The “World Market” Category in the Critique of Political Economy and the Globalization of Capital

Marx’s critique of political economy developed an internal tension between grasping the reality of capitalist society and its historical movement at the level of essence and at the level of concretion. This mode of inquiry exerts a hidden force within the structural system of the critique of political economy, particularly evident in the analysis of the latent structure of “world market and crisis” and the overall contradictions of capitalism. The “world market” constitutes the historical precondition and real bearer of the totality of capitalist economic relations; all contradictions of the modern world are fully unfolded with the establishment of the world market, and the concomitant world market crisis is precisely the comprehensive form of expression and ultimate result of all the above contradictions.

马克思从事的政治经济学批判研究形成了在本质性领域和具体化层次上把握资本主义社会现实及其历史运动的内在张力。马克思的这一研究方式在政治经济学批判的结构体系中发挥着隐秘的力量，尤其体现在对“世界市场与危机”潜在结构与资本主义总体性矛盾的分析之中。“世界市场”构成了资本主义经济关系总体的历史前提与现实承担者，现代世界的一切矛盾都随着世界市场的建立充分展开了，相伴而生的世界市场危机恰恰是上述一切矛盾综合的表现形式和最终结果。

The process of globalization determined by the logic of capital has now persisted for several hundred years, from the foreign trade of early colonial states to the new imperialist stage dominated by financial capital, fundamentally reconstructing the sovereign boundaries and mutual relations of nation-states worldwide through war or peace, political or economic means. As the decisive force shaping the current world system and international order, this historical movement enables capital to break through its own boundaries, overcome bottlenecks in its self-valorization, and continuously absorb external spheres into its own structure, making capitalist civilization global in depth and breadth, while its inherent instability and all its contradictions increasingly transcend regional scope to manifest as international phenomena. Globalization deepens mutual interaction and interdependence among nation-states, but it does so on the precondition and result of constructing and maintaining unequal dependency relations among modern states. Beneath the surface of the rational “system of rights” that the modern international order follows, there lies precisely the power struggles and regional conflicts caused by the logic of capital’s drive to expand the world market, and at a deeper level, this triggers anti-systemic movements within the capitalist world system.

由资本逻辑所规定的全球化进程至今已经持续几百年时间，从早期殖民国家的对外贸易到金融资本主导的帝国主义新阶段，通过战争的或和平的、政治的或经济的方式在根本上重新建构了世界范围内民族国家的主权边界与相互关系。作为当今世界体系与国际秩序形成的决定性力量，这一历史运动使资本能够突破自身的疆界，克服自我增殖的瓶颈，将外部领域不断吸纳到自身结构之中，使资本主义文明在深度和广度上成为全球性的，其内在的不稳定性和全部的矛盾性日益超出区域范围表现为国际性的。全球化加深了民族国家之间的相互交往与相互依赖，但却以建构和维持现代国家之间不均衡性的依附关系为前提和结果。在现代国际秩序所依循的合理的“权利体系”表象之下，恰恰隐遁着资本逻辑为了扩张世界市场所导致的权力斗争与区域冲突，并在更深层次上引发了资本主义世界体系内部的反体系运动。

At the same time, globalization today is not only a process of “time-space compression” that people experience and feel, but has also become a doctrine and strategy that is promoted and marketed. However, obscured by the ideology of modernity, “people begin to rewrite history from the perspective of contemporary globalization, which reconstructs the past, but in this process also makes it a prison of the present, refusing to imagine global possibilities that could overcome colonialism, environmental destruction, and various social inequalities and political oppressions—those very problems that, as we know, are integral parts of the global system.” To strip away the obscuring effect of the ideology of modernity on globalization and to expose the essence of globalization dominated by the logic of capital and its possible tendencies, it is necessary to take Marx’s category of the “world market” in the critique of political economy as a mediating point. In the view of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, the world market, as the explosive domain of capitalism’s internal contradictions or anti-systemic movements, equally constitutes the originary link of the proletarian revolution.

与此同时，全球化在今天已不仅仅是人们所体验和感受着的“时空压缩”进程，更加成为被宣扬并兜售的主张和策略。然而，在现代性意识形态的遮蔽下，“人们开始根据当代全球化的视角来重写历史，这重构了过去，但在这一过程中也使它成为当前的牢笼，拒绝想象能克服殖民主义、环境破坏以及各种社会不平等和政治压迫的全球可能性，而那些问题就如我们所知，正是全球性制度的组成部分”。剥离现代性意识形态对全球化的遮蔽，揭露由资本逻辑所支配的全球化实质及其可能趋势，需要以马克思政治经济学批判的“世界市场”范畴为中介，在马克思、恩格斯以及列宁看来，世界市场作为资本主义内在矛盾或反体系运动的爆发性领域，同样构成了无产阶级革命的源发性环节。

International trade and the world market, which are internal to the capitalist mode of production, are by no means a sphere of circulation in the geographical sense; in essence, they signify the capitalization of the world in depth and breadth, or the overall manifestation of the internationalization of expanded reproduction and the division of labor: “The expansion of foreign trade, although in the infancy of the capitalist mode of production it is the basis of this mode of production, becomes, in the development of this mode of production, due to the inherent necessity of this mode of production and its need for a constantly expanding market, a product of this mode of production itself.” The world market constitutes the condition for capital’s self-realization; because this condition is permeated by the absolute purpose of pursuing surplus value and increasing the profit rate, the world market becomes a domain of domination and antagonistic relations. Yet this domain of relations and its internal movements (following real power relations and structures) are represented by the modern world order (following an abstract system of international rights), and it appeals to the principles of natural rights and the modern system of international law to guarantee liberal trade, maintaining the opposition and conflict between states within a certain scope by defining the scope of rights and obligations of each sovereign state.

内在于资本主义生产方式的国际贸易与世界市场，绝不是地理学意义上的流通领域，就本质而言，意味着世界在深度和广度上的资本化，或扩大再生产与劳动分工国际性的总体表现，“对外贸易的扩大，虽然在资本主义生产方式的幼年时期是这种生产方式的基础，但在资本主义生产方式的发展中，由于这种生产方式的内在必然性，由于这种生产方式要求不断扩大市场，它成为这种生产方式本身的产物”。世界市场构成了资本自我实现的生存条件，由于这一生存条件被追求剩余价值与提高利润率的绝对目的所穿透，因此，世界市场成为一个支配性与对抗性的关系领域。然而这一关系领域及其内在运动（依循现实的权力关系与结构）却是以现代世界秩序（依循抽象的国际权利体系）为表象的，并诉诸自然权利原则与现代国际法体系来保障自由主义贸易，通过规定每一个主权国家的权利和义务范围，将国家之间的对立和冲突维持在一定的范围之内。

As identified by economists and international jurists as an economic fact, international trade and the world market formed by the expansion of commodity exchange appear as a pure sphere of circulation, following specific principles of free trade within the modern international order and system of international rights, and based on the nation-state system. Because the principle of equality in the formal determination of the market and the need for a peaceful external environment to safeguard commercial interests, Kant’s hoped-for “perpetual peace,” as a universal ideological illusion of modernity, attaches a veil of tender sentiment to globalization. Especially before the emergence of anti-globalization trends, participating in the process of globalization dominated and prescribed by the logic of capital became the sole way or main path for many developing countries to understand their own modernization.

就经济学家和国际法学家所指认的经济事实而言，商品交换扩大化所形成的国际贸易和世界市场，表现为一个纯粹的流通领域，在现代国际秩序与国际权利体系中依循特定的自由贸易原则，并以民族—国家体系为基础。由于市场在形式规定上的平等化原则与商业利益需要和平的外部环境保障，康德所希冀的“永久和平”作为普遍的现代性意识形态幻觉，为全球化附着了一层温情脉脉的面纱。尤其在逆全球化趋势产生之前，参与由资本逻辑所主导并规定的全球化进程，成为诸多发展中国家理解自身现代化的唯一方式或主要途径。

Through the critique of political economy, Marx revealed the real logic of capital’s movement: the world market is internal to the capitalist mode of production and constitutes its condition of existence. Behind the expansion of commodity exchange in the sphere of circulation, the flourishing of international trade, and the expansion of the world market, the “capital-labor” relation that is followed fundamentally signifies the essential determination and real planning of the world system by the capitalist mode of production. Although the “world market” followed by international trade occupies the last position in the temporal sequence, from the perspective of the expansiveness of capitalist commodity production and the pursuit of surplus value, it is “the precondition of the whole and its system.” In other words, within the framework of the globalization of the logic of capital, international trade and the world market are both the result of the development of commodity exchange and the realization link of surplus value dominated by capitalist production. Therefore, this result equally contains the totality of capitalist relations of production (property relations and class relations), so all contradictions of capitalist commodity exchange necessarily advance into the depths of globalization. This is manifested not only in the struggle for dominance among nation-states in international trade, but also in geopolitical conflicts and competition; changes in the forms of capital and labor; transformations in new technological factors; the emergence of transnational institutions, new global markets, and modes of accumulation; and so on. The contradiction between capitalist socialized production and the private ownership of the means of production necessarily transcends the boundaries of nation-states and unfolds fully in the domain of the world market, thereby making the world market a totalizing domain where the comprehensiveness of social intercourse and the antagonism of class relations are interembedded and mutually propelled, and it becomes the dominant force driving structural change and overall transformation in the capitalist world system.

马克思通过政治经济学批判揭示了资本运动的现实逻辑，世界市场内在于资本主义的生产方式并构成其生存条件。流通领域中商品交换的扩大、国际贸易的繁荣以及世界市场的扩张，这些表象背后所依循的“资本—劳动”关系在根本上意味着资本主义生产方式对于世界体系的本质规定与现实规划。尽管国际贸易所依循的“世界市场”在时间序列中处于最后位置，但从资本主义商品生产的扩张性以及追求剩余价值的角度而言，它却是“整体及其体系的前提”。或言之，在资本逻辑全球化的架构中，国际贸易与世界市场既是商品交换发展的结果，同样是被资本主义生产所支配的、剩余价值的实现环节。因此，在这个结果中同样包含着作为总体的资本主义生产关系（财产关系和阶级关系），那么资本主义商品交换的所有矛盾必然向全球化的纵深领域推进，这不仅仅体现为民族国家之间在国际贸易中的主导权争夺，还包括地缘政治冲突与竞争；资本与劳动形式的改变；新的技术要素变革；跨国机构、新的全球市场以及积累方式的出现；等等。资本主义社会化生产与生产资料私人占有制之间的矛盾，必然超出民族国家的边界而在世界市场领域充分展开，从而使世界市场成为社会交往的全面性与阶级关系的对抗性互相嵌含、互相推动的总体性领域，并成为资本主义世界体系发生结构性变动与整体性变迁的主导力量。

In his unfinished “six-book plan,” Marx designated international trade and the world market as the fifth and sixth books, following capital, landed property, wage labor, and the state — that is, as the complex domain in which the capitalist mode of production and its inherent contradictions are concretely advanced. This allows the real movement of a preceding series of abstract economic categories to obtain further synthesis and elucidation, giving rise to concrete manifestations of contradiction in the globalization of the logic of capital, its world system, and international order. It incorporates domestic capitalism and international capitalism as a unity into the totality of the real movement of capital and the antagonism of class struggle. The world market, as the highest categorical determination of capitalist economic relations that have developed into a totality, is subsumed within the overall capitalist economic relations in the real movement of the logic of capital. It continuously subsumes capitalist relations of production within itself, extending the universal relations of bourgeois society from the scope of a single country to the world scale, “appearing in its most developed form, in the form of the world market.” [4]4 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie* (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1953), p. 145. [Translator’s note: This is a reconstructed reference; the original Chinese text does not provide a specific citation.] The most typical manifestation is the establishment of “commodity production based on the international division of labor.” As the condition of existence for capitalism, capitalist states transfer domestic economic crises through foreign trade, thereby temporarily alleviating the existing contradictions of capitalism and overcoming economic crises, thus “pushing contradictions into a broader sphere, opening up a broader arena of activity for these contradictions.” [5]5 Karl Marx, *Das Kapital*, Vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), p. 253. [Translator’s note: This is a reconstructed reference; the original Chinese text does not provide a specific citation.] The world market, as the unity of opposites between the bearer and the condition of existence of capitalist economic relations, creates the real basis in production and intercourse for the class unity of the proletariat and the historical movement of communism.

马克思曾经在未完成的“六书计划”中，将国际贸易和世界市场作为资本、土地所有制、雇佣劳动、国家之后的第五册和第六册，即作为资本主义生产方式及其内在矛盾具体化推进的复杂领域，使得之前一系列抽象经济范畴的现实运动获得进一步的综合与阐发，形成关于资本逻辑全球化及其世界体系与国际秩序的具体矛盾表现，并将国内资本主义与国际资本主义作为统一体纳入资本现实运动与阶级斗争对抗的总体性之中。世界市场作为已经发展为总体的资本主义经济关系的最高范畴规定，在资本逻辑的现实运动中隶属于资本主义经济关系总体，不断将资本主义生产关系统摄于自身之内，资产阶级社会的普遍关系由一国范围拓展至世界范围，“以其最发展的形式，以其世界市场的形式出现”，最典型的便是建立“以国际分工为基础的商品生产”；世界市场作为资本主义的生存条件，资本主义国家通过对外贸易转移国内经济危机，又使世界市场暂时性缓解资本主义现有矛盾、克服经济危机，从而“把矛盾推入更广的范围，为这些矛盾开辟更广阔的活动场所”，世界市场作为资本主义经济关系承担者与存在条件的对立统一，为无产者的阶级联合与共产主义的历史运动创造了生产与交往的现实基础。

In summary, any essential discussion of the issues of globalization and deglobalization must necessarily take Marx’s category of the “world market” as its intellectual mediation. On the one hand, it situates globalization within the totality of the capitalist mode of production, revealing the internal structure and contradictory conflicts of the globalization process dominated by the logic of capital. On the other hand, it treats the modern international order and world system as both the premise and the result of capitalist development. Marx and Engels, earlier and more profoundly than the bourgeois schools in the social sciences, demonstrated that international trade and the world market, owing to the capitalist mode of production, constitute an organic whole. International trade, the world market, and economic crises mutually propel each other on a global scale, serving as cause and effect, continuously transferring, expanding, and deepening the overall crisis of capitalism. The marketization and internationalization of capital itself become the inevitable tendency and higher link for overcoming the crisis of industrial capitalism. The proletarian revolution must necessarily transcend the scope of the nation-state in this domain and become internationalist. Grasping the fundamental nature and unfolding tendency of the globalization of the logic of capital through the mediation of the category of the “world market” in the critique of political economy becomes the theoretical premise and real basis for a profound insight into the essential determinations of the modern international order and international relations.

综上所述，关于全球化与逆全球化问题的本质性讨论，必然需要以马克思的“世界市场”范畴为思想中介，一方面，将全球化置于资本主义生产方式的总体性之中，揭示由资本逻辑所主导的全球化进程的内在结构与矛盾冲突；另一方面，将现代国际秩序和世界体系作为资本主义发展的前提和结果，马克思和恩格斯比社会科学领域的资产阶级学派更早、也更为深刻地表明，国际贸易与世界市场由于资本主义生产方式而成为一个有机整体，国际贸易、世界市场与经济危机在全球范围内彼此推动、互为因果，不断转移、扩张和深化资本主义总体性危机，资本自身的市场化与国际化成为克服产业资本主义危机的必然趋势和更高环节。无产阶级革命必然在这个领域中超出民族国家的范围，成为国际主义的。以政治经济学批判的“世界市场”范畴为中介把握资本逻辑全球化的根本性质与展开趋势，成为深刻洞察现代国际秩序与国际关系本质规定的理论前提和现实基础。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗