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Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 88ndash109 brillnlhima

Beijing between Smith and Marx

Lucia PradellaUniversity of Naples (Federico II) and Paris X (Nanterre)

luciapradellahotmailcom

Abstract1

In Adam Smith in Beijing Giovanni Arrighi attempts to outline the possible consequences of the growth of China through a rereading of the work of Adam Smith and a critique of Marx Th is article analyses and sheds light on the limits of this reading upon which Arrighi bases his prediction of a possible peaceful growth in collaboration amongst the various nations within the world-market It also seeks to identify what makes Marxrsquos work so timely for the understanding of the contemporary phase of capitalist globalisation with its escalation of the exploitation of ever more globalised labour-power and of international competition

KeywordsGiovanni Arrighi Adam Smith Karl Marx China capitalism colonialism

Th e main interest of Giovanni Arrighirsquos book Adam Smith in Beijing lies in the contemporary issues it places at the centre of its analysis and in its affi rmation of the need to adopt a global view if we want to understand ongoing social transformations and the possible transfer of hegemony from the USA to China the latter being once again at the centre of the world-economy after more than a century of decline According to Arrighi the crisis in Iraq caused by the resistance of the Iraqi people is likely to trigger the terminal crisis of US hegemony and bring to an end the fi rst and only American century ndash lsquothe long twentieth centuryrsquo Such epoch-making transformations undermine the Eurocentric approach of the social sciences and raise fundamental questions about the future of humanity What will be the outcome An exacerbation of international competition and war or peaceful and co-operative growth Arrighi tends towards the second hypothesis the underlying thesis of his book is that

1 I acknowledge Kevin Smart who translated an earlier draft of this article from Italian I thank also Matteo Mandarini for his help in the translation of the fi nal version

L Pradella Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 88ndash109 89

the failure of Th e Project for a New American Century and the success of Chinese economic development have made the realization of Smithrsquos vision of a world market society based on greater equality among the worldrsquos civilizations more likely than it ever was in the almost two and a half centuries since the publication of Th e Wealth of Nations2

On the basis of this view Smithrsquos theories are seen as being more helpful for interpreting the current historical phase and its possible developments than those of Marx Th is article aims to clarify the theoretical basis assumed by Arrighi and analyse his theoretical and historical reconstruction of the work of Smith and Marx

Th e lsquovirtuous growthrsquo of China

China should really be seen as returning to the centre of the world-economy It is worth remembering that it was one of the worldrsquos leading economies at least until 1820 when as a result of its increasing imports of opium the balance of trade shifted in favour of Great Britain which exploited its colonial possessions in India in order to produce and illegally export the drug to the lsquoCelestial Empirersquo where it had devastating eff ects on the population and created a fi nancial crisis by draining the state of its circulating silver3 When the Chinese authorities tried to intervene Britain replied with its gunboats Th e Opium Wars marked a qualitative change in the Western penetration of China which was subsequently subjected to open military aggression fi rst by Britain alone and then by the subsequent competitive collaboration of the European powers the United States and Japan Th ese military and economic attacks ndash with their imposition of lsquounequal treatiesrsquo territorial lsquoconcessionsrsquo and enormous war-indemnities paid for by indebting the Chinese empire and with the subsequent penetration of Western capital ndash led to the progressive impoverishment of the population4 and what the Chinese call lsquothe century of humiliationsrsquo

One of the merits of Arrighirsquos reconstruction is its highlighting of the fact that the current growth of China rests on lsquorevolutionary basesrsquo he argues that it was the extraordinary reawakening produced by the popular and anticolonial revolution of 1949 that put an end to the lsquocentury of humiliationsrsquo and ndash as a result of agrarian reform as well as the establishment of infrastructure health-services and education-systems ndash laid the foundations

2 Arrighi 2007 p 83 Chesneaux Bastid and Bergegravere 1977 pp 42ndash34 Chesneaux Bastid and Bergegravere 1977 pp 86ndash7 Fenby 2008 p xxxi

90 L Pradella Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 88ndash109

for its present development In addition to the data provided by Arrighi it is necessary to bear in mind that in the fi rst thirty years of the Peoplersquos Republic GNP more than tripled real per capita product grew by more than 80 per cent and productivity increased by 60 per cent Th e economic structure of Chinese society was profoundly transformed and in 1978 the contribution of industry to GNP exceeded that of agriculture5 Th ese were the bases for the reforms of Deng and his successors Arrighi does not consider in depth what he calls the controversial issue as to lsquowhether Dengrsquos reforms have consolidated or undermined these achievementsrsquo6 but says that they have not triggered the forms of lsquoprimitive accumulationrsquo specifi c to Western Europe in particular because of the role played by Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) Although he admits that the reforms made by Deng and his successors generated forms of lsquoaccumulation by dispossessionrsquo and deepened inequalities and social discontent he underlines the fact that they have simultaneously increased the rate of literacy and per capita income and provided the impulse for an economic development that has turned China into the lsquolocomotive of Eastern Asiarsquo and one of the worldrsquos leading trading nations7 For Arrighi this has made it a potential alternative centre of world-economics and -politics and allows it to head a new and even more solid Bandung alliance Its infl uence has increased in Southern countries ndash from India to Iran and from Africa to South America (where it promotes investment without imposing the extortionate conditions of Western loans and off ers development-aid) ndash as well as in Europe According to Arrighi nothing less than an about-turn is taking place in relations between the states of the North and South of the world with the latter beginning to pay their debts and the oil-producing countries redirecting their surplus towards them Furthermore by exploiting the competitiveness of its economy China is pushing for the real liberalisation and lsquoglobalisationrsquo of international trade For Arrighi globalisation is not necessarily negative the new Bandung alliance led by China could transform the world-market into a means of rebalancing power-relations between the global North and South and might ultimately even bring about a lsquoCommonwealth of civilisationsrsquo ndash a theoretical formulation devised to return us to Adam Smith

5 Maddison 19986 Arrighi 2007 p 3717 Although Arrighi himself sustains that the increase in per capita income has not been

accompanied by a proportional increase in basic well-being and that it therefore does not reveal the inequalities existing among the population he does claim that it is a good indicator of the strength of an economy in capitalist terms lsquoIn a capitalist world as we have repeatedly underscored national wealth as measured by per capita income is the primary source of national powerrsquo (Arrighi 2007 pp 371ndash2)


Th e lsquodiff erencersquo of Asia

Although declining powers have historically always had recourse to war as a means of maintaining their hegemony (and still do) Arrighi argues that it would be a mistake to concentrate on exclusively competitive and non-collaborative options when considering relations between todayrsquos dominant and emerging powers Th e current epoch is set apart by the lsquodiff erence of Asiarsquo and the challenge of a peaceful rise that it represents According to Arrighi the historical experience of East Asiarsquos state-system is essentially diff erent from that of the West the state arose in the East before the West and was lsquointrovertedrsquo in nature Th e Qing Empire opposed private enrichment and (commercial) capitalists were considered a subordinate social group which is why Arrighi claims China had a non-capitalist market-economy He says that it was precisely the policies of introversion practised by the Qing in China and the Tokugawa in Japan that led to the brusque reduction in trade among Asian countries from the beginning of the eighteenth century Th e subsequent vacuum throughout maritime Asia was fi lled by European trading companies and their merchants also by virtue of their military superiority

While Arrighi tends to attribute the isolation of China to lsquointernal factorsrsquo and the nature of its lsquostate systemrsquo and sees this as one of the factors that allowed European expansionism other authors (including Marx) have not considered it an intrinsic characteristic of Chinese society but a reaction on the part of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty to the aggressiveness of the European trading companies8 Th e Dynasty was above all worried about the possibility that foreigners would foment the domestic social discontent underlying the chronic peasant-revolts that have characterised Chinese history9 In addition to isolating imperial policies from their international context Arrighi also fails to examine the nature of the countryrsquos internal social relations and simply refers to the analysis of China contained in the pages of Th e Wealth of Nations

Adam Smithrsquos main work was published in 1776 at the dawning of the Industrial Revolution and at a time when the Chinese economy was still so prosperous that Smith declared not without a certain exaggeration that lsquoChina is a much richer country than any part of Europersquo10 Bolstered by its colonial exploitation of America Britainrsquos trade with China constantly grew throughout the eighteenth century11 Furthermore the middle of the century

8 Bairoch 1993 9 Marx 1979a p 93 Fenby 2008 p 510 Smith 1961 p 20311 Marshall 2001


saw a profound change in its presence in Asia the East India Company had conquered Bengal allowing Britainrsquos progressive penetration of the Indian subcontinent and from there towards the whole of Asia during the subsequent century British foreign policy was systematically aggressive in the eighteenth century as it aimed at obtaining a virtual monopoly of strategic overseas-colonies Th e expansion of colonial trade was enormous growing from 15 per cent of total trade in 1700 to one-third in 177512 ndash the year preceding the publication of Th e Wealth of Nations

Smith called the Chinese economy lsquonaturalrsquo because it was based on agriculture and internal trade he did not mention the fundamental union of agriculture and domestic industry (also documented by his sources such as Bernier) which was its principal characteristic above all in comparison with Great Britain where the two activities were gradually becoming separated and increasingly specialised According to Smith the growth of the agricultural sector would have created conditions for the spontaneous and harmonious development of foreign trade and manufacturing if the law had not imposed unnecessary (and therefore unnatural) limitations which he blamed on Chinese institutions Th is would have been the lsquonaturalrsquo path of development and the exact opposite of that followed by Europe which was lsquounnaturalrsquo because it was based on trade and manufacturing Although unique in its attempt to analyse the internal functioning of the Chinese economy Smithrsquos approach was not so very diff erent from that of his European contemporaries13 who tended to contrast Asia and Europe with reformist and moralising intentions this time in favour of free trade Th is measure clearly responded to the interests of British manufacturers looking for larger markets ndash however lsquounnaturalrsquo Smith may have deemed them14

Furthermore a careful reading of Th e Wealth of Nations makes it plain that Smith had not developed a systematic analysis of the precapitalist Chinese economy It is certainly true that he criticised and ridiculed the sources of European followers of the Enlightenment insofar as they were based on the eye-witness accounts of lsquoweak and wondering travellers frequently by stupid and lying missionariesrsquo15 but if Arrighi had read further he would have also had to mention that Smith considered the descriptions contained in Bernierrsquos

12 Hobsbawm 1968 p 3713 Both in the case of those critics of China ndash such as Montesquieu Diderot and

Rousseau ndash and of apparent lsquoSinophilesrsquo such as Voltaire and Quesnay14 lsquoAccording to this liberal and generous system therefore the most advantageous method

in which a landed nation can raise up artifi cers manufacturers and merchants of its own is to grant the most perfect freedom of trade to the artifi cers manufacturers and merchants of all other nationsrsquo (Smith 1961 Vol II p 192)

15 Arrighi 2007 p 58


travel-memoirs to be more plausible And Bernier was one of the main supporters of the thesis of oriental despotism16 In other passages Smith off ers an image of China that is very diff erent from the rosy picture cited above by arguing that although it had long been one of the richest and most fertile countries in the world it had since become stagnant and wages were low

Th e poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe In the neighbourhood of Canton many hundred it is commonly said many thousand families have no habitation on the land but live constantly in little fi shing boats upon the rivers and canals Th e subsistence which they fi nd there is so scanty that they are eager to fi sh up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard by any European ship Any carrion the carcase of a dead dog or cat for example though half putrid and stinking is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries Marriage is encouraged in China not by the profi tableness of children but by the liberty of destroying them17

Arrighi does not confront these thorny aspects of Smithrsquos account and goes as far as saying that

Smithrsquos depictions of China are a far cry from the indictments of Montesquieu Diderot and Rousseau that eventually gave rise to Marxrsquos infamous notion of an lsquoAsiatic mode of productionrsquo Th ey nonetheless are not as full of admiration as the depictions of the Sinophile faction of the European Enlightenment most prominently represented by Leibniz Voltaire and Quesnay18

After such a claim we can reasonably expect some mention of Marxrsquos texts on the Asian mode of production but there is nothing of the kind Arrighi limits himself to some passages from Th e Communist Manifesto (1848) Th is is a serious lacuna because it was from 1850 onwards in fi ery articles against the Opium Wars that Marx began to write specifi cally about China In terms of sources it needs to be stressed that although Marx initially considered Bernierrsquos analysis of oriental despotism valid subsequent and more detailed study of the debate relating to land-ownership led him to question the truth

16 lsquoTh e accounts of those works however which have been transmitted to Europe have generally been drawn up by weak and wondering travellers frequently by stupid and lying missionaries If they had been examined by more intelligent eyes and if the accounts of them had been reported by more faithful witness they would not perhaps appear to be so wonderful Th e account which Bernier gives of some works of this kind in Indostan falls very much short of what had been reported of them by other travellers more disposed to the marvellous than he wasrsquo (Smith 1961 Vol II pp 251ndash2)

17 Smith 1961 Vol I p 8118 Arrighi 2007 p 58


of Bernierrsquos generalisation concerning conditions in the state of lsquothe Grand Mughal of all Asiarsquo19 Marx went beyond the category of lsquooriental despotismrsquo in his formulations of the Asian mode of production which were in turn based on his analysis of production-relations in Asia and how they diff ered from capitalist ones His published notebooks20 also demonstrate that he continued studying precapitalist societies from Asia to America and within Europe itself until the end of his life paying particular attention to the transformations caused by the expansion of trade and colonial conquests Marx was very concerned about the question of sources and criticised the poverty of the empirical data on which British writers based their arguments which were often dictated by colonial interests He also denounced their tendency to see various forms of despotism in primitive institutions as a means of justifying the despotism of British imperialism

In the chapter of the Grundrisse on lsquoForms Which Precede Capitalist Productionrsquo Marx described the Asian form as a social system in which workers had not yet been separated from the land the unity of agriculture and domestic industry was not yet broken there was no antagonism between cities and the country and the economy was integrated with the sphere of the community or family-relations As the personifi cation and presupposition of overall unity the sovereign appropriated the surplus agricultural product of communities or families by means of taxes and could make use of their collective labour for public works As it was the fi rst antagonistic social form it was also the fi rst to have a state-organisation In this type of society internal trade principally took place amongst peasants and not with the cities21 which developed where there were opportunities for foreign trade and where the sovereign resided Th e high level of productivity of this mode of production constituted a barrier to the expansion of the market for European industries the aim of colonialist aggression was to appropriate the strength of the state for itself precisely in order to destroy the fundamental union between agriculture and domestic industry and to force production-activities to

19 Marx started studying the British debate concerning land-ownership in Asia in more detail in 1853 as can be seen in Notebook XXII of the Londoner Hefte [to be published in MEGA IV11] and questioned the positions of Bernier who generalised to the whole of Asia the social conditions existing in the lands of the Grand Moghul where there were no village-communities Comparison of the letters Marx wrote to Engels on 2 June and 14 June 1853 bears witness to this evolution Concerning the relationship between Marx and Bernier see Krader (ed) 1972 pp 88ndash92

20 Already published in part by Krader (ed) 1972 Harstick 1977 and in the book Notes on Indian History (664ndash1858) (Marx 2001) Th e complete historical-critical edition of Marxrsquos notebooks is expected to be published in MEGA2

21 Vries 2003 p 26


specialise in the primary sphere as happened in India For this reason this chapter of the Grundrisse follows that on the lsquoOriginal Accumulation of Capitalrsquo As Krader rightly underlines22 Marx does not describe social forms in isolation here but as an integral part of the analysis of the process of capitalist accumulation which includes a continuous action and reaction with previous social forms that it intends to subordinate by destroying the bases of the lsquonatural communityrsquo

Arrighirsquos accusation does not take into account the texts or even the evolution of Marxrsquos thoughts on Asia Th is is a thunderous silence in a book that is supposedly dedicated precisely to this subject Th is is due in my opinion to Arrighirsquos desire to overcome the underlying approach of Marxrsquos analysis based on production-relations understood as laying the foundations for the specifi c forms taken by the political organisation of societies

Capitalism the state and the market

Arrighi says that Marxrsquos principal lacuna is his failure to examine the role of the state in the economy Th is is why it is necessary to reassess the contribution of Adam Smith who unlike the neoliberal vulgate23

presupposed the existence of a strong state that would create and reproduce the conditions for the existence of the market that would use the market as an eff ective instrument of government that would regulate its operation and that would actively intervene to correct or counter its socially or politically undesirable outcomes24

However Arrighi does not fully address Marxrsquos political writings or those pages of Das Kapital that deal with the function of the state and therefore presents a quasi-lsquoneoliberal Marxrsquo not so very diff erent from an lsquoembeddedrsquo

22 lsquoIf that discussion is conducted no further is not related to the proceeding passage on accumulation of capital in the Grundrisse it would be undialectical and false Yet this is what the discussion on the epochs has accomplished until this timersquo (Krader 1975 p 95)

23 It is true that Adam Smith cannot be considered the father of the neoliberal rhetoric concerning the dichotomy between the market and the state in which any intervention of the latter only creates systematic problems by diverting the spontaneous course of the former It is however equally undeniable that Smith formulated a theory of self-regulated economic development in which the state has the main function of favouring and supporting capitalism even though he may wish for the inclusion of political measures aimed at limiting its socially negative consequences Th e real target of the polemic behind neoliberal doctrine is state-intervention in social issues and never its function as the guarantor of private property or as the holder of the monopoly of power both inside and outside its national borders

24 Arrighi 2007 pp 42ndash3


journalist such as Th omas Friedman Th is suggests that the real lacuna lies with Arrighi rather than Marx and the causes seem to be just as clear by liquidating Marxrsquos analysis of production-relations Arrighi is in no position to grasp his analysis of the state

Marx sees capital as a social relation characterised by antagonism between the capitalist and working classes which historically arose by means of a process that separated direct producers from the means of production In Chapter 32 of Volume I of Capital he describes the fundamental role played by the state in generating this relation25 both nationally and internationally in terms of expropriating peasant-landholdings disciplining the proletariat and supporting manufacturing as well as in terms of the lsquoaccumulationrsquo of the enormous mercantile and usurious capitals (acquired by robbing pillaging and conquering colonised peoples) that gave rise to industrial capital Th is historical description is strictly related to his identifi cation of the permanent means that capital uses in order to lsquoguaranteersquo its extended reproduction as indeed Arrighi sometimes seems to acknowledge though he only refers to national debt and the credit-system Arrighi also does not consider the role of the state in class-confl ict or interstate-competition or the colonial or protectionist system all of which are fundamental elements in any discussion of the key theoretical point the relations between capitalism the state and the world-market

Adam Smith saw capitalism as a harmonious mode of production that had arisen cumulatively and spontaneously from the activities of frugal and industrious Englishmen and whose self-regulated course would lead to peace and a general improvement in the living conditions of humanity as a whole Th e world-market would consist of the sum of potentially equal and independent nations that could develop industrially within a context of perfect and balanced competition with their cumulative growth allowing all nations to make the transition from agricultural to manufacturing production thus increasing their national wealth Although it is true that in some parts of his book Smith said that the greater technical division of labour would require a concomitant expansion of the foreign market and described the advantages that Europe (particularly Great Britain) had historically gained from its colonial conquests he also said that these processes were not driven by necessity or even by an lsquoabsolutersquo utility On

25 For Marx all of the methods of lsquoprimitive accumulationrsquo use lsquothe power of the state the concentrated and organised force of society to hasten hot-house fashion the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode and to shorten the transition Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one It is itself an economic powerrsquo (Marx 1996 p 739)


the contrary the founding of the colonies and the mercantile-system brought about disadvantages whose underlying principles he called lsquofollyrsquo and lsquoinjusticersquo26 In the chapter of Capital on manufacturing Marx himself pointed out that Smith had denounced ndash but only in the last part of his book ndash the deleterious eff ects of the division of labour on workers which he had celebrated ex professo at the beginning as a source of general well-being and that he had recommended popular education for them lsquobut prudently and in homeopathic dosesrsquo27 What Smith did not clarify was the objective underlying the division of labour ndash reducing the value of the labour-power ndash which makes its expansion in manufacturing and society necessary For Marx in its specifi c capitalistic form lsquomanufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative surplus-value or of augmenting at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital usually called social wealth ldquoWealth of Nationsrdquo ampcrsquo28 Th e development of manufacturing presupposes a certain degree of social division of labour in the fi rst place between town and country which it deepens and extends in its turn Furthermore it would not take place spontaneously nor would it be possible in lsquofree-marketrsquo conditions but would require the support of the state through protectionism whose eff ectiveness is strengthened by the colonial system which makes it possible to eradicate any industry in dependent countries by force thus compelling them to specialise in producing raw materials and buying manufactured goods

Although the work of Smith included numerous historical references to these processes his economic theory was based on the unrealistic and anti-historical assumption that colonialism and the forced expansion of the world-market represented an incidental phase of capitalism whose development would be possible in a closed national system Smith and subsequently (and even more resolutely) Ricardo and Say also claimed that all of the capital of a country could be advantageously used internally and that crises were not structural because accumulation would lead to employment and a corresponding increase in the demand of society as a whole Marx stated that although Smith had sustained this thesis he had with his usual intelligent instinct also denied it by describing the simple development from the domestic to the foreign market as being dictated by a relative overproduction

26 Smith 1961 Vol I pp 75ndash927 Marx 1996 p 36828 lsquoTh e Colonial system and the opening out of the markets of the world both of which

are included in the general conditions of existence of the manufacturing period furnish rich material for developing the division of labour in societyrsquo (Marx 1996 p 369)


in the former29 However Smithrsquos theory cannot structurally take these elements into account and confl icts with real history ndash marked by violence conquest and subjugation ndash insofar as it expresses the interests of ascendant British capitalism which he can describe as being harmonious peaceful and law-abiding only by hiding its exploitation and presenting its recourse to direct violence as an exception30 It is for this reason that at the height of the process of enclosure and when Britain was intent on transforming the world into a reservoir of raw materials and markets for its manufactured goods Adam Smith described both the condition of wage-labour separated from the land and the Chinese economy as being lsquonaturalrsquo ndash a view that was based on the naturalisation of the capitalist mode of production and which in particular refl ected the interests of a given system that of Great Britain

Th ese considerations are confi rmed if we read Smithrsquos principal work the lsquoCommonwealth of Nationsrsquo described at the end of the book as a lsquonew Utopiarsquo31 was not extended to all of the states in the world but only to British colonies and the lsquomotherlandrsquo It was aimed at fi nding an alternative solution to the imminent separation of the lsquorebelrsquo American colonies as well as at reducing the national debt and the costs of empire However Adam Smith was not against maintaining Britainrsquos commercial strongholds in Africa or its growing territorial acquisitions in Asia but hoped that their management would be entrusted to the government because unlike the trading companies it really had lsquoan interest in the prosperity of that empirersquo He went on to argue that

Th e territorial acquisitions of the East Indian company the undoubted right of the crown that is of the state and people of Great Britain might be rendered another source of revenue more abundant perhaps than all those already mentioned Th ose countries are represented as more fertile more extensive and in proportion to their extent much richer and more populous than Great Britain32

Th e union he wished for and which Arrighi now re-proposes as a harbinger of global peace and prosperity therefore never questioned the supreme interests of British capital international competition and the Empire

For the same reasons Smith was against lsquotumultuousrsquo coalitions of workers whose violence and at times lsquofollyrsquo would in his opinion rarely bring them positive results they would do better to wait for the wage-increases that

29 Marx 1989b p 15430 Marx 1996 p 70531 Smith 1961 [1776] Vol II p 47232 Smith 1961 [1776] Vol II p 484


would lsquonaturallyrsquo come from greater national wealth33 However this thesis (which was reiterated in similar forms in the twentieth century by economists such as JM Keynes according to whom improved working-conditions and greater free time depended on economic growth) is not supported by history Various studies have demonstrated that the (real) reduction in working hours did not come from increased productivity but was obtained by workers through organised struggle34 It is precisely for this reason that workersrsquo coalitions were outlawed in England from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century It was not until 1871 that the British Parliament recognised trade-unions but even then it made sure to pass another Act that simultaneously re-established the previous relation in a new form It was the struggles of the workers and not some concession from on high that forced the British Parliament to modify the legislation35 Equally fundamental were the collective claims of the working classes in industrialised countries which allowed them to obtain political and social rights during the course of the twentieth century (although these lsquoconquestsrsquo have never been defi nitive as the ascendancy of neoliberalism proves) together with the agency of large sectors of the subordinate classes leading to the victory of anticolonial revolutions and the subsequent imposition of policies aimed at redistributing the results of national economic growth In Adam Smith in Beijing Arrighi does not talk about these anything-but-secondary aspects concerning the intervention of the state in the economy and even goes as far as to say that lsquoSmithrsquos advice to the legislator was almost invariably labour-friendlyrsquo36 In my opinion his references in this book to the importance of workersrsquo struggles and anticolonial revolutions therefore remain purely formal and extrinsic

Th e internationalisation of capital and wage-labour

Although it has the merit of raising the question of the relation between capitalism and expansionism (thus continuing his debate with Harvey)37

33 Smith 1961 [1776] Vol I pp 75ndash934 For a documented examination see Roediger and Foner 1989 Basso 2003 pp 101ndash835 In Das Kapital Marx pointed out that lsquoonly against its will and under the pressure of the

masses did the English Parliament give up the laws against Strikes and Tradesrsquo Unions after it had itself for 500 years held with shameless egoism the position of a permanent Tradesrsquo Union of the capitalists against the labourersrsquo (Marx 1996 p 730)

36 Arrighi 2007 p 4837 See the critical ndash but fundamentally theoretically similar ndash criticism by Harvey 2003 to

which Arrighi constantly makes reference


Arrighirsquos book does not explore the interpretation of Marx in detail Arrighi argues that there is a contradiction between the lsquoeconomicrsquo analysis of Volume 1 and the chapter on lsquoprimitive accumulationrsquo However in Capital the colonial expansion of Europe is described as a permanent and unifi ed process

Th e discovery of gold and silver in America the extirpation enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production Th ese idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations with the globe for a theatre It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain assumes giant dimensions in Englandrsquos anti-Jacobin War and is still going on in the opium wars against China ampc38

In the industrial phase capitalrsquos fi eld of action mainly expanded by means of competition but also by having recourse to state-interventions and colonial wars Th e diff erence from the period of manufacture properly so-called lies in the fact that industrial predominance was then based on commercial supremacy whereas in the industrial phase industrial supremacy implies commercial supremacy Th e strength of capital no longer depends on the strength of the state but vice versa the strength of the state depends on the strength of capital

In the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century the de facto industrial monopoly of Britain led to a progressive questioning of the mercantile system that had underlain its development39 and the strengthening of attempts to impose international free-trade measures favouring the export of industrial goods Th e expansion of trade was strictly related to the expansion of capital foreign investments started to increase in importance after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and went on to form an lsquoinvisible empirersquo covering the entire planet40 And this together with the development of transport and communications created appropriate conditions for the international nature of capitalist production41 Highly competitive British industrial commodities supplanted ndash also by means of colonial aggression ndash the products of non-industrialised countries which were forced to specialise in producing raw materials and led to the concentration of industrial activities in Great

38 Marx 1996 p 73939 Winch 1965 p 4840 Jenks 1963 p 141 Marx 1996 p 427


Britain which counted on becoming the only lsquoindustrial centrersquo in an agricultural world For Marx although the process of primary accumulation in India however destructive lsquodid not go deeper than its surfacersquo42 the process of concentrating industrial production in Britain and destroying local manufacturing broke down lsquothe entire framework of Indian societyrsquo leading him to say that lsquoafter 1833 the extension of the Asiatic markets is enforced by the ldquodestruction of the human racerdquo (the wholesale extinction of Indian hand-loom weavers)rsquo43 Th e opening of the Chinese market brought about by means of the Opium Wars led British capitalists and their allies to hope that they could repeat what they had managed to do in India by expanding their overseas-markets and thus avoiding crises of overproduction and overspeculation In his articles Marx denounced the robbery and dominion of Britain carried out with parliamentary support such as the liberal methods used to protect the interests of Manchesterrsquos industrialists But the British failed to conquer China and take the power of the state into their own hands and were therefore unable to overturn the basis of its economy Th e resistance of China dashed their hopes44

Th is expansionism has an organic place in Marxrsquos main work which does not analyse a lsquoclosed national systemrsquo but sees the fi eld of the accumulation of British capital as completely globalised45 Th is abstraction is not a Weberian ideal-type or an expression of the pure (and peaceful) capitalism of Schumpeter (as Arrighi seems to suggest) nor is it to be attributed to a presumed

42 Marx 1979b p 12643 Marx 1996 p 46244 Th e wars with which they wanted to open the markets gave rise to lsquoside eff ectsrsquo such as

the Taiping Rebellion (1850ndash64) Th ese put a brake on their expansion as well as the consequences of the opium-trade which developed inversely to that of Western manufactured goods Marx stated that regardless of these factors the causes of the resistance of Chinese production were structural and due to the high level of productivity of domestic industry which in its combination with agriculture managed to keep prices low and guarantee the rural populace comfortable living conditions He therefore thought it extremely unlikely even after the Opium Wars that the British would be able to supplant Chinese manufacturing production as they had done in India because having failed to conquer the country and seize the power of the state they would not be able to overturn the basis of its economy It is therefore truly disappointing that Arrighi can say against Marx that British manufactured goods encountered diffi culties in supplanting their Chinese counterparts even after the Opium Wars (Arrighi 2007 pp 336ndash7) See in this regard the explicit and unmistakable passages by Marx in Chapter 20 of Volume III of Capital on commercial capital and his articles for the New York Daily Tribune

45 lsquoIn order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances we must treat the whole world as one nation and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed itself of every branch of industryrsquo (Marx 1996 p 580)


conviction on the part of Marx that the universalisation of the capitalist system was inevitable and would lead to a lsquofl attening of the worldrsquo On the contrary it refl ects the tendency of the capital of the dominant states ndash also by resorting to the methods of lsquoso-called primitive accumulationrsquo ndash to expand and increase the exploitation of workers worldwide For Marx

the monopoly enjoyed by concentrated English capital and its dissolving eff ect on the smaller national capitals of other countries are disharmonious Th ese world-market disharmonies are merely the ultimate adequate expressions of the disharmonies which have become fi xed in the economic categories as abstract relations or have a local existence on the smallest scale46

In Capital Marx considers the world of trade as a single nation abstracting from the presence of multiple states the colonial and polarising structure of the world-market resistance against the expansion of capital workersrsquo struggles national diff erences in wages the stratifi cations of the labour-force and persistent diff erences in the juridical forms of their exploitation (slavery glebe-servitude forced labour artisan and peasant) in order to identify the laws of the antagonism between capital and wage-labour throughout the world Numerous writings demonstrate that Marx certainly did not underestimate the importance of peasant-labour or its possible revolutionary role However in Volume 1 of Capital he does not take these conditions into account and presupposes the worldwide extension of wage-labour thus refl ecting the limit of capitalist development which involves a process of continuous expropriation and proletarianisation of the rural population For Marx the general tendency that underlies all diff erentiation is the increasing impoverishment of the working class which should be considered a world-class in order to refl ect the growing interdependence of its living conditions and the universalisation of the co-operation of labour

Accumulation develops by means of a vicious circle in which labourers make themselves relatively redundant as members of their class the combined eff ect of the concentration and centralisation of capital ndash or dead objectifi ed work ndash is an increase in the organic composition of capital and a relative reduction in the demand for labour Th e reserve industrial army is used as a weapon to pressurise the employed reduce wages and lengthen the working day thus further increasing its ranks Accumulation increases competition among workers and therefore against themselves as members of the working class both nationally and internationally Th e process of capitalist concentration and centralisation tends to reach the lsquolimitrsquo point at which

46 Marx 1986b p 9


total social capital achieves concrete existence as one single capital and the absolute wealth to which it intrinsically aspires47 However this lsquolimitrsquo can never actually be reached because competition is an intrinsic part of the very essence of capital which always presents itself as many capitals accumulation therefore re-proposes it more acutely thus increasing intercapitalist and interstate antagonisms For Marx capitalrsquos development is a process that increasingly reproduces its inherent antagonisms the growth of new powers exacerbates peaceful as well as military international competition and through this the exploitation of living labour

Arrighi limits his analysis to the principal hegemonic power (the United States) without making explicit its lsquocompetitive collaborationrsquo with the other powers and the international dimension of its interventions But the point highlighted by the previously cited passage from Capital is that the competition of the European nations takes place lsquowith the globe for a theatrersquo and continues when they momentarily coalesce in order to extend their lsquospheres of infl uencersquo as in the case of the attempted conquest of Chinese markets by Britain France and the United States According to Marx the presence of one hegemonic state does not eliminate competition with the other states on the world-market but their industrial development actually increases it Signifi cantly Volume I of Capital concludes with a reference to the enormous economic growth of the USA described as the power destined to replace Britain in its global hegemony as a result of the exacerbation of the war of international competition48

Destiny andor revolution

Presupposing the complete universalisation of the capitalist mode of production does not mean that it was considered inevitable But this is precisely the criticism raised by Arrighi when he says that Marx continuously argued from Th e Communist Manifesto to Capital that Asian societies were fated to succumb to the violent attack of the bourgeoisie Th is misunderstands the essential underlying characteristic of Marxrsquos critical analysis according to

47 Th e concept of lsquolimitrsquo ndash with which in mathematics one analyses the behaviour of a mathematical object that approaches a given value ndash is used by Marx to indicate the lsquoaimrsquo of the historical dynamic insofar as it progressively approximates to it

48 See Marx 1996 p 760 and p 703 Th e articles by Marx and Engels on the American Civil War deny Arrighirsquos thesis that Marx was unaware of the role of militarism in capitalist development Marx (but above all Engels) carefully studied the military and organisational aspects of the American Civil War which presented lsquoa spectacle without parallel in the annals of military historyrsquo (Marx and Engels 1984 p 186)


which capitalism is a historically-determined and surpassable mode of production that precisely for this reason can be conceived of as a totality ndash thus going beyond the dichotomy of history and theory that characterises classical political economy For Marx the development of capitalism is the development of its antagonisms and lays the basis for the creation at the world-level of its historical alternative socialism Capital is essentially an analysis of the antagonism of two diff erent social systems which Marx saw at work in reality and in which he intervened actively by elaborating the lsquotoolsrsquo necessary to the revolutionary movement Th e fact that Marx took many positions and in the last years of his life had a lively interest in community-forms of landholding in Asia and Russia seems to further undermine Arrighirsquos criticism49 Furthermore it is nothing new in his letters to the editorial board of Otecestvenniye Zapiski Marx himself opposed those who were trying to transform lsquothe historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophic theory of general development imposed by fate on all peoples whatever the historical circumstances in which they are placedrsquo50

Marx did ask himself lsquocan mankind fulfi l its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asiarsquo51 but this question has a radically diff erent meaning from that espoused by Arrighi who instead of reproaching Marx should have criticised the Stalinist theory of the stages of development that all peoples independently need to go through in order to reach lsquosocialismrsquo During the 1850s and partially as a result of the impulse coming from the uprisings in Asia against colonial aggression Marx revised his conviction (expressed in Th e Communist Manifesto) that the liberation of the Asian peoples depended on the revolution in Europe arguing instead for a reciprocal relation of action and reaction between the two revolutions He favourably greeted the Taiping Rebellion ndash proposing that its main cause lay in Britainrsquos wars of aggression which had led to the explosion of the social discontent already simmering in China52 he interpreted it as part of a more general uprising of the lsquogreat Asiatic nationsrsquo against British colonial dominion stretching from China to India and Persia53 If Britain had

49 In addition to the previously cited texts on precapitalist societies also see the letters of Marx to Vera Zasulich (1881) on the Russian commune and the introduction to the second edition of the Communist Manifesto of 1882 (Marx and Engels 2008 pp 243ndash56) On the changes that Marx made to the French edition of Capital (1872ndash5) concerning this issue see the articles by Anderson (1983 2000)

50 Marx 1989a p 20051 Marx 1979b p 13252 Marx 1979a p 9353 Marx 1986a p 298


triggered revolutions in China and Asia over time they would react back on Britain itself and through it on continental Europe thus accelerating the factors of economic crisis and therefore the possibility of a revolutionary outcome By continuously expanding its markets in order to escape its crises capital simultaneously increases the factors of crisis and the possibility of the revolutionary overthrow of the system According to Marx the global interconnections of the world-market lay the basis for the unifi cation and reciprocal reinforcement of struggles on an international scale thus making revolutionary movements strictly interrelated Th e victory of the proletarian revolution in Europe could have prevented capitalism from expanding to other continents thus allowing for the socialisation of the conquests of the capitalist mode of production among other peoples but avoiding its exploitative relations and destructive eff ects

As a result of his commitment to the First International and his subsequent studies of the colonial question at the end of the 1860s Marx further developed this dialectical view of the global struggle against capitalism and ndash with his positions on Ireland ndash laid the basis for conceiving of the international revolution as a unifi ed process of lsquopermanent revolutionrsquo in which the struggles for independence of the colonies and dominated countries are an active force that also contributes to the emancipation of the metropolitan proletarians themselves54

However if this connection (which was indeed lsquovirtuousrsquo in Marxrsquos opinion) did not take place and China were to set off along the road to capitalist development it could not do otherwise but follow the inexorable laws outlined in Capital Continuing his letter on Russia Marx held that if it

is tending to become a capitalist nation on the model of the countries of Western Europe ndash and in recent years it has gone to great pains to move in this direction ndash it will not succeed without having fi rst transformed a large proportion of its peasants into proletarians and after that once it has been placed in the bosom of the capitalist system it will be subjected to its pitiless laws like other profane peoples55

54 In his letter to Engels of 10 December 1869 Marx maintains that lsquoit is in the direct and absolute interest of the English working Class to get rid of their present connection with Ireland And this is my most complete conviction and for reasons which in part I cannot tell the English workers themselves For a long time I believed that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy I always expressed this point of view in the New York Tribune Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite Th e English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland Th e lever must be applied in Irelandrsquo (Marx and Engels 1988 p 398)

55 Marx 1989a pp 199ndash200


In this regard it is particularly interesting to read the passage on international competition and China added by Marx to the French edition of Volume I (the last that was lsquopersonallyrsquo edited by him between 1872 and 1875) which was subsequently not integrated into the third and fourth German editions (and therefore the principal editions circulating in the twentieth century) but only partially recorded in a note Marx held that the lsquocosmopolitan competitionrsquo into which capital had thrown the workers of the world would ensure that if China developed the capitalist mode of production the tendency would not only be to drive British wages down to the level of those in continental Europe but also European wages down to the level of those in China

In our day these aspirations have been totally left behind thanks to the cosmopolitan competition into which capitalist production has thrown all the worldrsquos workers It is no longer a case of simply reducing English wages to the level of those of continental Europe but ndash in a more or less distant future ndash to lower the level of European wages to the level of the Chinese Th is is the position that Mr Stapleton a member of the British parliament revealed to his electors in a speech on the future cost of labour lsquoIf China becomes a great manufacturing country I cannot see how the industrial population of Europe will be able to maintain its struggle without descending to the level of its competitorsrsquo (Note 8 S 523 25 Times 9 Sept 1873)56

Despite the historical and institutional specifi city of every country (to which Marx always paid the greatest attention) recent history does nothing but demonstrate the truth of this prediction Th e expansion of the capitalist mode of production involves the extension of competition and a drive to lower the value of labour-power57 Th is tendency should not be interpreted

56 Marx 1989 p 522 (translated from the French)57 However paradoxical it may seem Arrighi does not explicitly take any position on

Chinese society and its mode of production and claims that is not clear whether Dengrsquos reforms have led to the formation of a capitalist class or whether this class has been able to take command over the economy lsquoAll it means is that even if socialism has already lost out in China capitalism by this defi nition has not yet won Th e social outcome of Chinarsquos titanic modernization eff ort remains indeterminate and for all we know socialism and capitalism as understood on the basis of past experience may not be the most useful notions with which to monitor and comprehend the evolving situationrsquo (p 24) It could have been expected that if only to liquidate them socratically Arrighi might have given the lsquotraditionalrsquo defi nitions of capitalism and socialism but no such formulation or reply to this central point can be found anywhere in his book He claims that the capitalist nature of market-based development is not determined by the presence of capitalist provisions and institutions but by the relation between the power of the state and the power of capital and his whole argument is founded on the assumption that the defi nition of China as a non-capitalist market-economy is still valid today His reasoning therefore moves in a vicious circle he does not defi ne the capitalist mode of


simplistically but requires a series of mediations that can be abstracted from the analysis of Capital For example in his articles on India in addition to the destructive eff ects of its conquest Marx also identifi ed the material basis for the unifi ed uprising of the Indian people and the countryrsquos national development which Britain had unknowingly established and stated that the material living conditions of the mass of the population would depend on its appropriation of the fruits of that development Workersrsquo struggles can oppose and limit the relative worsening in their social conditions but cannot halt it except by overthrowing the system itself58 Th e universal nature of Marxrsquos work and his ability to grasp the totality of capitalist society lies in his descriptions of these laws which are still relevant to explaining the situation today and the keystone of his anything-but-outdated programme for the unifi cation of workers throughout the world

Conclusions

Arrighi attempts to demonstrate that lsquoglobalisationrsquo could lead to well-being and a new equilibrium between no better-defi ned lsquospheres of civilisationrsquo On the basis of partial fragmentary and sometimes downright wrong theoretical and historical reconstructions he fails to analyse the fundamental economic levers underlying the social transformations that are taking place today

In my opinion the fact that Adam Smith in Beijing does not even mention any of the analyses and positions of Marx detailed above is due to the fundamental divergence between the position of Arrighi and that of Marx Arrighi argues that not all market-processes (trade the emigration of labour exchanges of technology and information and so on) are driven by capitalist logic and the diff erent logics of power (capitalist and territorial) essentially operate within a framework of state-policies States are the principal protagonists of accumulation by dispossession and states deal with overaccumulation by continuously creating new spaces making use of fi nancial capital and the credit-system Arrighi therefore overturns the position of Marx (according to whom states operate on the basis of the lsquologicrsquo

production or examine the Chinese mode of production in detail but posits that it is a non-capitalist market-economy and insists that this undermines the lsquotraditionalrsquo notions of capitalism and socialism

58 In Capital Marx maintains that the workersrsquo struggle to increase relative wages and improve their social conditions could never lead to a long-term growth in wages that was proportional to that of the growth in productivity the objective of which is to reduce the value of the labour-power (Marx 1996 p 616)


of capital) and places the state as the subject although without making this lsquologicrsquo explicit By failing to analyse production-relations and the lsquocapitalist logicrsquo (although he does refer to it) Arrighi fails to examine the nature and function of the state However in this way he also distances himself from Smith who never doubted that the aim of state-policies should be to pursue the wealth of the nation ndash that is the accumulation of capital By trying to go beyond Marx via a return to Smith Arrighirsquos analysis leads to indeterminacy And it is for this reason that instead of being a real critique it is very often nothing more than a repetition of trite commonplaces about Marx that collapse before the textual evidence Despite the way the governments of the G20 present themselves the current economic crisis involves a sharpening of the antagonisms outlined by Marx in Capital Th e current relevance of his immanent critique is due not only to the prescience of his analysis but also to its identifi cation of the only social force that can really lsquomake the diff erencersquo

References

Anderson Kevin B 1983 lsquoTh e ldquoUnknownrdquo Marxrsquos Capital Volume I Th e French Edition of 1872ndash75 100 Years Laterrsquo Review of Radical Political Economics 15 4 71ndash80

mdashmdash 2000 lsquoMarxrsquos Late Writings on Non-Western and Precapitalistic Societies and Genderrsquo Rethinking Marxism 14 4 84ndash96

Arrighi Giovanni 2007 Adam Smith in Beijing Lineages of the Twenty-First Century London Verso

Bairoch Paul 1993 Economics and World History Myths and Paradoxes Chicago University of Chicago Press

Basso Pietro 2003 Modern Times Ancient Hours Working Lives in the Twenty First Century London Verso

Chesnaux Jean Marianne Bastid and Marie-Claire Bergegravere 1977 China from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution Hassocks Harvester Press

Collotti Pischel Enrica 2005 [1972] Storia della rivoluzione cinese Rome Editori RiunitiFenby Jonathan 2008 Th e Penguin History of Modern China Th e Fall and Rise of a Great Power

1850ndash2008 London Allen LaneGallagher John and Ronald Robinson 1953 lsquoTh e Imperialism of Free Tradersquo Th e Economic

History Review Second Series ltsect 1 1ndash15Harstick Hans Peter 1977 Karl Marx uumlber Formen vorkapitalistischer Produktion Frankfurt

CampusHarvey David 2003 Th e New Imperialism Oxford Oxford University Pressmdashmdash 2005 A Brief History of Neoliberalism Oxford Oxford University PressHobsbawm Eric John 1968 Industry and Empire An Economic History of Britain since 1750

London Weidenfeld and NicolsonJenks Leland Hamilton 1963 Th e Migration of English Capital to 1875 London Th omas

Nelson and SonsKrader Lawrence 1975 Th e Asiatic Mode of Production Sources Development and Critique in

the Writings of Karl Marx Assen Van Gorcum


mdashmdash (ed) 1972 Th e Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx Assen Van GorcumMaddison Angus 1998 Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run Paris OECDMarshall Peter James 2001 lsquoTh e British in Asia Trade to Dominion 1700ndash1765rsquo in Th e

Oxford History of the British Empire Volume II Th e Eighteenth Century edited by PJ Marshall Oxford Oxford University Press

Marx Karl 1979a lsquoRevolution in China and in Europersquo in MarxEngels Collected Works Volume 12 London Lawrence amp Wishart

mdashmdash 1979b lsquoTh e British Rule in Indiarsquo in MarxEngels Collected Works Volume 12 London Lawrence amp Wishart

mdashmdash 1986a lsquoTh e Revolt in the Indian Armyrsquo in MarxEngels Collected Works Volume 15 London Lawrence amp Wishart

mdashmdash 1986b MarxEngels Collected Works Volume 28 London Lawrence amp Wishartmdashmdash 1989 Le Capital Paris 1872ndash1875 in Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe Volume II7 Berlin

Dietz Verlagmdashmdash 1989a lsquoLetter from Marx to Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapiskirsquo in MarxEngels

Collected Works Volume 24 London Lawrence amp Wishartmdashmdash 1989b MarxEngels Collected Works Volume 32 London Lawrence amp Wishartmdashmdash 1996 Capital Volume 1 in MarxEngels Collected Works Volume 35 London Lawrence

amp Wishartmdashmdash 2001 Notes on Indian History (664ndash1858) Honolulu University Press of the Pacifi cmdashmdash and Frederick Engels 1984 lsquoTh e American Civil Warrsquo in MarxEngels Collected Works

Volume 19 London Lawrence amp Wishartmdashmdash and Frederick Engels 1988 MarxEngels Collected Works Volume 43 New York

International Publishersmdashmdash and Friedrich Engels 2008 India Cina Russia Milan Il SaggiatoreRoediger David R and Philip S Foner 1989 Our Own Time A History of American Labor and

the Working Day London VersoSmith Adam 1961 [1776] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

2 vols Frome Butler amp TannerVries Peer 2003 Via Peking back to Manchester Britain the Industrial Revolution and China

Leiden Leiden UniversityWinch Donald Norman 1965 Classical Political Economy and Colonies London Bell


the failure of Th e Project for a New American Century and the success of Chinese economic development have made the realization of Smithrsquos vision of a world market society based on greater equality among the worldrsquos civilizations more likely than it ever was in the almost two and a half centuries since the publication of Th e Wealth of Nations2

On the basis of this view Smithrsquos theories are seen as being more helpful for interpreting the current historical phase and its possible developments than those of Marx Th is article aims to clarify the theoretical basis assumed by Arrighi and analyse his theoretical and historical reconstruction of the work of Smith and Marx

Th e lsquovirtuous growthrsquo of China

China should really be seen as returning to the centre of the world-economy It is worth remembering that it was one of the worldrsquos leading economies at least until 1820 when as a result of its increasing imports of opium the balance of trade shifted in favour of Great Britain which exploited its colonial possessions in India in order to produce and illegally export the drug to the lsquoCelestial Empirersquo where it had devastating eff ects on the population and created a fi nancial crisis by draining the state of its circulating silver3 When the Chinese authorities tried to intervene Britain replied with its gunboats Th e Opium Wars marked a qualitative change in the Western penetration of China which was subsequently subjected to open military aggression fi rst by Britain alone and then by the subsequent competitive collaboration of the European powers the United States and Japan Th ese military and economic attacks ndash with their imposition of lsquounequal treatiesrsquo territorial lsquoconcessionsrsquo and enormous war-indemnities paid for by indebting the Chinese empire and with the subsequent penetration of Western capital ndash led to the progressive impoverishment of the population4 and what the Chinese call lsquothe century of humiliationsrsquo

One of the merits of Arrighirsquos reconstruction is its highlighting of the fact that the current growth of China rests on lsquorevolutionary basesrsquo he argues that it was the extraordinary reawakening produced by the popular and anticolonial revolution of 1949 that put an end to the lsquocentury of humiliationsrsquo and ndash as a result of agrarian reform as well as the establishment of infrastructure health-services and education-systems ndash laid the foundations

2 Arrighi 2007 p 83 Chesneaux Bastid and Bergegravere 1977 pp 42ndash34 Chesneaux Bastid and Bergegravere 1977 pp 86ndash7 Fenby 2008 p xxxi
































21 Vries 2003 p 26





















































46 Marx 1986b p 9




























Conclusions







References




























































21 Vries 2003 p 26





















































46 Marx 1986b p 9




























Conclusions







References

















































































46 Marx 1986b p 9




























Conclusions







References
























































Conclusions







References































References



























