At 14:57 30/12/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Our friend Bob is always disparaging Kautsky but couldn't it
>be the case that Lenin was right concerning pre-WW I Europe
>whereas Kautsky's concept of a super-imperialism may well
>have validity for the world we live in now?
>
>Jim F.
Highly likely. I tried checking in "Karl Kautsky and the Socialist
Revolution" by Massimo Salvadori 1976 Verso paperback 1990.
The picture is mixed. It is common in marxism space for people to write
confidently that there were some deficiciencies in the description of
imperialism given by Lenin as based on Hobson's writings. Kautsky's work
certainly has deficiencies too, and it is complex to disentangle the errors
of political judgement, the explanations, the limitations of analysis, and
the change in the objective conditions.
The issue of voting for the war credits, and trying to resist or modify
them while maintaining unity of the German SDP is one question. Another is
whether he could make a principled distinction between calling for the
defeat of ones own imperialist country, and making one's support
conditional only on it not waging an aggressive war.
There is the wider question of how much genuine socialists should depend on
progressing purely through bourgeois democracy.
But in terms of the theory of ultra-imperialism -
Kautsky does, as Lenin charged, appear to see imperialism as the control of
agricultural resources by industrial capital. Finance capital is not
emphasised for him in the way it is by Lenin. For Kautsky imperialism is
about empires of industrial heartlands with agricultural colonies. For him
therefore ulta-imperialism is an alternative policy whereby out of class
interests the industrial capitalists of the world could come to see it is
better to overcome war and promote free trade.
In one sense this is indeed a policy subject to conscious control rather
than a higher phase of capitalism independent of the will of any
individual. But it does not appear to recognise the chaotic dynamics of the
clashes of blocs of finance capital.
Kautsky appears to have been complacent about the dominance of liberal
bourgeois democracy.
In his analysis of the effects of the war Kautsky appears to have been more
realistic about the likely shifts in the balance of forces internationally:
1) the decline of Europe
2) the rise of anti-imperialist struggles in the colonies
3) the ascent of the United States destined to assume the leadership of the
capitalist world
4) the end of Tsarist Russia.
This sort of theorizing is an attempt to reflect in thought the
contradictions in the external world and we ought to keep our attention
focussed on the external world.
What people are trying to get at with concepts like "ultra-imperialism" is
the way finance capital can interpenetrate and may promote free trade and
the reduction of the risk of big wars between large states.
On the other hand the contradictions do not disappear and the terms of
cooperation can cover up skirmishing for dominance between different
imperialisms. EG the Kosovo war was in part an attempt by the USA supported
by the UK to show Europe it could give leadership and impose a solution.
The concealed recriminations and the rapid decision on forming a 50,000
strong European-only defence force, are a reflection of the contradictions.
There can be both contention and collusion between different imperialisms
(by which I mean blocs of finance capital).
Chris Burford
London
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