WL's response is shot through with so many howlers it's hard to know where to begin. This reply will therefore probably continue in several parts. For the sake of readers' patience/forbearance, I'll try to keep it coherent by periodically summarizing and indicating where certain points are linked to others. I'll start by going through WL's more obvious howlers first.
HOWLER #1 WL responds to the continuing endorsement of Lenin's characterisation of our era as that of "imperialism and the proletarian revolution" thus: "Imperial means advanced societies with more developed means of production and armaments generally bring the less advanced societies into their sphere of influence. Imperialism has characterized human history for thousands of years. Marx gives us our theory of capitalism and the imperialism based on it. Lenin's description of modern imperialism updated Marx. Lenin's outlook became the political foundation of the Third International." Lenin clearly defines modern imperialism quite differently. He says the economic base of modern imperialism is finance capital which he describes as the merger of industrial capital into banking capital under the directing hand of finance. Lenin does not equate the colonialism of British, French and other European expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries and the first 75 years of the 19th century with the rise of the modernised version of colonialism of the 2-3 decades preceding WW1 which he dubs imperialism and defines as the highest, final stage of capitalist society. In his classic Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin already sees the emergence of the phenomenon of neocolonialism: countries that are nominally politically independent but dominated via international financial manipulations by some foreign Great Power. He clearly identifies Great Britain as the progenitor of this new wrinkle of the colonial system. In his "Notebooks" on imperialism which were used to prepare the famous pamphlet, Lenin copies various tables and charts that expose how countries such as Canada at the turn of the 20th century are already being groomed as British neocolonies but encountering an even more efficiently-organised form of rising neocolonial dictate fostered by U.S. monopolies and especially the Money Trust led unofficially by JP Morgan. Lenin is very clear that modern imperialism is definitely no longer all about capturing exports for the marketing of goods produced by the manufacturing sector of a Great Power such as Britain, but rather about the determination of the most lucrative fields for the export of Capital to plunder the raw materials of countries and territories far from the home country. Its essence is oligarchic, that is, precisely the maximum profit is to be pursued and nothing less. Costs of production, of the transport of goods to markets, of whose shipping fleets or railway companies get the biggest portion of traffic etc are matters decided within cartels which operate according to a strict pecking order imposed by the strongest capitals over the weaker capitals. Under the economic order of monopolies and cartels, alongside a certain continuation of "competition" in the pre-monopoly sense [of lowering costs of production, for example, through introduction of more efficient, i.e., labour-exterminating, technologies, etc], a far more ruthless form of competition --- for the most lucrative and powerful positions in the cartel pecking order --- assumes greater importance. As they drown, the losing capitalists scream blue murder about unfair monopolistic competition and monopoly cartel price-fixing etc. Marx gives no theory of imperialism. He explains capitalist pursuit of colonies as an historically distinct moment intimately connected with, and extending out of, the period of primitive accumulation, which involves among other things the reintroduction of slavery as an intercontinental trafficking in the human raw material needed to make extraction of new sources of raw material profitable. Colonies in general as such, however, can pose a problem for the competitive stage of industrial factory-based capitalism because of 1. the "American" danger, i.e., the prospect that colonies may assert independence and quickly become a serious competitor against their former mother country in other markets; 2. the problem of maintaining a stable population growth in the colony as an ongoing market for goods from the mother country; and 3. the problem of attracting population to a colony that will accept being someone's employee and settle down when there's all this self-earned private property -- especially where there's no pre-existing feudal system like in old Europe -- easily to be stolen by one's own initiative or by killing off some indigenous tribespeople. Marx is keenly aware of how the East India Company operates as the middleman of the will of the Lancashire textile manufacturers to ensure that Asian textiles are kept out of their markets in Europe and America, and he is also keenly aware of British industry's use of the Irish labourer as a scab/blackleg and as a source generally of labour-power whose price will always undercut that of the English worker. Clearly, then, absolutely contrary to WL's breezy assertions, "Lenin's description of modern imperialism" HAS NOT IN ANY WAY "updated Marx." To Be Continued Best wishes in 2011 for success in the progressive political work undertaken by all the participants on this list _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
