While Karl Marx wrote a bit on imperialism, it
was Lenin who contributed most to this argument. In this interpretation, capitalists would
respond to the falling rate of profit by domination over foreign countries.
These foreign countries would provide them cheap labor (to maintain the reserve
army) and cheap raw materials. The foreign countries would also provide markets
to offset the problem of inadequate consumer spending in the home country
(caused by the low wages). It is true
that until the end of World War II, much of the Third
World was divided into formal colonies of the capitalist
countries. To Marxists, the domination
by the capitalists is the major reason why these former colonies are still
poor. We will consider the influence of
these Marxist ideas when we consider China
and Mexico
later in the course.
Since there were many capitalist
countries, Marxists believed that there would be conflict as to which country’s
capitalists would dominate a specific foreign country. This would lead to imperialist wars. For
example, Marxists saw the war between the United
States and Japan (World War II) as an
imperialist war to determine which country’s capitalists would have domination
over the countries of the Pacific!
Marxists also saw World War I as an imperialist war; many Marxists refused
to participate in it. They saw it as a
war in which the capitalists of the victorious countries would benefit but the
workers would get nothing. Because of this, they believed that the workers
would refuse to fight. This belief, of
course, did not come true. Marxists have
often overstated the class consciousness of workers and understated their
feelings of nationalism.
But while Marx himself wrote very little
about imperialism, he did write about the global expansion of the capitalist
economy. In this, he was very
prescient. The following long paragraph
from the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848. It could have been written today in talking
about the global economy.
“All
fixed, fast, frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid
melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, the man is at last compelled to
face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relation with his
kind. The need for a constantly
expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface
of the globe. It must nestle
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation
of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption
in every country. To the great chagrin
of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national
ground on which it stood. All
old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being
destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a
life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer
work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest
zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every
quarter of the globe. In place of the
old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants,
requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have
intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in
material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of
individual nations become common property.
National one-sidedness and narrow mindedness become more and more
impossible, and from numerous national and local literatures there arises a
world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all,
even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy
artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces
the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of
extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to
introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois
themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”
For more on Karl Marx and Marxism:
Marx on Class Consciousness
Marx's Dialectical Approach and Materialist Interpretation of History
Marx's Class Struggle
Marx on alienation and freedom
Marx's Value and Surplus Value theory
Marx on The Reserve Army of Labor / Unemployed
Marx's Law of Increasing Concentration of Capital
Marx on Contradictions of Capitalism
Marx on the Crises of Capitalism
Marx on the state
Marx on the Proletarian Revolution
Marx on the dictatorship of the Proletariat -
Summary of the Communist Manifesto
Summary of The German Ideology
Marx's Class Struggle
Marx on alienation and freedom
Marx's Value and Surplus Value theory
Marx on The Reserve Army of Labor / Unemployed
Marx's Law of Increasing Concentration of Capital
Marx on Contradictions of Capitalism
Marx on the Crises of Capitalism
Marx on the state
Marx on the Proletarian Revolution
Marx on the dictatorship of the Proletariat -
Summary of the Communist Manifesto
Summary of The German Ideology