Jainism made its own unique contribution to this mainstream development of philosophy by occupying itself with the basic epistemological issues. According to Jains, knowledge is the essence of the soul.
This knowledge is masked by the karmic particles. As the soul obtains
knowledge through various means, it does not generate anything new. It
only shreds off the knowledge-obscuring karmic particles. According to
Jainism, consciousness is a primary attribute of Jīva (soul) and this consciousness manifests itself as darsana (perception) and jnana (knowledge).
The first two kinds of knowledge are through indirect means and remaining three are through direct means. Indirect means includes inference, analogy, word or scripture, presumption and probability.
Sensory knowledge
The knowledge acquired through the empirical perception and mind is termed as Mati Jnana (Sensory knowledge). According to Jain epistemology, sense perception is the knowledge which the Jīva (soul) acquires of the environment through the intermediary of material sense organs. This includes recollection, recognition, induction based on observation and deduction based on reasoning. This is divided into five processes:
Vyanjanavagraha (contact of an object)
Arthavagraha (presentation of object or first observation)
Iha (urge to apprehend the object or curiosity)
Apaya (confirmation)
Dharana (definite knowledge or impression)
Scriptural knowledge
Stele depicting Śhrut Jnāna or complete scriptural knowledge (Jain Agamas)
The knowledge acquired through understanding of verbal and written sentences etc., is termed as Śhrut Jnāna.
Scripture is not knowledge because
scripture does not comprehend anything. Therefore, knowledge is one
thing and scripture another; this has been proclaimed by the Omniscient
Lord.
As per Jains, the knowledge of Śhrut Jnāna, may be angaparivastam (things which are contained in the Angas, limbs or sacred Jain books) or angabahyam (things outside the Angas). They are further subdivided into 12 kinds each. This raises aspirations for quiescence of mind, right determination, disposition to realize the truth and character-formation.
Clairvoyance
Clairvoyance is mentioned as avadhi jnana in Jain scriptures. According to Jain text Sarvārthasiddhi, "this kind of knowledge has been called avadhi as it ascertains matter in downward range or knows objects within limits". The beings of hell and heaven (devas) are said to possess clairvoyance by birth. Six kinds of clairvoyance is mentioned in the Jain scriptures.
Telepathy
According
to Jainism, the soul can directly know the thoughts of others. Such
knowledge comes under the category of 'Manhaparyaya Jnana'.
By Shredding of the karmic particles, the soul acquires perfect
knowledge. With such a knowledge, the knowledge and soul becomes one.
Such a knowledge is Kevala Jnana.
Nature of the soul
Jains maintain that knowledge is the nature of the soul. According to Champat Rai Jain:
Knowledge
is the nature of the soul. If it were not the nature of the soul, it
would be either the nature of the not-soul, or of nothing whatsoever.
But in the former case, the unconscious would become the conscious, and
the soul would be unable to know itself or any one else, for it would
then be devoid of consciousness; and, in the latter, there would be no
knowledge, nor conscious beings in existence, which, happily, is not the
case.
Anēkāntavāda refers to the principles of perspectivism
and multiplicity of viewpoints, the notion that truth and reality are
perceived differently from diverse points of view, and that no single
point of view is the complete truth.
Jains contrast all attempts to proclaim absolute truth with adhgajanyāyah, which can be illustrated through the parable of the "blind men and an elephant".
This principle is more formally stated by observing that objects are
infinite in their qualities and modes of existence, so they cannot be
completely grasped in all aspects and manifestations by finite human
perception. According to the Jains, only the Kevalis—omniscient
beings—can comprehend objects in all aspects and manifestations; others
are only capable of partial knowledge. Consequently, no single,
specific, human view can claim to represent absolute truth.
The doctrine of multiple viewpoints (Sanskrit: Nayavāda), holds
that the ways of looking at things (Naya) are infinite in number.
This is manifested in scripture by use of conditional propositions,
called Syādvāda (syād = 'perhaps, may be'). The seven used conditional
principles are listed below.
syād-asti: in some ways, it is;
syād-nāsti: in some ways, it is not;
syād-asti-nāsti: in some ways, it is, and it is not;
syād-asti-avaktavyah: in some ways, it is, and it is indescribable;
syād-nāsti-avaktavyah: in some ways, it is not, and it is indescribable;
syād-asti-nāsti-avaktavyah: in some ways, it is, it is not, and it is indescribable;
syād-avaktavyah: in some ways, it is indescribable.
The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and Britain. It was triggered by the Chinese government's campaign to enforce its prohibition of opium, which included destroying opium stocks owned by British merchants and the British East India Company.
The British government responded by sending a naval expedition to force
the Chinese government to pay reparations and allow the opium trade. The Second Opium War was waged by Britain and France against China from 1856 to 1860. It resulted in the legalisation of opium in China.
In each war, the superior military advantages enjoyed by European forces led to several easy victories over the Chinese military, with the consequence that China was compelled to sign the unequal treaties
to grant favourable tariffs, trade concessions, reparations and
territory to Western powers. The two conflicts, along with the various
treaties imposed during the "century of humiliation", weakened the Chinese government's authority and forced China to open specified treaty ports (including Shanghai) to Western merchants. In addition, China ceded sovereignty over Hong Kong to the British Empire, which maintained control over the region until 1997. During this period, the Chinese economy also contracted slightly as a result of the wars, though the Taiping Rebellion and Dungan Revolt had a much larger economic effect.
The First Opium War broke out in 1839 between China and Britain and was fought over trading rights (including the right of free trade)
and Britain's diplomatic status among Chinese officials. In the
eighteenth century, China enjoyed a trade surplus with Europe, trading porcelain, silk, and tea in exchange for silver. By the late 17th century, the British East India Company (EIC) expanded the cultivation of opium in the Bengal Presidency, selling it to private merchants who transported it to China and covertly sold it on to Chinese smugglers. By 1797, the EIC was selling 4,000 chests of opium (each weighing 77 kg) to private merchants per annum.
In earlier centuries, opium was utilised as an medicine with anesthetic
qualities, but new Chinese practices of smoking opium recreationally
increased demand tremendously and often led to smokers developing
addictions. Successive Chinese emperors
issued edicts making opium illegal in 1729, 1799, 1814, and 1831, but
imports grew as smugglers and colluding officials in China sought
profit. Some American merchants entered the trade by smuggling opium from Turkey into China, including Warren Delano Jr., the grandfather of twentieth-century President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Francis Blackwell Forbes; in American historiography this is sometimes referred to as the Old China Trade. By 1833, the Chinese opium trade soared to 30,000 chests. British and American merchants sent opium to warehouses in the free-trade port of Canton, and sold it to Chinese smugglers.
In 1834, the EIC's monopoly on British trade with China ceased,
and the opium trade burgeoned. Partly concerned with moral issues over
the consumption of opium and partly with the outflow of silver, the Daoguang Emperor charged Governor General Lin Zexu with ending the trade. In 1839, Lin published in Canton an open letter to Queen Victoria requesting her cooperation in halting the opium trade. The letter never reached the Queen. It was later published in The Times as a direct appeal to the British public for their cooperation. An edict from the Daoguang Emperor followed on 18March,
emphasising the serious penalties for opium smuggling that would now
apply henceforth. Lin ordered the seizure of all opium in Canton,
including that held by foreign governments and trading companies (called
factories), and the companies prepared to hand over a token amount to placate him. Charles Elliot,
Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, arrived 3 days after
the expiry of Lin's deadline, as Chinese troops enforced a shutdown and
blockade of the factories. The standoff ended after Elliot paid for all
the opium on credit from the British government
(despite lacking official authority to make the purchase) and handed
the 20,000 chests (1,300 metric tons) over to Lin, who had them destroyed at Humen.
Elliott then wrote to London
advising the use of military force to resolve the dispute with the
Chinese government. A small skirmish occurred between British and
Chinese warships in the Kowloon Estuary on 4 September 1839.
After almost a year, the British government decided, in May 1840, to
send a military expedition to impose reparations for the financial
losses experienced by opium traders in Canton and to guarantee future
security for the trade. On 21 June 1840, a British naval force arrived
off Macao and moved to bombard the port of Dinghai. In the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its superior ships and guns to inflict a series of decisive defeats on Chinese forces.
The war was concluded by the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) in 1842, the first of the Unequal treaties between China and Western powers. The treaty ceded the Hong Kong Island and surrounding smaller islands to Britain, and established five cities as treaty ports open to Western traders: Shanghai, Canton, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Xiamen (Amoy).
The treaty also stipulated that China would pay a twenty-one million
dollar payment to Britain as reparations for the destroyed opium, with
six million to be paid immediately, and the rest through specified
installments thereafter. Another treaty the following year gave most favoured nation status to Britain and added provisions for British extraterritoriality, making Britain exempt from Chinese law. France secured several of the same concessions from China in the Treaty of Whampoa in 1844.
The 98th Regiment of Foot at the attack on Chin-Kiang-Foo (Zhenjiang), 21 July 1842, resulting in the defeat of the Manchu government. Watercolour by military illustrator Richard Simkin (1840–1926).
In 1853, northern China was convulsed by the Taiping Rebellion, which established its capital at Nanjing. In spite of this, a new Imperial Commissioner, Ye Mingchen,
was appointed at Canton, determined to stamp out the opium trade, which
was still technically illegal. In October 1856, he seized the Arrow, a ship claiming British registration, and threw its crew into chains. Sir John Bowring, Governor of British Hong Kong, called up Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour's East Indies and China Station fleet, which, on 23 October, bombarded and captured the Pearl River
forts on the approach to Canton and proceeded to bombard Canton itself,
but had insufficient forces to take and hold the city. On 15 December,
during a riot in Canton, European commercial properties were set on fire
and Bowring appealed for military intervention. The execution of a French missionary inspired support from France.
Britain and France now sought greater concessions from China,
including the legalisation of the opium trade, expanding of the
transportation of coolies to European colonies, opening all of China to British and French citizens and exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties. The war resulted in the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin), in which the Chinese government agreed to pay war reparations
for the expenses of the recent conflict, open a second group of ten
ports to European commerce, legalise the opium trade, and grant foreign
traders and missionaries rights to travel within China. After a second phase of fighting which included the sack of the Old Summer Palace and the occupation of the Forbidden City palace complex in Beijing, the treaty was confirmed by the Convention of Peking in 1860.
The theory of imperialism refers to a range of theoretical approaches to understanding the expansion of capitalism into new areas, the unequal development of different countries, and economic systems that may lead to the dominance of some countries over others. These theories are considered distinct from other uses of the word imperialism which refer to the general tendency for empires throughout history to seek power and territorial expansion. The theory of imperialism is often associated with Marxist economics, but many theories were developed by non-Marxists. Most theories of imperialism, with the notable exception of ultra-imperialism, hold that imperialist exploitation leads to warfare, colonization, and international inequality.
Early theories
Marx
Karl Marx did not write about imperialism directly, but inspired many later theories.
While most theories of imperialism are associated with Marxism, Karl Marx never used the term imperialism, nor wrote about any comparable theories.
However many writers have suggested that ideas integral to later
theories of imperialism were present in Marx's writings. For example,
Frank Richards in 1979 noted that already in the Grundrisse "Marx anticipated the Imperialist epoch." Lucia Pradella has argued that there was already an immanent theory of imperialism in Marx's unpublished studies of the world economy.
Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was considered particularly important to later theorists of imperialism, as it seemed to explain why capitalist enterprises consistently require areas of higher profitability to expand into. Marx also noted the need for the capitalist mode of production as a whole to constantly expand into new areas, writing that "‘The need of a constantly expanding market chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."
Marx also argued that certain colonial societies’ backwardness could only be explained through external intervention. In Ireland Marx argued that English repression had forced Irish society to remain in a pre-capitalist mode. In India Marx was critical of the role of merchant capital, which he saw as preventing societal transformation where industrial capital might otherwise bring progressive change.
Marx's writings on colonial societies are often considered by modern
Marxists to contain contradictions or incorrect predictions, even if
most agree he laid the foundation for later understandings of
imperialism.
Like many liberals, Hobson's objection to imperialism was strengthened by his disgust at the imbalance of power in the Boer War.
J. A. Hobson was an English liberal economist whose theory of imperialism was extremely influential among Marxist economists, particularly Vladimir Lenin, and Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy. Hobson is best remembered for his Imperialism: A Study, published 1902, which associated imperialism with the growth of monopoly capital and a subsequent underconsumption crisis. Hobson argued that the growth of monopolies within capitalist countries tends to concentrate capital in fewer hands, leading to an increase in savings, and a corresponding decline in investment. This excessive saving relative to investment leads to a chronic lack of demand, which can be relieved either through finding new territories to invest into, or finding new markets
with greater demand for goods. These two drives result in a need to
safeguard the monopoly's foreign investments, or break up existing protections to better penetrate foreign markets, adding to the pressure to annex foreign countries.
Hobson's opposition to imperialism was informed by his liberalism, particularly the radical liberalism of Richard Cobden and Herbert Spencer. He alleged that imperialism was bad business due to high risk and high costs, as well as being bad for democracy, and morally reprehensible. He claimed that imperialism only benefited a select few individuals, rather than the majority of British citizens, or even the majority of British capitalists. As an alternative, he proposed a proto-Keynesian solution of stimulating demand through the partial redistribution of income and wealth within home markets.
Hobson's ideas were enormously influential, and most later
theories of imperialism were in some way shaped by Hobson's arguments.
Historians Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann argue that Hobson had an enormous influence in the early 20th century among people from all over the world:
Hobson's ideas were not entirely
original; however his hatred of moneyed men and monopolies, his loathing
of secret compacts and public bluster, fused all existing indictments
of imperialism into one coherent system....His ideas influenced German nationalist opponents of the British Empire as well as French Anglophobes and Marxists; they colored the thoughts of American liberals and isolationist critics of colonialism. In days to come they were to contribute to American distrust of Western Europe and of the British Empire. Hobson helped make the British averse to the exercise of colonial rule; he provided indigenous nationalists in Asia and Africa with the ammunition to resist rule from Europe
— Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann, Burden of Empire: An Appraisal of Western Colonialism in Africa South of the Sahara page 59.
By 1911, Hobson had largely reversed his position on imperialism, as
he was convinced by arguments from his fellow radical liberals Joseph Schumpeter, Thorstein Veblen, and Norman Angell,
who argued that imperialism itself was mutually beneficial for all
societies involved, provided it was not perpetrated by a power with a
fundamentally aristocratic, militaristic
nature. This distinction between a benign "industrial imperialism" and a
harmful "militarist imperialism" was similar to the earlier ideas of
Spencer, and would prove foundational to later non-Marxist histories of
imperialism.
A modern steamboat and primitive rafts in the Chilean port of Huasco in the 1850s illustrate the concept of uneven development.
Leon Trotsky began expressing his theory of uneven and combined development in 1906, though the concept would only become prominent in his writing from 1927 onwards.
Trotsky observed that different countries developed and advanced to a
large extent independently from each other, in ways which were
quantitatively unequal (e.g. the local rate and scope of economic growth and population growth)
and qualitatively different (e.g. nationally specific cultures and
geographical features). In other words, countries had their own specific
national history with national peculiarities. At the same time, all the
different countries did not exist in complete isolation from each
other; they were also interdependent parts of a world society, a larger
totality, in which they all co-existed together, in which they shared
many characteristics, and in which they influenced each other through
processes of cultural diffusion, trade, political relations and various "spill-over effects" from one country to another.
In The History of the Russian Revolution, published in
1932, Trotsky tied his theory of development to a theory of imperialism.
In Trotsky's theory of imperialism, the domination of one country by
another does not mean that the dominated country is prevented from
development altogether, but rather that it develops mainly according to
the requirements of the dominating country.
Trotsky's later writings show that uneven and combined development is less of a theory of development economics, and more of a general dialectical category that governs personal, historical, and even biological development. The theory was nonetheless influential in imperialism studies, as it may have influenced passages in Rudolf Hilferding's Finance Capital, as well as later theories of economic geography.
Rudolf Hilferding's Finance Capital, published in 1910, is
considered the first of the "classical" Marxist theories of imperialism
which would be codified and popularized by Nikolai Bukharin and Lenin. Hilferding began his analysis of imperialism with a very thorough treatment of monetary economics and an analysis of the rise of joint stock companies.
The rise of joint stock companies, as well as banking monopolies, led
to unprecedented concentrations of capital. As monopolies took direct
control of buying and selling, opportunities for investment in commerce
declined. This had the effect of essentially forcing banking monopolies
to invest directly in production, as Hilferding writes:
An ever-increasing part of the capital of industry does not belong to the industrialists
who use it. They are able to dispose over capital only through the
banks, which represent the owners. On the other side, the banks have to
invest an ever-increasing part of their capital in industry, and in this
way they become to a greater and greater extent industrial capitalists.
I call bank capital, that is, capital in money form which is actually
transformed in this way into industrial capital, finance capital.
— Hilferding, Finance Capital page 225.
To Hilferding, the Monroe Doctrine was an example of U.S. finance capital exacerbating the territorial division of the world.
Hilferding's finance capital is best understood as a fraction of capital in which the functions of financial capital
and industrial capital are united. The era of finance capital would be
one marked by large companies which are able to raise money from a wide
range of sources. These finance-capital-heavy companies would then seek
to expand into a large area of operations in order to make the most
efficient use of natural resources and, having monopolised that area, erect tariffs on exported goods in order to exploit their monopoly position. This process is summarized by Hilferding as follows:
The policy of finance capital has
three objectives: (1) to establish the largest possible economic
territory; (2) to close this territory to foreign competition
by a wall of protective tariffs, and consequently (3) to reserve it as
an area of exploitation for the national monopolistic combines.
— Hilferding, Finance Capital page 226.
To Hilferding, monopolies exploited all consumers within their
protected areas, not just colonial subjects, however he did believe that
"[v]iolent methods are of the essence of colonial policy, without which
it would lose its capitalist rationale." Thus like Hobson, Hilferding believed that imperialism benefits only a minority of the bourgeoisie.
While acknowledged by Lenin as an important contributor to the
theory of Imperialism, Hilferding's position as finance minister in the Weimar Republic from 1923 discredited him in the eyes of many socialists.
Hilferding's influence on later theories was thus largely transmitted
through Lenin's work, as his own work was rarely acknowledged or
translated, and went out of print several times.
Luxemburg wrote that the Opium wars were typical of European imperialist attempts to penetrate new markets.
Rosa Luxemburg followed Marx's interpretation of the expansion of the capitalist mode of production very closely. In The Accumulation of Capital,
published in 1913, Luxemburg drew on a close reading of Marx to make
several arguments about Imperialism. First, she argued that Marx had
made a logical error in his analysis of extended reproduction, which
would make it impossible for goods to be sold at prices high enough to
cover the costs of reinvestment, meaning that buyers external to the
capitalist system would be required for capitalist production to remain
profitable. Second, she argued that capitalism is surrounded by
pre-capitalist economies, and that competition forces capitalist firms
to expand into these economies and ultimately destroy them. These
competing drives to exploit and destroy pre-capitalist societies led
Luxemburg to the conclusion that capitalism would end once it ran out of
pre-capitalist societies to exploit, leading her to campaign against
war and colonialism.
Luxemburg's underconsumptionist argument was heavily criticised by many Marxist and non-Marxist economists as too crude, although it gained a noted defender in György Lukács.
While Luxemburg's analysis of imperialism did not prove to be as
influential as other theories, she has been praised for urging early
Marxists to focus on the Global South rather than solely on advanced, industrialized countries.
The classical theories of imperialism were written in anticipation of, or in response to, the killing of the First World War.
Prior to the First World War Hobson, as well as Karl Liebknecht had theorized that imperialist states could, in the future, potentially transform into interstate cartels which could more efficiently exploit the remainder of the world without causing warfare in Europe. In 1914 Karl Kautsky
expressed a similar idea, coining the term ultra-imperialism, or a
stage of peaceful cooperation between imperialist powers, where
countries would forego arms races and limit competition.
This implied that warfare is not essential to capitalism, and that
socialists should agitate towards a peaceful capitalism, rather than an
end to imperialism.
Kautsky's idea is often best remembered for Lenin's frequent criticism of the concept. In an introduction to Bukharin's Imperialism and World Economy
for example, Lenin contended that "in the abstract one can think of
such a phase. In practice, however, he who denies the sharp tasks of
to-day in the name of dreams about soft tasks of the future becomes an
opportunist".
Despite being sharply criticized in its own day,
ultra-imperialism has been revived to describe instances of
inter-imperialist cooperation in later years, such as cooperation among capitalist states in the Cold War. Commentators have also pointed out similarities between Kautsky's theory and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's theory of empire, however the authors dispute this.
Bukharin
Bukharin cited the giant landholding companies in GermanKamerun as examples of monopoly companies aligned with a national imperialist bloc.
Nikolai Bukharin's Imperialism and World Economy, written in
1915, primarily served to clarify and refine the earlier ideas of
Hilferding, and frame them in a more consistently anti-imperialist
light. Bukharin's main difference with Hilferding was that rather than a
single process that leads to imperialism (the increasing concentration
of finance capital), Bukharin saw two competing processes that would
create friction and warfare. These were the "internationalization"
of capital (the growing interdependence of the world economy), and the
"nationalization" of capital (the division of capital into national
power blocs). The result of these tendencies would be large national
blocs of capital competing within a world economy, or in Bukharin's words:
[V]arious spheres of the
concentration and organization process stimulate each other, creating a
very strong tendency towards transforming the entire national economy
into one gigantic combined enterprise under the tutelage of the
financial kings and the capitalist state, an enterprise which
monopolizes the national market. . . . It follows that world capitalism,
the world system of production, assumes in our times the following
aspect: a few consolidated, organized economic bodies (‘the great
civilized powers’) on the one hand, and a periphery of underdeveloped
countries with a semi-agrarian or agrarian system on the other.
— Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy pages 73-74.
Competition and other independent market forces would, in this
system, be relatively restrained at the national level, but much more
disruptive at the world level. Monopoly was thus not an end to
competition, but rather each successive intensification of Monopoly
capital into larger blocs would entail a much more intensive form of
competition, at ever larger scales.
Bukharin's theory of imperialism is also notable for reintroducing the theory of a labor aristocracy in order to explain the perceived failure of the Second International. Bukharin argued that increased superprofits from the colonies constituted the basis for higher wages
in advanced countries, causing some workers to identify with the
interests of their state rather than their class. The same idea would be
taken up by Lenin.
Lenin in Switzerland, around the time of writing Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism.
Despite being a relatively small text which sought only to summarize
the earlier ideas of Hobson, Hilferdung and Bukharin, Vladimir Lenin's
pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism is easily the most influential, widely read text on the subject of imperialism.
Lenin's argument differs from previous writers in that rather than viewing imperialism as a distinct policy of certain countries and states (as Bukharin had done, for example),
he saw imperialism as a new historical stage in capitalist development,
and all imperialist policies were simply characteristic of this stage.
The progression into this stage would be complete when:
"(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed
to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a
decisive role in economic life"
"(2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the
creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital’ of a financial oligarchy"
"(3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance"
"(4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share the world among themselves"
"(5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed."
The importance of Lenin's pamphlet has been debated by later writers due to its status within the communist
movement. Some, such as Anthony Brewer, have argued that Imperialism is
a "popular outline" which has been unfairly treated as a "sacred text",
and that many arguments (such as Lenin's contention that industry
requires capital export to survive) are not as well developed as in his
contemporaries’ work.
Others have argued that Lenin's prefiguration of a core-periphery
divide and use of the term "world system" were crucial to the later
development of dependency theory and world-systems theory.
Between the publication of Lenin's Imperialism in 1916 and Paul Sweezy's The Theory of Capitalist Development in 1942 and Paul A. Baran's Political Economy of Growth
in 1957, there was a notable lack of development in the Marxist theory
of imperialism, best explained by the elevation of Lenin's work to the
status of Marxist orthodoxy. Like Hobson, Baran and Sweezy employed an
underconsumptionist line of reasoning to argue that infinite growth of
the capitalist system is impossible. They argued that as capitalism
develops, wages tend to decline, and with them, the total level of
consumption. The ability for consumption to absorb the total productive
output of society is therefore limited, and this output must then be
reinvested elsewhere. Since Sweezy implies that it would be impossible
to continuously reinvest in productive machinery (which would only
increase the output of consumer goods, adding to the initial problem),
there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the need to increase
investments to absorb surplus output, and the need to reduce overall
output to match consumer demand. This problem can, however, be delayed
through investments in unproductive aspects of society (such as the
military), or through capital export.
The
enormous military and research investments of the Cold War can be
explained through a need to solve over-investment resulting from
underconsumption.
In addition to this underconsumptionist argument, Baran and Sweezy
argued that there are two motives for investment in industry: increasing
productive output, and introducing new productive techniques. While in
conventional competitive capitalism, any firm which does not introduce
new productive techniques will usually fall behind and become
unprofitable, in monopoly capitalism, there is actually no incentive to
introduce new productive techniques, as there are no rivals to gain a
competitive advantage over, and thus no reason to render one's own
machinery obsolete. This is a key difference with the earlier
"classical" theories of imperialism, especially Bukharin, as here
monopoly does not represent an intensification of competition but rather
its total suppression. Baran and Sweezy also rejected the earlier claim
that all national industries would form a single "national cartel,"
instead noting that there tended to be a number of monopoly companies
within a country: just enough to maintain a "balance of power."
The connection to imperialist violence then, is that most western
nations have sought to solve their underconsumption crises by investing
heavily into military armaments, to the exclusion of all other forms of
investment. In addition to this, capital exports into the less
concretely divided areas of the world have increased, and monopoly
companies seek protection from their parent states in order to secure
these foreign investments. To Baran and Sweezy, these two factors
explain imperialist warfare and the dominance of developed countries.
Conversely, they explain the underdevelopment of poor nations
through trade flows. Trade flows serve to provide cheap primary goods to
the advanced countries, while local manufacturing in underdeveloped
countries is discouraged through competition with goods from the
advanced countries.
Baran and Sweezy were the first economists to treat the development of
capitalism in the advanced countries as different from its development
in the underdeveloped countries, an outlook influenced by the philosophy
of Frantz Fanon and Herbert Marcuse.
In doing so Baran and Sweezy were the first theorists to
popularize the idea that imperialism is not a force which is both
progressive and destructive, but rather that it is destructive as well
as a barrier to development in many countries. This conclusion proved
influential, and lead to the "underdevelopment school" of economics,
however their reliance on underconsumptionist logic has been criticised
as empirically flawed. Their theory also attracted renewed interest in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
Kwame Nkrumah, former president of Ghana (1960–66), coined the term Neocolonialism, which appeared in the 1963 preamble of the Organisation of African Unity Charter, and was the title of his 1965 book Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah's theory was largely based in Lenin's Imperialism,
and followed similar themes to the classical Marxist theories of
imperialism, describing imperialism as the result of a need to export
crises to areas outside Europe. However unlike the classical Marxist
theories, Nkrumah saw imperialism as holding back the development of the
colonized world, writing:
In place of colonialism, as the
main instrument of imperialism, we have today neo-colonialism... [which]
like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the
capitalist countries... The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign
capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of
the less developed parts of the world. Investment, under
neo-colonialism, increases, rather than decreases, the gap between the
rich and the poor countries of the world. The struggle against
neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed
world from operating in less developed countries. It is also dubious in
consideration of the name given being strongly related to the concept of
colonialism itself. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of
the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the
less developed.
— Nkrumah, Introduction to Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism
Nkrumah's combination of elements from classical Marxist theories of
imperialism with the conclusion that imperialism systematically
underdevelops poor nations would, like the similar writings of Ché Guevara, prove influential among leaders of the non-aligned movement and various national-liberation groups.
Cabral
Amílcar Cabral, leader of the nationalist movement in Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands, developed an original theory of imperialism to better explain the relationship between Portugal
and its colonies. Cabral's theory of history held that there are three
distinct phases of human development. In the first, social structures
are horizontal, lacking private property and classes, and with a low
level of productive forces. In the second, social structures are
vertical, with a class society, private property, and a high level of
productive forces. In the final stage, social structures are once again
horizontal, lacking private property and classes, but with an extremely
high level of productive forces. Cabral differed from historical materialism in that he did not believe that the progression through such historical stages was the result of class struggle, rather that a mode of production
has its own independent character which can effect change, and only in
the second phase of development can class struggle change societies.
Cabral's point was that classless indigenous peoples
have a history of their own, and are capable of social transformation
without the development of classes. Imperialism, then, represented any
barrier to indigenous social transformation, with Cabral noting that
colonial society had failed to develop a mature set of class dynamics.
This theory of imperialism was not influential outside of Cabral's own
movement.
Andre Gunder Frank based his theories on observations of inequality in Latin America, exemplified by cities like São Paulo.
Andre Gunder Frank
was influential in the development of dependency theory, which would
dominate discussions of radical economics in the 1960s and 70s. Like
Baran and Sweezy, and the African theorists of imperialism, Frank
believed that capitalism produces underdevelopment in many areas of the
world. He saw the world as divided into a metropolis and satellite,
or a set of dominant and dependent countries with a widening gap in
development outcomes between them. To Frank, any part of the world
touched by capitalist exchange was described as "capitalist," even areas
of high self-sufficiency or peasant
agriculture, and much of his work was devoted to demonstrating the
degree to which capitalism had penetrated into traditional societies.
Frank saw capitalism as a "chain" of satellite-to-metropolis
relations in which metropolitan industry siphons away a portion of the surplus value
from smaller regional centers, which in-turn siphon value from smaller
centers and individuals. Each metropolis has an effective monopoly
position over the output of its satellites. In Frank's earlier writings
he believed this system of relations extended back to the 16th century, while in his later work (after his adoption of world-systems theory) he believed it extended as far back as the 4th millennium BC.
This chain of satellite-metropolis relations is cited as the
reason for "the development of underdevelopment" in the satellite, a
quantitative retardation in output, productivity and employment. Frank
cited evidence that the outflows of profit from Latin America greatly exceed the investments flowing in the other direction from the United States.
In addition to this transfer of surplus, Frank noted that satellite
economies become "distorted" over time, developing a low-waged, primary
goods-producing industrial sector with few available jobs, leaving much
of the country reliant on pre-industrial production. He coined the term lumpenbourgeoisie to describe comprador capitalists who had risen to reinforce and profit off of this arrangement.
Huey P. Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party developed an original theory of imperialism starting in 1970, which he called intercommunalism.
Newton believed that imperialism had developed into a new stage known
as "reactionary intercommunalism," characterized by the rise of a small
"ruling circle" within the United States which had gained a monopoly on
advanced technology and the education necessary to use it. This ruling
circle had, through American diplomatic and military weight, subverted
the basis for national sovereignty,
rendering national identity an inadequate tool for social change.
Newton declared that nations had instead become a loose collection of
"communities of the world,"
which must build power through survival programs, creating
self-sufficiency and a basis for material solidarity with one another.
These communities (led by a vanguard of the Black lumpenproletariat)
would then be able to join into a universal identity, expropriate the
ruling circle, and establish a new stage known as "revolutionary
intercommunalism," which could itself lead to communism.
Newton was not widely recognized as a scholar in his own time, however intercommunalism gained some influence in the worldwide Panther movement, and was cited as a precursor to Hardt and Negri's theory of empire.
Arghiri Emmanuel’s theory of unequal exchange, popularized in his 1972 book Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade
is considered a major departure from several recurring themes in
Marxist studies of imperialism. Notably it does not rely on an analysis
of monopoly capital, or the expansion of the capitalist mode, instead
positing that free trade between two fully capitalist nations can still
be unequal in terms of the underlying value of trade goods, resulting in
an imperialist transfer.
Arghiri Emmanuel wrote that the intensification of global trade created a hidden transfer of value from poor to rich countries.
Emmanuel based his theory on a close reading of Marx's writings on price, factors of production and wages. He concurred with Piero Sraffa
that differences in wages are the key determinant of differences in
costs of production, and thus of prices. He furthermore noted that
western, developed nations had much higher wages than underdeveloped
ones, which he credited to higher rates of unionization
rather than a difference in productivity, for which he saw no evidence.
This initial difference in wages would then be compounded by the fact
that capital is mobile internationally (allowing the equalization of
prices and profit rates between nations), while labor is not, meaning
wages cannot equalize through competition.
From here, he noted that if western wages are higher, then this
would result in much higher prices for consumer goods, with no change in
the quality or quantity of those goods. Conversely, underdeveloped
nations’ goods would sell for a lower price, even if they were available
in the same quantity and quality as western goods. The result would be a
fundamentally unequal balance of trade,
even if the exchange value of the goods sold is the same. In other
words, core-periphery exchange is always fundamentally "unequal" because
any poor country has to pay more for its imports than it would if wages
were the same, and has to export a greater amount of goods to cover its
costs. Conversely, developed countries are able to receive more imports
for any given export volume.
Emmanuel's theory generated considerable interest through the
1970s, and was incorporated into many later theorists’ work, albeit in a
modified form. Most later writers, such as Samir Amin, believed unequal exchange was a side-effect of differences in productivity between core and periphery, or (in the case of Charles Bettelheim) of differences in organic composition of capital. Emmanuel's arguments around the role of wages in imperialism have been revived in recent years by Zak Cope.
Rodney
Guyanese historian Walter Rodney
was an important link between African, Caribbean, and Western theorists
of imperialism through the 1960s and 70s. Inspired by Lenin, Baran,
Amin, Fanon, Nkrumah and C. L. R. James,
Rodney put forward a unique theory of “capitalist imperialism” that
would gain some influence via his teaching position at the University of Dar es Salaam, and through his books.
Questioning Lenin's periodization
of imperialism, Rodney held that rather than emerging in the 19th
century, imperialism and capitalism were concomitant processes with a
history stretching back to the late middle ages. This capitalist imperialism was tied to the emergence of race, racism,
and anti-blackness, which rationalized brutality and exploitation in
colonial regions. In doing so, this allowed colonial regions to serve as
a “release valve” for European social and economic crises, such as
through exporting unwanted populations as settlers, or overexploiting
colonial regions in such a manner that would provoke revolt if it were
performed in Europe. This was accepted because racialized peoples were
only a “semi-proletariat,” stuck between modes of production, with lower
wages justified through the idea that they could grow their own food
for survival. At the bottom of this system were slaves,
often “a permanent hybrid of peasant and proletarian,” racialized in
such a manner that wages were deemed unnecessary. Through creating a
permanently unsettled global underclass, Europeans had also created a
permanent reserve army of labor, who, once imported into Europe or the Americas, could easily be kept from organizing through racism and stratified wages.
A world map of countries by their trading status
in 2000, using Wallerstein's categories of core countries (blue),
semi-periphery countries (yellow) and periphery countries (red). Based
on a list in Dunn, Kawana, Brewer.
Immanuel Wallerstein argued that any system must be viewed as a
totality, and that most theories of imperialism had hitherto incorrectly
treated individual states as closed systems. Instead, from the 16th
century onwards a world-system
formed through market exchange had developed, displacing the
"minisystems" (small, local economies) and "world-empires" (systems
based on tribute to a central authority) that had existed until that
point. Wallerstein did not treat capitalism as a discrete mode of
production, but rather as the "indivisible phenomenon" behind the
world-system.
The world-system is divided into three tiers of states, the core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery countries.
The defining characteristics of these tiers changed as Wallerstein
adopted new ideas into his world-systems analysis: in his early work,
the difference between these tiers lies in the strength of the state
systems in each country, while in later essays all states serve fundamentally the same purpose as part of an interstate system,
which exists to divide the world into areas differentiated by the
degree to which they benefit from or are harmed by unequal exchange.
To Wallerstein, class analysis amounts to the analysis of the
interests of "syndical groups" within countries, which may or may not
relate to structural positions within the world-economy. While there is
still an objective reality of class, class consciousness tends to
manifest at a state level, or through conflicts of nations or
ethnicities, and may or may not be based in a reality of world-economic
positions (the same is true of bourgeois class consciousness). The
degree to which perceived oppressions reflect objective realities
therefore varies from state-to-state, meaning there are many potential
historical agents rather than just a class-conscious proletariat, as in orthodox Marxism.
Wallerstein suggested that the British Empire was briefly a true global hegemon during the early period of Pax Britannica.
Another key aspect of world-systems theory is the idea of world hegemons,
or countries which gain a "rare and unstable" monopoly over the
interstate system by combining an agro-industrial, commercial, and
financial edge over their rivals. The only countries to have gained such
a hegemony were the Dutch Republic (1620-1672), the United Kingdom
(1815-1873), and the United States (1945-1967). Wallerstein notes that
while it may seem that the United States continues to be a world
hegemon, this is only because the financial power of declining hegemons
tends to outlast their true hegemony. True hegemonies tend to be marked
by free-trade, and political and economic liberalism, and their rise and
decline can be explained through Kondratiev waves, which also correlate to periods of expansion and stagnation in the world system.
Wallerstein helped to establish world-systems theory as an
accepted school of thought, with its own set of research centers and
journals. Both Frank and Amin would go on to adopt Wallerstein's
framework. Other world-systems theorists include Oliver Cox, Giovanni Arrighi, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Beverly Silver, Volker Bornschier, Janet Abu Lughod, Thomas D. Hall, Kunibert Raffer, Theotonio dos Santos, Dale Tomich, Jason W. Moore and others.
World-systems theory has been heavily criticized from a number of angles. A common positivist critique was that world-systems theory tended towards generalization and was not falsifiable. Marxists claim that it gives insufficient weight to social class.
Others criticized the theory for blurring the lines between the state
and business, placing insufficient weight on the state as a unit of
analysis, or placing insufficient weight on the historical effects of culture.
Amin
Samir Amin wrote that an excessive reliance on exports, like a plantation economy, could be a sign of dependency and unequal development.
Samir Amin's main contributions to the study of imperialism are his
theories of "accumulation on a world scale" and of "unequal
development." To Amin, the process of accumulation must be understood on
a world scale, but in a world divided into distinct national social
formations. The process of accumulation tends to exacerbate inequalities
between these social formations, whereupon they become divided into a
core and periphery. Accumulation within the center tends to be
"autocentric," or governed by its own internal dynamic as dictated by
local conditions, prices, and effective demand, in a manner relatively
unchanged since it was first described by Marx. Accumulation in the
periphery, on the other hand, is "extraverted," meaning that it is
conducted in a manner beneficial to core countries, dictated by their
need for goods and raw materials. This extraverted accumulation results
in export specialization, with a large proportion of developing
economies devoted to producing goods to suit foreign demand.
Amin thought that this imperialist dynamic could be overcome by a
process of "de-linking" economies which would sever developing
economies from the global law of value, allowing them to decide on a
"national law of value." This would allow something approaching
autocentric accumulation in poorer countries, for example allowing rural
communities to move towards food sovereignty rather than needing cash crops to export.
Hardt and Negri are widely regarded to have predicted key aspects of the War on Terror.
Post-Marxists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri introduced a new theory of imperialism with their book Empire, published in 2000. Drawing on an eclectic set of inspirations including Newton, Polybius, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Baruch Spinoza, they propose that the modern structure of imperialism described by Lenin has given way to a postmodern Empire constructed among the ruling powers of the world.
Hardt and Negri describe an imperial mode of warfare informed by biopolitics,
in which the enemies of Empire are no longer ideological or national,
but rather enemies will come to include anyone who is reducible to an other,
who is able to be simultaneously banalized and absolutized. Such an
enemy can be both denigrated as a petty criminal (and thus subject to
routine police repression), and elevated to the status of an extreme
existential threat, such as a terrorist.
The construct of Empire is made up of three aspects which correspond to one of Plato's regimes. The United States, NATO, and various high-level intergovernmental organisations constitute a monarchy
that presides over the Empire as its source of sovereign power.
International corporations and various states constitute an oligarchy.
Finally non-governmental organisations and the United Nations constitute a democracy
within the Empire, providing legitimacy. This Empire is so totalizing
that one is incapable of offering resistance apart from pure negation:
the "will to be against," and in so doing becoming part of a multitude.
Hardt and Negri's work gained significant attention in the wake of the September 11 attacks, as well as in the context of the anti-globalization movement, which took on a similarly nebulous character to the pair's proposed multitude.
Vogler
In line
with early Marxist theories of imperialism, the political economist Jan
Vogler defines imperialism as a “strictly hierarchical relationship
between polities that is at least partly (often mostly) based on
coercion and that typically involves some form of economic exchange or
exploitation”, adding that it “can manifest itself differently and
ranges from asymmetrical trade and informal rule to the unmediated and
complete administrative subjugation of colonial territories through an
imperial center”.
In seeking to explain imperialism, he highlights the decisive role of
military and capitalist economic rivalries among great powers on the
European continent. Vogler begins by outlining his theory's assumptions
and describes how psychological processes of social comparison and the
importance of political prestige partly established the desire of rulers
to continuously expand their territory and economic base. Given this
system of incentives, successful expansion by an individual state might
have eventually led to the emergence of a single dominant empire on the
European continent. However, the fragmented character of European
geography and climate in combination with endogenous processes of great
power balancing prevented a single state from permanently gaining a
dominant status. In addition, constant innovation and change in military
technologies became the norm. Under these conditions, relatively
symmetrical military and economic rivalries among major European states
were sustained for long time periods.
Vogler then argues that “[t]hree mechanisms connect [these relatively symmetrical] intra-European rivalries to imperialism”.
The first of the three mechanisms is that the desire for prestige gains
through territorial and economic expansion was increasingly difficult
to satisfy in Europe itself. This was due to strong defensive capacities
and greater parity in weapons technology of states on the continent.
Therefore, beginning with the development of long-distance naval
technology in the fifteenth century, imperial expansion and exploitation
in other world regions, which typically sparked less effective military
resistance, became an attractive alternative form of prestige gain for
rulers. Additionally, sustained military and economic rivalries in
Europe were often very costly and led to exploding sovereign debt. Even
though economic profits from imperialism were not always guaranteed, its
economic potential to help finance sovereign debt was another important
motive for elites. Lastly, Vogler argues that lengthy military
rivalries created powerful domestic interest groups “in the form of
navies and armies that favored imperialism” because it became a credible means of justifying these groups’ permanent and far-reaching access to public resources.
For several centuries, the combination of the described mechanisms
shaped the incentives for imperialism and the economic exploitation of
other world regions by European powers.
Even though all suggested dynamics can be observed in the preindustrial
capitalist era already, intensifying economic competition for raw
materials and export markets stemming from the emergence of industrial
capitalism further amplified them.
Recent development
While
the best-known theories of imperialism were largely developed in the
years 1902–1916, and through the 1960s and 70s with the rise of
dependency and world-systems theories, the study of imperialism
continues across several research centers, journals, and independent
writers. Relevant journals include the Journal of World-Systems Research, the Monthly Review, New Political Economy, Research in Political Economy, Peace, Land and Bread, Ecology and Society, and Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales (in French).
The theory of ecologically unequal exchange involves studying the transfer of ecologically harmful substances like pollution or plastic waste between countries.
Topics in recent studies of imperialism include the role of debt in imperialism, reappraisals of earlier theorists, the introduction of political ecology to the study of imperial borders, and the synthesis of imperialism and ecological studies into the theory of ecologically unequal exchange.
Econometric studies of the past or ongoing effects of imperialism on the Global South, such as the work of Jason Hickel, Dylan Sullivan, and Huzaifa Zoomkawala has brought newfound media attention to imperialism studies.
A topic that continues to generate debate in recent years is the
connection between imperialism and labor aristocracy, an idea introduced
by Bukharin and Lenin (and mentioned by Engels). The debate between Zak
Cope and Charles Post has generated particular interest, and has resulted in two books from Cope linking labor aristocracy to unequal exchange and social imperialism.
Chinese writers’ theories of imperialism are generating renewed interest in the context of the China–United States trade war.
Cheng Enfu and Lu Baolin's theory of "neoimperialism" in particular has
found considerable interest. They hold that a new stage of imperialism
has begun, characterized by monopolies of production and circulation,
the monopoly of finance capital, dollar hegemony and monopolies in intellectual property, an international oligarchic alliance, and a cultural and propagandistic hegemony.
In orthodox Marxism, superprofits are sometimes confused with super
surplus value, which refers to any above-average profits from an
enterprise, such as those gained through a technological advantage,
above-average productivity, or monopoly rents.
In the context of imperialism, however, superprofits usually refers to
any profits which have been extracted from peripheral countries. In
underconsumptionist theories of imperialism, superprofits tend to be a
side-effect of capitalist efforts to avoid crisis, whereas in other
theories, superprofits themselves constitute a motive for imperialist
policies.
Many theories of imperialism, from Hobson to Wallerstein,
have followed an underconsumptionist theory of crisis. The most basic
form of this theory holds that a fundamental contradiction within
capitalist production will cause supply to outpace effective demand. The
usual account of how this leads to imperialism is that the resulting overproduction and overinvestment requires an outlet, such as military spending, capital export, or sometimes stimulating consumer demand in dependent markets.
There is some confusion in regards to Marx's position on underconsumption, as he made statements both in support of and against the theory. Marxist opponents of underconsumptionism, such as Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky and Anthony Brewer,
have pointed out that Marx's account of the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall leaves open the possibility that overproduction can be
solved by investing into the manufacture of productive machinery rather
than consumer goods, and that crises happen due to declining
profitability rather than declining consumption. However Sweezy and Harry Magdoff countered that this would only be a temporary solution, and consumption would continue to decline in the longue durée. John Weeks claimed that the above criticism was unnecessary, as underconsumption was incompatible with aspects of the labour theory of value regardless. Non-Marxist economists typically believe that an oversupply of investment funds resolves itself through declining interest rates, or else that overproduction must be resolved by stimulating aggregate demand.
Considering that underconsumptionism has been criticised from many Marxist perspectives, and largely supplanted by Keynesian or Neoclassical economics
theories in non-Marxist circles, a critique of underconsumption has
frequently been cited to criticise the theory of imperialism as a whole.
However, alternative theories hold that competition, the resultant need
to move into areas of high profitability, or simply the desire to
increase trade (and thus stimulate unequal exchange) are all sufficient
explanations for imperialist policies and superprofits.
Monopoly capital
The many American trusts around the turn of the century, exemplified in this Rockefeller-Morgan "Family Tree" (1904), inspired many early theories of monopoly capital.
Most theorists of imperialism agree that monopolies are in some way
connected to the growth of imperialism. In most theories, "monopoly" is
used in a different manner to the conventional use of the word.
Rather than referring to a total control over the supply of a
particular commodity, monopolization refers to any general tendency
towards larger companies, which win out against smaller competitors
within a country.
"Monopoly capital," sometimes called "finance capital," refers to
the specific kind of capital which such companies wield, in which the
functions of financial (or banking) capital and industrial capital
become merged. Such capital can both be raised or loaned from an
indefinite number of sources, and also be reinvested into a productive
cycle.
Depending on the theory, monopolization can either refer to an
intensification of competition, a suppression of competition, or a
suppression on a national level but intensification on a global level.
All of these can lead to imperialist policies, either by widening the
scope of competition to include competition between international blocs,
by reducing competition to allow for national cooperation, or by
reducing competition within poorer areas owned by a monopoly to such a
degree that development is impossible. Once they have expanded,
monopolies are typically held to gather superprofits in some way, such
as through imposing tariffs, protections, or monopoly-rents.
The use of the term "monopoly" has been criticized as confusing
by some authors, such as Wallerstein who preferred the term
"quasi-monopoly" to refer to such phenomena, since he did not believe
they were true hegemonies.
Classical theories of imperialism have also been criticized for
overstating the degree to which monopolies had won out against smaller
competitors.
Some theories of imperialism also hold that small-scale competitors are
perfectly capable of extracting superprofits through unequal exchange.
Connection to colonialism and warfare
A
shared characteristic of many theories of imperialism is that
colonization represented an attempt to export European crises to areas
where brutality and exploitation was more acceptable.
The theory of imperialism is the basis of most socialist
theories of warfare and international relations, and is used to argue
that international conflict and exploitation will only end with the revolutionary overthrow or gradual erosion of class systems and capitalist relations of production.
The classical theorists of imperialism, as well as Baran and
Sweezy, held that imperialism causes warfare and colonial expansion in
one of two ways. The looming underconsumption crisis in advanced
capitalist nations creates a tendency towards over-production and
over-investment. These two problems can only be resolved either by
investing into something which creates no economic value, or by
exporting productive capital elsewhere. Thus, western nations will tend
to invest into the creation of a military–industrial complex
which can soak up an enormous amount of investments, which in turn
leads to arms races between advanced countries, and a greater likelihood
of small diplomatic incidents and competition over land and resources
turning into active warfare. They will also compete for land in colonial
areas in order to gain a safe place for capital exports, which require
protection from other powers in order to return a profit.
Some modern theories hold that the creation of borders to limit labor mobility is an important objective of colonization and imperialism.
An alternative underconsumptionist explanation of colonialism is that
capitalist nations require colonial areas as a dumping ground for
consumer goods, although there are greater empirical problems with this
view.
Finally, the creation of a social-imperialist ideological camp led by a
labor aristocracy tends to erode working class opposition to wars,
usually by arguing that warfare benefits workers or foreign peoples in
some way.
An alternative to this view is that the tendency for the rate of
profit to fall is itself enough of a motive for warfare and colonialism,
as a rising organic composition of capital in the core countries will
lead to a crisis of profitability in the long run. This then
necessitates the conquest or colonization of underdeveloped areas with a
low organic composition of capital and thus a higher profitability.
Yet another explanation, which is more common in unequal exchange
and world-systems theories, is that warfare and colonialism is used to
assert the power of core countries, divide the world into areas with
different wages or levels of development, and strengthen boundaries to
limit labor mobility
or the secure flow of trade. This ensures that capital can remain more
mobile than labor, which allows for the extraction of superprofits via
unequal exchange.
Most earlier writers on imperialism favored the view that imperialism
had a contradictory effect on colonized nations’ development,
simultaneously building up their productive forces, better integrating
them into a world economy and providing education, while also bringing
warfare, economic exploitation, and political repression to negate class
struggle. In other words, the classical theory of imperialism believed
that the development of capitalism in colonial societies would mirror
its development in Europe, simultaneously bringing chaos, but also a
chance at a socialist future through the creation of a working class.
By the postwar period, this view had declined in popularity, as
many African and Afro-Caribbean writers began to note that a class
society similar to Europe had failed to develop, and, as Fanon suggested, the rules of a developing base and superstructure may be inverted in the colonies.
This more pessimistic view of imperialism influenced postwar
theories of imperialism, which have together been referred to as the
"underdevelopment school."
Such theories hold that all development is relative, and that any
development in the west must be matched by underdevelopment in colonial
areas. This is often explained through core and peripheral countries
having fundamentally different processes of accumulation, such as in
Amin's "autocentric" and "extraverted" accumulation.
Both views have been criticized for failing to account for
exceptions to the rule, such as peripheral countries which are able to
pursue successful industrialization initiatives, core countries which
pursue deindustrialization despite possessing a favorable position in the world economy, or peripheral countries which have remained relatively unchanged over decades.
All theories of imperialism have had some connection to the process
of internationalization, either through capital accumulation, or the
creation of other international connections. Bukharin, for example,
noted that this process was contradictory, with monopoly blocs becoming
more connected to nation-states even as the world economy itself became
more interconnected and internationalized.
Frank noted that a branching "chain" of economic links had extended
from metropoles to smaller satellite economies, leaving no area truly
disconnected from capitalism.
Bukharin and Lenin blamed the failure of the Second International to effectively oppose the First World War on the problem of labor aristocracy.
Many theories of imperialism have been used to explain a perceived tendency towards reformism, chauvinism,
or social-imperialism among the labor aristocracy, a privileged section
of the working population in core countries, or alternatively the whole
population. According to Eric Hobsbawm, the term was coined by Engels in an 1885 introduction to The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844,
but it described a phenomenon which was already a familiar topic in
English socio-political debate. Engels identified the labor aristocracy
as a small stratum of artisans organized into craft unions,
who benefited from Britain's industrial world monopoly. Bukharin and
Lenin built upon Engels short description to conclude that all
imperialist monopolies create superprofits, a portion of which goes
towards higher wages for labour aristocrats as a "bribe." The labor
aristocrats and their craft unions then seek to defend their privileged
position through taking leadership positions in the labour movement,
advocating for higher wages for themselves, or advocating for social
imperialism.
Lenin blamed these labor aristocrats for many of the perceived failings of the labor movement, including economism, a belief in revolutionary spontaneity and a distrust of vanguard parties. Lenin also blamed the labour aristocrats’ social chauvinism and opportunism for the collapse of the Second International,
arguing that the labor movement had to abandon the highest strata of
workers to "go down lower and deeper, to the real masses."
Since Lenin's time, other theorists have radicalized the theory
of labor aristocracy to include whole populations, or even whole groups
of countries. Wallerstein's semi-peripheral countries have been
described as an international labor aristocracy which serves to diffuse
global antagonisms.
Zak Cope has adapted the theory of labor aristocracy to argue that the
entire population of the core benefits from unequal exchange, historical
imperialism and colonialism, direct transfers, and illicit financial flows in the form of welfare, higher wages, and cheaper commodity prices, an idea criticized by Charles Post.
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