Marxist Theories of Imperialism

A History

Murray Noonan

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786720948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Imperialismo

For Marxists, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Critical analysis of imperialism has been a feature of Marxist throughout the twentieth century. The conceptualising and theorising of imperialism by Marxists has evolved over time in response to developments in the global capitalist economy and in international politics. Murray Noonan here provides the first complete analysis of Marxist theories of imperialism in over two decades. Presenting three phases of imperialist theories, he analyses and compares 'Classical', 'Neo' and 'Globalisation-era' Marxist theories of imperialism. The book moves chronologically, tracking the origins of imperialism theorised by J.A. Hobson at the beginning of the twentieth century up to the present day. He critically identifies and engages with a new 'Globalisation-era' phase of Marxist imperialism theory. Through a detailed scholarly analysis of the history and evolution of these theories, Noonan offers vital new perspectives on imperialist theory and its relevance and application in the twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 1

IMPERIALISM AS ABERRATION

THE REFORMISTS: HOBSON, HILFERDING AND KAUTSKY

Introduction

For many contemporaries, the first two decades of the twentieth century heralded the end of civilisation. Eric Hobsbawm notes that, for people like the British foreign secretary, Edward Grey, who had spoken of the ‘lamps going out all over Europe’ upon the commencement of hostilities in 1914, ‘the world war [was] the end of a world’ (Hobsbawm 1998: 22). The war was remarkable not only for killing and maiming on a scale never before witnessed, but also for the disappearance of empires and the re-drawing of the political map of the world (Hobsbawm 1998b). For such catastrophes to happen, clearly there had been some significant developments in Europe and in the wider world. The effort to understand what had been the causes of the conflagration and how to stop such a calamity occurring again gave rise both to the discipline of International Relations (Burchill 1996a) and the League of Nations. The latter was the first multinational body whose aim was to prevent the outbreak of another catastrophe like the Great War (Hobsbawm 1998b).

The effort to understand did not end there. The social, political and economic changes that had occurred prior to the outbreak of hostilities were critically analysed by the British economist and liberal John A. Hobson. On the Continent, the Austrian-born Marxist Rudolf Hilferding sought to extend and update Marx's critique of capitalism. Hilferding identified a number of developments in capitalism that had occurred after Marx's death, especially the appearance of an amalgam that he called ‘finance capital’. One of the consequences of the publication of Hobson's book Imperialism: A Study (1988) and Hilferding's Finance Capital (1981) first published in 1902 and 1910 respectively, was that imperialism gained acceptance as the descriptor for not only capitalism's changes since Marx but also the disquieting developments in the geopolitics of that time. Hobson and Hilferding were of the opinion that capitalism, the nature of politics, the political relationships within and between the industrialised nation-states and the multifaceted relationships between colonies and colonial powers all had been transformed by imperialism.

Hobson's understanding of imperialism, informed as it was by his liberalism, led him to offer up some prescriptions to return the British body politic to rude good health. The details of those prescriptions need not delay us here; it is enough to note that Hobson thought that reform of the British economy and its politics would be sufficient to rid the country of the evils of imperialism. Classical Marxists, namely Hilferding, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Bukharin and Lenin, had fundamental differences of opinion about the role of reform or revolution in the strategic vision of working class parties. These differences had a direct bearing on how the classical Marxists configured imperialism and its connections to contemporaneous developments in capitalism and domestic and international politics. Despite the differences in ideological outlook and strategic vision, taken as a whole, the work of the ‘pioneers of imperialism theory’ was complex, theoretically sophisticated and established the parameters for the analysis of capitalist imperialism.

The ‘pioneers’ did more than produce rich and complex theories. One of the arguments in part one is that the theorising of the ‘pioneers’ is not only of historical interest, but also continues to function as a benchmark for more recent contributions in the study of imperialism. The parameters that the ‘pioneers’ set and the insightful observations they made about the prevailing conditions continue to have relevance. Nonetheless, as Vivek Chibber has pointed out, aside from Hobson the theories of imperialism produced by the ‘pioneers’ gravitated strongly towards critical analysis of economic developments (Chibber 2004: 429). Whereas Hobson examined both the economic and political sides of imperialism, classical Marxist theorising is notable for a distinct lack of attention paid to the political aspects of imperialism. Furthermore, the simplistic or instrumentalist view of the state evident in the writing of particular classical Marxists comes in for criticism from ‘globalisation-era’ Marxists (as will be shown in part three). Such criticism is valid, not only for the classical Marxists but for the ‘pioneers’ as a whole. A further argument will be made, then, that the political mediation of imperialism (particularly the function of the state) did not receive enough attention from the ‘pioneers of imperialism theory’. This primarily is due to the simplistic or instrumentalist rendering of the state by this cohort of writers. Although this is a flaw, it does not detract from the overall achievements of the ‘pioneers’. The fact that ‘globalisation-era’ Marxists overwhelmingly direct their attention to the work of the ‘pioneers’ rather than the neo-Marxists is another example of the enduring nature of their early contributions to theorising.

Returning to the two approaches to imperialism sketched out above – the reformists and revolutionaries – it is possible to split the ‘pioneers’ evenly. Of the six writers, three of them can be categorised as reformists and three as revolutionaries. The reformists saw imperialism as either an aberration deriving from poor policy choices, the undue influence of particular interest groups such as financiers or as political and economic developments that did not require revolutionary upheaval to redress. Throughout this book the term reformist specifically refers to Hobson, Hilferding and Kautsky, and it denotes their advocacy of non-revolutionary remedies to the problem(s) of capitalist imperialism. Hobson quite easily is characterised as a reformist, because for him there was nothing fundamentally wrong with British economic and political institutions. The distortions of imperialism that he identified were correctable through judicious applications of legislation and policy. For Hilferding and Kautsky, the application of the reformist label is not quite as straightforward as in Hobson's case. Common to Hilferding and Kautsky was the experience of being involved in organising working-class political parties in Austria and Germany and getting elected representatives into parliament. The sinecure of an official, paid position within the apparatus of the Austrian and German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) and the daily business of party affairs also helped foster a more cautious approach to class struggle, the attainment of state power and the fight against militarism. The attraction of reformism as a business-as-usual approach therefore is understandable.

Hilferding made his name as a Marxist thinker in Vienna amongst a group that included Max Adler, Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, who collectively became known as the Austro-Marxists (Bottomore and Goode 1978: 6). He had practised as a medical doctor for five years and then again as part of his military service in World War I (Bottomore 1981: 2). Hilferding came to the attention of Kautsky as a result of his contributions to the leading Marxist theoretical journal Die Neue Zeit, from 1902 onwards. He was appointed to the SPD school in Berlin in 1906, and his relationship with the party continued after being given the foreign editorship of its journal Vorwärts (Bottomore 1981: 2–3).

On 4 August 1914, the majority of the SPD representatives in the German Reichstag voted to support war credits, effectively guaranteeing that the German war effort would be financed. Voting for war credits had far-reaching implications. It precipitated a split in the ranks of not only the peak body of working-class parties, the Second International, but also caused splits in German social democracy itself. Hilferding had taken up a minority position in opposing the voting for war credits. This watershed moment did not brand him as a reformist; rather, what did was his commitment, like Kautsky, to parliamentarism and electoral action (Bottomore 1981: 11), as well as his opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power and the formation of the Third or Communist International. These attitudes affirm his reformist credentials.

Kautsky was a complex and contradictory figure, on the one hand believing in social revolution but on the other hand considering ‘the peaceful and legal road to power within the framework of democratic representative institutions both possible and desirable’ (Salvadori 1990: 41). Kautsky oscillated between the revisionists of Bernstein's ilk and the radicals such as Luxemburg and the Dutch social democrat Anton Pannekoek. After his polemics with Luxemburg in 1910 (see below), Kautsky's position hardened. He found that he was drawing closer to the arguments of the revisionists that he had battled against a few years earlier (Salvadori 1990: 149). In the highly charged atmosphere that accompanied SPD deliberations about the voting on war credits, Kautsky advocated that the party's Reichstag members should abstain from voting. When the majority of SPD Reichstag representatives refused to countenance his advice, Kautsky accepted the majority position. He felt that he could not advocate ‘an outright vote against the credits, “in view of the lack of clarity” about the exact responsibility for the war’ (Salvadori 1990: 182).

Kautsky's criticism of the revolutionaries Luxemburg and Lenin reflected a less than sanguine belief in the efficacy of revolution. During the upheaval that came to pass in Germany late in the war he insisted on legalism, the principle of parliamentary politics and loyal opposition. That his philosophical outlook was reformist rather than revolutionary is borne out by his most famous article on imperialism ‘Ultra-imperialism’ (Kautsky 1914). Here he painted a possible picture of the Great Powers chastened by the destruction that attended the war, accommodating each other to ensure the status quo. As further analysis of this article follows later, for now it suffices to note that this short piece was published in September 1914 shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in August. That he should ascribe some level of equanimity to states that had large armed forces and were prepared to use that force indicates a belief in the ongoing nature of capitalism and its political forms. According to Kautsky, the correct course of action for the SPD was to extract what could be extracted from the capitalist social system until it eventually collapsed. Kautsky by these lights was a reformist.

Hobson's analysis of imperialism and Hilferding's examination of capitalist development in the decades after Marx's death put in place the political and economic concepts that Kautsky, Luxemburg, Bukharin and Lenin would build on in their theorising of imperialism. Kautsky's contribution, though reviled by Lenin, has received some praise by the two ‘globalisation-era’ Marxists Panitch and Gindin. They suggest that Kautsky's notion of ultra-imperialism – an accord between the imperialist nations – indeed has come to pass under the aegis of American hegemony (Panitch and Gindin 2004). Reformists' work on imperialism and capitalist development continues to resonate due to their influence on theorists like Bukharin and Lenin, for example, and by extension through them later thinkers. Moreover, the key elements of capitalist imperialism identified by the reformists (and the revolutionaries) are observable in contemporary world affairs. It is timely, then, to begin the critical analysis of reformist writings starting with Hobson's imperialism theory, moving on to Hilferding's work and finishing with Kautsky's article ‘Ultra-imperialism’.

John A. Hobson: father of imperialism theory

It has been claimed that Hobson's Imperialism: A Study (Hobson 1988) is a classic of political literature (Townshend 1988: [9]). There is merit in this claim, for Hobson set many of the parameters of imperialism theory. His groundbreaking study highlighted the development in capitalism that saw a shift from commodity export to the export of capital, the prominent role of financiers in the direction of state policy and the pernicious effect of imperialism on the British economy and mores. Hobson's work deserves its lofty reputation.

Born in 1858 into a family with liberal views, Hobson spent his formative years in Derby. After a brief stint teaching, he arrived in London in 1887 to take up journalism (Cain 2002: 15; Townshend 1988: [11]). Peter Cain states that Hobson ‘was undoubtedly raised in an atmosphere where free market capitalism and the Gladstonian state were largely taken for granted as guarantors of individual freedom’ (Cain 2002: 16). Hobson's shift to the left of the Liberal spectrum came in the 1890s under the impetus of social crises and the unfolding events in South Africa. The 1895 Jameson Raid was an unsuccessful attempt to de-stabilise the Kruger government in South Africa, at the behest of Cecil Rhodes and his fellow mining capitalists who perceived the Afrikaner government as obstructive. The unsuccessful attempt at de-stabilisation inflamed liberal opinion in Britain and also was ‘a key moment in the emergence of the idea of “financial imperialism”’ (Cain 2002: 60). Links between the shareholders of Rhodes' British South Africa Company, the City of London connections and members of the aristocracy revealed to Hobson the potential for these people to bring to bear political influence favourable to their business interests (Cain 2002: 60).

Hobson published a number of articles about the unfolding situation in South Africa in 1899 while based there as a special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. According to Cain, what the South African experience did for Hobson was not only confirm his suspicions about the mendacity of financial interests but also the cosmopolitan nature of financial capitalism. Hobson's unravelling of the cosmopolitan nature of financial capital did not end at pointing out the national origins of the financiers. With a decidedly anti-Semitic streak, Hobson alleged that in South Africa the economy was dominated by Jewish financial interests (Cain 2002: 92).

Back in Britain, Hobson wrote up his observations and published The War in South Africa in 1900 (Cain 2002: 286). In 1901, he wrote six articles for the Speaker which, combined with another article published in early 1902, laid the groundwork for ‘The Economies of Imperialism’, the first part of Imperialism: A Study (Cain 2002: 103).

The economics of imperialism

In his introductory remarks to the 1938 edition of Imperialism: A Study, Hobson cited ‘three fields of causation of imperialism’: first were political illusions; second were the ‘financial fears and mistrusts which prevented sane monetary arrangements for internal and external marketing’; and, finally, the ‘tragic absurdity summarised as “poverty in plenty”’, which for Hobson represented a ‘refusal to make full use of existing or attainable productive resources’ (Hobson 1988: [51]). One reason for the territorial expansion indulged in by advanced nation-states was found in the inherent predatory and pugnacious character of the ‘animal man’. Human nature thus is a causal factor of imperialism, yet Hobson also saw a development in capitalism which was telling:

My contention is that the system prevailing in all developed countries for the production and distribution of wealth has reached a stage in which its productive powers are held in leash by its inequalities of distribution; the excessive share that goes to profits, rents and other surpluses impelling a chronic endeavour to oversave in the sense of trying to provide an increased productive power without a corresponding outlet in the purchase of consumable goods (Hobson 1988: [51–2]).

Oversaving, accompanied by underconsumption at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, are two sides of the same coin. The surplus of savings looking for investment opportunities and surplus population seeking employment opportunities were manipulated by interested parties, like financiers and businessmen with overseas investments, ultimately giving rise to imperialist policies. Democratic struggles within the advanced countries for more just and equitable economic outcomes were diverted by imperialism (Hobson 1988: [60]).

Perhaps the most famous trope associated with Hobson is his ‘economic taproot’ of imperialism hypothesis. The genesis of the ‘economic taproot’ was found in the work of the American Marxist H. Gaylord Wilshire (Etherington 1982: 19). Wilshire's analysis of capitalism in America in the 1890s suggested that there had been ‘a relentless progression from competition to monopoly’ which had blocked channels of investment. Domestically there was a surplus of capital looking for investment opportunities (Etherington 1983: 40–1). Wilshire claimed that capitalists in America at that time were greatly in need of foreign fields of investment, hence the advocacy of imperialism by the Republican Party (Etherington 1983: 41). The change in American capitalism outlined by Wilshire became the example which Hobson used to flesh out his taproot hypothesis:

It was sudden demand for foreign markets for manufactures and for investments which was avowedly responsible for the adoption of Imperialism as a political policy and practice by the Republican party to which the great industrial and financial chiefs belonged, and which belonged to them. The adventurous enthusiasm of President Theodore Roosevelt and his ‘manifest destiny’ and ‘mission of civilization’ party must not deceive us. It was Messrs Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, and their associates who needed Imperialism and who fastened it upon the shoulders of the great republic of the West. They needed Imperialism because they desired to use the public resources of their country to find profitable employment of their capital which otherwise would be superfluous (Hobson 1988: 77–8).

Great Britain, Germany, Holland and France were compelled to locate larger amounts of their economic resources outside their political domains, too. Offshore investments, export of surplus capital and goods were accompanied by policies of political expansion or colonisation (Hobson 1988: 80). Following this expansion and the opening up of new markets was the extension of protection by the mother country to these new colonies and markets. Competition between the advanced countries for new territories and new fields of investment created additional imposts on taxpayers, by way of government subsidies, tariffs and costs associated with administrative and military functions. Indirect taxation was the preferred method of financing these undertakings as the burden of funding such governmental expenditures was not only concealed, but was transferred to the public (Hobson 1988: 97–8). Increasingly, imperialist financiers used state guaranteed debt or public loans to concentrate in their hands influence over governments. Not only was the holding and trading of government debt a profitable business, it also could be decisive in determining political outcomes at critical times (Hobson 1988: 108).

Summarising Hobson's views on the economic taproot of imperialism, it was the desire of highly organised industrial and financial interests to impose the security and development of their private overseas investments on the public purse and the armed might of the state. The private overseas investments spoken of here were comprised of surpluses of goods and capital. Necessary accompaniments to the economic root of imperialism – the drive to send surpluses overseas – were ‘war, militarism, and a “spirited foreign policy”’ (Hobson 1988: 106).

Crucially, for Hobson, the problem of oversaving and underconsumption could be alleviated by reform. At the heart of the oversaving and underconsumption nexus was mal-distribution of income. Mal-distribution of income could be overcome through the awarding of higher wages, boosting worker's consumption. Consequently, domestic demand would create new possibilities for investment in the home economy. Changes to the taxation regime meant that oversaving could be channelled into the community where it could be spent on improving consumption and living conditions (Hobson 1988: 85, 86, 88). Social reform would raise the ‘wholesome standard of private and public consumption for a nation, so as to enable the nation to live up to its highest standards of production’ (Hobson 1988: 88). Foreign trade still would continue, with the small surpluses of British manufactures traded for the raw materials and foodstuffs required, but the exodus of surplus capital and goods would be minimised. Imperialism, in Hobson's view, was distorted economic development which brought in its train benefits to certain interest groups or classes. States became increasingly enmeshed in imperialist policies, practices and militarism, yet the source of the policies, practices and militarism was economic.

Old imperialism, new imperialism, colonialism and liberalism's sell-outs

Hobson did not entirely disapprove of imperialism. There were positive and negative versions of imperialism, sane and insane, legitimate and aggressive (Townshend 1988: [19]). For example, imperialism in its pre-1870s guise often was more rational than the post-1870s variety, which Hobson called ‘New Imperialism’. The difference came down to the type of policies implemented in the protectorates or colonies. Sane imperialism for Hobson was the implementation of policies ‘devoted to the protection, education, and self-development of a “lower-race”’. In contrast, the insane version promoted the untrammelled exploitation of the resources and the ‘lower races’ of a colony or protector...