TC
3rd April 2007, 20:41
I've just read this article 'Britain, parasitic and decaying capitalism'
http://www.rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk/about/FRFI194_07_10.pdf
and while its not especially originally, i think its a brilliantly succinct demonstration of the real application of Lenin's theory of imperialism, which is to say monopoly rather than competitive capitalism, as it applies to the world today.
This article addresses much of the dogma and self-denial of the petty bourgeois "revolutionary" left which has avoided analyzing it directly.
It demonstrates:
*the parasitic, unproductive nature of finance capital and imperialism
*the existence of a labour aristocracy whose lifestyle is subsidized by the superprofits of neo-colonial exploitation, who produce minimal or no capital themselves and are likewise parasitic.
*the shocking extent to which imperialist finance capital rather than merely capitalist industrial capital dominates the domestic economies of United Kingdom and to a lesser extent United States.
*the failure of the left in the imperialist world to have an honest account of the class divisions and changing nature of its own working class and the reality of hyper-exploitation in the productive third world labour.
Its short and compact, i would encourage everyone to read it.
In the same topic i'd like to draw people's attention to "Imperialism and the split in socialism" by Lenin:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
"A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations."- Lenin
"
Secondly, why does England’s monopoly explain the (temporary) victory of opportunism in England? Because monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world. The capitalists can devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance (recall the celebrated “alliances” described by the Webbs of English trade unions and employers) between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries. England’s industrial monopoly was already destroyed by the end of the nineteenth century." -Lenin
"The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable."- Engels, October 7 1858, Letter to Marx
http://www.rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk/about/FRFI194_07_10.pdf
and while its not especially originally, i think its a brilliantly succinct demonstration of the real application of Lenin's theory of imperialism, which is to say monopoly rather than competitive capitalism, as it applies to the world today.
This article addresses much of the dogma and self-denial of the petty bourgeois "revolutionary" left which has avoided analyzing it directly.
It demonstrates:
*the parasitic, unproductive nature of finance capital and imperialism
*the existence of a labour aristocracy whose lifestyle is subsidized by the superprofits of neo-colonial exploitation, who produce minimal or no capital themselves and are likewise parasitic.
*the shocking extent to which imperialist finance capital rather than merely capitalist industrial capital dominates the domestic economies of United Kingdom and to a lesser extent United States.
*the failure of the left in the imperialist world to have an honest account of the class divisions and changing nature of its own working class and the reality of hyper-exploitation in the productive third world labour.
Its short and compact, i would encourage everyone to read it.
In the same topic i'd like to draw people's attention to "Imperialism and the split in socialism" by Lenin:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
"A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations."- Lenin
"
Secondly, why does England’s monopoly explain the (temporary) victory of opportunism in England? Because monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world. The capitalists can devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance (recall the celebrated “alliances” described by the Webbs of English trade unions and employers) between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries. England’s industrial monopoly was already destroyed by the end of the nineteenth century." -Lenin
"The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable."- Engels, October 7 1858, Letter to Marx