International Socialists

Shaun P

The slaughter in Iraq, Australia and New Zealand's intervention in the Solomons and the "invasion by invitation" in Liberia have all made the question of imperialism relevant to the 21st century.
Shaun takes an in-depth look at what socialists mean by imperialism, and why we think understanding it is important for changing the world today.

The end of the Cold War was seen by many to be the victory of freedom over tyranny, and a time when a new era of peace would ensue. Globalisation was, so the argument went, causing the disappearance of the state and the end of war. But the idea that capitalism would make war obsolete is not new – the most famous case was made in 1910 by British newspaper editor Norman Angell, who argued that "military and political power give a nation no commercial advantage, that it is an economic impossibility for one nation to seize or destroy the wealth of another, or for one nation to enrich itself by subjugating another" – right on the eve of the First World War. Even supposed Marxists like Karl Kautsky, thought that capitalist states could reconcile their differences and live in peace – in the midst of the bloodiest century in human history.

After the Second World War, the UN was set up supposedly as a peaceful alternative to conflict, but the Cold War was anything but peaceful in the Third World, as Stalinist Russia and the US sought to divide the world between them. Since the end of the Cold War things have not become more peaceful – the 1990s were filled with violent conflicts and war. The threat and the use of force by great powers to impose their will on smaller states is still a frequent occurrence. Imperialism is alive and kicking.

So what do socialists say about imperialism? Firstly, we argue that imperialism is not something outdated that capitalism will grow out of. The Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin traced the way that competition between European states to carve up the world led to their militarisation and the slaughter of World War I. More importantly, he diagnosed the economics that undergirded imperialism: monopoly capitalism. As capitalism develops, wealth is increasingly centralised and concentrated – a trend that Marx first noted and that continues to this day (think of Microsoft). Small producers are swallowed up by larger concerns until a national market is monopolised – either alone or as cartels. Simultaneously, finance capital increases its control over all branches of industry, and national monopolies and finance capital become completely intertwined with the nation state – to the point that the economic interests of the monopolists becomes the "national interest."

Corporations need the state not only to educate, control, and if necessary suppress the workers that they exploit. They also need the military might of the state to protect their interests from rival multinationals and the rival states that protect them.

There have been three main phases of imperialism: classical imperialism from 1875-1945; superpower imperialism from 1945-1990; and imperialism after the Cold War.

Classical imperialism
When people think about imperialism, the "age of empires" – classical imperialism – is what first comes to mind: The Russian Tsars, the British and French Empires. The world then was economically and politically multi-polar, with the British increasingly challenged by the US and Germany. The first phase, from about 1880 to 1900, saw every corner of the Earth, from the Himalayas to the most remote Pacific island claimed by one or another European power or the US.

This expansion, Lenin argued, was a result of a transition in capitalism from smaller producers and free markets to giant monopolies and the dominance of finance capital. Finance capital needed new areas of profitable investment and had launched a struggle to divide what today we call the Third World. Between them Britain, France, Germany and the US controlled the world through the export of capital in order to exploit low cost labour and materials. The industrialisation of war forced the industrialisation of the world as countries, such as Japan, saw that the alternative to industrialisation was annexation.

The second phase saw imperialist rivalry, denied an outlet in colonisation, turn to inter-imperialist conflict. Britain, although militarily dominant, was losing market share to the US and Germany, which had more efficient, more centralised, and more advanced industry. The precarious balance of power in this multi-polar world collapsed into war in 1914, which essentially pitted the US and Germany against each other in a struggle to inherit the crown of the declining British empire.

During and after the First World War, state and private capital became more and more integrated. National industries were shielded by trade barriers and tariffs – slowing global integration and intensifying rivalries, as countries like Germany and Japan, lacking loads of resources and captive colonial markets saw military force as necessary for economic survival. The Second World War ended with the unquestioned dominance of the US over its rivals, Germany and Japan. It saw the destruction of their industry and military, and their absorption into the US economic empire

Superpower imperialism
Superpower imperialism consisted of a politically bipolar but an economically multi-polar world. The world was split into two opposing camps, grouped around the dominant superpower, the USA, and its only rival, the USSR. The Western bloc of nations included the three most powerful economies in the world: the US, Japan and Germany. This placed the Soviet bloc at a distinct disadvantage, and also opened up contradictions in the Western camp. The largest economies in the world were all in a single political bloc.

This created a large economic space where competition between capitalist nations did not give way to war – economic rivals were forced to be military friends. This global economic order promoted considerable globalisation of capital, stimulating the rise of Japan and Germany's economies. Here were the seeds for further destabilisation, as the US began to lose market dominance to Japan and Germany.

During the Cold War, direct conflict was avoided and differences were settled by proxy in the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. Although there was no major war, the Cold War arms race fuelled the longest sustained economic boom in history, but the burden of matching US military spending with a much smaller economic base eventually saw the USSR collapse. Ironically, US triumph has also defrosted the Cold War ties that kept its imperial allies from emerging into rivals.

Imperialism now
Even though the US is still acknowledged as the only superpower, the world is actually more economically and politically multi-polar than during the Cold War. Germany, with the European Union, Japan with its East Asian periphery, and the US, all compete for economic superiority. The collapse of the USSR, and the bargain basement privatisation of state-run economies allowed the Western bloc to maintain the appearance of unity during the 1990s.

But tensions are growing. It's true that German and French politicians came under immense public pressure to oppose the invasion of Iraq, but the reason they didn't ignore the protests like Blair and Bush was because they saw, rightly, the invasion as a threat to their strategic interests. The EU-US conflict over GE, steel tariffs, and the Kyoto global warming treaty are other examples of this rivalry.

But the US is still the globe's military superpower and the invasion of Iraq is an aggressive assertion of that. The Bush administration has made it clear that the US ruling class reserves the right to bring military power into play with or without the agreement of the UN and other imperialist powers. The Gulf War could not have happened under Cold War constraints. In this more unpredictable time regional powers are more likely to take risks, and may invoke a more savage reaction from the US than anticipated.

But Lenin's theory of imperialism wasn't just another take on war – it also explained that monopoly capitalism actually points the way to socialism:

Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialisation of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation.

However, even though we can see the outline of a less chaotic economy, Lenin warned against the idea that imperialism, because it involves an advanced industrialised nation subjugating a weaker, less industrialised nation, could ever play a progressive role. In all cases, imperialist war is nothing but the destructive wastefulness of an outdated system that is over-ripe for change.