Theorizing imperialism in today’s world

(This was just posted to the Introduction to Marxism mailing list on Yahoo.)

Below you will find a provisional outline for readings apropos of “current debates on imperialism” that we will be pursuing in common weeks. But first I want to try to explain why imperialism has become such an important topic in our epoch, which I date roughly from the end of WWII.

From the days of Karl Marx to the end of the 1930s, the focus was much more on how to make a revolution in advanced capitalist countries since the objective possibility existed in a way that it does not today. Economic crisis seemed intractable in countries like Italy, France, and Germany while even Great Britain was shaken by a general strike in 1926.

With the end of WWII, the advanced capitalist countries entered a period of economic expansion that has persisted until today. Even though there are frequent convulsions-such as with the subprime crisis of the current moment-there is nothing like the mass unemployment workers faced in the 1930s.

Many Marxists began to re-theorize class relationships after WWII with an eye toward understanding the period better. One of the earliest attempts to grapple with the new situation was mounted by Felix Morrow in the American Socialist Workers Party. Party leader James P. Cannon predicted a new depression and inter-imperialist war while Morrow was much more cautious, especially with respect to Germany where Trotskyism expected working class militancy of the sort seen in the 1920s:

To put it bluntly: all the phrases in its prediction about the German revolution — that the proletariat would from the first play a decisive role, soldiers’ committees, workers’ and peasants’ soviets, etc. — were copied down once again in January 1945 by the European Secretariat from the 1938 program of the Fourth International. Seven years, and such years, had passed by but the European Secretariat did not change a comma. Exactly the same piece of copying had been done by the SWP majority in its October 1943 Plenum resolution in spite of the criticisms of the minority.

Among the first Marxists to step outside the box and look dispassionately at the new situation were Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran of the Monthly Review. They drew two conclusions about the postwar period: one, monopoly capitalism (ie., imperialism) defined the current epoch; two, the primary contradictions were not between capitalist and worker in the advanced countries-at least not to the same extent as the pre-WWII period-but between the advanced countries as a whole and the 3^rd world as a whole. As might be expected, Monthly Review began to evolve in a Maoist direction.

The MR analysis has been called “dependency theory” and began to be challenged in a serious fashion in the 1970s, largely sparked by Robert Brenner’s attack in the New Left Review. Additional voices were heard from that shared some of Brenner’s approach, including Bill Warren, an Irish Marxist, who went much further and argued that imperialism actually benefited 3^rd world countries by introducing capitalist property relations and more dynamic and prosperous economies.

Debates around the question of “dependency theory” have not been limited to Marxist journals. Within the academy, the debate has raged since the 1970s with proponents of World Systems theory such as Immanuel Wallerstein debating Robert Brenner in the pages of academic journals. There was also a prolonged debate within Latin American studies over these issues, particularly in the pages of Latin American Perspectives. Andre Gunder Frank was pilloried above all. He was accused of abandoning Marxism, adapting to the national bourgeoisie and worse.

The other controversial aspect of the Monthly Review current was its seeming dismissal of the working class of the advanced countries, who were seen as hapless victims of the consumer society rather than agents of revolutionary change. While Monthly Review was not so nearly as pessimistic as Herbert Marcuse, the journal did serve as a pole of attraction for New Leftists who understandably skeptical about claims made by the Trotskyists on behalf of a revolutionary working class (this would change in 1968 with the French events).

Despite the tendency to regard the MR as “revisionist” when it came to the revolutionary role of the working class, there is some precedent in classical Marxism for their stance. In 1916, Lenin wrote an article titled “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” that states that “the political institutions of modern capitalism-press, parliament associations, congresses etc.-have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops.” Does that not describe workers today in the U.S., particularly white workers?

Closely related to this is the theory of an aristocracy of labor that the Australian Democratic Perspective group has adopted. They insist that it is grounded in classical Marxism but many Marxists disagree with them. We will review this concept in some detail, especially since the question of the revolutionary capacity of the working class in imperialist countries is probably the most critical question facing our movement today.

If socialist revolution is not on the agenda today for the reasons just alluded to, perhaps the best thing that radicals can hope for today is a decline in U.S. power. Is there any basis for seeing American hegemony coming to an end? By the same token, is the rise of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) a way out of the current impasse of imperial invasion and CIA subversion?

These issues have been very much the focus of the academic left. At an Edward Said Conference on Imperialism at Columbia University in 2003, there were various takes on this question with David Harvey arguing that hegemony exists in the military realm but only as a way of compensating for declining economic power. Meanwhile, some scholars associated with Socialist Register in Canada-including Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin-see the U.S. as just as powerful as ever, particularly in the economic realm. We will review some of the more important contributors to this debate.

Finally, if the chief goal of radicals today is to oppose American imperialism, which is arguably the most dangerous enemy of humanity in its entire history, shouldn’t the major focus be on opposing imperialism even when the government under attack does not exemplify socialist ideals and that moreover represses radicals and socialists within its territorial boundaries?

“Anti-imperialism” as a movement has always operated according to its own logic. For example, Andrew Carnegie was a member of the same anti-imperialist movement that Mark Twain belonged to, even though he had no trouble shooting strikers at his steel mills. I am also learning a bit about the “anti-imperialism” of E.L. Godkin, the founder of the Nation Magazine, who opposed the annexation of the Dominican Republic in 1870 because the policy of “absorbing semi-civilized Catholic states” was ill-advised.

Socialist internationalism seems to have to a Scylla and a Charybdis when it comes to anti-imperialism. The Scylla would be “humanitarian interventions” of the sort that Christopher Hitchens and company have defended. The Charybdis would be adaptation to the governments that are currently the enemy d’jour, such as Mugabe’s or Ahmadinejad’s. Trying to navigate between these two obstacles might be easier if we can get a better understand of how Marxism dealt with such problems in the past.

So the agenda for the weeks to follow:

1. Dependency theory

–Sweezy, Baran
–Robert Brenner
–Various Latin American specialists on both sides of the debate
–Bill Warren

–etc

2. Imperialism and the revolutionary potential of the working class

–Lenin
–The Australian DSP and the aristocracy of labor
–The making of a white working class (Ted Allen, David Roediger, et al)

3. U.S. hegemony

–Immanuel Wallerstein
–David Harvey
–Ellen Meiksins Wood
–Peter Gowans
–Gindis/Panitch
–Patrick Bond

4. Anti-imperialism

–Leon Trotsky (on Finland, Ethiopia, Brazil)
–Sam Marcy’s theory of contending blocs
–Selected readings (Michael Chussodovsky et al)