[ A Review of Socialist Register 2023]
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CAPITAL AND RESISTANCE  
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John Clarke
May 26, 2023
The Bullet
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_ A Review of Socialist Register 2023 _

, Socialist Register

 

Socialist Register 2023: Capital and Politics
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what the editors, Greg Albo, Nicole Aschoff, and Alfredo Saad-Filho,
describe in the Preface as “a careful accounting of the
organizational means by which capitalists accumulate assets and wealth
[so as to] understand the parameters of power in capitalist society”
(p. x). Knowing the class enemy is central to this volume.

This volume is the first in nearly forty years in which Leo Panitch
didn’t play a direct role. Though last year’s volume was produced
following his tragic death in 2020, he’d been heavily involved in
setting its perspectives and goals. The present volume represents both
a tribute to Leo and an effort to carry on, now that his “tenure of
editorial leadership” (p. ix) has come to an end.

The book thus has two components. In the first, a taking “stock of
‘capital and politics’ at this enormously complex moment in global
capitalism.” There is then a shift to “Leo’s writing and
political engagements in the context of the socialist challenge
today.” This involves consideration of his “assessment of the
making of global capitalism and its consequences for state power and
socialist strategy” (p. ix).

Know the Enemy

The first chapter by Adam Hanieh examines transformations in the
production of oil. The industry had been dominated by a handful of US
and Western European companies, but oil-producing states asserted
their interests, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) was formed in 1960 (p. 3). National oil companies (NOCs)
emerged (p. 4) and a “wave of industrial consolidation” among the
IOCs occurred, along with a turn “toward environmentally risky,
technologically intensive oil production in areas where oil was
difficult to extract” (p. 5).

The growth in Asian oil imports prompted a shift in oil refining away
from North America and Europe. “Asian refining capacity tripled
between 1992 and 2020 so that its share of world refining capacity
reached 37%. At the same time, refining capacity in the Middle East
“more than doubled between 1992 and 2020” (p. 11).

Despite “the urgency of phasing out oil production altogether,”
the twelve largest oil companies “are planning to collectively spend
$103-million each day for the rest of the decade on new oil and gas
projects… the major oil companies – NOCs and IOCs alike – are
driving us squarely toward ecological collapse” (p. 20).

The second chapter, by Nicholas Graham and William K. Carroll,
explores climate breakdown and finds a “deep symbiosis between
fossil fuels and capital accumulation” (p. 26). This relationship
“has only deepened through subsequent phases of capitalist
development” (p. 27).

The authors examine the Canada’s dreadful contribution to “extreme
extraction,” including “bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, along
with fracked shale gas and offshore oil.” Despite questions as to
viability, “Canadian business has pursued a sell-out strategy
designed to valorize carbon assets by pushing them in volume to market
while they still hold value” (p. 29).

The chapter explores the “regime of obstruction” (p. 29) that
fossil fuel companies have constructed to minimize action on climate
change. It considers “[c]limate capitalism… an emergent
accumulation strategy to redirect investments from fossil fuels toward
decarbonization and renewable energy” but plausibly characterizes
this as an effort to “accommodate pressure” (p. 34) that offers
too little too late.

The chapter examines climate-justice movements and advocates an
“energy democracy” where “corporate control over production and
allocation is replaced with participatory democratic planning” (p.
40).

Corporate Strategies

In the third chapter, by Rafeef Ziadah, explores logistics and the
maritime industry. Today, “the management of commodity circulation
through complex, networked infrastructures and internationalized
supply chains, underpins contemporary capitalism” (p. 48). This
“puts emphasis on standardization and systems of management of goods
in motion, while minimizing and disciplining the labour time necessary
to move them” (p. 49).

The focus of maritime trade has shifted east because of the growing
economic power of China (p. 50). There has been considerable
concentration of ownership among both port operators and within the
shipping industry, reflecting “a strategy of optimizing corporate
control over integrated systems of production and circulation” (p.
51).

State-owned enterprises play a considerable role, and two of the five
largest port operators are majority state owned. “…the capitalist
state remains vital to guaranteeing legal regimes, investment, and
financing arrangements” (p. 53).

The shift to containerization and the reordering of the workforce has
had an impact, but the supply chains and networks of the new system
have their own vulnerabilities. “It is crucial…that the left
better understand the pivotal role of operational logistics for the
global circulation of commodity capital” (p. 59).

The fourth chapter, by Patrick Bond, considers the crisis of
multilateralism in the face of geopolitical turmoil and argues that
present upheavals have upset an earlier balance. He considers the
example of “vaccine apartheid” (p. 68), the failure to reach
consensus on climate action (p. 72), and discord in the face of the
invasion of Ukraine (p. 79).

Bond suggests that the “impasse of capitalist multilateralism…
needs to be placed in the context of the most intense geopolitical
turmoil besetting interstate relations over the neoliberal period”
(p. 77). He argues that the “dilemma confronting multilateral
economic coordination can be seen as the perpetual problem of how to
displace ‘over-accumulated capital’…This is a process which has
intensified uneven and combined development everywhere across the
world market.”

The role of the West is clear but “[b]ecause they exhibited some of
the world’s worst such economic characteristics, the BRICS offered
no alternative to a world system where, driven by overaccumulation of
capital, territorial tensions continue worsening over how to defend
against diverse forms of wealth devaluation” (p. 78). Thus,
“…socialist strategies must return to a stage of contestation over
local and national power rather than retain fantasies of negotiated
multilateral solutions…” p. 84).

In the fifth chapter, Stephan F. Diamond challenges the “corporate
governance myth,” traces the emergence of the view that
“corporations should be viewed as powerful political institutions
and not just as objects of mere economic interest” (p. 92). This has
gone over to the notion of “corporate social responsibility.” Thus
“many modern stakeholder advocates want to ‘democratize’ the
corporate entity” (p. 93).

Diamond argues that corporations “are ruled by capitalists in order
that capitalists can rule society.” Their “only ‘purpose’ is
to carry out the laws of the capitalist economic system – capital
accumulation and valorization – whatever the wider social
consequences of that mandate may be” (p. 114).

Next, Charmaine Chua and Spencer Cox explore Amazon’s corporate
model as one that is based on “‘just-in-time’ consumer
delivery” that integrates “formerly distinct spheres of
production, transportation, and consumption into a single e-commerce
system aimed at the long-term consolidation and transformation of the
retail industry into a vast logistical enterprise” (p. 125).

The authors note that Amazon’s “warehouse model not only
reorganized the geographies of supply chain management, and the
logistics industry as a whole, but also drew its labour force from the
surplus populations increasingly displaced from metropolitan
centres” (pp. 132-33).

Under these conditions, “[o]rganizing at the intersection of race
and class requires moving into the suburbs (and) [b]uilding bridges
across ethnic, racial and gender divides” (p. 135). It also means
“[l]abour organizers need to connect shop floor concerns to the
issues of working-class people in the cities and communities in which
they live” (p. 136).

The chapter concludes by observing that there “is much for the North
American left to learn from these struggles to build autonomous
working-class organizations rooted in the everyday lives of workers”
(p. 138).

Kyle Bailey confronts the concept of “stakeholder capitalism” in
the next chapter, focusing on the case of Unilever. He notes that, for
major companies, “a legitimation deficit has been steadily rising
since the ‘lock-in’ of neoliberal reforms” (p. 143).
Corporations have responded by promoting a “reconceiving (of) the
intersection between society and corporate performance” (p. 145).
They would present themselves as being interested in more than
profits.

Faced with the anti-globalization movements of the 1990s, Unilever was
one of those that put on a human face. It joined the World Business
Council for Sustainable Development and adopted several programs in
line with this approach. However, as Bailey shows, this tactical shift
isn’t only about a refurbished image; its initiatives “exploit
market opportunities” arising from the campaigns that are taken up
and promote the “marketization of climate and social justice
‘activism’” (p. 153).

Bailey argues that the “left can’t settle for a
‘multi-stakeholder’ variant of capitalism…(Challenging) the
social and ecological harms being wrought by the major corporations
today necessitates posing worker-centred, eco-socialist alternatives
to capitalist exploitation and social irresponsibility” p. 158).

In the eighth chapter, Richard Saunders looks at efforts to regulate
extractive interests and local governments to prevent trade in
“conflict diamonds.” This has employed “notions of public
participation, tripartism, and transparency in new private-public
regulatory conventions” (p. 167). These underlay the formation of
the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KP) in 2003.

Saunders points out that while “formally multi-stakeholder in
membership and internal governance, the new initiatives… were
dominated from the outset by industry and government” (p. 167). The
Civil Society Coalition (CSC), involved in the KP, “pointed to a
rising wave of diamond-related violence in a number of member
countries.” However, “[b]y the 2010s, groups of allied governments
formed within the KP to blunt efforts at internal KP reforms and
derail efforts to sanction non-compliant countries” (p. 169).

The chapter details the consistent thwarting of regulatory efforts and
focuses on horrendous examples of corruption and violence in Zimbabwe.
Saunders concludes that “African social movements (must) imagine,
identify, and build the political and social conditions that will be
an essential ingredient in any popular gains on the front of
extractive regulation…” (p. 185).

Prospects for Resistance

In the ninth chapter, Minqi Li examines China’s “regime of
accumulation,” and the potential for working-class resistance. Long
hours and harsh working conditions underlie China’s rapid economic
advances. At this time, standard forms of exploitation are being
augmented by “‘new patterns of employment’ made possible by
platform technologies… as of 2020, 84 million workers were employed
in the platform sectors and, and more broadly defined ‘flexible
employment’ reached about 200 million” (pp. 191-92).

The chapter shows that, despite grim working conditions, wage growth
has maintained a level of social stability. However, this is “now
beginning to be overtaken by various living costs that are not fully
captured in the official price index” (p. 197), particularly housing
costs. Moreover, “[a]s China’s rural surplus labour force
approaches depletion, there will no longer be a reserve army of
millions of workers who are willing to accept harsh working conditions
in exchange for higher living standards if they move into urban
areas” (p. 202).

Already, young workers are ‘lying flat’ and “refusing to marry,
have children, or participate in the pursuit of unnecessary
consumption” (p. 203). This may be an early indication of a huge
intensification of class struggle.

The tenth chapter, by Pun Ngai and Chen Peier, deals with class
conflict within high-speed rail (HSR) projects that China has turned
to. This must “be understood as a strategic response to the global
financial crisis in 2008,” with some 40% of government stimulus
going into transportation infrastructure (p. 213). Thus, “a
monopolistic railway dominated by state-owned enterprises has
gradually been developed for capital valorization, with state backed
competitive advantages in both domestic and foreign markets” (p.
215).

The chapter outlines the massive assault on working conditions within
HSR projects (p. 217), and it shows how struggles have been taken up
within this system (p. 219). It argues that these massive developments
can “create internal contradictions that intensify class conflicts
and spur the formation of the infrastructural power of labour (and)
the struggles that are making a new Chinese working-class” (p. 221).

Next, Armando Boito explores political divisions in Brazil over recent
decades, leading up to “neo-fascism” under Bolsonaro. Boito
considers this from the standpoint of “cleavages in the Brazilian
capitalist class, between a bourgeois fraction that is fully
integrated into foreign capital…and another that… seeks to limit
the internationalization of Brazilian dependent capitalism” (p.
225).

In a “first attempt to impose neoliberal capitalism” in the 1990s,
the section of the bourgeoisie closest to the imperialist powers
prevailed (p. 230). The first portion of this century saw the
“political program of the big internal bourgeoisie become dominant
through the neo-developmentalist economic policy of the PT-led
governments…” (p. 230).

Boito argues that the fragmentation of social and economic struggles
has led to “the working-classes…being integrated into one of the
main bourgeois fractions” (p. 232). This relative weakness allows
contending capitalist interests to dominate.

The restored ascendency of neoliberalism was achieved under Bolsonaro.
The chapter was written before the victory of Lula, but it notes
Bolsonaro’s hostility to the electoral system and how it suggests a
“need for neoliberalism to resort to fascism, which destabilizes
democracy in Brazil…” (p. 244).

Capitalism and the State

The Register’s final essays considers “Leo Panitch and the
Socialist Challenge,” beginning with a chapter by Stephen Mahar and
Scott Aquanno on Panitch’s contributions to exploring “the
arrangement of social forces, the structure of capitalist class power,
the specificity of state institutions, and the like, within a
particular historical moment” (p. 247).

The chapter bases its conclusions on a careful examination of
“specific institutional forms of capital and state” (p. 248) as
they have developed over recent decades. It examines the strategic
shifts that have taken place and the central role of the US state
within this process.

The authors look at the response to the financial crisis of 2008 and
the consolidation of a “risk state” to manage the economy through
quantitative easing and other initiatives. “What had seemed at first
to be a radical extension of state power into the heart of the
financial system was now organic to its routine functioning” (p.
256).

The chapter points to the growth of asset management companies and
explores the role of the “Big Three” of these formations. “As
the asset management companies are effectively permanent owners of the
largest corporations in the economy, equally permanent
interconnections between these financiers and industrial
corporations” (p. 259).

The plausible conclusion is drawn that the “formation of the new
finance capital does not seem to have created space for a meaningful
social democratic class compromise. Rather, this has served to
entrench the consensus among all factions of capital around
globalization and class discipline” (p. 264).

Like all the chapters, this one is marked by the concreteness with
which it approaches its subject matter. Firm conclusions are drawn and
insights of value to all socialists are presented. Yet the broad
conclusions that the authors form left me troubled.

The picture painted is of a system that remains robust. The turn to
financialization has been done from a position of strength. Crises
happen, but they often make the system stronger. The hegemonic power
of US imperialism seems unshakable. We are up against an enormously
powerful, if not invincible, opponent by this reckoning.

Yet, can we say that the sluggish recovery that followed the Great
Recession was an indication of capitalist strength and stability? Has
the “risk state” been so successful in containing the threat of
crises that we should accept its long term effectiveness? The US is
still hegemonic, but isn’t there some evidence, in the rivalry it
faces and its own internal problems and contradictions, that its
future looks uncertain?

If we are to consider socialism as a realistic bet, there is no doubt
that a conscious political initiative must be taken up and that
capitalism won’t fall over by itself. However, this subjective
factor may have more to work with, in terms of the limitations and
contradictions that exist within the system, than this chapter
suggests.

In the next chapter, Panagiotis Sotiris looks at strategies around
mass parties with a view to Panitch’s work on these questions. In
the last decade or so, a range of left electoral initiatives have
unfolded. Their shortcomings prompt the question asking “by which
means can the left take state power through a democratic election and
begin the process of… socialist transition?” (p. 275).

The author accepts the possibility of “the collapse of the state and
forms of more or less violent insurrection” but suggests that an
electoral road must be viewed as possible, in order to avoid being
“theoretically rigid and politically sectarian” (p. 275). Sotiris
points out that Poulantzas rejected the Leninist concept of dual power
but feels that “what (Poulantzas) suggests is actually close to a
dual power strategy. He insists on autonomous social movements and
subaltern organization…” (p. 277).

In my view, despite working class organization existing in both the
‘in and against the state’ approach and a revolutionary
perspective, a very different notion of dual power is at play that
reflects opposed perspectives with regard to the prospects for
transforming the capitalist state.

Sotiris suggests that a “withering away” of the captured
capitalist state “can only rest on the increased intervention of the
popular masses in the State” (p. 278). This social mobilization will
be needed to overcome the “reaction of the enemy,” and we may
agree that ruling classes will oppose their own dispossession. It will
also be one of “two parallel forms of power – ‘a left government
and a second power composed of popular organs” (p. 278). The
possibility of major differences between the two is acknowledged, but
a creative tension is hoped for.

The concept of dual power that is advanced here isn’t one of
independent working-class formations emerging in a period of crisis
and representing the basis for a different state power. On the
contrary, an elected government takes control of the capitalist state
and transforms it into a mechanism to create socialism. The mass
working-class organizations in this situation may demonstrate some
impatience, but they are working in a partnership and provide the
lifeblood for incremental transformation by way of “non-reformist
reforms” (p. 283).

Sotiris suggests that “profound changes inside the state, especially
with regard to democratic control and oversight over repressive
apparatuses such as the police, armed forces and judiciary” could be
implemented. In my opinion, the hope that ‘democratic control’
over cops and military commanders can neutralize them is unfounded.
The central banks and finance ministries aren’t any better of a
prospect. As to the ruling class itself, while it may grant
concessions in the face of social mobilization, it won’t be
pressured into accepting its own destruction.

I fear that the effort to rework the capitalist state would come to
grief and that the dual power that Sotiris envisages would end in a
major defeat unless the ‘popular organs’ took matters into their
own hands.

Vehicle for Socialism

In the fourteenth chapter, Madeleine Davis explores Leo Panitch’s
thinking on the British Labour Party. His last major work was
published following the defeat of the Corbyn project, and this cast
its shadow over the prospects for “a Labour new left” that could
“transcend the limits of parliamentary socialism.”

This task has unfolded within a political institution marked by “its
structural integration and subordination within the British class and
national system that continually frustrated efforts to transform it
into a “‘broadly mass and democratic party capable of acting as a
vehicle for socialism” (p. 289).

The chapter provides an overview of Panitch’s contribution to this
effort to create a means of advancing socialism. The overall failure
to take the Party in such a direction is explored, not only from the
standpoint of its right wing and its links to the British
establishment but also the shortcomings of the parliamentary left.
“Crucially, within the Labour Party itself, the myth of ‘broad
church’ unity masked a structural subordination of the left within
it” (p. 292).

The emergence of the Starmer leadership and its mission to ensure
Labour will be a loyal representative of the ruling establishment
would surely reinforce the conclusion that the limits of social
democracy are clear and that hopes for a new left must be directed
elsewhere.

The final chapter takes the form of an interview with Leo Panitch that
was conducted by Rafael Khachaturian entitled “Against Pessimism: A
Life on the Left.” In it, Leo speaks of his formative experiences,
growing up in a working-class Jewish family in Winnipeg. “My father
in particular was a self-educated socialist…it was a political
intellectual milieu” (p. 316). He traces his university experiences,
his time in Britain, and the enormous influence on his development of
Ralph Miliband.

Leo pointedly rejects “value neutral” scholarship and argues that
“[of] course, your research is governed, motivated and stimulated by
your values… When your research is orientated to its strategic
implications, you’ve got to really make sure that you’re not
finding inconvenient facts and burying them, because that’s going to
affect whether your strategy is right or wrong” (p. 319).

In many dealings with Leo over the years, we often agreed and
sometimes disagreed, but the seriousness and integrity that the above
quote suggests was always in evidence. Khachaturian’s assertion that
he was “one of the most dedicated and tireless intellectuals on the
Western left” (p. 313) is fully justified.

This volume of Socialist Register offers a concrete appraisal of the
forces of global capitalism and the possibilities for working-class
resistance. Each chapter provides information and analysis of
considerable importance. The perspectives advanced, especially on the
means by which a socialist society can be created, represent an
important current of left opinion. As such, this volume should be
studied and discussed widely. •

John Clarke is a writer and retired organizer for the Ontario
Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). Follow his tweets at @JohnClarke
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