Imperialism

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Poster with the words "death to world imperialism", by Soviet artist Dmitry Moor, circa 1920.

Imperialism, also known as capitalist imperialism or advanced monopoly capitalism, is the ultimate stage of the capitalist mode of production which involves the centralization and merging of large bourgeois entities, the creation of a financial oligarchy, and the exportation of capital to other, less developed countries. Imperialism results in massive conflicts and strife between rival imperialist powers as they fight to divide and re-divide the imperialized countries among themselves.[1] Imperialism itself takes on different forms based on the ebbs and flows of the capitalist system, including neo-colonalism. Imperialism conducted by revisionist states is known as social-imperialism. The most prominent imperialist powers in the present day include the United States, the European Union, United Kingdom, Russia, and China.[2]

Characteristics

Imperialism maintains five primary characteristics. These are, as identified by Vladimir Lenin:

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 associations which share the world among themselves.

5. The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.

Contradictions

Imperialism creates or otherwise intensifies multiple contradictions, of which there are three major ones.

Labor and capital

Imperialist aggravates the domestic struggle between labor and capital in the industrial countries. The development of monopolies, trusts, cartels, and other financial institutions devastates small producers and forces the working class to endure even more brutal hardship. Legal forms of struggle such as trade unionism become increasingly unyielding in imperialist countries, further driving the working class towards revolutionary means.

Among rival imperialists

Imperialism entails the redivision of an already divided world among an ever-more narrow collection of financial entities and imperialist powers. When a territory or market has already been seized by a rival imperialist power, new and emergent imperialist interests campaign viciously for the redivision of the colonized territory to secure their power. The inevitable conclusion of this tendency is inter-imperialist war (such as the First World War), with brings immersion to the whole of the proletariat and demands the need for the imperialist war to be turned by a revolutionary communist movement into a class war based on the stance of revolutionary defeatism.

Oppressed and oppressor nations

Imperialism partitions the world between a small amount of imperialist countries on one side and a large periphery of imperialized nations, dependencies, and colonies on the other. In their exploitative pursuit of profits, the imperialists are compelled to develop the productive forces in the imperialized countries to facilitate the attainment of super-profits. In time, the oppressed peoples will develop a native proletariat and intelligentsia and develop a national consciousness of their own, leading to the eventual overthrow of imperialism through national liberation struggles.

Varieties

American imperialism

British imperialism

French imperialism

Russian imperialism

German imperialism

Social-imperialism

Soviet social-imperialism

Chinese social-imperialism

Further reading

See also

References

  1. Vladimir Lenin (1917). Imperialism: The Highest State of Capitalism. Available on the Marxists Internet Archive.

    And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its complete development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features: 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, and 5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism in the stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”

  2. Joseph Stalin (1924). Foundations of Leninism: I – The Historical Roots of Leninism.