Sunday, June 04, 2006
Putting the "I" in imperialism
This week I gave a presentation on all the charts I've been putting up on this blog. I suggested that imperialism, as a concept, is becoming stretched. It needs new content, because something is changing in the world economy.
For example, Foreign Direct Investment – a sign of globalization – is rising dramatically. Even though annual rates of investment go up and down, absolute holdings are increasing at a steep rate. Moreover, ownership is changing. The owners of big corporations, as I suggested earlier, are becoming less geographically bound.
From World Development Indicators Online, the World Bank
These changes have a huge impact on what we mean by imperialism. Previous definitions have said the nation-state is the final unit of control. Nations acted in the interests of the corporations owned within their borders; corporations used their states to plunder resources abroad. Lenin said this process led to war; Kautsky thought a truce was possible; many present-day theorists place governments and their economies in a world-system of unequal trade.
Today we have interpenetration: corporations owned across national boundaries. What does this do to a theory of imperialism, which begins with states acting on behalf of 'their' corporations?
Investment rising - a sign of interpenetration
I’d argue it seriously undercuts it. Like William Robinson, and Bichler & Nitzan have proposed, we may need a new theory of global capital, that sees national states acting on behalf of global corporate entities. We can call those actions imperialism if we want, but we have to rethink how it works.
This is a controversial thesis. It could be radically wrong. But I'd argue it's squarely within the Marxist tradition. After all, Marxists theorize the shape of global politics based on a reading of the shape of capitalism. Open up any Marxist writing about imperialism – from the early stuff of Lenin and Bukharin, to Wallerstein and Amin – and they begin with a detailed analysis of the world economy. They're not saying politics, ideology or oppression aren't important. But they're saying these things have a context. They stem from how the world is structured – and as Marxists, we think capital is the prime force for shaping the world. Not because we want it to be, but because the capitalists have made it that way, and it's important to understand how.
Not how we'd like it to be
In response, however, some people seemed to think I was denying the reality of imperialism, racism and colonialism. I'm not trying to do that at all. I'm saying those things are shaped by capitalist power relations. To understand power, we need to understand the language of power: the 'right' that the capitalist class takes onto itself to commodify everything.
For my presentation, I took some World Bank figures that showed the 25 biggest multi-national corporations control $4 Trillion. The world economy is estimated at $32.5 Trillion. That means 25 corporations control over 12% of everything that can be bought and sold. We have to understand what that level of concentration means, because it has huge consequences for wars, immigration, nationalism - everything.
Imperialism, if it's going to mean anything, has to be the set of strategies capital uses to control the globe – to 'smooth out' bumps in profit-making. One of the ways it does this is by bringing everything it can 'inside' itself. Everything's marketable, everything's commodified, everything’s governed from the same place. This is a capitalist goal, not a reality – yet. But we’re seeing distinct trends towards it. If imperialism is the best way to describe the process, then I'm all for it. But let's be absolutely clear about what we mean by imperialism, and not let old categories hold us back from understanding the world as it is - or at least, may be - today.
For example, Foreign Direct Investment – a sign of globalization – is rising dramatically. Even though annual rates of investment go up and down, absolute holdings are increasing at a steep rate. Moreover, ownership is changing. The owners of big corporations, as I suggested earlier, are becoming less geographically bound.
From World Development Indicators Online, the World Bank
These changes have a huge impact on what we mean by imperialism. Previous definitions have said the nation-state is the final unit of control. Nations acted in the interests of the corporations owned within their borders; corporations used their states to plunder resources abroad. Lenin said this process led to war; Kautsky thought a truce was possible; many present-day theorists place governments and their economies in a world-system of unequal trade.
Today we have interpenetration: corporations owned across national boundaries. What does this do to a theory of imperialism, which begins with states acting on behalf of 'their' corporations?
Investment rising - a sign of interpenetration
I’d argue it seriously undercuts it. Like William Robinson, and Bichler & Nitzan have proposed, we may need a new theory of global capital, that sees national states acting on behalf of global corporate entities. We can call those actions imperialism if we want, but we have to rethink how it works.
This is a controversial thesis. It could be radically wrong. But I'd argue it's squarely within the Marxist tradition. After all, Marxists theorize the shape of global politics based on a reading of the shape of capitalism. Open up any Marxist writing about imperialism – from the early stuff of Lenin and Bukharin, to Wallerstein and Amin – and they begin with a detailed analysis of the world economy. They're not saying politics, ideology or oppression aren't important. But they're saying these things have a context. They stem from how the world is structured – and as Marxists, we think capital is the prime force for shaping the world. Not because we want it to be, but because the capitalists have made it that way, and it's important to understand how.
Not how we'd like it to be
In response, however, some people seemed to think I was denying the reality of imperialism, racism and colonialism. I'm not trying to do that at all. I'm saying those things are shaped by capitalist power relations. To understand power, we need to understand the language of power: the 'right' that the capitalist class takes onto itself to commodify everything.
For my presentation, I took some World Bank figures that showed the 25 biggest multi-national corporations control $4 Trillion. The world economy is estimated at $32.5 Trillion. That means 25 corporations control over 12% of everything that can be bought and sold. We have to understand what that level of concentration means, because it has huge consequences for wars, immigration, nationalism - everything.
Imperialism, if it's going to mean anything, has to be the set of strategies capital uses to control the globe – to 'smooth out' bumps in profit-making. One of the ways it does this is by bringing everything it can 'inside' itself. Everything's marketable, everything's commodified, everything’s governed from the same place. This is a capitalist goal, not a reality – yet. But we’re seeing distinct trends towards it. If imperialism is the best way to describe the process, then I'm all for it. But let's be absolutely clear about what we mean by imperialism, and not let old categories hold us back from understanding the world as it is - or at least, may be - today.
