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April 13, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 15 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 60
Imperialism and Self-determination
Revisiting the Nexus in Lenin
Radha DSouza
This paper presented at the conference on Lenins Thought in the
21st Century, School of Philosophy, Wuhan University, China, 20-22
October 2012.
Radha DSouza (R.Dsouza1@westminster.ac.uk) is with the School of
Law, University of Westminster.
This essay examines the nexus between
self-determination, imperialism and the importance
of Marxist theory in Lenins writings. It argues that the
three strands were inseparably connected in Lenins
thinking. The breakdown of the unity of the three
strands of thought has impeded our understanding of
contemporary imperialism.
Rereading Lenin a Century Later
A
t the turn of the 19th century critical intellectuals in
Europe noted that the character of capitalism was
changing before their eyes. The hallmarks of indus-
trial capitalism characterised by class conicts, competition,
factory production, the gold standard, domestic markets, the
nation state as the umbrella institution for protecting home
markets and domestic industries and the Empire system was
undergoing radical structural transformation. Marx acknow-
ledged that the inevitable logic of competition was mono polies
(Marx 1974 [1894]: Ch 15). However, monopolistic tendencies
became visible much later.
In the economy, the period from 1873-96 in western Europe
was one of economic depression, instability of currency backed
by the gold standard, political pessimism and repression
(McDonough 1995). Policy responses to the crisis had the ef-
fect of restructuring the relations between banks and manu-
facturing. In turn these interventions transformed the struc-
ture of capitalist production and entailed comprehensive
changes in the economic regime.
1
The separation of nance
from manufacturing enabled rms to survive through mergers
and acquisitions, and by forming cartels and syndicates to
maintain prices. The emergence of cartels and syndicates, the
backward and forward integration of production, and other
means of achieving economies of scale gave successful entre-
preneurs the ability to stall the falling currencies. Closely re-
lated to these issues was the behaviour of competition and its
implications for prices. In turn these changes in the structure
of capitalism implied corresponding changes in the relations
between currency and value (the labour-time) as well as the
circuits of production and consumption and money and price
in commodity production that Marx wrote about.
2
These
changes led socialists to revisit Marxs analysis of capital. Did
Marxs analysis need revision and could capital self-correct the
inner contradictions that Marx described in Capital and Theo-
ries of Surplus Value?
In politics, after the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871

in
western Europe, the home of capitalism, socialist movements
became mired in factional politics and enamoured by bour-
geois democracy and parliamentary politics (Engels 1968 [1874];
Lenin 1972 [1908]; Lenin 1971 [1919]: 150-54). Germany was
late amongst the European states to consolidate the nation state
project which was accomplished under Bismarcks unication
as late as 1871. By that stage the third world had been effec-
tively divided between Britain, France, Spain and Portugal.
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Germany was forced to ght for redivision rather than discovery
of colonies. Russia inherited colonies from the pre-capitalist
feudal era. However, as a latecomer to capitalist development
her industrialisation was overshadowed by European expan-
sion, and internal class relations were slow to develop. In the
colonies, including the colonies of the Russian Empire, popular
movements demanded independence from colonial rule. These
historical developments posed new questions for socialist move-
ments. While Marx referred to the Jewish, Polish and Irish
questions in his writings and the unity of workers of all nations
in the struggle for socialism, these questions had not assumed
the programmatic urgency they did at the beginning of the
20th century. When rereading Lenins writings it is important
to locate the arguments of different actors within the context
and the polemics generated by it.
In revisiting the legacy of Lenin it is important to ask:
(i) why do we wish to engage in the exercise of reassessing
Lenins legacy; (ii) what are the problems in the present that
invites us to remember Lenin; and (iii) how does the legacy of
Lenin help us to address our futures if at all? Methodologically,
the present mediates the past and the future. When the past is
read without regard for the future, the analysis becomes dis-
engaged from praxis and theory becomes something for its
own sake. Marx wrote that the role of philosophy is to change
the world (Marx and Engels 1969 [1888]).

If philosophy is to
help us change the world, the questions for theory must be
posed from the standpoint of political praxis. The type of an-
swers we get depends on how theoretical questions are posed.
Equally when the future becomes disengaged from the past,
political praxis remains unconscious, spontaneous and in-
stinctive (Lenin 1970 [1902]).
This essay revisits Lenins writings on self-determination,
imperialism and Marxism from the standpoint of the people of
the third world. In most third world countries socialist move-
ments of the early 20th century had a profound inuence on
the national liberation struggles for independence from colonial
rule. Since the end of second world war and the emergence of
the United Nations (UN) system as the so-called New World
Order, people in these countries have faced increased milita-
risation, ethnic and sectarian conicts, economic dependency,
expropriation of their natural resources, exploitation of cheap
labour, and the burden of successive economic crises of capi-
talism. 1989 was a turning point for third world states. It saw
the rise of the Washington Consensus, the end of the cold war,
and the formation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the
last round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) negotiations. Together, these developments undermined
any gains the people of the third world had made from the
struggles against colonialism for a just and free world. In
recent times the third world has seen a return of the politics of
the Mandate years in new forms. The majority of the worlds
population face unemployment, wars, displacement and po-
larisation of wealth and poverty on scales that is unprecedent-
ed in human history.
All this comes together with what scholars have described as
capitalist triumphalism. Triumphalism as ideology proclaims
that all past struggles for freedom from class and national
oppression by people everywhere have failed and therefore
there is no alternative to bourgeois liberalism (Fukuyama 1992).

Lenins writings remained, at all times, focused on how
oppressed people should intervene in politics so as to bring
about structural transformations in their conditions of life. In
addressing these problems Lenin on his part drew from the
legacy of Marx and Engels to address the theoretical problems
of revolutionary transformation. How should scholars under-
stand Lenins legacy in todays global context where bour-
geois triumphalism has displaced the legacies of internation-
alism, socialism and third world solidarities born from the
anti-colonial struggles? How should people understand iso-
lated struggles for survival of the revolutionary traditions in
small pockets of the third world today?
Lenin wrote that there are three fronts in the struggle for
socialism: the political front, the economic front and theoretical
front. Each front, he argued, must be challenged on its own
terms as a distinct arena (Lenin 1970 [1902]). Far too many
struggles in the third world today are intuitively against impe-
rialism and for self-determination, but politically inspired by
identity politics that manifest as ethnic, religious and cultural
conicts. Equally there are many struggles on the economic
front against the policies of international organisations like
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and WTO
and G-8 states. These struggles propose liberal democracy and
constitutionalism as solutions even though historically these
solutions have proven to be limited. The point of departure for
this article is the understanding that whereas struggles for so-
cial justice by people of the third world on the economic and
political fronts have been relentless since the end of the world
wars, the struggle on the theoretical front in the third world
remains the weakest. These methodological observations and
approaches inform the analysis of the nexus between imperial-
ism, self-determination and the theoretical struggle for social-
ism within Marxism in this article.
We rst summarise Lenins arguments on each one of these
questions in the historical context in which they arose. We
then provide a brief summary of the development of insti-
tutional infrastructures for imperialism after the end of the
second world war. Following this, we draw out the signicance
of the rupture in the three strands of thought.
Lenin on Self-determination, Imperialism and Socialism
The period from 1898 until the end of the second world war in
1945, spanning over half a century, was uid, a period of rapid
transformations and also a period of polemics and debate.
Lenin responded to early developments as they occurred in
the trajectory of developments during this uid period. As
early as 1899 Lenin noted the emergence of cartels in the
United States (US) and wrote that they limited production for
home markets, sold their products overseas by undercutting
prices and charged domestic consumers monopoly prices
(Lenin 1974 [1899]).

Lenins writings on imperialism and self-
determination were part of his overall strategy and tactics for
successful socialist revolutions in Russia and elsewhere. His
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writings cover over 25 of the 50 years it took for the New
World Order to emerge under the institutional umbrella of
the UN.
One of the key arguments in this paper is that Lenins writ-
ings must be read in their totality. Selective readings of Lenin
emphasising one text over others, or for that matter, emphasis-
ing his main pamphlets over observations in speeches, inner-
party debates and other sources could well lead to a one-sided,
reductive reading of imperialism, self-determination or social-
ism. As Bagchi points out imperialism and self-determination
are inseparably intertwined in Lenins writings.

To this insight
we may add another. The struggle against imperialism and for
self-determination is contingent on the struggle for socialism
(1983). A reductive reading limits imperialism to the sphere of
economy, self-determination to the sphere of international
relations, and legal sovereignty or socialism to abstract ideas
about a normative social order hinders our understanding of
contemporary struggles in the third world. Subsequent writings
on Lenin have done just that. This paper argues that when re-
visiting Lenins writings in the contemporary context the
relations between the three strands in Lenins thinking hold im-
portant clues to our understanding of contemporary problems.
It is useful to recall that Lenins purpose in investigating im-
perialism was prompted by the struggles for self-determina-
tion within the Russian Empire initially and later in other colo-
nies and protectorates in the world. Chronologically, the right
of nations to self-determination predated imperialism on the
agenda of socialist movements. In the early years from 1901 to
1910 Lenins energies were devoted to organisational questions.
As early as 1903 the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party
adopted support for the right of self-determination in its
organisational programme. Dissensions arose within the so-
cialist movement about the interpretation of the right especially
amongst members from Russias colonies, protectorates and
minorities in particular the Poles, the Ukrainians and the
Jews who demanded special status within the party based on
ethnicity (Lenin 1974 [1913]; 1974 [1903]). These arguments
prompted Lenin to set out the Marxist premise for self-
determination in The Right of Nations to Self-Determination
published in early 1914 more than three years before Imperial-
ism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which was published in
the middle of 1917 (Lenin: 1970 [1914]; 1970 [1917]; see Lenin
1974).
3
It must also be noted that the Right of Nations con-
solidated observations, speeches, and other shorter writings
from 1899 onwards on the subject. What is important is that
Lenins writing on self-determination before 1914 as well as in
the 1914 pamphlet reveals the nexus between self-determina-
tion, imperialism and socialism. Lenins arguments unied
theory and practice by bringing together economic develop-
ments, political necessity as well as philosophical (theoreti-
cal) insights into debates on political programmes.
Lenins arguments on self-determination, imperialism and
socialism may be grouped and organised thematically as follows:
Is self-determination a legal right or a political right?
Nation states and imperialism
Imperialism, revisionism and the corruption of Marxism
Is Self-determination a Legal or a Political Right?
4

This question is closely tied to the emergence of nation states
as the institutional umbrella for market relations in societies
founded on commodity production, i e, capitalism. When this
question arose within the socialist movements at the turn of the
century, the anti-feudal revolutions in western Europe were
more or else complete. The bourgeois revolutions were fought
on grounds of cultural, religious, and linguistic freedoms and for
recognition of secularism and nation states as the foundations of
international law. The Peace of Westphalia in 1638 recognised
secularism and nation states but as treaties between states, i e, as
contractual obligations of states and not a legal principle. It was
left to the new US to advance self-determination as a legal
principle in inter national law much later.
The US advocated self-determination as a legal principle
governing interstate relations. The Monroe doctrine
5
argued
against forced colonisation and for the legal principle of mu-
tual recognition through bilateral treaties (contractual rela-
tions between states) as the basis for interstate relations. The
Monroe doctrine was premised on philosophical liberalism
with emphasis on formal legal equality between unequal social,
political and economic actors, in this case, states. Nations under
this doctrine were based on cultural, historical and linguistic ties.
The Monroe doctrine was invoked to expand the inuence of
the US in Latin American countries struggling against Spanish
and Portuguese colonialism. Within the British Empire the
system of protectorates, known as indirect rule coexisted
alongside direct rule and settler colonialism (see Dsouza
2006; Mamdani 1996).
6
The Monroe doctrine systematised it as
a universal principle in international law. The Monroe doctrine,
far from bringing freedom to Latin American states, merely
switched masters, and transferred Latin American states from
Spanish colonialism to indirect rule by the US as protectorates
with formal independence and economic subjugation. The US
had forcibly occupied North America denying the indigenous
people their self-determination. Equally, the settlement of Latin
America by slaves and indentured labour meant that the people
there were forcibly removed from their ties to their histories,
languages and cultures. American expansionism took the oc-
cupation of the American continent and denial of self-deter-
mination of indigenous people, slaves and indentured labour
as given and expanded its sights to the colonies of European
Empires including Russia.
During Lenins time the Monroe doctrine saw a revival under
Woodrow Wilsons presidency later formalised in the Fourteen
Points (see Lenin 1971 [1920]: 449-64 at pp 455-56; Cass ese 1995
at pp 13-23).
7
The US under Wilson used the legal right to self-
determination as a diplomatic tool in its engagement with
western European states, especially Britain, to gain access to
resources and markets in the colonies.
8
Nevertheless the power
of formal liberal rights remained as attractive then as it is now
to socialists and nationalists.
Lenin noted that the Monroe doctrine had actually institu-
tionalised a system of protectorates.
9
He argued that formal
equality in international relations is nothing more or less than
liberalisms formal legal equality between unequal actors in
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW April 13, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 15 63
society; it fetishised and camouaged real inequality and
oppression between states.
10
Keeping in the Marxist traditions
Lenin argued that social relations are the basis for legal
relations and that principles of jurisprudence must not be
taken at face value but probed deeper. What law does in society
(sociological aspects of law) and not what law says (normative
aspects of law) must guide socialists.
11
Continuing the legacy of Marx and Engels and their writings
on the Irish, Jewish and Polish questions, Lenin argued that
socialists must anchor understandings of nation states to the
nature of capitalism and on class relations and not derive it from
essentialist ideas of culture, language, religion or ethnic char-
acteristics. Lenin was the rst to articulate the kernel of the idea
that nations have class content and nation states are not empty
institutional forms.
12
The argument against self-determination as
a formal legal principle raised further questions about the nation
state as an institution. If the anti-feudal revolutions in western
Europe were progressive, as Marx argued, and they brought
forth new forms of knowledge and new freedoms for working
people under the institutional umbrella of the nation state,
surely people in backward nations where anti-feudal revolutions
were slow and late in developing were also entitled to travel
the same historical road as western Europe? Should they not
therefore seek formal legal rights which socialists could use as
democratic spaces for real equality between states? This question
led Lenin to investigate the institutional form of nation states.
Nation States and Imperialism
The demands for self-determination came amidst a series of
annexations and wars. At the heart of demands for self-deter-
mination was the demand for statehood, in other words, for
states to be free of national oppression.
13
Would independent
statehood alone be a sufcient condition for freedom from
national oppression? The demand for self-determination pre-
supposed two classes of states: oppressor and oppressed states.
It also presupposed the existence of a collective social entity, a
society, formed by multiple interest groups with shared natures
and cultures, entities that were threatened by the developments
in capitalism (Dsouza 2012).

Wars inamed national enmity and
threats of subjugation brought out the worst in people.
14
What
made some states oppressors and others oppressed?
Lenin analysed all the wars since 1870 between the Great
Powers to understand the impending rst world war and the
demands for self-determination. What is interesting is that far
from taking a reductive view of wars from economic or political
standpoints he analysed them by taking into account a wide
range of factors including diplomatic relations, colonial policy,
economic policy including trusts, customs agreements, large-
scale concessions, workers movements and socialist parties in
the countries at war, non-proletarian revolutionary move-
ments, national movements and the national question, demo-
cratic reforms including electoral reforms, social reforms, in-
cluding reforms in colonial policies and other factors.
15
The
comprehensive assessment of all aspects led Lenin to develop
his theory on the changing character of capitalism and nation
states and the relations between them.
Marx made an important distinction between capitalist and
pre-capitalist societies. He argued that pre-capitalist social
structures were founded on the unity of nature and people
(labour). Capital ruptured the unity and mediated the relations
in new ways. The key to understanding the formation of social
structures is to analyse the ways in which capital organises
and mediates the relations between nature and people (labour)
(Marx (1973 [1930]): 898 at p 276). By the same token capital
reorganises and restructures relations between people and
nature and the institutional formations for the relations. Lenin
extended Marxs analysis of the mediating role of capital to argue
that there were distinct stages to capitalism. Each stage is char-
acterised by the ways in which capital remediates and restruc-
tures social relations and institutions while keeping the basic
attributes and features.
16
It does not follow therefore that re-
mediation and restructuring is a self-correcting mechanism capa-
ble of resolving the inner contradictions of commodity produc-
tion as many of his contemporaries argued.
17
If anything the
restructuring expands the scale and intensity of the next crisis.
Taking a reductive economic standpoint several intellectuals,
progressive and reactionary, highlighted the economic aspects
of imperialism, the emergence of monopolies and trusts and
other features; others taking a reductive view of politics wrote
about diplomacy, colonial policy and treaties; and on the Left
many took a normative view of socialism, seeing it as an ideal
standard which socialist movements must measure up to.
Lenin synthesised the three strands. The synthesis revealed
the transformations in capitalism as well as in the nation-state
as the institutional form.
In Rights of Nations Lenin argued that nation states during
the early stages of capitalism arose from the collapse of feudal-
ism and absolutism. The nation state of the nascent capitalism
had metamorphosed into something qualitatively different in
the mature phase at the end of the 19th century. This is because
capitalism itself had changed and developed into a new stage.
Nation states that were well developed, i e, with established
constitutional regimes, class divisions, and institutions were
in a position to dominate nation states that were not so well
established, i e, where legal, institutional and class formations
were nascent or not rmly established. The un equal development
of capitalism historically and geographically meant that some
nation states could dominate others by mobilising a variety of
military, economic and ideological resources.
18
He called the new
stage of capitalism imperialism following what other intel-
lectuals around him were calling it and with whom his writings
engaged. In the imperialist stage, dominant nation states incorpo-
rated weaker nation states as entities in their entirety as satel-
lite states in systemic ways into the political economy of capi-
talism (Chua 1995).
19
Protectorates were the institutional
form for the domination, and formal self-determination the
legal principle. The incorporation of nation states as satellite
entities in their own right was made possible because of the
separation of nance/bank capital from manufacturing.
Dominant nation states
20
could become rentier states by
being home to nance and banking capital and by remote
controlling appropriation of natural resources as well as
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contracting out manufacturing at cheaper rates to the protec-
torates Noreld (2011).
21
The character of mature capitalist
nation states had changed from being home to manufacturing
and protecting home markets to becoming rentier states by
becoming home to nanciers and bankers and living off the
return on capital from nation states that were formally inde-
pendent but economically subordinated to centres of nance
and banking. Annexations and wars were integral to national
oppression.
22
Annexations and wars could be motivated by
competition between dominant states for spheres of inuence
or collaboration between them to subjugate weaker nation
states (Lenin 1970 [1916]).
In the new stage of imperialism capital called forth two
types of formally independent nation states that were asym-
metrically related. On the one hand, capital in the imperialist
stage united all nation states by making them interdependent,
and on the other hand it created asymmetrical relations
between nation states. The unequal development of capitalism
made it possible to insert collective social units as states, com-
munities or social groups into capitalist relations.
23
It was no
longer necessary under monopoly nance capitalism to have
old style empires with colonial settlements or settler colonies.
Protectorates could be drawn into asymmetrical relations with
rentier states in ways that will make them dependent nations.
In his notebooks Lenin notes:
+ Why division into nations when imperialism is the epoch of the un-
ion of nations?
Why national movements in the Ukraine, China, Persia, India, Egypt,
etc, if (when) the advanced countries have reached the stage of
imperialism, which unites nations, if capitalism (=imperialism) in the
advanced countries has outgrown the bounds of national states?
24
To this he answers,
imperialism is the era of oppression of nations on a new historical
basis. [...]
25

However that is only half the problem, the other half being
the emergence of national movements:
Self-determination is the tattered slogan of a bygone era of bourgeois-
democratic revolution and movements. Imperialism gives new life to
this old slogan.[...] imperialism cannot be purged of national oppres-
sion [...] the struggle must be revolutionary and, under socialism, for
joint determination, not self-determination.
26
The most important distinction between liberal legal rights
of self-determination and socialist self-determination is the
right to secede. Secession was the safeguard against national
domination. Socialist movements would ensure that secession
was recognised internationally.
27
Capital in the imperialist stage called forth another univer-
sal category of analysis in Marxisms conceptual repertoire:
the contradictions between nation states and global capital,
the unity of capital and diversities of nation state structures.
Unequal development created the asymmetrical relations
between them. Lenin was the rst to argue that nation states
have class content depending on their internal composition and
their positions in imperialist relations. Socialist movements
cannot therefore accept a blanket principle of self-determination
as liberal legal rights did, but they must examine the class
content of each struggle and take an informed position on it
from the perspective of working people and not the nation
states. Also dominant nation states in the imperialist stage
wanted self-determination to be a legal principle precisely to
exploit every cultural, religious, ethnic difference between
people to foster wars and conicts as a strategy to constantly
restructure their internal relations to suit imperialist agendas
(Manbekova and Khomenko 1974).
28

The purpose of this section has been to revisit the nexus
between nation states and imperialism in Lenins writings. The
emphasis has been over the nexus rather than the economic
aspects of imperialism as such. There is a large body of literature
on the economic features of imperialism, or rather capitalism in
the imperialist stage, since the end of the world wars. Theories
of dependency, neocolonialism and world systems have em-
phasised the economic aspects of exploitation of the third
world. Imperialism has returned in recent writings especially
since the events of the so-called 9/11. What is missing in these
writings is the nexus between the changes in the structure of
capital and restructuring of nation states. What is missing too
is the theoretical understanding of the analytical categories
of capital and nation states in the era of imperialism.
Imperialism, Revisionism and the Corruption of Marxism
On the theoretical front, Lenin argued that the emergence of
imperialism as a distinct stage of capitalism shifted the arena,
or the battleground for theoretical struggles. Throughout his
life Lenin riled over and over again relentlessly against corruption
and opportunism within the socialist movement. His interven-
tions on this question spanning 25 years are far too many to
summarise easily (Lenin 1974 [1916]: 61).
29
Until the 1890s, in
the main, Marxism deve loped in opposition to liberal theories
that drew inspiration from different strands of philosophical
liberalism. Lenin argued that after the 1890s the arena for
theoretical struggles shifted to the domain of Marxism as
something internal to it. As early as 1908 Lenin observed that
in philosophy Marxists had returned to Kant and other thinkers
of the early stages of capitalism; in political economy, reliance
on narrow empirical analysis minus the philosophical founda-
tions of Marxism whittled down or undermined the essential
inner contradictions of Marxism.
30
In the sphere of politics
Marxists used revisionist interpretations of Marxism to return
back to legalism, constitutionalism and parliamentary demo-
cracy as norms valuable in themselves. Theoretical liberalism
manifested as a tendency within Marxism. Bourgeois ideo-
logists used the vocabulary of Marxism precisely because the
Marxist critique of capitalism had been thorough and compre-
hensive. Theory, for Lenin, was an international phenomenon
that straddled a variety of national conditions.
31
It could not be
limited to this or that nation.
The unstable class composition of nation states under
imperialism was the source of revisionism in the new stage of
capitalism.
32
The nation state as a category in capitalist relations
which was called forth in the imperialist stage was based on a
coalition of classes that experienced national oppression under
imperialism.
33
New nation states in the imperialist stage could
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no longer be stable establishments embedded in legal and
institutional histories as the dominant states were. During the
early stages feudalism and theocracy were unable to shore up
the institutions of economic, political and ideological power of
feudalism. The vacuum created by the collapse of the old order
provided the space for nascent capitalism to entrench institu-
tions and systems of knowledge to bring about structural
change in social relations. In the imperialist stage the entrenched
capitalist powers would only allow new nation states to remain
as such if they remained satellites. The ght against capitalism
in the imperialist stage necessitated a ght against national
oppression. The stance of the Marxists within socialist move-
ments in the dominant capitalist states towards their own capi-
talism and nation state was therefore central to ghting revi-
sionism and chauvinism.
34
This is all the more so because
there is a bond between imperialism and opportunism in the
working class movement that is mediated by the nation state.
It allows the dominant states to win over the workers of their
own states to ght workers of other nation states.
35
In the imperialist stage of capitalism old ideas about the
progressive role of capitalism were no longer valid. After the
defeat of the Paris Commune and the German revolution in
1905 capitalism had become incapable of leading the struggles
against feudalism or theocracy or bringing forth new forms of
knowledge, or agrarian reforms that would bring freedom to
people. In the imperialist stage capitalism compromised with
reaction and with social chauvinism. The idea of an independent
capitalist state in the era of imperialism was impossible. Only
socialism would guarantee freedom from national oppression.
The super-prots in the imperialist stage enabled dominant
states to bribe and buy out their own working-classes, the
labour aristocracy.
36
Imperialism invokes crass national preju-
dices, social chauvinism in Lenins words to ght people
against people, one nation state against another. In the imperi-
alist stage all social life is militarised.
37
Capitalist militarism is
an economic, political and ideological phenomenon. Wars
include wars within states (civil wars) and between states, and
periods of truce/peace must be seen as an interregnum
between wars.
38
If self-determination became a legal right,
imperialist powers would utilise it to fan ethnic conicts to
subjugate nations. Real self-determination was not possible
without socialism; equally socialism is not possible without
freedom from national oppression. The two struggles were
two sides of the same coin.
It follows therefore that the theoretical developments sup-
portive of revolutionary social transformation must, in the im-
perialist stage, emerge from within Marxism. Lenin qualied
this by saying opportunism could not be fought by words but by
deeds, as the words would sound Marxist anyway! Lenin fore-
saw the possibility of another imperialist war if socialists failed
to unify the struggles against national and class oppression.
39
Much of the work of the third international after the Second
Congress turned its attention to this task.
The brief overview above has drawn attention to the unity
of the three strands in Lenins thought between imperialism as
a distinct stage of capitalism, national oppression, nation states
and self-determination as issues arising from the development of
capitalism into a new stage and the interrelationships between
imperialism, revisionism and social chauvinism within Marxism.
The Third World, Imperialism and the Legacy of Lenin
Lenin never synthesised his thoughts, or rather, he never got
the time or the space to write a comprehensive work on Marxism
after Marx. Yet his writings in the form of pamphlets and
speeches covered in 45 volumes of collected works shows re-
markable consistency and incremental development of ideas.
The lasting international legacy of Lenins intervention was
the emergence of the three world architecture of the world
after the end of the world wars.
40
The breakdown in the unity
of the three strands in Lenins thinking: economic imperial-
ism, political self-determination and Marxist theory within
socialist movements provide the cues to the trajectory of
developments of imperialism and its implications for people of
the third world. After the end of the world wars the unity of
the three strands in the analysis of imperialism broke down.
The breakdown of the unity of economics, politics and socialist
transformation manifested differently in the dominant capi-
talist states, the socialist states and the third world states. In
each of these three worlds different sets of internal and exter-
nal circumstances impelled the changes. Admittedly these
observations are based on broad generalisations.
Beginning with socialist transformation, the legacy of Lenin
survived longest in the Chinese revolution. Mao Zedong, in the
course of the Chinese revolution, systematised the incremental
evolution of Lenins analysis of imperialism, national liberation
and revisionism. Imperialism in China colluded with feudal
forces to subjugate China (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1965 [1939]).

In
the imperialist stage no progressive social outcomes could be
expected from capitalism because capitalism could survive
only by making compromises with feudalism and comprador
capitalists (ibid).

In turn the compromise made third world
states protectorate and satellites of dominant nation states. Fol-
lowing on from Lenin on the class content of nation-states Mao
synthesised the idea more clearly with his thesis on the Four
Class Alliance (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1965 [1926]).

As nation
states had class content the socialist movements should iden-
tify which classes were adversely affected by imperialism and
subjected to national oppression; they should develop a politi-
cal programme that unied those classes that stood against
imperialism to unite the many to defeat the few. In the Four
Class Alliance of workers, peasants, small landowners and na-
tional capitalists, the peasants and workers were the most reso-
lute opponents of imperialism because they bore the brunt of
national oppression (ibid). The national capitalists could vacil-
late or switch sides. As the class alliance in a nation state was
inherently unstable in the age of imperialism, communists
should learn how to handle the contradictions amongst class-
allies and class-enemies (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1977 [1957]a).
According to Mao, what Lenin called democratic revolutions
under the dictatorship of the proletariat was in fact not a
dictatorship at all. For Mao the Four Class Alliance was actually a
new kind of democracy that was based not on formal legalisms
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but rather on real relations between people in an oppressed
nation (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1961 [1949]).

Again Mao argued
that the main ideological struggle was against bourgeois ideas
within the party, i e, within Marxism.
41
For Mao, the struggle
against national oppression was tied to the struggle for socialism.
Either socialist revolutions would prevent a third world war or
a third world war would bring forth struggles for socialism.
42

These formulations had profound effects on the national lib-
eration struggles throughout the third world. The legacy of
Lenin lasted until the Mao-era in China. It continues today in
isolated pockets outside China in various Maoist movements
that continue to be inspired by the revolutions of the early
20th century. Having acknowledged very briey the survival
of the Leninist traditions in isolated pockets, what can we say
about the nexus between the three aspects of imperialism
more generally in the international arena?
Capitalism and Its Institutional Architecture
In the epoch of imperialism there are three moments in the
trajectories of developments of capitalism internationally. The
period from 1905-45 may be seen as the transitional moment.
43

The second moment from 1945 to 1989 may be seen as the
reconstruction period.
44
And, the period from 1989 to the
present may be viewed as the maturing of imperialist stage. Of
these phases, the reconstruction period from 1945-89 is the
least theorised by Marxists. Yet it is the most important period
for understanding contemporary imperialism. It may be worth
recapping the formative developments during that period be-
fore returning to the rupture in the three strands of Lenins
thinking about imperialism, self-determination and revision-
ism in the international arena.
Transnational monopoly-nance capital presupposes legal,
institutional, scientic, technological, social, cultural and ideo-
logical preconditions for the new imperialist stage. The hall-
marks of the new stage were new systems of production, the
global outreach of nance capital, a permanent war machine,
a system of protectorates, institutions to sustain asymmetrical
relations between nation states being the more important
ones. The old institutional infrastructures of industrial capi-
talism, including the legal, organisational, scientic, techno-
logical, military, social, ideological infrastructures were inad-
equate and unsuited for the new stage. The breakdown of the
institutional infrastructures in the early 20th century gave
socialist movements and national liberation struggles an op-
portunity to intervene and inuence the structural changes
underway. Their interventions were economic, political as well
as theoretical with profound impact on the architecture of the
world after the second world war. The three world architec-
ture that emerged was the result of three types of struggles
during the transitional years: the ght against fascism, the
ght for socialism and the ght for national liberation. The
three world architecture of the world produced structural
breaks on imperialisms effort to rebuild the institutional in-
frastructures appropriate for the new phase of capitalism.
The world wars caused extensive destruction of the physical,
social and institutional infrastructure of capitalism of the
industrial stage. Reconstruction was the slogan of domi-
nant capitalist states in the post-war era for building new
infrastructures for the imperialist stage of capitalism. Recon-
struction meant systemic reconstruction: i e, the reconstruc-
tion of institutions, ideologies, relations and mechanisms of
imperial governance. Broadly speaking, there were three types
of systemic reconstruction: reconstruction of the physical,
social and institutional infrastructure conducive to the imperi-
alist stage of capitalism; reconstruction of the colonial relations
ruptured or weakened during the world wars; and undermin-
ing the socialist experiment by encircling, containing and iso-
lating the socialist bloc states.
The conceptual resources for reconstructing the institutional
infrastructures for transnational monopoly nance capitalism
came from social democracy, the very trend in the socialist move-
ment that Lenin fought against all his life. European social de-
mocracy synthesised liberalism and socialism to rebuild the insti-
tutional preconditions for the imperialist stage. Key conceptual
resources included: (i) modifying the role of the state in tradi-
tional liberal theory; (ii) bringing about a truce between labour
and capital in the tripartite structures of trade-unions, monopoly
corporations and capitalist states, known as the welfare state;
(iii) developing international organisations premised on western
liberal ideas of institutional separation of economic relations
from social, political and cultural ones on a global scale; and
(iv) developing a legalistic view of nation states and sovereignty.
The UN system for the rst time provides and institutional
mechanism for transnational monopoly nance capitalism on
a global scale in the imperialist stage. Until then relationships
between states were primarily based on treaties. It must be
noted too that institutional nuts and bolts for the UN system
was conceptualised initially bilaterally between the United
Kingdom (UK) and the US in the Atlantic Charter as early as
1941, two years after the second world war broke out. Presi-
dent Roosevelts Four Freedoms formed the normative basis
for the Charter.
45
The Atlantic Charter formed the basis for ne-
gotiations with the former USSR and China which concluded in
the 1943 Moscow Declaration. Thereafter the Charter was put
to other states. Thus, most of the present member states had
very little say in the writing of the UN Charter.
46
In the architecture of the UN system the distribution of pow-
er runs through its organs and provides important insights
into the institutional reconstruction of the post-world war
phase. Of the six organs: the Security Council, the General
Assembly, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the
Trusteeship Council, the International Law Commission and
the Secretariat, we may, for the purposes of this article, leave
out of consideration the Secretariat. Political power is exer-
cised through the Security Council and the General Assembly.
The Security Council alone has the power to take punitive
action including economic sanctions, military interventions
and arbitrations between states. The Security Council in the
nal analysis is controlled by the victors in the world war of
whom the three western allies dominate.
The General Assembly is often seen as the assembly of all
nation states. It is important to remember that the General
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Assemblys powers are limited to making recommendations.
General Assembly recommendations are not binding on the
Security Council or the International Court of Justice. Most
third world states had little say in the drafting of the Charter as
they were not recognised as sovereign entities. The Trustee-
ship Council was seen largely as a transitional arrangement
to oversee the dissolution of old colonies under the Empire
system and the Mandate territories, regions acquired by the
Axis powers during the rst world war. Except for a few out-
standing issues like Palestine most colonies are now restruc-
tured as nation states and admitted to membership of the
General Assembly. Their role in the General Assembly, besides
making recommendations to the Security Council on political
issues, is to develop international conventions, declarations and
make social and cultural policies. The General Assemblys role
secures the consent of states in developing the normative frame-
works for global governance without corresponding powers.
The UN charter gives the UN an economic role that the
League never had before. Two chapters in the charter are
devoted to the economic role of the organisation. The role of
the ECOSOC, the least understood organ of the UN, is to coordi-
nate the mechanisms of governance and align the social and
cultural policies formulated by the General Assembly and the
economic policies of the specialised agencies. The specialised
agencies are international economic organisations set up out-
side the UN but brought under the institutional umbrella of the
UN through specialised agency agreements.
The international organisations may be classied into two
groups: the international economic organisations (IEOs) formed
under the Bretton Woods treaty and the international standard
setting organisations (ISSOs). Many of the ISSOs were formed un-
der the oversight of the League of Nations. Although the League
failed to hold the peace between warring states after the rst
world war, the League oversaw the development of economic in-
frastructures for post-world war capitalism. More than 400 ISSOs
ranging from the International Labour Organisation, Internation-
al Postal Union, World Meteorological Organisations, the scienti-
c unions and other standard setting organisations were formed
under the League. These standard setting organisations laid the
foundations for standardisation of technical, scientic and labour
standards that provided the preconditions for transnational mo-
nopoly nance capitalism after the end of the second world war.
47
The second world war broke out in 1939 and in the same
year UK and US opened negotiations for a global nancial
system to be put in place after the world war ended. By 1943
the terms of the shape of the system to come was in place under
the Draft Bank Plan proposed by the US treasury. The IEOs
were formed outside the UN and modelled on shareholding
structures adopted by private corporations. Thus, the economic
interventions of the state were modelled along corporate lines.
The shareholding structures of the World Bank and the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund give the largest voting rights to ve states
making the largest contributions to the capital base of the
IEOs. The Articles of Association of the two organisations make
any constitutional changes impossible without the consent of the
ve largest capitalist states. The specialised agency agreements
exempt the IEOs and ISSOs from the oversight of the political
o rgans of the UN. The ECOSOC nevertheless mobilises the UN
s ystem, sets up special organisations and regional interstate
o rganisations to coordinate the work of the economic organisa-
tions with the UNs work.
48
The socialist bloc countries had very
little inuence in the formation of the IEOs. The third world,
much of it under colonial rule, had even lesser inuence.
Reconstruction of Colonial Ties
The socialist revolutions and national liberations struggles
created powerful political opposition to the advance of imperi-
alism but had very little inuence over the economic and
standard setting institutions of capitalism during the imperialist
stage.
49
The UN Charter adopts the Wilsonian conception of
self-determination as a legal right. The Charter has an open-
ended denition of self-determination which can be claimed
by peoples, nations, states or countries.
50
The legal principle
of recognition in international law makes self-determination
contingent on the consent of the veto members of the Security
Council. By the time the last of the IEOs envisioned in the Bretton
Woods agreement, the WTO, came to be formed in 1995, the
reconstruction phase was complete.
Turning to reconstruction of colonial ties ruptured by
the national liberation struggles the development agenda con-
ceptualised under the Truman doctrine and adopted by the
IEOs and capitalist states played a key role in breaking
the link between self-determination and economic oppression
of nations.
51
Before long third world states complained about
dependency and neo-colonialism. Many Marxist writings
analysed various aspects of transnational monopoly nance
capitalism, neo-colonialism, unequal trade and dependency
but their analysis saw these issues reductively as economic
o ppression. They drew from Lenins Imperialism but rarely
mentioned Right of Nations and even less the nexus between
imperialism and the corruption of Marxism. The legal right of
self-determination in the charter created the belief that the
third world could use the right to assert economic independ-
ence. This position reverses the Marxist understanding that
economic relations cannot be separated from political, legal,
social and cultural questions. Indeed economic relations create
the conditions for particular forms of political and cultural re-
lations. Instead critical and radical theory took what scholars
have described as the cultural turn. The cultural turn shifted
the attention of theory from class, capitalism and structural
analysis to identity, culture and subjectivity. In turn the cultur-
al lens for understanding third world societies brought out the
crassest forms of religious and ethnic prejudices and conicts
and created an environment for conicts that imperialist pow-
ers could intervene in.
The UN resolution on the New International Economic Order
in the 1970s was the last concerted attempt by the third world
to change the UN system. Beleaguered by indebtedness, colo-
nial legacies, civil wars, cold wars and political interventions
by dominant states, the third world states were transformed,
by and large, into satellite states of imperialist powers by the
end of 1989. In 1989, the Washington Consensus initiated the
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neo-liberal reforms implemented by the IEOs. The reforms
restructured third world states rolling back the gains of the
national liberation movements.
Lastly, the socialist bloc created structural breaks in the ex-
pansion of capital after the end of the second world war. One-
sixth of the world was inaccessible to transnational monopoly
nance capital. In the UN the socialist states were the strongest
defenders of the principle of the political principle of self-
determination. However, they saw it as a legal right in inter-
national law, contrary to what Lenin had argued. As a legal
right it became anchored to abstract norms disconnected from
the materiality of imperialism.
The period from 1945-89 in the second world may be seen
as one where there was a contest to break the class alliances
on the basis of which the new nation states had succeeded in
the national liberation struggles. Here Lenins analysis of the
n ation state as a category called forth by capital in the imperialist
stage holds the clues to understanding the present. The most
important difference between early capitalist states constitut-
ed through the struggle against feudalism and theocracy and
late nation states constituted by capitalist expansion lies in the
fact that the early capitalist states innovated institutions and
systems of knowledge that were necessary conditions for capi-
talism to exist in systemic ways. The later states adapted the
institutions and forms of knowledge from the dominant capi-
talist states. They remain alien social institutions without
roots in their own natures and cultures and unable to con-
stantly innovate and restructure (Dsouza 2012: 6-43).
The year 1989 was a crucial milestone in the trajectory of con-
temporary imperialism. It was a period when the structural
breaks on imperialist expansion by the socialist revolutions and
national liberation struggles were nally removed. The year
saw three signicant developments: (i) the fall of the Berlin
Wall and the integration of the socialist bloc states into the po-
litical economy of imperialism, a project stalled by the revolu-
tions that Lenin was inuential in promoting; (ii) the Washing-
ton Consensus that mandates the intensication of economic
exploitation of the third world and increases the scale and
scope of each crises; and (iii) the conclusion of the GATT nego-
tiations that set up the WTO with the mandate to restructure
international organisations along neo-liberal lines (Dsouza
2010: 491-522). Once again the dominant capitalist powers had
the upper hand in institutional inno vation and scientic and
technological infrastructures for capitalism in the advanced
imperialist stage. As Lenin warned capitalist ideologies in the
garb of Marxism within the socialist movement were crucial in
reconstructing the insti tutional preconditions for capitalism in
the imperialist stage. Ironically the very bourgeois trium-
phalism has exacerbated the contradictions of capitalism and
threatens to shake its foundations on a scale far bigger than the
rst half of the 20th century.
Conclusions
This article highlights the nexus between imperialism, self-
determination and socialism in Lenins thinking. There is the
wider question of the development and maturing of the impe-
rialist stage of capitalism, and where it is taking the world.
Lenin argued that imperialism will not simply disappear under
its own weight. If socialist struggles do not ght back, Lenin ar-
gued, imperialism will make it impossible for people to repro-
duce conditions for human life due to militarism, wars, and
impoverishment. Much of that is happening in the third world
today. The single-most important question on the agendas of
social movements is the search for alternate models of deve-
lopment that are self-sustaining and resilient. If capitalism
grew from the ashes of disintegrating feudalism by ghting
theocracy and developing new social institutions, socialism
can only grow from the ashes of imperialism by developing
new forms of knowledge and building new types of institutions
that can sustain and reproduce a different kind of society. The
challenges of development call for new forms of know ledge in
the natural and social sciences and capacities for institutional
innovation, not mere adaptations of capitalisms models. Marx-
ist theory has developed extensive political and economic as-
pects of the critique of capitalism. The critique of science and
technology and law and institutions remain the weakest as-
pects of Marxist theory. It is precisely in these areas that impe-
rialism pushed forward for new innovations that eventually
reversed the revolutions of the early 20th century (Dsouza 2011).
Every revolution contributes something positive to the
human condition. The positive contributions of bourgeois revo-
lutions were limited to western European society and ended by
the late 19th century. It is ironic that bourgeois triumphalism
points to the failure of later revolutions but says little about the
failed promises of bourgeois revolutions. As an ideology, bour-
geois triumphalism seeks to erase the memory of the revolu-
tionary upheavals and the theories and practices that helped to
change the world. Remembering those efforts is an important
step to nding solutions for the present. If the past lives in the
present, the future too is conceived in the present.
Notes
1 For a theoretical understanding of regime
changes in history, see Lloyd (2002: 238-66).
2 The statement is necessarily an indicative
statement of the issues covered by Marx in his
economic writings in the three volumes of
Capital.
3 Lenin (1970 [1914]); Lenin 1970 [1917].
Through out this essay, key texts are read along
with Lenins notebooks on imperialism to glean
insights into his thinking on the subject. See
Lenin (1974).
4 Lenin, 1970 (1914).
5 James Monroe 1738-1831. See Lenins noting on
Monroe in Notebooks 1974, p 752.
6 For indirect rule in India see Dsouza (2006);
for indirect rule in Africa see Mamdani (1996).
7 Woodrow Wilson 1856-1924, president of the
United States from 1913-21 and a contemporary
of Lenin. For Lenins critique of Wilson see Len-
in (1971 [1920]: 449-64 at pp 455-56; for a legal
account see Cass ese (1995 at pp 13-23).
8 US opposed British colonialism in India in 1919
but never supported Indias freedom struggle.
See DSouza 2006, p 290.
9 Lenin, Notebooks 1974, especially p 732.
10 Lenin, Right of Nations 1970 (1914). For a
theoretical critique of formalism in liberal the-
ory see Ci (1999). The free labour markets for
example guarantees formal legal freedoms to
workers but nevertheless transform their real
status to wage slaves of capital. The reasoning
about formal legal rights to self-determination
and real national oppression is analogous here
and based on the philosophical critique of
liberalism in Marxist theory.
11 For a more in-depth Marxist approach to legal
norms and social relations see Pashukanis
1989 [1929].
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW April 13, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 15 69
12 By the Critique of Imperialism [...] we mean the
Attitude of Different Classes of Society Towards
Imperialist Policy in Connection with their
General Ideology in Lenin Imperialism n 13 at
p 752.
13 Lenin, Right of Nations 1970 (1914), p 598.
14 Lenin, Notebooks 1974, p 739.
15 Lenin, Notebooks 1970 (1914), pp 680-735.
16 Lenin, Imperialism n 13 supra at 680-83;
698; 736-37. In Notebooks Lenin qualies
highest stage of capitalism as highest mod-
ern capita lism. See Lenin, Notebooks 1970
(1914), p 202.
17 Lenin, Imperialism 1970 (1917), pp 725-26;
Ch IX, pp 752-63.
18 Lenin, Right of Nations 1970 (1914), p 602.
19 For co-relation between global economic policies
and impact on particular communities within
third world nation states see Chua (1995).
20 It is important to note that Lenin refers to
rentier states as those states that come to rely
on overseas investments of its corporate and
individual citizens for revenue. See Imperia lism,
1970 (1917), Ch VIII at pp 745-52.
21 With regard to contemporary British states
reliance on revenues from overseas investments
of banks see Noreld (2011).
22 Lenin, Notebooks 1974.
23 For e g, see Chua Nationalisation, etc, n 29,
supra.
24 Lenin, Notebooks 1974, p 736.
25 Lenin, Notebooks 1974, p 736.
26 Lenin, Notebooks 1974, pp 736; 757.
27 Lenin, Right of Nations 1970 (1914), pp 608-13.
28 See generally articles and speeches Manbekova
and Khomenko (ed.) (1974); in particular article
on Events in the Balkans and Prussia at pp 32-43;
also Notebooks 1974, pp 739-40.
29 The main texts referred to here all engage various
liberal bourgeois tendencies within Mar xism. In
particular see collection of speeches and arti-
cles , Lenin (1974), and Lenin (1974 [1916]: 61).
30 Lenin 1970 [1908] #221@74-75.
31 Lenin, ibid at p 77.
32 Lenin, ibid at p 77.
33 See in this connection {Lenin 1971 [1920] #218}.
34 See Lenin articles and speeches at 1974 on The
Defeat of Ones Own Government in the Impe-
rialist War at pp 116-18.
35 Lenin, Imperialism 1970 (1917), pp 765-77.
36 Lenin, Imperialism 1970 (1917), p 677.
37 Lenin, Notebooks 1974, pp 739-40.
38 Lenin, The Military Programme of the Prole-
tarian Revolution at p 773.
39 Lenin, ibid at p 775.
40 First world the dominant capitalist states,
second world states that underwent socialist
revolutions and third world states that attained
independence from colonial rule and formal
protectorate systems.
41 Mao, Combat Bourgeois Ideas in the Party.
Several other articles in the same volume deal
with the question of bourgeois ideologies with-
in the Community Party of China.
42 Mao, On the Correct Handling of Contradic-
tions among the People.
43 1905 was the year when the socialist revolution
in Germany and the bourgeois democratic rev-
olution in Russia were unsuccessful. The sec-
ond world war ended in 1945 and the UN was
set up as the institutional framework for inter-
national law and international relations for the
rst time.
44 From the formation of the UN and the Bretton
Woods institutions and emergence of the Three
World architecture to the end of the cold war,
the Washington Consensus and the last round
of GATT treaty which concluded with the decision
to form the WTO.
45 Dsouza, Interstate Conicts over Krishna
Waters: Law, Science and Imperialism at Ch 11
p 294.
46 DSouza, ibid, Ch 11.
47 DSouza, ibid.
48 DSouza, ibid.
49 It may be noted here that Palestine remains an
unresolved question primarily due to US veto
in favour of Israel. It may also be noted that the
International Trade Organisation was concep-
tualised as a Bretton Woods Organisation in
1944. Even though the UN had adopted a reso-
lution soon after it was formed in February
1946 to set up the ITO, an international trade
organisation was formed only after the end of
the cold war. It may also be noted that the two
most important socialist states China and Russia
were granted accession to the WTO only in
2001 and 2012 respectively after both countries
had restructured their states and their institu-
tions in ways compatible with capitalism in the
imperialist stage.
50 UN Charter Preamble Articles 2, 55, 73, 76.
51 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/tru-
doc.asp, Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law
Library.
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