In chemistry, primarily organic and computational chemistry, a stereoelectronic effect is an effect on molecular geometry, reactivity, or physical properties due to spatial relationships in the molecules' electronic structure, in particular the interaction between atomic and/or molecular orbitals. Phrased differently, stereoelectronic effects can also be defined as the geometric constraints placed on the ground and/or transition states of molecules that arise from considerations of orbital overlap. Thus, a stereoelectronic effect explains a particular molecular
property or reactivity by invoking stabilizing or destabilizing
interactions that depend on the relative orientations of electrons (bonding or non-bonding) in space.
Stereoelectronic effects present themselves in other well-known interactions. These include important phenomena such as the anomeric effect and hyperconjugation. It is important to note that stereoelectronic effects should not be misunderstood as a simple combination of steric effects and electronic effects.
Founded on a few general principles that govern how orbitals
interact, the stereoelectronic effect, along with the steric effect, inductive effect, solvent effect, mesomeric effect, and aromaticity, is an important type of explanation for observed patterns of selectivity, reactivity, and stability in organic chemistry.
In spite of the relatively straightforward premises, stereoelectronic
effects often provide explanations for counterintuitive or surprising
observations. As a result, stereoelectronic factors are now commonly
considered and exploited in the development of new organic methodology
and in the synthesis of complex targets. The scrutiny of stereoelectronic effects has also entered the realms of biochemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry in recent years.
A stereoelectronic effect generally involves a stabilizing
donor-acceptor (i.e., filled bonding-empty antibonding, 2-electron
2-orbital) interaction. The donor is usually a higher bonding or nonbonding orbital and the acceptor is often a low-lying antibonding orbital
as shown in the scheme below. Whenever possible, if this
stereoelectronic effect is to be favored, the donor-acceptor orbitals
should have (1) a small energy gap
and (2) be geometrically well disposed for interaction. In particular,
this means that the shapes of the donor and acceptor orbitals
(including π or σ symmetry and size of the interacting lobes) must be
well-matched for interaction; an antiperiplanar orientation is especially favorable. Some authors require stereoelectronic effects to be stabilizing. However, destabilizing donor-donor (i.e., filled bonding-filled
antibonding, 4-electron 2-orbital) interactions are occasionally invoked
and are also sometimes referred to as stereoelectronic effects,
although such effects are difficult to distinguish from generic steric
repulsion.
Trend of different orbitals
Take the simplest CH2X–CH3 system as an example; the donor orbital is σ(C–H) orbital and the acceptor is σ*(C–X). When moving from fluorine to chlorine, then to bromine, the electronegativity of the halogen and the energy level of the σ*(C–X) orbitals decreases. Consequently, the general trend of acceptors can be summarized as:
π*(C=O)>σ*(C–Hal)>σ*(C–O)>σ*(C–N)>σ*(C–C), σ*(C–H). For
donating orbitals, the nonbonding orbitals, or the lone pairs, are
generally more effective than bonding orbitals due to the high energy
levels. Also, different from acceptors, donor orbitals require less
polarized bonds. Thus, the general trends for donor orbitals would be:
n(N)>n(O)>σ(C–C),
σ(C–H)>σ(C–N)>σ(C–O)>σ(C–S)>σ(C–Hal).
Stereoelectronic effect can be directional in specific cases. The radius of sulfur is much larger than the radius of carbon and oxygen. Thus the differences in C–S bond distances generate a much-amplified difference in the two stereoelectronic effects in 1,3-dithiane (σ(C–H) → σ*(C–S)) than in 1,3-dioxane(σ(C–H) → σ*(C–O)). The differences between C–C and C–S bonds shown below causes a
significant difference in the distances between C–S and two C–H bonds.
The shorter the difference is, the better the interaction and the
stronger the stereoelectronic effect.
Influence on stability
If there is an electropositive substituent (e.g. –SiR3, –SnR3, –HgR, etc.) at the β-position of carbocation,
the positive charge could be stabilized which is also due largely to
the stereoelectronic effect (illustrated below using –SiR3 as an
example). The orientation of the two interacting orbitals can have a
significant effect on the stabilization effect (σ(C–Si) → empty p
orbital), where antiperiplanar (180°) > perpendicular (90°) > syn
(0°).
Influence on conformation
Gauche effect
One structural consequence of acyclic systems due to the stereoelectronic effect is the gauche effect. In 1,2-difluoroethane,
despite the steric clash, the preferred conformation is the gauche one
because σ(C–H) is a good donor and σ*(C–F) is a good acceptor and the
stereoelectronic effect (σ(C–H) → σ*(C–F)) requires the energy minimum
to be gauche instead of anti.
This gauche effect and its impact on conformation are important
in biochemistry. For example, in HIF-α subunit fragments containing (2S,4R)-4-hydroxyproline, the gauche interaction favors the conformer that can bind to the active site of pVHL. pVHL mediates the proteasomal degradation of HIF1A and with that the physiological response to hypoxia.
Special effects of fluorine substituent
Stereoelectronic effects can have a significant influence in pharmaceutical research. Generally, the substitution of hydrogen by fluorine could be regarded as a way to tune both the hydrophobicity
and the metabolic stability of a drug candidate. Moreover, it can have a
profound influence on conformations, often due to stereoelectronic
effects, in addition to normal steric effects resulting from the larger
size of the fluorine atom. For instance, the ground state geometries of
anisole (methoxybenzene) and (trifluoromethoxy)benzene differ
dramatically. In anisole, the methyl group prefers to be coplanar with the phenyl group, while (trifluoromethoxy)benzene favors a geometry in which the [C(aryl)–C(aryl)–O–C(F3)] dihedral angle is around 90°. In other words, the O–CF3 bond is perpendicular to the plane of the phenyl group.
Further studies illustrate that even for only one or two hydrogen
atoms in a methyl group being replaced by a fluorine atom, the
distortion in the structure can also be significant, with the
[C(aryl)–C(aryl)–O–C(H2F)] dihedral angle in the energy minimized structure being around 24° and the [C(aryl)–C(aryl)–O–C(HF2)] dihedral angle 33°.
Influence on reaction selectivity
Reductive cyclizations
Although the energy difference between coplanar anisole and its isomer is quite large, the rotation between the O–CH3 bond becomes favorable when the electronic properties of methoxy group on aromatic rings need to be altered to stabilize an unusual intermediate or a transition state. In the following reaction, the regioselectivity
could be rationalized as the out-of-plane rotation of the O–C bond
which changes the methoxy group from an in-plane donor group to an
out-of-plane acceptor group.
The intermediate of the above reaction is the di-anion and the
stereoelectronic effect that stabilizes this intermediate over the other
one is the fact that the anionic charge at the para position could
delocalize to the oxygen atom via orbital interaction: π(benzene) →
σ*(O–CH3).
Hydrogenation
Even remote substituents on the benzene ring can affect the electron density on the aromatic ring and in turn influence the selectivity. In the hydrogenation of ketones using CBS catalysts, the ketone coordinates to the boron atom with the lone pair
on the oxygen atom. In the following example, the inductive influence
of the substituents can lead to differentiation of the two sp2 lone pairs on the oxygen atom.
The relevant stereoelectronic interaction in the starting material is the nO → σ*(Ccarbonyl–Caryl) interaction. The electron-withdrawing substituent on the benzene ring depletes the electron density on the aromatic ring and thus makes the σ*(Ccarbonyl–Caryl(nitro)) orbital a better acceptor than σ*(Ccarbonyl–Caryl(methoxy)).
These two stereoelectronic interactions use different lone pairs on the
oxygen atom (the one antiperiplanar to the σ* in question for each),
leading to lone pairs with different electron densities. In particular,
the enhanced depletion of electron density from the lone pair
antiperiplanar to the 4-nitrophenyl group leads to weakened ability for
that lone pair to coordinate to boron. This in turn results in the lone
pair antiperiplanar to the 4-methoxyphenyl binding preferentially to the
catalyst, leading to well-defined facial selectivity. Under optimized
conditions, the product is formed with excellent levels of
enantioselectivity (95% ee).
Influence on thermodynamics
Influence on equilibrium
The stereoelectronic effect influences the thermodynamics of equilibrium. For example, the following equilibrium could be achieved via a cascade of pericyclic reactions.
Despite very similar structures, one of the two isomers is
strongly favored over the other because of a stereoelectronic effect.
Since the σ*C-C orbital adjacent to the electron-withdrawing carbonyl group is lower in energy and is therefore a better acceptor than the σ*C-C orbital adjacent to the methoxy, the isomer in which the nO(σ) lone pair is able to donate into this lower-energy antibonding orbital will be stabilized (orbital interaction illustrated).
Another example of the preference in the equilibrium within the
area of pericyclic reaction is shown below. The stereoelectronic effect
that affect the equilibrium is the interaction between the delocalized
“banana bonds” and the empty p orbital on the boron atom.
Influence on resonance structures
In another case, the stereoelectronic effect can result in an
increased contribution of one resonance structure over another, which
leads to further consequences in reactivity. For 1,4-benzoquinone
monoxime, there are significant differences in the physical properties
and reactivities between C2-C3 double bond and C5-C6 double bond. For
instance, in the 1H NMR, 3J23 higher than 3J56.[16] The C2-C3 double bond also selectively undergoes Diels–Alder reaction with cyclopentadiene, despite the increased steric hindrance on that side of the molecule. These data illustrate an increased contribution of resonance structure B over structure A. The authors argue that the donation from nN to σ*C4-C3
orbital lengthens the C4–C3 bond (C4 is the carbon bearing the
nitrogen substituent), which reduces the p-p overlap between these two
atoms. This in turn decreasing the relative importance of structure A which has a double bond between C4 and C3.
Application in asymmetric Diels–Alder reactions
In the asymmetric Diels–Alder reactions, instead of using chiral
ligands or chiral auxiliaries to differentiate the side selectivity of
the dienolphiles, the differentiation of face selectivity of the dienes (especially for cyclopentadiene derivatives) using stereoelectronic effects have been reported by Woodward since 1955. A systematic research of facial selectivity using substituted
cyclopentadiene or permethylcyclopentadiene derivatives have been
conducted and the results can be listed as below.
The stereoelectronic effect affecting the outcome of the facial
selectivity of the diene in the Diels–Alder reaction is the interaction
between the σ(C(sp2)–CH3) (when σ(C(sp2)–X) is a better acceptor than a donor) or σ(C(sp2)–X) (when σ(C(sp2)–X) is a better donor than an acceptor) and the σ* orbital of the forming bond between the diene and the dienophile.
If the two geminal substituents are both aromatic rings with
different substituents tuning the electron density, the differentiation
of the facial selectivity is also facile where the dienophile approaches
the diene anti to the more electron-rich C–C bond where the
stereoelectronic effect, in this case, is similar to the previous one.
The ring opening of cyclobutene under heating conditions can have two products: inward and outward rotation.
The inward rotation transition state of the structure shown below is relatively favored for acceptor R substituents (e.g. NO2) but is especially disfavored by donor R substituents (e.g. NMe2).
Stereoelectronic effect versus steric clash
Sometimes, stereoelectronic effects can win over extreme steric clash. In a similar cyclobutene ring-opening reaction, the trimethylsilyl group,
which is very bulky, still favors the inward rotation. The
stereoelectronic effect, which is the interaction shown above when the
acceptor orbital is the σ*(Si–CH3), appears to be a more
predominant factor in determining the reaction selectivity against the
steric hindrance and even wins over the penalty of the disrupted
conjugation system of the product due to steric clash.
Furthermore, the acceptor orbitals are not limited to the
antibonding orbitals of carbon-heteroatom bonds or the empty orbitals;
in the following case, the acceptor orbital is the σ*(B–O) orbital. In
the six-membered ring transition state, the stereoelectronic interaction
is σ(C–X) → σ*(B–O).
Stereoelectronic effects in biomolecules
Molecular recognition events mediated through orbital interactions
are critical in a number of biological processes such as enzyme
catalysis. Stabilizing interactions between proteins and carbohydrates in
glycosylated proteins also exemplify the role of stereoelectronic
effects in biomolecules.
Theories of imperialism offer a range of theoretical approaches to understanding (for example) 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. While some theories of imperialism were developed by non-Marxists, other theories stem from Marxist economics. Many theories of imperialism, with the notable exception of ultra-imperialism, hold that imperialist exploitation leads to warfare, colonization, and international inequality.
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 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
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. Hobson's theory of imperialism was extremely influential among Marxist economists, particularly Vladimir Lenin, and Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy.
Early Marxist 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, dependency, super-exploitation and unequal exchange.
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, ranks as the first of the "classical" Marxist
theories of imperialism; it would be codified and popularized by Nikolai Bukharin and by 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
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. Hilferding summarizes this process 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
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 Lenin acknowledged him 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
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, Hilferding 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.
Postwar Marxist theories
Baran and Sweezy
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 after the 2008 financial crisis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hardt and Negri are widely regarded to have predicted key aspects of the war on terror.
Post-MarxistsMichael 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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