Foster-Panitch debate on the relevance of "imperialism"

[Charles Brown <BrownBingb@xxxxxxx>]

From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>

Lou,

I'm glad you raise this. I have been in so many discussions of this
issue since being on these lists.

One point I would ask is did Lenin's formulation claim that the
imperialist centers did not export capital to other impeialist centers
?  I am not sure that he did. To say that there is a shift with
imperialism from exporting goods to exporting capital to the
_colonies_is not necessarily to comment on the relationships between
the capitalist centers. He may only have been talking about a change
in the relationship with the colonies, and not saying that "more"
capital was exported to the colonies than to the other centers.
Russia was an imperialist power and a recipient of a large amount of
capital export from Germany and England , I believe, at that time.

I agree with you that it is very important to take into account the
concrete developments since 1919, especially, the existence and
dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the wave of political
independence of the paleo-colonial world.  Lenin is well known for
concrete analysis, and of course would not expect his analysis of 1919
to become a dogma , of all things ! Also, ironically , of course, he
could not take account the impact of the existence of the very Soviet
Union that he played such an important role in bringing about.

Many times on this "thread" I have argued that the one principle of
the definition that Lenin gives, that must be modified is
interimperialist rivalry, exactly because , as you say, the
imperialist powers united to counter the rise of socialist
nations. However, many of Lenin's other principles, monopoly capital,
state-monopoly capital, finance capital, export of capital seem to
persist, or someone will have show otherwise.  What are maquiladoras
and the like if not export of capital to neo-colonies ? What are world
cars, assembled from several disparate points of production around the
world ?  What are Third World sweatshops ? What is the privatization
of China ? What is "globalization" if not export and rexport,
constantly swirling export of capital ?  What are the World Bank, IMF,
U.S. Treasury , the Third World Debt etc. if not finance capital at
the head of a vast exporting and reexporting of capital ? Export of
"capital", since as Marx taught capital is relationship not a thing,
is establishing capitalist relations of production, not sending big
machines and plants around the world to be controlled by colonials
(given that possession is nine-tenths of the law), i.e. not
independent development.  And plants close as well as open. Things
change. Here today gone tomorrow. The points of production are
scattered and swirling, all to the best advantage of making profits
and keeping the workers of the world off balance, and employing the
revolution in the mode of destruction /military industrial complex and
communication and transportation to guarantee this.

Lenin's thesis seems more true than ever in its fundamentals, and it
is demonstrated by facts that are common place today even to the
non-professional economist. So, imperialism remains the last stage of
capitalism; it is just that the last stage is much more extended than
was thought in 1919. On the other hand, Lenin had to pose his thesis
based on the _possibility_ of world revolution and ending world
capitalism in that period, and affirmatively stating that possibility
as the spiritual/motivational premise for achieving it practically.
This is a dialectical and practical-critical approach. Today Lenin
would modify his thesis based on the new concrete circumstnaces, and
so we must do the same. Yet , the substance is enough the same to
retain the label "imperialism" , just as the more basic substance
remains still "capitalism."

I must admit though that we are in a tougher circumstance than Lenin
was to whip up the mass enthusiasm necessary to motivate practical
revolutionary activity. The counterrevolution is ascendant in our
period of life. In this regard , we have an original task for which we
have very little to rely upon in Lenin for precedent.  Even as our
objective analysis of the world development is accuraate, how do we
revive mass enthusiasm for socialism as the solution to imperialism in
its new form ?

Charles

clip-