Oeconomicus Volume VII 2004 2005 Reflections on the Empire of Capital By Kevin Young Institute of Political Economy Carleton University Ellen Meiksins Wood has contributed a great deal in recent years to the debate on the origin and nature of capitalism Both Empire of Capital 2003 and an earlier work The Origin of Capitalism 2002 argue that the historical uniqueness of capitalism lies in the way that it transforms the market from a source of opportunity into an imperative thus instituting a system of uniquely economic coercion Market dependence ensures that the propertylessness of producers and the rigorously competitive environment of appropriators drive the former to sell their labour on the market and the latter to engage in profit maximization through improvements in labour productivity For Wood the basic objective of the capitalist system is the production and self expansion of capital Wood 2002 3 The imperatives of competition accumulation and profit maximization mean that exchange value is put before use value and in Wood s terms profit before people Wood 2003 14 Drawing heavily on this conception of capitalism Wood s recent book Empire of Capital is an impressive work that provides valuable insight into the debates about globalization and modern imperialism by contrasting many of history s great empires against each other and by discussing the uniqueness of the present capitalist empire Unlike former colonial empires which dominated territory and subject people s by means of extra economic coercion by military conquest and often direct political rule capitalist imperialism is able to exercise its rule through economic means by manipulating the forces of the market Wood 2003 12 While insistently emphasizing that modern empire is as dependent as ever on states for its reproduction Wood relies on her trademark characterization of capitalism as an historically unprecedented system under which market imperatives constitute the distinctive form of social governance in society While extra economic coercion annexation of territory and the pursuit of trade are common to all forms of empire the British imperial project was the first to be driven and rationalized by the logic of capitalism Likewise today s global capitalist empire is driven by similar imperatives but with more a frightening degree of coercive power accompanying it than in any previous time While Wood is careful to emphasize that the internationalization of capitalist imperatives was aided in some significant instances by the dynamics of military rivalry such as the pressure of military capacity faced by France and Germany in response to an industrializing capitalist Britain Wood 2003 119 her emphasis is clearly on the importance of states in reproducing the conditions for capitalist reproduction For Wood although the dynamics of economic coercion provided by the market mechanism are a distinctive form of social governance such a dynamic is made possible by a system of multiple states 111 Kevin Young The very fact that globalization has extended capital s purely economic powers far beyond the range of any single nation state means that global capital requires many nation states to perform the administrative and coercive functions that sustain the system of property and provide the kind of day to day regularity predictability and legal order that capitalism needs more than any other social form Wood 2003 114 While Wood s argument is decidedly materialist she does not neglect the importance of intellectuals and ideas An admirable feature of Empire of Capital is that different key intellectuals are associated with the imperial ambitions of their respective sovereigns Hugo Grotius for example with his just war theory and emphasis on international conflict is associated with the Dutch commercial empire William Petty and John Locke theorists who devoted much of their attention to an explicit defense of expropriation of land based on new and distinct theories of value are associated with British imperialism For Wood it is the particular rationalization of improvement based on potential exchange values of land that provided the justification for land expropriation and the administration of capitalist property rights during subsequent development The way that empire was executed and rationalized in the British empire was different in this respect The logic of capital was extended even further after the First World War this time with the United States at the primary helm of dominance While the above description certainly does not do justice to the many subtleties of her argument many could rightly identify obvious shortcomings with her conception of capitalism Several shortcomings immediately come to mind the existence of oligopoly the role of finance making market imperatives less imperious the partial socialization of many capitalist societies and the absence of the absolute propertylessness of producers in advanced capitalist countries all complicate her system and certainly challenge its totalizing character At the same time Empire of Capital emphasizes extremely well the fact that governance and coercion occur in a historically unique manner under capitalism that social governance often operates through market imperatives For all the poststructuralist and Neo Gramscian critiques of Neo liberalism that currently proliferate within the critical globalization literature it is enlightening to have an author explain the consolidation of rule not just by the advanced organization of a hegemonic bloc or by particular discourses but to take matters back to the inner logic of capitalist development To be sure Wood is adroit in emphasizing the importance of states in managing capitalism s requirements or in consolidating conformity to the logic of capital Her emphasis and her insight above many others however is that in capitalist societies the governing dynamic of market imperatives acts as a substitute for traditional forms of more direct and conscious social governance This is not to say that such a dynamic is without its limits or ideological accompaniments For Wood the separation of the political from the economic in capitalism is an important quality that has assured its long life thus far since the moment of appropriation and the moment of coercion appear to be separated 112 Oeconomicus Volume VII 2004 2005 While emphasizing these points repeatedly Wood recognizes that social dislocation and the existence of collective
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