Because of language difficulties, the Japanese Uno–Sekine approach to Marxism, based upon pioneering work of Kozo Uno, his student Thomas Sekine, and a growing cast of followers, both in Japan and around the world, has never received the acclaim it deserves for its interventions in Marxian theory and debate. Questions of periodizing capitalism, for example, were treated innovatively in line with writings of Regulation Theory and Social Structures of Accumulation theory, yet well in advance of the latter’s formulations. The Uno–Sekine approach is distinctive within the field of Marxist studies for two reasons. First it argues for the relative separation of historical materialism and Marxian political economic study of capitalism as two distinct projects with divergent subject-matters. Second it maintains that Marxian political economy be undertaken at three levels of analysis—a pure economic theory of capital, a stage theory which periodizes capitalism, and empirical-historical studies of capitalism.
Keywords
- Levels of analysis
- Stage theory
- Consumerism as the final stage of capitalism
- Theory of a purely capitalist society
- Marxian economics