Comparative Capitalisms and/or Variegated Capitalism

Abstract

This quotation from a lecture in 1847 by Marx on free trade will frame my critical appreciation of the Comparative Capitalisms (CC) literatures. I argue that it knows less about the present than about the past of capitalism — and is even less insightful about its future. This is because CC tends to adopt a disaggregative approach to diversity in the world market. This is useful for some theoretical and practical purposes and provides one possible ‘first cut’ analysis of the overall diversity of the capitalist landscape. But it marginalizes the emerging logic and constraining power of a world market that is becoming more tightly integrated through differential accumulation and the relative success of specific strategic initiatives. Some of my earlier contributions to the critique of political economy shared these problems (Jessop and Sum, 2006), and, in response, I have recommended taking variegated capitalism in the world market as an alternative ‘first cut’ entry-point.

All those laws developed in the classical works on political economy, are strictly true under the supposition only, that trade be delivered from all fetters, that competition be perfectly free, not only within a single country, but upon the whole face of the earth. These laws, which A. Smith, Say, and Ricardo have developed, the laws under which wealth is produced and distributed — these laws grow more true, more exact, then cease to be mere abstractions, in the same measure in which Free Trade is carried out… Thus it can justly be said, that the economists — Ricardo and others — know more about society as it will be, than about society as it is. They know more about the future than about the present.

(Marx, [1847] 1976, p. 290; italics added)