Michael Roberts' latest piece, taking us through the Historical Materialism conference. He talks about the responses he got from various people there about his book, including a comparison between China and Nazi Germany.

He also defends the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall from various radlibs.

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SJ was pleased that we did not swallow the idea of capitalist stages ie. ‘monopoly capitalism’ or ‘state monopoly capitalism’, which have become popular again recently, but instead stuck to using value theory to explain changes in capitalism, as such. But SJ did not agree with the view in our book that China was not capitalist, let alone imperialist. RV also argued that China was capitalist – yes, the state played a big role, but so did it play such a role in countries like Japan and Korea in their development. Indeed, China’s economy was similar in some ways to Nazi Germany in fusing the state with big business to exploit wage labour. I do not agree that a fascist state has the same class character or economic foundation as the modern Chinese state, but there is no space to develop that argument here.

This critique was echoed from the floor in discussion. Indeed, I suspect that I was the only one in the session that did not accept that China was capitalist (or state capitalist?). My defence of that position has been outlined in many posts and papers. Simply, yes the law of value still operates in China, capitalists operate in China; workers are exploited and wage labour exists. But something happened in 1949: capitalists and landlords were expropriated and a new state machine was installed. Yes, there is no workers democracy in China; it’s a one-party dictatorship (says Biden!).

But when we consider the economic foundation of the Chinese economy, the size of the state sector is immense compared to any other (major) economy in the world; and the commanding heights of the economy are in the hands of the state and CPC. Capitalists operate in China and there are billionaires,but they do not control the state machine or its policies, and instead often they must do the state’s bidding.

And here is the theoretical rub: if China is capitalist like any other capitalist state, how can we explain China’s phenomenal economic growth and rise in prosperity? I thought capitalism could no longer develop the productive forces for the world’s periphery – are they not held back by imperialism and the contradictions of capitalist production? No other peripheral capitalist economy, not even India, has grown like China – none of the other BRICS have done so. So does China’s (capitalist?) success mean that we must revise Marxist theory on capitalism; or is China not capitalist after all?

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Several speakers attacked the chapter on imperialism; first, because the book rejected the theory that the main cause of surplus value transfer from the peripheral counties to the imperialist bloc was through ‘super-exploitation’ ie where wages levels in poor countries are forced below even the basic needs of people ie below the value of the labour power. Our research on the economics of modern imperialism does not rule out super-exploitation, but we reckon value transfer takes place mainly because of the technological superiority of the imperialist companies over the periphery, not because of low wages. Through the process of what Marx called ‘unequal exchange’ in trade, the imperialist countries can gain extra surplus value from the periphery. So imperialist exploitation is not because wages are forced lower in the poor countries.

Later, on tech companies, and the magical invention of AI that is soon to cure all ills:

The big issue of 21st century capitalism apart from global warming is the advent of AI and ‘generalised intelligence’, as expressed through language learning machines (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Bard. There was an excellent session on the tech ‘monopolies’ and how they would prosper over the next few decades. In his presentation, Harry Halpin from the American University of Beirut (and a top ‘techi’, I am told), quickly dismissed the nonsense promoted by the likes of Yanis Varoufakis that ‘ordinary capitalism’ is dead and been taken over by ‘feudal monopolies’ like the ‘famous seven’ media and tech monsters.

Halpin reckoned that the tech companies faced the same contradictions of other capitalist companies – over time, their profitability would fall and push them into crisis. Their bloated stock prices bore little relation to their underlying profitability and would prove to be so much fiction. As AI reduced marginal costs of production towards zero, it would lead to high average costs in infrastructure and facilities that had to be paid for by ever great profits. That wasn’t going to be found in the sectors each tech was in and so they would be forced to compete with each other and look for ‘unproductive’ but lucrative business such as military and corporate surveillance where government funding would be available.