The Fiction of Economic Coercion: Political Marxism and the Separation of Theory and History

Abstract

The theory of social-property relations, or political Marxism, has argued that in contradistinction with pre-capitalist forms of exploitation, capitalism is characterised by the separation of the economic and the political, which makes surplus appropriation under this system uniquely driven by economic coercion. In spite of political Marxism's various strengths, this article argues that the paradigm puts forward an ahistorical and sanitised conception of capitalism typical of bourgeois economics, which is an outcome of its formal-abstractionist approach to the concept of the mode of production and the separation between theory and history that it operates. A more satisfactory solution to political Marxism's inability to make sense of past and present forms of coercion and violence under capitalism can be found in jairus Banaji's emphasis on Marx's historical -rather than formal -conception of the mode of production. KeywordsJairus Banaji, political Marxism, Marx, mode of production, unfree labour, violence, coercion In a methodology of forced abstractions, which identified relations of production with particular forms of exploitation, the concept of 'historical specificity' was radically impoverished.'The starting-point of the development that gave rise both to the wage-labourer and the capitalist was the enslavement of the worker. The advance made consisted in a change in the form of this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation.M any thanks to

Experiencing primitive accumulation as alienation: Mangrove forest privatization, enclosures and the everyday adaptation of bodies to capital in ruralSenegal

“…This perspective poses problems for the study of contemporary large‐scale land expropriations because it leads to the assumption that people today live outside capitalism or in minimal contact with it. In addition, it makes capitalist development appear to be a deducible process from its supposedly essential features (Rioux, ; Robinson, ). Thus, by focusing on the necessary conditions for capital accumulation, authors drawing on this approach separate the question of primitive accumulation from that of workers' labour and, therefore, from that of workers' everyday lives.…”

The political economy of race and caste: Revisiting the writings of Mariátegui and Ambedkar†

“…As we noted in the introduction, there has been a tendency today to divorce identity from class and to treat these as separate, dichotomous categories, with class in some senses being perceived as more “real” than caste or race (Roediger, 1999). The justification for this usually tends pivot on the definition of capitalism as a mode of production in which surplus value is extracted through purely market based, economic means alone and where, as a result, the only identity of laboring masses that matters is that of “interchangeable units of labor abstracted from any specific personal or social identity” (Anievas & Nisancioglu, 2014; Rioux, 2013; Wood, 2000, p. 211). Defined in this manner, extra‐economic coercion has no structural role in the system and thus identities like race and caste cannot aspire to become focal points for left politics that seek to challenge capitalism.…”

Unfree Labour Beyond Binaries

“…He uses the term to criticize these theorists' 'substitution of purely theoretical explanation for theoretical research and/or recourse to a theory that is itself simply a string of abstractions ' (2010: 8). See LeBaron (2011) and Rioux (2013) for a longer discussion of Marxist debates on unfree labour. 4 For a critique of this tendency among scholars associated with 'political Marxism' see Rioux (2013).…”

“…See LeBaron (2011) and Rioux (2013) for a longer discussion of Marxist debates on unfree labour. 4 For a critique of this tendency among scholars associated with 'political Marxism' see Rioux (2013). 5 As Jairus Banaji has argued, while Marxist work has tended to conflate the two, Marx in fact ascribed two meanings to the concept of mode of production.…”