Forward to Freedom, Democracy, Socialism!

Arindam Sen

(Samkalin Prakashan, Patna, is shortly publishing a Hindi reprint of Lenin’s ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’. Here we reproduce the introduction written by Arindam Sen for this new Hindi edition of Lenin’s Imperialism. – Ed.)

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ITH THE inaugural years of the 21st century already overshadowed by a series of wars, “imperialism” has shot back into everyday discourse everywhere, and with that, Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, the most influential and authentic text on the topic. And what a treasure of theoretical insights and practical-political guidelines greets a reader when she/he takes up the classic for the first, second, or umpteenth time! And this despite the fact that here Lenin was forced to use “the accursed Aesopian language” in order to get it published under tsarist censorship!

Of course, this unavoidably told on the forthrightness of political expression that characterises his other writings. In the preface to the first edition (published after the fall of tsardom), he therefore referred the reader to the articles he “wrote abroad in 1914-17”. Long excerpts published here from two of these vital tracts – The Collapse of the Second International (written in May-June, 1915) and Imperialism and the Split in Socialism (October 1916) – will immensely help the reader understand the political questions which had to be largely avoided in Imperialism, and thus grasp the Leninist understanding of imperialism in its totality.

Lenin was studying the overall trends of world capitalism right from the beginning of his political career. Thus he observed in 1899:

“It is said that cartels of industrialists can counteract crises by limiting and regulating production. But America is a land of cartels; yet instead of a limitation we see there a tremendous growth of production. Further, the cartels limit production for the home market but expand it for the foreign market, selling their goods abroad at a loss and extracting monopoly prices from consumers in their own country.” (Collected Works, henceforth LCW, Vol. 4, p 202)

While such references are not rare in his works, Lenin began a really thorough and comprehensive study of the monopoly stage of capitalism when the First World War broke out. This was rendered highly necessary and urgent by the malignant growth of opportunism and social chauvinism in the international working class movement, which drew nourishment from patently incorrect theories on imperialism. The most intense period of study was February to June 1916, when he worked in the Zurich Cantonal Library and ordered books from other places also. He took detailed notes from 148 books (including 106 German, 23 French and 17 English books and two Russian translations) plus 232 articles. In this work he received considerable help from his comrade-in-arms and life partner, N Krupskaya. These notes, together with comments and reflections on them, comprise more than 700 printed pages that make up the Notebooks on Imperialism ( LCW, Vol. 39 ). The result of this backbreaking toil – the cardinal Marxist textbook on the political economy of imperialism – is now before you, as fresh and inspiring as it was at the time of its first publication about a century back.

* * *

In many ways, imperialism has continued to display the major features noted in Imperialism, and even more glaringly at that.

Lenin located the quintessence of imperialism in the growing, all-pervasive role of monopolies, and today the cult of the colossus is being played out in much more dramatic forms of battles between titans (between European Airbus and American Lockheed-Martin, for example) as well as mega scandals (Enron), mega bankruptcies (world. com, Daewoo), and mega-mergers (Mobil- Exxon, Daimler Benz-Chrysler-Mitsubishi).

“Export of capital predominating over export of commodities” has become more pronounced and assumed newer forms such as “hot money” flows at lightning speed. As for “parasitism”, Lenin had already talked of “the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of “advanced” countries – by “international banker countries” and “usury imperialism” – a trend that has assumed more institutionalized shape with the rise of the transnational financial corporations and the IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank etc.

Lenin referred to the still nascent trend of speculation in land, shares, etc. emerging as the most tempting field for making a fast buck: “…the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still ‘reigns’ and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the ‘geniuses’ of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialised production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialisation, goes to benefit … the speculators.” (Imperialism)

In continuation of this trend, we now see speculation in foreign currencies, shares, bonds etc. predominating over the manufacturing sector, which is plagued by overproduction (read under-consumption) and falling profit rates. By the late 1990s, the volume of transactions per day in foreign exchange markets alone came to over $ 1.2 trillion, which was equal to the value of all trade in goods and services in an entire quarter. (“Capitalist crisis and corporate crime in America” by Walden Bello, Global Outlook, Issue Number 3, Winter 2003.) The rampant speculation is leading to frequent and devastating stock market crashes and currency turmoils. To cite just one example, the great dotcom collapse of 2000-2001 wiped out $ 4.6 trillion in investor wealth on Wall Street, an amount that was half of the American GDP and four times the wealth wiped out in the 1987 crash. (Ibid.)

Pure speculation far removed from productive activities leading to the “bubble-bust” syndrome – here we have perhaps the most glaring manifestation of the hollow, parasitic nature of capitalist ‘growth’ today. Curiously, both the bubble and the bust are ‘powered’ by the marvels of computerization and communication technologies. Speculation itself is recognised as a science, so much so that the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to Robert Merton and Myron Scholes (USA), who had just developed a model for pricing “derivatives” such as stock options. This technique was expected to help speculate ‘scientifically’ and reap mega profits safely, although the Nobel laureate’s own hedge-fund operating on this model went bust in less than a year.

Parasitic capitalism, for Lenin, was also decaying capitalism, but “It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of bourgeoisie, and certain countries betray… now one and now another of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before.” (Imperialism)

Spectacular but extremely uneven, lopsided growth and pronounced decay thus constitute a unity of opposites – where, in the ultimate analysis, decay is the principal aspect of the contradiction. This contradiction manifests itself at all levels: inter-sectoral (high-speed growth in the “new economy” vis-a-vis crisis in the “smokestack” industries), inter-national (say Argentina compared to the USA), inter-class (everywhere a small minority growing fatter and the vast majority sliding further down into relative or absolute poverty) and so on.

Finally, Lenin held that imperialism is moribund capitalism, i.e., “capitalism in transition to socialism: monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already dying capitalism, the beginning of its transition to socialism. The tremendous socialization of labour by imperialism (what its apologists – the bourgeois economists – call “interlocking”) produces the same result.”

What Lenin means to say here is that before the rise of joint-stock companies and monopolies, capitalism was based on scattered, unplanned production carried on by a growing number of small, medium and big enterprises owned by individuals or partnership firms. Socialisation of production (production jointly carried on by many workers together) was at a higher stage compared to the feudal manufactory system, but not very high. The 20th century saw a qualitative development in concentration of production (beyond factory walls and national boundaries, with components of a single product – say a car – being produced in many factories and then put together), marketing, management (one holding company controlling tens of – sometimes more than a hundred – subsidiaries, often in foreign lands) etc. This signified a tremendous rise in the degree of socialization of production and labour, but the fruits of that labour, i.e., the surplus value or profit, continued to be appropriated privately, and that too by fewer (monopolistic) concerns. Society’s productive base widened, but appropriation became narrower.

This is how the mismatch between socialized production and private appropriation – the fundamental contradiction of capitalism – gets accentuated to an unprecedented level and cries out for an urgent solution. And there is but one solution: to socialize appropriation, so as to bring it into correspondence with already socialized production. This means sharing the fruits of collective labour collectively and equally, which is possible only by transferring the ownership of land, factories, and other means of production to the whole people. And that is socialism. In this sense, “imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat” – as the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin declared. Very soon history was to affix its seal of approval on this thesis in the form of the victorious November Revolution.

This, of course, does not imply that capitalism’s transition to socialism is an automatic process. The subjective role of the proletariat and its party is as crucial as the objective maturing of the fundamental contradiction mentioned earlier. And it is here that we stumble upon a big problem. International monopoly concerns earn not only ‘normal’ profits at home, but also ‘super profits’ from abroad by means of export of capital. So huge is the quantum of these total profits that they can afford to spare a small part of that for bribing labour leaders and the upper stratum of organized workers so as to keep them away from revolutionary politics. Thus emerges “the labour aristocracy, the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, the real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism.” (Imperialism, Preface to the French and German editions)

So on one hand monopoly finance capital objectively brings socialism nearer and on the other creates a major subjective hurdle. Acutely aware of this paradox, Lenin observed towards the close of Imperialism:

“…private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period (if, at the worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is protracted), but which will inevitably be removed.”

The political focus is clear enough: cure the “opportunist abscess” and take the plunge for revolution. At the same time, Lenin recognized the theoretical possibility that even in its state of decay capitalism (imperialism) may continue to exist “for a fairly long period”, particularly if opportunism in the labour movement is not dealt a death-blow. This is what we witness today; while the other possibility was actualized by Lenin who led the Bolsheviks in defeating opportunism and founding the world’s first socialist state as well as the Third (Communist) International.

But didn’t Marx and Engels tell us that socialism is to be built simultaneously in all, or at least several, advanced capitalist countries? Yes they did – replied Lenin– but conditions have changed radically. At its last and final stage, capitalism has stretched itself into a world system, but the chain is under severe strain and liable to snap at the weakest links, where socialism emerges in one country at a time. However, imperialism does have the economic and political resources and resilience to reconnect the remaining links and carry on till the next break gives it a shudder down the spine.

Lenin did not live to see the imperialist chain snapping again after the second World War, leading to the emergence of the People`s Democracies in East Europe and the People’s Republic of China. And after the war, imperialism took on a brand new countenance.

* * *

World War II brought about certain basic and long-term changes in the forms of political domination/hegemony and in the international balance of forces and consequently in the rules of the imperialist game of war and peace. A tremendous upsurge in national liberation movements forced the old and wounded imperialist powers like Great Britain, France, Italy, etc. to beat a retreat and resort to indirect methods of exploitation and domination. Many countries like our own passed on from colonial to semi-colonial status, where a limited political independence serves to hide unbridled economic plunder by several imperialist powers. War among imperialist powers for redivision of these colonial possessions, which marked the whole modern history of Europe and which therefore found a prominent place in Imperialism had to become, historically, a thing of the past.

Secondly, the USA, which suffered the least in the war, emerged as an economic and military “superpower” (a new category) even as certain “great powers” (Germany, Italy, Japan) found themselves in ruins and others (most notably Great Britain and France) suffered heavy casualties in human, military and economic terms, including the loss of colonies. Washington used the situation to its best advantage. Through economic measures like the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods arrangement (the founding of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), strategic initiatives like the launch of NATO, a high-pitched ideological campaign against the “red danger” (rendered all the more palpable after the emergence of socialist China) and various other means, it acquired over the capitalist world a hegemony – a combination of domination and leadership – that was unique in modern history. A semblance of unity prevailed, and the gradual rise of a hegemonic “Soviet superpower” (a new category again) served as an inhibiting factor, keeping the inter-imperialist contradictions in check. On the military plane, the rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons (which, for the first time in history, had the capacity to destroy all life on earth several times over) led to the novel doctrines of “mutual deterrence” and “cold war” even as wars characteristic of the earlier era – wars of aggression against underdeveloped countries – continued to be waged by imperialist powers, the USA in particular.

But behind these alterations, the economic essence continued to work unabated. Lenin had written about “war contracts” as sources of mega-profits for big corporations; today we stand witness to a full-scale “war economy” and “military-industrial complex” (to use a term coined by US president Eisenhower). We also hear about “military Keynesianism” which advocates wars as a means for toning up first the war-related industries and then, by extension, the whole economy – a strategy quite popular with US military circles, particularly the Republicans.

The collapse of the Soviet camp brought about the next major set of changes in international relations. With the disappearance of the inhibiting factor, the inter-imperialist contradictions which used to express themselves on issues of trade and finance now began to assume political overtones. The process has been a long-drawn-out one, but it came to the surface only before and during the recent war on Iraq. These contradictions are bound to intensify in the face of growing American obduracy and unilateralism, but are not likely to assume, at least in the near future, the shape of military confrontations. Rather, the narrow self- interests which prompted France, Germany etc. to oppose the Anglo-US move in Iraq also compel them to keep the godfather in humour, as the recent unanimous UN resolution on Iraq showed.

Finally, in the modus operandi of imperialist finance capital, a range of changes have taken place (and are taking place) which are too vast to be discussed here. While the ‘civilizing mission’ of the colonial era was replaced by ‘development’ as the hegemonising logic of imperialism in the early post-war decades and then by ‘democracy and human rights’ (as applied for instance in the case of Yugoslavia) and more recently by ‘war against terror and rogue/failed states’, the modes of plunder grew more and more varied and sophisticated: from unequal exchange and unfair terms of trade to IMF conditionalities and debt trap to forced liberalization and GATT- WTO regimes to the carefully engineered ‘hot money’ flows and stock-and-currency turmoils and so on. Internally too, monopoly finance capital went on changing its theories and techniques : from welfare-statism commensurate with the so called golden period of capitalism (the 1950s and the 1960s) to neo-liberalism since the late 1970s, out-sourcing and informalisation of labour, extreme reliance on speculation and fraud…

It is not necessary to catalogue all the new trends and features; the point is: do Lenin’s writings still provide us with an adequate framework for understanding the dynamics of imperialism today?

Many would say yes, and not from Marxist quarters alone. Among the admirers of Lenin are also Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the celebrated co-authors of Empire:

“…. Through his political re-elaboration of the concept of imperialism, Lenin, more than any other Marxist, was able to anticipate the passage to a new phase of capital beyond imperialism and identify the place (or really the non-place) of emerging imperial sovereignty.

Imperialism actually creates a straitjacket for capital – or, more precisely, at a certain point the boundaries created by imperialist practices obstruct capitalist development and the full realization of its world market. Capital must eventually overcome imperialism and destroy the barriers between inside and outside. (Empire, pp 233-34)

Lenin did say that imperialism creates a straitjacket, as we have already noted: “a shell” (Marx’s “integument” in capital, or bourgeois relations of production) which shall be, sooner or later, torn asunder by the growing “content” (rapid socialisation of production), resulting in socialism. As readers would see, in more places than one Lenin made this absolutely clear; but the Empire-duo reads into Lenin a profound dualism:

“This is the alternative implicit in Lenin’s work: either world communist revolution or Empire, and there is a profound analogy between these two choices.” With the actualization of the second choice, we now see “the entry into postmodernity”, the “passage to Empire” as a new, post-imperialist stage marked by the total retreat of the nation state, including the USA: “The United States does not, and indeed no nation state can today, form the center of an imperialist project. Imperialism is over.”

And therefore, “The history of imperialist, inter-imperialist, and anti-imperialist wars is over.”

Quite fascinating, isn’t it? Only the Iraq war shattered the illusion rather too fast!

* * *

This brings us to the all important question of the Leninist method in studying contemporary capitalism, a method best appreciated in contrast against the Kautskian.

As a most faithful student of Marx, Lenin had observed: “In his Capital, Marx first analyses the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz. the exchange of commodities.

In this very simple phenomenon (in this “cell” of bourgeois society) analysis reveals all the contradictions (or the germ of all the contradictions) of modern society. The subsequent exposition shows us the development. (both growth and movement) of the contradictions and of this society in the summation of its individual parts, from its beginning to its end.”(LCW, Vol. 38, pp 358-59)

For Lenin, the “most fundamental relation” in his object of study was monopoly, where he located “the germ of all the contradictions” of imperialism. From this vantage point, he was able to proceed from appearance to essence and see in monopolies – in the giant trusts, cartels, etc., – the decay and moribund stage of capitalism. Kautsky on the other hand saw the giants as strength of capitalism and visualised a passage to ‘ultra’ or super imperialism.

Marx in his study of capitalism concentrated on England, capitalistically the most developed country at the time. Lenin was studying a world-system, he had to collect and summarise “all the data on the basis of economic life of all belligerent countries and the whole world.”

Lenin conceived imperialism as an objective stage in the historical evolution of capitalism; Kautsky as a subjective policy currently practised by the ruling bourgeoisie of advanced countries, a policy liable to be changed in favour of a more intelligent policy of “joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital in place of the mutual rivalries of national finance capital[s]” (see p 223, LCW, Vol. 21). In fact Kautsky seemed to be advising the imperialist bourgeoisie that such a change would serve them better.

As evidence of the emergence of such a scenario, Kautsky cited a few signs like some decline in protectionism here, a trend toward disarmament there and the like. Lenin dismissed most of these evidences as superficial or non-representative, save one. Quoting this particular (factually correct) argument, Lenin said: “‘The growing international interweaving between the cliques of finance capital’ is the only really general and indubitable tendency, not during the last few years and in two countries, but throughout the whole capitalist world. But why should this trend engender a striving towards disarmament, not armaments, as hitherto? Take any one of the world-famous cannon (and arms) manufacturers, Armstrong, for instance…Here, the intertwining of finance capital is most pronounced and is on the increase; German capitalists have “holdings” in British firms; British firms build submarines for Austria, and so on. Interlinked on a world-wide scale, capital is thriving on armaments and wars.” (ibid. pp. 226-27)

The last sentence, emphasised by us, brilliantly captures the dialectic of the political economy of imperialism: the international fusion of finance capitals drawn from different states leads not to the cessation of hostilities but to an aggravation of them, not to peace but to wars and the military-industrial complexes. Unable to grasp this, Kautsky declared: “From the purely economic point of view, it is not impossible that capitalism will yet go through a new phase, that of the extension of the policy of the cartels to foreign policy, the phase of ultra- imperialism.”

It is this pedantic, economistic reading of imperialism which Lenin found most disgusting and harmful: “Kautsky divorces imperialist politics from imperialist economics, he divorces monopoly in politics from monopoly in economics in order to pave the way for his vulgar bourgeois reformism, such as “disarmament”, “ultra-imperialism” and similar nonsense. The whole purpose and significance of this theoretical falsity is to obscure the most profound contradictions of imperialism and thus justify the theory of “unity” with the apologists of imperialism, the outright social-chauvinists and opportunists”. (LCW, Vol. 23, p 107).

There is a compelling reason why we are discussing the Kautskian viewpoint in such detail. In certain subtle ways, the Kautskian or apologetic approach continues to contaminate a wide range of progressive/semi-Marxist/ post-Marxist/scholarly Marxist writings on imperialism. To take one instance, Hardt and Negri take pains to link the genesis of their idea of Empire to Lenin, and for this purpose invent an agreement between Lenin and Kautsky:

“Lenin agreed with Kautsky’s basic thesis that there is a trend in capitalist development toward the international cooperation of the various national finance capitals and possibly toward the construction of a single world trust. His objection was “that Kautsky used this vision of a peaceful future to negate the dynamic of the present reality…rather than waiting for some peaceful ultra-imperialism to arrive in the future, revolutionaries should act now on the contradictions posed by capital’s present imperialist organization.” (Empire, p 230)

“Thus,” add the authors, “while generally adopting these authors’ [Hilferding and Kautsky – AS] analytical propositions, Lenin rejected their political positions… Lenin’s logical demarche here between analytical propositions and political positions was certainly tortuous. Nevertheless, his reasoning was very effective from the subjective point of view.”(Ibid, p 231)

Shorn of euphemisms, what they mean to say is that Lenin’s voluntarist politics were temporarily very effective, but now with the final defeat of his dream of world revolution we should go back to the common “analytical propositions” of Lenin, Hilferding and Kautsky!

In support of their thesis of the alleged identical theoretical positions of Lenin and Kautsky, the authors of Empire cite, in particular, Lenin’s preface to N. Bukharin’s pamphlet on imperialism (December 1915). So let us verify how Lenin presents the question in the last paragraph of this short write-up:

“Can it be denied, however, that a new phase of capitalism is “imaginable” in the abstract after imperialism, namely, ultra-imperialism? No, it cannot. Such a phase can be imagined. But in practice this means becoming an opportunist, turning away from the acute problems of the day to dream of the unacute problems of the future. In theory this means refusing to be guided by actual developments, forsaking them arbitrarily for such dreams. There is no doubt that the trend of development is towards a single world trust absorbing all enterprises without exception and all states without exception. But this development proceeds in such circumstances, at such a pace, through such contradictions, conflicts and upheavals – not only economic but political, national, etc., - that inevitably imperialism will burst and capitalism will be transformed into its opposite long before one world trust materialises, before the “ultra-imperialist”, world-wide amalgamation of national finance capitals takes place”. (LCW, Vol. 22, p107)

What is portrayed here is a struggle between two trends, two contrary strivings: (a) the imperialist centripetal movement or striving for absorbing all enterprises and all states in a single world entity (the empire?) and (b) the explosive force of the economic, socio-political and other antagonisms inherent in imperialism bursting out in multiple upheavals and endangering the whole system. For the first trend work the imperialists, their friends and ideologues; for the second operate the revolutionary proletariat, and its allies; and on the fence in-between sit the Kautskyites, the centrists.

Curiously, the ghost of Kautsky sneaks in where one least expects it. Professor Prabhat Patnaik, probably the most prolific Indian writer on imperialism, writes in his Introduction to the LeftWord Books edition of Lenin’s Imperialism:

“Lenin had talked about nation-based, and hence nation-state aided, finance capital; what we have today is finance which, though drawn from particular nations, is neither amenable to the control or discipline of any nation-state, nor engaged in promoting any definable ‘national interest’…this finance operates not in the context of intense inter-imperialist rivalries, but rather in the context of very noticeable unity among the leading capitalist powers.” Patnaik does recognise that “rivalries among” imperialist powers exist and “could even flare up some day”, but “as of now, and especially vis-a-vis the Third World countries, they display a remarkable degree of unity”.

How many times in recent years have we heard the same old story: finance getting globalised and flying beyond the control of nation-states (even the United States?), nation-states beating a retreat, softening of “inter-imperialist rivalries” and “remarkable” pan-imperialist unity “especially vis-a-vis the Third World countries…”!

To be fair to Patnaik, these lines were written before the Iraq war, which brought the sharp division within NATO wide into the open, and that precisely in relation to a developing country. It was the Iraq war again which brought to the surface the roles of nations and nation-states (US-UK versus Iraq, “coalition of the willing” versus “Old Europe”) and the state-business synergy (Bechtel, Halliburton, Lukoil, TotalFinElf …). But surely he was knowledgeable enough to appreciate the seriousness of the protracted trade-and-currency wars among US, EU and Japan; of the cut-throat competition among the top MNCs, with full involvement of their ‘own’ national governments, for economic territories across the globe; the “bail-out” operations frequently undertaken by developed states to save corporate gangsters, and so on!

But then it is not knowledge or erudition that mainly decides the matter; the key thing is one’s revolutionary perspective, proletarian stand and dialectical viewpoint. These are the qualities, gained only in a long course of integrating Marxist theory and revolutionary practice, that set Lenin’s works apart and above the rest; and it is these that we must imbibe if we are to carry Lenin’s critique forward in theory and practice. It is for this purpose, for facilitating mass study of and mass struggle against imperialism led by the USA, that the publication of a new Hindi edition of Imperialism and other writings had become an urgent necessity. ?