Imperialism - foreign policy or monopolization?

[Widerstand]

Something I have noted when reading Lenin's work on Imperialism, is that he very much defines capitalist Imperialism as primarily the monopolization of capital, driven by financial capital, and the resulting splitting up of the market between monopolies, as well as the splitting up of the world between the most developed capitalist nations. However the latter part is, as to my understanding, not central to capitalist Imperialism, but rather a logical result of it. At one point he notes that these notions of expansionism and colonialism have predated Capitalism, and they have been called "Imperialist" as well. It seems to me that the latter is the sense in which the word is widely used in common language, both on this board and elsewhere. Why is it that "Imperialism" largely is used to refer to foreign policy only, and not to a development of the capitalist system? The way I perceived it, Anti-Capitalism always included Anti-Imperialism. But if we go by this latter use of the word "Imperialism", doesn't that mean that it's possible to be against Imperialism but for Capitalism (for example Isolationism)? Are then the strictly Anti-Imperialist groups really our allies, or are a good number of them just another branch of the "fix capitalism" crowd?

[graymouser]

Lenin's book on imperialism was in the context of the World War I era debates on what motivated modern imperialism. He was basically using Rudolf Hilferding's 1912 work on the predominance of finance capital to demonstrate that the then-modern imperialist states were really based on the economic needs of the capitalist system, rather than vice versa.

Modern anti-imperialism focuses on foreign policy in part because it's the really evident face of imperialism. The anti-neoliberal literature that started to surface around the time of the 1999 WTO protests was trying to draw these lines; for instance Eric Toussaint's book Your Money Or Your Life and a good chunk of Chomsky's work, particularly Profits Over People, did try to deal with the economic angle of imperialism. But really the opposition to what is seen as "empire" abroad has mostly crystallized around the critique of foreign policy. A Marxist view would emphasize that economic policy comes first, although this has been a little crude - for example in the attempts to focus the Afghanistan war primarily on the question of a natural gas pipeline.

Can there be reactionary anti-imperialism? Absolutely. Isolationism can be a highly reactionary force, and this has been a significant debate in the American anti-war movement: the question of whether we should embrace right-libertarians, and particularly 9/11 truth conspiracy theorists, as a legitimate part of anti-imperialism. The current I'm closest to, Socialist Action, has opposed this kind of alliance, but it's run into a good deal of flak for doing so. Particularly troubling is the Counterpunch website, which used to be a good anti-imperialist news source, where Alex Cockburn has increasingly courted right-libs and paleoconservatives like Paul Craig Roberts.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Particularly troubling is the Counterpunch website, which used to be a good anti-imperialist news source, where Alex Cockburn has increasingly courted right-libs and paleoconservatives like Paul Craig Roberts.

Is Paul Craig Roberts a paleo-con? Some circles call him a "Marxist," and no paleo-con pulls out Marx or "Marx and Lenin" to praise them for anti-capitalist insights (though you can hear that from some neolibs and neo-cons).

[Savage]

This may not be too relevant, it's Loren Goldner's ''Socialism in One Country'' Before Stalin, and the Origins of Reactionary ''Anti-Imperialism'' The Case of Turkey, 1917-1925: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/turkey.html