industrialization/imperialism

[Forrest]

Why does capitalism need new markets? Would capitalism be impossible inside of a isolated industrialized country? What will happen when/if all countries become industrialized via capitalist imperialism?

[the last donut of the night]

The simple reason is that outside markets, in this case being pristine and free from earlier exploration, have a much larger base of resources. Also, workers are cheaper to pay.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism - Chapter 8 (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch08.htm), by Lenin. Though I would recommended reading through the whole thing if you can.

Basically, an unequivocal feature of capitalism is uneven development, from enterprise to enterprise, from country to country. Now because of this unequal development, the stronger more advanced sections of capitalism have a huge advantage over smaller developing countries. After competition was all but transformed into monopoly (see the first chapter of Imperialism), this created a strata of developed industrialized countries as opposed to the countries lagging behind; it's not hard to imagine how the two develop an antagonizing relationship.


Why does capitalism need new markets?
Specifically, capitalists need new, underdeveloped markets. In order to actually make a profit in the industrialized imperialist countries, there is a need to exploit cheaper, less restricted (meaning less or no laws against any kind of mal-practices) in order to produce and develop whatever means of making a profit they plan on producing. It's much cheaper to hire a labor force in Latin America or Southeast Asia where the minimum wage is far lower than in the US or UK for example.


Would capitalism be impossible inside of a isolated industrialized country?
Yes, but it would have to systematically destroy parts of their economy in order to create the kind of environment needed for a growing market. Markets can't grow if everyone is winning.


What will happen when/if all countries become industrialized via capitalist imperialism?
It would never happen. The point of imperialism is to keep developing countries, just that, developing; so that they have a large source of labor, resources, land, etc etc that are cheap to own and control.

[Forrest]

Yes, but it would have to systematically destroy parts of their economy in order to create the kind of environment needed for a growing market. Markets can't grow if everyone is winning.
What do you mean by destroy? Would the state have to destroy businesses or what?


It would never happen. The point of imperialism is to keep developing countries, just that, developing; so that they have a large source of labor, resources, land, etc etc that are cheap to own and control.
Why not if there is a finite amount of countries to develop?

[mykittyhasaboner]

What do you mean by destroy? Would the state have to destroy businesses or what?
I admit it was a crude way of describing what I was trying to say. Actually capitalism cannot function in an isolated industrialized country because capitalism as we know it today only came about through the integration of all the worlds markets into a global system. Since the first industrialization booms and the development of capitalism in Western Europe, they've had an advantage over developing parts of the world. Capitalism, and specifically imperialism, has always been characterized by private owning classes which have a "weaker link" to exploit.

So if capitalism actually could work in an isolated industrialized country, the country couldn't be equally developed because this would go against the very basic principles of capitalist economics. Thus, parts of this country's economy would have to be kept under developed, so that a minority of private owners could thrive. If said country were industrialized and developed equally then it really wouldn't be capitalism.



Why not if there is a finite amount of countries to develop?Quite simply, if all of the countries in the world were fully industrialized, there would be no imperialism.


The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies.What Lenin is saying here is that without the export of capital to the "third world", capitalist economies in the industrialized west would not be able to produce significant development (propertied classes would not profit). As a result imperialism would not be able to function.

[rebelmouse]

capitalism would be economic poor without robbing of other countries. whole wealth is gathering in hands of several people, so of course, majority of people will be poor. present good economic standard of people in west is result of colonialism (in which money from robbing of other countries came to budget and from budget were financed royal families, military, teachers, medicine sisters, etc), but in this new time, which i call imperialism, money from robbing of other countries finish in pockets of corporations (families which possess corporations). it means there is no so much money for budget like before in the time of colonialism. plus riches transfer factories to asia, so, summa summarum: west europe will be poorer and poorer and with more demonstrations (unfortunately peaceful ones) and therefore autorities will make bigger repression (spying, preventive arrests, big punishments, and beating of protesters). informators of secret agency inside of leftist movement will help to autorities to keep demos peaceful (they will call armed fight: terrorists or agents provocators, etc). so there will have to be divide in order to protect movement from those who gather information for secret agency. if there is no divide, preventive arrests will be successful and authorities will succeed to keep everything under control.
only new, armed, 1968, can be successful. last 1968 was jump step for careerists, and manifestation for peaceful protesters, therefore capitalism survived.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What will happen when/if all countries become industrialized via capitalist imperialism?


Quite simply, if all of the countries in the world were fully industrialized, there would be no imperialism.

I agree with much of what you said and I think we can look at the early 20th century to see what happens as industrial countries develop. Essentially world profit began to fall because there were fewer and fewer new markets due to increased competition among the big powers.

England and France and a few other major powers controlled much of the world and the major trade routes. The US and Russia still had some land to expand and resources to develop, but they were largely cut out of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (although the US was able to take over territories controlled by the old Spanish empire). Italy and Germany developed capitalism and industry late and so they were the worst off as far as ability to grow their economy. This situation essentially set up WWI because there had to be a massive reordering of the world if the emerging powers could continue to grow. Germany was the number 1 industrial power but had the fewest colonies and so I think war was inevitable (unless there had been a revolution or something).

Now we are in a similar situation with the US status quo being a barrier to future growth by new emerging powers - mostly China. The US wants to control the middle east and central Asia for the same reasons the British wanted to control the Suez canal: if the US controls oil needed by Indian and Chinese industry then it controlls the competeing powers. The US and China are both beginning to rub up against each other in Africa because this is one of the few "open" markets left to compete over. There will probably be a proxy war between the two powers in the next decade - sooner if the world economy continues to stagnate.

[ckaihatsu]

A useful metaphor -- correct me if I'm wrong here -- would be about trying to pick *and eat* all of the apples in a small orchard. There's the metaphor of "low-hanging fruit" that already exists, which fits into this larger metaphor....

At some point it wouldn't be worth it to climb trees to go after the more-difficult-to-reach apples -- it would be *easier* to search out new orchards nearby, and to manipulate some mercenary-minded youths to kill off any resistance to taking over the additional orchards.

At some point you would have picked all of the low-hanging apples so then you would run into the problem of labor -- if you were to continue in the orchards business you would have to keep harvesting apples to sell for cash, even if that means having to give over part of your revenues, as wages, to those who will climb the trees to get the apples.

You may discover that, by investing some of your revenues into the purchase of some robotic-arm-type apple picking tools your workforce will be able to pick apples faster because they won't have to climb trees (as much).

But your competitors at other orchards will be buying the same kind of equipment, so your market share in the selling of apples will decline while you *still* have to continue to pay the workers to go and pick the apples anyway, to keep the business going. Worse yet, some of your competition has started using a *better* tool -- it's like a trough-slide with razor-teeth on the far end, and it gets the apples even faster than the robotic-arm-clutch type of tool. You find that you have to buy the new equipment just to keep pace with the increased rate of productivity throughout the orchards *industry*.

It's at this point that you realize you should just invade some more pristine orchards so that you can get at some low-hanging fruit again -- that's the easiest of all. There might also be people there who have never worked for a wage or had money to buy consumer goods through the market. They would work for almost nothing since *all* consumer goods would be new and exciting to them. They'd probably know people, too, who would work in the orchard just so that they could eat a few apples after a hard day of work. And if they complained or got any "smart" ideas about all stopping work at once for better wages, well, that's where your mercenary force comes in to beat them all and force them back to work, now for less wages, as a punishment.

The *real* big problem comes in when there are *no more orchards left* -- then the going gets *really* tough because *no one* wants to climb trees just to get the few apples that are left -- worse yet your workers have now had enough time to discover other apple-picking workers at several orchards nearby, and now *all* of the laborers are demanding higher wages together even though sales are down because there are so many orchards putting apples onto the market.

Note that plenty of apples have *never* been picked, and *never* will be picked, because it's just *not worth it*, from an economic standpoint. If the *workers themselves* could defeat the mercenary forces and run the orchards themselves they might find a way to grow smaller trees, but more of them, to maximize apple production while minimizing the labor necessary to get them. But under private ownership there's no incentive to go through all that trouble because it just *takes too long* -- ownership is going to just stick with what it has and not take any risks regarding its property. It's also *not* going to get at *all* the apples, because *that* takes too much time and effort, too, especially when the market's crashing from an oversupply of apples from too many orchards.

The weird part is that since the orchard business is slow the ownership is unable to pay workers the wages that they *used* to get -- that means that, even though there are plenty of apples on the market, for very low prices, the workers just don't have the wages with which to *buy* the apples that they just picked...! And they *won't* be allowed to just hang out at the orchard while business is slow to chat and eat apples, because the orchards are *private property* and off-limits to the workers who work there.

Weird, huh?!


Chris


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[jake williams]

All these explanations are basically correct, but they're really long. Basically, profits are higher in new markets (in general that means profits are lower in the West than in it), and so the tendency is very strong to move capital there. We could go into why profits are higher there, but I'm trying to give as simple an answer as possible.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Simple answers are the best. It's best to be able to generally explain concepts like imperialism in a sentence or two. I tend to ramble.

[chegitz guevara]

All these explanations are basically correct, but they're really long. Basically, profits are higher in new markets (in general that means profits are lower in the West than in it), and so the tendency is very strong to move capital there. We could go into why profits are higher there, but I'm trying to give as simple an answer as possible.

That's true, but that's not why capitalism has to expand.

The reason why capitalism has to expend is because capitalism constantly outgrows its own markets. That's like running faster than your feet can keep up with. When that happens, you trip and fall. When capitalism does so, it's called a market correction, crisis, depression, recession, etc. Once the market catches up, growth can begin again. By expanding abroad, you can continue to grow your markets. Eventually, however, this just expands crises internationally.