Theories of Imperialism revisited

1. Theories of Imperialismrevisited Panagiotis Sotiris, University of Athens

2. The return of imperialism • During the 1990’s ‘globalization’ emerged as the most convenient concept to describe world affairs. • However, during the 2000s imperialism made an impressive come-back in political and theoretical debates. • David Harvey’s New Imperialism, (Harvey 2003), Ellen Meksins Wood’s Empire of Capital (Wood 2003) or Alex Callinicos’ The New Mandarins of American Power (Callinicos 2003), on the Marxist side • The notions of empire and imperialism became pertinent again in mainstream discussions of international relations and conflicts, exemplified in calls for a liberal imperialism to deal with terrorism and rogue states (Cooper 2002; Wolf 2001) and for the need for the US to act as a benevolent imperial Hegemon (Kagan 1998; Boot 2001; Donnelly 2002) to safeguard Western values and liberties. This mostly had to do with the emergence of an aggressive American military interventionism, beginning with the war in Afghanistan, the brutal occupation of Iraq, the plans for a military strike against Iran.

3. The open questions for a Marxist theory of imperialism • Is a theory of imperialism simply a combination of Marxist political economy and Realism? • Is it a theory of territorial expansion? • Is it a theory of a unified global system • Is a theory of Empire?

4. Theory of imperialism as Marxist Political Economy combined with Realist Geopolitics • Alex Callinicos has insisted on the need to incorporate the state system and the conflicts and antagonisms at that level as “a dimension of the capitalist mode of production” (Callinicos 2009, 83) leading to the combination of two forms of competition, one among capitals and a geopolitical competition between states (Callinicos 2005; 2007; 2009). • Gonzalo Pozo-Martin (2007) has shown that this ‘realist’ or geopolitical moment needs much more theoretical elaboration, if we want to avoid the theoretical shortcomings of traditional realist conceptualizations of international relations. • Peter Gowan’s (1999) attempted towards a Marxist geopolitics of American dominance, notwithstanding the accuracy of many of his conclusions and despite his insistence that American foreign policy is based on the promotion of American capitalist interests as national interest.

5. Realism is not enough • Realism has been the defining theoretical tradition in mainstream International Relations theory (Carr 1939, Wight 1994, Waltz 1979, Frankel (ed.) 1996. For a criticism of traditional international relations theory see Rosenberg 1994). • While realism is seen as having merit when contrasted with the idealist rhetoric of most of current globalization or cosmopolitan democracy theories, the simplistic Hobbesian conceptions of political power and Great Power rivalry that are the backbone of realist theories of International Relations do not offer a possible way to theorize the complexity of determinations within the international plane and the interrelation between economic, political and ideological antagonisms. • Moreover, it remains a theoretical paradigm that leads to a rather schematic territorial conception of the stakes in international conflicts and antagonisms.

6. The persistence of the territorial logic • On of the problems in contemporary Marxist theory of imperialism is the persistence of the territorial logic • On example has been David Harvey’s theory of accumulation as dispossession. (Harvey 2003) • For Harvey, capitalism not only induces a logic of endless flows of capital but also brings forward the particular importance of spatio-temporal fixes in a social process of production of space that leads to the historical geography of imperialism. This is also the basis of a certain territorial logic that grounds the tendency towards imperialism under capitalism. • Here accumulation by discpossession acquires importance, especially in a period of capitalist overaccumulation, in the sense of a predatory imperialist quest for assets all over the world, enhanced by both financialization and privatization

7. Accumulation by dispossession • Harvey links this to both Luxembourg’s theory of imperialism and to Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation. However, he insists that it is not limited to a particular historical period • The disadvantage of these assumptions is that they relegate accumulation based upon predation, fraud, and violence to an 'original stage' that is considered no longer relevant or, as with Luxemburg, as being somehow 'outside of capitalism as a closed system. A general reevaluation of the continuous role and persistence of the predatory practices of 'primitive' or 'original' accumulation within the long historical geography of capital accumulation is, therefore, very much in order, as several commentators have recently observed. Since it seems peculiar to call an ongoing process 'primitive' or 'original' I shall, in what follows, substitute these terms by the concept of'accumulation by dispossession'. (Harvey 2003, p. 144)

8. Accumulation by dispossession and neoliberalism • For Harvey accumulation by dispossession leads to neoliberalism • Accumulation by dispossession became increasingly more salient after 1973, in part as compensation for the chronic problems of overaccumulation arising within expanded reproduction. The primary vehicle for this development was financialization and the orchestration, largely at the behest of the United States, of an international financial system that could, from time to time, visit anything from mild to savage bouts of devaluation and accumulation by dispossession on certain sectors or even whole territories. But the opening up of new territories to capitalist development and to capitalistic forms of market behaviour also played a role, as did the primitive accumulations accomplished in those countries (such as South Korea, Taiwan, and now, even more dramatically, China) that sought to insert themselves into global capitalism as active players. For all of this to occur required not only financialization and freer trade, but a radically different approach to how state power, always a major player in accumulation by dispossession, should be deployed. The rise of neo-liberal theory and its associated politics of privatization symbolized much of what this shift was about. (Harvey 2003, p. 156)

9. Contemporary Imperialism as accumulation as dispossession • The rise in importance of accumulation by dispossession as an answer, symbolized by the rise of an internationalist politics of neoliberalism and privatization, correlates with the visitation. Accumulation by Dispossession of periodic bouts of predatory devaluation of assets in one part of the world or another. And this seems to be the heart of what contemporary imperialist practice is about.(Harvey 2003, pp. 181-82)

10. The territorial logic revisited: Rosa Luxembourg • Imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains still open of the noncapitalist environment. Still the largest part of the world in terms of geography, this remaining field for the expansion of capital is yet insignificant as against the high level of development already attained by the productive forces of capital; witness the immense masses of capital accumulated in the old countries which seek an outlet for their surplus product and strive to capitalise their surplus value, and the rapid change-over to capitalism of the pre-capitalist civilisations. On the international stage, then, capital must take appropriate measures. With the high development of the capitalist countries and their increasingly severe competition in acquiring non-capitalist areas, imperialism grows in lawlessness and violence, both in aggression against the non-capitalist world and in ever more serious conflicts among the competing capitalist countries. But the more violently, ruthlessly and thoroughly imperialism brings about the decline of non-capitalist civilisations, the more rapidly it cuts the very ground from under the feet of capitalist accumulation. Though imperialism is the historical method for prolonging the career of capitalism, it is also a sure means of bringing it to a swift conclusion. This is not to say that capitalist development must be actually driven to this extreme: the mere tendency towards imperialism of itself takes forms which make the final phase of capitalism a period of catastrophe. (Luxambourg 2003, pp. 426-7)

11. Luxembourg: Imperialism and War • The other aspect of the accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism and the non-capitalist modes of production which start making their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant methods are colonial policy, an international loan system—a policy of spheres of interest—and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern laws of the economic process. (Luxembourg 2003, p. 432)

12. The teleology of collapse • the deep and fundamental antagonism between the capacity to consume and the capacity to produce in a capitalist society, a conflict resulting from the very accumulation of capital which periodically bursts out in crises and spurs capital on to a continual of the market. (Luxemboug 2003, p. 327) • Such a position leads to the assumption that capitalism will collapse the moment capitalist social relations prevail all over the world

13. The need for expansion In the 1915 Anti-critique Rosa Luxembourg described in the following manner capital’s tendency towards expansion: • Accumulation is impossible in an exclusively capitalist environment. Therefore, we find that capital has been driven since its very inception to expand into non..capitalist strata and nations, ruin artisans and peasantry, proletarianize the intermediate strata, the politics of colonialism, the politics of' opening-up' andthe export of capital. The development of capitalism has been possible only through constant expansion into new domains of production and new countries. But the global drive to expand leads to a collision between capital and pre-capitalist forms of society, resulting in violence, war, revolution: in brief, catastrophes from start to finish, the vital element of capitalism. (Luxembrourg / Bukharin 1972, p. 145)

14. An early critic of the territorial logic: Bukharin • In his reply to Luxembourg Bukharin followed a twofold strategy: • On the one hand he deconstructed the core of Luxembourg’s argument insisting that expanded reproduction of capitalism is contingent upon the dynamics of class struggle and it is wrong to assume an absolute limit, as Luxembourg did. • In other words: a conflict between production and consumption, or, which amounts to the same thing, a general over-production, is nothing other than a crisis. This position is basically different from that held by Rosa Luxemburg, according to which over-production must manifest itself at all times in a purely capitalist society, since an expanded reproduction is absolutely) impossible. (Luxembourg / Bukharin 1972, p. 225)

15. An early critic of the territorial logic: Bukharin (II) • On the other hand Bukharin insisted that the motive for capitalist expansion is not realization of value, but the search for profit. This insistence on capitalist profit is an important break with the logic of territorial expansion either as need for the extraction of assets or as need for finding new outlets for inherent capitalist over-production. According to Bukharin the driving force behind capital exports is not the problem of realization (the basis of under-consumption theories) but the search for higher profit rates and this can explain why imperialist policies are not directed solely against the non-capitalist periphery but also against the capitalist centre and he cites the French occupation of Ruhr as an example. • The reader will have noticed how strangely Rosa Luxemburg formulates the question of the economic roots of capital expansion. As she overlooks the factor of the search for larger profits, she reduces everything to the bare formula of the possibility of realization. Why does capital need a non-capitalist milieu? (Luxembourg / Bukharin 1972, p. 246) • The expansion of capital is conditioned by the movement of profit, its amount and rate, on which the amount depends. The movement of commodities and capital follows the law of the averaging out of the rate of profit. There is no doubt that this process must be seen from the standpoint of the reproduction of the total social capital. (Luxembourg / Bukharin 1972, p. 255)

16. The specificity of imperialism • Accordingly, the objective content of capital expansion changes also - within certain limits. We saw that the forms of expansion changed towards a sharpening of the methods of fighting. Further we have seen that this again is caused by a change of the forms of capital itself. As war is nothing but 'the continuation of politics with other means', so is politics nothing but the method of the reproduction of certain conditions of production. So the modem expansion of capital differs from the previous in the fact that it reproduces the new historical type of the conditions of production on an extended level, i.e. the type of the conditions of finance capitalism. In this rests the basic constitutive characteristic of imperialism, which Rosa Luxemburg completely overlooked. What is the point of all this talk about imperialism, if one does not understand its specific historical characteristics? It means a misunderstanding of the demands of Marxist methodology as well as of the 'concrete historical process', which is so often called as a witness against the 'soulless formulae' in Marx's Capital. (Luxembourg / Bukharin 1971, p. 257)

17. The wrong reading of Lenin • There are two possible readings of Lenin’s theory of Imperialism. • One is to consider it a Marxist version of classical theories of colonial empire-building, either those that related imperialism to an overabundance of capital in tandem with growing social instability, or those that considered imperialism an expression of certain fractions of the ruling block that had to gain from overseas expansion and military build up (Hobson 1902). According to this view, Lenin presents a theory of irremediable capitalist stagnation and overproduction which can only be temporarily dealt with by colonization, the latter providing the necessary outlet for idle capital and a means of social pacification, through the creation of a labour aristocracy. • This is a wrong reading

18. The problems with Lenin (a) • Lenin’s endorsement of Bukharin’s book on world capitalism (Lenin 1917). Bukharin, although not a theorist of a global unified capitalist system in the strict sense, tended to present an image of a global capitalism as an integral system in which the antagonistic relations between big capitalist trusts represented by states, thus underestimating specificity of the role of the state • At present, when the competition and the centralisation of capital are being reproduced on a world scale, we find the same two types. When one country, one state capitalist trust, absorbs another, a weaker one possessed of comparatively the same economic structure, we have a horizontal centralisation of capital. Where, however, the state capitalist trust includes an economically supplementary unit, an agrarian country for instance, we have the formation of a combine. Substantially the same contradictions and the same moving forces are reflected here as within the limits of "national economies"; to be specific, the rise of prices of raw materials leads to the rise of combined enterprises. Thus on the higher stage of the struggle there is reproduced the same contradiction between the various branches, but on a considerably wider scale. (Bukharin n.d., pp. 120-21)

19. The problems with Lenin (b) • Lenin’s emphasis on the formation of monopolies as a distinctive feature of the imperialist stage sometimes underestimated competition between capitals. • But this is not the case. Not in every branch of industry are there large-scale enterprises; and moreover, a very important feature of capitalism in its highest stage of development is so-called combination of production, that is to say, the grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry (Lenin v. 22, 198

20. The problems with Lenin (c) • Lenin’s tendency towards an instrumentalist theory of the state as a tool in the hands of monopoly capital and big trusts. • His definition of imperialism (and monopoly capital) as inherently parasitic and crisis-prone. From all that has been said in this book on the economic essence of imperialism, it follows that we must define it as capitalism in transition, or, more precisely, as moribund capitalism. (Lenin, v.22, p. 302) • e) His agreement with Hilferding’s original position that the export of capital towards the periphery was the result of limits to capital accumulation in the imperialist centre and with Hilferding’s conception of the predominance of monopolies and cartels (Hilferding 1981).

21. Another reading of Lenin is possible! • Lenin’s theory of imperialism revolutionizes the theory of the international system, giving imperialism a wholly different meaning than simple empire building. Lenin tried to think of the international system as a complex unity of economic, social and political contradictions, as a hierarchy of social formations, engaged not only in economic competition, but also in political and military antagonism.

22. Uneven development • Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. (Lenin, v.21, p. 342) • Unevendevelopmentis not just a description of the world system. It is an acknowledgement of the constant and overdeterminedefficacy of class struggles. Global tendencies, botheconomic and ‘geopolitical, are unevenbecause class struggles and theirdynamics are uneven. • See also his description of the antagonisms in the world scene in the introductory speech at the Second Congress of the Communist International (Lenin 1920a)

23. Uneven development and overdetermination • That the revolution succeeded so quickly and—seemingly, at the first superficial glance—so radically, is only due to the fact that, as a result of an extremely unique historical situation, absolutely dissimilar currents, absolutely heterogeneous class interests, absolutely contrary political and social strivings have merged, and in a strikingly “harmonious” manner. (Lenin vol. 23, p. 302) • As long as national and state distinctions exist among peoples and countries—and these will continue to exist for a very long time to come, even after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established on a world-wide scale—the unity of the international tactics of the communist working-class movement in all countries demands, not the elimination of variety of the suppression of national distinctions (which is a pipe dream at present), but an application of the fundamental principles of communism (Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat), which will correctly modify these principles in certain particulars, correctly adapt and apply them to national and national-state distinctions. (Lenin vol. 31, p. 92)

24. Uneven development and overdetermination (II) • Uneven development is not merely about quantitative differences between social formations but describes the necessarily singular and overdetermined character of both • In the international plane, uneven development is the necessary outcome of the complex history of the emergence and domination of capitalism in different parts of the world. It refers to the consequent creation of antagonistic total social capitals, and the fragmentation into different and mostly national polities. In this process, different class histories led to different balances of forces between dominant and subaltern classes (but also among power blocs), and consequently different paths for state formation, and also domestic and international strategies. • Uneven development, and the different strategies for capital accumulation, not only in terms of international market antagonism but also in terms of states promoting the interests of antagonistic total social capitals and bourgeoisies, create the material conditions for conflict. It is exactly this articulation of the economic and the political, itself uneven, contradictory and contingent on the dynamics of the conjuncture, that leads to inter-imperialist rivalry and war

25. Class relations determine international relations • The most important point in Lenin’s approach is that social relations take analytical priority over inter-state relations. States’ behaviour on the international plane is conditioned by their social structure and the balance of forces in the class struggle. • Imperialism is not the outcome of a simple drive towards territorial expansion, but the result of specific tendencies in the development of capitalist accumulation (relative surplus value as the predominant form of surplus extraction, real subsumption of labour to capital, concentration and centralization of capital) and of the contradictions that arise out of its class antagonistic nature. • That is why Lenin considers imperialism as a specific stage in the development of capital. However reminiscent of an evolutionary theorization of capitalist development this conception of stages can it be, it nevertheless has the advantage of linking international behaviour to capitalist accumulation and class contradictions. • Moreover, for Lenin, internationalization of capital is not an expression of capitalist stagnation, but an aggressive tendency helping the expanded reproduction of capitalism, the consolidation of the ruling block, and the tentative dominant role of capitalism over non-capitalist modes of production.

26. The specificity of capitalist imperialism • The emphasis on class relations and antagonisms marks a sharp difference between Lenin’s theory of imperialism and proponents of American expansionism in the form of ‘economic imperialism’ as a solution for the over-abundance of capital, such as Charles Conant (1898). Lenin’s intervention goes far beyond a theory of idle capitals, the difficulty of wealth redistribution and the unavailability of domestic productive outlets. The fundamental issue for Lenin was not capital exports as such, but capital exports as part of a broader tendency: the expansion of capitalist social relations on a global scale, the political and military antagonisms that followed this expansion, the violent character of this process, and the resulting challenges for the revolutionary movement. • Beginning with his early work on the development of capitalism in Russia (Lenin 1977) Lenin insisted on capitalism transforming all social forms it gets into contact with. Although Lenin lacked a theory of the articulation of modes of production that could help explain the symbiotic relation of capitalism with many non-capitalist modes of exploitation, we think that he managed to grasp the particular way capitalism may emerge within specific conjunctures not simply as a dominant mode of production, but as the central node around which other modes and forms of production can be articulated. • Such a conception of capitalist imperialism can explain why especially during colonial expansion forms of capitalist and non-capitalist exploitation could co-exist, co-emerge and even co-develop.

27. Capitalist Imperialism • “Imperialism, in turn, is the set of conditions that shape and are shaped by the existence of this exploitation. Yes capitalist imperialism – not because capitalists get what they want, nor because forms of colonial expansion and domination did not predate the emergence and development of capitalism, nor finally because imperialism can be reduced to or explained entirely in terms of the economy (capitalist or otherwise) – but because the particular forms of imperialism I am referring to, from the British annexation of India to the US military barrage on Iraqi forces and the new ‘war on terrorism’ cannot be divorced from those (complex, changing) conditions and effects of capitalism to which I just referred.” (Ruccio 2003, 87).

28. Lenin’s theoretical revolution • Lenin revolutionized the theorization of the international system by giving internal class relations and contradictions analytical priority over interstate relations. Contrary to most theories of international relations, both realist and ‘idealist’, which have their origins in classical political philosophy and 19th century diplomatic history and tend to view states as subjects that act out of their own will, Lenin insisted that the policies of states are governed by their internal class balance of forces, the degree of capitalist development and the particular class strategies around it.

29. Export of capitals • Typical of the old capitalism, when free competition held undivided sway, was the export of goods. Typical of the latest stage of capitalism, when monopolies rule, is the export of capital. (Lenin, v. 22, p. 240) • The export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported. While, therefore, the export of capital may tend to a certain extent to arrest development in the capital exporting countries, it can only do so by expanding and deepening the further development of capitalism throughout the world. (Lenin, v.22, p. 243 • Lenin’s emphasis on capital exports – not simply as productive investments abroad but as the expansion of capitalist social relations – as the predominant form of the internationalization of capital, and on the internationalization of capital as the material basis of imperialism also had revolutionizing effects. Contrary to the traditional conception of international power politics as expressions of conflicting national interests, Lenin insisted on the internationalization of capital as a contradictory expansion of capitalist social relations resulting to singular articulations of capitalist and non capitalist modes and forms of production, but with capitalist social forms being dominant not necessarily quantitatively but surely qualitatively in the sense of inducing the transformation of all social relations and practices. International conflicts must be viewed as class antagonisms mediated by the nation-states as expressions of the long-term interest of the power blocs in these states, namely alliances of the dominant classes, in which capitalist classes play a leading role.

30. Internationalization of capital Vs territorial expansion • Lenin’s emphasis on the internationalization of capital through capital exports dealt a decisive blow to the notion of imperialism as simply territorial expansion. Despite Lenin’s many references to the ‘division of the world among the Great Powers’, the core of his argument regarding capital exports is that the expansion of capital no longer requires territorial annexation or formal empire, but the articulation of capital accumulation and political power. Moreover, his insistence on antagonism and conflict and on the particular, non-uniform and related to a given conjuncture dynamics of interimperialist rivalry prevent his position from falling into the teleology of a uniform transition and development.

31. A political theory of imperialism • Lenin’s emphasis on the role of states in imperialist dynamics and rivalries and on the necessity of the state apparatuses for the expression and mediation of capitalist interests in the international system, leads also to a political theory of imperialism. Imperialism presupposes political power as a condensation of class interests and inter-imperialist rivalries are political rivalries, struggles between different power blocks, including struggles between alliances of states, something that can also account for the importance of international organizations. • This emphasis on the relative autonomy of the political protects Lenin’s argument from economistic reductionism and keeps capital accumulation and capitalist class interests as the necessary material ground of the whole process. That is why Lenin proposed a possible explanation for World War I as the culmination of rival strategies for leadership and dominance in the imperialist system. • It can also explain the possibility that the international is also the plane where internal contradictions and political strategies are being played out, from the many examples of aggressive military campaigns to galvanize domestic consent in nationalist lines, to the current use of international economic organizations such as the IMF to promote political agendas that were initially domestically articulated.

32. Imperialist chain • The emergence of the concept of the imperialist chain as the suitable description of the hierarchal, uneven and contradictory character of the international system, and of the combination of hierarchy and interdependence in the international plane and the concept of weakest link as an attempt to describe the potential condensation of contradictions in a specific social formation, are also important. • Class struggle within each social formation determines its position in the hierarchy of the imperialist chain. • The form of social alliances, the stage of capitalist development, the level of capitalist productivity, its military and political force, as well as its ideological influence, can reinforce or undermine the relative international power of a capitalist social formation. • A social formation’s position in the imperialist chain is not based only on its level of economic development but also on the entirety of its political and military power.

33. Antagonism in the imperialist chain • the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a redivision to reach out for every kind of territory, and (2) an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine hishegemony. (Lenin, v.22, 269) • The new index of the power of politicswhichcharacterizesmonopolycapitalismwithineach national formation istranslatedinto the new index of the power of politicswhich marks international relations in the imperialist stage. […] The concreteform and the degreee of the strength of politicswithineach national formation, depend on its ‘historical position as a link in the chain: thisdepends in turn on the unevendevelopment of the chain and on its mode of existence withineachlink (Poulantzas 1979 p. 24)

34. The weak link of the chain • The theory of the imperialist chain along with the imagery of the weakest link in the chain remain important for any thinking of revolutionary politics • It describes the complex articulation of national and international determinations and the overdetermination of class antagonism • It offers the possibility of a theory of the revolutionary conjuncture, a theory the the ‘moment’(and not of the event)

35. An Althusserian detour • “Lenin gave this metaphor above all a practical meaning. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. In general, anyone who wants to control a given situation will look out for a weak point, in case it should render the whole system vulnerable. On the other hand, anyone who wants to attack it, even if the odds are apparently against him, need only discover this one weakness to make all its power precarious. ”

36. Althusserian detour (II) • But here we should pay careful attention: if it is obvious that the theory of the weakest link guided Lenin in his theory of the revolutionary party (it was to be faultlessly united in consciousness and organization to avoid adverse exposure and to destroy the enemy), it was also the inspiration for his reflections on the revolution itself. How was this revolution possible in Russia, why was it victorious there? It was possible in Russia for a reason that went beyond Russia: because with the unleashing of imperialist war humanity entered into an objectively revolutionary situation.Imperialism tore off the 'peaceful' mask of the old capitalism. The concentration of industrial monopolies, their subordination to financial monopolies, had increased the exploitation of the workers and of the colonies. Competition between the monopolies made war inevitable. But this same war, which dragged vast masses, even colonial peoples from whom troops were drawn, into limitless suffering, drove its cannon-fodder not only into massacres, but also into history. Everywhere the experience, the horrors of war, were a revelation and confirmation of a whole century's protest against capitalist exploitation; a focusing-point, too, for hand in hand with this shattering exposure went the effective means of action. […] Why this paradoxical exception? For this basic reason: in the 'system of imperialist states'[8] Russia represented the weakest point. The Great War had, of course, precipitated and aggravated this weakness, but it had not by itself created it. Already, even in defeat, the 1905 Revolution had demonstrated and measured the weakness of Tsarist Russia. This weakness was the product of this special feature: the accumulation and exacerbation of all the historical contradictions

37. Marxism and the Political • In contrast to the tautologies used in traditional political science, in which political power is just taken as given, Marxism offers a definition of power as the “capacity of a social class to realize its specific objective interests” (Poulantzas 1978, 104). • This priority of exploitation over domination offers an explanation of power as class power, ability of social groups to control the extraction and distribution of surplus labour because of their specific objective structural class position. It offers a possible explanation of the class character of power relations and struggles and therefore also of state apparatuses. • The key point, in our opinion, is to stress at the same time the analytical priority of exploitation over repression and domination, and the importance of the fact that political practice has as its object the condensation of all the contradictions of the various levels of a social formation (Poulantzas 1978, 41). • This notion of the political escapes the shortcomings of both the mainstream political science’s notion of political power as administrative command, and of the portrayal of political power as direct control of the state by capitalist factions that characterizes many varieties of economistic Marxism. • In this non-economistic reading of Marxism, the insistence on the class character of political power is combined with the position that class strategies are also necessarily political strategies, strategies aimed at reproducing or destabilizing social formations as complex and contradictory unities of economic, political, ideological relations and practises.

38. The dialectic of the economic and the political • we can accept both Marx’s insistence that the “specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers” is the “innermost secret” of every social structure (Marx 1894, 778) • and Althusser’s warning that although the economic relations are determinant in the last instance, the “lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never comes” (Althusser 1969, 113). • It is a conception of political power that manages to maintain the link between politics and the economy and at the same time ground the necessary relative autonomy of the political

39. [Marx] • The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances. (Marx 1894, 778)

40. [Althusser] • We must carry this through to its conclusion and say that this overdetermination does not just refer to apparently unique and aberrant historical situations (Germany, for example), but is universal ; the economic dialectic is never active in the pure state ; in History, these instances, the superstructures, etc. -- are never seen to step respectfully aside when their work is done or, when the Time comes, as his pure phenomena, to scatter before His Majesty the Economy as he strides along the royal road of the Dialectic. From the first moment to the last, the lonely hour of the 'last instance' never comes. (Althusser 1969, 113)

41. Gramsci and Hegemony • To this we must add the importance and theoretical fruitfulness of the Gramscian concept of Hegemony (Gramsci 1971; Buci-Glucksmann 1980; Bootham 2008; Thomas 2009). • Itdoes not simply imply the combination of coercion and consent. Rather, it refers to the complex modalities of social and political power in capitalist societies that make a social class become the leading social force in a society. • Moreover, the concepts of hegemony and hegemonic apparatus, as part of Gramsci’s theorization of the Integral State (Gramsci 1971, 239; Thomas 2009, 137-141) also offer a way to theorize the extent and complexity of State apparatuses and their economic, political, and ideological practices and interventions. • Along with Althusser’s conception of the Ideological State Apparatuses (Althusser 1971; Althusser 1995) and their role in social reproduction and Poulantzas’ relational conception of the State as a condensation of social forces (Poulantzas 1980), this theoretical direction maintains the relation between State functioning and social class formations, brings forward the role of the State in the elaboration of class strategies and the transformation of class interests into political projects, and stresses how the State is being traversed and conditioned by class struggles and antagonisms.

42. States are not self-sufficient forces (the limits of geopolitics) • We cannot take states as self-sufficient actors in shaping the international plane, but we must look at the different class alliances and power blocs and how these affect the formation of capitalist class strategy, state policy and consequently international policy. • States’ behaviour in the international plane is itself conditioned by the articulation of class contradictions and political strategies and the emergence of hegemonic power blocs. Interstate relations can be viewed as class based relations, as relations (and conflicts) between different power blocs. • The current return of ‘geopolitics’ is a welcome refusal of the economistic idealism of the ‘globalization’ rhetoric. However, it poses the danger of a return to a pre-Marxist conception of political power. Of course, if ‘geopolitics’ is a metonymic reference to the State’s relative autonomy vis-à-vis the economy or the relative autonomy of the political in general, then we do not disagree in principle, but we still insist on a terminology that underlines the conceptual break between Marxist and non-Marxist theories of Imperialism.

43. Imperialism as a class strategy • Imperialism as class political strategy in an inherently antagonistic international plane, where the antagonism between capitals is also mediated through the antagonism of power blocs and where States as potential representatives of collective capitalist interests constantly intervene, by economic, ideological, political and military means, in order not simply to promote specific capitalist interests but also the more general conditions for capitalist accumulation through strategies that are also over-determined by political and ideological considerations having to do with their specific class balance of forces and the articulation of modes and forms of production. • This is the problem with the territorial or geopolitical logic expressed in many recent interventions. It is not that capitalists and capitalist states do not preoccupy themselves with territorial or spatial questions (for example natural resources) or with geopolitical questions (for example regional military balance of forces), but that this is not the basic ‘logic’ of capitalist imperialism. But to substantiate this position and to distance it from a teleological or deterministic conception we will proceed, in the next section, to an alternative theorization of capitalist imperialism.

44. The non-territorial logic of capitalist imperialism • Direct territorial domination and expansion is a characteristic, in particular in Europe, of pre-capitalist modes of production where direct access and possession of land and scarce resources and the ability to exercise direct physical force on populations in order to extract surpluses (‘extra-economic’ coercion) were structural aspects of social reproduction. • The emergence of capitalism as a dominant mode of production, and of an international system based on territorially sovereign nation-states, the evolution of social and political struggles, and the growing importance of productivity, technological change, and real subsumption of labour, meant that territorial gains of colonial dominions were no longer essential conditions for the reproduction of the system. • On the contrary what emerges as the main aspect of modern capitalist imperialism is the internationalization of capital. By internationalization we refer to all forms of product and capital exports, of capital movements, of trade and financial transactions, of global relocation of production, of lowering of barriers to trade and investment, of international agreements, policy initiatives and organizations facilitating theses procedures, including forms of international coordination and even creation of forms of supranational integration such as the EU. • The internationalization of capital is indeed inducing the expansion of specifically capitalist social relations of production, in articulation with non-capitalist modes and forms of production in complex processes of reproduction and transformation.

45. The political dimension of the internationalization of capital • The tendency of capital to transcend national borders and search all over the world for better profitability is not an unmediated purely economic process. • If political power and bourgeois hegemony are necessary conditions for the reproduction of capitalist social relations, the same goes for the internationalization of capital: some form of political intervention (and ideological legitimization) is necessary for it. • This is a structural necessity; the specific form of this political and ideological guarantee is subject to historical contingencies, • This can explain the move from imperialism in the form of rival colonial empires to the more ‘modern’ imperialism of a hierarchy of imperialist formations, with the US in the hegemonic role of politically and militarily guaranteeing the global collective capitalist interest.

46. Competition and politics • Competition between capitals is an “organic” aspect of capitalism, in the sense that it is inscribed in the very structure of the capitalist market. However, competition between different capitals in the international plane takes the form not only of competition between different national capitals but also to competition and antagonism between different states representing different collective capitalist interests. That is why the notion of the imperialist chain is still an accurate description of the uneven and complex relations of interdependence between different social formations and power blocks. • When we talk about political intervention as a prerequisite for the internationalization of capital we do not refer only to ‘classical’ forms of military intervention or ‘gunboat diplomacy’. For example, the formation of the current international financial architecture was not just a spontaneous process and same goes for the lowering of barriers to the free flow of products and capital and the political decision to expose capitalist social formations to the competitive pressure of world markets and capital movements. • Etienne Balibar suggested that Marx performs a theoretical short circuit between economics and politics, by grounding the political in class strategies within production and at the same time treating the economical as a terrain of conflicting political class strategies. A theory of imperialism must perform the same theoretical short circuit.

47. On the causes of war • In this light, we must tackle the question of the causes of war. If one sees war, especially imperialist war, as a form of territorial expansion, then the evolution of capitalism and the importance of capital exports make this sort of expansion (and any military preparation for it) unnecessary. But one should not forget that two World Wars were mainly not the outcome of territorial disputes. It is true that the question of the dissolution of Empires acted as a catalyst for WWI, and one should not underestimate the initial importance of Nazi Germany’s claim over all of the territories with German-speaking minorities in the outbreak of WWII. But it is also obvious that in both World Wars the scale of the mobilization and the extent of the conflict were beyond simple territorial claims. It was a fight for leadership and hegemony in the capitalist world. These wars were mainly forms of escalating political antagonism, due to condensed contradictions concerning the hegemonic position in the imperialist chain. If one sees war as an extreme case of political confrontation, then we can insist on the position that antagonism remains the structural aspect of interstate relations. Whether this antagonism takes the form of military confrontation or remains in political terms (namely within the limits of current international law and custom) depends on the conjuncture, on the scale of the interests and strategies at stake, on the balance of forces both regionally and globally, on the domestic social and political configuration and whether war effort will galvanize or destabilize hegemony.

48. Transnational Classes and States • Most ‘globalization’ theories are either simple descriptions of tendencies and o observable phenomena, lacking theoretical rigour • Other theories, such as the one presented in Empire (Hardt – Negri 2000) are simple metaphorical rewritings of traditional global capitalism theories • The most interesting theories are the one suggesting that we are dealing with transnational capitals, transnational social formations and transnational political forms, such as the theory presented by William I. Robinson.

49. Are there transnational classes? • ‘globalization is establishing the material conditions for the rise of a bourgeoisie whose coordinates are no longer national. In this process of transnational class formation dominant groups fuse into a class (or class fraction) within transnational space. The organic composition, objective position and subjective constitution of these groups are no longer tied to nation-states.’ (Robinson and Harris 2000) • “The national state is being transformed and increasingly absorbed functionally into a larger transnational institutional structure that involves complex new relations between national states and supra or transnational institutions, on the one hand, and diverse class and social forces, on the other.” (Robinson 2007, p. 17) • We are witness to new forms of global capitalist domination, whereby intervention is intended to create conditions favorable to the penetration of transnational capital and the renewed integration of the intervened region into the global system.Robinson 2007, p. 19)

50. The limits of Empire • Hardt and Negri in Empire (2000) in fact, despite the references to biopolitics etc, in fact return to a very classical conception of a global capitalism system, in certain aspects reminiscent of Luxembourg’s positions • Their reference to Empire has the extra problem of confusing the capitalist and pre-capitalist conception of empire • Consequently it is more a radical theory of globalization rather than a Marxist theory of imperialism