Imperialism

For the 1997 computer strategy game, see Imperialism (game).

Cecil Rhodes: Cape-Cairo railway project. Founder of the De Beers Mining Company, one of the first diamond companies, Rhodes was also the owner of the British South Africa Company, which carved out Rhodesia for itself. He wanted to "paint the map British red,"

Imperialism is a policy of exerting effective and continuing control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires. This is either through direct territorial conquest or settlement, or through indirect methods of influencing or controlling the politics and/or economy. The term is used to describe the policy of a nation's dominance over distant lands, regardless of whether the subjugated nation considers itself part of the empire.

The "Age of Imperialism" usually refers to the Old Imperialism period starting from 1860, when major European states started colonising the other continents. The term 'Imperialism' was initially coined in the mid to late 1500s [1] to reflect the policies of countries such as Britain and France's expansion into Africa, and the Americas.

Lenin argued that capitalism necessarily induced imperialism in order to find new markets and resources, representing the last and highest stage of capitalism. This theory of necessary expansion of capitalism outside the boundaries of nation-states was also shared by Rosa Luxemburg and then by liberal philosopher Hannah Arendt. Since then, however, Lenin's theory has been extended by Marxist scholars to be a synonym of capitalistic international trade and banking [2].

Insofar as "imperialism" in the non-Marxist sense might be used to refer to an intellectual position, it would imply the belief that the acquisition and maintenance of empires is a positive good, probably combined with an assumption of cultural or other such superiority inherent to imperial power (see The White Man's Burden).

Imperialist policies have been criticized because they have often been used for economic exploitation of poorer countries as sources of raw materials and cheap labor. When imperialism is accompanied by overt military conquest of non-human rights abusing nations, it is also seen as a violation of freedom and human rights. Many instances of this have been recorded throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, notably among the poorer, resource-rich countries.

In recent years, there has also been a trend to view imperialism not at an economic or political level, but as a cultural issue, particularly in regard to the widespread global influence of American culture (see "cultural imperialism"). Some dispute this extension of the concept, however, on the grounds that it is highly subjective to differentiate between mutual interaction and undue influence, and also that this extension is applied selectively.

In nineteenth century Britain the word "imperialism" came to be used in a polemical fashion to deride the foreign and domestic policies of the French emperor Napoleon III. Britons, in a longstanding tradition to distinguish themselves from the European mainland, did not consider their own policies to be "imperialist". They did speak of "colonisation", the migration of people from British descent to other continents, giving rise to a “greater Britain” of English speaking peoples. Colonisation was not yet associated with the rule of non-western peoples. India, which Britain acquired from the East India Trading Company, was widely regarded as an exception.

It was a very important exception, which nonetheless gave Britain cause for embarrassment. Benjamin Disraeli's move to make Queen Victoria "Empress of India" was even criticised as a dangerous act of (continental) “imperialism”. Critics feared this would have negative repercussions on British freedom and the rule of Parliament. When the subordination of non-Western peoples by European powers resumed with greater vigor in the late 19th century, the term became commonplace among liberal and Marxist critics alike.

In the twentieth century the term "imperialism" also grew to apply to any historical or contemporary instance of a greater power acting, or being perceived to be acting, at the expense of a lesser power. Imperialism is therefore not only used to describe frank empire-building policies, such as those of the Romans, the Spanish or the British, but is also used controversially and/or disparagingly, for example by both sides in communist and anti-communist propaganda, or to describe actions of the United States since the American Presidency's acquisition of overseas territory during the Spanish-American War, or in relation to the United States' present-day position as the world's only superpower.

Leninist theory of imperialism

While Karl Marx never published a theory of imperialism, he referred to colonialism in Das Kapital as an aspect of the prehistory of the capitalist mode of production. In various articles he also analyzed British colonial rule in Ireland and India. Lenin defined imperialism as "the last and highest stage of capitalism", the era in which monopoly finance capital becomes dominant, forcing nations and corporations to compete themselves increasingly for control over resources and markets all over the world.

Marxist theories of imperialism, or related theories such as dependency theory, focus on the economic relation between countries, rather than the formal political relationship. Imperialism thus consists not necessarily in the direct control of one country by another, but in the economic exploitation of one region by another, or of a group by another. This Marxist usage contrasts with a popular conception of 'imperialism', as directly controlled vast colonial empires.

Lenin held that imperialism was a stage of capitalist development signalled by the dominance of monopolies and of finance, or banking, capital. Following Marx's value theory, Lenin saw monopoly capital as plagued by the law of the tendency of profit to fall, as the ratio of constant capital to variable capital increases. In Marx's theory only living labor or variable capital creates profit in the form of surplus-value. As the ratio of surplus value to the sum of constant and variable capital falls, so does the rate of profit on invested capital.

Lenin stated that imperialism allows the capitalists from developed (rich) countries to extract a superprofit from the working class of undeveloped (poor) countries. In this way capitalists could circumvent the tendency of profit rates to fall by using more labor-intensive production in colonial, or zones controlled by imperialism. These were "super-profits" in that these profit rates exceeded the average rates possible in the imperialist centers. The majority of this superprofit is kept by the capitalists themselves, but some of it is shared with the working class of the developed countries (in the form of higher standards of living, cheaper consumer goods, etc.), in order to placate that working class and avoid revolution at home.

The Soviet Union, which claimed to follow Leninism, proclaimed itself the foremost enemy of imperialism and supported many independence movements throughout the Third World. However, at the same time, it asserted its dominance over the countries of Eastern Europe. Some Marxists, including Maoists and those to the left of the Trotskyist tradition, such as Tony Cliff, claim that the Soviet Union was imperialist. The Maoists claim that this happened after Kruschev's seisure of power in 1956, while Cliff claims it happened in the 1940s with Stalin's policies. Harry Magdorn's Age of Imperialism is a 1954 discussion of Marxism and imperialism. Globalization is generally viewed as the latest incarnation of imperialism among Marxists.

See also

• Empire
• New Imperialism
• Theories of New Imperialism
• Ultra-imperialism
• Colonialism

External links

• The Paradox of Imperialism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. November 2006.