Mészáros’ Structural Limits to Capital and the Limits to the War on China

Abstract

Critical Political Economy analysts have addressed the similarities between the US–China hegemonic confrontation as contemporary parallels to previous global rivalries which led to open conflict. Noticing the distinctive patterns through which the capitalist crisis presented itself, István Mészáros proposed a theoretical elaboration linking the overproduction characteristic of the crisis to the material conditions presented by capitalist reproduction within a limited biosphere and with concrete, existing human beings. Capitalism, thus, could not be reformed away from its own physical limits. This paper’s objective is to offer a partial re-interpretation of Mészáros’ 1980s thesis on the Structural Limits to Capital. This paper looks at the developments of nuclear warfare, addressing the contradiction between the necessity of war as a means for the disposal of exceeding capital and the existence of nuclear weapons as a structural limit itself. This is done in a way to propose an addition to Mészáros’ list of four limits stressed out as core contradictions to capital reproduction, which enacted in the 1970s the structural capitalist crisis that continues to this day.