitation of humans by humans, which is nothing other than the emergence of the state. This is the Marxian natural historical viewpoint. Baudrillard has criticized the notion of production in Marxism insofar as it stems from the tradition of Western philosophy and theology, counterposing symbolic exchange in order to lay emphasis on consumption. The notion of production proper to Western metaphysics is based upon a Platonic view that sees it simply in spiritual terms as poiesis. Plato looked down upon actual production, which either
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brings waste or eventually turns into waste. In modern times, it was Hegel who showed most systematically how spiritual production shapes natural and human history. Needless to say, this is idealism. Marxists reversed this idealism into materialism, but idealism remained in the very notion of production as it was considered the driving force behind social change. Consequently, they naively glorified the progress made in the forces of production. It is easily understood why ecologists would criticize them. Their criticism, however, does not apply to Marx. In order to attack the metaphysics of production in Marx, Baudrillard counterposed the notion of symbolic exchange or consumption, which he obtained from anthropological observations of primitive society. The Marxian standpoint, however, had nothing to do with such metaphysics of production. Marx viewed the relation between humans and nature as material exchange. What I propose here is that the relation between humans should be viewed in terms of exchange in a broader sense. For instance, in primitive society, people work together and share the products of their labor. Their relation can be seen as reciprocal, as a mode of exchange. In class society, some have others work for them either by force or for money. These relationships can also be seen as different modes of exchange. In this light, what Marx called the relations of production can be reconsidered in terms of exchange. It is not particularly unique for me to use the notion of exchange in such a broad sense. Marx himself did so after his early period, although he used the term Verkehr (intercourse/traffic) for exchange. In The German Ideology (Marx and Engels 1970), Verkehr implied diverse notions of trade and war between family and tribal communities, and even communication in general, not to mention traffic in a narrow sense. Here, Marx was indeed considering exchange in a broad sense.2 Marx widely and diversely used the term Verkehr up until the Communist Manifesto of 1848. His abandonment of the concept thereafter seems to have been caused by the fact that he submerged himself in the study of economics, which eventually led him to write Capital. He finally limited his observation of exchange to a specific modality: namely, commodity exchange. In other words, he applied himself to the study of the whole system of capitalist economy by way of commodity exchange, thus making observation of the state, community, and nation secondary. Therefore, to deal with those matters comprehensively, we should return to the notion of Verkehr. However, for practical clarity I will use the word exchange in diverse senses instead of reviving Verkehr.
2. This point becomes even more evident when we take the thesis of Moses Hess, who had proposed the notion of Verkehr prior to Marx. Today, Hess is essentially known as a precursor of Zionism, but in his youth he was a Young Hegelian. Though senior to Marx, Hess modestly admired him and cooperated with him in the Communist League up until 1848. This does not negate the fact that he had a profound impact on the young Marx. In fact, Hess was the first person who applied the Feuerbachian critique of Christianity as self-alienation to other spheres such as the state and capitalism. Based on the concept of Verkehr, he presented the consistent view of history of nature and human, as is evident in his essay Uber das Geldwesen (On money) (Hess 1961).
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plunderredistribution
reciprocity (gift-return)
C
commodity exchange
Figure 1
Four basic modes of exchange
The Mode of Exchange

The experience of Stalinism and fascism served as a lesson to those Marxists who had given little attention to the state and the nation by treating them merely as ideological superstructures and as ultimately determined by the economic base. Subsequently, more attention has indeed been given to them but, since Marxists have been deeply bound to the historical materialist framework, they have not gone further than simply stressing the relative autonomy of the state and the nation. Sociology and psychoanalysis have been mobilized to prop up Marxist theory, but despite increasingly sophisticated arguments Marxists have continued to conceive of the state and the nation as communal fantasies or ideological representations. Now I propose to consider the state and the nation as derived from the modes of exchange rather than exclusively from commodity exchange. In Capital, Marx tried to explain these grandiose and illusive systems from the basic mode of commodity exchange. By the same token, we can see the state and the nation as historical derivatives of the basic modes of exchange. Neither is a communal fantasy nor ideological image; they have firm and necessary grounds. That is precisely why they cannot be easily dissolved. There are four basic modes of exchange, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 2a/b show the historical derivations arising from the different modes of exchange.3
3. I presented the idea of conceiving of capital, state, nation, association, and so on, as different modes of exchange in Transcritique (Karatani 2003). For the continuation of this work, see Toward the World Republic: Beyond Capital-Nation-State (Karatani 2006). This essay serves as an introduction to that work.
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(a)
state
community
C
city
(b)
state
nation
capitalist economy
Figure 2
Historical derivations from different modes of exchange
The first mode of exchange is A: reciprocity. In Capital, Marx emphasized that commodity exchange begins only between distinct communities, but this is not to say that exchange within a single community does not exist. The exchange we see there is of a different kind: namely, reciprocation of gift and return. Marcel Mauss (1968) found that certain principles in primitive society tended to support the formation of a social structure; these were principles of reciprocity, such as the gifting and returning of food, wealth, women, labor, and so on. Reciprocity, as a type of exchange, is not
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restricted to archaic societies but exists today in various types of communities, even in societies where capitalism is most developed, ranging from family to an extended community, from association to nation. Although this reciprocity brings about solidarity and equality, it should not be seen in terms of goodwill. Gifting is a way of subordinating others to ones will, which of course has nothing to do with goodwill. The gifted is placed under the gifting unless able to offer a return. Basing his thoughts on his observations of Polynesian communities, Mauss assumed that the custom of returning is compelled by a magical power (hau) that gifts contain. But this magical power can be explained as a social power that rules over and binds others. Therefore, one who lavishes gifts on others may receive power. This, however, does not create the king or the state, for one who becomes a chieftain by lavishly gifting would eventually run out of wealth, and eventually lose power. This is precisely how attempts to gain power through gifting unknowingly promote mutual aid and equality. In this sense, principles of reciprocity prevent both power from being fixed and the state from coming into existence. The formation of community is based upon such principles. Conversely, such reciprocity can exist only within a community, where it renders mutual aid and equality to individuals. This, at the same time, binds individuals firmly to the community, whereby individuals feel as if they were gifted from the community and were obliged to return. The second type of exchange takes place between communities. Marx repeatedly emphasized that commodity exchange began between communities, but what initially occurs is plunder. Plunder is the opposite of exchange. But what makes it a mode of exchange? The continuous plundering requires some kind of redistribution; that is to say, the ruler needs to take care of the ruled. This redistribution has, at least historically, taken the form of public undertakings such as irrigation, welfare, or security measures. If we take this into consideration, it starts to appear as if plunder and redistribution can form a type of exchange. Needless to say, it is this mode of exchange that serves as the prototype for the state. To paraphrase Max Weber, the essence of the state lies in the monopoly of violence, or rather, in the designation of the violence of others as illegitimate. The rulers protect the ruled from the violence of the others. The state begins to function when the ruled take it for granted to pay tax in return for the rights secured by the rulers. Furthermore, the state redistributes wealth to the ruled in one form or another. This is how the state assumes a public appearance from the beginning. In this sense, it may be said that the state is based on the mode of exchange B. In contrast to plunder, the mode of exchange C, commodity exchange, is based on mutual assent. Despite appearances, however, human relationships formed through commodity exchange are not necessarily equal. Commodity exchange, strictly speaking, takes place not as an immediate exchange of products or services, but as an exchange between money and commodity. As Marx put it, money has the right of pledge to exchange with commodities, while commodities do not. Those who own money may acquire others products and can make others work without recourse to violent coercion. This is why those who own money and those who own commodities are not equal. Capitalists gain surplus value through commodity
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exchange, necessarily resulting in class disparities and oppositions. It may be said that the mode of exchange C engenders class relationships that are different from those caused by mode of exchange B. Finally, I must mention the mode of exchange D, which is characterized by recovery of the mode of exchange A (or the principles of reciprocity), on a higher level, and beyond the modes of exchange B and C (namely, the state and capitalism). Mode of exchange D is at once free and reciprocal. Or, we may call it the reciprocity of freedom. Societies in which the reciprocity of freedom has been realized have been given various names: socialist, communist, anarchist, associationist, and so on. But I will call it X for the time being in order to eschew the historical connotations of those words. What should be noted is that X does not exist in reality. It exists only as an idea (Ide e). To further interrogate X, or the mode of exchange D, Kants remarks on the moral imperative are most suggestive: So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means (1998, 38 [4:429]). Kant called the society where such amoral law is realized the republic of ends or the kingdom of freedom, which is itself, of course, une Ide e. However, this moral law is not abstract or ahistorical, as is usually believed. As Hermann Cohen, a neo-Kantian philosopher, reminds us, it is important that Kant here stresses never merely as (Cohen 1984, 112 ff.). He does not negate treating others as a means. After all, such treatment is inevitable so long as humans depend on exchanging their labor or products with others. Within a capitalist economy, Kants emphasis suggests that human beings are treated merely as a means but never as an end. His moral law implies changing such a society into one where others are treated also as an end; this is what Kant called the republic of ends. Furthermore, Kant actually mapped this out in practical terms. His plan was to form an association of independent producers without the mediation of merchant capital. This is why Cohen calls him the true originator of German socialism. In fact, it was Proudhon rather than German socialists who truly inherited the idea of Kantian socialism. The crucial point here is that X, whatever you may call it, ought to be both ethical and economic. To borrow from Kants rhetoric, communism without an economic basis is empty while communism without an ethical basis is blind. Let us return to the modes of exchange. While the modes A, B, and C have existed since time immemorial, the mode D emerged historically at a stage where the state and the market economy had reached a certain degree of development. The mode D emerged in the form of universal religions, revealing an ethicaleconomic dimension in contrast to the community, state, and market economy. It did not come from peoples wishes or fantasies, but rather in opposition to them: it appeared as a moral imperative. That is to say, mode D exists not merely as a Utopian idea but as an act that radically intervenes in the society constituted by modes A, B, and C. Universal religion permeated the city, and then the state and the community. But as it altered the state and the community, it also was altered by them, coming to serve for their old system. Nevertheless, the universal religion retains some negativity against the state and the community. For example, it brought the
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universal law; jus canonicum (canon law), sharia (Islamic law), dharma (Buddhist law), and so on. Thus, the state is never free from the influence of the ideality derived from mode D. Furthermore, the negativity in universal religion is reactivated whenever a social movement tries to subvert the ancient regime. This is why social movements often take the form of religious movements like millenarianism. Indeed, the first bourgeois revolution in Britain took a religious form: namely, the Puritan revolution. Apparently, socialism has been divorced from religion since the middle of the nineteenth century. It has subsequently become scientific socialism and has attempted to convince people that its visions are realistic and programmatic. Socialism has lost its ethical and Utopian elements. As a result, it has also lost the splendor and fascination it once carried.4 To repeat, modes A, B, and C exist in actuality, but mode D exists only as an idea. However, in Kantian terms, it is not a constitutive idea, but a regulative idea: that is to say, an idea that is never realized but that remains an index for humans gradually to approximate as closely as possible. The regulative idea is an appearance or Schein, but it is a transcendental Schein in the sense that human beings cannot do without it. Therefore, although the mode of exchange D will never be realized, it will never disappear. So long as the modes of exchange A, B, and C persist in reality, mode D will also persist as a source of negativity against modes A, B and C.
The Social Formation

Marx distinguished five historical types of social formation according to the dominant mode of production: tribal, Asiatic, Greco-Roman, feudal, and capitalist. However, as I have previously suggested, distinguishing each in terms of the mode of production is problematic and confusing, so I have proposed reconsidering each in terms of modes of exchange (Table 1). Any social formation comprises the combination of various modes of exchange: reciprocity (A), plunder-redistribution (B), commodity exchange (C) and, most important, the fourth mode (D) should not be overlooked. Its widespread existence is evident in the form of law, churches, social movements, and so on. The difference in social formation depends upon which mode of exchange is predominant and how the modes of exchange are articulated. In addition, the formation of one society largely depends upon the formation of adjacent societies. Baudrillard (1975) came to reject the position that views the economic field as the last instance. In its stead he placed symbolic exchange, which is reciprocal and thus differs from commodity exchange. But it would be false to say that reciprocity in itself is a basic exchange. Other modes of exchange are just as
4. It is not surprising that religious revolutionaries have played a large role in todays social movements, as represented, for example, by the Iranian revolution. Religious radicalism has the power to urge ordinary people to counter the capital and the state, but this should not be overestimated. So long as radicalism takes a religious form, it will necessarily lead to a dictatorship of the clerics, and ultimately reinforce the state.
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Table 1 Marxs Five Historical Types of Social Formation Type of Social Formation 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Tribal Asiatic Greco-Roman Feudal Capitalist Dominant Mode of Exchange Reciprocity, or gift-return Plunder-redistribution Plunder-redistribution Plunder-redistribution Commodity exchange
fundamental. For instance, in primitive society the principle of reciprocity is certainly predominant, but trade and war, other modes of exchange, exist as well. Likewise, the predominance of commodity exchange in capitalist society does not preclude other modes of exchange. Any social formation is the combination of the four modes of exchange. The difference lies in how they are combined. If this is the case, it is impossible to say which mode is the most fundamental. If we were to say that exchange in general is economic, all basic modes of exchange may be called economic. Additionally, if we see these modes of exchange as bases, we can picture how ideational superstructures are constructed upon them. For example, the state is the ideational structure based upon the mode of exchange B, and the nation is the ideational structure based upon the mode of exchange A. The capitalist system, as well, is a grand ideational system interwoven by money and credit. In Capital, Marx attempted to elucidate the capitalist economy as an ideational system that grows out of commodity exchange by bracketing all other modes of exchange. It is true that he did not scrutinize the other spheres of exchange. Rather than criticize him for this, however, we should consider what systems might be formed through the bracketing of the different modes of exchange. In fact, based on their anthropological observations of primitive societies, it may be said that Mauss, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Pierre Clastres have clarified how the principles of reciprocity form a society. Meanwhile, Carl Schmitt (1996) sought the nature of the political, as distinct from the economic or the aesthetic, in the friend/enemy distinction. This only implies, however, that the political is intrinsic to the basic mode of exchange B. These contributions in no way downgrade Marxs achievements vis-a-vis the capitalist economy. ` We must synthesize these disparate studies of modes of exchange; that is, we must review the social formation as the nexus of these various modes of exchange. More specifically, this requires us to reconsider the history of social formations as presented by Marx from a new point of view. First, the tribal community is the social formation in which reciprocity is predominant. This means that other modes (A and B) are coexistent. Here, historical archaic societies ought to be distinguished from contemporary primitive societies as observed by anthropologists. The latter are isolated from the outside; more precisely, they have conditions that make their isolation possible. Archaic societies were forced to be absorbed by a state or themselves turned into a state
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formation by coming into contact with other societies. However, archaic societies are not solely based upon the principles of reciprocity. As a matter of fact, they are quite manifold, ranging from sheer primitive societies to nearly statelike societies. The difference depends upon the extent to which other modes of exchange are present. Many primitive societies had a chiefdom, which is an embryonic form of the state. But a chiefdom can resist the state, namely through the principles of reciprocity. This system prevents anyone from remaining a chieftain forever, which implies that the king or the state cannot emerge from within a single community.5 Again, Marx stressed that commodity exchange arose only between distinct communities. Likewise, it should be noted that the state, as well, can only emerge between distinct communities. The formation of the state cannot be seen as the outcome of the internal development of a community. Rather, it appears when a community rules other communities. This does not mean that all states were formed by conquest. If one state exists, other adjacent communities must become states in order to protect themselves from being subjected. It is in this sense that states exist essentially against other states. For instance, it is commonly believed that the rise of productivity in agrarian society engendered class division, which eventually led to formation of the state. This is one typical way of viewing the state via the community. But the rise of productivity never occurs within a community. Given the surplus, it would be readily dissipated, as Bataille (1991) has noted. The rise of productivity or surplus labor in the community is realized by the coercion of the ruler, the state. The state is a community that imposes tribute and service on other communities that it dominates. Accordingly, the state should be observed from two sides: from the ruling community, and the ruled community. This is typical of the Asiatic social formation, which is usually considered an early and primitive stage of history. But this is only valid if we focus on the ruled community. The characteristics of the Asiatic social formation should also be seen on the level of the ruling community, in which the principles of community (reciprocity) were denied and replaced by a centralized government, a bureaucracy, and a standing army. Meanwhile, by contrast, the principle of community stayed intact in the ruled agrarian communities. We fail to recognize the nature of
5. In primitive societies, decisions were made by an assembly or a council. Anthropologist David Graeber wrote, After having lived in Madagascar for two years, I was startled, the first time I started attending the meetings of the Direct Action Network in New York, by how familiar it all seemed*/ the main difference was that the DAN process was so much more formalized and explicit (2004, 86). This remark reminds me of what Hanna Arendt remarked in her book On Revolution regarding the council, a widespread institution in the New Left movement around 1968. The council (Soviet in Russian, Rate in German) is often associated with Marxism, but was originally an anarchist idea. However, Arendt emphasizes that the institution of the council derives from lived political experience and action, and arises spontaneously as if it were something entirely new. That is, the council is actually no ones idea, either Marxist or anarchist. Rather, anarchism (as a principle of reciprocity) consists in embracing spontaneously occurring anticentralization movements. If the state and capital come from human nature, countermovements can also be said to come from human nature.
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the Asiatic social formation if we restrict our focus to the so-called mode of production.6 Such centralization, however, was not readily realized. Let us consider examples of Asiatic states, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus, and China. They all began with city-states. Centralization occurred only through incessant struggle among these small city-states. The process is clearly shown in Chinese history up until the first Chinese Empire of Shih-huang-ti. In this process of centralization, the principles of reciprocity that remained in the city-states were erased. Consequently, the despotic state emerged with its bureaucrats and a standing army. This is what Weber called the patrimonial-bureaucratic state. These states facilitated the creation of technologies necessary to control the environment, as in the case of large-scale irrigation, which greatly developed agricultural production. What is no less significant is that they also created technologies for controlling people, such as bureaucracy, letters, media, religion, and so on. The Asiatic states are not elementary. In Europe, it was not until the period of absolute monarchy that patrimonial bureaucratic states were created, emerging out of decentralized feudal states through the suppression of the many feudal lords who were vying for power. The Asiatic state, then, is not embryonic but is an essentially complete form of the state. In the Asiatic social formation, the exchange mode B is prevalent. This is a form that usurps the agrarian communities by way of tribute and compulsory service. The Asiatic social formation, of course, contains modes B and C as well. For instance, trade and merchant capital were highly developed. Nevertheless, trade and the city were subordinate to the state. Likewise, the agrarian community had autonomy and maintained the principle of reciprocity while at the same time being subordinate to the state (the ruling class). The Greco-Roman social formation also includes the mode B as a necessary factor, but it differs from the Asiatic social formation on the levels of both the ruling and the ruled. On the level of the ruled, in Asiatic society, the agrarian communities were dominated as they were. That is why they largely retained the vestige of a tribal community. But in Greco-Roman society, the ruled did not form communities as they were primarily slaves that had been uprooted from various communities.
6. The notion of the Asiatic mode of production was entirely negated by Stalin in the 1930s. All premodern societies came to be called feudal, without the distinction between the Asian and the feudal. Needless to say, this brought about fatal errors both in theory and practice. Russian Marxists denied the notion of the Asiatic mode of production, partly because they did not like their own bureaucratic system to be linked to the czarist Russia, the Asiatic state. In addition, this denial of the distinction was induced by the very idea of attaching importance to modes of production. It naturally led to a focus upon the extortion-based relationship between the farmers and the rulers. If seen from the perspective of this relationship, the difference between the Asiatic and the feudal is negligibly small. However, the difference appears striking when seen from the perspective of the form of the state, or the ruling class. The patrimonial bureaucratic state was formed in the Asiatic social formation, whereas it was hampered and delayed in the feudal social formation. Negating the distinction between the Asiatic and the feudal is actually tantamount to neutralizing and justifying despotic bureaucratic rule in Russian socialism.
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The difference is more striking on the level of the rulers. While the rulers constituted the bureaucratic system in Asiatic society, they did not in Greco-Roman society. Greek ruling communities descended from warrior-farmer communities. As their mode of production was based on slavery, they had to constantly wage war in order to acquire their slave workers. Even still, it was such a warrior-farmer community that ultimately brought about democracy in the Greek polis. The principles of reciprocity remained there and were reconfirmed when the polis was established. The development of trade and a market economy greatly contributed to the creation of their democracy. In brief, on the level of the ruling community, elements of modes A and C were strong, curbing the element of mode B. It is undeniable that original, epoch-making thoughts emerged in ancient Greece, especially in Athens. But we should not view this situation as unique to Greece. For instance, almost at the same time as the flourishing of thought in ancient Athens, there was a period in China when a variety of thinkers such as Confucius, Lao-tzu, Mo-tzu, Sun Tzu, and others, were emerging. There were so many important figures that they are referred to collectively as the Hundred Schools. They rose to prominence at a time when many city-states were struggling against one another. The abundance of new and great thinkers ended when these cities were unified by the first Chinese Empire of Shihhuang-ti. Such flourishing of intellectual activity took place only where the principles of reciprocity and commodity exchange throve. These activities failed to continue after the emergence of the despotic state in China, and the same is true of Athens. Athenians, not being content with a small city-state, were constantly trying to expand their land and become a large state like Persia and Egypt. But they could not overcome the resistance from other poleis and ultimately failed. Athenian principles of the polis could not be fostered outside their own borders. The Athenian expansionist dream was actually realized by Alexander of Macedonia, who conquered the Asian empires. But this was achieved through the demolition of the Greek polis. Alexander became virtually an Asiatic despot. As for Rome, the course taken was akin to that of Greece, but Romans held a principle that went beyond that of the polis and greatly aided the expansion of empire: the law of nations (jus gentium). Rome was successful in building a tremendous empire that covered the entirety of previous west Asian empires. Nonetheless, Rome was not free from conflict with the principles of the city-state. The emperor of the Roman Empire had to pretend to be a mere representative of the Roman citizens when he was actually an Asiatic despot. The emperor was required to treat all peoples equally and to satisfy the Roman citizens who upheld the principles of reciprocity. These observations lead us to consider the Asiatic and the Greco-Roman as stages in a temporal development, but also as societies that were synchronically related within space. For example, the Greco-Roman societies were formed on the margins of Asiatic empires and in direct relation to them. To make sense of this relation, Karl Wittfogels (1957) theory of core, margin, and submargin is helpful. In his opinion, the Asiatic empire is the core. People on the margins are liable to be subordinated or assimilated by this core. However, this did not happen to people in the submargin, who managed to carve out a certain distance from the core that allowed them to choose what elements to take from it; they accepted the letters and technology, but refused the hierarchical state system. This, for example, was the case with Greece and Rome.
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The same can be said of the feudal social formation. Feudalism was cultivated within Germanic society, located on the submargins of the Roman Empire. Previously, the Germanic societies were warrior-farmer communities, upholding principles that were resistant to the hierarchical order. They came to be divided into the ruling class and the ruled (serfs), but to a certain extent the principle of reciprocity was sustained. First, among the ruling class, the lord/vassal relationship was reciprocal and prevented the formation of a centralized system. Despite his authority, the king was unable to place himself in an absolutely superior position; thus, he was similar to a chieftain among the lords. This king, in collusion with the urban bourgeoisie, held power over the lords and was ultimately able to form the state by way of bureaucracy and a standing army. Second, because serfs were originally warriors, they were not entirely subject to the lords. Unlike the Asiatic community, they created an association of individuals after being detached from the primary community. In cities such tendencies were even clearer, as in the autonomous commune. Large cities were developed in the Asiatic societies, but they, too, were subordinate to the state. The reason an autonomous city and trade market developed in Europe was that the centralized state (patrimonial bureaucratic state) had not formed there. The autonomy of the city was facilitated by the complex power games played between lords and churches. Later, such city-communes developed and then declined. In collusion with the king, they managed to topple the feudal regime. In turn, they ended up becoming subordinate to the absolute state. What is crucial here is that a social formation should not be considered by itself, in isolation from other social formations. For instance, feudalism in Europe cannot be explained from within Europe alone. Generally feudalism is peculiar to the submargins of the core Asiatic state (empire). This accounts for feudalism in Japan; while Korea and Vietnam lay on the margin, Japan was on the submargin. Subsequently, the Chinese political and cultural system was adopted in its entirety in Korea and Vietnam, while Japan only partially accepted it. In Japan, the Chinese system and ideas were only superficially adopted and did not take effect in any real sense, as the Japanese culture of warriors despised the Mandarin.
Capitalist Social Formation

So far I have dealt with social formations prior to capitalist society. The capitalist social formation is the one in which the commodity exchange or the mode of exchange C prevails. It should be noted that the capitalist social formation first emerged as the sovereign state. It is irrelevant, however, to claim that such a political superstructure was determined by the economic base, for the separation of the political and the economic was the very product of the capitalist social formation. Furthermore, the sovereign state promoted capitalist production in its own right. The transition from the feudal to the capitalist social formation should be seen as the process of reorganizing the modes of exchange. In feudal societies, mode B was prevalent. That is to say, the feudal system consisted of the king and feudal lords imposing levies and services on farmers, merchants, and manufacturers. At the same
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time, the mode of exchange C (the monetary economy) was growing. Meanwhile, the absolute monarch suppressed other feudal lords and monopolized violence, making others violence illegal. In addition, the monarch monopolized the feudal levy system, turning it into a national form of taxation. In other words, feudalistic extraeconomic coercion was prohibited and began to base itself on the principles of commodity exchange. This brought about the separation of the political and economic. By the same token, the mutually dependent relationship between capital and the state was established; the absolute monarch followed the policy of mercantilism and began promoting trade and commodity production. As I have explained, centralization or monopolizing of powers is impossible within a single state for other feudal lords or the church are bound to resist it, particularly in collusion with other kings. Thus, on the one hand, sovereign states are made possible by mutual assent. On the other hand, a sovereign state necessarily produces other sovereign states, since a sovereign state tacitly implies its right to reign over the area not belonging to itself. In fact, the states of the world were colonized by sovereign states in Europe, and the movements of resistance and independence created sovereign states globally. Social formations prior to capitalism, whether Asiatic or feudal, remained local, since they were based upon the principles of mode B. They formed world empires here and there, shaping the cultural spheres that share letters, religion, or currency, but their worlds were still limited and disconnected from one another. It was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that those worlds came to be connected by the world market based upon the principles of commodity exchange. No area in the world has been exempt from the pressure of the world market since that time. Wallerstein has designated the world prior to the world market the world empire and the world after it the world economy. In the world economy, the world empires that used to be the core were pushed to the margin. Societies outside Europe were compelled to transform themselves, under invasion and infiltration by capitalism. Their reactions varied, depending on the nature of their previous social formations. Generally speaking, precapitalist modes of exchange still linger heavily in these societies.7
7. The world empires prior to the world market, which were the core in Wittfogels terminology, constituted their own worlds involving the surrounding nations and tribes as the margin and the submargin. The world market or the world economy nullified such geopolitical configurations, altering the center-margin structure on a world scale. Wallerstein has described this structure in terms of center, semiperiphery, and periphery; Andre Gunder Frank has used metropolis and satellite; and Samir Amin has used center and periphery. But what is most important is that after the world economy pushed the old empires to the margin, differences between core and periphery in the premodern empires lingered. In general, the old empires were colonized by the Western states and capitalism, but the former core, margin and submargin responded to Western colonialism quite differently. While the former periphery was readily colonized, the former core resisted and continually aimed to restore their geopolitical hegemony, by attempting to reverse the center-periphery order imposed by the Western states and capitalism. Socialist revolutions in Russia and China are two prominent examples. Marxism has functioned as an ideology for sustaining these empires against the threat of dissolving into multiple nation-states.
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The absolute monarch is considered an early stage of the capitalist social formation, but the nature of the formation was already fully evident. From the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, this nature was concealed by the bourgeois revolution and the development of industrial capitalism. Let us examine the capitalist formation from the perspective of the capitalist economy. According to classical economists such as Smith and Ricardo, industrial capital is based on fair trade, unlike merchant capital, which buys cheap and sells high. Meanwhile, Ricardian leftists insisted that industrial capital was stealing surplus labor from workers, the wageslaves. Marx criticized both of these accounts. He agreed that capitals accumulation depends on the exploitation of surplus labor, but distinguished this accumulation from feudalistic extraeconomic plunder. He observed the nature of industrial capital by tracing it back to merchant capital. In other words, he attempted to grasp capital from the general formula of accumulation M-C-M, which itself is obtained from merchant capital. It is possible to gain surplus value from fair trade if conducted between different value systems. Buying a commodity at a place where it is cheap and selling it at a place where it is expensive brings profit, though each exchange is a fair trade. Industrial capital is, in this sense, the same as merchant capital insofar as it gains surplus from exchange between different value systems. What is unique to industrial capital, however, is that it has a special commodity: labor power. Capital obtains differentials by raising productivity of labor power through technological innovation and consequently lowering the value of labor power. While merchant capitals accumulation is based on a spatial difference due to natural and historical conditions, industrial capital is based on the incessant differentiation of value systems due to technological innovation. This accounts for the development of technology to an unprecedented level during the period of industrial capitalism. Capitalism is a system in which surplus value can be obtained from exchange through mutual consent*/that is, without extraeconomic coercion. Marx demonstrated that the system of the capitalist economy is based exclusively on the principles of commodity exchange. However, this observation alone does not elucidate the whole of the capitalist social formation. For example, Ricardos economic theory was really that of the polis, as can be observed in his book Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Marxs Capital, with its subtitle Critique of Political Economy, left out the matter of taxation completely. Taxation is not negligible to capital and is indispensable to economists such as Keynes, for instance, who attached importance to state intervention by means of taxation and redistribution. The reason Marx did not take notice of taxation was not because he completely ignored the issue of the state, but because he tried to examine the capitalist economy as it specifically arose from commodity exchange. To make this thoroughgoing examination possible, he bracketed the state and other modes of exchange. But in order for us to deal with the capitalist social formation, we need to take into account modes A and B of exchange, which Marx bracketed. Let us begin with mode B, or the state derived from it. The bourgeois revolution abolished the absolute monarchy and formed the state, where sovereignty rests with the people. This sovereignty, which was visible in the absolute monarch, is made
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invisible in the modern democratic state. The state comes to be identified with the government chosen by the people, and bureaucrats are regarded as public servants. However, the state as the sovereign remains even after the absolute monarch is gone, occasionally emerging at exceptional occasions*/namely, during war (Schmitt 1996). As Hegel remarked, the sovereign exists first and foremost against other states. At critical moments of the modern state the sovereign makes itself visible, no longer as the absolute monarch but as a charismatic political leader who wins overwhelming support from the masses. This is parallel to what Freud called the return of the repressed. Of course, underneath this return lies the strong demand of the state apparatus and capital. In The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx (1977) brilliantly analyzed how Bonaparte became emperor through the universal suffrage realized by the revolution in 1848. From this text, written within the context of a concrete social struggle, it is evident that Marx did not simply explain the political by reducing it to the economic base. Rather, the nature of the state emerges at its point of crisis just as the nature of capitalism emerges at its point of crisis. This fact has not changed. Second, concerning the mode of exchange A, it should be noted that even after the capitalist economy becomes dominant, various kinds of communities endure: the agrarian community, the municipal community, craft associations, kinship structures, religious sects, ethnic groups, and so on. The sovereign state, either the absolute monarch or the bourgeois state, strove to dissolve such multiple, independent groups. The state as sovereign was only established after these disparate groups were more or less dissolved. The people as sovereign are formed only after these various groups come to be subjected to the absolute monarch. However, this condition is still insufficient for the making of a nation. The nation does not appear until the peoples resistance to the sovereigns destruction of various communities occurs. Various communities were decomposed by the modern state and capitalism. They did not simply vanish, but were imaginatively recovered as nations. It is literally the imagined community, as Benedict Anderson (1991) has written. What the nation recovers are the principles of mutuality and reciprocity. Fraternity, one of the three slogans of the French Revolution, points in this direction. Meanwhile, the formation of the nation is hampered or retarded where strong communal ties remain, such as religion, kinship, and ethnicity. Generally, the capitalist social formation appears through a combination of all three modes of exchange: capital, state, and nation. These three are at once contradictory and complementary to one another. For instance, when the capitalist economy leads to class disparity and struggle, which is inevitable, the nation demands equality and the state alleviates class opposition by means of taxation and redistribution. These three elements thus compose a Borromean ring. It is impossible to overthrow one of them alone. If we try to overcome capitalism by means of either the state or nation, we will end up reinforcing the state or nation; Stalinism is the former case while Nazism is the latter. Given the numerous failures to overcome capitalism, nation, and state, most socialists have come to abandon the idea of ever overcoming them. Capital, nation, and state are now conceived as necessary evils, and all that can be done is gradual regulation and alteration. This is, in many respects, a return to the idea presented by Bernstein toward the end of the
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nineteenth century. We have been entrapped in the Borromean ring of capital-nationstate, and have abandoned the idea of X, the mode of exchange D. Our current task is to find out how we can get out of this Borromean ring, while being fully aware of its difficulties.
The Question of State

If we neglected the role of the state we could easily say that the capitalist economy is coming to an end, given that the source of surplus value, difference, is diminishing. To quote Marx again: Capitalist production . . . only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all-wealth*/the soil and the worker (Marx 1976, 638). This implies that the soil and the worker are the limits to industrial capitalism. In other words, industrial capitalism is limited by two natures, the soil and the worker, which capital cannot produce and which cannot become commodities unless fictionalized as such, to borrow from Karl Polanyis (1944) terminology. As for labor power as commodity, the reason for its significance is not that capital makes individuals work for wages. If it were simply about the workforce, slavery should be good enough. In fact, in some places the distinction between wage work and slavery is difficult to discern. What is indispensable to the capitalist economy is that workers buy back their own products while at the same time working for wages. Slaves never purchase. Farmers in the community do not purchase. The development of the capitalist economy is made possible by turning the reciprocal, autarchic, economy-bound farmers into proletarians who are consumers as well as workers. The capitalist economy completes itself when this autopoietic system is formed, where commodities continue to make and buy commodities. This system cannot be sustained unless the commodity (worker/consumers) continues to be replenished. Industrial capital can obtain enough surplus value for accumulation when there are plenty of new proletarians being released from rural communities. The growth of industrial capitalism goes hand in hand with deruralization. Nonetheless, this eventually reaches a saturation point. As a result, the rate of profit falls as wages rise, and consumption falls as goods proliferate. In order to secure the rate of profit, capital has to seek out new proletarians (workers/consumers) abroad: that is, turn a great number of farmers in underdeveloped areas into proletarians and throw them into the world market. Today this process is called globalization. Rapid economic growth is currently taking place in the most heavily populated areas of the world such as China, India, and Brazil. This prolongs world capitalism, but this, too, will soon reach a saturation point. What, then, will happen? Capital will no longer be able to find further exteriors. Furthermore, such a process would destroy another nature, the natural environment. Capitalist production has been able to continue unabated because it has had an exterior to which it was able to throw away the waste. Industrial capital (corporations) had no need to think of the cost of disposing of waste. In terms of metabolism (or material exchange), their treatment of the waste is the exploitation of nature, which necessarily results in environmental destruction. Capital should pay
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back to nature; they have to pay the cost necessary for sustaining the environment or, more precisely, pay the tax for it. This would obviously lower capitals rate of profit. For these two reasons, Wallerstein (2003) predicts that the end of capitalism is near.8 But, even after facing these obstacles, the capitalist social formation will not automatically come to an end. Certainly the capitalist economy will face a tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This was pointed out by Adam Smith and Ricardo even prior to Marx. Nevertheless, capitalism did not end with the fall in the rate of profit because at the time the state supported its endurance. The capital-based state tries to perpetuate capital at any cost. For example, the state and capital initiated imperialist policies, or the exportation of capital, in order to remove themselves from longstanding chronic depression in the 1870s. The same may be said of the process of globalization that began in the 1990s. Hardt and Negri (2000) have asserted that the situation in the 1990s should be labeled not imperialism but empire, which is the empire of capital. They seem to believe that nation-states are virtually insignificant during the time of empire (or, global capital), and that the multitude will counteract empire. By multitude they mean various human groups such as minorities, immigrants, and indigenous people. Although the multitude is not confined to the working class, their vision is similar to that of Marx and Proudhon around 1848. In fact, Hardt and Negri themselves note that what Marx called the proletariat should not be confined to the working class in the narrow sense, but should be taken to be very close to what they call the multitude. In that sense, Hardt and Negri advocate a world revolution by the multitude, if not by the proletariat. However, when talking about Empire, they have the empire of capital in mind. This effectively explains the state by reducing it to the economy; in other words, they reduce the different modes of exchange to the mode of exchange C, commodity exchange. This reduction necessarily follows from their overlooking the autonomy of the state*/an autonomy that derives from the mode of exchange B (plunderredistribution). Yet, the modes of exchange A and B persist and form the capitalist social formation of the Borromean ring, capital-nation-state. This will never be dissolved by capitalist globalization. Without understanding the nature of the state, the revolt of the multitude will only lead to consolidation of the state rather than its abolition. The capital-nation-states that were best represented by social welfare nations started to falter with the longstanding economic stagnation of the 1970s. After 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, capital and the state began to completely abandon social welfare. Neoliberalism has thus prevailed, prioritizing small govern8. Wallerstein (2003) points out that world capitalism has been dependent on the existence of a significant rural sector not yet engaged in the wage-labor market. This sector, however, is rapidly diminishing. The deruralization of the world is on a fast upward curve. It has occurred continuously over five hundred years, but has accelerated most dramatically since 1945. It is quite possible to foresee that the rural sector will have largely disappeared in another twentyfive years. Once the whole world-system is deruralized, the only option for capitalists is to pursue the class struggles where they are presently located. And here the odds are against therein. . . . The net result of all of this is a serious pressure on profit levels that will increase over time (Wallerstein 2003, 60).
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ment and global megacompetition. However, this movement never extinguishes the nation-state. First, neoliberal policies require strong states. Second, domestically these states should confront opposition from nationalists or democrats who give priority to social welfare and industrial protection. As a matter of fact, in most nations such confrontation takes up a great portion of the political agenda. In this regard, the Borromean ring of capital-nation-state is far from dissolved. Today, it is true that national economic policies (Keynesianism, for instance) do not function as well as before, as nations are more and more involved in the world economy. But what this entails is not the dissolution of nation-states within the world market, but rather into the old world empire, from which modern nation-states were articulated and shaped. In other words, the world empire functions as the ground, with nations as the figure. This is represented most significantly by the formation of the European Union, which was followed by the rise of old world empires such as China, India, and Russia. We should also add the Islamic bloc to the list, with the caveat that it was formed through religion beyond nationalism. The oppositional stance of regional blocs, based upon the old world empires, is often regarded as the clash of civilizations. For certain, such politico-economic regional unities are based upon the communality of the old world empires and their civilizations shared letters, religion, and currency, from which the modern nationstates are to be differentiated. However, these projects do not signify an overcoming [of] modernity.9 In Europe, the ideologues of the European Union claim that they are going beyond modern paradigms such as the nation. If so, they must admit that Islamic fundamentalists are doing the same. The revival of empires is nothing other than the policy of capital-nation-states under global competition and pressure. Accordingly, world capitalism (the empire of capital) reacts not with one empire, as Hardt and Negri anticipated, but with multiple empires. In this regard, the situation after 1990 should be considered a new version of imperialism. However, we should respect the fact that Hardt and Negri are attempting to look beyond the closure of the capital-nation-state, which entails having refused the option of social democracy that most postmodernists and poststructuralists have succumbed to. But this is all the more reason to critically examine their account. In my view, as I suggested earlier, they lack a structural understanding of the capitalist social formation, as was also the case with Proudhon and Marx around 1848. Proudhon, perhaps the first socialist, considered it imperative to abolish both the state and capitalism. According to him, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute
9. Philosophers of the Kyoto School, led by Kitaro Nishida, have given philosophical foundation to the Greater East Asian Coprosperity, which was imperialist Japans geopolitical strategy during the 1930s. Their philosophy can be summarized by the slogan of overcoming modernity, or overcoming the nation-state, of which capitalism and communism have been their products. The Kyoto School asserted that the idea of the Greater East Asian Coprosperity differed from imperialism or Soviet communism, where one nation dominates others, insofar as the task is to overcome the nation-state itself. In the Greater East Asian Coprosperity, each nation remains independent and autonomous yet forms the whole in harmony. This logic is akin to Leibnizian monadology. Needless to say, it is no more than the philosophical justification of Japanese imperialism. This logic, however, is still useful today and, though unintentionally, has actually been used in Europe and other places for forming regional communities.
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monarch, but the sovereign state remained intact, where people are ostensibly sovereign whereas living individuals, in truth, are subject to the state. What is more, in civil societies individuals are subject to money as sovereign; that is, they are subject to capitalism. In order to realize true democracy, it is crucial to abolish the state and capitalism. Compared with Proudhon, most socialists, such as Saint-Simon and Louis Blanc, were more or less heirs to the Jacobin tradition of the first French Revolution, holding a positive position in regard to the state being neutral and public. In contrast, Proudhon objected to this sort of political revolution, which he believed would only strengthen the state and destroy freedom even if it realized economic equality. He proposed economic revolution, presenting various plans for alternative economies which he thought would replace capitalism. One example was the producers cooperatives, where each member would function simultaneously as labor and management. Wage-labor (labor-commodity) is thereby superseded. Other examples included alternative forms of money and credit unions, which were attempts to abolish the sovereignty of money. Proudhon insisted that if the sovereignty of money remained after the abolition of the monarchy, democracy could not be realized. Proudhons idea was in essence to establish networks independent from both the state and the capitalist market. In short, his socialism consists in realizing the economy of reciprocal exchange on the basis of free individuals. His ideas are still effectual today. It is quite evident that Marx was strongly influenced by Proudhon. Throughout his life he shared Proudhons vision of socialism as a free association that would assume the place of the state. It is true, however, that from around 1847 Marx began to criticize Proudhons notion of economic revolution. He thought that a political revolution was pivotal. An alternative economy such as Proudhons would be impossible without seizing state power. For example, Marx thought that producers cooperatives would be unable to compete with capitalist enterprises. He fundamentally criticized Proudhon for his lack of understanding of the capitalist economy, which was one reason he went on to write Capital. Nonetheless, this did not lead Marx to abandon Proudhons associationism. In fact, while writing Capital and even through the First International, Marx continued to collaborate with Proudhonists. For instance, Bakunin condemned Marx for being a statist, merely on the ground that the state socialist Lassalle called himself Marxs disciple. In fact, Marx was opposed to Lassalles state socialism as represented in the Gotha Program (in 1876), which proposed the fostering of producers cooperatives with state support. Lassalles perspective basically represents the Hegelian consecration of the state as reason whereas Marx expected the state to disappear after the rise of associationism. Lassalles state socialism, we should note, was completely different from National Socialism (Nazism), but was the same as social democracy. Marxs critique should prove he was a thorough anarchist to the very end. Meanwhile, Proudhon and Proudhonists later altered their views, accepting the idea of temporarily taking state power. Proudhonists pursued this strategy during the Paris Commune of 1871, which Marx praised as a model of proletarian dictatorship. It would be completely wrong, therefore, to regard Marx as a statist. But how, then, was it possible to draw extreme statism (Stalinism) from his ideas? It is not because Marx was a statist, but because he
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was an anarchist; he believed that economic revolution would eventually dissolve the state. Both Proudhons and Marxs position on the state, and even their influential predecessor Spinoza, is based upon historical experiences of city communes within Europe. The commune is a community created as an association of individuals through mutual consent. However, the absolute monarch, while liberating these city communes from feudal regulations, stripped them of their autonomy and subjected them to the state and capitalism. If the state and capitalism were abolished, the civil society of the commune, or communism, could be restored. At least this was Marxs view ever since his early period, as he regarded the state as the self-alienation of civil society. But this view looks at the state from within. To repeat, the state exists in the face of other states. If it were not for external factors, the governmental version of community would be no more than a chieftainship, where the chief would lack immutable powers and would thus be easily dismissible. If we see the state from the perspective of community, a chief appears as a domineering figure presiding over a community that ultimately represents the self-alienation of the community. However, this alienation is derived from the outside, not from the inside. The same is true of the cities of Europe. Within these cities, the principles of reciprocity remained active. This mobilized democratic self-government and socialist policies against the class disparities resulting from the commodity economy. But it should not be forgotten that the cities were always surrounded by feudal states and lords, leaving neither holding an absolute position. Busy fighting with each other, they allowed the city communes to exist as autonomous. The state is the product of neither the citys internal class conflicts nor the self-alienation of the commune. The state, with bureaucracy and a standing army, came from outside the city. In short, the state is not the self-alienation of civil society or the commune. Whatever happens internal to the state, it will not dissolve insofar as other states remain intact. Restoring the commune therefore would not dissolve the state.10 There is no way of understanding the state if it is cut off from other states. The same is true of revolution. For example, if a revolution is successfully carried out in one nation, there remain other states that will intervene against it. This indeed
10. Marx was opposed to the uprisings in Paris during the First International, but when they were the finished, he praised the move as an example of a proletarian dictatorship. The Commune*/ reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of the organized force of their suppression*/ the political form of their social emancipation, instead of the artificial force appropriated by their oppressors (their own force opposed to and organized against them) of society wielded for their oppression by their enemies (Marx 1974, 246). But ten years later, Marx wrote in a letter to Domela-Nieuwenhuis, a Dutch labor activist, Perhaps you will refer me to the Paris Commune; but apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a city under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist, nor could it be. With a modicum of common sense, however, it could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of people*/ the only thing that could be reached at the time (Marx to Domela-Nieuwenhuis, 22 February 1881). These two seemingly contradictory remarks do not necessarily imply an inconsistency in Marxs opinion or even a change in his thought. It is quite possible that he held both opinions. That is, he viewed the state not only from the inside but also from the outside.
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occurred during the Paris Commune, which was destroyed in two months by the Germans. It was also the case with the Russian Revolution, where the revolutionary government had to defend itself by ultimately making itself a powerful state, inexorably leading to one-state socialism, or Stalinism. Marx never conceived of the possibility of one-state socialism, as he never expected socialism to be possible within a single nation. Revolution could only be multinational. Marx was correct, but is this really feasible? Marxists since Lenin and Trotsky have faced this problem. Marxism turned to statism not because Marx was a state-socialist but rather because, like Proudhon, he was an anarchist who believed that the state would soon dissolve. Thus, no matter how passionately we criticize statism, it does not keep us from falling into the trap of statism. What remains necessary is the recognition that the state consists in its monopoly of violence, while always existing against other states. The vision of a simultaneous world revolution is mythical. Even today it tacitly functions, though we no longer use the expression simultaneous world revolution. Hardt and Negris global revolt of the multitude is one prominent example. Such a revolt might break out in isolated areas, but even these would soon be squashed by states. People would react with panic and fright when faced with the anarchic situation, and would demand a reinforcement of the state for more security and protection. This would ultimately result in a fortification of the capital-nation-state. This duly applies to the simultaneous world revolution of the past. Far from overthrowing the state and capitalism, the revolution in 1848 resulted in the establishment of an advanced version of the capital-nation-state. For instance, Bonaparte in France and Bismarck in Prussia facilitated state-sponsored industrial capitalism through social policies and welfare initiatives that eventually led to imperialism.
Conclusion
We are confined in the Borromean ring of the capital-nation-state. Social democracy, which regulates capitalism and redistributes wealth by way of parliamentary democracy, is not free from this fact. More often than not, social democracy functions as chauvinistic nationalism. In order to get out of this deadlock, countermovements against the state and capitalism in each nation are cause sine qua non. Concretely, this requires the creation of a noncapitalist alternative economy based upon reciprocal exchange at the level of transnational networks*/that is, without state dependence. But if these movements were to reach a certain level of development, they would certainly face disruption by the state and capital; transnational networks would be blocked and divided. Therefore, countermovements from outside or above are just as necessary. The state cannot be overcome only from within or from below, as it exists against other states (enemies). It is just as impossible to abolish one state on its own. If we cannot count on a simultaneous world revolution, what else is possible? In this regard, the Kantian idea of a world republic and perpetual peace are suggestive. These ideas have typically been read as part of a conservative pacifist manifesto. As I understand
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them, however, Kant is proposing nothing other than a gradual, simultaneous world revolution to abolish both the state and capital. We have observed how Kantian moral law leads to his economic plan of superseding capitalism. In addition, if applied to the political, it will lead to a federation of states that supersedes the state. Kant published the treatise To Perpetual Peace in 1795, when Napoleon was about to rise to power in the course of the French Revolution. It may be said that Kant anticipated the new type of war emerging among nation-states, which was fervently admired by Romantic philosophers such as Fichte and Hegel. The Kantian idea was ignored throughout the nineteenth century, but gained respect at the time of the First World War, when the League of Nations was formed in accordance with Kants notion of perpetual peace. The League of Nations was ineffective, however, mainly because it was not ratified by the United States. It simply could not prevent the Second World War. The United Nations, formed following the Second World War, has also proved to be without any real power. It has often been criticized for becoming a tool for hegemonic nations to legitimate their purposes, and is even looked down upon for having to rely on the hegemonic nations military forces. The idea of solving international conflicts through the United Nations is often cynically denounced as Kantian idealism. Such criticisms of the United Nations can be traced back to Hegel, who mockingly criticized Kants design of a federation of nations, and this criticism has been repeated ever since. In Hegels view, a federation fails without a superpower that can punish the nations that violate the law. In other words, there can be no peace without a hegemonic state. For Hegel, world history is nothing but the stage on which nationstates compete with one another. The world-historical idea is realized by a hegemonic state. The problem is, however, that such a state may simply seek its own interest. Thus, the world-historical idea comes to be actualized through a subjective will or desire, as was the case with Napoleon. Hegel called this the cunning of Reason. Following Hegel, Marxists have ridiculed Kantian cosmopolitanism. Today this position is repeated even by neoconservative ideologues in the United States. (Incidentally, it is not surprising to learn that many of them used to be Trotskyites.) After 9/11, these ideologues attacked Europe for siding with the United Nations, again dismissing the organization as old Kantian idealism. However, these politicians remain unaware that they themselves have based their position upon an old Hegelian idealism. The United Nations, however, in its present state is far from the Kantian idea of the federation of nations. Kant was not as na as he has been criticized for being. In ve fact, he shared with Hobbes a deeply pessimistic view of the state and human beings. He was fully aware of the deep-seated violence in human nature, which he called unsocial sociability. At the same time, he believed that this violence could ultimately be contained. Interestingly, he did not count on human intelligence or good will for this containment. He wrote, That means which nature employs to bring about the development of innate capacities is that of antagonism within society, in so far as this antagonism becomes in the long run the cause of law-governed social order. By antagonism, I mean in this context the unsocial sociability of men, that is, their tendency to come together in society, coupled, however, with a continual resistance which constantly threatens to break this society up (1970, 44).
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According to Kant, the federation of states, and subsequently a world republic, will be brought about not by human goodwill and intelligence but through unsocial sociability and war. We could call this the cunning of nature in contrast to Hegels cunning of reason. Kants optimism, in the end, was backed by a strong pessimism.11 Meanwhile, Hegels view was dominant throughout the nineteenth century. The struggle for hegemony among empires continued, eventually resulting in the First World War. However, the devastation brought on by the war forced people to reconsider the notion of perpetual peace. In this sense, it may be said that the League of Nations was actualized by the cunning of nature. The same is true of the United Nations, which was a result of the Second World War. This is not to suggest, from historical experience, that we must await the next world war to bring about a higher form of the federation of nations. Rather, it is to suggest the fundamental importance of the idea. Were it not for such a regulative idea as the world republic, states would remain and war would forever be repeated. Kant, we should remember, distinguished between constitutive and regulative ideas, or rather the constitutive use of reason and the regulative use of reason. The Marxist attempt to abolish the state and capital, since the Russian Revolution, is an example of the constitutive use of reason par excellence. Certainly, it brought about the violence of reason. But it does not necessarily follow that reason in general ought to be denied. As Kant has shown, the critique of reason, or the critique of its grounding that is caused by the constitutive use of reason, cannot be made but by reason. Postmodernist discourses have attempted to dispose of this idea as illusory. But these postmodernist attempts are themselves mere illusion and are often carried out by those who were once possessed by such illusion and later became disillusioned. The idea is, by definition, illusion (Schein), but it is a transcendental illusion in the sense that it is indispensable and immovable. As a matter of fact, while intellectuals have been mocking the idea as a grand narrative, people were attracted by religious fundamentalisms that seem to counter the state and capital in their own way. Intellectuals should not mock this, but be ashamed of their own inaction and incompetence. Second, the idea of superseding the state and capital is not a constitutive idea, but a regulative idea that would continue to function as an index for us to gradually approach, despite its not being fully realizable. This idea is neither a fantasy of the future society nor an arbitrary plan designed by the intellect. Rather, it comes from natural historical necessity*/namely, the inexorable structures formed through the relation between humans and nature, and between humans themselves. This idea can
11. Kant claims that unsocial sociability or antagonism in human nature would eventually bring peace, or the self-control of violence. But how is this possible? I believe the Freudian notion of the death drive, or aggression drive, is the most suggestive. In 1920, Freud began to regard the superego as the internalization of the aggressive drive rather than as the internalization of external social rules. He soon after came to acknowledge the positive role of the superego, as well as civilization, which went against the prevailing criticism of the 1920s that resulted in Nazism. For details, see Karatani (2007).
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be formulated as X, derived from the mode of exchange D. Accordingly X, as a regulative idea, will persist so long as modes A, B, and C persist.
Acknowledgments
This essay was presented at the Rethinking Communism plenary session of the Rethinking Marxism 2006 Conference, held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in November 2006.
References
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined communities: Reections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Rev. ed. New York: Verso. Bataille, G. 1991. The accursed share. Vol. 1, Consumption. Trans. R. Hurley. New York: Zone. Baudrillard, J. 1975. The mirror of production. Trans. M. Poster. New York: Telos. Cohen, H. [1914] 1984. Einleitung mit kritischen Nachtrag zur Geschichte der Materialismus von F. A. Lange. In Werke, 3d ed., vol. 5. Hildesheim: Olms. Graeber, D. 2004. Fragments of an anarchist anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hess, M. [1845] 1961. Uber das Geldwesen. In Philosophische und Sozialistische Schriften 1837/1850: Eine Auswahl, ed. A. Cornu and W. Monke. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Kant, I. [1784] 1970. Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan intent, Fourth thesis. In Kants political writings, ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ______. 1998. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Ed. M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karatani, K. 2003. Transcritique: On Kant and Marx. Trans. S. Kohso. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ______. 2006. Towards the world republic: Beyond capital-nation-state (in Japanese). Tokyo. ______. 2007. World intercourse: A transcritical reading of Kant and Freud. Trans. H. Yoshikuni. umbr(a): semblance, 139/65. Marx, K. [1871] 1974. First draft of The civil war in France. In The First International and after, trans. D. Fernbach. New York: Penguin/NLR. ______. [1867] 1976. Capital. Vol. 1. Trans. B. Fowkes. New York: Penguin/NLR. ______. [1852] 1977. The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers. ______. [1859] 2000. Preface to a critique of political economy. Trans. D. McLellan. In Karl Marx: Selected writings, 2d ed., ed. D. McLellan, 424/7. New York: Oxford University Press. Marx, K., and F. Engels. [1845] 1970. The German ideology. Ed. C. J. Arthur. New York: International Publishers. Mauss, M. 1968. Sociologie et anthropologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Polanyi, K. 1944. The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Boston: Beacon.
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Schmitt, C. 1996. The concept of the political. Trans. G. Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wallerstein, I. 2003. The decline of American power. New York: The New Press. Wittfogel, K. A. 1957. Oriental despotism: A comparative study of total power. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, The Point and Purpose of Marxs Notion of Class (17/1) A class awareness might motivate workers to demand new laws that placed the collectivity of workers in the position of receiving the surpluses that same collectivity has produced. Such laws would resemble those that outlawed slavery and serfdom: they would add exploitation to the proscribed intolerables that a modern, liberated society rejected as incompatible with its values. + Giorgio Agamben I am sure that you are more pessimistic than I am . . .: An interview (16/2) There is a phrase from Marx . . . that I like a lot: the desperate situation of society in which I live fills me with hope. I share this vision: hope is given to the hopeless.

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Four basic modes of exchange

The Mode of Exchange

Historical derivations from different modes of exchange

The Social Formation

Capitalist Social Formation

The Question of State

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