A: al-ʾimbiryālīya. – F: impérialisme. – G: Imperialismus. – R: imperialism. S: imperialismo. – C: dìguózhǔyì 帝国主义
The term I stems from the Latin imperium, whose change of meaning from “command”, “rule”, or “order” to “force” or “domination” resulted in referring to territories subordinated to the “imperative” of a universal power. Following the example from antiquity (Imperium Romanum), Czarist Russia, Great Britain, or France under Napoleon III understood themselves as being “empires”. Towards the end of the 19th cent., the word “I” was coined in the context of the global expansion of capitalism. Although not used by Marx with this intention, there is hardly any other term more closely interconnected with the development of Marxism in the 20th cent. – for one thing because of the close interrelationship between the unlimited accumulation of capital and modern I, and for another because of the influence of Lenin and Leninism. A first wave of Marxist theorising concerning the emergence, essence, and future of I occurred during the period of the First World War. The term was primarily conceived to explain the drive to colonial expansion and the rivalry between the great powers, but starting in the 1930s it was used to explain the relationship between I and fascism as well. After 1945, with the beginning of the Cold War, the reference to inter-capitalist relations retreated to the background vis-à-vis the confrontation between systems; “I” became a term for a system and camp in opposition to state socialism. The Vietnam War brought about a second wave of theorising, in which the domination and exploitation of the peripheries (“Third World”) by the USA and its allies, the “First World”, was discussed as an antagonism between rich and poor countries. At the beginning of the 21st cent., a third wave of Marxist theories of I developed which dealt with a globally operative capitalism and its “imperium” in the classical sense of the word.
In various ways, non-Marxist studies sought to reject Marxist explanations rooted in theories of capitalism, preferring to treat I as a purely political phenomenon or as a relapse into pre-capitalist forms of expansion. Thus for example Hans J. Morgenthau defines I as ‘a policy devised to overthrow the status quo’ (1948, 34) – thus making it possible to disparage national liberation movements as “imperialist” and attest that the protection of American predominance is “anti-imperialist”. Joseph A. Schumpeter regards I as an irrational, atavistic relapse into pre-capitalist behavioural patterns: ‘capitalism is by nature anti-imperialist’ (1919/1951, 73). For Max Weber, in contrast, ‘imperialist capitalism’ ‘[…] has always been the normal form in which capitalist interests have influenced politics’; ‘For the predictable future, the prognosis will have to be made in its favor’ (E&S, 919). This is because it ‘has offered by far the greatest opportunities for profit. They have been greater by far than those normally open to industrial enterprises which worked for exports and which oriented themselves to peaceful trade with members of other polities’ (918).
1. There exist considerable differences between theorists with a Marxist orientation concerning the definition of I and the evaluation of its relation to capitalism. Five positions can be distinguished: 1. The designation of I as ‘the domination of one country by another in order to economically exploit the dominated’ (Szymanski 1981, 5) distinguishes clearly between I and capitalism and leaves the relation between them open. A “deficient capitalism”, so to speak, or certain capitalist interests could consequently lead to imperialist actions. 2. I as the gradual expansion of capitalist relations in stages to pre-capitalist or non-capitalist parts of the world: thus the emergence of national economies is followed by the colonialist stage and the creation of spheres of influence, which is followed by the international capitalist integration towards the end of the 20th cent. referred to as ‘globalisation’ (MacEwan 1972). 3. A conception originating with Lenin regards I as the “final” or “highest” stage of capitalism, without distinguishing between modern I and monopoly or late capitalism. 4. The dependency theory which became prominent in the 1970s and the world systems approach designate I as a (capitalist) system characterised by a spatial dichotomy between centre and periphery. Capitalism tends intrinsically toward I, since a few metropolitan states have always dominated and exploited weaker, peripheral countries; the forms of I have merely changed over time. This concept is found more pointedly in the work of Herb Addo (1986), who designates I to be a permanent condition of capitalism. 5. Finally, analogous to Marx’s elaboration of the external factors of the genesis and spread of capitalism and the emergence of the world market in the Critique of Political Economy: I as the pioneer or “midwife” of capitalism (Warren 1980).
2. Although the term is only used by Marx in the phrase “concealed I”, which he uses to characterise the aspirations of the ‘official republican opposition’ of large parts of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie under Louis-Philippe, characterised by ‘French nationalism’ (MECW 11/112 et sq. [8/124]), the theories of I that emerged after his death were able to refer back to his work. The primary reference points were Marx’s emphasis upon the expansive force of capital which subjugates all other social relations, and his analysis of primitive accumulation. ‘The sudden expansion of the world market, the multiplication of commodities in circulation, the competition among the European nations for the seizure of Asiatic products and American treasures, the colonial system, all made a fundamental contribution towards shattering the feudal barriers to production’ (Marx 1981, 450 [25/345]). Thus for Marx, the expansion of the market into a world market and unequal development at a global scale were inextricable – as both cause and effect – from the emergence of capitalism.
Marx was primarily interested in the transformation of merchant capital into industrial capital. Using the example of India (MECW 12/125–33 [9/127–33]), he demonstrated that the advance of merchant capital alone not only exploited the country, but also destroyed traditional modes of production without bringing about higher socioeconomic development, whereas elsewhere, the destruction wrought by no less exploitative industrial capital at least created space for new relations (see Brewer 1980, 59). Geoffrey Kay (1975) developed this thought further within the framework of a theory of (under)development. It also forms the point of departure of Bill Warren’s understanding of I as the “pioneer of capitalism”. According to Warren, Marx’s “progressive” interpretation of I was later ‘sacrificed to the requirements of bourgeois anti-imperialist propaganda and, indirectly, to what were thought to be the security requirements of the encircled Soviet state’ (1980, 8). The progressive character of capitalism, as Marx understood it, should according to Warren also serve as a model for determining the progressive function of I; he regards it as erroneous to draw a conclusion about the reactionary character of capitalism from the character of I.
In a late work, Engels describes imperialist expansions as attempts to solve the escalating contradiction between production and consumption in European industrial states through the conquest of new overseas markets. But this would merely delay the crisis, causing it to break out at a later date with even more intensity: ‘Here we have another splendid quirk of history – China is all that is left for capitalist production to conquer, yet the latter, by the very fact of having finally conquered her, will itself be hopelessly compromised in its place of origin’ (Letter to Kautsky, September 23, 1894, MECW 50/350 [39/301]).
3. The first wave of theories of I was based upon the works of Hilferding, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Lenin, as well as the important contribution of Rosa Luxemburg, who analysed I within the framework of Marx’s theory of accumulation. The replacement of the capitalism of free competition by monopoly capitalism is at the centre of “Leninist” conceptions; I is understood as its ideology and praxis as well as a necessary stage of capitalist development.
The most important precursor of these approaches was the British radical democrat John A. Hobson. As a reaction to the Boer war, which he abhorred, he sketched an antagonism between liberal and imperialist capitalism. He determined the latter to be an attempt to use the expansion of markets and the export of capital to overcome tendencies toward underconsumption, which he traced back to the increasing monopoly power of large firms. Following this, I refers to a policy of aggressive nationalism, colonialism, and militarism promoted by large companies. ‘It is not industrial progress that demands the opening up of new markets and areas of investment, but mal-distribution of consuming power which prevents the absorption of commodities and capital within the country. The over-saving which is the economic root of Imperialism is found by analysis to consist of rents, monopoly profits, and other unearned or excessive elements of income’ (1902, 85). Hobson assumed that underconsumption could be overcome if monopoly profits were redistributed as wages and social welfare benefits. A “democratic and social” capitalism would not waste its resources on armaments and colonialism. ‘I is a depraved choice of national life, imposed by self-seeking interests which appeal to the lusts of quantitative acquisitiveness and of forceful domination surviving in a nation from early centuries of animal struggle for existence’ (1902, 368).
The first genuinely Marxist theory of I is found in Rudolf Hilferding’s work Finance Capital (1910/1981). For the first time, I was understood as a necessary corollary of the stage of capitalist development in which the formation of cartels displaces free trade and finance capital succeeds industrial capital as the hitherto dominant form. Hilferding sees the ideology and praxis of finance capital as ‘opposed’ to liberalism, since ‘finance capital does not want freedom, but domination; it has no regard for the independence of the individual capitalist, but demands his allegiance. It detests the anarchy of competition and wants organisation, though of course only in order to resume competition on a still higher level’ (1910/1981, 334). For that reason, it requires ‘a strong state which will ensure respect for the interests of finance capital abroad, and use its political power to extort advantageous supply contracts and trade agreements from smaller states’, which must be capable and prepared ‘to transform the whole world into a sphere of investment for its own finance capital’ and ‘is strong enough to pursue an expansionist policy and the annexation of new colonies’ (ibid.).
Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy was written in 1915, but was first published after the October Revolution. Lenin published an introduction praising it and analysed the material for his own theory. Bukharin examines the contradictory tendencies of the international and national expansion of capital, which together make up the new stage of I. Concentration and centralisation have progressed to the point where each national economy has become ‘one gigantic combined enterprise under the tutelage of the financial kings and the capitalist state’ (1915/1929, 73). At the same time, the rivalry between capitalist states has replaced the competition between capitalist enterprises. The national chauvinism arising from this has an effect upon the working classes of the imperialist countries. In the long term, however, internationalised forces of production would enable the proletariat to overcome national boundaries (144–68).
Although Lenin’s text is also based upon a comprehensive study of the materials (CW 39), it is distinguished from Hilferding’s and Bukharin’s analyses by the fact that its primary aim is to “educate” the labour movement and convey to it an awareness of the specific character of the epoch and the causes of what Lenin views as the treacherous behaviour of most social democratic leaders during the outbreak of the First World War. The text had ‘the character of a revelation’ within Marxism-Leninism and the anti-colonial liberation movements. In the countries of the Third World, it attained a theoretical significance comparable to that of the Manifesto in the developed countries (Kemp 1967, 67).
For Lenin, capitalism had reached a new stage with I, marked by five distinct characteristics: 1. The concentration of production and capital brings about the formation of monopolies, which achieve a determining role in economic life through their sheer size (“economies of scale”) and technological and organisational superiority (CW 22, 210 et sqq.). 2. The fusing of bank capital and industrial capital into ‘finance capital’ leads to the emergence of a financial oligarchy (226). 3. The significance of the export of capital trumps that of the export of commodities. Within the advanced countries, there is a ‘lack of a field for “profitable” investment’; an increase of profits is therefore only possible through exporting capital to underdeveloped countries (242). 4. International monopolies divide the world among themselves. 5. This is accompanied by a complete territorial ‘division of the world’ between the capitalist great powers (254).
In contrast to Hobson, I for Lenin does not concern political decisions, but rather an irreversible stage in the development of capitalism (288). Any kind of “redistribution of monopoly profits” is precluded, since these profits are the necessary result of the development of the forces of production and the pressure on the general rate of profit. However, parts of the monopoly profits flow to select groups of workers in the form of higher wages, which Lenin considers to be a ‘bribe’ (301) aimed at bringing about a national-chauvinist ‘labour aristocracy’ and splitting the labour movement. The ‘social I’ that set in with Bismarck and which attained its classical expression in the ‘Tariff Reform League’ led by Joseph Chamberlain constitutes an attempt to indoctrinate the workers with patriotism in order to destroy proletarian internationalism (285). In the 1930s, this concept was used to analyse European fascism; in the 1960s, it was deployed in the Maoist critique of the Soviet Union.
One of those attacked by Lenin (288 et sqq.) was Karl Kautsky, who interpreted I as the annexation of agrarian territories by advanced capitalist countries – and thus as a political strategy that could also be given up again. Kautsky regarded the formation of an ‘Ultra-Imperialism’ as a possibility, in which militaristic imperialist policy ‘is displaced by a new, ultra-imperialist’ one, which posits ‘in place of the struggle between national finance capitals among each other the common exploitation of the world by an internationally united financial capital’ (1915, 144). For Lenin, such a claim was a ‘lifeless abstraction’ (CW 22, 272) only suitable for diverting attention away from the antagonistic contradictions of the capitalist mode of production and between capitalist states. However, he acknowledges that in history there have been examples of such “ultra-I”, for example in the common exploitation of China (295). But due to capitalist competition, such alliances are not permanent; since the world is already divided up, there can only be a ‘redistribution’, the expansion of one’s own territory at the expense of others (254). This leads to continuous ‘alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world politics’ (295). Competition brings about ‘unequal’ development – the centre of economic development shifts from England and France to Germany and Japan, respectively, and ultimately to the USA.
In contrast to Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg conceives of I as a permanent component of capitalism, the reproduction of which is dependent from the very beginning on the exploitation of non-capitalist modes of production. In order to examine the conditions necessary for the realisation of surplus value and the accumulation of capital, she draws upon Marx’s schemata of simple and expanded reproduction. She sees a flaw in their neglect of ‘the deep and fundamental antagonism between the capacity to consume and the capacity to produce in a capitalist society, a conflict resulting from the very accumulation of capital which periodically bursts out in crises and spurs capital on to a continual extension of the market’ (1913/2003, 327). Capitalist growth is ultimately only possible if an increasing mass of surplus value is realised through the expansion of demand outside of the system. ‘Capitalism is the first mode of economy with the weapon of propaganda, a mode which tends to engulf the entire globe and to stamp out all other economies, tolerating no rival at its side. Yet at the same time it is also the first mode of economy which is unable to exist by itself, which needs other economic systems as a medium and soil. Although it strives to become universal, and, indeed, on account of this its tendency, it must break down – because it is immanently incapable of becoming a universal form of production’ (447). Luxemburg substantiates her central thesis, that capitalism is kept running by the subjugation of primitive non-capitalist economies, by pointing to the historical replacement of old, artisan forms of production of village communities by cheap mass-consumer goods and the violent appropriation of land and natural resources in many parts of the world. In analysing the subjugation of non-capitalist modes of production as a form of destruction and impoverishment, she anticipates essential elements of the second wave of Marxist theories of I in the 1960s and 1970s.
Luxemburg’s derivation of the concept of I from Marx’s reproduction schemata was frequently criticised. Bukharin writes that she provides ‘a brilliant and masterful description of colonial exploitation’, but misses ‘the theoretical nucleus of the matter’, because ‘she reduces everything to the bare formula of the possibility of realization’ of the surplus value already produced, and separates this problem from that of ‘larger profits’, ‘thus from the question of the exploitation of non-capitalist economic forms’ (1926/1972, 246; see Howard/King 1989, 114). In 1913, Otto Bauer observed that countries with ‘continuous underaccumulation attract capital from abroad and send labour overseas’, whereas ‘continuous overaccumulation’ requires foreign investment, which in the long term leads to a corresponding ‘adjustment […]’ by means of ‘great crises, with unemployment, wage reductions, and increasing exploitation on the one hand, and unemployment of capital, destruction of values, and a declining rate of profit on the other’ (1913/1986,106 et sq.). Luxemburg is also alleged to have underestimated the possibilities for the domestic market to expand (which would in the later period of Fordism become the fundamental basis for a class compromise between capital and labour). Yet according to Bauer, Luxemburg correctly saw that accumulation ‘in an isolated capitalist society’ is ‘confined within limits. I does in fact serve to widen these limits’ (108). According to Sweezy, ‘the distinction between “capitalist” and “non-capitalist” consumers’ is ‘quite irrelevant’: ‘if the dilemma were a real one […] it would demonstrate not the approaching breakdown of capitalism, but the impossibility of capitalism’ (1942, 205). Joan Robinson conversely defends Luxemburg’s proposition with the argument that ‘investment can take place in an ever-accumulating stock of capital only if the capitalists are assured of an ever-expanding market for the goods which the capital will produce’ (1951, 21). To the extent that Luxemburg concentrated upon the exploitation of non-capitalist modes of production and a continuous “primitive accumulation” as factors counteracting the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, from the standpoint of dependency theory and feminist positions her theory of I was superior to Lenin’s.
4. The October Revolution, the socioeconomic and political turbulence of the 1920s and 1930s and the rise of fascism required theories of I to be developed further. This was accomplished above all by Eugen Varga’s conception of a ‘persistent crisis of capitalism’ (1922, 8) combined with the prognosis of the “end of I”, caused by its internal contradictions as well as by the increasing strength of anti-imperialist forces. According to Varga, I transforms itself in order to delay its final crisis; it promotes fascism and state monopoly capitalism, both characterised by an increase in state interventionist activity. I and fascism are interconnected in two respects: the latter serves in the first instance to break the resistance of the working class and nationalise its independent organisations in the interests of the monopolies. Secondly, it organises ‘the nation both spiritually by intensive propaganda and practically by military preparations and authoritarian centralization for an ambitious campaign of territorial expansion’ (Dobb 1937, 259).
After the Second World War, Varga assumed that deliberate planning would replace the anarchy of the market and that the state would thereby acquire autonomy from the economic base. He was criticised for considering state capitalist tendencies to be a new, crisis-free stage of capitalism (Howard/King 1992, 77). He retracted his position and developed a concept of the three stages of a general crisis of capitalism, which later on significantly influenced the view of I held by communist parties. However, despite the collapse of the colonial system, his theory lost its cogency once capitalist accumulation gained new momentum in the 1950s and 1960s.
John Strachey’s “new revisionism” was an attempt to overcome old theories of I: in light of the substantial growth of real wages in the imperialist metropolises, the ‘Hobson-Lenin’ line had supposedly become irrelevant. The old imperial powers no longer drew their profits from colonies. West Germany of all countries, which had no overseas colonies to fall back on, made the quickest recovery from the war. Contrary to popular prejudices, the strengths and weaknesses of a nation were inversely proportional to its imperial possessions (1959, 194). Strachey defines I as an ‘imposition of the power of one nation on another, with the intention of ruling the subjected nation for an indefinite period’ (292) and proceeding from this examined the possibilities of an American or Russian I. The first is prevented by the SU’s and China’s positions as world powers, and furthermore by the anti-imperialist tradition of the USA and the ‘relative immaturity of the American economy for empire’ (291). In contrast, the SU had clearly become an imperial power oppressing and exploiting the peoples of Eastern Europe, but was not suited to an imperial role due to its low level of economic development (304). For that reason, the ‘end of the imperialist epoch’ is ‘a precondition of our survival’ (309).
5. At the high point of the second wave of theories of I, The Geometry of Imperialism (1978) by Giovanni Arrighi was published. Whereas Hobson and Lenin conceived I in terms of the convergence of nationalism, inter-state anarchy, and the reign of finance capital, the I of the post-war period should be conceived as a combination of internationalism and a hierarchical order of states and transnational corporations. It is characterised by an informal empire of free trade and free enterprise, embedded in a “Pax Americana” through the hegemony of the USA.
The new theories were linked to the rise of the so-called “New Left” in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the predecessors was Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth (1957). According to him, the current division into centres and peripheries can be traced back to the European campaigns of conquest of the past few centuries. The different forms which the integration of Japan and India into the world market took demonstrate that underdevelopment is not the result of backwardness or a lack of capitalist production, but rather of a world economy structured by imperialist power as such, which cements the dependency of less developed countries. Development could only be set into motion by socialist-oriented revolutions which could bring about a relative decoupling of the peripheral countries from the world market. Baran’s analysis inspired revolutionary movements of the “Third World”, beginning with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. For the second wave of theories of I, his book played a role similar to that of Hobson’s for the first. However, he did not formulate a specific theory of I. It became implicitly clear that I is an element inherent to capitalism that alters with the changing forms of capitalist development.
The work that Baran wrote together with Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (1966), placed the emphasis upon American militarism and I. For the American oligarchy, a large and growing military machinery is existentially necessary in order to contain, force back, and ultimately destroy the rival socialist world system, as well as propping up “allies” and other clients that are willing to adjust their laws and policies to the needs of American “big business” (1966, 191, 201). Military build-up absorbs a growing share of surplus value produced, but whereas massive state expenditures for education and welfare threaten to weaken the position of the oligarchy, military expenditures do the opposite: ‘militarization fosters all the reactionary and irrational forces in society […] Blind respect is engendered for authority; attitudes of docility and conformity are taught and enforced; dissent is treated as unpatriotic or even treasonable. In such an atmosphere, the oligarchy feels that its moral authority and material position are secure’ (209).
In 1968, Harry Magdoff published an economic analysis of the ‘new I’ using the USA as his primary example. ‘I is not a matter of choice for a capitalist society; it is the way of life for such a society’ (1969, 26). Its fundamental need is to gain control of as many sources of raw materials as possible, ‘wherever these raw materials may be’ (35). As a result, the USA develop a strong dependency upon raw material imports, in particular of strategic industrial materials, increase their direct investment in foreign countries, and place great importance on military expenditures for leading enterprises.
In a series of articles from the 1970s, Stephen Hymer (1979) examined the rise of transnational corporations and the internationalisation of capital, which led to a modification of the hierarchical structure and control over the world economy. According to Hymer, if either an increase in competition or the working class became a threat, transnational corporations were in a position to retreat to other markets and unify their interests. The increase of their power and their dominance within the newly emerging global economic order created centralised decision-making processes and effected a division of labour between nations that corresponded to the division of labour within the hierarchy of an enterprise. Parallel to this, Christian Palliox (1975) developed a formal model of accumulation on the world market. He relied empirically upon a comparative study of various strategies used by European countries to promote the growth of select branches of industry in order to be able to react to the new global constellation. The concept of a “new international division of labour” and its repercussions for the working class in the industrialised and tricontinental countries was further developed by Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye (1977). From the viewpoint of the “tricont”, the “new Is” were aggregated under the term “neo-colonialism” – Kwame Nkrumah’s Neo-Colonialism – the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) being exemplary. The then-dominant euphoric mood was expressed by Jack Woddis, for whom neo-colonialism was a reaction to the liberation movements of the tricont: ‘This phase is one in which I is faced with the emergence of a powerful socialist camp, an unprecedentedly powerful national liberation movement […] and a strong working class and democratic movement in the industrialised capitalist countries’ (1967, 50).
Building upon Lenin’s configuration of the characteristics of I, James O’Connor provided an updated list: 1. integration of the capitalist world economy by transnational corporations dominated by the US, under whose auspices technical revolutions are accelerated; 2. A turn away from the “free” international market, which is replaced by price regulation; 3. The participation of state capital in international investments; 4. the replacement of national rivalries by the consolidation of an international ruling class; 5. the intensification of all of these tendencies due to the threat posed by socialism to the capitalist world system (121).
Dependency theory and the world systems approach were the most politically influential variants of the second wave of theories of I; both were closely interconnected to examinations of unequal exchange (Emmanuel 1969). Central to these theories and predictions, however, was the capitalist world system, described as a relatively stable system of domination and exploitation sustained by a contradictory centre-periphery relation. ‘The connection between I and world capitalism is so close, I is so much an intimate part of world capitalism that capitalism cannot exist without I. We may in fact see the two phenomena as synonyms’ (Addo 1986, 14).
André Gunder Frank would later claim that the tendency to reduce global capitalism to a structurally fixed system with a spatial dichotomy and to equate this with I was part of the problem: central concepts of dependency theory such as ‘over/underdevelopment’, ‘capitalism’, or ‘dependency’ were ‘all derived only from European/Western ethnocentrism, which was propagated around the world […] as part and parcel of Western colonialism and cultural I’ (1998, 336).
6. The looming end of the competition between social systems, the neoliberal reordering of global capitalism and the decline of the “Third World movement” mandated a rethinking of I. On the basis of a comparison between American I and the earlier empires of the Dutch and the English, Giovanni Arrighi (1994) depicts the history of world capitalism in long, secular cycles: the phase of expansion with its diverse possibilities for investing money profitably is gradually replaced by a phase of stagnation in which capitalists attempt to transfer their fixed capital into more liquid forms of property, which leads to financial speculation at the global level. What distinguishes the individual ‘systemic cycles of accumulation’ is the character of the driving investments and the hegemonic centres. The territorial basis of the dominant factions of capital has gradually expanded: from an almost non-territorial “network” of capital, hegemony passed to the Netherlands, then Great Britain, and finally to the continental power of the USA. In this manner, it is possible to compare the different capitalist regimes of accumulation with each other and reconstruct the formation of American hegemony around the turn of the millennium.
Alfred W. Crosby’s study of Ecological Imperialism (1987) sheds light upon an aspect that was hardly considered in earlier examinations of European expansion: the colonising Europeans, with the plants and animals they brought with them, triggered an ecological shock in local cultures which made them more susceptible to epidemics and famine. Mike Davis demonstrates how cyclical climatic phenomena like El Niño, came to be “natural” catastrophes through the advancement of the capitalist mode of production and the destruction of old, relatively acclimatised ways of life in India, China, Brazil, and Ethiopia. Thus underdevelopment had already been produced in the late 18th cent., and a ‘Third World’ was ‘made’. ‘Millions died, not outside the modern “world system”, but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. They died in the golden age of Liberal Capitalism; indeed, many were murdered […] by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham, and Mill’ (2001, 9).
Prabath Patnaik’s study Accumulation and Stability under Capitalism (1997) connects post-Keynesian theories of growth and distribution with theories of unequal development, in order to better grasp the functioning and elasticity of the capitalist system. The periphery provides a buffer that allows growth in the capitalist centre to proceed relatively free from crisis and inflation. Capitalism can stabilise itself because the wages of an outsourced part of the labour force, above all producers in the primary sector, are ‘compressible’ due to the reserve army in surrounding areas (1997, 9). According to Patnaik, it is precisely this complex system with a spatial dichotomy and a functional economic unit that constitutes contemporary I. This allows for I to almost self-legitimate. Because the system ‘functions well’ at the centre, this appears as an inherent quality of the system itself, and poverty, unemployment, and social unrest “outside” appear to be attributable to the fact that capitalism has not yet developed far enough there: ‘its ideological triumph consists in the illusion that it creates, including among its victims, that its success at the core is replicable everywhere’ (1997, 182).
The centres are not only interested in non-renewable resources from the peripheries, but are also always reliant upon the import of agricultural products. Charles A.S. Hall et al. (2000) use the example of Costa Rica to demonstrate how the intensive industrialised cultivation of monocultures for export leads to soil erosion, the loss of biodiversity, higher susceptibility to illness, as well as a declining ability on the part of many countries to feed their own populations. Ecological I refers to the state of affairs in which the environmental costs of the “Northern” standard of living is imposed mainly upon the export countries of the South. Despite the disproportionate share in the use of natural resources worldwide, the centres are able to preserve their own “ecological capital” at the expense of others. They maintain the illusion that further growth is the solution to ecological problems, and accuse poor countries of not ensuring the preservation of their natural resources (for example, the Brazilian rain forests) (Muradian/Martínez-Alier 2001; Andersson/Lindroth 2001). Bilateral and multilateral agreements and patent regulations are attempts by agribusiness and the pharmaceuticals industry to politically and institutionally secure the private appropriation and valorisation of genetic resources (see Brand/Görg 2001).
Multiple Marxist investigations concentrate upon the establishment of a neoliberal global order dominated by the USA. Walden Bello (1994) demonstrates how primarily the USA has pushed through a series of measures to dismantle trade barriers, open borders to investments, extensively privatise state sectors, dismantle welfare state rights, reduce wages, and devalue currencies, which has led to disastrous consequences for the global poor. Peter Gowan (1999) examines in detail how the USA instituted the “Dollar-Wall Street Regime” and used it, via the collaboration of private international financial actors with the dollar policies of the US government, to impose their national interests on the world market. Beginning with the unilateral termination of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971, increasingly differentiated strategies were developed in order to force internal economic and political reforms upon countries that did not follow the Anglo-American model of liberal capitalism. In this respect, Stephen Gill speaks of a ‘new constitutionalism’ of ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’ that helps to anchor the power of capital within the state and civil society by means of macro- and micro-economic discipline (2000, 4). Kees Van der Pijl (1997) examines the formation of a transnational ‘Atlantic ruling class’. As Leo Panitch notes, as early as 1973, Nicos Poulantzas had described a new era of I by specifying three imperialist phases: a transitional phase from competitive capitalism to I, a phase of consolidation and finally, after the Second World War, ‘a new epoch of American global dominance, entailing a new type of non-territorial I, implanted and maintained not through direct rule by the metropolis, nor even through political subordination of a neo-colonial type, but rather through the induced reproduction of the form of the dominant imperialist power within each national formation and its state’ (Panitch 2000, 9; see Poulantzas 1973, 25 et sqq.).
Susan Strange also points out that a ‘structural power’ (1988, 24) has formed which in some regards is more reminiscent of the Roman Empire than of powerful nation states. With regard to the USA, she writes of a ‘nonterritorial empire with its imperial capital in Washington, D.C.’ (1989, 167). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri claim to transcend the term I with their concept of empire. They determine I to be a relic of a bygone world divided into nation-states. ‘I is over. No nation will be world leader in the way modern European nations were’ (2001, xiv). Empire rules the entire “civilised” world, without territorial limits. Whether an all-encompassing empire will mark the new epoch, or whether imperialist rivalries will assert themselves again, is a question that is both decisive for the future of humanity as well as open. Many aspects of the situation at the beginning of the 21st cent. display parallels to the dynamics of the international system at the end of the 19th cent. According to Peter Gowan, the key elements of analysis in both cases are the same, namely the dominant states (USA/Great Britain), their main competitors (EU/Germany and Japan), the new centres of growth (East Asia), and dependent regions; labour organisations in both epochs were weak. There are admittedly great differences. Thus, for example, internationalisation in the 19th cent. took place within the context of the extraordinary stability of the international gold and financial system, instead of the ‘chaos of the Dollar-Wall Street Regime’ (1999, 72).
Jan Otto Andersson
Translated by Alexander Locascio
Bibliography
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