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Lenin writes of the "semi-colony," in a specific context, and as the world was being reformed by the export of capital in the form of finance "as distinct from" the export of commodities. In my reading of Lenin "semi-colony" refers to the striving for political independence of the colonial state in a CLOSED (direct colony) COLONIAL SYSTEM; as these political states come under domination of petty bourgeois, domestic capitalists and democratic (popular) forces. These social-political forces are striving to realize some form of the democratic republic, in a world leaping from agrarian to industrial relations. The semi-colonial states of Lenin era’s - (as a transitional form of politics), either leaped forward to emancipation from capital and not just freedom from the direct colonial relation, or eventually lapsed into financial entrapment and strangulation. Lenin calls the semi-colony a "transitional form." The form of imperialism changes. We are not faced with colonial political states heroically struggling to escape the direct colonial system. The direct colonial system was one of the environments for an imperialism characterized as the "export (and import) of commodities," military conquest and establishment of the imperial outpost amongst the colonized. The direct colony is characteristic of bourgeois imperialism at the front curve of the industrial revolution. Lenin writes of the correlations of political forces in his use of the concept "semi-colony," never turning a blind eye to economic phenomena. The direct colony existed as a cornerstone of "capitalist Europe," directly tied to the imperialist state. Lenin writes of the First World Imperialist War as "a war to re-divide an already divided world." What was the preexisting division if not the direct colonial system? What was fought out in both world imperialist wars were the colonies represented as/in Europe and for re division of the world. The Allende period of Chile - the Allende political state, signaled for me the end of the period of the transitional form called the "semi-colony" as used by Lenin. The "Third World" phenomenon expressed the historical fate of the colonial movement world wide. II. Capitalism is a historically specific stage of private property. This historically specific stage of private property imparts its property signature onto means of production. In capturing the essence of the industrial revolution and its bourgeois property integument Marx coined the concept "bourgeois mode of production." The industrial revolution and its bourgeois property integument = "bourgeois mode of production" = capitalism. Bourgeois imperialism is not a mode of production. This imperialism is a mode of reproduction of capital. WL. Quotes "As to the "semi-colonial" states, they provide an example of the transitional forms which are to be found in all spheres of nature and society. Finance capital is such a great, such a decisive, you might say, force in all economic and in all international relations, that it is capable of subjecting, and actually does subject, to itself even states enjoying the fullest political independence; we shall shortly see examples of this. Of course, finance capital finds most "convenient", and derives the greatest profit from, a form of subjection which involves the loss of the political independence of the subjected countries and peoples. In this respect, the semi-colonial countries provide a typical example of the "middle stage". It is natural that the struggle for these semi-dependent countries should have become particularly bitter in the epoch of finance capital, when the rest of the world has already been divided up. Further: "Since we are speaking of colonial policy in the epoch of capitalist imperialism, it must be observed that finance capital and its foreign policy, which is the struggle of the great powers for the economic and political division of the world, give rise to a number of transitional forms of state dependence. Not only are the two main groups of countries, those owning colonies, and the colonies themselves, but also the diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically, are formally independent, but in fact, are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence, typical of this epoch. We have already referred to one form of dependence—the semi-colony. An example of another is provided by Argentina." VI. DIVISION OF THE WORLD AMONG THE GREAT POWERS Lenin’s "Imperialism" ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
