请将“These types of intervention can now be linked to three points of reference: the circuit of capital, periodisation, and forms of political representation. But it is first necessary to correct any impression that this typology implies the necessary functionality of the state. For it is intended only to provide criteria with which to assess the manner and extent to which particular states maintain, restore, or undermine the preconditions of capital accumulation. In so far as a given state fails to secure the general external conditions of production, to provide basic general conditions of production, to support the activities of particular capitals in key sectors, and to impose or concert the degree of direction necessary at a specific stage of socialisation, then economic crises can be anticipated. It will then be subject to various pressures to respond to such crises - pressures which may involve demands for more government intervention, new kinds of intervention, or even disengagement and resort to private, market-generated solutions. In this context it is important to recall the argument advanced by Joachim Hirsch that the state responds to the political repercussions of crisis and not to the economic crisis (or crises) as such. It is for this reason that an adequate account of state intervention must consider state power as a form-determined condensation of the balance of forces in struggle. In any event it is vital to reject any attempt to establish the functionality of the state on behalf of capital on a priori, essentialist grounds. The extent to which a state actually succeeds in maintaining, restoring, or strengthening the various conditions necessary for accumulation must always be established in each conjuncture.

In this context the most appropriate course of theoretical analysis is to link the effects of state intervention to the circuit of capital. This provides the theoretical means to discuss both the effectivity and preconditions of capital accumulation at different levels of abstraction and also permits the analysis to be modified to take account of various forms of this circuit and different forms of state integration into it. Moreover, because the concept of the circuit of capital also reveals the complex relations between production, distribution, and exchange, it provides a superior theoretical means to analyze crises and their resolution. Finally it provides the means to analyze the articulation of the CMP with other modes of production and/or forms of private and/or social labour through their location in the circuit of capital as a whole.

In its most simple and abstract form, the metamorphosis of capital in this circuit can be examined in terms of the transformation of money capital into commodities and thence into money revenue embodying surplus-value (or, in the conventional Marxist notation, M-C'-M') and the general external conditions of existence of this transformation. It can then be considered in more concrete and complex terms to take account of the specificity of the commodity of labourpower, the different fractions of capital (banking, industrial, commercial, merchant), the different forms of the circuit (laissez-faire, simple monopoly, state monopoly), the forms of its internationalisation, its various tendencies and counter-tendencies, the withdrawal of revenue from the circuit in the form of taxation, and so forth. The more specific the definition of the circuit and hence the more specific its articulation with the state, the more determinate become the explanations of events. Thus, although one can analyze the linkages between the circuit M-C'-M' and the ‘present’ state considered as a rational abstraction, the analysis will necessarily be highly indeterminate. One can specify certain conditions of existence of M-C'-M' that cannot be secured through the circuit itself (e.g., legal forms, legal tender, the reproduction of labour power, etc.) but it does not follow that all these can and/or must be secured through political action undertaken through a state apparatus. As the analysis becomes more concrete and complex the role of the state can be considered not only from the viewpoint of formal and/or substantive facilitation but also in terms of particular measures in the area of formal and substantive support for particular capitals (including variable capital or wage-labour) and the sphere of substantive direction. This permits a more detailed account of the interaction between forms of state intervention and the overall circuit of capital.

Thus the circuit of state monopoly capital requires, inter alia, a flexible taxation system and a market in state credit as preconditions of Keynesian techniques of demand management oriented to the realisation of surplus-value and/or of post-Keynesian attempts to make state credit function directly as capital. But such intervention is influenced in turn by the circuit itself. The market in state credit depends on the activities of autonomous financial institutions as well as on the state and they may calculate their opportunities for profit in ways contrary to the needs of effective state intervention. Keynesian techniques are also limited because they affect the circuit of capital only via the sphere of circulation (through their impact on economic agents as holders of money which they remain formally free to use as revenue and/or as capital) and because these techniques cannot satisfactorily modify the global circuit of capital into which such economic agents are linked through the world market. If the state tries to circum-vent these limits by using state credit directly as capital it will encounter problems of valorisation as well as realisation and will also confront difficulties in reconciling its role as a ‘real individual capitalist’ with its role as an ‘ideal collective capitalist’. Conversely, if the state attempts to avoid these problems through the allocation of state credit to particular private capitals in the form of formal and/or substantive support, it becomes dependent once again on economic agents outside its direct control. In short, although the circuit of state monopoly capital requires specific forms of political intervention, the institutional separation of the state casts doubt on its functionality.

After this brief illustration of the connections between the circuit of capital and state intervention we can now consider the question of periodisation in more general terms. In this context the work of Fine and Harris provides an important point of reference. In abstract, simple terms it is apparent that the period of laissez-faire capitalism is tied to formal facilitation: the state secures the formal framework of capital accumulation and leaves the substantive development of the economy to the operation of market forces. This is not inconsistent with the operation of concertation at the micro (or plant) and meso (or industrial) levels to the extent that this is the private concern of formally autonomous economic agents. Indeed, even where the state itself adopts a laissez-faire approach to economic development in the simple monopoly as well as liberal stages of the CMP, private concertation becomes a significant vehicle of economic direction at the meso- as well as micro-level. This is evident in the growth of cartels, trusts, syndicates, etc., organised on vertical and/or horizontal lines; in the development of concertational links between the banks and industry not only in investment banking but also in industrial restructuring; and in the rise of bilateral consultation between employers’ associations and trade unions. Moreover, with the increasing socialisation of the forces of production, the growing capital-intensity of production and the growing importance of technological innovation in improving labour productivity, the lengthening turnover time of certain key branches of production, and the emergence of cyclical crises associated with dislocations in the private credit system and the relative exhaustion of major technological revolutions, the stage of simple monopoly capitalism also witnesses the growth of substantive facilitation as well as formal and/or substantive support for capital accumulation. Under state monopoly capitalism there is a further shift in the forms of state intervention with growing importance attached to the role of direction mediated through concertation and/or imposed from above. In particular it is no longer always in the power of individual capitals acting alone or in concert at the meso-level to mobilise the resources necessary to ensure capital accumulation and it is necessary for the state to supplement the activities of ‘real collective capitalists’ at the meso-level with macro-level facilitation, support, and direction. It is in this context that we must situate not only the growing importance of nationalisation, state credit, and taxation but also the development of new forms of representation through which state direction of the economy is mediated.

Indeed it should be emphasised that changing forms of articulation between the circuit of capital and state intervention should ideally be accompanied by changes in forms of representation. For the effectivity of different forms of intervention depends not only on the technical adequacy of the available policy instruments but also on their articulation with strategies which can secure the support and/or minimise the resistance of those affected. The laws of motion of capitalism are not natural and inevitable: they depend for their realisation on the balance of forces in the complex relation between capital and labour. It follows that a reorganisation of this balance may become a prerequisite of restoring the conditions necessary for the creation and appropriation of surplus-value on an expanding scale. Changes in the articulation of different state apparatuses, in the forms of political representation, in the character of state intervention, and in political strategies and alliances could prove important in this respect. In turn this suggests that crises of accumulation can occur through the structural dislocation of forms of intervention and representation as well as through adverse changes in the balance of forces where these forms are at least formally complementary. The failure to develop corporatist forms to facilitate macro-level concertation of state direction of economic and social reproduction in state monopoly capitalism is merely one example of this (see Jessop, 1980a, pp. 38-54, 82). More generally we should emphasise that structural crises in the state and/or crises in the balance of political forces can precipitate or aggravate economic crises and reject any suggestion that economic crises have purely economic roots and are themselves the unilateral cause of state and political crises.”翻译为中文