PARTISAN!

The Melbourne branch of the Platypus Affiliated Society held a panel on the topic of “Imperialism, what is it? Why should we be against it?“. We publish here the talk given by Anthony Furia of the RCO. Neil F (Spartacist League of Australia) and David Glanz (Solidarity) were also on the panel.

I would like to preface this by saying that, when I initially sat down to write this speech, Henry Kissinger, the imperialist butcher, was still alive. And it brings me, and I’m sure many others, immense satisfaction that, just days before this panel on imperialism, that murderous conductor of imperial ambition finally carked it. Although he may have done so unfortunately surrounded by loved ones and family at an immense age, he also died at a time when the US imperial hegemony he worked so tirelessly to build was finally unravel ling at the seams, and all he could do was watch.

With the advent of the first world war, and its bloody, dramatic unfolding from 1914 until 1918, the question of imperialism appeared on the stage of European Marxist thought with a vitalised urgency and prominence. Named the “imperialist war” by Marxists; driven forward by the forces of capitalist monopolisation, the concentration of production in the industrial capitalist states of Europe, and their export of capital abroad, Lenin’s quintessential pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism represents a condensed culmination of the Marxist theory advanced and developed through the experience of the war.

Yet we, as scientific socialists, would be remiss to dismiss or discard the progression of capital’s dominance over the globe since the great war, and the development of capitalist relations and means of production into the 21st century which necessitate – and have indeed given rise to – an expanded, clarified notion of imperialism today. With the expansion of capital’s reach across the world came the theoretical development of theories of imperialism and imperialist exchange. Indeed, as capitalism developed, so too did imperialism as a world system, as an absolutely quintessential part of modern capital, dominating all aspects of global capitalist exchange and relations. First raised to particular prominence in the 1960s and 70s in debates on dependency theory and exchange, the Marxist understanding of imperialism was greatly clarified and developed through the period of rapid globalisation in the late 20th, and early 21st century.

This period saw the incredible expansion of capitalist relations to all parts of the world, the uprooting of swathes of remaining subsistence farmers, the creation of wage dependency and relations internationally, and the final cementing, through acts of incredible economic and political violence, of an international periphery, semi-periphery, and imperial core. Such a system is epitomised in the cementing of relations of production in which the proletarian layers of those in the periphery and semi-periphery are subjected to hyper exploitation; the exportation of mass amounts of surplus value and capital to the imperial core through Transnational Corporations who aid developing states in keeping the price of local labour power as low as possible, as exploitable as possible, in order to satiate the unending demand of capital for expansion and the self-valorisation of value into oblivion.

This represents not a split from the theory of imperialism set forth by Lenin, utilising Marx’s Capital as its base, but rather its clarification and development. The domination of immense financial monopolies has suffused all aspects of global capitalism, and indeed has been instrumental in its construction and maintenance through the so-called “Neoliberal” period of global capital from the late 20th to early 21st century. Capitalism as a world system has succeeded in cementing its split of the global relations of production into periphery, semi-periphery, and imperial core nations.

The proletariat of the semi-periphery, the great manufacturers of the world, face the brutal, naked exploitation of the value of their labour-power to an extreme extent; beyond that faced by many workers in imperial countries themselves, regardless of productivity increases over the past 20 years and the industrial-bank monopolies choke hold on specialised labour, advanced technologies, and labour processes. The profits extracted from such exploitation of the semi-periphery and periphery, fully integrated in the 21st century into capitalism as a world system, serve to offset the concessions granted to the working class of imperial countries themselves.

This process, of development at the expense of the workers of the periphery and semi-periphery, attempts to neuter the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat of imperial nations imbued in their class position through higher wages, social benefits, and an overwhelming, choking abundance of commodities, cheap and expensive, in all facets of life. The result is the formation of a labour-aristocracy; highly privileged, skilled workers in the imperial core whose salaries reflect not just the cost of their labour-power but also the monetary concessions accrued by the working class through years of struggle now provided for, in part, by the exploitation of workers outside the imperial core.

This process of extraction, of global production, capital flows and investment, chasing inevitably lowering rates of profit and surplus value, is the essence of modern imperialism. This is the development of capitalist exploitation and value extraction as a world system, this is the reality faced by the international proletariat as a whole, across all nations.

The importance of this critique, of a Marxist critique, of imperialism, in determining the orientation and strategy of any serious socialist organisation in Australia cannot be understated. Liberal critics of imperialism speak on its moralist “injustice” as a system. They loudly protest against the most apparent violations of their fetishised international law and system of checks and balances, yet cannot go beyond this.

The character of general liberal criticisms of imperialism is flawed two-fold; first, it broaches only single incidents resulting from imperialism from a moralistic standpoint complaining of their violation of abstracted liberal ideology and ethics in the form of Human Rights and refusing to go beyond this.

Rather than a serious criticism of imperialism itself, founded upon the social relations (economic and political) that compose it as a system of fundamental exploitation, liberal criticisms largely point only to effect, with a minimal ability to decry the cause. This is the criticism offered by the NGO-industrial complex, built upon liberal-humanist ideology, which is swift to decry Congolese child labour, or Bangladeshi sweatshops, without comprehension of the social factors that drive forward these reprehensible conditions; namely the search for international capital for the highest possible rate of profit, and greatest possible extraction of surplus value.

The second point of flaw in liberal critique of imperialism that exposes its intellectual bankruptcy is the failure to identify imperialism as both essential to, and a defining feature of, modern capitalism and globalisation. As liberal criticisms of imperialism often lack any analysis of exploitation and its global social relations of production, they fall utterly flat in drawing the clear line between imperialism and capitalism as a world system. They do not see either as linked, or if they do, they perceive such a link as merely incidental or temporary; rather than a connection that betrays the inextricable connection between imperialism and contemporary capital that cannot be undone without the undoing of capitalism itself. Thus they cannot reach the political conclusions drawn from such “economic” analysis and critique, and fail to make the leap to the politics of international revolution, of the emancipatory destruction of imperialism and capital through the force of an international proletarian class.

The necessity of a disciplined, scientific Marxist criticism of imperialism – as roughly outlined earlier – to revolutionary communists in Australia is thus itself demonstrated through the inadequacy of any and all liberal critique. Much of which continues to, unfortunately, influence the criticisms Australian Marxists echo of imperialism. While the left, more specifically socialists, opposes the sabre-rattling and inexorable expenditure on the imperial war machine in Australia, our critique of imperialism necessitates going far beyond simply pointing to a “crumbling, neglected welfare state”.

Indeed, here in Australia immediate demands simply for a return to the efficient welfare state, to a benevolent management of capital, totally disregard the simple fact that this supposed “welfare state” was built only upon 200 years of colonial occupation and the later imperialist superprofits reaped by Australia and its allies in the imperial core. The decay of the welfare state is emblematic of the decay in the objective conditions of global capital; but it is not enough, it is not acceptable for Marxists to advocate for a return to this welfare state; founded upon imperialism itself.

This does not mean an abandonment of the revolutionary potential of the proletariat in Australia. Indeed, a principled clarification of imperialism lends itself, with inevitability and certainty, to the absolute necessity of international revolution and international proletarian struggle. Despite often benefiting implicitly from imperialism, the fundamental character of the Australian proletariat’s relations to production remains unchanged. They remain exploited, dominated by capital, and placed in the very position which provides the basis for a revolutionary class consciousness. However, as capitalism degrades, as conditions slide, or are forced, backward for workers internationally in order to extract every drop of profit, we cannot simply join the oft-reactionary call for a return to a system of welfare predicated on global exploitation.Our demands must reach beyond this.

Even in the positing of immediate and transitional demands revolutionary communists must not simply advocate for the welfare once gained, or anything within parameters “acceptable” to capital. We must advocate for demands that sharpen the contradictions of capitalism, that force its reckoning with itself, that, if implemented, would be disastrous for capitalism itself; both globally and locally. If, and when, we do raise a slogan of welfare, it must not be “backwards, to the return of the welfare state” but rather “forwards! To a life worth living”.

The importance of this, and the importance of a principled Marxist criticism and formulation of imperialism, has become, and will only become increasingly vital to the organising efforts of communists in Australia. To quote from the 1st edition of the RCO program;

“Capitalism, in experiencing its prolonged demise, has committed itself wholly to the altars of imperialist war and ecocidal extraction, to the modern Moloch of techno-capital, the foul demiurge of race, nation, and Empire.”.

As imperialist wars rage on, in Ukraine and in Palestine, as imperialist tensions heighten, in the South China Sea and in the Asia-Pacific as a whole, due to the long decline of capitalism’s objective conditions and the ripening of revolutionary ones, Socialists must have the answers. We must present an analysis, a comprehensive understanding, of capitalism as a world system and imperialism as a fundamental aspect of it, and we must organise and orient our strategy in line with this, to meet the objective conditions of revolution with the subjective heightening of organisation, of tactics, and of proletarian class struggle.