Abstract
The world economy appears to us at first sight as a multitude of unregulated exchanges between individuals; an exchange based on the laws of supply and demand which depend in the last analysis upon the free expression of individual needs and creativities in a situation of general scarcity.1 These are what we call ‘economic’ activities, and apparently clearly distinguishable from those which are oriented towards the need to maintain order in society and which relate in the last analysis to the nature of the state which is defined by its monopoly of the powers of physical coercion.2 These apparently distinct latter activities are characterised as ‘political’ and are predominantly oriented towards national governments since it is they that have the exclusive juridical right to enforce contracts. At the international level politics is then seen not as existing in its own right, but as a function of a global system whose development is viewed as the outcome of the interactions between the autonomous nation states of which it is composed.3
Covenants being but words and breath, have no force to oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what it has from the public sword.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan
The differing interests of producers and consumers may come into collision with each other; and although a fair balance between them on the whole may be brought about automatically, still their adjustment also requires a control which stands above both and is consciously undertaken.
G. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
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Notes and References
See L. Robbins, Essay on the nature and significance of economic science, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1935) p. 16.
For the classic definition see M. Weber, Economy and society, eds G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) p. 52. ‘A ruling organisation will be called “political” insofar as its existence and order is continuously safeguarded within a given territorial area by the threat and application of physical force on the part of the administrative staff. A compulsory political organisation with continuous operations will be called a “state” insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.’
For a good recent review of the orthodox arguments presenting international relations as an anarchical but ordered system in which ‘modern states have formed, and continue to form, not only a system of states but also an international society’, see H. Bull, The anarchical society (London: Macmillan, 1977) p. 24.
K. Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 84.
And this holds for both the laissez faire and interventionist states, whatever the claims made by the supporters of the former. As Gramsci notes, ‘Thus it is asserted that economic activity concerns civil society and the state must not intervene in its regulation. But as in actual reality civil society and the state are identified, it must be settled that even liberalism is a form of “regulation” of a state kind, introduced and maintained by means of legislation and coercion, it is an act of will conscious of its own ends and not the spontaneous, automatic expression of an economic fact’. A. Gramsci, The modern prince and other writings (New York: International Publishers, 1957) p. 153.
G. Hegel, Hegel’s philosophy of right (London: Oxford University Press, 1952) p. 219.
E. H. Carr, The new society (London: Macmillan, 1956) p. 82.
See H. Morgenthau, Politics among nations, 5th edn (New York: Knopf, 1973) and
I. Claude Jr, Power and international relations (New York: Random House, 1962) for a general discussion of the implications of this conception.
N. Harris, Of bread and guns (Hannondsworth: Penguin, 1983) p. 45.
J. M. Keynes, ‘Proposals for an International Clearing Union’, in H. Grubel, World monetary reform (London: Oxford University Press, 1964) p. 79.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Coffins, 1962). For a clear formulation of the conditions which must be met for the Hobbesian formulation to hold,
see C. B. Macpherson, The political theory of possessive individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
R. Murray, ‘The internationalisation of capital and the nation state’, in H. Radice, International firms and modern imperialism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975) p. 107. This article, together with Mandel’s analysis cited below (note 19) constitutes the most effective treatment of the problem dealt with in this chapter that I have yet found. Contrast this analysis with that found in Bull, 1977, notably in his treatment of MNCs on pp. 270–3.
Ibid., p. 123.
Thus Czecheslovakia was in effect excluded from the IMF in 1955 for non-fulfilment of obligations, while Cuba withdrew in 1964 when threatened with the same fate. See J. K. Horsefield, The International Monetary Fund, 1945–1965, Vol. I, Chronicle (Washington: IMF, 1969) pp. 363, 549.
Henry Fowler in 1965, cited in H. L. Robinson, ‘The downfall of the dollar’, in The socialist register, 1973 (London: Merlin, 1974) p. 405.
E. Mandel, Late capitalism (London: Verso, 1975) pp. 327–8. Mandel is here only referring to the needs of Western Europe, but the same argument applies with even greater force at the level of the world economy as a whole.
For a developed statement of a possible response of this kind see I. S. Abdulla, ‘The inadequacy and loss of legitimacy of the IMF’, Development Dialogue, 1980, 2.
Note, for example, S. S. Kuznets’s assertion that small countries ‘can attain economic growth only through a heavy reliance on foreign trade’, Modern economic growth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966) p. 302
A. Emmanuel, Unequal exchange (London: New Left Books, 1972) p. xiv.
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© 1985 E. A. Brett
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Brett, E.A. (1985). A Political Theory for the World Market. In: The World Economy since the War. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17896-4_2
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