Professional Documents
Culture Documents
of Imperialism
A C O M M E N T ON SOME RECENT WRITINGS
towards a declining rate of profit. As Kemp puts it: 'Marx calculated the
rate of profit as a ratio between surplus value and the total capital em-
ployed. The rise in the organic composition of capital — arising from
technical progress and enforced by competition — would thus tend to
lower the rate of p r o f i t . . . .' 20 Marx believed that the 'main counteracting
influence' was that of foreign trade.
Fourthly, Marx believed that the concentration and centralization of
capital was an inevitable outcome of the competitive struggle inherent in
capitalism.
In Imperialism, as in his other writings, Lenin was intent upon extending
and applying Marx's analysis of capitalism to contemporary developments.
As Kemp explains, in his demonstration of the 'connection and relation-
ships between the principal economic features of imperialism and his
construction of a composite picture of the world capitalist system in its
international relationships at the beginning of the twentieth century — on
the eve of the first world imperialist war — Lenin constantly emphasized,
in Marxist vein, the contradictions within capitalist imperialism'. 21
This point is also taken up by Eric Stokes. The anti-Marxist critiques
of Fieldhouse and many other historians suffer, he believes, from the
fallacy of merging the distinct theories of Hobson and Lenin into a
generalized economic interpretation of imperial expansion. 22 But Lenin
had quite other concerns than Hobson. Interested mainly in the evolution
of capitalism and its 'latest' or 'highest' stage in the imperialist conflict
which gave rise to World War I, Lenin made little attempt to explain the
scramble for colonies between 1870 and 1900 about which Hobson had
developed his economic interpretation. Although he saw features of
monopoly capital emerging after 1870 and tended to link the scramble
for colonies with it, Lenin's attention was centred upon the new manifesta-
tion of monopoly finance capitalism which did not definitely supersede
the earlier stage of monopoly capitalism until the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Rather than attempting to explain the earlier struggle to acquire the
remaining open spaces of the world in the nineteenth century, Lenin
concentrated upon the intensification of inter-state competition arising
from monopoly finance capital which gave rise to a 'struggle for the
redivision of the already divided world' in the early twentieth century.
This struggle was at its most intense not in colonial Africa or Asia but in
the semi-colonial territories of Persia, the Turkish empire and China, and
within the industrialized regions themselves. In Lenin's words:
T h e characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex
not only agrarian territories, but even most highly industrialised regions (German
appetite f o r Belgium; F r e n c h appetite for Lorraine), because (1) the fact that
the world is already divided up obliges those contemplating a redivision to
reach out for every kind of territory, and (2) an essential feature of imperialism
is the rivalry between several G r e a t Powers in the striving f o r hegemony. 2 3
the economic interpretation of imperialism 183
perialist financial interests and which Lenin believed was part of the
superstructure of capitalism. 31 Fieldhouse, concludes Stretton, lacks a
coherent counter-explanation of imperialism. Far more convincing and
balanced, Stretton believes, is W. L. Langer's conclusion. Although non-
Marxian in his insistence that the 'economic side, whatever its importance,
must not be allowed to obscure the other factors', Langer suggested:
At b o t t o m the m o v e m e n t was probably as much economic as anything else. It
resulted f r o m the tremendously enhanced productive powers of European
industry a n d the b r e a k d o w n of the monopolistic position of England through
the a p p e a r a n c e of competitors. T h e feeling that new m a r k e t s must be secured
was very widespread a n d the need f o r new fields of investment, t h o u g h not much
discussed at the time, was probably even m o r e important. These needs, however,
had been met in the past without any corresponding expansion of territory. It
was the e m b a r k a t i o n of France, G e r m a n y , a n d other countries o n the course
of empire t h a t b r o u g h t the British t o the conviction that only political control
could adequately safeguard markets. 3 2
b e h a v i o u r . C l a r i f i c a t i o n of t h e m a j o r issues in c o n t e n t i o n m u s t a w a i t a
Marxist interpretation that encompasses pre-capitalist and post-capitalist
imperialism, and a non-Marxist interpretation which develops a historical
t h e o r y of i m p e r i a l e x p a n s i o n i s m t h a t c o n v i n c i n g l y resolves t h e p r o b l e m
of ' r o o t c a u s e s ' . 4 9
M. R. STENSON
University of Auckland
NOTES
1
T. Kemp, Theories of Imperialism, London, 1967, p. 120.
2
R. Koebner, Imperialism, Cambridge, 1961.
3
D. K. Fieldhouse, 'Imperialism: An Historiographical Revision', The Economic
History Review, 2nd series, XIV, 2 (1961), 195.
4
J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, 3rd edition, London, 1938, pp. v-vi.
5
ibid., p. vi.
6
G. Lichtheim, Imperialism, London, 1971, pp. 112-3.
7
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Peking, 1970, p. 106.
8 ibid., p. 149.
9
ibid., p. 100.
10 ibid., pp. 102-3.
11 Kemp, p. 8.
• 2 ibid., p. 29.
' 3 ibid., p. 9.
• 4 ibid., p. 10.
is ibid., p. 11.
16 ibid., p. 14.
1 7 Capital, Moscow, 1958, III, 327, cited in Kemp, p. 19.
is Capital, I, 451, cited in Kemp, pp. 19-20.
19
Kemp, p. 27.
2
0 ibid., p. 27.
2
1 ibid., p. 3.
22
E. Stokes, 'Late Nineteenth Century Colonial Expansion and the Attack on the
Theory of Economic Imperialism: A Case of Mistaken Identity?', The Historical
Journal, XII, 2 (1969), p. 288.
23
Lenin, Imperialism, p. 109.
24
R. Robinson and J. Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The
Official Mind of Imperialism, London, 1961, p. 294.
25
See, for example, Robinson and Gallagher, p. 465.
26
Kemp has written elsewhere: 'the Marxist theory rejects the view that the course
of history can be explained in terms of power drives, love of war, desire for glory and
the influence of outstanding personalities. In particular, it denies that the massive
technological and economic forces of advanced capitalism have been somehow geared
to imperialist drives, contrary to their inherent tendencies, by statesmen, military
leaders, aristocratic castes or even whole peoples. It begins with the capitalist mode of
production in its state of movement and sees what it defines as "imperialism" as being
the expression of the working out of its immanent laws.' 'The Marxist Theory of
Imperialism' in R. Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism,
London, 1972, p. 17.
27
H. Stretton, The Political Sciences, London, 1969.
28
Fieldhouse, p. 204.
29
ibid., p. 209.
30
Stretton, p. 132.
31
A similar criticism is made of Robinson and Gallagher by V. G. Kiernan. Although
frequently emphasizing the primary importance of India in the'official mind'of British
188 m. r . stenson
imperialism, Robinson and Gallagher never investigate why India was considered so
important. V. G. Kiernan, Marxism and Imperialism, London, 1974, p. 83.
32
W. L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902, New York, 1951, pp. 95-96,
cited in Stretton, The Political Sciences, p. 137.
33
P. A. Baran and P. M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American
Economic and Social Order, Harmondsworth, 1968.
34
M. Barratt-Brown, After Imperialism, London, 1962; Essays on Imperialism,
Nottingham, 1972; The Economics of Imperialism, Harmondsworth, 1974.
35
H. Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy,
New York, 1969.
36
Barratt-Brown, 'A Critique of Marxist Theories of Imperialism', in Owen and
Sutcliffe, pp. 57-58.
37
See, for example, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical
Studies of Chile and Brazil, Harmondsworth, 1971.
38
Magdoff, pp. 148-9.
39
ibid., p. 155.
40
ibid., p. 156.
41
Baran and Sweezy, ch. vii.
42
Kemp, Theories, p. 171.
43
Lichtheim, pp. 137-43; Barratt-Brown, Economics, ch. ii.
44
Kiernan, p. 139.
45
Barratt-Brown, Economics, ch. xii.
46
ibid., p. 291.
47
R. W. Tucker, The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy, Baltimore, 1971,
p. 106.
48
B. J. Cohen, The Question of Imperialism: The Political Economy of Dominance
and Dependence, New York, 1973, pp. 242-5.
49
Schumpeter's explanation remains probably the most systematic and coherent
non-Marxist theory of imperialism but his thesis of capitalist rationality and anti-
imperialism has been hard hit by the course of time. J. Schumpeter, Imperialism and
Social Classes, New York, 1972 (first published 1919). Most other non-Marxist dis-
cussions of imperialism either decline to develop a rival theory or rely upon implicit
assumptions about the individual or national will to power.