Although many Western scholars represented by Piketty have intuitively felt the breath of the changes of the times, they are limited by their own interests and theoretical vision, and they are unable to systematically grasp the overall situation of the continuous formation of world history, and can only hope to stitch together the divided social reality with utopian dreams, and can only spin around in the false theoretical system and abstract conceptual categories. In this sense, in the face of the intensifying trend of capitalist rentierization, it is necessary to apply dialectical materialism and historical materialism, adhere to the concept of systems, and grasp the essence of the overall history through the appearance of local experience.
Original: "Grasping the Essence of History through the Appearance of Local Experience", originally published in the 3rd edition of the 1902 issue of the Journal of Social Sciences
Author | Zhou Jiaxin, professor of the Marxist Social Theory Research Center of Nanjing University
Picture | Internet
In recent years, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly pointed out that the world is undergoing major changes unseen in a century. To grasp the great changes unseen in a century and realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, we need to accurately grasp the new changes and the essence of contemporary capitalism. Since the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberalism has declared bankruptcy in theory and practice, financial monopoly capitalism has been criticized, the wave of anti-globalization has gradually risen, and the development of digital technology and its reflection are in the ascendant. Marked by Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, a new theoretical problem has become increasingly apparent in the discussion of the inequality of wealth distribution in Western countries: the intensifying rentier tendency of contemporary capitalism has constituted the main reasons for the continued economic downturn, intensified polarization, deepening social contradictions, and even global economic imbalance and regional political turmoil in Western countries. In order to cope with the rentier tendency of contemporary capitalism, we must adhere to the principle of historical materialism based on the material mode of production, persist in grasping the essence of the times and the general trend of history with a systematic concept, and guard against the transfer and transfer of various risks and crises in the Western world.
Contemporary capitalism in the prism
On September 29, 2017, when presiding over the 43rd collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that the world pattern is in the historical process of accelerating evolution, which has produced a large number of profound and complex practical problems and put forward a large number of theoretical topics that need to be answered urgently. This requires us to strengthen the study of contemporary capitalism, analyze and grasp the various changes that have emerged and their essence, and deepen our understanding of the laws of the profound and complex changes in capitalism and international political and economic relations. In recent years, around the new changes and the nature of contemporary capitalism, Western academic circles have formed a variety of theoretical viewpoints from different perspectives. To sum up, these theoretical perspectives mainly revolve around the following three aspects.
First, the critique of neoliberal bankruptcy and financial monopoly capitalism. The first financial crisis in the United States in 2008 triggered a global recession. The global financial crisis is widely seen in Western academics as a sign of neoliberalism's theoretical and practical bankruptcy. The so-called neoliberalism is the dominant discourse of Western bourgeois ideology that has been formed and established since the 70s of the 20th century. Neoliberalism, marked by the "Washington Consensus" and its emphasis on privatization, free markets, and global integration, is essentially a theoretical system in the service of financial monopoly capitalism. On the basis of the critique of financial monopoly capital, the "neo-laissez-faire" and reflection on national issues in the process of global expansion of capital, and the investigation of the structural crisis of contemporary capital accumulation and its manifestations, contemporary Western left-wing scholars have also tried to systematically summarize and elaborate. Among them, Samir Amin and David Harvey are the representatives of different perspectives such as imperialism and financial monopolies, and they jointly point to the rentier tendency of contemporary capitalism.
Second, the analysis of the tide of anti-globalization in the trend of economic globalization. With the advent of neoliberalism and the emergence of new financial derivatives, the globalization of capital has become popular. In the process of coping with the international financial crisis, the capitalist countries often diverted the crisis in different ways, triggering the so-called wave of de-globalization. In the face of the sudden new crown epidemic, the irresponsible attitude and practices of some Western countries have further exacerbated this trend. We know that the development of productive forces and the universalization of social exchanges have promoted the formation of world history, and economic globalization is an objective historical process. Today's so-called wave of de-globalization and even the trend of separatism are essentially the product of the competition of all kinds of false communities around super-profits under the conditions of financial monopoly capitalism. Correspondingly, Western social ideology has also manifested itself in the shift from the divergence between libertarians and communitarianism in the rise of neoliberalism to the rise of populism and extremism today.
Third, the network society, the fourth industrial revolution and the discussion of digital capitalism. Since the 50s of the 20 th century, the new scientific and technological revolution has given a tremendous impetus to the development of social productive forces. Since the beginning of the new century, with the development of Internet technology, understanding contemporary capitalism from the perspective of network society and information technology has become a continuous hot spot. In recent years, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by smart manufacturing, the Internet of Things, and big data, is in the ascendant, and the discussion of digital capitalism has received more and more attention. Topics include changes in labor patterns under the digital economy, adjustment of global value chains, monopoly of online platforms, and the monitoring and slavery of people by big data. In these discussions, the focus of the issue is the inequality in the distribution of income or wealth. Although Christian Fox put forward the slogan "Marx's return" in his research on digital labor, his starting point is still the issue of wealth distribution. Concerns about platform monopolies and big data point more directly to the rentier tendency of capital behind the distribution of wealth.
It is only possible to patch on income distribution and political slogans
In short, since the 2008 international financial crisis, whether it is the reflection on neoliberalism and financial monopoly capitalism, the rise of the trend of anti-globalization, or the critique of digital capitalism in the acceleration of the new technological revolution, all stem from and point to an objective reality. That is, the economy of many Western countries continues to be sluggish, polarization has intensified, and social contradictions have deepened. Focusing on the issue of unequal distribution of wealth under capitalist conditions, Thomas Piketty published Capital in the 21st Century in 2013, which sparked extensive discussion in the international academic community. As General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his speech at the Symposium on Philosophy and Social Sciences, the book uses detailed data to prove that inequality in the United States and other Western countries has reached an all-time high, and that unchecked capitalism has exacerbated wealth inequality and will continue to worsen. The author's analysis is mainly carried out from the field of distribution, and does not go into much of the more fundamental issue of ownership, but the methods used and the conclusions drawn are worth pondering.
In Capital in the 21st Century, Piketty uses historical data and data covering more than 20 countries in the past three centuries to put forward his view, arguing that although modern economic growth and information dissemination have avoided Marx's theoretical predictions based on the reality of capitalism in the 19th century, they have not realized the optimistic vision put forward by Kuznets in the middle of the 20th century, and have not changed the reality of the deep structure of capital and social inequality. To put it simply, the overall logic of Piketty's argument is that the rate of return on capital is higher than the rate of economic growth, i.e., r>g. The so-called rate of return on capital includes profits, dividends, interest, rents, and other capital income. The so-called economic growth rate G refers to the growth of annual income and output. Further, R>G is a fundamental force in the differentiation of income and wealth. This fundamental inequality has nothing to do with any form of market defect. On the contrary, the more sophisticated the capital market is, the more likely it is to r>g, as Western economists envision. Faced with the resurgence of the 21st century in which the rate of return on capital far exceeds the rate of economic growth, Piketty calls it the 21st century global inheritance capitalism, and hopes that democracy will regain control of capitalism and ensure that the public interest prevails over the interests of the individual, maintaining economic openness while avoiding the effects of trade protectionism and nationalism.
Objectively speaking, Piketty's research focuses on the theme of wealth and income inequality, using longer and broader material data than Kuznets to prove that capitalism in the 21st century unconsciously produces uncontrollable and unsustainable social inequality. Compared with many Western economists, this is very valuable. The book has effectively dismantled the theoretical myths of neoliberalism in an empirical way, and has promoted and will continue to promote the study of Marxist political economy in Western academic circles. In the book "Capital in the 21st Century", whether it is the overall logic that the rate of return on capital is higher than the economic growth rate, or the identification of global inheritance capitalism in the 21st century, they all implicitly or explicitly identify and confirm a key issue of contemporary capitalism, that is, the rentier tendency of contemporary capitalism. However, Piketty's analysis focuses mainly on the field of distribution, and does not deal too much with the question of ownership and the mode of production directly related to it, which leads to the fundamental theoretical flaws of Capital in the 21st Century.
In addition to economic instruments such as inheritance tax, progressive tax, and wealth tax, the authors of the book suggest that they focus on the realities of the European Union, advocate regional political integration, and place the stakes on the book's vague values of democracy and eliteism. This kind of vagueness in the countermeasures and suggestions reflects the shortcomings of the research method and the deviation of the theoretical perspective of Capital in the 21st Century. Piketty's analysis focuses on income inequality in developed countries in Europe and the United States, and discusses the distribution of wealth at the empirical level according to different forms of income. In this way, he is actually more concerned with the interrelations between different rentiers in the process of global expansion of capital, rather than with the analysis and explanation of the capitalist production process. Because it cannot penetrate into the interior and whole process of the capital-led production process in today's world, Capital in the 21st Century cannot fundamentally touch the capitalist system itself, and can only patch up the issue of income distribution and political slogans.
Be wary of capitalist rentier
A closer look at Capital in the 21st Century shows that Piketty uses a number of different categories in his analysis of inequality in the distribution of wealth, such as profits, dividends, interest, rents, and other capital income included in the rate of return on capital, and the growth of annual income and output referred to by the rate of economic growth. These categories have been analysed and explored in Capital. It's just that Marx used these categories to describe the process of reproducing the essence of the capitalist mode of production in the sense of the general social process of capitalist production. Therefore, an empirical examination of the relationship between these different forms of income is only the first step in the critique of political economy. A more important step is to reveal the dialectical historical relationship between these forms of income in the unity of logic and history. In the words of Western vulgar economics criticizing Capital, the overall logic of R>G is nothing more than an examination at the level of "transformation issues". Its theoretical significance lies in revealing in an intuitive and empirical way the contradictions and conflicts within the rentier class formed in the process of the development of capitalist society.
Returning to the writing process of Capital, on the one hand, Marx clearly pointed out the world-historical significance of capital as a special social production relation; On the other hand, Marx used the theory of surplus value to reveal the inherent contradictions of the capitalist mode of production and its historical limits. In the latter sense, Marx used the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete, scientifically elucidating the historical nature of the forms of income such as profits, interest, rents, dividends, etc., which exist in empirical reality. This completely exposes the secret of the monopoly power of rentiers of all stripes in the social form dominated by the capitalist mode of production. Since the beginning of the 20th century, in the face of the transition of capitalism from free competition to monopoly, Lenin put forward and developed the theory of imperialism on the basis of criticizing Kautsky, Luxemburg, and Hilferting. Bukharin used the concept of "rentier political economy" to refute the attack on Capital by bourgeois economists represented by Bombavik. After the 30s of the 20th century, in the face of the new trend of capitalist development, Western Marxism carried out critical analysis along different paths such as Fordism, the welfare state, and the consumer society. The Frankfurt School critical theorists Horkheimer and Adorno also tried to propose a so-called "gang theory" to elucidate capitalism's rentier tendencies and their consequences.
Today, in the face of the objective reality that neoliberalism has been declared bankrupt in theory and practice, financial monopoly capitalism still occupies a dominant position, and in the objective process of economic globalization, the pursuit of profit by capital has triggered a wave of anti-globalization, and the rapid development of the Internet and information technology has brought about drastic changes in social life and production methods, starting from the discussion triggered by Piketty, we should pay close attention to and be vigilant against the development of the rentier tendency of contemporary capitalism and its possible consequences.
With the increase in the level of productivity, the total social process of production is becoming more and more complex. With the globalization of the economy and the international division of labor, the links of production, distribution, exchange and consumption have been further divided in time and space. Many Western scholars' analyses have consciously or unconsciously ignored the material production process and focused only on the distribution of income and wealth. Therefore, in the face of the rentier tendency of contemporary capitalism, we should accurately understand the latest development of socialized large-scale production, adhere to the innovative development strategy, and promote the formation of a fair, just and reasonable new international political and economic order. At the same time, we should be wary of the Western world's use of economic, political, ideological and even violent means to create global turmoil in order to grab super-profits.
Social existence determines social consciousness, and the intensification of the rentier tendency of capitalism will inevitably produce ideological concepts that are compatible with it. Marx has already pointed out that the emergence of the capitalist mode of production has produced the phenomenon of fetishism in social life, creating the opposition between the abstract individual and the external materialized world. Today, the profit-seeking behavior of capital leads to a sharp contradiction between extreme individualism and false communities. Combined with the recent events in the United States, we can see that this antagonism has largely led to the internal division of Western society. We must guard against the rise and spread of this ideology on a global scale, and actively promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.
With the deepening of social contradictions in Western countries, represented by Piketty, although many Western scholars have intuitively felt the breath of the changes of the times, they are limited by their own interests and theoretical vision, they cannot systematically grasp the overall situation of the continuous formation of world history, and can only hope to stitch together the divided social reality with utopian dreams, and can only spin around in false theoretical systems and abstract conceptual categories. In this sense, in the face of the intensifying trend of capitalist rentierization and to grasp the great changes unseen in a century, we must apply dialectical materialism and historical materialism, adhere to the concept of systems, and grasp the overall historical essence through the appearance of local experience.