Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Capitalism and Imperialism

KOREA COLUMN 20

Capitalism and Imperialism

As Marx explained in The Communist Manifesto, capitalism is a system which is subject to constant change and development. ‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society… Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions… distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all others.’

In the run up to the First World War, i.e. twenty five to thirty years after Marx’s death, it became clear to most of the leading Marxist theorists that capitalism had entered a new stage of development, distinct and different in various ways from the capitalism analysed by Marx in Capital. Since one of the most obvious characteristics of the period was the struggle between the so-called ‘Great Powers’ (Britain, France, Germany, Russia etc.) to take over and colonise virtually the whole world, the term ‘imperialism’ was widely adopted as the name for this new phase of capitalism. Analysis of imperialism became an important task for Marxism, and that task became even more pressing when rivalry between the imperialist powers erupted into the mass slaughter of world war – the most destructive conflict in human history up to that point.

Many leading Marxists of the time – Hilferding, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Bukharin, and Lenin – applied themselves to this project. Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910), Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital (1915), and Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy(1916), were particularly important contributions to an ongoing debate, but what was to prove by far the most influential analysis was provided by Lenin in his brochure Imperialism – the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin’s work had significant limitations. By his own account it was only a ‘popular outline’ of the subject and, because it was designed to get past the Tsarist censorship, it dealt only with the economic features of imperialism and refrained from drawing political conclusions. Nevertheless it provided an extraordinarily clear and concise summary of imperialism’s essential characteristics and structure and of the theoretical underpinning of Lenin’s political opposition to the war and to imperialism, which became known by other means.

For Lenin ‘ Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general’ but it was also distinguished by five main features:

1. The replacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly and the domination of economic life by giant monopolies, cartels, trusts etc.

2. The merger of bank capital and industrial capital to produce ‘finance capital’ and the emergence of a financial oligarchy

3. A shift from the export of goods (typical of the previous phase of capitalism) to the export of capital, particularly to economically backward countries where profits are high, due to a scarcity of capital, and cheap labour, land and raw materials

4. The formation of international capitalist monopolies, which operate across the globe and divide the world among themselves.

5. Alongside this economic division, the complete territorial division of the world among the Great Powers, so that further expansion, further acquisition of colonies, was possible only through the forcible repartitioning of the world.

Clearly Lenin’s analysis both offered a Marxist explanation of the First World War, and supported his revolutionary opposition to it. Since war was the necessary consequence of imperialism and imperialism was capitalism in its latest stage, any ‘peace’ on a capitalist basis would only be a ‘truce’ before the next war. Real peace could be won only by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

Throughout this analysis Lenin was keen to stress his differences with Kautsky, widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on Marxism, but whom Lenin viewed as a traitor since his failure to oppose the War in August 1914. Kautsky argued that imperialism was not a ‘stage’ of capitalism as such, or even an economic necessity for capitalism as a whole, but merely a ‘policy’ adopted under the influence of particular pro-imperialist capitalists. He also suggested that it was possible, even likely, that capitalism would soon enter a new ‘ultra-imperialist’ phase in which competition and conflict between rival monopolies and states would give way to agreement and peaceful co-operation. Lenin insisted that such views were both theoretically false, completely separating the politics of imperialism from its economics, and politically disastrous, blunting the struggle against war, imperialism and capitalism and leading directly to opportunism, reformism and class collaboration by sowing illusions in the possibility of a peaceful non- imperialist capitalism, freed of its contradictions.

Lenin’s economic analysis of imperialism must also be seen in the context of his political position on the right of oppressed nations to self-determination. He had first developed this position in relation to the many oppressed nationalities within the Tsarist Empire – Latvians, Georgians, Ukrainians etc. Lenin insisted that revolutionaries in the oppressor country, i.e. Russia, had an absolute duty to defend the right of oppressed nations to secede if they chose to do so, and that this was the only basis on which the international unity of the working class could be achieved. Lenin extended this position to apply to colonial countries in general, arguing that imperialism would inevitably generate anti- imperialist struggles from Ireland to China, and that these would play a vital role in weakening the imperialist powers and assisting their overthrow by the working class. It was therefore necessary to establish an international alliance between the working class and the oppressed nations and people’s of the world against imperialism (without, of course, abandoning independent revolutionary socialist organisation).

The ninety one years since the publication of Lenin’s Imperialism have obviously witnessed enormous further changes in world capitalism, economically and politically – the depression of the thirties, the rise (and then fall) of fascism and Stalinism, the Second World War, the Cold war, the permanent arms economy and the post war boom, the retreat from colonialism, the return of crises in the seventies, globalisation and others too numerous to mention here. At times elements in Lenin’s analysis, e.g. the export of capital to underdeveloped countries, have become less relevant, and elements emphasised by other Marxists, such as the drawing together of the state and capital pointed to by Bukharin, have become more relevant. Nevertheless it is astonishing how well the core of Lenin’s analysis has stood the test of time and how much of it still applies to the world today.

We still live in a world dominated by giant capitalist corporations (far larger, of course, than in Lenin’s day) and imperialist states. Despite the illusions, peddled by the system’s ideologists, in a peaceful ‘new world order’ or a conflict free ‘end of history’ following the fall of the Soviet Union, or in the abolition of poverty and war by capitalist globalisation, imperialism remains warlike and anti-imperialist revolt grows. Despite the existence, in the shape of the US, of a single imperialist superpower, that power is already obliged to strategise against potential future threats such as China, or a resurgent Russia, and has already over reached itself in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, of course, from our side, uncompromising opposition to imperialism and imperialist war remains absolutely central to socialist politics.

John Molyneux

13 April 2007

The Theory of the Revolutionary Party

KOREA COLUMN 19

The theory of the Revolutionary Party

The most important of the many contributions to Marxist theory after Marx is, in my opinion, the theory of the revolutionary party developed by Lenin. What makes this theory so important is, first, that history has shown that without such a party the socialist revolution cannot be victorious and, second, that this theory affects and transforms every aspect of socialist activity in the here and now.

Before setting out the positive features of the Leninist theory of the party, it is perhaps necessary to say what the theory is not. It is not simply the idea that to struggle effectively the working class needs to be organized into a political party. This was well understood by Marx and by most Marxists and socialists long before Lenin and has continued to be an article of faith of most reformists and non – Leninist socialists subsequent to Lenin.

Nor is it some special organizational formula, such as ‘democratic centralism’. The principle that a socialist party should be internally democratic in discussing and forming policy but united in action in implementing that policy was indeed adopted by the Bolshevik Party and other Leninist organizations but it was not invented by Lenin, not a fixed organizational structure or regime, and certainly not the key distinguishing or defining characteristic of the Leninist party.

What was distinctively Leninist was a new conception of the relationship between the party and the class. This conception was not arrived at by Lenin in a single moment of theoretical inspiration, nor is it systematically set out in any single Lenin text. Rather it was developed in practice, by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, before it was expounded theoretically. With hindsight we can say that this conception rested on the combination of two key principles:

1. The independent organization of a party consisting wholly of revolutionary

socialists

2. The establishment and maintenance of the closest possible links between the independent revolutionary and the mass of the working class.

Prior to Karl Marx there existed two models of socialist activity. The first, drawn from the French Revolution and based on the Jacobins, was of a secret club or conspiracy which would seize power in a coup d’etat on behalf of the masses. The second, as with the ‘Utopian Socialists’, was of passive propaganda which would preach the virtues of socialism to the general public and, especially, to the ruling class. Marx transcended both these models with the understanding that the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself, and the idea of a workers’ party combining active engagement in workers’ day to day struggles with socialist political propaganda.

Following Marx the predominant form of socialist organization was the large national workers party, including in its ranks all or most of the strands of socialism in a given country. A typical example was the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) which had an openly reformist right wing led by Eduard Bernstein, a revolutionary left led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and a majority ‘centre’ led by Bebel and Kautsky, which talked revolution while practicing reformism. Similar parties, with similar trends existed in most European countries before the First World War, and together they made up the Second, or Socialist International.

What Leninism brought to this was the idea that the revolutionary left should separate from the reformist right and the vacillating center, and organize independently. What was really at stake here was the role of the reformist leaders. Marx and Engels and the young Luxemburg and young Trotsky were all revolutionaries, not reformists, but they tended to assume that once revolution broke out the reformist and centrist leaders would either be swept along with the movement or swept aside by it.