Imperialism and Capitalism: Rethinking an Intimate Relationship

Abstract

The literature on imperialism suffers from a fundamental confusion about the relationship between capitalism and imperialism. The aim of this paper is to remove this confusion. The paper is organized in three parts. In Part I we state our own position of the capitalism-imperialism relation. In part II we discuss some major points at issue in the Marxist debate on imperialism. And in Part III we review the changing forms that imperialism has taken in Latin America in the course of the capitalist development process. The main focus of the paper is on the form taken by imperialism in the current conjuncture of capitalist development, namely, extractive capitalism. This conjuncture is characterized by the demise of neoliberalism as an economic model and a growing demand on the world market for energy, minerals and other “natural” resources—the political economy of natural resource development (large-scale investment in the acquisition of land and entailed resources, primary commodity exports). The fundamental dynamics of what we term “extractivist imperialism” are examined in the context of South America, which represents the most advanced but yet regressive form taken to date by capitalism in the new millennium. Our analysis of these dynamics is summarized in the form of 12 theses.

Keywords:

• extractive capitalism
• extractivist imperialism
• post-neoliberal state
• natural resource development
• resource pillage
• (re)primarization
• resistance

Notes on Contributors

Henry Veltmeyer is senior research professor of development studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas and Professor Emeritus at Saint Mary's University. He has authored and edited over 40 books on Latin American and world development, including New Extractivism in Latin America and Human Development: Lessons from the Cuba Revolution.

James Petras is professor emeritus of sociology at Binghampton University. He is the author and co-author of over 60 books and numerous other writings on the dynamics of world affairs and Latin American development, including Extractive Imperialism in the Americas (with H. Veltmeyer; Brill, 2014). His periodical and political writings are accessible via www.rebelion.org.

Notes

¹Most Marxist theorizing about imperialism tends to focus on its economic dynamics, although Panitch, in making this point and arguing the need for a theory of the imperialist state apparently was unaware of an earlier and more in depth analysis of the imperial state in Petras and Morley (1981, 1–36).

²In addition to theories that view imperialism through the lens of geopolitical interests or the rational pursuit of power for its own sake, liberal theorists of imperialism often resort to cultural and even psychological “explanations” of imperialism, viewing it in terms either of an imputed psychological drive to power or, as in the case of Razack (2004), the “idea of empire,” “deeply held belief in … the right to dominate others… .” Razack (2004, 9–10) expands on this rather fanciful and totally unscientific, if not absurd, theory in the following terms:

Imperialism is not just about accumulation but about the idea of empire… . Empire is a structure of feeling, a deeply held belief in the need to and the right to dominate others for their own good, others who are expected to be grateful. (emphasis in original)

³This “image” of imperialism as “external domination” that Robinson here disparages is associated with a view that Robinson for some reason associates with theories of “new imperialism,” namely, that “world capitalism in the 21st century is made up of domestic capitals and distinct national economies that interact with one another, as well as a realist analysis of world politics as driven by the pursuit by governments of their national interest” (Robinson 2007, 11). In effect, Robinson lumps together all sorts of contemporary theorizing about imperialism, whether Marxist, structuralist or realist, purely on the basis of the shared assumption, which Robinson problematizes and ridicules, that, in the words of Meiksins Wood (2003, 23) “the national organization of capitalist economies has remained stubbornly persistent.”

⁴World system theorists of “transnational(ized) capital” such as William Robinson (2007) and “neoimperialism” theorists such as David Harvey (2003) coincide in the view that capital is “economic” and inherently “global” (no longer takes a national form), but that the state is “political” and inherently “national” (territorial-based and “geopolitical”)—and that they therefore pursue “distinct” (albeit, according to Harvey, interconnected) “logics of power.”

⁵In his critique of “neoimperialism” theory Robinson conflates (and confuses) the views of Marxists in this tradition, lumping together “structuralists,” “realists,” and “neoMarxists.”

⁶The authors in earlier studies actually have done so—measured the impact and consequences of US imperialism in Latin America—but this economic analysis (Petras and Veltmeyer 2005b, 2007b) was contextualized in terms of the projection of US state power at the level of military force, ideological hegemony (globalization), imposition of a policy agenda, and foreign policy.

⁷China, Japan, South Korea, the high growth East Asian countries are an excellent example of countries moving beyond dependency to independent high growth economies (Financial Times, March 25, 2010; and February 22, 2010). On China see “China Shapes the World” in Financial Times on January 21, 2011.

⁸The Monthly Review Press, beginning with Paul Baran's book, The Political Economy of Growth (1957) was prominent in emphasizing the “one-sided” impact of foreign capital.

⁹Development can be understood in two ways: (i) as a project, i.e., as an idea acted upon via a strategic plan or goal-based strategy in order to bring about a consciously desired end; and (ii) as a process that is shaped by conditions that are objective in their effects on people, and countries, according to their location in a system, and by forces of change that arise in response to these conditions (Veltmeyer 2010).

¹⁰Studies of the process of social change and economic development involved in this transition to capitalism in agriculture and the resulting transformation were based on three alternative meta-theories and narratives: industrialization, modernization, and proletarianization (Veltmeyer 2010).

¹¹It might be remembered that the US interventionist success in Guatemala (1954) caused the United States to repeat its policy with Cuba in 1961—a policy that led to defeat. The successful US orchestrated military coups in Brazil (1964) and Indonesia (1965) and the invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965) encouraged the United States to deepen and extend its military invasion of Indo-China, which led to a historic but temporary defeat of imperial policy-makers and the profound weakening of domestic political support.

¹²In theory—both the theory formulated by development economists and sociologists as “modernization theory,” and by traditional Marxists—the capitalist development of agriculture would lead to the conversion of peasants into a wage-labouring and earning working class, but in conditions of peripheral capitalism, in the 1980s, the end result was semi-proletarianization—the formation of a rural proletariat of landless workers and an urban proletariat of street workers working not for wages but “on their own account” in the informal sector.

¹³As Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean published by ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) in various years point out, the share of wages in national income from 1970 to 1989, after less than a decade of neoliberalism, was reduced from 34.4 and 40% in the cases of Ecuador and Peru to 15.8 and 16.8% (Petras and Veltmeyer 2007b, 55).

¹⁴The first cycle corresponded to the economic policies of the military regimes established in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in the 1970s—policies designed by the “Chicago boys” according to a neoliberal recipe of market-friendly structural reforms (privatization, decentralization, liberalization, deregulation). On the three cycles of neoliberal policies see, inter alia, Petras and Veltmeyer (2001).

¹⁵On the post-Washington Consensus and the two types of “post-neoliberal regimes” formed in the wake of widespread disenchantment with and rejection of the neoliberal model, see Barrett, Chavez, and Rodríguez (2008), Petras and Veltmeyer (2009), and Van Waeyenberge (2006).

¹⁶On the dynamics of these conflicts in the extractive sector see the Observatory of Latin American Mining Conflicts (2011), MiningWatch Canada (2009) and the various country case studies in Veltmeyer and Petras (2014). Since the late 1990s across Latin America here has been an increasing incidence of local protests against large private (privatized) mining and oil projects based on foreign capital, and with respect to mining Observatory of Latin American Mining Conflicts (OCMAL) has registered 155 major socio-environmental conflicts in recent years, most of them in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. See the Observatory's website (www.olca.cl/ocmal) for details about these conflicts.

¹⁷In 2000, the companies and traders in the sector made US$2.1 billion in profits; in 2012 this was US$33.5 billion. And while some traders enjoyed returns in excess of 50% or 60% in the mid-2000s, today, in the context of a “global financial crisis” and a downturn in some commodity processes, they are still averaging 20% to 30%—still large by any business standard. Indeed, the net income of the largest trading houses since 2003 surpasses that of the mighty Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley combined, or that of an industrial giant such as General Electric. The commodity traders made more money than Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford Motor Company, BMW and Renault combined (Blas 2013).

¹⁸As for the regulatory regime established for extractive capital two different models have been constructed, one by economists at ECLAC, the UN agency that has led the debate with neoliberalism: “inclusionary state activism” or, as Infante and Sunkel (2009) have it, “inclusive development.” The other model has been described as “inclusive growth” and is predicated on the agency of the market and the “private sector” rather than the state. One of the most definitive forms of this model has been constructed by economists at the reactionary (=neoliberal) Canadian think-tank, The Fraser Institute, and formally tabled by an ad hoc Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development of Canada's House of Commons (2012).

¹⁹It is estimated that Canada accounts for over 60% of global investments in the mining sector of the extractive industry. Nowhere is the presence of Canadian mining felt more acutely overseas than in Latin America. More than a half of Canadian mining companies' global assets, at a value close to 57 billion Canadian dollars, are located there (Keenan 2010).