MM

							• Capitalism can be seen as the development of international trade
  and the expansion of the world market.
• The expansion of this market entails increased profits and
  maintenance of capital order.
• There is production for production’s sake and a removal of arbitrary
  geographical barriers to the expansion of capital.
• However, the state system remains that of politically constructed
  nation-states during the post-war era.
• States:
    – provide the domestic political underpinning for mobility of capital
    – offer elementary institutional schemes aimed at securing international
      property rights
• Burnham suggests that “[a] changing global context of
  accumulation strategies need not imply a narrowing down of
  opportunities for the nation-state.”
• Reconstruction assisted the notion of statehood. Competing states
  revived their domestic economy through collaboration and conflict.
• It is often thought that Britain was subordinated to the United
  States.
• This capitulation thesis derives from the assumption that, during
  the post-war era, Keynes was “unable to resist a series of dreary
  capitulations” to American negotiators.
• “Britain became, if not a colony, then a client state of the
  Americans” – Gott, R. (1987)
• Post-war reconstruction from this point of view was a process
  directed by the hegemonic American administration who ‘forced
  their model of development on the rest of the world.
• The United States was unable to impose its rule, highlighting the
  unstable nature of capitalist reintegration in the post-war system.
• The reintegration was the outcome of an uneven process whereby
  nation-states pursued individual accumulation strategies in the
  context of re-establishing conditions for global accumulation.
• Individual nation-states acted within the constraints of domestic
  politics, with a goal of re-establishing an effective exchange
  mechanism whilst reconstructing their infrastructure.
• The actions of Britain were not simply to buckle to the American
  Liberal doctrine. Whilst the United States expansionist policies led
  them to attempt to reintegrate Western Europe, Britain had a
  fundamental interest in the Sterling Area nations.
• The American imperialist objectives were largely abandoned by
  1950.
• Britain was unsure of its stance towards Western Europe and the
  United States. She advocated European resistance to the United
  States, but the withdrawal from intra-European trade demonstrated
  her attitude of conflict towards Western Europe.
• Britain’s objective of re-establishing sterling as a world currency was
  based on the necessity to overcome the dollar gap. By using dollar
  aid to restructure trade and stimulate production, this was reduced
  and Britain retained independence from the United States.
• Rapid accumulation was required by the government in order to
  enable reconstruction. An adequate international payments system
  had to be established to facilitate trade and essential imports.
• The strength of sterling sufficed in aiding the bargaining power of
  Britain and, coupled with its good relations with the rest of Western
  Europe, Britain held the key to the US infiltration of Europe.
• Keynes secured a $3750 million loan from the United States,
  accepting a series of subordinating obligations.
• Britain did not take the obligations seriously: “we have broken
  our agreements left and right... (the only remaining question
  is)... how far we can dress it up to look as if we were inside it.”
  – Playfair, (1947)
• Though a strategy aimed at achieving the United States’
  foreign economic policy, in its final form it simply fed Britain
  more dollars without achieving the desired European
  integration.
• Constant British resistance to the formation of an accessible
  single Western European market produced a non-committal
  co-ordination, sufficient to enable dollar aid flow, but not
  British subordination.
• Stuart Croft highlights the common assumption of a missed
  opportunity for Britain in a period when France, Benelux and
  Italy were proposing a form of West European unity
  approaching a federation.
• He states that this is not a valid assessment of British policy,
  claiming that Labour could not have accepted this approach
  without sacrificing many important policies and
  fundamentally transforming their view of the world.
• A combination of domestic political factors, ideological
  considerations, Empire concerns and conceptual blocks meant
  that unity would never succeed.
• The British state had overcome the barriers to accumulation
  that once constrained it in 1945.
• Despite sterling crises, Britain had established a payments
  system which facilitated high rates of growth.
• Britain maintained a close trading relationship with the
  Commonwealth, preventing it from becoming a proxy to
  Western Europe for the United States.
• Once the British strategy had been formulated, it had its own
  developmental logic which produced a period of sustained
  capitalist prosperity.