Theories of imperialism
Theories of imperialism offer a range of theoretical approaches to understanding the expansion of capitalism into new areas, the unequal development of different countries, and economic systems that may lead to the dominance of some countries over others. These theories are considered distinct from other uses of the word "imperialism" which refer to the general tendency for empires throughout history to seek power and territorial expansion. While some theories of imperialism were developed by non-Marxists, other theories stem from Marxist economics. Many theories of imperialism, with the notable exception of ultra-imperialism, hold that imperialist exploitation leads to warfare, colonization, and international inequality.
Theories
Hobson
was an English liberal economist best remembered for his Imperialism: A Study, published 1902, which associated imperialism with the growth of monopoly capital and a subsequent underconsumption crisis. Hobson argued that the growth of monopolies within capitalist countries tends to concentrate capital in fewer hands, leading to an increase in savings, and a corresponding decline in investment. This excessive saving relative to investment leads to a chronic lack of demand, which can be relieved either through finding new territories to invest into, or finding new markets with greater demand for goods. These two drives result in a need to safeguard the monopoly's foreign investments, or break up existing protections to better penetrate foreign markets, adding to the pressure to annex foreign countries.Hobson's opposition to imperialism was informed by his liberalism, particularly the radical liberalism of Richard Cobden and Herbert Spencer. He alleged that imperialism was bad business due to high risk and high costs, as well as being bad for democracy, and morally reprehensible. He claimed that imperialism only benefited a select few individuals, rather than the majority of British citizens, or even the majority of British capitalists. As an alternative, he proposed a proto-Keynesian solution of stimulating demand through the partial redistribution of income and wealth within home markets.
Hobson's ideas were enormously influential, and most later theories of imperialism were in some way shaped by Hobson's arguments. Historians Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann argue that Hobson had an enormous influence in the early 20th century among people from all over the world:
By 1911, Hobson had largely reversed his position on imperialism, as he was convinced by arguments from his fellow radical liberals Joseph Schumpeter, Thorstein Veblen, and Norman Angell, who argued that imperialism itself was mutually beneficial for all societies involved, provided it was not perpetrated by a power with a fundamentally aristocratic, militaristic nature. This distinction between a benign "industrial imperialism" and a harmful "militarist imperialism" was similar to the earlier ideas of Spencer, and would prove foundational to later non-Marxist histories of imperialism. Hobson's theory of imperialism was extremely influential among Marxist economists, particularly Vladimir Lenin, and Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy.
Early Marxist theories
Marx
While most theories of imperialism are associated with Marxism, Karl Marx never used the term imperialism, nor wrote about any comparable theories. However many writers have suggested that ideas integral to later theories of imperialism were present in Marx's writings. For example, Frank Richards in 1979 noted that already in the Grundrisse "Marx anticipated the Imperialist epoch." Lucia Pradella has argued that there was already an immanent theory of imperialism in Marx's unpublished studies of the world economy.Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was considered particularly important to later theorists of imperialism, as it seemed to explain why capitalist enterprises consistently require areas of higher profitability to expand into. Marx also noted the need for the capitalist mode of production as a whole to constantly expand into new areas, writing that "‘The need of a constantly expanding market chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."
Marx also argued that certain colonial societies’ backwardness could only be explained through external intervention. In Ireland Marx argued that English repression had forced Irish society to remain in a pre-capitalist mode. In India Marx was critical of the role of merchant capital, which he saw as preventing societal transformation where industrial capital might otherwise bring progressive change. Marx's writings on colonial societies are often considered by modern Marxists to contain contradictions or incorrect predictions, even if most agree he laid the foundation for later understandings of imperialism, dependency, super-exploitation and unequal exchange.
Trotsky
began expressing his theory of uneven and combined development in 1906, though the concept would only become prominent in his writing from 1927 onwards. Trotsky observed that different countries developed and advanced to a large extent independently from each other, in ways which were quantitatively unequal and qualitatively different. In other words, countries had their own specific national history with national peculiarities. At the same time, all the different countries did not exist in complete isolation from each other; they were also interdependent parts of a world society, a larger totality, in which they all co-existed together, in which they shared many characteristics, and in which they influenced each other through processes of cultural diffusion, trade, political relations and various "spill-over effects" from one country to another.In The History of the Russian Revolution, published in 1932, Trotsky tied his theory of development to a theory of imperialism. In Trotsky's theory of imperialism, the domination of one country by another does not mean that the dominated country is prevented from development altogether, but rather that it develops mainly according to the requirements of the dominating country.
Trotsky's later writings show that uneven and combined development is less of a theory of development economics, and more of a general dialectical category that governs personal, historical, and even biological development. The theory was nonetheless influential in imperialism studies, as it may have influenced passages in Rudolf Hilferding's Finance Capital, as well as later theories of economic geography.
Hilferding
's Finance Capital, published in 1910, ranks as the first of the "classical" Marxist theories of imperialism; it would be codified and popularized by Nikolai Bukharin and by Lenin. Hilferding began his analysis of imperialism with a very thorough treatment of monetary economics and an analysis of the rise of joint-stock companies. The rise of joint-stock companies, as well as banking monopolies, led to unprecedented concentrations of capital. As monopolies took direct control of buying and selling, opportunities for investment in commerce declined. This had the effect of essentially forcing banking monopolies to invest directly in production, as Hilferding writes:Hilferding's "finance capital" is best understood as a fraction of capital in which the functions of financial capital and industrial capital are united. The era of finance capital would be one marked by large companies which are able to raise money from a wide range of sources. These finance-capital-heavy companies would then seek to expand into a large area of operations in order to make the most efficient use of natural resources and, having monopolised that area, erect tariffs on exported goods in order to exploit their monopoly position. Hilferding summarizes this process as follows:
To Hilferding, monopolies exploited all consumers within their protected areas, not just colonial subjects, however he did believe that "iolent methods are of the essence of colonial policy, without which it would lose its capitalist rationale". Thus like Hobson, Hilferding believed that imperialism benefits only a minority of the bourgeoisie.
While Lenin acknowledged him as an important contributor to the theory of imperialism, Hilferding's position as Finance Minister in the Weimar Republic from 1923 discredited him in the eyes of many socialists. Hilferding's influence on later theories was thus largely transmitted through Lenin's work, as his own work was rarely acknowledged or translated, and went out of print several times.
Luxemburg
followed Marx's interpretation of the expansion of the capitalist mode of production very closely. In The Accumulation of Capital, published in 1913, Luxemburg drew on a close reading of Marx to make several arguments about Imperialism. First, she argued that Marx had made a logical error in his analysis of extended reproduction, which would make it impossible for goods to be sold at prices high enough to cover the costs of reinvestment, meaning that buyers external to the capitalist system would be required for capitalist production to remain profitable. Second, she argued that capitalism is surrounded by pre-capitalist economies, and that competition forces capitalist firms to expand into these economies and ultimately destroy them. These competing drives to exploit and destroy pre-capitalist societies led Luxemburg to the conclusion that capitalism would end once it ran out of pre-capitalist societies to exploit, leading her to campaign against war and colonialism.Luxemburg's underconsumptionist argument was heavily criticised by many Marxist and non-Marxist economists as too crude, although it gained a noted defender in György Lukács. While Luxemburg's analysis of imperialism did not prove to be as influential as other theories, she has been praised for urging early Marxists to focus on the Global South rather than solely on advanced, industrialized countries.