Forwarded from Jurriaan Bendien: See about this Patrick Karl O'Brien, "Imperialism and the Rise and Decline of the British Economy, 1688-1989," New Left Review 238 (1999).
I met O'Brien (LSE) in Amsterdam at a Mandel seminar. He's quite clued up about the historical data and some material is available on the web; he has some unconventional ideas but tries to base himself on fact rather than dogma. Michael Barratt Brown also wrote analyses on this theme - his books After Imperialism, The Economics of Imperialism, and Essays on imperialism. However, arguments that imperialism was "a drain on Britain" (or any other country) are suspect, in the sense that one ought to specify exactly who gained, and who lost from imperial conquest (which social classes). If imperialism has been a total business failure, obviously it would have disappeared quickly. The same applies to US imperialism today - much of the burdens fall on taxpayers and veterans, but the benefits go to private enterprise. Many imperialist ventures occurred not specifically for economic gain, but simply to block competing nations. My point of view is, is that capitalist imperialism is the "natural" concomitant of market expansion and intercapitalist competition internationally. Capital must expand or it dies. To expand means to compete. To compete requires increasing market-shares and improving international bargaining power. Thus, imperialism is the political expression of the forces of the world market. In that sense, imperialism was part of the very birth of industrial capitalism, and was already evident in the era of mercantile capitalism. A stated aim of the US federal government is to secure the conditions and expand the scope for private enterprise internationally, and this is an imperial objective which is taken to justify unilateral intervention in the political affairs of foreign states. The premiss that the US govt has the right to intervene unilaterally to defend American interests is accepted without question. Likewise, agencies such as the IMF have the explicit objective of working for the global integration of countries into the world market; but since there is a hierarchy of nations, this integration obviously benefits the richer, industrially advanced nations more, and often occurs at the expense of weaker nations, which cannot compete on an equal footing in terms of productivity, market power, military strength or technological expertise. >From the mentioned imperative, of course no specific policy necessarily follows - particular plans and ambitions may be advanced or hindered depending on the world situation, and the initiatives of particular political groups or leading personalities; they may be framed in religious terms, or in terms of cultural superiority, or in terms of controversy over free trade or protectionism. Given competing business interests, the capacity for the most powerful strata of big business to operationalise their plans, given a complex struggle between different parties, lobying groups and associations may contingently be greater or lesser. However, even if imperialist interventions prove costly, and they often do, they would not be engaged in, if the imperial powers did not think they were necessary to maintain or advance their geostrategic position or longterm business interests. Kissinger and Brzezinski are quite explicit on this point. The real dispute is just about how this position and these interests are contingently best advanced, given a specific balance of power - who are the allies, and who are the enemies, what are the ultimate rewards, which depends on the current aligments of parties, classes and nations given a particular economic situation. In the force-field of international politics, however, if you don't go forward you go backward, and assertion of military strength may occur, simply to send a signal to competitors to back off, in the same way that investors might invest not because to do so is particularly profitable, but because they cannot afford not to invest, in order to safeguard their longterm position. Precisely because multinational corporations heavily rely on internationalised markets, states necessarily seek to enforce the whole social framework necessary for world trade. But whether this enforcement is benign or violent does not alter the fact that it is effectively imperialist, since a hierarchy of nations persists, allowing some to dominate and shortchange others. Best, Jurriaan
