Global Capitalism

[Roses in the Hospital]

As I guess my this thread got 'purged' the last time I'm re-posting:

In the Communist Manifesto Marx & Engles write:


The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everyehere, establish connexions everyway.

The way I see things is that tempted by the higher profit available by exploiting less economically developed countries the Western bourgoisie has moved East for its major workforce, meaning that the traditional proletariat of the Western countries has been significanly weakened, maybe even disolved. Is it, therefore, a fair generalization to say the way the global class-system currently works is something akin to the Western bourgosie explointing the Proletariat of the East with the Western 'middle classes' mindlessly consuming to complete the cycle?
If so what issues does this raise for the comming of 'the revolution'? Do we need to think of things on a global rather than national scale? Is the revolution going to come from an underdeveloped country after all, overthrowing the foreign bourgosie rather than it's own?

[monkeydust]

In some ways, I suppose it is a fair generalization; but it's really a gross oversimplification.

It is true that there has been a broad trend for businesses to move to the developing world for cheap unskilled labour, I certainly wouldn't dispute that.

Nor would I dispute your contention that we should think on a "global scale" - that has always been the case.

But the implication behind what you're saying, that somehow in place of national class structures we have global ones, - the Western minority representing an oppressive pseudo-bourgois class in itself - is a bit of a distortion.

Western countries have not "lost" their working class; it hasn't simply moved. Rather, business classes have tended to use western countries for skilled labour that is as equally or perhaps more important in the modern world than manual labour. This is, incidentally, one of the reasons why capital has and continues to back the growth and expansion of education in industrialized states - the need a highly-trained workforce in these areas.

[nochastitybelt]

Briefly, the 4 points of Globalization:

Monoculturalism – The idea that the world is a single, interdependent market lies behind the commitment to free trade and what the Chief Executive Officer of United Technologies calls ‘a worldwide business environment unfettered by government interference’. In this industrial monoculture factories and people, like parts, are interchangeable, and ‘Coca-Colonization’ extends to every corner of the globe.

The first victims are of course the familiar nation states, whose borders and governments are now impediments – as much in the North where administrations are seduced or bought, as in the South where they are subverted or controlled. Thus over the last decade we have seen the disintegration of national governments in Eurasia, the total collapse of central authority in a variety of states and a hell-bent drive to join in the capitalist game from China and Vietnam to Poland and East Germany.

But monoculturalism won’t stop there. Its need, which has always been the need of industrial capital, is to destroy regional identities, indigenous cultures and even stable communities. Traditions rooted there – self-sufficiency, sustainability, handicrafts, ‘enoughness’ – the market system must eliminate for its success.

Technophilia – What was once a simple drive to replace human work by mechanical work has become a near obsession in our machine-dominated society. It is not merely that the globalists have machines that can slosh billions of dollars around the world instantly at the press of a key, or can alter equally genes or ecosystems or atmospheric layers. What’s critical is that their perspectives must succumb to the patterns set by these machines. Problems must be posed in ways that can be solved by them.


Consumptivitis – It is so elemental that we almost overlook it, but the unalterable foundation of industrialism is the disease of unending consumption – of what, it hardly matters – and its accompanying unlimited production. A global economy guided by free trade – that is free of environmental laws and price constraints and resource allotments and national allegiances and labour restrictions – can go into a frenzy of production and consumption, prodded by advertising, sanctioned by consumer culture and driven by the materialism that lies at the heart of Western society.

This consumption need not be equal, within or among nations, to work. In fact the accumulated buying power of the rich must come from the increasing impoverishment of the poor – the underclasses within industrial society (growing by record numbers in the 1980s and 1990s) and the still-colonized countries elsewhere, whose distance from the rich nations is vast and growing wider each year.

There are limits to all this, of course, and they are set by the earth and its systems, already seriously over-stressed. But they are of no concern to globalists, since by definition they have no home and couldn’t care less about that care-of-home that goes by the name ‘ecology’. Without restraints the megacorporations are free to use up resources at an ever-faster rate (remember, the scarcer the resource the more valuable it becomes), to foul the biosphere in their processing of them and to poison air and soil in their disposal of them. There is no concern for the inevitable ecocidal end of this because the corporation, again by definition, does not comprehend the future and must maximize profits in the shortest run possible.

Giantism – Perils there may be in bigness, as the struggling IBM, General Motors and even Mitsubishi demonstrate. But this is the imperative of successful globalism. What you lose now in workforce you simply gain later in hassle-free automation, reduced labour costs and increased profits. Despite its problems General Motors is still the number one American corporation. Moreover the occasional and inevitable misstep (for with all their megamachines, large enterprises are always less efficient than small) is more than made up for by the immense power the global players have. They can twist laws and regulations, shift plants around the globe, open or close markets, set prices, monopolize research and development. The rules, written by the big players always favour the big players, and are designed to forgive them for their flaws and failures.

It has become commonplace to note that such power is beyond the control of any mere citizen or consumer. But corporations have never been democratic, nor were ever meant to be. The largest of them are for the most part impervious not only to popular pressure but even to government suasion. They owe no loyalty to any town or even nation. Wasn’t it revealing that the US pavilion at the World’s Fair in Spain last year was such a meagre, flimsy thing? The main reason was that American companies one after the other refused to kick in funds and thus become associated with the United States. They wished to be seen as ‘global’ instead.

And since there is none to take them on and all the powerful international institutions like the World Bank are of their own making, there is none to halt their increasing growth, or their increasing power to impoverish the people and imperil the earth. Giants really do stalk the world, and most of creation trembles.

The gospel of globalism made up of these essential values bids fair to sanction a corporatist catastrophe in this next century. And I’d be hard put to identify – alas, even to imagine – the forces that would be able to undermine its potent message and the likely outcome. We know what values we would put in its place: community, democracy, decentralization, biophilia, harmony, sustenance. But it is difficult to see what gospel would be able to proclaim them forcefully enough, effectively enough, quickly enough.

Perhaps there is comfort in the knowledge that, in time and probably not too far hence, the earth will recoil from the assault of globalism and in some awful spasm will dispel it and all its work, as a dog shakes off water after a plunge. Whether we will be here afterward, of course, is an open question.


http://www.newint.org/issue246/giants.htm

[NovelGentry]

I'm gonna go into a bit more detail with my response this time, and maybe be a bit more confromtational with it, not necessarily to the original poster, but to all those who believe a western working class doesn't exist.

Let's first examine what we know.

1) Capitalism progresses society (all forms) more rapidly and to a much further advanced state than has ever been in the past, it does so and in the end creates more technology and progression than any other system in the history of man.


The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? -- Karl Marx

2) Capitalism == Imperialism. One MUST extend markets to sustain it, and strangely, one of the cheapest ways to take a market is actually to be militarily or socially intrusive in that country.


The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt its culture and its principles of intellectual ownership; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. But the very instruments of its communication and acculturation establish the modes of -- Karl Marx

3) This force (what is internationally called Imperialism) exists within capitalist nations themselves on a smaller scale.


The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. -- Karl Marx

Zingu and I had a very interesting conversation in which he brought up Leninism's addition of "Imperialism" as a characteristic of capitalism and as such the "final stage of capitalism." Personally I think this is about the dumbest "addition" one could ever assume to have been made. Capitalism is inherently imperialist, and Marx realized this. It is imperialist not in it's "final stage" but throughout it's existence, it oppresses it's own society in much the same way imperialism oppresses the societies of foreign nations, but alas, people have missed the point of Marx I think.

We are all one society. Disregard national borders, remove the idea that there is an east and the west, and what occurs is the same thing that's occured from day one -- the bourgeoisie oppressing the proletariat. Upholding national borders is by far favorable to the bourgeoisie, in doing so you uphold that you must not free the WHOLE of the working class, but only those of say, the east. More, you pretend the working class of the advanced capitalist nations, those which have evolved through the regional build-ups of capitalism, does not even exist. Sad, is it not?

This leads us to the familiar attitude of "The third world must advanced to socialism first." A sickeningly backwards idea that would wish to see the third world skip over the brunt of capitalism, in hope that by breaking their position as labor markets to the first world, one would somehow destroy the first world economies. Would this happen? I can only foresee it doing so with a very rapid switch in a large number of third world nations. Slow progression of the third world and a breaking of ties will do one of two things, 1) increase military force in those countries to strictly oppress their people and re-establish capitalism 2) increase the manufacturing labor market in first world nations.

Unfortunately, this does not collapse an economy and force a first world nation to move to socialism aswell, quite the contrary, it gives capitalism a new lease on life, particularly in a market where there still exists people with experience in such labor This leads us no where, to the contrary, it seeks only to reveal that the ideas of imperialism can be taken out of the national sense, when you see the exploitation rise again in the first world nations. And then you seek to see the child, the third world nation attempting socialism in the wake of the imperialist burden's destruction, grow above and beyond a system it has not yet completely grasp.

And what are those nations left with? Aged machines to produce the manufactured shoes and clothes for their people and little more? Overcrowded slums where you could not grow enough food to survive even IF you had the means to grow it? underdeveloped means for drugs, sewage systems, and basic sanitary works? You present a country, attempting to socialize a productive force that could barely sustain it's preceeding system.

What of this style of thinking, that the "traditional proletariat of the Western countries has been significanly weakened, maybe even disolved." You dismiss a portion of the exploited to favor only the most heavily exploited, worse, you dismiss the idea that they are exploited. You play into economic class roles and use terms like "middle class" or the ever inspirational "techno-managerial class" (talked about previously on these boards).

It is true that the economies of many first world nations are focused on services, but in those services your labor power is exploited just the same. It is true people in the first world nations make more money than those in third world nations, and for far less work, indeed we are the first and foremost consumer markets. This is not something that can be stopped, and it is a progression of capitalism, one which all third world nations will see (and some previous strictly third world nations ARE seeing). See: India and it's growing technology market.

By far the grossest statement put fourth in the initial post is the following:


akin to the Western bourgosie explointing the Proletariat of the East with the Western 'middle classes' mindlessly consuming to complete the cycle?

You uphold the national borders and then place within it the supposed missing piece the "middle class." You do this by chance that you do not dare call Western workers proletariat. So are the workers of the west not exploited? Are we not forced the same as the workers of the east to subdue ourselves in light of the bourgeois mode of production... do we not work within the system to survive, and work outside the system only as a dream that one day we could have the liberties the bourgeoisie affords themselves?

That one day we could stop "working" and "retire" and work on the things we want to do; that we could have more time to spend with our families and friends; we seek comfort out of discomfort in very much the same way the workers of the east do. We are separate from them ONLY by the conditions which capitalism has already progressed our nation.

Some want a reason, they look to the workers of the west, and say "Why are you so greedy?" "Why do you drive an SUV and guzzle gas while the people of the third world starve." "Why do you not oppose this system, and look to help them??"

They break it down, worker vs. worker -- it's out of the hands of the bourgeoisie, and it is WE who control the destiny of the world. And on one level they are right... it is WE who should be fighting, we who should be looking to overthrow the bourgeoisie here, so that we may actually progress the world towards socialism with the whole breadth of capitalist progression. But they are wrong too, in freeing ourselves we seek to free the workers of the third world, and in freeing them we seek to free ourselves, not by sheer coincidence, but in that we are one in the same.

Class consciousness is not a meaningless term. You become class conscious by realizing these things. You realize above all that our national and cultural differences do not matter, but we are a single and purposeful class. But what you mistake for the class consciousness, that revolutionary tact, of third world workers is little more than the same wannabe-bourgeois greed that fuels our consumerism.

What you have are two bodies, the majority of which is made up by non-class conscious individuals, who seek only to increase social class with different abstractions. The workers of the first world see their wealth as a status symbol, so much so that they will FAKE being bourgeois and believe wholeheartedly that they are a better person with more social worth because of it. While the workers of the third world seek the very same bourgeois liberty and comfort, but do so without a social abstraction, thus, they have a certain material conscousness fueled by their material conditions, but lack the class consciousness for beneficial impact. Quick to action, but it's action with little meaning.


Do we need to think of things on a global rather than national scale?

As I said before, always, but not in the position of simply thinking we need global action. While it might help or be interesting to see nonetheless, we need truly global thinkers. More to the point, we need people who don't think about regional issues period, and who think ONLY of the class struggle, and making that struggle come to fruition where and whenever they can. Over 5 billion people revolting against the bourgeoisie would be a great thing to see, but I'd hate to think of some of their reasons for doing so.

Overall, one must forget national borders exist. Certainly they limit us in other respects, I cannot exactly fly to Cuba and go help out if they get invaded by the US, but I can stand in solidarity with the working class of Cuba here in my own country, and rightfully I should.

This is a class struggle, and as much as more Leninist leaning Marxists might want to make it more of a national struggle, they do so on bourgeois terms.


Is the revolution going to come from an underdeveloped country after all, overthrowing the foreign bourgosie rather than it's own?

Again, upholding national borders. The foreign bourgeoisie IS it's own bourgeoisie, in combination with any regionally local bourgeoisie in existence. The bourgeoisie is the bourgeoisie is the bourgeoisie, for the proletariat of the west, east, middle, north, south, Mars, wherever.

[Roses in the Hospital]

You do this by chance that you do not dare call Western workers proletariat. So are the workers of the west not exploited? Are we not forced the same as the workers of the east to subdue ourselves in light of the bourgeois mode of production... do we not work within the system to survive, and work outside the system only as a dream that one day we could have the liberties the bourgeoisie affords themselves?


I'll gladly refer to the workers of the West as proletariat. I can see they're exploired as they've ever been. The problem is they don't see themselves as the proletariat and can't see they're exploited. They're happy living out their supposed 'middle class' existance without any thought of exploitation or even politics beyond a very basic understanding at all. In short there is no class conscience compared to when the Western proletariat worked in factories or down the pits rather than in the office.

[NovelGentry]

I'll gladly refer to the workers of the West as proletariat. I can see they're exploired as they've ever been

Well again, as I originally stated the confrontational nature of the post was not really direct at you, as you were posing more "questions" -- the issue is that there are people who will answer your question in such a way that I have outlines, and those are the people I'm directing this at moreso.

The response was to you, but as I thought I mentioned, I was not trying to be specifically confrontational towards you.

But to offer yet another general response:


The problem is they don't see themselves as the proletariat and can't see they're exploited. They're happy living out their supposed 'middle class' existance without any thought of exploitation or even politics beyond a very basic understanding at all. In short there is no class conscience compared to when the Western proletariat worked in factories or down the pits rather than in the office.

My point remains that often strength in numbers and material consciousness can appear to be class consciousness when it's not. I don't think one should mistake early US socialist movements for class consciousness, nor should one mistake the movements of the east, even those that directly proclaim to be communist/socialist, as having any sort of class consciousness.

There is a very specific selfishness to workers in underdeveloped or even developing capitalist nations, including the US pre-1920s. In recognition that material consciousness is present, and is present by CAUSE of those material conditions, it is easy to see one's self in such a situation as being "exploited."

The problem that occurs with this is such consciousness becomes extremely easy to appeal, as it is not the fact that they are wage slaves that makes them think they are exploited, and if they see themselves as such they do so only in light of the material conditions themselves, but simply the fact of how bad off they are. Thus, by increasing wage, cutting hours, shifting the labor market elsewhere, creating services jobs, and of course the biggest player the NATURAL increase in technological advancement which leads to less work for humans, more work for machines, etc... this so-called "consciousness" easily disappears.

What you&#39;re left with is a bunch of oldtimers who had it rough saying things like "You think you have it bad, there was a time I walked to work, 15 miles, uphill both ways, through snow, and when I got to work I was paid only 5 pennies an hour for 14 hours to <insert crap assembly line type manufacturing job here>."

Are there those who actually ARE fully conscious (both class conscious and materially conscious)? Of course... and those tend to be the focuses socialists, who despite the introduciton of the 8 hour work day, introduction of minimum and an increasing minum wage, introduction of child labor laws, etc... despite all these things, they still push for more. But the general population of workers in these situations lack much of the same TRUE consciousness that the workers still lack today.

This will be overcome with time, effort on our parts, and the general self-destruction of capitalism. People are STILL in a worker vs. worker mode. There are still people willing to outbid another worker at a lower pay rate just so they can pull the job, and they direct this anger not towards the system itself, but towards the silly excuses it puts fourth.

How many people will cry out "The economy isn&#39;t so good right now" ? And not have a single idea of the implications of that. Next time some sassy liberal tells you that the "economy is shit." Say "So, you&#39;re saying capitalism doesn&#39;t work?" They&#39;ll spin it off, blame it on Bush and say "If <insert democratic candidate of the past or past democratic president> was president we wouldn&#39;t have this problem." And maybe it wouldn&#39;t be as bad, at least not to us. But any increase in our wealth that is not directly perceived by changes in our labor market (services or otherwise) can be linked to increased exploitation elsewhere. The democrats are the same lousy bourgeois feeding group -- they&#39;re just not as stupid as the republicans and thus can cover it up a little bit better.

People DO want answers, the problem is the only answers they can see right now are being fed to them by the same people causing them the problems. There will be a time when they begin to distrust that group, and the answers they find will come from their own understanding when they seirously take a hard long look around them and realize their position in the world.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Roses in the [email protected] 22 2005, 10:56 AM
As I guess my this thread got &#39;purged&#39; the last time I&#39;m re-posting:

In the Communist Manifesto Marx & Engles write:


The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everyehere, establish connexions everyway.

The way I see things is that tempted by the higher profit available by exploiting less economically developed countries the Western bourgoisie has moved East for its major workforce, meaning that the traditional proletariat of the Western countries has been significanly weakened, maybe even disolved.
That&#39;s definitely not what Marx was talking about; in his time there was little modern industry in the colonial and semicolonial nations. There&#39;s some reference in the Manifesto to the exploitation of "nations of peasants by nations of bourgeois." As part of the development of the world market, which is a necessary part of the development of capitalism from the beginning, and one of its progressive accomplishments.

The working class in the advanced capitalist countries has definitely not disappeared; it&#39;s a lot bigger than in Marx&#39;s time in most cases.

Is the industrial working class weaker? Well, it&#39;s smaller, and its bargaining position in some ways weakened by the growing international competition among workers. On the other hand, the strategic striking power of industrial workers has in some ways been strengthened by recent developments - their ability to shut down the economy, basically.

Transport and communications are more centralized, and industry has gone to small "just in time" inventories. The shut down of one plant, in the auto industry for example, can have a cascading effect of shutting down more and more as they run out of parts.

It also definitely strengthens our class, on a world scale, to have a growing working class in countries all over the world. That doesn&#39;t mean you can write off the class struggle within the imperialist countries. Lemme point out as well that all struggles in the rest of the world would ultimately be doomed if that were the case.

I strongly recommend Imperialism by Lenin, which NovelGentry should read before blathering about it. The currently fashionable ideas about "globalization" and the supposed obsolescence of nation-states are in fact not new and in fact are just a retread of Kautsky&#39;s "ultra-imperialism" which Lenin rebuts in this short book.

Lenin lays out a number of features of capitalism which were new in the early 20th century and which are still in effect today. He summarizes these features as imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism.

One of them is the transfer of industry to the semicolonial countries in pursuit of cheaper labor; there&#39;s even a quote from some writer making a Michael Moore-like prediction of all manufacturing being shifted there. Since it hasn&#39;t happened in the past near-century, lemme suggest it&#39;s an exaggerated prediction today as well. The imperialist system isn&#39;t structured to permit that level of rounded economic development to become widespread in the so-called "Third World."

A few more: monopoly concentration of capital; a few large companies dominate the market. The dominant role of banks and finance capital - Lenin points out that industrial capitalists were often opposed to colonial expansion; Carnegie financed the Anti-Imperialist League...until Morgan, a finance capitalist, told him to stop. The division of the world among the major imperialist powers, just as the world market is divided among a few large companies. Every inhabitable part of the world under control of some state, usually under the direct or indirect domination of one or the other imperialist power. Lenin gives the stats on percentages of the world owned by the European colonial powers, including the US. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch06.htm)

From the begining of the 20th century, an imperialist power can only expand at the expense of some other imperialist power....leading to conflicts among them for the redivision of the world, and the world market.

These conflicts are inevitable under capitalism, which is one reason why the nation-state is not obsolete but instead indispensible for capital, including the so-called transnational corporations.

Kautsky expressed the currently fashionable idea long ago: "Cannot the present imperialist policy be supplanted by a new, ultra-imperialist policy, which will introduce the joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital in place of the mutual rivalries of national finance capitals?" (Quoted and rebutted by Lenin) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch09.htm)

The first world war answered his question: no. And the growing rivalry, US vs France + Germany etc., answers the assertion made now: that "The first victims are of course the familiar nation states, whose borders and governments are now impediments" to capital.

The fashionable opposition to "consumerism" likewise has nothing to do with the interests of working people or the direction of the workers&#39; struggle for self-emancipation. On the contrary, it&#39;s in the interest of capitalists to urge us to consume less...so they can pay us less.

[NovelGentry]

It&#39;s interesting that I was "blathering" but you go on only to clarify my point, first in what can only be looked at as a distinction:


The currently fashionable ideas about "globalization" and the supposed obsolescence of nation-states are in fact not new and in fact are just a retread of Kautsky&#39;s "ultra-imperialism" which Lenin rebuts in this short book.

This is far dependent on what you mean when you use the term "globalization" -- the "obsolescence" of nation-states is not what I&#39;m talking about -- at least not in terms of a globalizing capitalist market and unification of imperialist powers as mentioned in Kautsky&#39;s work.

What I&#39;m talking about is the far more subtle nature of capitalism being branded as imperialism in light of crossing national borders. The word imperialism is used as if it&#39;s some new form that the capitalist market takes on, ignoring the ALREADY global nature of class struggle -- even in non-capitalist nations. The borders are upheld as if to provide new definition to the form the class struggle should take. You only go on to prove this.


The imperialist system isn&#39;t structured to permit that level of rounded economic development to become widespread in the so-called "Third World."

The Imperialist system isn&#39;t structured to permit anything, it isn&#39;t structure period. This is of course my gripe with Lenin, Kautsky, or anyone else who wants to whip out the term Imperialism as a magic advancement of capitalism. Imperialism as a term, and even as Lenin defines it upholds national borders -- this is all well and dandy when you bring a class struggle into a national realm, but then you&#39;re not really pushing it as a class struggle, are you?

Saying imperialism exists in the context of class struggle is in effect diluting the focus on class struggle itself, and giving it a national tinge all over the place. You can see it smeared all over this board if you search for the term "imperialism." Indeed, oppose imperialism, oppose imperialism by opposing capitalism. We do not seek to free a nation from it&#39;s oppressor nation, we seek to free a class from it&#39;s oppressor class -- period.

The technicality of what imperialism is, and whether or not Marx foresaw what you claim Lenin only pointed out is secondary. Whether or not Lenin pointed it out, it has served no purpose other than to dilute that focus. Served Lenin quite nicely though when he wanted to appeal to the soldiers.

So if the imperialist system is structured to do so, how about the capitalist one?


monopoly concentration of capital

Occurs as a feature of capitalism, not strictly imperialism.


a few large companies dominate the market

Occurs as a feature of capitalism, not strictly imperialism.


The dominant role of banks and finance capital.

See above.


The division of the world among the major imperialist powers, just as the world market is divided among a few large companies.

But IS it? You&#39;re turning the "imperialist powers" into the state itself. Which if you believe is a tool of class oppression serves directly, is controlled by, and is made up of the bourgeoisie. Hence, the division of the world among the major imperialist powers equates directly to the division of the world market divided among a few large companies.

This is in essence, my point. Imperialism is a term which abstracts the nature of the state, specifically the state under capitalism from it&#39;s purpose. You&#39;ve taken the dynamics of capitalism itself and the nature of class struggle, and put fences around it, fales, imaginary fences that breeds a new term because we no longer want to recognize it as capitalism: Imperialism.

My point is very simply that there is nothing NEW going on under this. Just as companies will fight for economic control (not necessarily physically) the state to protect their interests will fight for national control (quite physically). Imperialism is a manifestation of capitalism&#39;s natural tendencies with focus on the state rather than the company/corporation.

It serves NO purpose to those who truly recognize the international nature of class struggle, for example, Marx.


From the begining of the 20th century, an imperialist power can only expand at the expense of some other imperialist power....leading to conflicts among them for the redivision of the world, and the world market.

Much like when MIcrosoft expands into network appliances it treads on linksys/cisco&#39;s turf.


These conflicts are inevitable under capitalism, which is one reason why the nation-state is not obsolete but instead indispensible for capital, including the so-called transnational corporations.

Agreed, and again, I&#39;m not talking about nation-state obsolescence. I&#39;m talking about the stupidity in upholding national borders for terms like imperialism from our end of the table.

As for whether or not imperialism, and thus rightfully, capitalism, is well rounded enough to expand third world markets into full markets, that&#39;s another question. One which I&#39;ll be glad to branch off on in another thread.

The question at hand is, Do we look at imperialism as a higher stage of capitalism? Or do we look at imperialism as the inherent nature of capitalism, but seen through the lense that reveals national borders?

I&#39;m not doubting the Lenin pointed out these things, what I am doubting is that anyone who&#39;s seriously looked at some of the things Marx said, could not have inferred these from his writing. Which may be, in fact, what Lenin did. But despite Marx&#39;s lack of the use of such a term himself, he documented quite clearly the imperialist nature of a capitlaist nation -- and he documented quite clearly where the groundwork was being laid in the third world (namely India and China at the time). But where I think Marx saw it as the general assumed nature of capitalism as it spread through the world, Lenin saw it as a political tool -- to redefine -- to give class struggle a very national definition, and thus to appeal to those who felt the affects of the "imperialism" he described.


Kautsky expressed the currently fashionable idea long ago: "Cannot the present imperialist policy be supplanted by a new, ultra-imperialist policy, which will introduce the joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital in place of the mutual rivalries of national finance capitals?"

Yes, it&#39;s called the European Union. Good job Lenin. Even still, Lenin&#39;s dispute was not over the simple question of obsolescence, but over the fact of whether or not the growth of capitalism had to take the form of a nation state, and thus imperialism. The answer to that, whether Lenin would like to believe it or not, is NO. The growth of capitalism into an imperialist form happens by chance not that it can&#39;t grow within these other nations, but by chance that the existing capitalist nations NEED to grow their market.

Unless I am seriously confusing the point you are trying to make, the case is as follows:

Imperialism is the natural form of capitalism as existing capitalist regions (represented by a nation-state or not) dominate under developed regions to fulfill the needs of market expansion. The term imperialism is in fact, EXACTLY this, but assumes the nation-state to be the perpetrator on behalf of the corporations itself.

It seems to me like we agree on the nature itself of Imperialism, my argument is whether or not we need to recognize it as something other than just capitalism. Do we need the term imperialism?