[Marxism] Imperialism

[Angelus Novus]

Haines Brown:

> I'm having trouble following this. The point about 
> capitalism being an objective process in which the 
> capitalist is mere Träger is obvious - so obvious 
> that Lenin was obviously aware of it and would 
> unlikely fall into error.

The state exists to ensure the smoothest possible
accumulation of capital, to mediate between sectoral
interests, to act as guarantor for the interests of
capital "as a whole".

This is incompatible with a perspective which sees the
state as merely an instrument of the "monopolies".

> Well, you might be right here, except that how one 
> might define stages is obviously an open question.

What I mean is that Lenin, who never made a complete
break with Kautskyism, never left behind the classic
perspective of the German Social Democracy which was
his model and inspiration, that Marx's Capital is
intended as a work of history, an account of the
historical trajectory of English capitalism, rather
than an abstract logical account of the laws of
capitalism at its "ideal average".

The idea is that Marx's Capital was viewed as an
account of a "competitive capitalism" which is no
longer existing in the age of "imperialism".

John Bellamy Foster and Michael Dawson,
representatives of the "monopoly capital" school, give
a representative sample of this position:

"in the increasingly global monopoly capitalist order
of today the role of price competition is much reduced
in comparison to the nineteenth century era of
competitive capitalism."  (Virtual Capitalism: The
Political Economy of the Information Highway)

But my main point with regard to the term
"imperialism", is that it is never clear to me what
individual speakers mean when they use the term. 
Either it is intended in the sense used by Lenin, in
which case it entails accepting a whole body of
assertions whose truth is questionable ("monopoly
capitalism", colonies as spaces for exporting capital,
the bribery of the proletariat in the first world, the
melting together of financial and industrial capital),
or imperialism is simply an inflated, moralistic
synonym for capitalist statecraft, an intellectual
sounding way of stating that capitalist-nation states
attempt to extend their power and influence, sometimes
by military force.







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