Is a new theory of imperialism needed?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Awhile back, I read this blog (http://theoldmole.blogspot.com/2006/02/structures-of-imperialism.html) and even made brief comments here on its analysis (I think they got lost with the server upgrade), but with the motions of the modern world to consider, is a new theory of imperialism needed (preferrably one that has more detail than just a "popular outline")? Should the phenomenon itself be changed to "macro-capitalism" (because the economic features below are more prominent), in contrast to Marx's analysis of what I consider to be "micro-capitalism" in Das Kapital?

Consider:

1) The role of "accumulation by dispossession" (as described by David Harvey), which encompasses the traditional primitive accumulation (as analyzed by Rosa Luxemburg), privatization, and even intellectual property rights ("The commodification of cultural forms, histories and intellectual creativity entails wholesale dispossessions (http://titanus.roma1.infn.it/sito_pol/Global_emp/Harvey.htm)");

2) The export of commodities as a result of overproduction (analyzed by Rosa Luxemburg);

3) The modern "hourglass" corporate environment, rife with consolidations at the top (and littered with petit-bourgeois niches at the bottom) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=901762&postcount=1) for the sake of exercising as much monopoly power as permissible by anti-trust laws (barring industry-wide "trusts," which would result in economic distortions associated with the charging of monopoly rent);

4) The role of leverage and finance capital (analyzed by Rudolf Hilferding) - no longer tied from head to toe with industrial capital, in contrast to the case in during the time of "third-generation" Marxists Lenin and Luxemburg - and now the latter's more speculative subset ("venture capital" and other "speculative capital"), especially as part of the credit system as a whole (http://www.revleft.com/vb/banks-and-credit-t67963/index.html) (although I don't know if credit as a whole is tied from head to toe with imperialism);

5) The role of currency regimes (Should this be part of #4? :confused: ), especially since the abandonment of the gold standard;

6) The export of capital (analyzed by Lenin), but also the import of capital (most notably by the U$A) and the export/import movement of labour ("outsourcing" and "immigration");

7) The ever-changing division of the world market (between multinationals and State Incs. (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/16/state_inc/) like Gazprom, PetroChina, Singapore Airlines, Statoil, Temasek Holdings, etc.); and

8) Geopolitical considerations (post-colonialism), including "ultra-imperialism" (Kautsky's theory, as per its near-realization in the Western world during the Cold War).

[gilhyle]

Absolutely, though I think some of the features you list could be dealt with in the existing theory. The key problem is that imperialism has become an epoch made up of distinct periods and there is no theory of the periods of imperialism within Lenin's views. The idea that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism is no longer sufficient (not that it is wrong - but that it is not sufficient).

1. We need a much more developed theory of how monopolization occurs, works and what the counter tendencies are.

2. We need to understand better how countries can escape the status of being imperialised and how imperialised countries can develop

3. We need to understand the sense in which globalisation and multi national companies do NOT imply that capitalism has ceased to have a national foundation and the sense (if any) in which national economic formations are insurmountable within the imperialist social formation.

4. We need to understand the sense in which finance capital never came into existence or the sense in which it has ceased to exist - the sense in which it was a transitional formation.

5. We need to understand the very particular characteristics of social production in imperialist societies.

etc....etc.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Whoa! Care to elaborate on your contentious views regarding finance capital there (consider leverage, "venture capitalism," and overall speculation)?!

[gilhyle]

Happy to try to though its a long time since I looked at Hilferding. Hilferding looked at the idea that the progress of industrial concentration has been accompanied by an increasing coalescence between bank and industrial capital. However, what happened to industrial concentration ? What actually happened was that the period of protectionism from the 1920s to the 1960s reversed some of the coalescence of industrial and financial capital. Secondly the regulation of bank capital prevented the further coalescence of bank and industrial capital. Thirdly the regulation of concentration of by competition law has significantly impeded the spontaneous trend in the concentration of industrial capital. In summary then industrial capital concentrated to a lesser extent than Hilferding anticipated and banking capital did not move as close to industrial capital as Hilferding predicted. That is not to say that ther is no relationship between industrial capital and banking capital but it is not to merger of the two that Hilferding expected and which led him to conceptualise finance capital..

[Die Neue Zeit]

the regulation of concentration of by competition law has significantly impeded the spontaneous trend in the concentration of industrial capital

I referred to this above in mentioning "anti-trust laws." :)

However, I'd like to learn more about this "regulation of bank capital" (while I'm into finance, I'm not into banking and monetary policy :( ).

[S R]

To answer the thread title question if a new theory of imperialism is needed, my reply would be no. Lenin's theory of imperialism is as valid today as it was when he first wrote Imperialism is the Highest Stage of Capitalism, in fact Lenin's theory is needed today more than ever. The blog article of the Structures of Imperialism mentions Marx, especially in regards to bourgeiois states, but nowhere does it make any attempt to understand or analyze how capitalism has changed since the time of Marx by Lenin. Comrades should definitely read Lenin's lectures on The State and The State and Revolution.

Personally, I don't see why it is necessary to analyze the forms in which imperialism assumes and takes on, the content and nature of imperialism is the same, which is to deprive the working class from coming to its own conclusions, forming its own organs and structures of political power and vesting it with the working class and people's own sovereignty.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The blog article of the Structures of Imperialism mentions Marx, especially in regards to bourgeiois states, but nowhere does it make any attempt to understand or analyze how capitalism has changed since the time of Marx by Lenin.

Did you even read the blog's comments regarding currency regimes and the collapse of the gold standard? :glare:

More comments from other threads on the most contentious concept in Lenin's analysis of political imperialism (the fifth feature of his concept of imperialism), the notion of a "labour aristocracy":


The "labor aristocracy" theory was first put forth in Lenin's "popular outline" Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. It was his attempt to explain the capitulation of the parties of the Second International in the drive to imperialist war in 1914 just two years after all their key leaders had sworn to oppose the approaching war. Lenin reasoned that this capitulation (and larger tendency toward reformism) came directly from a layer of highly-paid, highly-skilled workers belonging to each social-democratic party. He hypothesized that their cooperation with the bourgeoisie was brought about by the latter giving them a portion of their "super-profits" extracted through imperialist gains, making them willing to go to war in order to defend their nation's bourgeoisie and imperialism, and dragging other workers in the same parties and trade unions behind them. However, this hypothesis has been proven false by the fact that the highly paid, highly skilled workers who Lenin would suggest leap to the defense of the bourgeoisie have been consistently at the forefront of revolutionary struggle, such as the machinery workers all across Europe at the end of WW1, the auto workers in the United States during the 1930s, and so on. Furthermore, Lenin never suggested any economic mechanism by which the bourgeoisie doles out its super-profits to the labor aristocracy. His hypothesis is mistaken because the roots of reformism were not very developed in Russia: because of constant state persecution, the Russian Social-Democrats had never grown as large as to be exposed to it. In Germany, on the other hand, Rosa Luxemburg was able to put forth a much better explanation for reformism, having to do with the leadership of the workers parties and unions developing different economic interests than the rank and file, and adopting new policies accordingly.



But such a model doesn't really "avoid" the whole collapse of capitalism problem. I actually wrote the mathematical reasoning behind why on the train.


Let W(n) be the aggregate wage of the labor aristocracy employed in the i-th industry during the n-th production process, B[i](n) be the portion of profits used to "bribe" the "labor aristocracy" W[i](n) during the n-th production process, P[i](n) be the profits the capitalists acquire during the n-th production process in the i-th industry. Let w[i][j](n) be the wage per third world worker to produce one unit of commodity j in the n-th production process, and k[i][j](n) be the cost of capital in the third world used to produce one unit commodity j in the n-th production process.

Definition 1 We define the proportion of the profits used to bribe the "labor aristocracy" be b[i](n)=B[i](n)/P[i](n).

Proposition 1 0<b[i](n)<1, because the "labor aristocracy" is bribed with some nonzero sum (so 0<b[i](n) because B[i](n)>0) which presupposes that there is some profit used to bribe (i.e. which requires P[i](n)>0), and the capitalist needs a portion of the profit to live, so B[i](n) < P[i](n) and it follows by dividing both sides by P[i](n) that b[i](n) < 1.

Corollary Profit cannot be zero otherwise b[i](n) would be undefined ("infinity").

Definition Let M[i][j](n) be the aggregate number of commodity j produced in the industry sector [i] during the production process n. Further, let p(M[i][j](n)) be the price per unit of commodity [j] produced during the n-th production process in the i-th industry sector.

Remark One can add and remove new and old commodities via matrix multiplication, so innovation is tacitly taken care of. Note that we require the total number of the different variety of commodities to be greater than or equal to 2 at all times, but it is allowed to be variable.

Proposition 2 ("No Shortages") SUM_[i] W[i](n) + (P[i](n)-B[i](n)) = (amount paid to labor aristocrats during the n-th production process) - (amount capitalist deals with in the n-th production process) <= SUM_[i,j] p(M[i][j](n))*M[i][j](n).

Definition L[i](n) is the number of third world workers working in the i-th industry sector during the n-th production process.

Lemma 1 lim_{n\to\infty} SUM_[i,j] M[i][j](n) > lim_{n\to\infty} SUM_{i} L[i](n), i.e. the number of units made total outnumbers the third world workers, in other words a third world worker produces more than one commodity.

[i]Proof of Lemma 1 It trivially follows from the "No shortages" proposition.

Corollary lim_{n\to\infty} SUM_{i,j} M[j](n) = infinity, i.e. as time goes on more and more goods will be produced.

[i]Proof of Corollary again this trivially follows from the "No Shortages" proposition.

Definition The capital used in the n-th production process in the i-th sector is treated as little more than a linear combination of the commodities used denoted by the diagonal matrix K[m](n) where m is a dummy variable used to index each entry.

Lemma 2 0 <= lim_{n\to\infinity}SUM_{i,j} P(M[i][j](n)) < infinity.

[i]Proof of Lemma 2 By the "no shortages" proposition, it follows that:

lim_{n\to\infinity} (SUM_{i} W(n) + P[i](n) - B[i](n))/(SUM_{i,j} M[i][j](n)) <= lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i,j} P(M[i][j](n))

The left hand side vanishes, which gives us

0 <= lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i,j} P(M[i][j](n))

Now the right hand side follows from simply noting that:

lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i,j} P(M[i][j](n)) < lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i,j} P(M[i][j](n))M[i][j](n)

And since

lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i,j} M[i][j](n) = infinity

multiplying it by positive, nonzero constants would not change anything so:

lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i,j} P(M[i][j](n)) < lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i,j} P(M[i][j](n))M[i][j](n) = infinity

which gives us the desired relation. QED.

Theorem 1 ("Imperialism results in no profit") lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i} P[i](n) = -infinity

[i]Proof of "No Profit in Imperialism" theorem Let Q[j](n) be the number of units of commodity j produced in the industry sector i from the n-th production process sold, then

Q[i][j](n) < M[i][j](n)

due to the above "No Shortages" proposition. It follows that:

SUM_{i} P[i](n) = SUM_{i,j} (Q[i][j](n)P(M[i][j](n)) - M[i][j](n)(w[i][j](n) + k[i][j](n)))

We know that:

0 < lim_{n\to\infinity} w[i][j](n) < infinity, for all i,j

and

0 < lim_{n\to\infinity} k[i][j](n) < infinity, for all i,j

which tells us basically "As time goes on, it will still cost some finite amount of money to produce one unit of any commodity". We can bound this by two arbitrary functions F(n) and G(n) such that:

w[i][j](n) < F(n)

and

k[i][j](n) < G(n).

We basically end up with a term involving a constant times Q[i][j](n) which grows slower than M[i][j](n), and a term involving -M[i][j](n) times a constant. Taking the limit, we see that -M[i][j](n) is the dominating term and find the P[i](n) goes to -infinity. QED.

[i]Alternative proof One can note that there is a dilemma although

M[i][j](n) > Q[i][j](n)

we also have:

w[i][j](n)+k[i][j](n) < P(M[i][j](n))

So we need to find which one grows faster. We then compare these two fractions:

Q[i][j](n)/M[i][j](n)

and

(w[i][j](n)+k[i][j](n))/P(M[i][j](n))

We note that as we take the limit n->infinity we get 0 and some positive number, respectively. So if we take this and arrange the inequality:

Q[i][j](n)/M[i][j](n) < (w[i][j](n)+k[i][j](n))/P(M[i][j](n))

then multiply both sides by (M[i][j](n))(P(M[i][j](n))) we find:

Q[i][j](n)P(M[i][j](n)) < (w[i][j](n)+k[i][j](n))M[i][j](n)

Which holds if we take the limit n goes to infinity, which is what we do in our theorem. So this implies (by subtracting the term on the right hand side from both sides):

Q[i][j](n)P(M[i][j](n)) - (w[i][j](n)+k[i][j](n))M[i][j](n) < 0

This holds for all i,j. Then we simply take the sum, which is by definition the profit, and the sum of all negative terms is itself negative. QED.

Corollary 1 The "real" third world workers will, given long enough time, become "labor aristocrats" themselves!

Corollary 2 If lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i} P[i](n) = -infinity, then capitalism will collapse.

Corollary 3 If lim_{n\to\infinity} SUM_{i} P[i](n) > -infinity, then either there is an upper bound to the number of third world workers or the third world is industrializing.

Remark on Corollary 3 This turns out to be one of the most bitter ironies, because it turns out that Lenin's theory of imperialism doesn't really challenge Marx's Law of Accumulation, nor does it "articulate" it any. In a matter of fact, Lenin's theory of imperialism proves to be internally inconsistent if one accepts the concept of a labor aristocracy.

Some Reflections Just a few thoughts looking back at this about what a "real Leninist" would argue. One would probably argue that (k[i][j](n)+w[i][j](n)) would be so small in comparison to P(M[i][j](n)) that the profit would actually go the other way...to +infinity! The problem with this is that the labor aristocracy is a growing "class" and so M[i][j](n) needs to grow proportionally according to the "no shortages" proposition, which requires either industrialization of the third world which is not supposed to happen or an increase in the number of third world workers employed. This increases the cost of production, despite the assertions that "wage may be treated as a small constant". Further, M[i][j](n)k[i][j](n) grows proportionally to O(L[i](n)*w[i][j](n)). So the negative term grows proportionally to O(M[i][j](n)^2). Compare this to the positive term which grows at a fraction of O(M[i][j](n)). So this objection doesn't really make any mathematical difference, unless w[i][j](n)+k[i][j](n)=0 which is impossible in the capitalist mode of production.

It should also be noted that lim_{n\to\infinity} w[i][j](n) > 0, so this objection is moot in the long run which is what we are concerned about.

What is interesting, which I am certain some MIMists and other Maoists are going to try to argue, is that the model is consistent if the number of third world workers is bounded from above (i.e. there is a maximum number of third world workers that can work)...the first thought that came to my mind was some sort of mass killings. That is what the MIM will argue "Amerikkkans, KKKanadians, and the UKKK are enforsing mazz killingz of da thrd wurld wurkyrz." This is not really observably justified, at least with common sense and basic empiricism, but maybe the mysticism of dialectics could do something for them :lol:

So the moral of the story is if the theory of the "labor aristocracy" is true, then Lenin's theory of imperialism is internally inconsistent with basic empiricism and basic math. Or the theory of the "labor aristocracy" is false. If the former, then there is no basis for the theory, and it results in being internally inconsistent, therefore false.

Conclusion: We thus reject the theory of the "labor aristocracy" based on the above mathematical arguments.

[I don't understand the math above, but this is reposted for those who do.]

[Die Neue Zeit]

Here's a new spin on modern "imperialism"/"macro-capitalism":

State Inc. (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/16/state_inc)

On the one hand, Kautsky's ultra-imperialism isn't as invalid as a lot of people think because of both the existence of nuclear weapons (thus precluding major warfare for economic dominance amongst the imperialist powers) and the increased economic unfeasibility of going to war (billions of $$$ and counting for the Iraq war, and that's just mere imperialist bullying by the US :glare: ).

On the other hand, the "prisoner's dilemma" known as national interests still dominate and will further dominate in the future (now through State Incs.), and not "ultra-imperialist" cooperation.