Classical Theory of Imperialism and Contemporary Capitalism

ABSTRACT

Despite its comprehensiveness, Lenin’s classical analysis of the imperialistic nature of capitalism deserves to be considered under a new lens. This article is an attempt to highlight some important features of late imperialism. While Lenin’s analysis is the focal point of critical inquiry, the article goes beyond his account to examine some important features of classical theory that remained unaddressed by Lenin. The attempt is to dialectically sublate Lenin’s theory with the analysis of contemporary imperialism. It is suggested that the mechanism of financial accumulation, concentration and centralisation of finance capital is broader than classical conception of finance capital. Another important driver of contemporary imperialism is the globalisation of industrial capital driven by transnational corporations and arm’s length production. The central feature of this new form of production is global monopoly capital resulting from combined interplay of concentration and internationalisation. The article also endeavours to understand the global proletarianisation of labour as a consequence of the accumulation at the world scale; a point only obliquely addressed by Lenin. The article concludes by comparing capitalism’s crisis and decay in Lenin’s analysis with the capitalism of present times.

KEY WORDS:

• Imperialism
• capitalism
• financialisation
• globalisation of capital
• proletarianisation

Acknowledgments

This article is an adapted version of a presentation made at the Historical Materialism Conference: The Great Transition, Montreal, Canada, May 17–20, 2018. I thank the journal’s referees for their suggestions, comments and insights. I thank Professor Pritam Singh, Visiting Scholar, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, for his helpful suggestions and valuable comments on earlier draft of this article. Any remaining error is of my own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This article is not an attempt to highlight any controversy among the classical theorists and modern theorists of imperialism. It is also not to pass any judgement on whether Lenin’s theory of imperialism is original or based on the work of Hilferding, Bukharin and other classical writers. Rather, it is an attempt to provide insights and simultaneously go beyond Lenin’s work to understand current conjuncture in capitalism. The central theme is to shed light on the changing characteristics of capitalism and its imperialistic nature, providing a comprehensive understanding about the main features of late capitalism.

2. For the distinction between finance and financial capital see Chesnais (2016, 5–10).

3. As Keynes (2013, 222) put it: “The volume of trading in financial instruments i.e. the activity of financial business is not only highly variable but also shares no close relation with the volume of output, be it of capital goods or consumer goods. The current output of fixed capital is dwarfed by the existing stock of wealth, which he referred to as the volume of securities. In a modern stock-exchange-equipped community the turnover of currently produced fixed capital is quite a small proportion of the total turnover of securities.”

4. In Capital, Marx (1992) used the term “relative surplus population” for those who are irregularly employed or employed under uncertain conditions. Marx identified the three major forms of relative surplus population: the floating, the latent and the stagnant.

5. The first situation created by the imperialist war was possibilities for the creation of a world proletariat for the revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie. But if it remains unconscious of its position and role then it can also create a world situation in which millions must murder each other to strengthen and extend the monopoly of their exploiters (see Lukacs 1997).

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Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.