Nancy wrote: > Re: the first, i did not understand imperialism the highest stage of > capitalism to be saying that at all. instead, i understood it as saying that > imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, begins when monopoly capitalism > begins, presumably because the corporations have grown so powerful that they > can collaborate with one another instead of fighting amongst themselves, > their power allowing them to reach out and find new lands and new people to > exploit, i.e., colonialism.
- Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism is Lenin's invention, without any historical basis, for imperialism does exist since Sargon the First (2300 BC), through Egypt, Elam, Babylon, Athens, Rome, 16th-century Europe, 19th-and -20th-centuries England, France, Germany and Russia, the USA in America and Pacific, then the last occidental empire centered on Wall-Street. And the list is not exhaustive. The constant that caracterizes all historical imperialisms is an accumulation, within urban centers, of wealth that is extracted from the conquired countries (raw materials) and labor attracted by the cities or exploited on the spot. In other words, accumulation needs expansion. In that respect, Rosa Luxemburg's theory fits better with history than Lenin's. It establishes a relationship of organic necessity between imperialism and accumulation. Additionnally, the expansion is not only a geographical one, but a sociological one, too. Ruin of peasants pushed to the town as wage-earners, as well as the current ruin of mean classes process attest this other dimension of capitalism expansion. On the contrary, Lenin's theory presupposes propensity and voluntarism of capitalists and capitalism for ever more profit, that is a behavioristic hypothesis, related to "human nature" metaphysics. > Re: the second, could you please explain a bit more? How can you build > socialism within capitalism? - Of course, I cannot. And social-democrats could not, too. I meant that the belief in an endogenous realization of surplus-value gathers Leninism and persisting social-democracy on the same side. If accumulation can be endogenous, it has no limit. Capitalism can indefinitely accumulate within a closed area and does not need to expand through the society and the world. There are then two possibilities: either to build socialism within capitalism, or to politically subvert capitalism. Persisting social democrats choosed the first way, while shismatic Leninists choosed the second way. We can today realize that both ways have been and still are historical failures and therefore were wrong. On the contrary, if realization of surplus value is exogenous, the social-democracy vs Leninism problems does not exist. Whatever be the way of political evolution or revolution, it must confront the crises and the limit of the accumulation process. By the way, the old accusation of "fatalism" against Rosa Luxemburg is irrelevant, as all kind of animal economy tend toward space limits, first provisional then definitive. And it is true of mankind's production, consumption and accumulation, too. It is the life law of entropy. The only difference, between mankind and other animal species is that the former is able to become aware of its limits. So that the fatality is not inevitable. It is a matter of collective conscience. The question is: will the men be collectively clever enough to realize entropy process and to act against it? Now, the current collective madness is not very encouraging to answer YES. Whatever it be, the solution can not arise from a relentless ratiocination around Leninist obsolete dogmas. > i must confess that i was not able to figure out the algebraic proof given by > Luxemburg in her book. would you have knowledge of any resources that might > help one understand the same? - I suggest to you to manage with the algebraic problem, through the question Marx asked but could never answer: where does the money of surplus-value come from? Rosa Luxemburg gave only a beginning of answer: the mobilization of an additional external workforce. As for the money, it is first a pure money issue (the wages of the additional mobilization plus some commissions and interests) becoming a profit when it has completed its cycle of puting into debt (investment) and rescuing from debt corresponding to the production and trading cycle of any asset. So accumulation process escapes the metaphysic ability of savers to decide what is to be invested and what is to be consumed (again a dropping behavioristic hypothesis). Investment is nothing but consumption, and Marx's so-called surplus-value is nothing but consumption of capitalists and of all kind of their relatives and servants, and of public expenses. That means that the accumulated profit to capital does not depend on the labor that is not paid to the workers, but on the increase in the number of workers. That is on economic growth needing expansion. Hopping that my English writing is not too misleading, Romain
