Lenin's Imperialism Today

[p058] Lenin’s Imperialism today which even bourgeois theorists and publicists are bound to take account of and which have, indeed, promoted a new and more serious interest in Marxism in academic and intellectual circles in the capitalist countries. For example, there is the growing concentration of ‘economic and political power in the giant monopolies and banks which dominate the economic life of the capitalist coun- tries today. Where but in Lenin and the works of other Marxists was such a development fore- seen? The great interest being shown by bourgeois economists in the ‘multi-national corporations’ testifies in the same direction. The old textbook concepts of marginal utility economics are help- less to grasp what is involved in such massive concentrations of power operating on an inter- national scale. Again, it is increasingly apparent that political ‘independence’ has not permitted the colonies and semi-colonies of the old territorial empires to extricate themselves from dependence upon the capitalist world market, and specifically from the stranglehold of the big extra-territorial monopolies which are the main agents of im- perialism. Economic growth on independent lines, or indeed on any other, has proved to be the biggest swindle of the post-war period. Poverty and stagnation remain endemic over two-thirds of the globe dominated by imperialism, condemning the people who live in those countries to slow death through malnutrition if not a rapid one through starvation and disease. The manifestation of the imperialist crisis How has the crisis of imperialism manifested itself since the Second World War? 1. The territorial area available to imperialism has diminished. To a greater extent than before 1939, world capitalism has had to face the challenge of a rival world system. Open conflict at the periphery has been accompanied by permanent international tension requiring heavy expenditure on armaments. 2. Threatened by the national liberation struggle in the colonies and semi-colonies the old empires have been dissolved. A new but highly unstable equilibrium has been established with the handing over of political power to national bourgeois governments which have become, in fact, the guarantors of the investment interests of the big corporations in the newly-created states. Still tied to the world market dominated by the advanced Capitalist countries, these countries remain in a State of economic dependence and are unable to overcome the problems of poverty and stagnation which they have inherited from their colonial Past. 3. The imperialist world system now has its centre not in Europe but in the United States, a country which has never had more than a few minor colonies. The USA thus draws into itself all the problems of world capitalism and is at the same time directly concerned in its preservation, 145

[p059] not excluding the possibility of retaking the areas occupied by non-capitalist states. At the same time, the search for new fields for the realization of surplus value and the accumulation of capital creates rivalries and tensions between the United States and the older capitalist countries of Europe, as it seeks to maintain the rate of profit at the expense of its competitors in the international market. 4. World expansion of capitalism had as its root the reconstruction of the war-torn areas made possible through the outflow of US dollars. Con- tinued expansion during the sixties was connected inseparably with the continuation of this outflow, the weakening of the dollar and the continuous crisis of the world monetary system of which it remained the key currency. 5. If on the one side the world system of capitalism has been kept expansive by the con- tinued willingness of the United States to supply dollars, on the other side it has been undermined by the inflationary pressures and currency dis- orders which this has inevitably generated. No less important, indeed basic to the whole process, has been the strength of the working class in the advanced countries, founded upon high levels of 146 employment and the ability of trade unions to win regular wage increases. 6. Imperialism has been in continuous decline and crisis as a world system since 1914. It is no longer able to develop the productive forces. It is no longer able to offer a tolerable future for mankind. All over its sphere of influence civil war remains open or endemic below the surface; class confrontations on an unprecedented scale have been taking place since 1968. 7. The ruling classes of the capitalist countries have now very little room for manoeuvre either in the metropolitan countries or in the dependent countries. There are few possibilities for increasing the exploitation of the less developed countries and the intolerable conditions of existence which prevail in them keep them in a constant state of political ferment. The buying off of the working class in the advanced counfgries has now produced an uncontrollable inflation which threatens the major currencies with disaster. The needs of capital now conflict with the demands and expectations of the working class. The crisis of imperialism comes to a new climax; the need for revolutionary leadership thus becomes paramount. As Lenin put it in 1920: ‘Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat.’ Fourth International Spring 1972