Ellen Meiksins Wood: Empire in the Age of Capital

EMW: I think the essential characteristic is that all of the major economic actors are market dependent, dependent on the market to maintain and reproduce their conditions of life. This also means that the relationship between classes is mediated by the market, so that unlike precapitalist systems in which exploiting classes were able to extract surplus labor from exploited classes by means of superior coercive power, direct noneconomic coercion, in capitalism the compulsions are economic imperatives. So in a mature capitalist economy, the capitalist doesn't need to have superior political, legal or military power over workers, the way a precapitalist landlord had to have power over peasants who had nonmarket access to land. Wage laborers have to sell their labor power to a capitalist simply in order to gain access to the means of their own life, their own labor, and so on. And of course the capitalist depends on the market for access to labor and to realize the profits the workers produce. Of course there's a huge difference between propertyless workers and the owners of capital, which means a huge imbalance of class power. But capitalists are no less dependent on the market to maintain themselves and their capital. The whole capitalist system is operated by market imperatives, the compulsions of competition, profit-maximization, and capital accumulation.

Why don't commerce or trade in goods constitute capitalism, as some might assume?

EMW: I make a distinction between market opportunities and market imperatives. And I think it's only in capitalism that you have a system in which people are obliged, are compelled, to enter the market simply to guarantee their own existence and their own self-reproduction. There have been markets throughout history in which people have brought their surpluses to sell, but there's never been a system before capitalism in which producers and appropriators both were absolutely dependent on the market for their most basic conditions of life and therefore compelled to follow the dictates of the market in order to sustain themselves.

You write that the exploitation that is a necessary part of capitalism is hidden in certain ways, unlike the coercion that characterized feudal societies where naked power was more apparent. How is exploitation under capitalism opaque? D

EMW: The contrast that you just indicated, between capitalism and feudalism, is a useful one. If you think about what the relationship is between a feudal lord and a dependent peasant, it's a very transparent relationship, which is even legally recognized as a relationship of inequality.

In capitalism, the capitalist and the laborer begin, on the face of it, as equals. They're legally equal, and on top of that, the capitalist actually pays the workers instead of transparently extracting surpluses from them. In the case of feudalism, the peasant is obliged to do labor services or to transfer surpluses directly to the lord; whereas in capitalism, the relationship appears on the face of it to be the opposite, because the capitalist actually pays the worker up front before realizing profits from the worker's labor in the market. So it takes some complicated calculation to figure out how it is that the worker's surpluses are transferred to the capitalist and how it is that the capitalist derives a profit from the worker's labor.

What are the main features of capitalist imperialism?

EMW: The main feature of capitalist imperialism is that it operates as much as possible via economic imperatives, instead of by direct colonial rule. I think that if you had talked about American imperialism before the invasion of Iraq, you would likely meet the objection that the United States doesn't really possess colonies. But I actually think it remains true that it's not a colonial power in the sense that we've traditionally understood it. I think the United States would still prefer to stay out of colonial entanglements and operate its domination through economic imperatives.

I think that the United States is actually the first, and so far the only, truly capitalist empire, which has exercised its domination largely by these economic imperatives, by making subordinate powers subject to economic compulsions emanating from the United States and from American capital.

So in the case of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, would you say then that it is an exception to this rule?

EMW: I think the mess that they made of it in Iraq, and the complete lack of planning for after the war, probably testifies to the fact that they hadn't really intended it to be this way. They hadn't intended to be an occupying power. What I think they hoped would happen was that they could decapitate the regime and just install some more compliant leadership and then allow

American capital to insert itself comfortably into the Iraq economy and into the production of oil. The very fact that they made such a hash of it seems to me to confirm the point, rather than the reverse.

What is it about capitalism today that allows empire to exist and to flourish and to expand without the need for military colonialization?

EMW: When we were talking about the relationship between capital and labor, I talked about the ways in which capital can exercise its domination over labor, because workers are market dependent and obliged to enter the market, to sell their labor power, simply in order to gain access to the means of life and self-reproduction. In a way, an analogous thing has happened on the global plane, in which more and more parts of the world have been subjected to...