A Loyal Retainer? Japan, Capitalism, and the Perpetuation of American Hegemony
A Loyal Retainer? Japan, Capitalism, and the Perpetuation of American Hegemony
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发表时间：
2011
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通讯作者：
R. T. Murphy
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作者：
R. T. Murphy
65年前，美国从第二次世界大战中崛起，成为世界资本主义无可争议的霸主。但在一代人的时间里，美国继续管理全球资本主义秩序的意愿和能力都不能被视为理所当然。本文认为，要理解自20世纪70年代体系震荡以来美国霸权的修复和继续强化，关键可以在日本及其邻国的战后经历中找到。在这一经验中存在着一个悖论：正是日本对正统资本主义方法的偏离--这是其政治经济学的独特标志--帮助解释了以美国为中心的世界资本主义体系在人们可能预料到其明显的矛盾会将其推翻很久之后仍然继续存在。
美国霸权时代在马克思已经指出的矛盾基础上又增加了一个资本主义矛盾，如资本家试图捍卫和扩大市场份额，导致生产能力过剩和利润率下降的趋势。自从美元作为资本主义的主导货币出现以来，我们看到了其相对价值的长期下降。与在19世纪大部分时间里保持购买力并通过英国资本出口传播的英镑不同，美元的全球供应来源于美国的经常账户赤字，这增加了对美元信心的侵蚀的可能性，最终可能导致对资本主义本身的信心危机。这一矛盾--最早由经济学家罗伯特·特里芬（Robert Triffin）在1956年提出（他称之为“两难”）--被日本解决或推迟了，日本采取了出口导向型增长模式，部分原因是为了阻止资本主义关系的全面变革。除其他外，依靠出口收入和国内储蓄而不是外国直接投资来为发展供资，有助于确保经济和政治结果由国内掌权者而不是客观的市场力量决定。但出口导向型增长模式也带来了自身的矛盾，即积累的美元没有充分转化为国内购买力。为了解决这一矛盾，当局故意制造和培育资产泡沫。泡沫一旦结束，就无法再膨胀，但试图通过一波又一波的信贷创造来刺激经济恢复增长的努力提供了大量信贷，助长了海外泡沫--首先是东南亚，然后是美国本身。也正是日本的信贷为美元提供了关键的支持，使其得以在泡沫破裂后生存下来，并保持其作为世界主导货币的地位。
日本人在国内建立的阻碍市场的机制，在处理最大的矛盾时，一再被迫服务：一个至少在一定程度上通过非资本主义手段获得财富和权力的国家拯救了全球资本主义秩序。但是，尽管日本采用的方法可能不是完全资本主义的，但它们的成功取决于它们嵌入以美国金融霸权为中心的全球资本主义秩序。当日本的方法开始威胁到这一秩序时，日本将采取行动维护这一秩序，同时尽最大努力限制国内的资本主义自由化，但并不总是成功的。日本对资本主义关系的全面变革力量的抵制，构成了日本支持全球资本主义秩序的意愿和能力的关键解释。
Sixty five years ago, the United States emerged from the Second World War as the undisputed hegemon of world capitalism. But within a generation, neither the American will nor the American ability to continue managing the global capitalist order could be taken for granted. This essay will argue that the key to understanding the repair and continued re-enforcement of American hegemony since the system-shaking tremors of the 1970s can be found in the postwar experience of Japan and its neighbours. Within that experience lies a paradox: it was precisely Japan’s deviations from orthodox capitalist methods – the distinctive marks that characterize its political economy – that help explain the continuation of an American-centred world capitalist system long after one might have expected its manifest contradictions to bring it down.
The era of American hegemony has added another contradiction of capitalism to those already identified by Marx, such as tendencies towards overcapacity and a declining rate of profit, as capitalists attempt to defend and enlarge market share. Since the emergence of the dollar as capitalism’s dominant currency, we have seen a secular decline in its relative value. Unlike sterling, which maintained its purchasing power through most of the 19th century and was disseminated via British capital exports, the global supply of dollars originates in American current account deficits − raising the possibility of an erosion of confidence in the dollar that ultimately could lead to a crisis of confidence in capitalism itself. This contradiction – first noted by the economist Robert Triffin in 1956 (he called it a ‘dilemma’) – was resolved or postponed by a Japan that had adopted an export-led growth model partly to forestall the full transforming power of capitalist relations. Among other things, relying on export proceeds and domestic savings rather than foreign direct investment to finance development helped ensure that economic and political outcomes were determined by domestic power holders rather than impersonal market forces. But the export-led growth model brought with it its own contradictions in the form of a build-up of dollars that were not adequately translated into domestic purchasing power. To resolve this contradiction, the authorities deliberately created and fostered asset bubbles. The bubbles, once ended, could not be re-inflated, but the attempts to jolt the economy back into growth with waves of credit creation supplied much of the credit that fuelled bubbles abroad – first in Southeast Asia, and then in the United States itself. And it has also been this Japanese credit that provided the crucial support the dollar needed to survive the bursting of those bubbles and maintain its position as the dominant world currency.
The very market-thwarting mechanisms that the Japanese put in place domestically have repeatedly been pressed into service in managing the biggest contradiction of them all: the rescue of a global capitalist order by a country that had attained wealth and power at least in part through non-capitalist means. But while the methods Japan employed may not have been fully capitalist, they depended for their success on their embedding within a global capitalist order pivoting around the financial hegemony of the United States. And when Japan’s methods began to threaten that order, Japan would move to preserve it while doing its best – not always successfully – to limit capitalist liberalization at home. Japan’s very resistance to the full transforming power of capitalist relations forms a crucial explanation for both Japan’s willingness and its ability to support the global capitalist order.