[Pen-l] Lenins Imperialism reads like it was written yesterday

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

When I decided to lead 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxism_class/>a reading group on the 
classics of Marxism, I was partly motivated to re-examine some books 
that I hadn't looked at in over 40 years in some cases. One of them 
was Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism". As 
somebody who has adopted a less than worshipful stance toward the 
Marxist classics in recent years, I was ready to encounter all sorts 
of indications of how wrong it was to use something written in 1914 
as a guide to our current situation. Leaving aside the big question 
of inter-imperialist wars, which does seem to be a thing of the past 
on first blush, I was amazed at how many other observations jibe with 
articles in the business sections of the major newspapers today 
devoted to the ongoing financial crisis.

A number of these observations appear in chapter 3 and 4 of Lenin's 
book and I expect to run into others as I work my way through it.

For those of you who have received a proper training in ruling class 
ideology in freshman economics or poli sci, you will surely remember 
how the teacher "proved" that Karl Marx's writings were obsolete on 
the basis that capitalism has become so democratized that the term 
"ruling class" has no meaning. This democratization is primarily 
expressed through pension funds, mutual funds, etc. that put the 
means of production in the hands of ordinary working people.

Back in 1958, when American capitalism enjoyed more of an ideological 
hegemony than perhaps at any point since WWII, economists and 
corporate executives spoke about a "people's capitalism" that had 
nothing to do with the stereotype of fat cats in top hats found in 
Marxist literature.

Economist Marcus Nadler wrote:

"The economy of the United States is rapidly assuming the character 
of what may be termed 'People's Capitalism,' under which the 
production facilities of the nation­notably manufacturing­have come 
to be increasingly owned by people in the middle and lower income 
brackets or indirectly by mutual institutions which manage their savings."

Roger Blough, the chairman of U.S. Steel, wrote:

". . . the change that has occurred in the ownership of our larger 
enterprises. Today fewer businesses­especially our biggest 
businesses­are owned by a few wealthy individuals or groups, as many 
were back in the Nineties. They are owned by millions of people in 
all walks of life. In United States Steel, for example, the owners of 
our business outnumber the employees by a considerable margin; and no 
one of them holds as much as three-tenths of one per cent of the 
outstanding stock."

General Electric, whose television show was hosted by Ronald Reagan, 
ran an full-page advertisement stating:

"People's Capitalism: The 376,000 owners with savings invested in 
General Electric are typical of America, where nearly every citizen 
is a capitalist."

In a pamphlet distributed to its employees, Standard Oil advised them 
that Karl Marx devised a theory in which "Ownership of the mills, as 
with ownership of the land, was the key to the future. Ownership 
should, therefore, be vested not in the hands of the few, but with 
something he identified as The People." But today, Karl Marx would be 
surprised to learn the following:

"Yes, the people own the tools of production. ? By his own 
definition, Karl Marx' prophecy has been realized. . . . How odd to 
find that it is here, in the capitalism he reviled, that the promise 
of the tools has been fulfilled."

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/lenins-imperialism-reads-like-it-was-written-yesterday/

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