Re: [Marxism] Imperialism in 1848 (Was: SACP on xenophobic attacks...)

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis writes:

> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>> I made no mention of the decrepit Ottoman Empire, and it's clear it
>> wasn't
>> the Ottomans that Marx and Engels had in mind in 1848 when they described
>> the brutal and contradictory social and economic changes being wrought by
>> the more dynamic imperial powers in the territories they occupied,
>> notably
>> the British in India.
>
> Well, isn't this the point? Marx thought that Great Britain was playing
> a revolutionary role in India in those 1850s Tribune articles, in
> keeping with the formulae of the Communist Manifesto but 20 years later
> he wrote Danielson in Russia that Great Britain was only carrying out
> larceny there. There was a growing perception that colonial rule was
> *not* revolutionizing the means of production...
====================================
No, what's at issue is whether "there was no imperialism in 1848" - your
assertion which provoked my query.

I understand that Marx later saw the railways and other infrastructure and
the parallel destruction of the old social order as on balance fostering
dependence rather than reproducing the pattern of capitalist development in
the metropolitan countries. But how does that imply in any way that the
British, French, and other plundering empires were nonetheless not
"imperialist" in 1848 and before, and that Marx only belatedly recognized
that the British were "carrying out larceny" in India? In 1853, he had
already made it quite clear that the British were "actuated only by the
vilest interests" ("The British Rule in India",
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm).

So are we just splitting semantic hairs here, or are there definite
political conclusions worth discussing which directly flow from your remark
that there was no such thing as imperialism until late into the 19th
century?




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