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ABSTRACT
This article begins by examining contemporary theories of imperialism, then highlights the relevance of older interpretations. As a matter of fact, Lenin’s theory—especially when he speaks of a “merger of banking capital and industrial capital,” anticipates the direct and indirect role played by financial capital in the export of capital by the center to the periphery. Such export reinforces the drainage of surplus value towards the center through the double process of unequal exchange and overexploitation. The article then returns to Marx who maintains that imperialism could be explained by the downward trend in the profit rate in developed countries, when the latter do not find enough means to counteract it at home and look for new ones through colonization and international trade. Marx suggests another counter-trend which is confirmed today: the transfer of productive work to the periphery, because only productive labor creates value. The article finally focuses on the case of China, by asking: How was it able, unlike other countries and despite unequal exchange, to benefit from foreign investments, thus to emancipate itself from imperialism? And what does it do in turn to help other underdeveloped countries develop without subjugating them?
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 With notably the historians Robert Brenner (Citation2006) and Ellen Meiksins Wood (Citation2003). And, for “analytical” Marxism, the economist John Roemer (1993).
2 Especially André Gunder Frank (Citation1978), Giovanni Arrighi (Citation1972), Samir Amin (Citation2010), or Immanuel Wallerstein (Citation1979).
3 See in particular the analyzes of Samir Amin (Citation2010) and his theorization of the law of globalized value.
4 We can see here the difference with capital exports between developed countries: there they rely on significant infrastructures, created by the countries hosting the investments, one of the reasons they put forward for their “attractiveness.”
5 Its estimates were made based on a calculation of GDP per capita, but corrected for differences in purchasing power. They didn’t take into account Russia, then the USSR, nor China, due to differences between national accounting systems.
6 See “The Rise of the BRICS.” https://www.statista.com/chart/30638/brics-and-g7-share-of-global-gdp/.
7 They are well refuted by Chris Harman in the article “The Rate of Profit and the World Today” (Citation2007).
8 The principle is the following: they all raise the “organic composition” of capital, i.e., the relation between “dead” (or previous) labor crystallized in the means of production, and “living” labor expended. As only labor creates value, and thus is a source of profit, the latter is reduced accordingly.
9 For details, see Chris Harman (Citation2007) and my own article entitled “A Marxist Explanation,” in French, http://tonyandreani.canalblog.com/archives/2018/11/24/36892241.html.
10 Regarding the famous problem of “transformation of values into production prices,” I believe that it can be solved in another way. See the chapter devoted to this question in Andréani (Citation2022, chapter 13, 277–279).
11 See the chapter that I devoted to these concepts in Andréani (Citation2022, chapter 5), where I follow and extend the analysis of Marx in vol. 2 of Capital ([1893] 2010, 133–155).
12 These are works of surveillance, coercion and legitimization (a whole facet of management), work of “social branding” and falsification of products (for example the design of their planned obsolescence), work aimed at increasing not productivity, but the intensity of work, work destructive of the environment, work devoted to armament for purposes other than national defense.
13 See the authors cited in the article by Harman (Citation2007), who himself mentions, under the heading of unproductive work, speculative investments, the strengthening of management hierarchies, expenses used to maintain a certain social peace, military adventures and capital intended to expand unproductive markets.
14 Financial investments must be clearly distinguished here from a simple allocation of capital, such as can be carried out by a company through self-financing, by calling on bank credit or by issuing shares and bonds. Financial markets are secondary markets, resale markets.
15 When speaking of “luxury goods,” we are not relying on a criterion of morality, but on the fact that they are reserved for a possessing elite and that many, moreover, have a very strong ecological footprint (for example private jets).
16 These are not their only privileges: the United States cannot experience a deficit in its balance of payments, the production of its notes costs them nothing, the massive purchase of US securities pushes their interest rates to the decline, and, last but not least, they grant themselves extraterritoriality rights, as soon as a dollar is used by another country, to impose sanctions as they wish.
18 However, GDP per capita of China remains much lower than that of the United States (80412 in euros compared to 12541 in 2023; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_countries_by_GDP-(nominal)_per_capita), European countries and many other countries (IMF). But the gap is smaller for the GDP (PPP): USA 80412, China 23309 (https://www.hyperlinked.wiki/wiki.php?slug = List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita).
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Tony Andreani
Tony Andreani is Professor Emeritus of political sciences at Paris 8 University. His major works include From Society to History (2 volumes, Paris: Editions Meridiens-Klincksiek, 1989), Discourse on the Equality between Human Beings (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1993), A Being of Reason: A Critique of Homo Oeconomicus (Paris: Editions Syllepse, 2000), Socialism Is (of) the Future (2 volumes, Paris: Editions Syllepse, 2001; 2nd ed. 2004), and Socialism in the XXI Century: Ten Essays (Paris: Editions Le temps des cerises, 2011).