Anti-imperialism: the highest stage of class-struggle

By Sammy Ismail
Source: Al Mayadeen English
10 Jun 2023 00:25
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A review of Vladimir Lenin's "Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism" (1916).

Anti-imperialism: the highest stage of class-struggle

Imperialism, as introduced by the theorists of scientific socialism, stands as one of the most pertinent concepts for studying contemporary geopolitics. Generally, imperialism is understood manifestly as the powerful states' attempt at subjugating other nations. However, in the lore of scientific socialism, imperialism is unpacked in the context of the continuous development of the material conditions of human society throughout history.

Historical Materialism Framing the Development of Society

Historical Materialism rationalizes the progress of society throughout history as being driven by social contradictions, i.e. conflicts of interests (mainly class conflicts). Each stage of history holds a burgeoning social contradiction between two primary social classes: first, it was masters and slaves, then feudal lords and serfs, and later bourgeois and proletariat. Classes were molded by violence, i.e. violence was employed to enforce a system of relations of production.

Politics, morality, and social organization were then constructed as superstructures to this economic basis (the molded relations of production). In primitive communal societies, the invention of weapons stratified the initially pacifist society of hunters and gatherers into a society of masters and slaves. Slave society saw the birth of the first form of class struggle between slaves and masters. This contradiction, alongside other material factors like the invention of agriculture, drove slave society to develop into a feudal society. The ruling class, the masters, transformed into a class of feudal lords that conceded to the former slaves their freedom. Under feudal society, masters no longer owned the slaves, instead, the feudal lords owned the lands which the serfs farmed and were thus entitled to its proceedings.

Later the bourgeois who had accumulated sizeable fortunes from international trade overthrew the feudal lords as the ruling class and brought about capitalism. Feudal society was overthrown by an increasingly wealthy bourgeois class that found feudal relations, which were based on inherited wealth and land, to be too restrictive for their enterprises. The bourgeois capitalists organized society around private property on which they built factories worked by wage laborers to sell the products of whom in the markets where they competed with other capitalists to attract consumers (Marx, 1848).

Capitalism Steadily Developing into Imperialism

Imperialism which manifests ultimately as military violence derives its vehemence fundamentally from the monopolistic development of capitalism (Lenin, 1916). The free market inevitably developed to affirm its negation: monopolies. The incentive of maximizing profit, which is advertised to drive the free market, inevitably brings about the demise of the free market. Competition, by striving for good quality and cheap prices to attract consumers, was eventually discarded in favor of monopolization which offers a less risky and more rewarding margin of profit.

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The contradiction of inter-capitalist competition was an unsustainable state of the economy and was thus poised for resolution. As an outcome of the burgeoning competition, one capitalist's share of the market, and by extension share of material wealth, fell in favor of the other; the former was banished from the capitalist class and the latter was promoted within the ranks of the capitalist class. Aggregately, this dynamic of banishment-promotion created disproportionately rich (in material wealth) and influential (in the market) capitalists. Richer and more influential capitalists are confronted with less rich and less influential capitalists who are more easily neutralized. The smaller capitalists temporarily enjoy the bliss of exploiting workers until they're banished by the bigger capitalists to whom they forsake their share of the market. Slowly the market, and by extension wealth, grows to be concentrated in the hands of the few who grow increasingly richer developing cartels with their peers and networks of subsidiaries with the smaller capitalists.

The Illusion of Choice © Photo : http://imgur.com (Sputnik)

After industrial capital was merged with bank capital to create financial capital which statically generates profit from accumulated interests off of loans, the capital was then married to the state which granted the capitalists access to an all-powerful apparatus. Through government and on the ruins of the free market, the capitalists then crowned themselves as oligarchs. In their access to the state's capacity to legitimately employ violence and taxation, the oligarchs protected and proliferated their wealth. More importantly, they were more efficiently capable of internationalizing their enterprise of maximizing profit: to appropriate more natural resources, exploit more workers, and sell their products in more markets (Lenin, 1916).

Thus imperialism was consolidated following the development of capitalism: from free market competition into monopolistic capitalism then merging with banks and finally the state. Imperialism describes the epoch of capitalism where the capitalists spearhead states as oligarchs aspiring to plunder the world to accumulate profit.

The oligarchs' enterprise for maximizing profit by exploiting weaker nations manifested itself in colonialism then compradorialism and recently neo-compradorialism. In their brutal aspiration to increase profit, the oligarchs found themselves in competition with the oligarchs of other empires and other smaller capitalists.

The international inter-capitalist competition quickly devolved into violence manifesting itself (most notably) as The First World War. Similar to how the contradiction of capitalism on a national scale was resolved in monopolies (or more accurately in oligopolies), the contradiction of early-stage imperialism, international inter-capitalist competition, was resolved in the economic and territorial partition of the world as spheres of influence between the major imperialist powers.

In the Second World War, after losing the First World War, Germany rebelled against the partitioning of the world which granted the German oligarchy little benefits in the international regime. After its defeat by the Allies and the exhaustion of Europe, the partitioning of the world was even more monopolistically divided in favor of the United States. By the end of the Second World War, the United States, as the front for the American oligarchy, had proclaimed itself as the primary hegemon of the international order contended only by the USSR and the socialist bloc. After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the socialist bloc, the US consolidated itself more sharply as the unilateral hegemonic imperialist superpower flanked by Europe and Japan (Samir Amin, 1997).

Anti-imperialism Resolving the Central Contradiction of Late-Stage Capitalism

From the lens of Historical Materialism, political practice is defined primarily in bifurcation as "reactionary" or "progressive". A progressive political action promotes the development of society and triumphs in the liberation of the people by hastening the resolution of social contradictions. A reactionary political action opposes the development of human society and by extension the liberation of the people which manifests as an attempt to maintain the status quo; Reactionary forces aim to perpetuate the social contradiction to garner profits off of exploiting people as much as possible for as long as possible.

Capitalism hitherto is the most advanced stage of human society, and it has developed to be more sophisticated over the years culminating eventually in imperialism. The contradiction of imperialism is bipartite. Imperialism plays out endogenously and exogenously with the former preceding the latter: such that imperialism grows out of capitalism whereby exploitation is exported to become international.

Being the most advanced stage of history isn't synonymous, however, with having the most potential to develop human society toward liberation. On the contrary, capitalism is well past its heydays of developing human society toward liberation, the persistence of capitalism has manifested in the extensive exploitation of people: appropriating the surplus value of their labor not only through the manipulative nature of wage-labor but also through privatized welfare, taxation which converges into the wealth of oligarchs, and interests on loans which steadily leech from their limited incomes. More so it has prompted deadly wars to loot the natural resources of foreign nations, exploit their cheap labor, and fuel military industries.

The increasingly exploitative nature of imperialist capitalism is what drives the contradiction toward resolution. It radicalizes the masses of people towards revolting against the dire social order which has increasingly impoverished them in favor of the increased accumulated wealth of the oligarchs. In a way, capitalism in itself brings about its own demise; it brutally expands at the expense of the workers (who drive it) resulting in an eventual incompatibility between the system and those who work the system.

Such is the silver lining of historical materialism; capitalism is not a sustainable social order and its destined to dissolve in favor of the liberation of the people by virtue of the contradiction between the few oligarchs’ aspiration to maximize profit and the workers’ aspiration for well-being. The piquing contradiction of imperialist capitalism is the clash between the self-interest of the few oligarchs and the self-interest of the masses of working people. This contradiction is inclined to be resolved in favor of the latter given the asymmetrical magnitude which the latter pole holds.

The silver lining of historical materialism is that the more ferociously and violently imperialist capitalism expands the more inclined it is to fold onto itself so that the liberation of the people may be realized. Thus, Lenin assesses imperialism as moribund capitalism: capitalism in decay.

Imperialism, despite being moribund capitalism, is a complex social order of exploitation and thus corresponds to a complex counter-strategy for it to be combated. Contending imperialist capitalism is perhaps best represented by Dominquo Losurdo's tree diagram.

Domenico Losurdo in China: An Insight into the State of Marxist Education and the CPC (2020)

In his study of Marxist education in China, Losurdo draws a distinction between the Chinese Marxist tradition of attending to social contradictions in contemporary capitalist society to that of the Western liberal tradition (which prioritizes private property, civil rights, and identity politics respectively).

The novel significance of Losurdo's tree is that it simplistically captures the complex contradiction of Imperialism. Not only does his proposition serve as a descriptive structuring of the contradiction of imperialism, but also sets the blueprint for resolving this contradiction by formalizing it in the tree-diagram analogy.

Losurdo structures out the resolution of the contradiction of imperialism toward the liberation of the people into 3 layers: sovereignty (liberation from hegemony), socioeconomic well-being (liberation from exploitative financial restraints), and civil rights (liberation from customs and norms which stifle self-realization and enjoyment of life).

In the early stages of capitalism, national class struggle was the central contradiction into which the efforts of the progressive forces were expected to be directed. However, in light of the ferocious development of capitalism into imperialism, the struggle for national liberation was promoted as the primary social contradiction through which progressive forces would contend imperialist oligarchs towards the eventual national liberation of people.