Imperialism, crisis, and revolution: from the London Notebooks to Capital
Volume 1
My paper traces the development of Marx’s understanding of the link between
imperialism, crisis, and revolution. It uses Marx’s notebooks (partially published in
the fourth section of the MEGA²), his articles on colonialism (on India, China and the
United States in particular), and Capital Volume 1. I first argue that, thanks to his
critique of the quantity theory of money in the London Notebooks (1850–3), Marx
developed his analysis of capital accumulation at the global level, including processes
of foreign investment and imperialist expansion. Marx thus elaborated a more
sophisticated analysis of the link between capital accumulation and crisis, and
overcame his previous unidirectional view of international revolution. In his Books of
Crisis and in his 1850–3 and 1858–9 articles on China and India, Marx argued that
anti-colonial movements in these countries were aggravating factors of crisis; these
movements could react on Britain and, through it, on continental Europe, increasing
the possibility of a revolutionary outcome. I finally discuss how Capital Volume 1
conceptualizes the link between anti-colonial movements, hegemonic transition, and
crisis. I present, in particular, Marx’s analysis of the consequences of US industrial
development and of the American Civil War on English industry. I finally draw some
conclusions on Marx's theory of crisis.
Lucia Pradella