[Marxism] Imperialism

[Haines Brown]

> > Assuming you refer here to a supposed ideological difference
> > between Marx and Lenin, it makes me a bit uncomfortable.
> 
> No, not so much an ideological difference between Marx and Lenin,
> but rather a methodological one.

OK

> Marx's Capital is a form-analytical account of the categories of
> capitalist society, the reified forms that social activity assumes
> in a society of generalized commodity production mediated by
> exchange.

My lack of sophistication is probably showing, but I have trouble
following your suggestion. "Categories" are mental concepts or
tools. We create them in order to communicate and to understand and
act upon the world. Are you saying that Marx was primarily interested
in the conceptual categories we employ in our study of capitalism, and
was not particularly interested in grasping the economic reality
itself?

Your second sentence seems to say that you feel Marx was concerned
with the human relations that in capitalist society acquire the
appearance of market relations, and that this conception of our social
relations is more important than the relations themselves.

While I am convinced that Marx implicitly (and at least incipiently)
used some conceptual categories that were not conventional at the
time, my impression of Kapital is that its main purpose is to arrive
at a scientific understanding of the capitalist economy, and, given
Marx's process view, this necessarily entailed a historical framework.

While Marx started out in life as a philosopher, I'm not too
sympathetic to a representation of his mature work as covert
philosophy in the sense that its empirical content is of little
importance. Keep in mind that Marx was an accomplished historian (as
Eighteenth Brumaire shows).

I'm not anxious to debate this side issue, for the topic is on the
nature of imperialism. 
 
> Lenin's account, on the other hand, seems to be a sociological
> theory of domination or rule.  Now, when you say Lenin practices
> something more akin to social engineering than social science,
> perhaps this is a reference to these "different levels" of analysis.
> But then it's difficult for me to see what is actually Marxian about
> Lenin's account

It seems to me that empirical studies are not invalidated by the fully
systemic or process approach that we associate with Marxism, but they
fall short in that they are "one-sided". For someone up to his neck in
revolution, Lenin sure did have to know his Soc or PoliSci 101 ;-). As
someone has pointed out. Marx was placed in a quite different
situation than Lenin, and so his priorities and concerns will
naturally be different. I recall quite a bit of more philosophical
material among Lenin's writings that demonstrate to me at least that
he was a fully a member in the Marxian tradition and actually carried
it forward in certain respects (such as in his position in regard to
Mach). Again, I'm not anxious to debate a side issue that might
imply that to be revolutionary you should not try to be scientific.

> > In Marxist terms, the conventional difference between >
> "government" and "state" is that government addresses > needs
> specific to the social whole (actually, this is > my own definition
> for politics, but that should make > no difference), and the state
> is an institution > needed to stabilize a society characterized by
> class > contradiction.
> 
> That may very well be the "Marxist" terms of understanding, but
> since Marx never got around to writing his planned book on the
> state, it's not something I can really begin with.  Some thinkers,
> like Joachim Hirsch, are attempting to formulate form-analytical
> theories of the state, in the tradition of Marx's form-analytical
> account of economic categories, but I haven't progressed far enough
> in my investigations to really comment on their worth.

I didn't mean to imply that Marx developed this distinction, but only
that it is a conventional one in the Marxist tradition. Why can't you
"begin with it", for it seems a quite obvious and useful
distinction. Just because it is possible it lacks warrant in Marx's
work is hardly a reason not to use it.

Sorry, I know nothing of Joachim Hirsch. I'm not sure what
"form-analytical theories of the state" might be. You wouldn't be
referring to the so-called analytical Marxism that is associated with
the love affair with analytical philosophy by some Marxists in the UK
back in the 1980s?

> > Well, if there is a socio-economic contradiction, _nothing_ can
> > "mediate" it
> 
> I'm assuming with socio-economic contradiction you mean something
> like the alleged contradiction between wage labor and capital,

"Alleged"? Wow!

> I think the term "contradiction" is another one of those fuzzy words
> that doesn't really clarify social reality.  A contradiction is
> something that exists in formal logic.

OK, that's the problem. You don't know what a contradiction is, and so
got lost. A contradiction _can't_ exist in formal logic, of course, as
a matter of principle; non-contradiction is one of the basic principle
of formal logic. So some people once forced to identify
"contradiction" with Kantean real oppositions. However, there's no
reason today to be at all ambivalent or nervous about the word. It can
be very readily defined in terms that are entirely scientific. Here's
my effort at it:

  A contradiction refers to two processes that are interdependent in
  that a decrease in the entropy of one is necessarily driven by an
  increase in the entropy of the other; it is commonly referred to as
  a "thermodynamic engine". In human affairs, entropy change is most
  obviously manifest in terms of relative causal potency and
  probability distributions (as understood in scientific realism),
  and it was such terms that were employed by Marx.

Again, I'm not anxious to debate diamat here, which would be OT. I'm
only insisting that I see no reason to reduce everything to formal
logic and that "contradiction" need not be a fuzzy concept at
all. Contradiction is incompatible with formal logic, and that should
be at the expense of the latter, not the former.

> It's not always clear to me what it means when applied to social
> structures.  Clearly, people have interests which conflict with one
> another, and they act out these conflicts within the general
> framework inscribed by capital and the state.

No, it does have a clear meaning when applied to social structure, and
has nothing to do with conflict (Kantean real opposition). Let me
illustrate briefly. 

Let us suppose that we have a capitalist enterprise in which I happen
to work. When I show up at the gates in the morning, I am offering my
labor time for sale, which like other factors of production the owner
purchases at a fair market price determined by their cost of
production and some extra (the 10% higher wage I get as a
union-member, for example). However, the product I produce is sold for
an amount far higher than its costs of production, for else no one
would have bothered to produce it. The explanation or this great
increase in value not present in the sum of the inputs is that I've
added value by virtue of my bringing to bear my social capacities (and
also use tools which are concretized social capacities). So, I'm being
paid a "fair wage" (what my time is worth in the labor market), but am
being exploited because my wages don't reflect the emergent new value
added to the product at the point of production by my labor.

To put this in other terms, production is an emergent process that
gives rise to a value greater than the sum of its inputs.

In my example, there's no overt conflict between me and the boss. I've
had jobs were I just show up every day, and I'm happy to have an
income and not be under pressure, and the boss is happy to see me
being functional every day. The boss may be nice guy, buying me a beer
every once in a while. The conflict is not between us as people, but
results from a system constructed in such a way that I get screwed
despite the good intentions of the boss. The enemy is capitalism; the
capitalists are only its Träger. Whether the capitalist personally
makes any money or puts the screws to me is irrelevant.

> This was certainly the consensus understanding of the Social
> Democracy that Lenin belonged to.  It was also Engel's understanding
> (Engels even thought the value analysis in the first chapter was a
> reconstruction of the historical emergence of the commodity form!).
> Lenin's positing of a "monopoly" stage of capitalism that supersedes
> competitive capitalism implies to me such an understanding.

So you dismiss Engels as well? Wow! No wonder you have trouble with
the concept contradiction. I don't see that positing the phases of
capitalist development (which it surely has) implies anything at all
intrinsically wrong.
 
> > For better or worse I tried to reply to both questions at some
> > length.
> 
> Do you mean this?:

And I question your question ;-) I offered a brief definition of
imperialism based on its characteristic dynamic that I explained as an
effect of the deepening contradiction of the capitalist system. You
might well have not cared for my definition, but isn't it a fact that
I did try to provide one? So I don't know why you wonder if I really
meant that I had addressed the questions.

> > What Marxism adds is a systemic view that ties politics in with
> > the economy and class.  > [snip] This intensified relation with
> > the environment can > be manifest in a variety of ways, such as
> > gaining > access > to critical raw materials or raw materials at >
> > a reduced price, gaining access to surplus value generated abroad,
> > dominating trade in one's own favor, etc.
> 
> If this is your definition, than it is the other sense in which
> imperialism is often used, not the moral sense, but more as a
> placeholder term that means "the stuff that capitalist nation-states
> do internationally."  But the problem that I have with this usage is
> that it necessarily implies that every capitalist nation-state on
> earth is "imperialist" in this tautological sense, from the
> militaristic USA, to economically powerful China, to the miserable
> EU protectorate statelet called "Kosovo".

I didn't realize I was offering a definition at all unconventional in
Marxist terms. You are right that I didn't define it in moral
terms. I'm not sure why you call the definition I offered a
"place-holder" term. I was simply labeling a phase of development.

For example, in cultural terms, when the European feudal system was
experiencing deep contradictions, the dominant culture acquired
certain peculiar super-energized characteristics such as strong
contrasts, a dynamism in time, and a twisting of form in space. We
call this cultural phase "baroque". It represents an empirical
coherence, a Gestalt. While the concept lacks explanatory power, it
refers to a real distinction and so is usefully given a label. No
tautology here; no general law; no universal.

As for imperialism, I see no reason to assume that all capitalism is
imperialist, although it may be incipiently imperialist in that
everything else being the same, and given its inner dynamic, and in
the presence of real possibilities, the system must address its
deepening contradiction if it is to flourish. It _could_ stagnate, it
could be lucky (discovery of North Sea oil, for example), it could
pursue internal intensification (sweat labor, use racism to depress
wages, brutalize our natural environment even more). But to the extent
there are no such internal possibilities and to the extent its
contradiction has deepened, the system must address its contradictions
by turning to the outside environment, and this is usually called
imperialism. 

The point is not the simple empirical fact of domination, but the
reason why that domination is necessary. That's the difference between
description and explanation, between a manipulation of factors
(engineering) and laying bare the causal powers that give rise to
change (science).

Note all the conditions here, which is why not every capitalist regime
is imperial. A nation might prosper because it has a competitive
advantage, such as geographic location, abundant valuable natural
resource, a highly developed technology. It may not prosper because
there is social chaos at home that discourages venture capital.

But more importantly, I believe, the competition between nations
involves a feedback loop that tends to make the rich richer and the
poor poorer, and so besides the specific factors that might account
for prosperity, there is the historical dynamic that is even more
important in determining the outcome, such as how soon you had started
in the path of capitalist development.

> On the lbo-talk list, Doug Henwood suggests a usage which combines
> the moral usage and the placeholder usage:
> 
> > don't mean it in Lenin's sense, which is obsolete, but a more
> > colloquial sense, in which a rich and powerful country dominates
> > poorer, weaker ones through economic, political, and military
> > means.

I'm not clear what you are talking about. Your colloquial sense seems
nothing but an empirical consideration of relevant factors. Again,
such a empirical or functionalist analysis is not invalid from a
Marxian perspective, but only one-sided. It gives you a part of the
truth, although not the whole of it.

> Which I think has the advantage of saying that imperialism is only
> the stuff that the rich and powerful nation-states do.

Still not following your point, but it seems to reduce imperialism to
a power relation, the powerful (rich) dominating the weak (poor) in
order to pursue their own interest. That certainly isn't a Marxist
definition of imperialism, and comes close to being subject to your
own criticism, which that it is a universal condition of life. I don't
think it is universal, for empires seem to arise for real reasons
under specific conditions, and surely the powerful beating down on the
weak is not a universal.

> Nestor also offers a fragmentary attempt at definition:
> 
> > is defined by class colaboration of vast masses of the proletariat
> > in the core countries of the system with their own bourgeoisies as
> > distinct from class war of the proletariat in the core countries
> > of the system against their own bourgeoisies.
> 
> Which implies that if this class collaboration were absent, then the
> same activity by the same nation-states would no longer be
> classified as "imperialist", because the necessary ingredient of
> class collaboration is absent.

This is the third time you have tossed out a name unfamiliar to me, so
I have no context from which to evaluate the definition, although it
reminds me of the one you offered earlier.

Let me say a little about definitions. There are two kinds of
definitions: definitions most often are useful conventions; sometoimes
they are innovations. The conventional definition has nothing to do
with truth, but is a means to facilitate communications. My dictionary
defines imperialism roughly as an extension of dominion. That's the
definition we should all use unless there is good reason to use
another, such as when it serves as useful jargon for a particular
group of people.

Why would Marxists define the word differently? Well, I suppose it is
because it offers a systemic approach lacking in the conventional
meaning of the word - a systemic approach that implies a determinant
relation between imperialism and class relations, the kind of economic
system, and the maturity of that system (depth of its
contradictions). As long as all Marxists agree on their own special
meaning of the term, there's no reason they should not use it among
themselves, for like any jargon, it serves to convey more meaning.

However, when the term defined in the Marxist fashion is used to
communicate with non-Marxists, it will only cause trouble unless
accompanied by justification. For what good reason should the person
be willing to accept the Marxist definition?

In the odd definition above that you offer, it is clearly neither the
conventional dictionary definition, nor is it obviously Marxist
jargon. That's OK as long as it is accompanied by a justification that
persuades me of its utility or beauty. Lacking that justification,
what can I say in response to the definition you offer?

Haines Brown