28.03.2007

Always imperialist

The third London meeting of the Campaign for a Marxist Party, on Sunday March 25, discussed the disastrous consequences that flow from a flawed reading of Lenin's flawed theory. Mary Godwin reports

Mike Macnair gave the opening on 'Colonialism, imperialism and internationalism', which developed arguments first raised in a series of articles published in the Weekly Worker in 2004 (see particularly www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/541/imperialism.htm).

Taking the current situation in the Middle East as an example, he pointed out that Marxists and communists should obviously be against the continued US-UK occupation of Iraq and any attack on Iran. The CPGB has also taken the position that we should be for solidarity with the Iranian workers' movement without in any way prettifying the islamist theocratic regime.

This double-sided political line is opposed from two directions: for example, from one side by the Socialist Workers Party and the majority of other left organisations; from the other side by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty.

Defeatism

The SWP et al say that the fundamental obligation of revolutionaries in wars between their own imperialist country and a colonial country is to be defeatist - ie, to be for the victory of the colonial country - because that victory weakens imperialism and is therefore a step forward in the struggle. This position, said comrade Macnair, goes back to the thesis on the united front in the Third Congress of the Comintern in connection with the anti-imperialist united front. According to this approach it was the duty of Marxists to support the victory of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq in 2003 and is currently the duty of Marxists to support 'the resistance' in Iraq.

The counter-line is that of the AWL, which says that, while this approach was valid in the period of formal empires, roughly from the 1870s to the 1940s, it has ceased to be so, because, instead of a system of formal empires and dependency, we have the US acting as a 'globocop' pledged to maintain the existence of capital on behalf of a cartel of capitalists, rather than maintaining specifically US imperialist or any other imperialist interests. Hence Marxists should examine concrete actions and what is specifically happening.

The AWL's conclusion is that the imperialists are reactionary but the islamists are more reactionary, continued comrade Macnair. The US may be an imperialist 'globocop', but Ba'athism is what the AWL calls a 'paleoimperialism'. Hence the AWL's conclusion - we should not be unequivocally in favour of the defeat of imperialism in the war in Iraq, nor for the immediate withdrawal of troops, a line which the AWL has persisted with, despite its increasingly obvious stupidity - even US Democrats are now calling for a sort of a pull-out. But the AWL claims that the presence of imperialist troops protects a nascent workers' movement, which would otherwise be crushed by the Ba'athists and the islamists - and their victory would be the worst possible outcome.

Both the SWP and the AWL approaches are founded on a theory of imperialism. If you take it to be true, as Lenin argued, that imperialism is the highest, terminal stage of capitalism, entering into paroxysms of crisis, then it becomes justified for communists to ally with reactionary anti-capitalist forces. However, comrade Macnair noted that this line is completely absent in political interventions of Marx and Engels. Lenin initially developed it in relation to Easter 1916, a petty bourgeois uprising led by reactionaries, but nonetheless anti-imperialist and so deserving support by the working class.

Lenin justifies his line in a way not found in any other theory of imperialism current at that time. Bukharin's theory does not reflect it. He was far more cagey than Lenin about imperialism being the terminal, paroxysmic crisis of capitalism. Bukharin also concluded that the working class could only act on an international scale. To act internationally it had to break with all forms of nationalism.

What came out of Lenin's theory of imperialism as capitalism's terminal stage was Trotsky's "death agony of capitalism"; and what came out of that was 40 years, in some cases more, of the Trotskyists claiming that 'The crash is about to happen. Our time is about to come'. Some, like Mandel, did not go for such an apocalyptic view, seeing the underlying stability of capitalism punctuated by very short-term crises. The post-1945 war boom was made possible by the scale of defeats of the working class since 1933, which had enabled an increase in the absolute rate of exploitation and hence in investment. Thus, for Mandel, crisis is a short, sharp period of class struggles, in which, if the working class does not take power, the capitalists will restabilise the regime. Mandel's theory of crisis produces short-term perspectives - we have to do something now, immediately; we must seize the moment.

New theory

Interpretations along the line of Lenin's theory of imperialism as the terminal moment of capitalism turned into politically disastrous misconceptions of political-economic dynamics. Comrade Macnair therefore argued that we should re-approach the question by asking, 'What must be explained by any theory of imperialism?'

First, we have to explain the existence of radical inequality between states and their populations in the capitalist world economy. If we simply took the internal logic of capital abstractly, as described in the three volumes of Capital, we should expect a homogenisation across the world of wage rates, the rate of return on capital, etc. But Capital is, of course, a radically incomplete work, less than half finished.

Secondly, any theory of imperialism needs to explain the changing structural dynamics of international relations. In the early 19th century we have a period of informal British world dominance. The relationship between Britain and the states of Latin America in the first four decades of that century is very closely analogous to the sort of relationship which the United States has had to 'third world' countries in the period since World War II.

Part of the problem with Lenin's theory of imperialism is that, once the colonial empires dissolved in the 1940s and 1950s, it was clear that there was still inequality between states, and dependency of one state on another. Those who said that the end of the colonial empires constituted the end of imperialism were very rapidly proved wrong. Imperialism still exists in terms of the US informal domination of the post-World War II period, though it is perhaps beginning to come apart.

Thirdly, a theory of imperialism has to explain the single, but double-edged, political corollary of these two developments. Up to the 1870s in Britain - the 1880s elsewhere - there was a general tendency towards the formation of a unified, international workers' movement and towards proletarian internationalism. Such an objective dynamic is clear. By the 1880s this dynamic was inverted, with the rise of socialist nationalism. The imperialist powers make concessions to their working classes, funded by income streams from direct foreign investment and money lending to states. These enable a partial smoothing of the cycle and a partial abatement of the polarisation between rich and poor in the imperialist countries.

The corollary is that the involvement of the working class movement in the imperialist countries in nationalism is matched by the emergence of mass nationalism in the colonial countries and the subordination to it of the colonial working class. This was comprehensible, continued comrade Macnair. Stalinism is simply an extreme form of nationalism of this sort - the desire by a backward country to establish a favourable position in the world market, accepting the existence of the international state system and subordinating the interests of the proletariat as an international class to the common interests of the Russian people of the Russian working class.

The converse of all this is that the theory of imperialism should not be expected to explain the internationalisation of production or the export of capital; nor monopoly, oligopoly; nor finance capitalism, as Hilferding and Lenin understood it, as the fusion of banking capital with industrial capital; nor whether capitalism has entered into decline or not.

Why? Because seeing the internationalisation of production, export of capital, monopoly, etc as new phenomena in the later 19th century is just false. All of these features are present already in the earlier history of capital. One example: late medieval and Tudor agrarian change, which the Robert Brenner thesis sees as fundamental in the emergence of capitalism. Under feudalism it was already the case that capitalist material production was internationalised.

The implication of this and related evidence concerning finance capital, oligopoly, monopoly and so forth is that the things which Lenin used in order to identify imperialism as the highest stage do not do so. Some of them are describing as new things which are inherent features of capitalism itself.

This does not mean that capitalism is not in decline - there are excellent grounds for believing it is. But if we examine these three points - inequality between states, global political-economic dynamics and division of the workers' movement - the first two of these are normal features of capitalism, which began no later than the 17th century English revolution. The third is evidence of the decline of capitalism, because it tells us that managing the workers' movement has become a major problem for capital.

Role of the state

All three have a common feature. They are about state actions and their consequences. The dynamics, the wars of the first half of the 20th century are state actions. The system of US world hegemony does not result primarily from the actions of individual corporations, but those of the US state.

Going back to Capital, one of the main reasons it is incomplete is that it lacks the book on the state, without which it cannot deal effectively with the world market, where states are significant actors. Capital requires the state to impose ownership rather than mere possession in the sphere of commodities. The state is in the commodity, and equally the state is in money. It is state action in relation to tax that essentially brings commodity money and money of account into being. The same can be said of credit money, transferable debt. It is the state which enforces debt. The consequence of all this is that capital needs a state which operates on the scale on which capital itself operates.

Capital, from the outset, is international in its operations, involving the international material division of labour. So capitalism requires, needs, tends towards, a world state. So why do nation-states persist? Because capitalism has inherited them from feudalism. Furthermore, the English revolution broke through at the level of a nation-state and has been copied ever since. The consequence, as things fall out, is that we have a global, hierarchical system of states under a world hegemon: first it was Britain, then after 1945 the US. This is what makes the AWL's depiction of capitalism comprising a mere cartel of capitals completely false - we are talking about capitals instantiated in concrete states and their apparatuses.

Concluding his opening, comrade Macnair emphasised his primary point, that the existence of this hierarchical system in no way implies any obligation to support subordinated capitalist states in their efforts to climb the greasy pole. Why on earth should it be in the interests of the working class to support the efforts of China to get higher up the greasy pole? We can already see what this means in reality for the Chinese working class.

Secondly, the existence of a hierarchy of capitalist states does not in the least imply any obligation to the idea of an anti-imperialist united front. On the contrary, everything which happens within this battle of one state against another is either a mechanism for controlling the working class or flatly and clearly contrary to the interests of the working class. What we need is radical internationalism - the unity of the working class movement as an internationalist movement, as opposed to the so-called 'anti-imperialist' version of working class internationalism.

Debate

A number of comrades made interventions. John Bridge reminded the meeting of the subtitle of Lenin's work on imperialism - 'A popular outline'. Of course, Lenin's book was not meant to be the last word, nor should his polemics be turned into "frozen verities". Clearly there was a profound change in the development of capitalism between the two world wars, and any theory of imperialism must take this into account. World War I saw the radical reorganisation of capital in relation to the state.

Certainly you can read Lenin on Ireland and interpret him as saying that anything which can hit British imperialism must be a good thing, because British imperialism was our main enemy. The crucial thing, however, is that the working class in Britain must have an independent foreign policy. To support rebellions simply because they are attacking our enemy is not correct. What matters is what advances the interests of the working class and this is key to our approach to international politics as a whole.

Comrade Nick Rogers agreed with most of Mike Macnair's points, but disagreed with him on aspects of what Mike listed as the things which are not explained by imperialism. Lenin was arguing against Kautsky's theory about how imperialists would form a cartel, said comrade Rogers. Lenin's analysis was flawed, but useful nonetheless. The role of the state is key to our understanding of the decline of the law of value. No theory of imperialism can be disentangled from a theory about how capitalism evolves. Clearly, if Lenin meant that imperialism represented the terminal phase of capitalism, he was wrong. We need to make a sober analysis rather than nurturing false optimism - although we do need optimism of the will.

Addressing the question of the anti-imperialist united front, comrade Jim Smith maintained that the demand for withdrawal of troops does not hinge on the politics of those who fight for it. We can have common ground without agreement and are ultimately on the same side as all who fight for immediate withdrawal of US-UK forces and give them "military support". Any notion that socialism will arise automatically from the collapse of imperialism and capitalism is wrong, as was Trotsky in this respect, said comrade Smith. The victory of socialism can only come about through a strong, international working class movement.

Action, not words

A Brazilian comrade spoke of his frustration with the left in Britain. All we ever seem to do is gather in small groups to talk about theory rather than the real issues, such as the urgent need to mobilise the poor in action. John Bridge replied to this point by referring to the history of the CPGB. Undoubtedly, back in the 1960s it was a strong and well organised force, punching well above its weight and involved in all manner of practical action. But it had the wrong theory. Today's SWP is the same, colonising and dominating any struggle, though doing so less well than the 'official' CPGB.

We must accept that the left is going through a period of decline. The solution, however, is not to try, with our forces, to go out and organise en masse - something for which there is no current base, something which would be bound to fail. There can be no question of "leap-frogging" the existing left in today's conditions, as if they were not there. These comrades are misguided, but are comrades nonetheless. Elucidating a correct theory is an absolute precondition before we can do anything useful at all.

All comrades seemed to agree strongly with comrade Macnair's closing remarks, summed up in the idea that the defects in our movement, as witnessed by the false premises of the anti-imperialist front, are deeply embedded. They paralyse us and can lead to disasters on a massive scale. Remember what happened in Iran in 1979. The dominance of the SWP's false position on imperialism and anti-imperialism is a source of potential catastrophe for the workers' movement as a whole.