His method was to analyse the system at different levels of abstraction. In the first volume of Capital he set out to delineate the most general underlying features of capitalist production. The second volume13 deals with the way in which capital, commodities and money circulate within the system, and the third volume14 integrates the process of production and circulation to provide more concrete accounts of things like profit rates, the crisis, the credit system and rent. Marx's original intention had been to produce further volumes, dealing among other things with the state, foreign trade and world markets. He was unable to complete these, although some of his work towards them is contained in various notebooks by him.15 Capital was, then, an unfinished work in some respects. But it was an unfinished work that accomplished the goal of unveiling the basic processes of the system, integrating into its account the very things ignored by the static equilibrium analysis of the neoclassical mainstream: technical advance, accumulation, recurrent crises and the growth of poverty alongside the growth of wealth.
Using Marx today
For these reasons, any account of the world system today has to begin with basic concepts developed by Marx. I try to outline these in the first three chapters of this book. Some readers from a Marxist background might regard the account as redundant. But the concepts have often been misunderstood within the Marxist camp as well as outside it. They have been seen as competing with the neoclassical to provide an equilibrium account of price formation and then faulted for failing to do so. 16
One reaction has been to drop key elements in Marx's own analysis, keeping it only as an account of exploitation and of the anarchy of competition. Another, apparently opposed, reaction has been an almost scholastic approach in which competing interpretations pore over texts by Marx and Hegel. It is often as if Marxist theory had been ambushed by its opponents and retreated into a theoretical bunker of its own, just as detached as they are from the real world. For this reason I have felt it necessary to expound the basic concepts in a way which is (I hope) easy to follow, showing how they describe the interaction of the underlying forces that determine the direction of capitalist development. I have left detailed discussion of other interpretations to footnotes. I have, however, felt it necessary to deal with the most common objections to Marx's account from mainstream economists in Chapter Two, since anyone who studies economics at school or university will have their views inflicted on them. Readers who have been lucky enough to escape that fate are welcome to skip this chapter.
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Introduction