Global Capitalism and the Stages Theory : Theory and Methodology of Analysis of the Historical Dimensions of the Global Financial Crisis in the Late 2000s (II)

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Other Title
  • グローバル資本主義と段階論 : グローバル金融危機・経済危機の解明の理論と方法（II）（完）
  • グローバル シホン シュギ ト ダンカイロン : グローバル キンユウ キキ ・ ケイザイ キキ ノ カイメイ ノ リロン ト ホウホウ(2 ・ カン)

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Abstract

The global financial and economic crisis in the late 2000s clearly demonstrated a great transfiguration of the modern capitalist system which could, fundamentally, be understood as comparable to the major historical transfiguration of the capitalist system during the interwar period that was characterized by two catastrophic world wars and the Great Depression in the 1930s, which constituted the great transition from the pre-World War I Pax Britannica capitalist regime to the post-World War II Pax Americana regime. An overall social scientific elucidation of the historical dimensions of this crisis that goes beyond a piecemeal analysis of its individual aspects is necessary. This paper reformulates the Stages Theory, once formulated by the Uno School in Japan, through a systematic re-examination of Marxian economics by focusing on the fundamental institutionalization (or “reification”) mechanisms of formation of the theoretical categories of the capitalist system, which is typified by the logical developmental process of value forms in the genesis of the money form. The capitalist system in the real world should theoretically be analyzed as a specific synthesis of real entities of basic categories which incorporate various non-market and even non-capitalist conditions of the real world as a set of institutions, including capitalist firms and state functions, especially in the Stages Theory. Capitalist firms are the real entity of the basic category of capital that incorporate internal institutions and organizations as a result of the historical institutionalization process, which constitutes the core of the specific capital accumulation system. In accordance with this reexamination, this paper concludes that Uno’s original “three stages” theory of capitalist development -- the “Mercantilism Stage”, the “Liberalism Stage” and the “Imperialism Stage”-- should be reformulated as two stages: the ”Pax Britannica Stage” and the “Pax Americana Stage.” Current global capitalism is defined as capitalism in the “transfiguring phase” of the “Pax Americana Stage”, and includes significant processes of transition to a new stage of capitalist development. Based on this reformulation of the stages theory and the theoretical system of Marxian economics, this paper analyses the global financial and economic crisis in the late 2000s and concludes that it is a crisis of the new capital accumulation structure and mechanism of current global capitalism, i.e. “the new global economic growth nexus,” itself.

Journal

  • 経済志林

    経済志林 87 (1･2), 87-148, 2019-09-20

    法政大学経済学部学会

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