This paper suggests that European Marxists should take account of the contributions of Japanese economists, Uno and Sekine. Their restatement of the Law of Value, which rests on explicit recognition of three levels of analysis, is described, and is shown to allow new insights on the transformation problem and the generation of crises.
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References
1.
1. So far the only text by Uno available in English is Principles of Political Economy: Theory of a Purely Capitalist Society (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980). Thomas Sekine has a number of texts available in English. His immensely important Dialectic of Capital is a completed manuscript without a publisher. He translated and contributed an important methodological essay to Uno's Principles. Sekine has also written: ‘Uni-Riron: A Japanese Contribution to Marxian Political Economy, ‘Journal of Economic Literature, XII, 1975; ‘The Necessity of the Law of Value, ‘Science and Society, Fall,’ 80; ‘The Circular Motion of Capital, ‘Science and Society, Fall,’ 81; ‘The Law of Market-Value’, Science and Society, Winter,’ 82–3. Also Makoto Itoh has written a number of articles and a book, Value and Crisis (New York: Monthly Review, 1980).
2.
2. Uno's original Principles was published in two volumes in Japanese in 1950. The ‘new’ Principles were a condensed and revised version firt published in 1964, and now available since 1980 as Uno's only work translated into English.
3.
3. This article is a condensed version of a chapter of a book soon to be completed which deals with the full scope of contributions that the Uno approach can make to Marxist theory.
4.
4. K. Marx, Capital Vol. III, (Progress Publishers, Moscow) p. 831.
5.
5. Capital Vol. II, p. 108–9.
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6. ‘Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results.’ Capital, Vol. I, p. 19.
7.
7. E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, (Monthly Review Press, New York) 1978, p. 153.
8.
8. Kozo Uno, Types of Economic Policies Under Capitalism, (Unpublished, partially translated manuscript.)
9.
9. This is all worked out in great detail in Sekine, Dialectic of Capital (unpublished manuscript).
10.
10. Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence p. 179. Though Marx is partially aware of the ‘method of dialectic exposition, ‘the three volumes of Capital lack explicit and full self-consciousness of the dialectical method.
11.
11. Uno, p. 14.
12.
12. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital Vol. I, p. 242.
13.
13. The failure to understand the role of demand as a passive constraint in value formation leads to an overly productivist and technological conception of the labour theory of value. This conception which is characteristic of Neo-Ricardianism is basically wrong. Uno and Sekine fully grasp the role of demand in value formation, but they are not the only ones who do so. For example, see Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx's Capital, (London, Pluto Press, 1977), pp. 88–95.
14.
14. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital, Volume I, p. 201.
15.
15. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital, Volume II, p. 3.
16.
16. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital, Volume II, p. 62.
17.
17. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital, Volume II, p. 129.
18.
18. M. Lippi, Value and Naturalism in Marx, p. XX.
19.
19. Steedman, Marx After Srajffa, p. 25.
20.
20. Steedman, Value Controversy, p. 11.
21.
21. Ibid., p.98.
22.
22. For an effort to solve the transformation problem mathematically see Saikh, “Marx's Theory of Value and the Transformation Problem” in Schwartz, The Subtle Anatomy of Capitalism (Santa Monica, Calif: Good- year Press, 1977). A good example of a philosophical defence of Marx's value theory can be found in G. Pilling, Marx's ‘Capital‘ (London: RKP, 1980).
23.
23. Sekine, ‘The Law of Market Value,’ in Science and Society, Winter 1982–82, pp. 420–444.
24.
24. I. Steedman, ‘Positive Profits with Negative Surplus Value,’Economic Journal1975 pp. 114–123. This article is used to support arguments by Sraffian Marxists in Value Controversy.
25.
25. Sekine, ‘The Law of Market Value,’ p. 432–3.
26.
26. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital Volume II, p. 110.
27.
27. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital Volume II, p. 104.
28.
28. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital Volume II, p. 104.
29.
29. Sekine, Dialectic of Capital Volume II, p. 104.
30.
30. A briefer version is in ‘The Law of Market Value’ in Science of Society, Winter’ 81–83.
31.
31. Sekine, The Dialectic of Capital, Volume I, p. 401.
32.
32. Hodgson's piece in Neaw Left Review 84 is a good example of the position that argues that the rate of profit has no more tendency to rise than to fall. Itoh notes in Value and Crisis that a long run tendency like the falling rate of profit can not explain the periodicity of crisis (p. 127). In Capital and Exploitation Weeks realizes that the theory of crisis must be rooted in the theory of accumulation and can not depend entirely on the falling rate of profit taken by itself, and he also sees that it must have something to do with fixed capital. But this analysis runs aground because he fails to grasp the widening and deepening phases of accumulation and instead sees a continual investment in fixed capital and technical change that must devalue the old fixed capital so that ‘The crisis was caused by the fall in the rate of profit, resulting from the implicit devaluation of means of production by technical change’ (p. 212). But this conceptualization of crisis is inadequate so that he falls back on formulations that sound good but are actually quite empty such as: ‘Crisis result from the uneven development of capital… capital as a whole comes into conflict with the mutual interaction of its decentralized parts' (p. 214).
33.
33. Sekine, ‘Uno-Rim’, p. 864.
34.
34. In Class, Crisis and the State, Wright takes the first steps towards relating crisis theory to the stages of capitalist development. These are steps in the right direction, but his periodisation of capitalist development is not vigorously posed or convincing, and at the level of stage theory political factors must be accounted for. Thus though it is accurate to argue that in the stage of imperialism capitalist crisis becomes more under-consumptionist, one has to go beyond this and investigate how crises themselves change in this stage and how their inability to solve certain problems solved by crisis in pure theory builds pressures towards imperialist war. Wright inadvertantly falls into the economism of the logical-historical method when he tries to smooth the debate between the various interpretations of crisis theory by saying that the falling rate of profit theory is most applicable to the mid-nineteenth century, underconsumptionism is more applicable to the stage of imperialism, and profit-squeeze is most applicable to the post-World War II period. This kind of application of economic models directly on history produces economism, and he still avoids answering the question of which account of crisis best fits the theory of a purely capitalist society. Also he really doesn't consider the possibility that the fundamental nature of crises may change in different stages of capitalist development.
