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Palgrave Insights into Apocalypse
Economics

Series Editor
Richard Westra
Institute of Political Science, University of Opole, Poland
Center for Macau Studies, University of Macau, Macau, China

This series is set to become the lodestone for critical Marxist and
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‘golden age’ economy but in fact have generated a widening spectrum
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Robert Albritton

A Japanese Approach to Stages of

Capitalist Development
What Comes Next?
2nd ed. 2022

With Richard Westra

Robert Albritton
Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

ISSN 2523-8108 e-ISSN 2523-8116

Palgrave Insights into Apocalypse Economics
ISBN 978-3-030-99036-7 e-ISBN 978-3-030-99037-4
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99037-4

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Dedicated with gratitude to
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Our brilliant friend, colleague, and mentor
November 22, 1933–January 16, 2022
Preface
For readers, the role of Marx’s Capital in grounding the study of
capitalism across its history, including into the present, may seem an
arcane exercise. Arguably, however, the power of Marx’s thinking hinges
upon the understanding of what his Capital intended to accomplish. It
is this that leads those interested in Marx and Marxism to debates over
the significance of Capital in Marx’s vast corpus.
In this spirit, Japanese Marxian economist Kozo Uno produced a
major re-working and refining of Marx’s Capital. Uno’s work, in turn,
was further developed by his student Thomas Sekine. Sekine’s
important contribution got to the bottom of one of the biggest
questions haunting Capital, that of the place of dialectics in Marx’s
theorizing in Capital. Sekine’s work draws out the homologous
structuring of Capital in three doctrines akin to G. W. F. Hegel’s Logic
which Marx praises as a major influence upon him. Sekine also
elaborated, where needed, upon the mathematical formulations of key
aspects of Marx’s economic theory in Capital utilizing calculus and the
margin principle. This enabled Sekine to clearly and robustly respond
to the many spurious critiques heaped upon Capital from neoclassical
economists and those Marxist economists mesmerized by neoclassical
subterfuge. Sekine, along with his students and his colleagues at York
University in Toronto, and his friends in Japan, have greatly expanded
on other elements of Uno’s work as well.
This expansion has included developing Uno’s thought on levels of
analysis in Marxian political economy. It is precisely that question
which empowers us to begin thinking about how to apply Marx’s
formulations in Capital to deal with political economic changes Marx
could hardly foresee. Albritton’s first edition of this book entitled A
Japanese Approach to Stages of Capitalist Development, published in
1991, took a large step in addressing that difficult question. The first
edition of the book developed Uno and Sekine’s work on stage theory
and levels of analysis in original ways. In particular, while Uno
theorized stages of capitalism in terms of the way the logic of capital is
supported by state policy in each stage, Albritton theorized stages more
broadly by exploring stages of capitalism as relatively coherent
structures of economic, ideological, legal, and political practices. Even
the economic logic of capital captured in the theory of a purely
capitalist society had to be theorized in each stage, Albritton
maintained, according to how that logic is refracted under the specific
constraints capital faces in managing the production of stage-specific
use-values. Albritton was also the first scholar working in the Unoist
tradition to theorize a fourth stage of capitalism. Uno theorized three
stages—mercantilism, liberalism and imperialism—and believed the
latter to be the final stage of capitalism. Uno came to that conclusion
based on the one hand, on the fact of capitalism worldwide being put
on the defensive following the Soviet revolution. On the other hand,
Uno thought that given the extent to which the logic of capital was
compromised in the stage of imperialism by tendencies of capital
towards monopolization and the extra-market interferences of an
enlarging imperialist state footprint, it would be difficult for capital and
the law of value to regain its vigour. Yet, for Albritton, while the fourth
stage of capitalism he theorizes, which emerged in the period following
World War II, certainly brought to bear extensive superstructural
support for accumulation as capital itself became more organized in its
attempt to govern market outcomes, the law of value continued to
evidence sufficient vigour. That is, unlike in the Soviet Union where
markets were replaced, in advanced capitalist economies including the
U.S., from which the stage structures of accumulation are abstracted,
consumerism as a stage never completely suppresses capitalist market
forces.
In this second edition of the book Albritton first renders the
discussion of each stage more succinct. He also brings Richard Westra
on board the project. Westra’s core contribution to this second edition
is a chapter on the economic crisis of consumerist accumulation and
political economic transformations of capitalism that follow in the wake
of that crisis. Westra’s work in the Uno tradition on Marxism follows
Albritton in theorizing the period following World War II as the
capitalist stage of consumerism. Westra’s chapter confirms Albritton’s
claim of the law of value continuing to evidence vigour in the stage by
examining the way, notwithstanding the extra-market buttresses capital
receives from the state and business itself, it was precisely the
dynamics of capital accumulation which led to crisis of the capital–
labour relation.
 What Albritton and Westra both capture in this second edition are
the immense challenges capital confronts as a mode of production with
the waning of the stage of consumerism. Westra argues that the twin
problems the crisis of consumerism ushers in, of raising the rate of
exploitation and dealing with bloating oceans of surplus or idle money
for which a dearth of investment possibilities exist in real production-
centred profitmaking activity, impelled processes euphemized as
globalization and financialization. However, these processes unfolding
under the ideological banner of neoliberalism only saddled capitalism
with even more insurmountable problems. They ultimately corrupted
its very essence as a class-exploitative, profitmaking society where
economic growth had been coupled with development. Instead the
economic trajectory of current history is converted into a predatory
and expropriative mechanism supported by neoliberal states and
ideologies of “there is no alternative”, in which the very continuity of
humanity hangs in the balance.
Albritton continues to develop the theme of dire threats faced by
humanity by exploring the impacts of growing militarism and looming
potential of climate change destruction of life on earth. In analysis of
each stage of capitalism Albritton explains how the ideology of
nationalism became more and more prevalent. From the stage of
imperialism it reached a bellicose state that drove the world into
devastating wars. For a few decade period following World War II there
was some tempering of nationalism with seeds of internationalism
planted in the crafting of supranational, intergovernmental institutions
such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank,
and so forth. Yet these seeds never achieved an enlarging growth
trajectory. Following the Cold War militarism and bellicose behaviour of
states, such as the U.S. only accelerated, with other states forced to
assume a selfish, national posture in international intercourse. This
hypertrophied the costs of militarism drawing resources away from
socially redeeming purposes and fostering psychological malaise upon
both participants and victims.
Where internationalism is most required—to deal with climate
change and epidemiological emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic—
it continues to be undermined by selfish behaviour of powerful
individual states. Of course, as Albritton makes abundantly clear, the
selfish behaviour of states is impelled by a narrow cohort of wealthy
elites that benefit from the neoliberal economic excrescence. The
deleterious impacts of Covid-19 and climate change are suffered by the
poorest and most vulnerable in society bringing questions of gender
and race/ethnicity to the fore.
This volume concludes with a passionate argument for the need of
progressive, redistributive, environmentally sustainable social change
in the here and now. We maintain, however, that capitalism of old, as it
existed in any of its stages cannot be resurrected to perform the
humanity-salvaging job that needs to be done. To do the job humans
need various forms of socialism. People desirous of social change for
human flourishing must organize to support the building of them.
Robert Albritton
Toronto, Canada
Contents
1 Introduction:​Stages of Capitalism from Start to Finish
References
2 The Theory of a Purely Capitalist Society
The Economics of a Purely Capitalist Society
Land
Ideology in a Purely Capitalist Society
Law in a Purely Capitalist Society
Politics in a Purely Capitalist Society
References
3 Stage Theory
Stage-Theoretic Economics
Stage-Theoretic Ideology
Stage-Theoretic Law
Stage-Theoretic Politics
References
4 Historical Analysis as a Level of Political Economy
References
5 The Stage of Mercantilism
Mercantilist Economics
Mercantilist Ideology
Mercantilist Law
Mercantilist Politics
Summary
References
6 The Stage of Liberalism
 Liberal Economics
Liberal Ideology
Liberal Law
Liberal Politics
Summary
References
7 The Stage of Imperialism
Imperialist Economics
Imperialist Ideology
Imperialist Law
Imperialist Politics
Summary
References
8 The Stage of Consumerism
Consumerist Economics
Consumerist Ideology
Consumerist Law
Consumerist Politics
Summary
References
9 Stage-Theoretic Trends
References
10 Theorizing the Neoliberal Era
Richard Westra
Economic Crisis of the Golden Age of Consumerism
Globalization Rising
 Consolidating the Dark Underbelly of Globalization
Globalization and Value Chains
Financialization​Rising
Financialization​and Capitalist Decay
Politics and Ideology of Global Financialization​
References
11 For Better Lives on a Better Earth
Wars and Capitalism
The Costs of Militarism as a False Economy
Unequal Life Options:​Military as a Career Choice and Prisons
Global Warming and Climate Change
Flooding, and Fresh Water, Glacier Melting, and Rising Levels of
Oceans
Heat and Air Pollution
Land and Food Production
Poverty and the Unfair Burden of Costs
12 Conclusion
Reference
Bibliography
Index
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
R. Albritton, A Japanese Approach to Stages of Capitalist Development, Palgrave
Insights into Apocalypse Economics
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99037-4_1

1. Introduction: Stages of Capitalism

from Start to Finish
Robert Albritton1
(1) Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON,
Canada

Robert Albritton
Email: ralbritt@yorku.ca

This book focuses primarily on expanding stage theory. It maintains

there are four stages of capitalism: (Mercantilism, Liberalism,
Imperialism, and Consumerism). Each stage manifests a golden age that
lasts from 20 to 50 years, and represents the most successful and
typical modalities of capital accumulation for the period. We will argue
that after the golden age of consumerism (1945–1975), most
successfully developed in the U.S., capitalism enters a phase of
transition away from itself, a phase that may last a considerable
number of years (1975–?), but is ultimately moving away from of the
classical stage of consumerism towards either new modalities of
barbarism or varieties of socialism. These potential trajectories will
ultimately lead to radical changes in thought and action, to which we
will give at least some attention, though the changes are often complex.
According to our take on stage theory, it consists of a more concrete
set of interacting ideological, legal, and political practices dominated by
a set of economic practices. Stage theory conceptualizes a characteristic
type or form of capital accumulation for a stage, and explores its
workings, whereas historical analysis explores the actual course of
historical change guided by the previous two levels of theory; from the
abstract inner logic of capital, and from a highly conceptualized and
abstracted mode of production, within which determinism appears as
absolute, to historical determinations as the exerting of pressures and
counter pressures, or in other words: historical analysis is a logic of
interacting processes.
Though others have recognized the problematic character of the
relation between the abstract level and historical analysis, E. P.
Thompson famously wrote: “The problem, as we have sufficiently
argued, is to move from… a highly conceptualized and abstracted mode
of production… to historical determinations… as a logic of process
within a larger process”.1Though Thompson himself never figured out
how to make such a “move”, it is Uno and his followers who have made
the most headway in posing an analytic framework that would at least
enable us to cast the problem of levels of analysis in a solvable form.
The economism that arises from moving too easily from the necessity of
economic law to the contingency of history (history is clearly not pure
contingency), or the voluntarism that arises from making economic law
a direct expression of class struggle, can be avoided by an approach that
leaves sufficient theoretical space to develop the mediations that
connect the economic with the ideological, legal, and political, and that
also connect the logical with the historical in a non-essentialist, non-
reductionist form. And the problem is not only leaving sufficient
theoretical space, but also finding a way through that space—a way that
convincingly and accurately connects the levels of analysis. It is not only
necessary to explore the interconnections between the economic logic
of a purely capitalist society and the ideological, legal, and political
practices that become relatively autonomous at the level of stage
theory, but also we need to explore the relations between the two more
abstract levels of analysis and the analysis of history.
At this point, the reader is no doubt puzzled about the character of
the three levels of analysis and how they interrelate. We offer the
following concrete example as an initial exemplar of what we mean.
Sometimes feminists are critical of Marx’s Capital because it neglects
domestic labour, biological reproduction, and other areas of social life
where the “women’s question” comes to the fore. However, if we
understand Capital to be an initial attempt at a theory of pure
capitalism, then domestic labour and biological reproduction should be
left out. This is because at this level of theory, our only concern is with
society insofar as it is reproduced solely through the workings of a
capitalist commodity-economic logic. In a purely capitalist society,
there are no direct person-to-person relations; social relations are
conceived only insofar as they are totally mediated by the commodity,
and the motion of commodities is controlled by the logic of capital
expanding itself. These assumptions of a purely capitalist society may
seem too stringently simple and one-sided, but our response is that the
one-sidedness arises from capital itself. We learn something very
important from this. Capital by its own inner logic peripheralizes
domestic labour and biological reproduction to such an extent that the
theory of that inner logic must leave them out.
To say that domestic labour and biological reproduction should be
left out of the theory of pure capitalism does not mean that they should
be left out of political economy. They can be and should be explored
partially at the level of stage theory and more fully at the level of
historical analysis. Indeed, we can understand them most fully at these
levels, only by leaving them out of the highest level. A clear and
coherent theory of the inner logic of capital is a prerequisite to
understanding how that logic impacts on other areas of social life be
they the state, gender relations, ecology, or religion. The question then
is not whether or not domestic labour is to be included in political
economy, but at what levels can it most fruitfully be studied?
In A Japanese Reconstruction of Marxist Theory (1986, St. Martin’s
Press), Albritton focused mainly on the theory of a purely capitalist
society and the epistemological implications of Uno’s levels of analysis
approach. Many readers welcomed the defence of the law of value
based on the work of Marx, Uno, and Sekine. Their discussion of stage
theory, however, was admittedly rather sketchy and undeveloped, given
its importance to the levels of analysis approach. Stage theory is the
crucial mediating link that connects pure theory and historical analysis.
Without adequate attention to stage theory, Uno’s levels of analysis
approach can result in a formalistic tendency to divorce the inner logic
of capital from historical analysis and strategic thinking. This was not
Uno’s intention, but to some extent it has occurred among his followers
in Japan, and this is primarily because of the neglect of stage theory. In
our view, Uno’s work on pure capitalism is sufficiently powerful to only
require refining and enlarging; whereas his text on stage theory and the
work of the Uno School as a whole, on stage theory has hardly begun. In
defence of the Japanese Unoists, however, it must be admitted that
stage theory is extremely difficult and complex to formulate, that it
does not fall within the established academic disciplines (it is
interdisciplinary), and that several variations are possible. This is all
the more reason to further develop the skeletal outlines of stage theory
left by Uno.
It is our hope that this book will help focus energies into the
development of a rich body of discourse on stages of capitalist
development from start to finish. Since this entire book is an effort to
delineate stage theory and show its utility, we avoid lengthy
argumentation at the outset about the need for stage theory. Suffice it
to say that in our view stage theory is needed for two primary reasons.
First, it helps to preserve the inner integrity and clarity of the “laws of
motion of capital” by helping to remove from them all non-reified social
relations; and second, it mediates the use of this abstract economic
logic, enabling us to avoid economism and reductionism.
The major focus of Uno’s intellectual energies was on the theory of
pure capitalism, or what he called “the principles of political economy”,
and this focus has continued with many of his followers.2 A major
reason for this continuing focus is simply the structure of modern
academic disciplines. The Uno School came to be housed
overwhelmingly in departments of economics, and naturally tended to
preoccupy itself with abstract economic law at the level of pure
capitalism. With large numbers of Unoist scholars focusing on the
theory of a purely capitalist society, this aspect of the work of Uno was
significantly refined and enlarged. At the same time, different shadings
of interpretation of Uno’s ideas eventually led to different sub-schools
of Unoism.3 The work of one of Uno’s followers, Sekine, has had a
particularly strong impact on us. In his two-volume The Dialectic of
Capital, Sekine explores the dialectical logic (Hegelian) inherent in
Uno’s theory of pure capitalism (and also Marx’s Capital on which it is
based).4
While it is no doubt true that the major focus of Uno and his
followers was on abstract economic law, we do not want to give the
impression that they have written nothing dealing with stage theory.
Uno, for example, wrote a major work entitled Types of Economic
Policies Under Capitalism.5 But even Uno himself saw this work as only a
small and partial first step towards the construction of stage theory: He
writes.

To complete the stages theory, which is to mediate pure

economic theory and concrete historical analysis…. one needs to
further incorporate the knowledge of other specialized studies
of political economy as well as that of juridical and political
science.6
In this quote, Uno indicates the interdisciplinary character of stage
theory, and the limitations of his book that focuses mainly on economic
policy. In our view, Uno places too much emphasis on economic policy
as the centre of stage theory, though it is probably true that he meant
“economic policy” in a very broad sense. Finally, there is evidence that
Uno believed that stage theory is absolutely crucial, both to the strength
and coherence of political economy and to the mediation between
theory and practice. Uno writes: “Indeed the neglect of stage theory not
only vitiates the integrity of pure economic theory, but also leaves the
specific task of a Marxist political party completely undefined”.7
A basic assumption of this book is that the inner logic of capital, as
first outlined by Marx in Capital, and improved upon by Uno and
Sekine, ought to constitute the touchstone of political economy. We
believe the strongest and most impressive statement of the law of value
is Sekine’s Dialectic of Capital, which basically enlarges and refines
Uno’s work. Since we are here focusing on stage theory, we will only
develop the law of value (which is the core of the theory of a purely
capitalist society) as far as is absolutely necessary to develop stage
theory.
The nature of stage theory as an intermediate level of analysis will
become clearer as we proceed. As a first approximation, stage theory is
a kind of highly structural history written from the point of view of the
inner logic of capital. It does not explore the sequence of historical
events in and of themselves, but attempts to extract from them a
characteristic type of capital accumulation, including the political and
ideological supports most centrally and crucially involved. The process
of extracting key structural dynamics is guided by the inner logic of
capital. Paradoxical as it may seem, stage theory is historical analysis
that has become so structural, that historical change per se is pushed
into the background. Historical change is not studied for its own sake,
but for the sake of elucidating a theory of abstract types. Stage theory,
then, is an attempt to outline the type of capital accumulation
characteristic of a stage of capitalist history without trying to explain
the origins of the type, its evolution towards a different type (the study
of historical evolution belongs not at the level of stage theory but at the
level of historical analysis), or its actual impact on history. In other
more philosophical words, stage theory is primarily a synchronic
analysis of a modus operandi or a historically specific dynamic of capital
accumulation. This makes it a level of analysis distinct from historical
analysis which is centrally concerned with origins, developments, and
outcomes, or, in general, with historical change in all its dimensions.
The central aim of this book is to outline capitalist stages of
development from roughly the eighteenth century to the present. These
chapters will establish the analytic framework that will be used to
analyse each of four stages of capitalist development: mercantilism,
liberalism, imperialism, and, consumerism.8 Following the stage of
consumerism, we argue that capitalism will finish its historical
adventures by moving away from itself. Depending on social forces this
transformation may be expressed in a disintegration of capitalism
towards forms of barbarism that portend the end of human society as
we have come to know it. Or various forms of socialism will arise and
move civilization towards epochs of human flourishing untrammelled
by forms of class domination or “extra-human” forces such as capital
which organize society according to its abstract purpose of value
augmentation. Given the depth of capitalism, developed as it has over
more than three centuries, this movement away from it may take some
time. We argue in this book that militarism and global warming will
play significant roles in shaping the future, a shaping that will likely be
very difficult.
We want to make it clear from the start, that by reserving the term
“imperialism” for a particular stage, we do not mean to imply that
capitalism is not to some degree expansive and imperialistic in all its
stages. Thus “imperialism” in our terminology has two uses. First, used
loosely it refers to the general tendency throughout its history for
capital to engage in various forms of aggressive expansionism. Second,
it is used to refer to a particular stage of capitalist development (1895–
1929), because capital was particularly expansive in that stage.
When we refer to time boundaries separating the stages, they are
always to be considered rough and approximate. Indeed time
boundaries are not particularly important at the level of stage theory,
because what is being theorized is a core type of accumulation and not
historical development in detail. It is much more important to
understand that industrial, laissez faire capitalism reached its most
classical development in England in the 1860s, than to be preoccupied
with exactly when the stage of liberalism started or finished. The stage
of liberalism extends roughly from 1740 to 1875, but it only reaches full
bloom in England in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The
stage of mercantilism extends roughly from 1600 to 1775, reaching its
most classical expression in England from 1700 to 1750. The stage of
imperialism extends roughly from 1880 to 1914, and its most
characteristic type of accumulation requires the consideration of
Germany, the U.S., and England during the twenty years prior to World
War I. The golden age of consumerism extends roughly from 1950 to
1975, representing the purest type of consumerist capital
accumulation, while after 1975 capitalism begins to show some signs of
slowly or sometimes more quickly weakening, because of its inability to
cope with a variety of deep crises such as those arising from severe
long-term ecological problems.
It is particularly important for stage theory to decide which country
or countries represent the most dominant and successful type of capital
accumulation during a stage, since the theory is to a large extent
abstracted from such countries to create a kind of paradigm case. This
is not to imply that the international dimension of capital accumulation
is ignored.
In our understanding capital accumulation needs to be rooted in the
study of how capital subsumes the labour and production process (in
other words production relations are central) in core geographical
territories, and once these core production relations are clearly
conceptualized, we can then explore their articulation with the global
dimensions of capital accumulation. In other words, the degree to
which capital accumulation is international and the forms of
internationalization that it takes are specific to stage-theoretic types of
production relations.
The decision concerning which particular countries most represent
the core production relations is guided by previous historical analysis
plus the law of value. All would agree that Britain is the dominant
capitalist power in the stages of mercantilism and liberalism. The stage
of imperialism is a little more difficult with two rapidly rising capitalist
powers (the U.S. and Germany) and one declining capitalist power
(Britain). While debateable, we shall argue that Germany and the U.S.
represent the most characteristic types of capital accumulation in this
stage (Germany is perhaps slightly closer to the pure type), though
Britain cannot be ignored. Indeed, the lack of a determinant hegemon
in this stage is one of the important characteristics of the stage, a
characteristic that leads to wars. Finally, the stage of consumerism is
again less controversial with the U.S. representing the golden age of this
stage between 1950 and 1975. After 1975, we claim that capitalism
enters a phase of gradual transition away from capitalism, which begins
to be more definite with the rise of economic forces euphemized as
globalization and financialization and impact of human driven changes
of nature such as global warming.
While, as we conceive it, the Unoist approach to stage theory is
unique, among important Western schools of Marxism, it is perhaps
closest to the “Capital-Logic” and the “Regulation” schools. This is
because both of these schools are concerned, at least to some extent,
with developing mediations between the theory of capital’s inner logic
and history, which leads them towards at least some sensitivity to levels
of analysis. For example, Hirsch, an important member of the capital-
logic school, argues that: “Because of its specific level of abstraction, the
mode of representation in Capital cannot be used without further
mediation from the development of the concept of the state”.9 Like Uno,
the capital-logic school bases Marxian political economy upon the inner
logic of capital, and as the above quotation illustrates, this school has
some sensitivity to “levels of abstraction” and the need for “mediations”
between them. Blanke, Jü rgens, and Kastendiek approach our point of
view even closer with their insistence on an initial “form analysis” that
derives the basic form of capitalist law and the capitalist state from the
commodity form.10
The Regulation school also seeks to develop mediations connecting
abstract economic law with more concrete modes of regulation that
consider the economic as articulated with the political and ideological.
Thus in analysing Aglietta’s The Theory of Capitalist Regulation, Davis
argues that Aglietta’s central concern is the “absence of a theoretical
level linking class struggles to their structural determinants in the
accumulation process”.11 In a sense, our aim is the same; only our
method of carrying it out differs. The similarity of the two approaches
is particularly apparent when Aglietta’s “Fordism” is compared to our
“Stage of Consumerism” (the auto or more broadly the oil-based means
of transportation are central commodities of the stage of
consumerism).
Referring to both the Regulation School and Capital-Logic School,
Jessop writes:

Both … have produced concepts at a middle range, institutional

level; both are concerned with stages and phases of capitalist
development rather than with the abstract laws of motion; both
are sensitive to the relative autonomy of the economic and
political spheres …12

But middle-range theory implies some relationship to higher and

lower range theories, and this is where the work of Uno with its clarity
about levels of analysis has a great deal to contribute.
If essentialism involves seeing reality as a direct expression of an
inner essence (rationalism), or seeing theory as a direct abstraction
from an independently existing reality (empiricism), then our approach
is not rationalist or essentialist. Essentialism in a sense is an extreme
form of the logical-historical method that we have argued against
elsewhere.13 If, however, the anti-essentialists claim that we cannot
make any distinction at all between deep structure and surface
appearance, if all social processes are over-determined by all other
social processes, and if we cannot distinguish the more important from
the less important in social explanation, then they have created a very
pluralistic and egalitarian epistemology—but at very high cost. Strictly
speaking, it is an epistemology that at best can know isolated fragments
and at worst can know nothing. For this reason, it is quite appropriate
to refer to the more radical versions of anti-essentialism that have
emerged as forms of “know-nothingism” (a term used by a mid-
eighteenth century nativist movement against immigrants and slaves
coming to the U.S.). In many ways the new anti-essentialism is very old;
fundamentally it is a return to the flux of Heraclitus (c. 536–470 bc),
who argued that everything is continually passing away so that no
identity, but only difference and change are real. Needless to say, from
the point of view of this kind of anti-essentialism, we must very happily
embrace some degree of rationalism. It is our firm belief that capital
has an inner logic based in the commodity form that is knowable.
We agree with orthodox Marxists when they affirm the existence of
such a logic, but where they have often gone wrong is in
conceptualizing the relation of this inner logic to historical analysis. It is
here where most of the problems lay. And once we problematize this
relationship in a fully self-conscious way, we face a very great and
difficult challenge, a challenge that is worth facing, because if we can
meet it, we will finally have released the explanatory power that
Marxian political economy has from the beginning seemed to promise.
We may ultimately achieve unprecedented clarity on the nature of
capitalism, on its impact on modern history, on what it has done to us
and we to it, and finally on possible democratic, just, caring, and
humane alternatives.

Notes
1. Thompson (1978, p. 163).

2. Kozo Uno (1897–1977) was a leading Japanese political

economist, whose many writings influenced a whole generation of
Japanese scholars. Two of his works have been published in
English. Uno (1980) and (2016). Though at the time of writing the
first edition of this book Uno (2016) was a partially translated
manuscript referred to here as Types of Economic Policies Under
Capitalism. We keep the original references in this book.
3. For a useful list of major works by Unoists in both Japanese and
English see Mawatari (1985). Also for a list of works in English see
Albritton (1986, Ch. 1, footnote 2). Neither of these lists is
completely up to date and exhaustive.

4. Since I do not read Japanese, my familiarity with Uno’s ideas

comes primarily from working closely with Sekine over the past
ten years. This knowledge has been supplemented by discussions
with numerous Uno scholars in Japan and visitors to Canada.

5. Uno, Types of Economic Policies Under Capitalism, trans. by Sekine

(unpublished).

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Uno believed that imperialism was the last stage of capitalism, but
we believe the post-World War II period may also be theorized as
a stage. Since this stage is still too much with us, it is not clear
what name to give its dominant type of economic policy. I have
chosen the label “consumerism” because it seems to me that it
does usefully tie together the dominant set of economic policies
broadly conceived, and because it is more homologous with
“mercantilism”, “liberalism”, and “imperialism” than terms like
“state capitalism” or “organized capitalism”.

9. Holloway and Picciotto (1978, pp. 63–4).

10. Holloway and Picciotto (1978, pp. 108–47).

11. Davis (1978, pp. 208–9).

12. Jessop (1988).

13. “Society never manages fully to be society, because everything in it

is penetrated by its limits, which prevent it from constituting itself
 as an objective reality” (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985).

References
Albritton, R., A Japanese Reconstruction of Marxist Theory (London: Macmillan, 1986).
[Crossref]

Davis, M., “Fordism in Crisis”, Review, Vol. II, No, 2 (Fall 1978).

Holloway, J., and Picciotto, S., State and Capital (London: E. Arnold, 1978).

Jessop, R., “Regulation theory, Post Fordism and the State”, Capital and Class, No. 34
(Spring 1988).

Laclau, E., and Mouffe, C., Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical
Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).

Mawatari, S., “The Uno School: a Marxian Approach in Japan”, History of Political
Economy Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1985).

Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1978).

Uno, K., Principles of Political Economy: Theory of a Purely Capitalist Society, trans. by
T. Sekine (Sussex: Harvester,1980).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
R. Albritton, A Japanese Approach to Stages of Capitalist Development, Palgrave
Insights into Apocalypse Economics
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99037-4_2

2. The Theory of a Purely Capitalist

Society
Robert Albritton1
(1) Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON,
Canada

Robert Albritton
Email: ralbritt@yorku.ca

Throughout the three volumes of Capital, Marx frequently uses

language which suggests that he is looking at capitalism in its
generality and purity without regard to all its local variations.1 Though
this is in general the method that he adopts, he sometimes integrates
historically specific and contingent material, not simply to illustrate
abstract economic law, but as part of the actual working of the law itself
(I discuss some examples of this below). When he does this, it suggests
that abstract economic law and history are very close together, even
giving the impression at times that history is the direct outcome of the
working of an economic law. Marx, himself, moves so easily back and
forth between the logical and historical, that most Marxists have not
seen anything problematic in this relationship. But, as we shall argue,
and we hope to demonstrate in this book, this seemingly close and cosy
relationship between abstract economic law and history is deceptive. It
simply will not do to assume, as Marx sometimes does, that history is
an approximation to the laws of motion of capital. It will not do because
“approximation” is excessively vague, and because the results of such an
assumption are nearly always some form of crude economism or
reductionism. Kozo Uno, more than any other Marxist that we know of,
begins to fully grasp just how large the gap must be between a rigorous
posing of the law of value and history, and therefore, how problematic
and complex the relation must be between the logical (the inner logic of
capital) and the historical. And it is his student Sekine who fully lays out
the dialectical connections between the concepts of pure capitalism.
Lacking a determinant theory of a purely capitalist society, both
Marx’s understanding of the law of value and his understanding of how
this law relates to history are weakened. The use of historical material
to illustrate the law is acceptable and even desirable; it is when
historically contingent material seems to become part of the law itself
or is not clearly distinguished from the law of value that trouble sets in.
For example, when he discusses his law of surplus population in Capital
Volume I, it is not always clear which statements belong to the law of
value and which belong to the historical sociology of Britain in the mid-
nineteenth century. Do his comments about the relation between
capitalism and population growth apply to capitalism in the abstract
and in general or only to capitalism in the nineteenth century? The
same can be asked with regard to his so-called theory of immiseration.
Or again, in Volume III, in his discussion of the countertendencies to the
falling rate of profit, it is not always clear which countertendencies
belong to the law of value and which to a more concrete level of
analysis.2
Uno and Sekine’s conception of pure capitalism brings the law of
value into sharp relief by separating it from all historically contingent
material. They see a purely capitalist society as one in which all
production would be production of commodities by commodified
labour-power for the sake of self-expanding value. The basic
characteristics of a purely capitalist society are the following: (1) All
production is production of commodities by commodified labour-
power; (2) The economy is governed by a self-regulating market; (3)
Capitalism is a single global society without specific boundaries; (4) It
is made up of three and only three clearly defined and demarcated
classes—capitalists, workers, and landlords; (5) It is an economy with
neither oligopolistic nor monopolistic practices; (6) It is a totally reified
society in which there are no direct person-to-person social relations
involved in the commodity-economic reproduction of society. From the
point of view of the expanded reproduction of capital, social relations
have been entirely reduced to a cash nexus—i.e. they are always
mediated by commodities, money, and capital. The consequence of this
is that economic agents are mere personifications or bearers of
economic categories.
A number of very important implications can be drawn from the
above conception of pure capitalism. First, we are conceiving of an
economy without a person-to-person service sector, without a self-
employed sector, and without a state sector. Second, since the economy
is self-regulating, it is not regulated by a state or by groups of
capitalists. Indeed, in a purely capitalist society, the state is reduced to a
passive background form incapable of action in the form of policy
formation or intervention in the economy. And even capitalists, while
they play a central role, are passive bearers of economic structures.
They are incapable of any independent action of the sort that would
enable them to interfere with abstract economic law. Third, the global
character of pure capitalism means that it has no territorial boundaries,
and therefore there can be no distinction between domestic market and
foreign trade. Fourth, classes are clearly and sharply defined as
locations in the relations of production, and, as mere bearers of
economic categories, are incapable of any class agency or class struggle.
Fifth, monopoly and oligopoly are inconsistent with a purely capitalist
society, because the price-setting potential of such forms of economic
organization would clearly disrupt the self-regulating character of the
market. Sixth, total reification of social relations through a cash nexus
implies that there is no power or domination in a purely capitalist
society (except in structural terms), since these both require person-to-
person relations that are either non-existent or thoroughly objectified
as if they were mediated by the commodity. Taking all six assumptions
together, clearly this is an abstract model that never exists in history. It
may also seem like a model with extreme and starkly simplifying
assumptions, but, in our view, it only extends the actual reifying
tendencies manifested by capital in its historical development to the
point where value can materially reproduce society without outside
interference. In short, it is not simply an extreme-type model pulled out
of some theorist’s head; instead it is an extrapolation of the actual
reifying tendencies that capital itself has displayed in its historical
development.
Suggested by what we have already said is the idea that the theory
of a purely capitalist society does not deal with all areas of social life. It
deals only with the material reproduction of society insofar as it is
managed by a commodity-economic logic. If all the inputs and outputs
of material reproduction take a commodity form, then they can be
managed by a self-regulating market. We assume this to be the case in a
purely capitalist society for the sake of clarifying the logic of capital.
Thus the theory of a purely capitalist society cannot and does not deal
with whole areas of social life that involve direct person-to-person
relations, or that involve modalities of reproduction that do not take a
commodity form. The family, biological reproduction, domestic labour,
and friendship relations (to name a few) must remain outside the scope
of the theory of pure capitalism. That these and other areas of concrete
social life are left out of pure theory is not meant to detract from their
importance. They are left out only because they are not directly
regulated by the commodity-economic logic of self-expanding value. At
the more concrete levels of Marxian political economy (stage theory
and historical analysis); domination, class solidarity and class struggle,
gender relations, the organization of knowledge, and other important
areas of social life can be analysed.
It might appear that the theory of a purely capitalist society is a very
one-sided theory, leaving out highly significant and large areas of social
life, but we think it is more accurate to say that there is something one-
sided about capitalism itself. The fact that capitalism so reifies human
relations that society can be conceived as materially reproduced
through a commodity-economic logic tells us something very
fundamental about what is most characteristic of a capitalist society.
Thus it is not the theory that is one-sided, but capitalism. Furthermore,
if over the time span referred to as “capitalist history”, capital has a
major impact on history (including the family, law, patriarchy, etc.), then
being clear about its inner logic must ultimately be illuminating when
dealing with these other areas. The question is how to relate the law of
value to these “other areas”, and that is what this book is about.
In the theory of pure capitalism, capital, as the law of value, is
allowed to have its way, in order for it to show itself as it really is
without outside supports or interferences. Monopoly, state
intervention, class struggle, and all forms of extra-economic force are
utterly excluded, since they would interfere with the automatism that
both flows from total reification and makes possible the theorizing of
capital as a logic in the form of the law of value. By allowing value to
prevail in theory, it is as if we tricked it into exposing its inner logic as
the inner logic of capital. The result is a theory that traces capital’s
inner logic with clarity, precision, and rigour.
In what follows we want to explore and analyse parts of the theory
of a purely capitalist society. Our aim is not to outline the whole theory
(Uno and Sekine do this), but to focus mainly on those parts that will be
most immediately important for informing stage theory, the
development of which is our main task. In sequence, we shall examine
the economic, the ideological, the legal, and the political, all in the
context of a very partial purely capitalist society.

The Economics of a Purely Capitalist Society

The core of the theory of pure capitalism is the economics in the form
of the law of value, or, what is the same thing, the inner logic of capital.3
It must be emphasized at the outset, that the economics in this context
is never to be theorized as the material-technical split off from social
relations. The economic ultimately achieves an autonomy and
automatism in the context of a purely capitalist society only because
social relations become reified. Thus, for example, prices are not simply
relations between commodities, but ultimately reflect a social division
of labour.
This is important to stress since much economic theory simply
assumes the autonomy of the economic, with the result that prices are
conceived of as relations between things (commodities). In the Uno-
Sekine approach, the economic only achieves such autonomy in the
theoretical thought-experiment of pure capitalism. It will become
apparent later that as we move to more concrete levels of analysis, the
autonomy of the economic becomes radically reduced. Something
approaching a pure economic theory can only be achieved in the one
case of a purely capitalist society, but even this one case must be
qualified by the fact that the economic is always conceived as reified
social relations, and by the fact that the law of value implies ideological,
legal, and political forms as passive background conditions.
In the context of a purely capitalist society, use-values are in a sense
idealized; that is, value is always permitted to be victorious in
overcoming use-value obstacles without relying on extra-economic
force. The victory of value is necessary in order to allow capital to
reveal its inner logic, but at the level of stage theory and of concrete
history, use-values are not so easily tamed. Indeed, the motion of value
only partially subsumes the material reproduction of social life, and
that motion is often deflected or only partially effective, and, even then,
only with the aid of political and ideological supports.
If capital is essentially the subsumption of the labour and
production process by the motion of value (M-C-Mʹ), then it follows that
the most fundamental and essential condition of capital accumulation is
the commodification of labour-power. This is because the crucial “C”
that “M” must be able to buy in order for M-C-Mʹ to subsume the labour
and production process, for the making of profits, is labour-power.
Competition determines that the aim of capital is to make profit and
expand; the necessity for capital to freely move from the production of
one commodity to another in response to differential possibilities of
profit means that it must be absolutely indifferent to the use-values it
produces except for profits. But even with such opportunistic flexibility,
the road of expansion is not even.
One way of beating out the competition and expanding is by
introducing superior technology. This generally requires large
investments in new fixed capital, investments that are inherently lumpy.
Capitalists avoid such investments, short of the old technology actually
breaking down, unless the investments are forced upon them by the
extreme competition characteristic of a crisis. For this reason, phases of
extensive accumulation, based on existing technology alternate with
phases of intensive accumulation, based on investment in new
technology; and the shifts from one phase to the other are typically
marked as periodic crises.
Crises bring about alterations of the basic capital/labour value
relation, especially the ratio between constant capital (the value of the
material means of production/inputs), and variable capital (that capital
utilizes to pay the wage bill). Crises can induce a reorganization of
capital, generally along the lines of “the big fish eating the small”. In the
context of a purely capitalist society, we can theorize capital’s
concentration (growth of individual capitals through the reinvesting of
profits) and its centralization (growth of individual capitals through
their merging into fewer, larger capitals) as abstract logical possibilities
that raise the spectre of monopoly. But in the context of a purely
capitalist society, we cannot translate these abstract tendencies into
any particular time framework. Thus the rate of concentration and
centralization might produce monopoly in 10 years or 50 years
depending upon more concrete considerations that do not enter the
law of value. From the point of view of pure capitalism, we can certainly
see why, at some particular stage of development, capital might become
monopolistic, but the actual theorizing of this belongs to stage theory.
Similarly, there may be an abstract tendency for the rate of profit to
fall in a purely capitalist society, but while remaining in the context of
pure capitalism, we cannot conceive of this tendency producing the
collapse of capitalism or of structurally altering capital in ways that
would disrupt the law of value. The tendency for the rate of profit to fall
suggests the mortality of capitalism (that it is an historically delimited
mode of production), but in the context of pure capitalism, this
tendency cannot be translated into any particular time framework that
would indicate the end of capitalism in, say, 10 years as opposed to
100 years.
In its dominant form, fully developed capital is industrial capital (i.e.
based on factory production).4 It is industrial capital that directly
exploits labour-power in the creation of surplus value. In pure
capitalism, industrial capital is hegemonic over commercial (merchant)
and bank capital with whom it shares the surplus value it creates.5
Commercial capital gets its share by economizing on the circulation
costs entailed in buying and selling both the inputs and outputs of the
production process. Historically, merchant capital may do a great deal
more than buy and sell, but in pure capitalism this is its sole function.
Bank capital saves on circulation costs by mobilizing idle funds and
savings for use by industrial capital. In the context of pure capitalism,
banks and stock markets can only be discussed as abstract embryonic
forms, because their fuller specification as concrete institutions breaks
with total reification, generally involving the state and material
institutions of a quasi-contingent type. At the level of stage theory,
these three fractions of capital (industrial, commercial, and banking)
may be defined differently and may relate to each other differently than
in the context of pure capitalism. For example, in the stage of
mercantilism, merchant capital, not industrial capital, is dominant, and,
at the same time, it carries out functions such as storage and
transportation that in pure capitalism are the preserve of industrial
capital.
Landed property is external to capital in a way that the fractions
that save on circulation costs are not; it cannot be so directly subsumed
by industrial capital, and its separateness is instituted by landed
property being owned by a separate landlord class. As a separate class,
they could constitute a dangerous obstacle to capital accumulation by
using their monopoly over the land to siphon off the profits of capital.
To do so, however, would be to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Furthermore, in a purely capitalist society, classes are simply bearers of
economic categories, too reified to be capable of independent action.
Landed property must therefore develop a working relationship with
capital that supports capital’s accumulation by being encapsulated in
value categories. This entails that landed property receives its share of
the surplus value in the form of rent. In pure capitalism, it is assumed
that landlords are a separate economic class, not equal to industrial
capital but rather parasitic off it. They are not subsumed to industrial
capital as a fraction of capital (as are merchant’s and banking capital),
but rather they are subordinated to capital accumulation as a whole
through the category “rent”. At the level of stage theory as opposed to
the theory of a purely capitalist society, landlords may be less
subordinate, to the point of constituting part of the politically
hegemonic coalition, or they may be altogether absorbed into capital.
As we shall see later, their very separateness from capital, may, in some
circumstances and at other levels of analysis, enable them to play
important political roles in the state.
If capital could freely produce all of its inputs as capitalistically
produced commodities, then in principle it could expand without
periodic crises. But we know empirically that periodic crises
continually occur, and that some of capital’s inputs cannot be freely
produced. As already stated, the crucial commodity that capital cannot
produce is labour-power. Another crucial commodity that capital
cannot produce is land. Though it can produce monetary gold, once we
move away from pure capitalism, the simple gold-commodity monetary
system is replaced with a more complicated financial system that
always involves state intervention. Therefore, capital can only produce
money without state supports in the context of a purely capitalist
society. We call labour-power, land, and money “artificial commodities”,
because, although they become totally commodified in the theory of a
purely capitalist society, they cannot be capitalistically produced like
other commodities (with the partial exception of some forms of
money).6 The difficulty in maintaining the commodification of these
three artificial commodities even in the context of pure capitalism
underlies periodic crises.7 At the level of stage theory, where the
obstacles to the law of value are more concrete, and less yielding, even
the partial commodification of these artificial commodities necessitates
political and ideological supports. We turn next to look a little more
closely at each one of these artificial commodities.

Labour-Power
A slave is an entire human being sold as a commodity; whereas a wage-
worker sells only his or her capacity to work during working hours and
for a limited period of time. During working hours, the worker is an
appendage to the capitalist accumulation machine, but after hours the
worker is free. The working class is constrained to sell its labour-power
as a commodity because it does not have control over any means of
production, and must therefore sell the only commodity that it does
own—its own labour-power—in order to survive. If the working class
is paid very much above subsistence (which is an historically relative
quantity) for long, it may cease to sell its labour-power either through
having become capitalists or through living off their savings. If paid
below subsistence, the working class will be unable to reproduce itself.
It follows, that in the long run wages must approximate subsistence
(understood as an historically established standard of living) in order
to secure the commodification of labour-power (for example, against
revolutions).
 When capitalists need more labour-power, they cannot simply start
up a new factory to produce more workers. When additional workers
are needed, they are called up from the pool of unemployed that Marx
called “the industrial reserve army”. If the pool of unemployed shrinks
too much, then the demand for additional workers will boost wages
above subsistence, and ultimately this will trigger a crisis that can only
be resolved by restructuring the basic value relation between capital
and labour. It follows that an industrial reserve army and periodic crisis
are further requirements for maintaining the commodification of
labour-power.
A number of conditions must be met in a purely capitalist society
for labour-power to be totally commodified. First, there must be a
complete separation of workers from all self-employed means of
production, with the result that they are forced to sell their labour-
power to capital which owns and controls all means of production.
Second, the capital/labour relation must be totally reified, in the sense
that capital is totally indifferent to labour-power except as a commodity
input in the production process. Third, workers have no means of
support of any kind other than their wage. Fourth, workers must be
completely mobile to respond to job availability and differentials in
wages and working conditions. Fifth, there must be deskilling of work
to the point where the vast majority of workers are basically unskilled.
Sixth, on average workers must receive only a subsistence wage,
defined as that wage necessary to reproduce the working class at a
standard of living that avoids the twin evils of excessive
underconsumption and profit-squeeze. In other words, subsistence is
defined as that standard of living that is maximally conducive to stable
capital accumulation. Seventh, total commodification of labour-power
assumes a complete lack of worker organization or solidarity, whether
in the form of trade unions or political parties. Eighth, we must assume
no state intervention in the labour market or in the contract between
individual worker and employer (trade unions and collective
bargaining do not exist). Clearly, in any historically existing capitalism
these conditions are only partially met.
The commodification of labour-power is so central to the law of
value, that one of the more important factors differentiating various
stages of capitalist development is the typical form and degree that this
commodification takes. Furthermore, at the level of stage theory,
whatever form and degree of commodification that does exist is not
maintained by the law of value alone, but is supported by ideological,
legal, and political practices. It follows that a purely economic
specification of stage theory is bound to be inadequate.

Land
A second commodity that becomes particularly problematic at more
concrete levels of analysis (stage theory and historical analysis) is land.
Land is not only the material basis of all production, but also it is the
basis of all life. When it is converted into private property, it can be
bought and sold like any other commodity. And when it is subsumed to
self-expanding value, it becomes a source of profit or of rent. Where the
life energy of workers can be sucked dry by capital’s drive for profits,
they can be replaced by a new generation. In contrast, many of the
resources of the land are not renewable, and the fertility of the land, if
not carefully nurtured can be permanently destroyed. The value/use-
value contradiction that Marx considered basic was the contradiction
between capital and labour. The contradiction that he paid little
attention to, and that we are now becoming poignantly aware of, is the
contradiction between capital as unlimited value expansion and land as
the basis of all use-values. In this case, value’s total indifference to use-
value means that the land is conceived of as raw stuff to be endlessly
“exploited” for insatiable value expansion. It is now becoming apparent
that it is more appropriate to think of land as a “living being” to be
nurtured, rather than as a raw material to be mined and exploited. The
overcoming of use-value by value represented by the dialectic of capital
may yet see (concluding chapters of this book) the final humbling of
value in history, at least partially, as a result of capital’s transgressions
against the use-value limits of land.
At the dawning of the age of capitalism, land also played a key role.
Access to the land as a means of livelihood had to be closed off to the
vast majority of workers, before a general commodification of labour-
power could effectively take place. The creation of landed private
property, acting as a barrier between labour and land, was a necessary
condition for labour-power to be converted into a commodity. But the
potential independence of a separate class of landowners could also act
as a barrier to capital accumulation since rents might eat into profits.8
In a purely capitalist society the monopoly power of landlords is not
used to undermine the law of value, because economically they are a
passive class, whose rents depend ultimately on their tenant capitalist
farmers earning an average rate of profit.
In a purely capitalist society, then, no land is owned by capitalists; it
is owned entirely by a separate landlord class. In this way surplus
profits arising from land ownership do not undermine the commodity-
economic rationality of the average rate of profit. In other words,
capitalists will not be deterred from shifting production or introducing
new technology in accord with profit criteria by extraneous surplus
profits due to owning peculiar qualities of land, because such surplus
profits are converted into rent and siphoned off into the hands of a
separate class.9 While pure capitalism assumes that capitalists and
landlords are mutually exclusive classes, we know that in history there
is always at least some overlap. Also in particular stages of capitalist
development, the economic predominance of capital over landlords,
characteristic of pure capitalism, may not obtain.
In a purely capitalist society, land can potentially be bought and sold
as a commodity even though it is not capitalistically produced. It can be
rationally priced as an investment that yields a flow of revenue by using
the average rate of interest and the rent to arrive at a price. As Harvey
puts it, “land price must be realized through future rental
appropriation, which rests on future labour”.10 Although land can in
this sense be commodified, in the context of pure capitalism, we must
assume that all land is held by a separate landlord class.
The branch of production most intimately bound up with the land is
agriculture. The fact that agricultural production is more dependent on
natural forces than most other lines of production means that the
obstinate materiality of the use-value obstacles of land becomes
particularly severe in this sphere. Agricultural production is dependent
on the seasons and the weather, resulting in wide price fluctuations
within a year and from year to year. If strict capitalist rationality were
adhered to, many farmers would go out of business during each bad
harvest. Furthermore, given that most labour requirements are
seasonal, it is difficult for a proletariat to maintain itself in a purely
capitalist rural setting. Also, since capitalist farmers only lease the land,
they may be inhibited from making fixed capital investments or from
expanding production in accord with strict profit criteria. Finally, while
production times in industry can be radically shortened by the
introduction of new techniques, in farming the production time has
natural constraints, as, for example, the time it takes for a crop to
mature. For these and other reasons, anything approaching a pure
capitalist agriculture never exists for long in concrete history (the
closest is England in the mid-nineteenth century). Indeed, capitalism
and agriculture appear not to be very compatible.11
A purely capitalist agriculture would display a number of
determinant conditions. First, it would have a three-class structure, in
which the landlords owned all the land, capitalist farmers leased
parcels of land from the landlords, and wage labourers did all the
productive labour. Second, as passive rent collectors, landlords would
be totally indifferent to capitalist farmers as long as they paid their
rents on time and did not run down the land. Third, as capitalists,
farmers would be totally indifferent to use-value, responding only to
profit criteria. They would switch into or out of farming purely on the
basis of profit criteria as they would also switch from one kind of
farming to another. Fourth, outside of the land which they would lease,
farmers would buy all their inputs, including labour-power, as
commodities. Fifth, capitalist farmers would not in general make fixed
capital improvements, because in not owning the land, they might not
profit from the investment (if, for example, their lease is not renewed).
Sixth, a capitalist farm would be large enough (the actual size would
depend on the level of development of productive forces) to employ
sufficient wage labour that the farmer would only manage workers and
would do no productive labour herself or himself. Seventh, capitalist
farmers would be totally indifferent to the wage labourers that they
hired or fired freely in accord with their need for labour-power as a
commodity input. Eighth, farm wage labour would have to be totally
commodified in accord with the conditions outlined above in the
discussion of wage labour in a purely capitalist society.

Money
The third commodity that becomes particularly troublesome for the
law of value at more concrete levels of analysis is money. A purely
capitalist society is a global society with a monetary system that is
effectively regulated by the market, because money, in this context, is
based on the special commodity gold taking the money form. The law of
value encompasses credit money and other forms of convertible paper
money only insofar as they are regulated by gold money. But at the level
of stage theory, we must consider a variety of complications stemming
from the state regulation of currency, the relative autonomy of
international and domestic monetary systems, and the state-regulated
financial institutions such as banking systems and stock markets. For
these and other reasons, the state must always be brought in when
theorizing money at the level of stage theory. It is only in the totally
reified and rarified atmosphere of a purely capitalist society that money
can be fully and solely regulated by the law of value.

Ideology in a Purely Capitalist Society

It would be easy to conclude that the dialectical logic of a purely
capitalist society is a purely economic theory with no political or
ideological dimensions. In one sense this is true. The dialectic itself
(law of value), considered as a theory of a self-contained totality, does
not contain any elements of extra-economic force or other outside or
alien supports. But it would be a mistake to stop here. Upon further
consideration, it seems that the dialectic of capital does imply certain
ideological and political forms, not as a part of the dialectic itself, but as
shadows cast by the dialectic, so to speak. Marx sometimes uses the
metaphor “passive reflex” to refer to these forms, and in our view this
metaphor is quite felicitous.12 Indeed, the political and ideological
forms theorizeable at this level arise from the requirement that all
social relations be mediated by commodities.
In a purely capitalist society, the only social connection is the “cash
nexus”. In such a theoretical setting, commodities as individual entities
are owned by individual entities called “legal persons”.13 Legal persons
have exclusive control over the commodities they own in the sense that
their will resides in their property, such that one of their commodities
can only be alienated wilfully or voluntarily.14 In a purely capitalist
society, the basic legal person is the individual commodity owner, but at
more concrete levels of analysis, it becomes clear that almost any group
or individual can be made an artificial legal person, from the state to
the business corporation, from a club to a trade union, from a king to a
commoner.
In a purely capitalist society, the individual is in the first instance a
property owner and legal subject or legal person. The
conceptualization of “subject” is in this case quite extreme. The basic
legal subject of pure capitalism is completely independent in the sense
that he or she is freed from all dependencies on other human beings. In
the realm of one’s private property, one is an absolute sovereign
standing at the centre of privately-owned commodities (including
money) exclusively subject to one’s own will. Implied here is a radical
separation between existence inside one’s private property, where the
subject has total control, and outside, where the subject has no control.
The question emerges in this case, what is to prevent these little or big
islands of despotism from being swamped in a sea of anarchism?
The answer to this question can be derived from Marx’s famous
definition of the fetishism of commodities as “material relations
between humans and social relations between things”.15 The erstwhile
external anarchism is ordered by a “social relation between things”. To
speak somewhat anthropomorphically, commodities conspire together
in the market place to establish social relations among themselves
resulting in prices and rates of profit. In the final analysis, the
seemingly sovereign individual subject is subordinated to the world of
commodity objects. Yes, the subject may choose to sell or not to sell, but
the price is totally dictated by the commodity world over which he or
she has no control. Objectivity is established by objects in motion over
which no single individual has any control, and subjectivity implies
total independence from other subjects and total control within one’s
own private realm. The resulting radical separation between subject
and object is the most fundamental and characteristic form that shapes
all capitalist ideology.
Capitalist social science characteristically fetishizes the object
(positivism), or the subject (individualism), or both at the same time.
For example, capitalist economics mainly focuses on the economy as
matter-in-motion, but often this extreme objectivism is coupled with
the idea of consumer sovereignty, where, somehow, at one and the
same time, the market (object) is sovereign and the individual
consumer (subject) is sovereign. The sleight-of-hand that hides this
contradiction works well in a society where the individual is seen to be
prime mover in relation to his or her own property, while the self-
regulating market governs economic society as a whole.
The extreme subject/object split peculiar to capitalist ideology is
based on the commodity form and individual ownership of private
property. Because of this split, there is a strong tendency to treat
“subject” and “object” as dichotomous categories rather than as
categories that condition one another to varying extents that can be
conceived as a continuum. Subjects tend to be prime movers, pure will,
the creator launching outward from the interiority of a totally
independent ego. Objects tend to be the other, the alien, the thing that is
what it is because we have had nothing to do with it. Objective
knowledge, then, becomes a real challenge, because it involves coming
to know the absolute other.
Even though in their roles as basic forms of capitalist ideology
“subject” and “object” appear to be mutually exclusive, they are often
combined in strange and wonderful ways. For example, high
employment may be seen to stem from the idleness and lack of
discipline of individual subjects who have failed to actualize
themselves, or it may at the same time be seen to stem from impersonal
market forces that nobody can do anything about, requiring an attitude
of resignation, much as we might have towards an earthquake. In both
cases, the powers that be conveniently escape all responsibility.
The fetishism of the object generated by capitalist ideology is most
commonly manifested in capitalist social science and philosophy. For
example, in positivist social science, objects of knowledge typically rest
ultimately upon discrete, thing-like facts. The fetishism of the subject
and the ideology of extreme individualism that accompanies it, though
manifest throughout all areas of capitalist ideology, are, for our
purposes, most importantly developed as capitalist law. We shall turn
next to examine law as perhaps the most important and fundamental
form of capitalist ideology.
Law in a Purely Capitalist Society
A purely capitalist society is a society seen from the point of view of the
requirements of the accumulation of capital. Capital ignores direct
human-to-human social relations; indeed, social relations caught in the
web of capital are always mediated by the commodity, resulting in a
society made up of isolated individuals connected only by the
commodity and its developed forms: money and capital. Of course,
biological reproduction must take place in any society, but in the theory
of a purely capitalist society, we can only understand biological
reproduction in so far as it is directly regulated by a commodity-
economic logic.
The exclusive control over a commodity implied by private property
is said to be a right, or to be more specific, a property right. The
property owner, then, is a legal subject, or an entity with a bundle of
property rights adhering to him or her vis-a-vis other legal subjects.
However, a property right implies mutual recognition where each
person’s property is defined by norms that distinguish mine from thine.
In this system of mutual recognition of property rights, each individual
becomes a legal subject or a legal person. What starts as a concrete
relation between individual and thing culminates in an abstract system
of society-wide norms which convert individuals into abstract legal
subjects defined by property rights.
What we are arguing is only that the legal subject is the basic form
of capitalist law. In other words, insofar as law is capitalist law, its basic
form will be the legal subject. When looked at more concretely, it is
apparent that capitalist law is very diverse, but it is our claim that
throughout the body of capitalist law, the concept of legal person is
fundamental, and that this can be understood as a generalization from
or an analogy with the legal subject as property owner. Legally the state
is an artificial legal person as is the business corporation, and though
there may be diverse types of legal persons, the basic form of legal
personhood stems from private property and the legal subject is
understood as property owner.
The legal subject is basically a subject with rights, and these rights
imply a boundary. Anyone who is uninvited, crosses the boundary is a
trespasser, and anyone who crosses the boundary and, uninvited, takes
something is a thief. Accompanying the idea of legal subject, then, is the
idea of boundaries and the idea of a sharp separation between inside
(one’s private property) and outside.
The legal subject is a completely autonomous will residing at the
centre of some accumulation of property. Right is in this case absolute
control over property, and the legal subject is defined by right which
extends to the boundary of its property. Beyond this boundary is a "no-
person’s" land inhabited only by money and commodities. I put money
into my hand and give it to your hand. The hands may not touch, but
they are both touched by the same money; a connection is made—i.e. a
socio-economic relation. This image clearly pictures what is meant by
Marx’s reduction of social relations to a “cash nexus”.
Some legal theorists have argued that the law of contract, which has
to do with the relation between one person and another (as in a
marriage contract), is sharply separate from the law of property which
is the relation between a person and a thing.16 In the context of pure
capitalism, no such sharp distinction can be made, precisely because
there are no direct person-to-person relations. Indeed, it appears in this
context that the laws of contract and property stem from a common
root. When commodity-owners carry out an exchange, a contract is
always implied and sometimes actualized—e.g. “I’ll pay so much now
and the rest later”. In the context of pure capitalism, even the labour
contract between capital and labour is simply a passive reflex of an
exchange relation of the sort—“you do such and such work for me now,
and I’ll pay you so much later”.
From a humanist point of view, one would like to think that the
person is prior to property; and hence, that rights fundamentally attach
to the person and only secondarily to the person as property owner.
This humanistic point of view can be derived from the labour and
production process common to all societies, because it implies a social
division of labour and social cooperation, out of which one would
expect to emerge some sort of recognition of human beings as human
beings with fundamental rights. In a limited sense, workers as opposed
to slaves or serfs are free, so that it is perhaps not surprising that the
doctrine of the “rights of man” arose in the capitalist epoch. But it must
be emphasized how hollow this doctrine is in the context of a class
society. Capital is only interested in persons insofar as they are
property owners—it is not concerned for their souls, their integrity.
Individuals only exist for capital as bearers of the commodity form in all
its permutations and combinations. If people were really put ahead of
property, then the rights of property would have to give way to the
suffering and hunger of the impoverished. The “rights of man” (sic) that
emerge in the capitalist epoch may have some deep connection to
general norms associated with the labour and production process and
the formal freedom of workers under capitalism, but in our view,
unfortunately the total reification of pure capitalism completely
overlays and subsumes this deeper level, with the result that the “rights
of man” (sic) are all too often derived from the “rights of property-
owners” and not vice versa.17
Since property includes the commodity labour-power, even the
proletariat are legal subjects with property rights. The category of legal
subject, then, does not recognize inequality or class. In a purely
capitalist society, all individuals are legal subjects, because at minimum
they own their labour-power. Ownership of one’s own labour-power is
a truly striking phenomenon with the greatest import. It means one can
gradually sell off one’s life energy, and from the point of view of formal-
legal equality, one is freely choosing to do so; whereas from the point of
view of concrete reality, one may be more or less forced to sell one’s life
energy perhaps in conditions of extreme exploitation and oppression.

Politics in a Purely Capitalist Society

Though no actual state can exist in a purely capitalist society where
there are no person-to-person relations and hence no power relations,
it is possible to derive the form of the capitalist state from the category
of legal subject.18 This derivation is very similar to Hobbes’ Leviathan,
with the difference that no actual “covenant” (contract) can take place
and no actual sovereign can be constituted. Rather, we can explore the
form that sovereignty would take if it could be created.
Legal subjects realize that their property rights are only as secure as
mutual observance, which is always vulnerable to degeneration into a
“war of all against all”. This is because where each is judge in his or her
own case, disputes over rights may easily escalate to a state of war. One
way to avoid this is to create a third party which stands above all legal
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LETTER OF KEATS TO FANNY BRAWNE
 IV

SOME LITERARY FORGERIES

“I cast my bread upon the waters, and it came back to me after
many days!”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked the tall white-haired man who
sat opposite me in his luxurious library. The room was an enormous
one, and thousands of fine books lined the walls from floor to ceiling.
My friend seemed in a confidential mood, and I expected to hear
something startling. This Gothic room, with its early Spanish religious
sculptures, had the very atmosphere of a confessional. My
companion had had a somewhat weird career, and as I watched him
through the heavy smoke of our cigars I recalled many strange
stories of his youth. Once he had been a lawyer’s clerk, but now he
was a director in many banks, with financial interests all over the
world. The variegated stages by which he had risen to such
eminence, not only in business but as a collector of pictures and
books, were not always clear to the friends of his later years.
He told me that he had been so poor as a boy he had often known
hunger; that, as a scrivener in the lawyer’s office, he had eked out a
most pitiable existence copying deeds and other legal documents. In
1885 he happened to read in the newspapers of famous auction
sales of autographs in London, and of the first arrival in this country
of representatives of the English book houses. For instance, Bernard
Quaritch was holding his first exhibition in New York at the Hotel
Astor. General Brayton Ives, Robert Hoe, and other great collectors
of the glaring ‘80’s were beginning to form their libraries. My friend
was fascinated, and as he had no capital to invest in great rarities
himself, he thought he would make a few. He determined to try his
hand at imitation.
Just about that period there was an awakened interest in the ill-fated
Major André, who had suffered death as a British informer. In his
grimy boarding house on Grand Street my friend practiced imitating
André’s handwriting. He finally manufactured a splendid letter in
which Major André wrote to General Washington requesting that he
be shot as a soldier and not hanged as a spy. As he described his
youthful fabrication his mouth lighted with a smile of pleasure, and
he confessed that he had been very proud of this forgery; it had
been a work of art! He finally actually sold this pseudo-André letter
for $650! Those were the days when unpedigreed rarities were more
easily disposed of, as there were not so many autograph sharks
around as there are to-day.
Thirty years elapsed. My friend had grown in riches and in
reputation. Now he was a noted collector; forgotten were the
peccadillos of his youth. In 1915, during the Great War, he noticed
the advertisement of a sale in London containing an André letter. He
cabled an unlimited bid, as was now his custom. The letter was
bought for him for £280. A few weeks later, upon opening the
package which he received from the custom house, the inclosed
autograph letter looked familiar to him. A closer scrutiny revealed the
fact that he had bought back, at three times what he had received for
it, his own fabrication!
Several years ago I had the remarkable good fortune to secure for
my own library a letter written by Cervantes. It is the only one known
in a private collection to-day. Other letters of his—and they are few—
may be seen only in the Spanish National Library at Madrid.
Cervantes’s autographs are so rare that the British Museum
possesses no example of the handwriting of the author of Don
Quixote, nor is there one in the library of the Hispanic Society in New
York City, founded by that great collector, Mr. Archer M. Huntington.
From this you may realize to some extent the desirability and
scarcity of a letter of Cervantes. Written on two pages, and dated
February 4, 1593, it is extremely legible, in a bold Castilian hand,
and contains his signature in full: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,
with a fanciful twirling flourish becoming to a great Spanish author.
Many an expert eye has passed upon it gloatingly in years gone by,
for it has been in the celebrated collections, first of Benjamin Fillon,
in Paris, and later of Alfred Morrison, of London.

LAST PAGE OF THE ONLY LETTER IN THIS COUNTRY WRITTEN

BY CERVANTES
Some time after acquiring this celebrated autograph I was startled
one day in New York, when an agent from a well-known English
autograph house telephoned me and said he had a wonderful letter
of Cervantes. He asked £3000 for it, which was certainly not too
high, when you stop to consider that Cervantes’s place in literature is
second only to that of Shakespeare. If a Shakespeare letter were
found to-day many collectors would not consider $500,000 too much
to pay for it. What, then, is a Cervantes letter worth? While I sat
mulling over these mathematical problems, the doorbell rang and the
dealer came in. His manner was important, almost condescending.
His precious letter was inclosed in a fine morocco case, elaborately
tooled. He removed it from its costly trappings, and after a moment
of suspense, which was really most effective, he handed the letter to
me. I could scarcely believe my eyes. I looked for the date—
February 4, 1593. It was an excellently forged copy of the one in my
possession.
“Where in the devil did you get this?”
His face turned the color of a carnation and his swanky manner of
assurance wilted away.
“Just what do you mean?” he asked me slowly. I motioned him to
follow, and took him into my book vault, where I laid his clever
forgery next to mine the original. For a moment I thought he would
crumple up and fall to the floor. I have never seen anyone so
completely nonplussed. He had really believed his Cervantes letter
to be the original, and had come in all good faith to sell it to me. I
proved to him how some forger, after securing the sheets of old
paper, had, through a process of photo-engraving, cleverly produced
the letter which he had so exultingly shown to me.
The beautiful thing about the book business is that you must be
constantly on your guard. It makes the game exciting to know that
there are beings who, like vultures, would pick your bones if you but
gave them the chance. Thank heaven for them. The chase is more
exhilarating on their account.
The atmosphere of Wall Street is that of a Quaker meetinghouse
beside it.
 ORIGINAL DRAWING BY DAUMIER OF DON QUIXOTE
Forgeries have been in existence as long as the collecting game
itself. During the Renaissance forgers were very active in every field
of creative art. Not only did they make imitations of great Greek and
Latin classics, which were just beginning their popular vogue in
Europe, but they very cleverly copied old medals, and fabricated old
gems too. Of course, the collector himself is in a sense morally
responsible for the forger. The collector’s overdeveloped sense of
acquisitiveness leads him to pay extravagant prices for his favorites;
he will search out and buy every available pen scratch of some great
writer.
A poor wretch in an attic reads in the newspapers that a capitalist
has just paid $2000 for an autograph letter of Robert Burns. He then
begins to “discover” other letters and documents by the same author.
This is the launching of a career that is usually full of excitement and
gives full scope to the imagination. The forger is a picturesque figure
until he, too, is discovered and publicly condemned. This class of
men—I know of no women forgers—is responsible for the literary
detective. There is real sport in tracking these fabrications. An ability
to tell the original from the false, the genuine from the spurious,
sometimes under the most trying circumstances, has developed
almost into a fine art.
There are men who make literary detecting their profession. Their
eyes are so well trained that they are seldom wrong when
pronouncing judgment. They are as fully aware of the thousand and
one tricks of the professional forger’s game as they are alert to the
peculiarities of each author’s handwriting.
These experts could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. When
you stop to consider that there are men even now in dark holes in
London, in obscure garrets in Paris, in flats in Harlem, and in
apartments in Atlantic City, making their livelihood forging
autographs, it puts you pleasantly on your guard. These fellows are
very often unsuccessful authors with a certain amount of erudition,
broken-down booksellers, or other bits of riffraff from the literary
world. I once knew a genial old college professor who turned from
unlucrative teaching to make an honest penny, as he termed it, by
forging.
My uncle Moses always told with a chuckle of his experience with an
Englishman by the name of Robert Spring. He called at my uncle’s
shop in Commerce Street one day in the 60’s and said he had an old
document signed by Washington. In fact, it was a military pass
issued to some Revolutionary worthy, permitting him to go through
the lines. My uncle naturally pricked up his ears at the mention of his
favorite character, General Washington, and immediately asked to
see this interesting relic. The Englishman then held it up
dramatically, and when Uncle Moses read it he felt like embracing
his visitor. For, lo and behold, the pass was made out in the name of
one of my uncle’s own ancestors!
It had every earmark of age, was written on old paper in faded ink,
the creases were almost worn through, and the edges were frayed.
To his covetous eyes the pass seemed much more desirable on
account of its connection with his forbears. He asked the Englishman
what he wanted for it and how it had come into his possession. He
glibly explained he had found it in an old-fashioned hair trunk in the
attic of a house in old Philadelphia. He wanted fifteen dollars for this
pass—a large sum in those days, when one could buy a full
autograph letter of Washington for that much money. Uncle Moses
rose to this thin story as a trout strikes at a fly.
Some years later Ferdinand J. Dreer, of Philadelphia, a connoisseur,
came to see him. Among other things, my uncle showed him the
faded pass. Mr. Dreer looked at it for a moment, and then, according
to Uncle Moses, turned to him and in that cheerfully disgusted tone
which one collector uses to a brother who has made a foolish deal,
said:—
“Mr. Polock, you, of all men, should know better! This thing is an
arrant forgery, and worth less than nothing.”
It later appeared that Robert Spring was the first great forger of
American documents. He had written many such military passes, all
of them with spurious signatures of General Washington. But he was
always foxy enough to look up the name of some ancestor of the
man on whom he planned to prey. Uncle Moses, nevertheless,
remained stoical, and said this outlay of fifteen dollars was one of the
most profitable investments he had ever made. It placed him on his
guard as nothing had before; was, in fact, an investment that would
in time be worth thousands of dollars to him.
 FROM A LETTER IN THE AUTOGRAPH OF GEORGE WASHINGTON,
SIGNED BY HIM FOR MARTHA WASHINGTON

Spring’s career as a forger lasted a surprisingly long time. He

reached a point where he made no effort to conceal from his
Philadelphia customers the almost made-to-order character of these
documents of his. He salved their feelings by saying he would never
think of offering them anything that was not genuine. Of course, he
was an excellent penman. Washington was his favorite model,
perhaps because he had greatest success in copying his
handwriting. He sold most of his productions to persons who lived
abroad, who were not regular collectors. He assumed various names
when he wrote to members of the English nobility, representing
himself sometimes as a widow in want, or as the needy daughter of
Stonewall Jackson, thus feeding most lucratively upon the kind-
heartedness of wealthy people thousands of miles away. He was
arrested several times, but finally reformed. Before dying he grew to
be a most proper and meticulously honest dealer in books and
engravings, and, I suppose, rests comfortably now in the bookmen’s
heaven.
I have collected letters and documents of Washington almost from
the beginning of my career. To-day I own an interesting, authentic
collection of more than two hundred, written between the years 1755
and 1799. He was a prolific correspondent. His handwriting is always
legible; the writing of a sensitive, clear-thinking person whose nerves
were under excellent control. Many of these letters are the charming
messages which any leisured gentleman of that period might write.
Others are on military matters of the utmost importance. Another
series deals entirely with agriculture, and shows how well the
masterly general could play the gentleman farmer.
The years which have passed since his death have seen the world
flooded with Washington autographs. But it took a measure of daring
and a fanatical spirit of patriotism to forge letters of his while he was
still alive and fulfilling with vigor the now historical duties of his
military career. It was in May or June of 1777 that a book appeared
in London purporting to contain certain letters of Washington written
in 1776 to friends and relatives of his in Virginia. These letters paint
him as a man whose motives were questionable. The false lines in
this book relate his pretended thoughts and feelings about the
Revolution in which he was then engaged. They make him say he is
tired of it all; that he wishes for peace at any price with the mother
country. They reveal him as a military scapegrace with the soul, but
not the courage, of a traitor! Despite the publisher’s preface
explaining his possession of these intimate documents, it was soon
proved that the letters were deliberate forgeries. Nevertheless, they
were of grave importance at the time, for they served as a powerful
propaganda against Washington, and therefore the colonies, and
made a strong appeal to the ignorant and easily biased mind.
Forgers must have, above all, a keen sense of chronology. This is
the first great requisite after their natural skill in imitating handwriting.
For instance, they cannot refer to the discovery of America in a letter
supposed to have been written before that event took place, or date
a letter of Dickens, 1872, two years after his death, and expect to get
away with it. Both these slips, strange to say, have occurred. In fact,
forgers frequently make similar crude errors, alluding to incidents
that hadn’t happened at the time the letter was dated.
It is plain, therefore, that the master forger must have his chronology
at his finger tips. He should know not only the dates of history, which
he can find in any textbook, but he must be familiar with the history
of costume, of furnishings, and decorations also. I remember reading
the invention of one gentleman’s brain and pen in which he alluded
to hoop skirts ten years before they put in their dreadful appearance.
The literary forger hoping for success should also acquire an almost
endless knowledge of the colloquial language of the period in which
he writes, and must be naturally a student of orthography and
spelling. In fact, he has taken up the one career where he has
literally to mind his P’s and Q’s!
It is fairly easy to imitate the writing of a distinguished character; the
most difficult part is to interpret, as well, the thoughts of the equally
distinguished mind. A forger of Thackeray wrote the name of the
author of Vanity Fair in many volumes, together with a short
comment about the text. He composed a pointed criticism of each
work, or invented what he believed to be some smart phrase about
the author. In this case the signature and the writing itself are so
excellent that they almost defy detection, but the thoughts are no
more those of the great Thackeray than are mine of Shakespeare.
 PAGE FROM A LETTER OF THACKERAY TO MRS. BROOKFIELD

Not many are privileged to see presentation copies actually in the

making. A friend of mine told me of an experience he had in London.
One day he strolled into a little bookshop near the British Museum.
He looked over some dusty volumes for a time, and finally found one
which he wanted to buy. There was no clerk in the front of the shop,
so he walked to the rear, where he discovered a little old man seated
at a large table. Before him was a row of books all opened at the title
pages. The busy old fellow was bent over another and so absorbed
in his work that he heard nothing. My friend looked over his shoulder.
He was committing a little quiet forgery! In other words he was
caught in “fragrant delectation.” On the title page he was
painstakingly forming Lewis Carroll’s autograph. Before my friend left
he had an opportunity to see what was written. He found, much to
his astonishment, that the old gentleman was inditing to long-
deceased friends of Lewis Carroll, copies of Alice in Wonderland,
each one with an appropriate inscription. When asked the reason for
all this industry, he replied, “I am making them for the American
market!”
Among the many bugaboos which the forger has to face are
watermarks woven into paper. These are the manufacturer’s trade-
marks, and often show the date the paper was made. You can see
them if you hold the paper to the light. Quite recently I was offered
three manuscripts supposed to be in the hand of Oscar Wilde. His
exquisite though affected Greek style of handwriting was well
enough imitated. But when I pointed out to the man who offered the
manuscripts to me that they were written upon paper which bore the
watermarks of a manufacturer who had made it during the Great
War, he suddenly remembered an appointment and hurriedly made
his departure.
About twenty years ago a celebrated French firm of book and
autograph dealers cabled my brother Philip that they were offering
for sale the original manuscript of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. Wilde, who
was a literary exhibitionist if ever there was one, gave Salomé to the
world in French, and not such very good French at that. As I had an
extensive collection of Wilde autographs even then, I was extremely
eager to own the original of this famous work also. Before my reply
could reach the firm in France, some luckier collector who was on
the spot at the time bought it. I was very much annoyed, but
concealed my chagrin as best I could, not even inquiring who the
buyer was. I suspected it was some French author. The year before
last, when on my annual pilgrimage to England, a French journalist
came to see me one day at the Carlton Hotel in London, with the
news that he knew the man who owned the Salomé manuscript, and
was informed that he would part with it if paid a sufficiently high
price.

PAGE FROM ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF OSCAR WILDE’S

“SALOMÉ”
Now, I am never frightened at high prices. I asked my friend to return
to France and buy it for me. Two days passed. Then I received the
news that I was again too late. It was plain that Salomé was playing
hide and seek with me, and placing my head on a charger. After two
months in England I went to Paris. I had hardly arrived before the
collector who last purchased Salomé offered to sell it. I asked him to
bring it immediately to my hotel. With my nerves on edge, I kept
telling myself that this time she should not escape me. Now, the
collector in question was supposed to be a judge of autographs. He
arrived and took the manuscript from its case. I fairly grabbed it from
him, fearing that the evil Salomé would sprout wings and fly out of
the window. I opened the cover to the first page, looked at it, turned
the second, then the third. Quickly I closed it and gave it back to him.
A silence followed during which he regarded me in amazement.
“No, thank you,” I said; “I am looking for Salomé in the flesh, not a
will-o’-the-wisp. Your manuscript is a forgery!”
It was plain this poor fellow had been deceived. He walked up and
down my room, tearing at his hair in the best French manner, for he
had given a good sum for this clever fabrication. I, too, was deeply
disappointed, after tracking over Europe for it. Like the villain in the
play, Salomé still evaded me.
 DEDICATION OF OSCAR WILDE’S “THE SPHINX”
TO MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL

In Philadelphia a year later I received a cable from a firm of

auctioneers in Paris, offering me the original manuscript of Salomé
once more. I naturally paid no attention to the offer, thinking it
another forgery. I was tired of the wiles of this wicked woman. I had
come to the conclusion that this work was not, by some weaving of
the fates, for the house of Rosenbach. No more fool’s errands for
me.
A few weeks after, when dining with a well-known American collector
in New York, he said to me:
“Doctor, I have something which will open even your eyes. I have
Salomé!”
Naturally, I could not suppress a cynical laugh. “Another forgery?” I
smilingly inquired.
After dinner we went to his library, and he pointed very proudly to
two old copy books on the table. The moment I looked at the pages I
knew that at last I held the original in my hands. How envious I was!
But I now realized this manuscript could never be mine. I felt truly
heartbroken. My friend, seeing I was not exactly elated over his
treasure, but rather downcast, asked the reason. I related the whole
story of my chase.
With great generosity he replied, with the air of a sultan presenting a
favorite slave, “Doctor, I don’t want to stand in your way. If you want
her, she is yours.” He told me its history as far as he knew it; the
manuscript had been purchased by Pierre Louÿs, the eminent
French poet. It was he who had bought it directly from the shop in
Paris when I first tried to obtain it twenty years before. It is far more
precious to-day than it was then. Not only is it the greatest work from
the pen of Oscar Wilde but it is the one work of his that has been
translated into all languages. It has also been used as the libretto by
Richard Strauss for his startling and beautiful opera.
The up-to-date literary forger always keeps his eye upon the market.
Genuine letters of certain famous, or infamous, men and women will
always command high prices. Yet the styles in collecting change as
in everything else. One decade there may be a sudden craze for
Byron letters; the next, autograph letters or documents pertaining to
Keats or Shelley are frantically sought.
So it goes. One cycle begins as another cycle ends. Therefore,
forgers’ productions often swarm into the market when the popularity
of an autograph is on the crest of the wave. There are certain
historical characters whose autographs will always sell at top prices.
With this in mind, one of the greatest hoaxes ever planned was, for a
time, put over by a French forger a few years after the middle of the
nineteenth century. Vrain Lucas was his name, and his guileless
customer was a noted mathematician, Michel Chasles. I first knew of
Lucas’s wretched forgeries through hearing my uncle Moses tell of
them; in a way, it was rather humorous, for when he told me the
story he became as enraged as though Lucas had taken him in,
rather than Chasles.
Vrain Lucas was a middle-aged man of fair education and rather well
read. By his own confession he had manufactured more than twenty-
five thousand spurious autographs, many of which he sold to
Chasles over a period of eight years. During that time Chasles had
doubted his word only once. Lucas immediately offered to buy back
everything he had sold him, and thus Chasles’s faith was restored.
This charlatan, Lucas, must have had a certain hypnotic influence
over Chasles, plus the assurance and the courage of Old Nick
himself. Chasles’s belief in him, however, proved Lucas’s undoing.
For when he sold him two letters from Charles V to Rabelais,
Chasles, in his excitement and delight, presented them to the
Academy of Belgium. The letters for a time were believed to be
genuine. Then Lucas came again to Chasles, this time with letters
from Pascal to Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, in which the writer
proved that he, and not Newton, had discovered the law of
gravitation.
You can imagine how deeply moved was Chasles, the naïve
mathematician. He rushed with them to the French Academy of
Science, and at once the scientific world was stirred into a
commotion. At the height of this agitation Sir David Brewster came
forward and announced that the letters must be from the pen of an
impostor, proving conclusively at the same time that Newton was a
mere child of ten when these pretended messages of Pascal were
written. Thus began the beginning of the end for the forger.
Certain testimony given by Chasles at Lucas’s trial before a tribunal
of the Seine, in 1870, is almost unbelievable. It seems ridiculous to