GLOBALIZATION: THIRD (AND LAST) STAGE OF CAPITALISM
An analysis from the view of historical materialism.
Tab:
Mariano Ciafardini is an attorney, Phd. student of Political and Social Sciences at the University of
Buenos Aires, member of the Argentine Geopolitical Institute. He is a member of the International
Affairs Committee of the Argentine Solidarity Party. In this last capacity he has acted as the
representative of the party at the Sao Paulo Forum. He is a contributor to the “Cuadernos Marxistas”
publication. In addition, he has a very busy academic life, and has written numerous publications on the
matter of critical criminology.
Dedication
In memory of Vladimir Ilich (Lenin) Ulianov (1870-1924)
Prologue
This essay does not arise as an independent study, but as a by-product of a larger investigation. It is in
fact a preliminary study required for another work in which I am involved, currently entitled “Capitalism
and Criminality” that attempts to explore and demonstrate the overlapping of the so-called “criminal
matter” or the crime and punishment phenomenology with the process of the birth, rise and decline of
modern capitalism.
As may perhaps be obvious, this required me to penetrate into the question of the moments, periods
and stages of this modern capitalist age in human history.
Not only that, however, but the study of the dynamic of the “criminal question,” both in the real form
that the conflict began to acquire, and the attempts for its social control by political power, as well as
the repetitive development of political-sociological explanations for the conflict and the justification for
control, began to reveal to me the existence within this process of various both longer and shorter
historical periods, that are contained one within the other, with qualitative leaps and dialectic
regressions. All this has enabled me to see how analysis of a phenomenon such as criminality shows that
it would be located in what has been called “the superstructure,” the movement of the historical
capitalist process in its totality, at least in its most general features.
I will not develop those historical-criminological analyses and explorations of conflict and control in
modern times in further detail, as it is not the purpose of this paper, whereas it is precisely the topic
dealt with in the work I have mentioned, which hopefully will be concluded shortly. I must however
mention that for a more thorough explanation of what arose from the dynamic of the criminal and
politico-criminal phenomenon itself that have been analyzed, in view of their scope I have found
increasingly useful the views expressed by Fernand Braudel in relation to the development of what from
a Marxist viewpoint is considered the first great stage of capitalism, that is to say “free” competition
(from 1300 to 1880) as well as the views of a group of Marxists writers who collaborated with numbers
5 and 6 of the “Socialist Register,” in relation to what, again in Marxist eyes, is considered to be the
second great stage of capitalism, that is to say, imperialism, which more or less covers the whole of the
twentieth century.
In relation to the globalization, the analytical novelty introduced by this essay as the third and final stage
of capitalism, I had to manage on my own, as there is as yet no historical perspective for its analysis
(anyone who knows anything of the writing of history will know how difficult it is to perform a historical
analysis of contemporary processes) and there is no bibliography that considers globalization from the
point of view of historical “periodization”, whether Marxist or non-Marxist.
This essay intends to develop a Marxist analysis, and its approach is of necessity based on the point of
view of historical materialism, for which reason matters of political economy are given particular
attention, but it is not a work of political economy, which would exceed my capabilities. Its main
purpose is to show in general terms the historical development of the stages of capitalism.
Nor is it a historical investigation in the true sense of the word, which would also exceed my theoretical
possibilities . The contribution I aim to make with these publications is political.
In other times it might have been described as a political pamphlet. Let us hope that today it will not be
given that name, as the term “pamphlet” has currently acquired a negative connotation. My intention is
to contribute to a Marxist theoretical construction of the nature of the era in which we live. I consider
this to be one of the most significant needs that is missing for the definitive orientation of the “historical
subject” that has for some time been taking up the march again towards the great transformations that
1
history demands, but that will not acquire the impulse and strength needed for the magnitude of the
enterprise until a qualitative theoretical leap is made within historical materialism that will enable a
definitive reconstruction of the vanguards of the global human movement, granting them a leadership
efficiency in the concrete practice of political action.
In this regard, one of the main contributions to theory from the work I am presenting is that the
consideration of globalization as a stage within the capitalist process indicates the qualitative
differentiation of “imperialism” as a qualitatively distinct stage in the capitalism of free competition.
This difference, if accepted, forces a rethinking of the tactics and strategies of transforming political
action, in contrast to those defined and practiced until the end of the twentieth century. In the case of
Latin American countries, for example, the category of “dependence” ceases to be relevant as a
description of the special relationship of submission to the political and economic will of the power
scheme formed by the overlapping of large monopolies and a powerful national state, such as was the
United States in the case of Latin America. The current form of “dependence” is the situation of
inevitable coupling in a world structured in the shape and according to the needs of the great financial
flows, which ensures that whatever the will of leaders and governments, even in cases of real political
decision with popular support, uncoupling becomes extremely complex, and a definitive break with neoliberal structures, imposed in that stage, is transformed into a virtually impossible task.
Here we come to another of the political conditions of the new era. Is it possible today to think of a truly
radical and profound change taking place country by country, as in the case of the revolutionary and
liberation processes attempted in the twentieth century?
If we take into account the above, the answer is negative, and the immediate consequence is the need
to articulate national political processes in regional blocs that move in unison in an unprecedented
ideological, political and organic identity. For that reason there will be a need to make progress on the
development of a common regional left-wing intelligence and levels of international political
organization by the left that have not been seen so far. This will only be possible if this intelligence of
the international left succeeds in making a qualitative leap in the development of its own Marxist
theoretical base that will allow each party and revolutionary organization to consider its own national
and regional situation from a valid new global perspective, that can detect the light at the end of the
tunnel with greater accuracy and hope than are provided currently by the vague nature of old utopias
and the cautious resignation left behind by past failures.
“There is no more urgent task at the beginning of the new century than to provide a deep
understanding of the political economy of capitalism, an understanding not only of the development of
1
capitalism nowadays but also of its past and of its possible future
“…since every crisis represents the objectification of capitalism's self- criticism, its crisis, once taken to
its extreme limit, enables us to develop completely and more clearly than today... historical materialism
as a means of investigation of “mankind's prehistory”
Gyorgy Lukacs, “History and Class Consciousness” (1923)
I) Introduction
1
Albritton Robert; Itoh Makoto; Westra Richard and Zuege Alan (Editors) “Phases of capital development. Booms, crises
and globalizations”. Palgrave New York 2001 p XII of the introduction by the editors (our translation)
2
For a few years now, extensive and very often profound theoretical explanations of the times in which
we're living have been given, these times being referred to as “globalization” and we can find many
different points of view. From the Marxist perspective, whether expressed or implicit, there are various
approaches although for sure in this case these coincide by stating that we are within a stage or phase
of capitalism which is part of its decline.
However the terminology referred to is very confusing. First the term of “stage” or “phase” is used
without any accuracy whatsoever to refer to the most different periods of time, without any coherence
as to why one stage should follow another, or if the number of stages or phases represents something
that actually makes any sense or none at all.
On the other hand, if the word “term” (or “phase”) was certainly introduced in the Marxist terminology
by Lenin, referring to the relation between a first capitalism of “free competition” or pre-monopoly and
a second capitalism whose paradigm was the monopolist capital and its relation with a state
(monopolist state capitalism), self named and named by others “imperialism”, it's not clear in the
abundant Marxist bibliography about this subject if the current period is a different stage from the two
previously mentioned or if we are living a (sub) stage “within” imperialism. If such is the case, we would
need to call it “stage within”, using a different term than “stage” or “phase”, given that if imperialism is
a stage as such, it wouldn't be convenient to name its different periods using the same term.
Basic conceptual logic.
Additionally we use the terms of “old” and “new” imperialism, the latter referring to the current
situation which, as we mentioned previously, is commonly called 'globalization'. If we understand
therefore that imperialism as a stage is not over and that we're only going through an internal change of
this stage, we should at least, in order to keep our conceptual logic, explain a little more about the
division of these stages into internal periods and saying how different is the evolution from one stage to
the other, from one internal period (within a stage) to another internal period of the same stage.
It's impossible to reject, from a Marxist point of view, the explanation (based on dialectics and historical
materialism) of these analytical divisions and their interrelations, given the risk that any affirmed idea
might end up being a little too much for any fussy idealistic historian. To all this should be added an
extra confusion with the analyses that emphasize the purely economic aspects of the question and
which refer to the short and long cycles described by Kodratieff. Do these cycles determine the length of
stages or periods within stages or phases or are they something different and coetaneous to them? And
furthermore what's the relation between these periodizations? This has never been clear, at least in the
most important Marxist publications written to this day.
And finally the theoretical arbitrary act is even more important when it comes to dealing with dates or
given periods of time. Did the current globalization or “new” imperialism (whether as a new period
within the imperialist stage or as a new stage in itself) start in the 60's/70's or in the 80's/90's?
Taking theoretical responsibility, separately, for each and every existing opinion and analysis on the
subject would represent an extremely tedious task; it's not only working through them but also
transmitting and explaining everything in a short essay like this one.
3
We suggest, instead, stating our own position and as we move on we'll be discussing other opinions
from which, and we might as well admit it for the sake of intellectual honesty, most of the theoretical
material has been extracted in order to produce our own opinion.
The historical issue
First we must remember that historicism is an intrinsic feature of dialectics (from the Hegel to the Marx
2
currents) For Marxists and particularly from the historical materialism perspective, it’s clear that in
order to know an object, it’s necessary to consider it in its movement, its emergence and its
development. It’s only by revealing the main stages of its development that understanding and
explaining the necessary properties and connections becomes possible, together with the inherent
characteristics of quality and quantity. This was already mentioned by the classics of Marxism “don’t
forget the fundamental historical nexus, analyze every problem taking into account the emergence of
the given phenomenon in history, what were the main stages of its development, and from this
perspective of its evolution, examine what it has become today ” (Lenin)
Even Benedetto Crocce criticized the “descriptive” and relativist theories of historiography, although he
belonged to the Hegel idealism current. And Popper’s (one of the most insistent contradictors of
Marxism) theoretical “allergy” to the historicism of historical materialism is well known, revealed mainly
in his “Miseria del historicismo”, (The poverty of historicism) a title that vulgarly attempts to paraphrase
Marx.
Marxist historicism presupposes that the laws were discovered, that they determine the emergence, the
operation and the development of the object or process being studied, that the present is explained on
the basis of these laws together with its inherent characteristics and connections, deducted from history
that it is to be examined with its necessary trends and forms; at the same time a theoretical
reconstruction should be done concerning the development processes of the phenomenons
investigated within this reconstruction.
In this respect, it’s obvious that the theoretical objective conditions are better nowadays than they were
in Marx’s and even in Lenin’s days, in such a way that we can observe a more complete development of
capitalism as a historical process and we have more data now than they had back then. It’s therefore a
theoretical obligation for Marxists to incorporate all this knowledge into the integral processing of the
analysis using historical materialism methodology which moreover will enrich itself as a method. So not
only do we have an increase in the quantity of information but also an evolution in terms of quality of
the levels of epistemology themselves.
However evolution and having more is not the same as theoretical tradition or deformation to go back
to an idealistic covering-up of reality but precisely the complete opposite.
So let’s say first that if we respect the initial periodization of capitalism done by Lenin, it’ll be initially
divided in big stages or phases, terms used indifferently by Lenin. If we go deeper into the analysis of the
2
Althuser’s thinking demonstrates its contradictions, a product of a non Marxist and antidialectic focus that he acquired
under the influence of idealistic aspects of structuralism
4
periodizations and if we then divide these stages internally, which neither Marx nor Lenin ever did
explicitly, we should use the term of periods (or cycles according the terminology used by Arrighi). If the
analysis is to be done from the Marxist perspective, the most important when differentiating stages and
periods has necessarily to be connected with the various movements of what is essential to all historical
process being analyzed: the capital and its ways of accumulating it. Finally, it would be coherent in a
Marxist analysis that the logic of movement of these stages and periods and the way these relate to
each other should be dialectically stimulated through affirmations, negations and negations of
negations.
We think that Marxism is an integral and internally coherent theory, above all a theory that coincides
with the real movement of things; it is in fact the only one that coincides with the real movement of
things. That’s the reason why we’re not going to argue about theoretical developments coming from
completely opposite standpoints or from other standpoints based on parts of the fundamental
affirmations of Marxism, materialistic dialectics or historical materialism (that constitute this integrity)
and which use pieces of information at their convenience. Being eclectic, multicultural and “multiideology” isn’t completely foreign to us and the objective of this work is not to discuss by using these
concepts as a central point but using other concepts which, by making a genuine effort to apply the
Marxist interpretation (in its non dogmatic development) to the analysis of reality, try to characterize
our times; in order to do this, they’ll inevitably need to refer to the interpretation of the historical past
and will try to discover the hidden trends from the process as a whole.
In order to justify how important the topic is, the editors, in the publication from which the first
paragraph was taken, asked the following questions:
1- Does the current situation represent a new phase of capitalism, a transition between phases of
capitalism, a transition towards an end of capitalism or a post-capitalist phase? 2- What variables are
more “happy” in order to build a theory of the phases of capitalism: the relationship capital-work,
hegemonic blocs, national systems of innovations, characteristics of products, advanced technology,
economic sectors, etc?
As regards the first question, it has to be said that if all options were to be used up, we would have to
add: is it not a phase or a new transition but the simple continuity of the phase which we were going
through? (This would then imply questions like: in which phase were we and what were the ones
before? And finally, maybe more important than anything else: Does capitalism have phases?
As regards the second question and from a Marxist perspective, it should be said right now that it’s not
about happiness or being sure of choosing the most adequate variable but about the scientific rigor of
finding the only variable that determines dialectically all the others; this variable, as we shall see further
on, can’t be anything else than the way of accumulating capital.
What we have to coincide with is the following statement presented by the editors as a question at the
end of the introduction of the previously mentioned publication and which is: “What knowledge can be
5
st
more important as we enter the 21 century than that which clarifies the main structural trends of past,
present and future capitalism?”
3
II) Hegel, Marx and history
4
For Hegel, “universal history is nothing else than the development of the concept of freedom” . For sure
th
Hegel wrote at the beginning of the 19 century during and at the end of Napoleon’s campaigns which
indeed represented the end of an era for Europe and the rest of the world.
From the terms used in his dialectic focus on history and under these circumstances Hegel couldn’t do
better than describe the moment in which he lived as the ultimate realization of modernity and with this
the pinnacle of a long humanization process.
Modernity (which, today we know, is the same or at least coincides temporarily with capitalism)
couldn’t be the pinnacle of humankind; Marx demonstrated it shortly before Hegel’s death in 1831 with
his theory of communism. But furthermore, time showed that neither Hegel lived to see the pinnacle of
“modernity” itself given that we’re still living in it (in spite of what postmodernists may think).
In fact what Hegel could anticipate was the ultimate period of the first modernity, in other words the
negation of Illustration (which had already negated the first modern moment of the constitution of
States). And he could anticipate it as the accomplishment of the beginning of the current that he
5
considered as “the ultimate stage of the history to our world and to our days”
In fact it was all about the consolidation (and reactionization-restauration) of capitalism together with
the industrialization and the ideological impression of positivism, which in Germany came about with
the consolidation of the Prussian state.
And anyway, as mentioned previously, this didn’t even represent the end of modernity for after this first
th
capitalist stage, two more stages were to come: 20 century imperialism and (at least as far as we see it)
th
st
late 20 and early 21 century globalization.
However and in spite of these “errors of appreciation”, Hegel’s interpretation as to how history should
be studied is to this day the most advanced and comprehensive (with some materialistic adjustments),
that is if studying history is of any use when it comes to transforming things.
It’s in the chapter about the Philosophy of History entitled “Forms and Progress of History” that Hegel
states that universal history is the development of conscience, of the spirit of freedom for the people
and of effectivization of this conscience. Moreover this specific spirit of the people forms its religion, its
political conscience, the ethics of its legal system, its science, its art and its technical abilities.
And this is where Hegel also states that in order to extract the concrete detail from history, the one that
makes up the uniqueness of the process, it’s necessary to be “previously” informed and that “ignorance
of the progress of the different forms of freedom” leads to recriminations towards philosophy:
3
4
5
Albritton et al Op Cit pXIII of the introduction (our translation)
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich “Filosofía de la Historia” Ed Claridad Buenos Aires 2005 (p390)
Hegel, G. Op cit p379
6
“Universal history should fully reject all considerations concerning this set of questions about politics
and moral values, ignoring judgment of what is personal and not letting individuals meddle with
annoying evaluations, given that its duty is the fulfillment of the people’s spirit”.
6
In other words, if we want to extract anything from studying history we want to understand its
evolution as a whole, which is determined ultimately by its own internal contradictions. This evolution
can and must be “previously” understood, at least in its general terms, in order to be used as a starting
point to explain some concrete and unique facts and phenomenons and also, we’d like to add, to
specifically identify the trends to take into account when it comes to planning strategies for action.
This doesn’t mean denying the quality of specific empirical studies, given that only from analyzing this
data we can find the necessary “previous” information. However, bearing in mind only factual
observation and accumulating specific empirical studies indefinitely leads to sterile knowledge,
confusion and basically to paralyzing the action.
This is our point of view concerning agnosticism, endless criticism and a lack of knowledge about
postmodernism.
Historical materialism
“The ‘spirit’ emerges already defective from the curse of being ‘loaded’ with matter”. Karl Marx’s and
Friedrich Engels’ criticism of Hegel’s philosophy is described in this sentence taken from the “German
Ideology”.
For Marxists, history can only be really appreciated from the perspective of historical materialism.
The premises of historical materialisms have been developed mainly by Marx and Engels in the German
Ideology, a piece of work that includes the following caption “Critique of modern German philosophy as
expounded by its representatives: Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner and of German socialism as
expounded by its various prophets”.
As part of the theoretical process known as the “Hegel’s school of thought”, Marx wrote that the legal
relationships as well as the forms of States can’t be self explained and neither can they be by the
supposed development of human spirit; they have their roots in the conditions of material life that
Hegel named “civil society”.
For Marx, the way to go from Hegelian dialectics to historical materialism is to be found in
“Phenomenology”, since this is where we can find the ascending movement that goes from “earth to
heaven”; however in the so-called Hegelian freedom he only sees a spiritual freedom. That’s why, even
for Marx, the Hegelian description of an unhappy conscience expresses the spiritual suffering of the
modern world but doesn’t want to end this suffering, and more so for, and within, philosophy.
On that base Marx criticizes, in the German Ideology, leftwing Hegelians that within the so-called
“putrefaction process of absolute spirit” were seeking to be better than Hegel while still directly
depending too much on him. He also criticizes Feuerbach’s “poor” materialism that doesn’t disagree
6
Hegel G Op cit p57
7
with scholastic philosophy and positions out of practice the problem of the existence of things and the
value of thoughts.
From there we can set the baseline for historical materialism that sees historical development as the
successive overcoming of production modes that depend on the development of productive forces and
on the social division of work.
7
As we mentioned previously, it has been said that historical materialism is not a historicism , however in
‘German Ideology’ Marx and Engels make it very clear what characteristics a materialist study of history
must contain: “The first premise of all human history is naturally the existence of living human beings.
Therefore, the first state of demonstrable facts is the physical organisation of these individuals and as a
consequence their attitude towards their natural environment… Necessarily, all historiography has to
start from these natural foundations and from the modification these foundations experience over time
because of human activity
8
A lot has been written and said on historical materialism, particularly since the implosion of the former
Soviet Union, for lacking rigor, for being out of date and for its supposedly false methodology. It has also
been misinterpreted to the point of being completely distorted.
We don’t need to discuss these points. There’s enough with referring to the destructive criticism made
9
opportunely by Lukacs of all post Hegelian insanity , that all the current previous and subsequent post
modern digressions to Foucault are for us nothing else than a remedy of that criticism, without ignoring
therefore the unique and specific contributions that many of these theoretical digressions have made,
beyond their complete and permanent lack of insight concerning the vision of the whole.
Perry Anderson also tackled the issue with precision in “In the tracks of historical materialism” in which
he demonstrated the corrosive influence of structuralism over historical materialism from the
publication of “The Savage Mind” by Levi Strauss in 1964 and the defection of Marxist criticism from the
moment it arrived, with delay, “wasn’t a rejection but an approval of the structuralist approach
10
Having said that, we must make it clear that for us, historical materialism, in its most classic version, is
the only scientific methodology that enables a more accurate and predictable approach of the questions
of human history and the analysis of its present.
Hegel, Marx, and the moments of history
Whether it’s in “Philosophy of History” or in “Philosophy of Right”, the only two important pieces of
work that cover the topic, Hegel moves towards the description of moments that he perceives as stages
of this historical transformation.
In the Philosophy of Right, he talks about the “principles” of the formation of conscience “of free will” in
its emancipation process and says that there are four predominant elements or “domains of universal
7
8
Althusser, Louis and Balibar, Etienne “Para leer El capital” Siglo XXi Buenos Aires 1974 p130 and following
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich “La Ideología Alemana” Ed Cartago Buenos Aires 1985
9
10
Anderson, Perry “Tras las huellas del materialismo histórico” Siglo XX Buenos Aires 2007 p 41
8
history”: the immediate revelation, the “to be for itself”, the rejection of the “for itself” and the
concrete essence.
Dri clarifies this “anomaly” in the triadic Hegelian current of thoughts: “There are four principles of selfconscience configurations (of the spirit of the world) in its liberation process. This can only create
confusion since the dialectic movement has always been based upon three well-known moments. In
fact, the four are reduced to three if we take into account that the third is a deeper understanding of
the second, as we shall see.”
11
Therefore Dri explains that the first configuration corresponds to the first dialectic movement of
abstract universe, of immediacy or of the “in itself”; the second and third configurations correspond to
the second dialectic movement, the “for itself”, the removal (negation) and the fourth configuration
now corresponds to the concrete universe, the individualism
or the “in itself for itself” that has returned from the infinite opposition (negation of the negation).
Hegel refers to the first movement as what we call Asian Kingdom, the second as the Greek and Roman
Empires and the third as the German “Reich”.
As for the Asian world, it’s chronologically the first world or the “beginning of history”, it’s what “derives
from the natural patriarchal totality”
12
This is how he describes it: “All the moments of the State are certainly present, including subjectivity,
but they’re incompatible with the substance. Apart from this unique power, there’s nothing that can
form itself independently.
Only the arbitrary decision of the absolute centre stands out and predominates and appears under a
negative form. That’s why we refer to the case of primitive communities that move down from the
highlands to progressive regions, destroying them or settling down, sometimes leaving behind their
uncivilized characteristics in order to then dissolve in the substance without any useful result… empires
built on emptiness, a story lacking historicity”
13
Hegel includes in this category the ancient civilizations of China and India together with the Assyrians,
Babylonians, Medes and Persians and also Ancient Egypt and Judea, under the terms by which he
considered that these civilizations and peoples had existed.
For Hegel history is, in turn, the history of the State or at least history originated with the formation
process of the State; that’s why he asserts, therefore continuing the paragraph that we previously
mentioned, that “Certainly – in the political formations of the first historical moment – all the moments
of the State are present”. If it wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t be part of history since “prehistory is what
precedes life of the State”
14
In any case for him the first moment is the “beginning of history”, to the point that in this category are
included autocratic empires just as well as nomadic peoples, the Jews and Ancient Egypt.
11
12
13
14
Dri Rubén “La rosa en la cruz. La filosofía política hegeliana” Ed Biblos 2009 p 221
Hegel,Georg W. Friedrich “Filosofía del Derecho” Ed Claridad Buenos Aires 2009 p277
Hegel G “Filosofía de la Historia” cit. p84
Hegel G. Op.cit. p91
9
For Hegel, the second great historical period is “Ancient Greece” and the third “Ancient Rome” and he
divides both periods in three chapters each.
Like Dri let’s consider that, for Hegel, Ancient Greece as well as Ancient Rome are part of the same
realization process period of the absolute truth, a moment that runs, on the other hand, from the
“authentic rebirth of the spirit” to the Roman crisis; in the latter we have, “on the one hand the fatality
and the abstract generality of domination and on the other the self-centered abstraction that contains
the determination that the individual is something in itself, not for its vitality and satisfied individuality
15
but as an abstract individual” .
As a third period, the synthesis of the two important periods referred to as Asian kingdom and GrecoRoman empires are, therefore, what Hegel calls “the Germanic world”.
Marxism and history
16
As Lukacs puts it, it is certain that historical materialism “means self-awareness of capitalist society” , in
other words even if the method is always an approximation of reality, “The more developed the
capitalist production mode is and the more completely have the imperfections and combinations with
17
what’s left of previous economic states been eliminated, the bigger this approximation” . It’s precisely
for that reason that we have to conclude with this that “historical materialism can’t be applied to precapitalist social formations in the same way as to capitalist development. Therefore we need a more
complicated and more detailed analysis to demonstrate, on the one hand, the function held by purely
economic forces - if these have, in the past, indeed existed in the strict sense of being purely economic among the driving forces of society and, on the other hand, the mode by which these forces have acted
18
according to the other formations of society” .
In any case, historical materialism is still the only method used to get as close as possible to the
description and above all to the understanding of these distant historical periods, particularly in their
meaning as compared with the present. Only it is clear that we can reduce everything to a simplistic
periodization among for example: slavery, feudalism and capitalism and see all of this as a mechanical
evolution of substitute and homogenous periods as it has been commonly stated.
On the other hand neither Marx nor Engels presented it in this way.
In “German ideology” Marx and Engels, using the correspondence between the forms of division of
labor and the forms of property as a starting point, describe three forms of property.
They refer to the first form as “property of the tribe” and affirm that
it corresponds to “the incipient phase of production in which a people sustains itself from hunting and
fishing, from stockbreeding or agriculture… leading the tribe are the patriarchs, below them the
members of the tribe and at the lowest level of all are the slaves”
15
16
17
18
19
19
Hegel G. Op. Cit. P278
Lukacs, Georg “Historia y consciencia de clase. Estudios de dialéctica marxista” Grijalbo México 1969 p239
Lukacs op.cit. p239
Lukacs, op. Cit. p249
Marx et al op cit p 21
10
The second form is “communal property and property of the state” in which “… slavery is still present.
Together with communal property we will now find private financial property and later on real estate…
all the organization of society is established on these bases and together with it the power of the people
that declines as private real estate develops… The relation of classes between citizens and slaves has
now been fully established”
20
The third form is “feudal property or property by estates” of which it is said that “it’s also based, alike
the property of the tribe and communal property, on a community. However, this form is not
confronted by slavery as a directly productive class, as it occurred in the society but by small rural
21
serves” .
Twelve years later, in the “Grundisse”, Marx mentions again the three forms of property when referring
to pre-capitalist economic formations.
The first is the “family extended to a tribe”. He refers to it in these terms: “in most oriental fundamental
forms, it’s very compatible with the fact that unity is what encompasses it all; situated above those little
common bodies, it can appear as the only and highest owner and the real communities only appear as
hereditary owners… The despot appears here as the father of all the many smaller communities, and
therefore the common unity of all is achieved… As a consequence oriental despotism appears to lead to
a legal absence of property: but strictly speaking its base is the tribal or common property”
22
The second form also depends on the community as an initial condition; however the base here is not
land ownership but the city as a centre. Individual property doesn’t require communal work in order to
be valued as it needed it in irrigation systems within the oriental mode.
“The more important these factors are –and consequently the more the communal character of the
tribe appears and must appear as a negative unit against the outside world – the more we have
conditions that allow the individual to become a private landowner, the owner of a piece of land whose
23
culture belongs to him and his family” Here it’s the Roman citizen that Marx presents as an example.
As regards the third form, Marx says: “Another form of ownership for workers, for self-sufficient
members of the community, in natural working conditions is the Germanic. In this case, the member of
24
the community as such is not as in the specifically oriental form a co-owner of communal property”
But the most important for Marx is that “in all these forms of property, landownership and agriculture
represent the base of the economic system and consequently the economic objective is the production
of values of use, in other words the reproduction of the individual with his community in specific
conditions” and within them we find the following elements: “1 appropriation of natural working
conditions, of the land as a primitive instrument of labor… but appropriation not as a result of work but
as an initial condition for work…2 The attitude concerning the land as property of the individual who
works means that from the start a man appears… as something that has an objective mode of existence
20
21
22
23
24
Marx et al op. Cit pp 21/22
Marx et al op. Cit. pp 23/24
Marx Karl and Engels Friedrich “Obras escogidas” Cartago Buenos Aires 1987 T II pp28/29
Marx C. et al op cit p30
Marx C. et al op cit pp31/32
11
with his ownership of the land, that situation precedes his activity and doesn’t appear as a mere
consequence”
25
These are the three forms of ownership that Marx considers as specific to pre-capitalist economic
formations and as concerns slavery and servitude, he writes in continuation a very enlightening
paragraph “What requires explanation is not the unity of human beings, living and active, with the
natural, inorganic conditions of its interaction with nature;… What needs to be explained is the
separation from human life of these inorganic conditions… A separation which is only completed with
the relation between paid work and the capital. In the relation of slavery and servitude there is no such
separation; what happens is that one part of society is treated by the other as the mere inorganic and
natural condition of its own reproduction. The slave has no relation whatsoever with the objective
conditions of his work. What’s more, it’s the work itself whether performed by the slave or by the
servant that ends up amongst other living things like an inorganic condition of production together with
cattle or as an extension of the land”
26
And he adds “… a tribe conquered and subjugated by another finds itself without property and forms
part of the inorganic conditions of reproduction of the conquering tribe, of which the latter considers
itself the owner. Therefore, slavery and servitude are simply subsequent developments of ownership
27
based on tribalism” . And finally: “Slavery, servitude, etc in which the worker himself appears among
natural conditions of production for a third party or a community and where consequently property no
longer represents the relation of the independent worker with objective working conditions, is always
secondary, never primary even if it represents the logical and necessary result of ownership based upon
the community and the work of the community“
28
Temporarily, there is a certain coincidence between what for Marx is the Asian production mode and for
Hegel the Oriental world, and also between what for Marx is the ancient production mode and for Hegel
the Greek and Roman worlds. Finally if we continue establishing similarities, Marx’s feudalism and
capitalism fit in Hegel’s Germanic world.
Generally and according to Marx there is a substantial breakdown between, on the one hand, the forms
of Asian ownership, ancient and feudal and on the other hand capitalist ownership, which allows us to
define the capitalist modernity of these three “ancient” economic formations as a whole. This is
connected with the relation of the worker with the land and the other means of production.
Obviously the explanations of periodization given respectively by Hegel and Marx are not connected;
however the confrontation we’re presenting between two different views is justified by various reasons.
First because Marx is Hegelian and adopts Hegelian dialectics, although from a materialistic perspective.
25
26
27
28
Marx C et al op cit pp 35/36
Marx C. op.cit. pp 39/40
Marx C op. Cit. p43
Marx C op. Cit. p45
12
Secondly because the views are different but not contradictory, in the way that nothing prevents the
moments of development of productive forces and the resulting change in production modes from
coinciding in one way or another with what is understood by Hegel as the way of “training the mind”.
Thirdly because we positively believe that a confrontation of both views from a materialistic focus
enables Marxist historical materialism itself to develop and allows us to move to conclusions that until
now were limiting the consolidation and the evolution of such focus. For us this consolidation is the only
way to understand the real development of human actions.
Hegel and capitalism
It’s obvious that Hegel couldn’t consider the existence of any formation process of something called
“capitalism”. For that it was necessary to have Marx.
However Hegel showed brilliant intuition and, above all, accuracy as to how to tackle the historical
problem; he detected the seeds of modernity in the Christian phenomenon, of Judaic base, that
emerged from the decadence of the Roman empire and he tells us how from the combination of
Christian ideas with the “spirit” of the German world emerges the culture of modernity: “The German
spirit is the spirit of the modern world whose goal is the realization of the absolute truth as the infinite
self-determination of freedom, of this freedom that contains its absolute form. It’s the German’s
peoples’ destiny to be the carriers of the Christian principle. The basic elements of spiritual freedom and
the principle of reconciliation were left in a primitive anemic state, still unknown from these ethnic
groups; they had the mission of not only being at the service of the universal spirit in order to position
the concept of real freedom as a religious substance but also to produce it freely for the world from the
subjective self-awareness perspective.”
29
The paragraph reminds us obviously of Weber’s ideas about the “spirit” of capitalism since
Protestantism wasn’t anything else than a final adjustment of Christian ideas to middle-class mentality.
Even Hegel makes an important reference to the protestant reformation as being decisive for what for
him is the consolidation period of modernity.
Hegel, Marx and the stages of capitalist modernity
For Hegel as much as for Marx himself it was almost impossible to correctly visualize the periodization of
capitalist modernity for the simple reason that they lacked the panoramic position that we have.
They and especially Marx lived the consolidation period of the system as such but all in all it was the
consolidation of a system from which an important future evolution was still missing.
Lenin did manage to clearly visualize the internal movement of the system when he “discovered”
imperialism as a stage of capitalism and in fact he correctly identifies it as being the second stage. Of
course Lenin’s analysis is Marxist and so therefore what for him determines the move from one stage to
another is the evolution in its material self-reproduction. In any case Lenin also inevitably lacks,
although less importantly, that historical perspective that one gets with the passing of events and time
29
Hegel Op.cit. p301
13
since he characterizes this second stage or phase as the “last one”, in other words he reduces the
number of stages to two, one inferior and one superior, implicitly ignoring moreover the triadic
movement.
Hegel, as we shall see further on, doesn’t inform about the temporal situation, -he couldn’t have done
so,-and therefore the category of the historical period that he lived in; he sees this period as a
culminating moment and hence describes it as the third part of the third period of the process that
forms the Germanic world, which in turn is the last of the three (Dri) important moments of his
“universal history”.
From his perspective, Hegel subdivides the Germanic process in three periods.
The first starts with the existence of German nations within the Roman Empire; once converted to
Christianity, these will dominate Western Europe. This period will extend until Charlemagne.
The second period corresponds to when the Church became a “theocracy” and the State a feudal
monarchy. It’s the period during which states were formed and it extended until Charles V.
The third period starts from there, more precisely from the beginning of the protestant reformation
th
until the period in which Hegel lived and wrote (second decade of the 19 century).
Hegel makes a comparison between these three periods and the actual contents of the Christian
doctrine: “we can define these three periods as the kingdoms of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. The
kingdom of the Father is the substantial and amorphous mass, in unnoticeable mutation, similar to the
power of Saturn devouring his children. The kingdom of the Son corresponds to when God appears
exclusively in relation with the temporal existence of the world. Finally, the kingdom of the Spirit
corresponds to the reconciliation”
30
He also compares the three periods of the Germanic world and the division of universal history itself; he
therefore notices dialectically that in Charlemagne’s period there’s a certain repetition of the Persian
empire (a phase of substantial unity in which the union still lies within the inner idea), the Greek world
corresponds to Charles V’s period (the real unity has reduced given that all the particularisms have been
consolidated into privileges and specific rights). And he compares the third period with the Roman
Empire (the general unity still prevails, even if it’s not as the unity of a global abstract empire but as the
hegemony of self-aware thinking).
It’s therefore necessary that, at first, Hegel as well as Marx refer to the periodizations of history as a
part of humanity which corresponds to the history of the great human era of violence of man against
man in which we’re still living.
In fact Marx (and Engels) refer to a previous era, the one of primitive communism and obviously also to
a future era, the one of developed communism. This is a perspective clearly dialectical and triadic since
a new communism would represent the synthesis of the two previous eras and with a spiral effect
would recover the essence of primitive communism integrated with those of the times of struggles of
men against men (the struggle of the classes).
30
Hegel G. Op. Cit. p304
14
That’s why it is said that the history which has been described so far is about the struggle of the classes;
however for them it’s in fact a prehistory since real history starts with developed communism. What is
certain is that neither Marx and Engels nor the other theoretical Marxists that preceded them returned
much to this topic and the fundamentals of Marxist production have focused on the terms of what could
be called the “era of violence”, from its origins within the Asian production mode to nowadays.
As for Hegel, history is the history of formation and development of the State, what precedes is
prehistory: “It’s the philosophical discipline’s responsibility to consider history from the moment
rationality enters the existence of the world. It mustn’t do so when there are the premises of a
possibility but when there is a situation in which rationality acts in full awareness, willpower and
action… Many civilizations could have lived a long life without a State until they reached this destiny in
order to achieve, in its insignificant setting, development in different directions. After what we’ve
31
commented, this prehistory won’t be part of our finality” and “Let’s say however that this transfer of a
great mass of humans represents, in spite of its importance, something that doesn’t belong to history
32
given what has preceded it” . Hegel even goes on affirming that India lacks history “From the
beginning, society in this country is organized in casts in such a way that laws reach determined civil
rights; however this depends on natural differences, that is to say on the different strata that make up
the organization”
33
COMPARATIVE TABLE. HEGEL VS MARX
31
32
33
Hegel g. Op cit. 51
Hegel Op cit.52
Hegel G. Op. Cit. p53
15
Our perspective
From a Marxist point of view, one can’t agree with the classification of Hegelian periods. If one wants to
periodize capitalism or modernity, it is to be said, as we previously mentioned and according to Lenin,
that there’s a division of two stages, to which we would add a third one depending on the perspective
given by our temporary position and on what time we have left: free market capitalism, imperialism and
financial globalization.
Concerning the division of the first capitalism which in a way coincides, although not in all its initial
extension, with what Hegel referred to as the ‘German world’, the Marxist perspective must agree more
with periodizations separated from the economic movement itself, although they aren’t exclusively
restricted to it, as in for example Braudel’s or Arrighi’s views.
Let us explain that Braudel considers initially as periods the one between 1350 and 1650 of Genovese
and Venetian influences; then the one from 1650 to 1817 marked by Amsterdam’s and the Netherlands’
th
important commercial role and thirdly the one from this last date to the beginning of the 20 century,
dominated by Britain. For his part, Arrighi speculated with another periodization although both agree
with a division in periods of the same era.
On the other hand Braudel’s analysis coincides, although from a deeper and more detailed analysis of
the facts and the dynamics specific to the times, with the analysis of Marx and Engels themselves, for
th
th
whom the development process of capitalism started in the period that goes from the 13 to the 15
century with the beginning of manufacturing; this created the period when capital originally
th
accumulated and that went on until past the 16 century; the second period started halfway through
th
th
the 17 and went on until the end of the 18 century which was called “century of trade”; the third
34
period, the one of “the great industry” is when they were writing
To conclude, we shall therefore say that a truly dialectic point of view directed at viewing the internal
movement of the whole involves considering as history of humanity the process that starts from its own
“anthropologic history”, that is to say from the qualitative leap from anthropoid to hominid until now.
That perspective shows that Marx is right when he considers the first and most extensive historical era
of the horde and the primitive community as the affirmation of what is human, all of which being denied
by the era of violence and the struggle of classes that Hegel calls history.
So from a dialectic proposal concerning general periodization of human history with an important
division into to big eras, we have: a) the era of primitive communism (the wild horde) and b) the era of
violence (from primitive tribal wars to nowadays).
Both can be divided in stages. It’s impossible to refer to the first and, concerning the second there is no
doubt that two of its stages or internal periods are: the antiquity and capitalist modernity.
34
See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels op.cit. from p63 to p70
16
Neither can we say much here about antiquity and its internal divisions, only that slavery and feudalism
are a part of it. What we do have to give a theoretical hypothesis about is the internal divisions (stages)
of modernity, that for us is nothing else than the rise and fall formation process of capitalism.
III Capitalism and the stages (or phases)
At first, and we’re repeating this, we’re going to respect the theoretical interpretation that presents the
division of capitalism in stages (and we’re going to use this term as a synonym for phase) like Lenin did
together with Hilferding and Rosa Luxemburg (and also Hobson, Bujarin and Kautsky). This concept was
introduced with a theoretical clarity from the start.
When Lenin defined it in “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” in 1916, imperialism defined
itself clearly as a distinctive stage of capitalism such as it was known until then. That’s because the main
way of accumulating capital and the political organization of hegemonic capital had changed. It was no
longer a matter of capitalists competing against each other, within borders, and countries competing on
commercial routes but a matter of the branches controlling from the inside, strongly associated with the
national state and competing aggressively towards the outside through influential zones of protocapitalist development of the dependent countries. There would be a lot more to say in order to
describe with precision this transcendental change within the capitalist process but all of this has
already been written “in-extenso”, deeply and accurately in the abundant bibliography that appeared
since then, particularly in the 60’s and 70’s.
Therefore the difference between initial capitalism and imperialism is very clear in Marxist terms and it
has been so for all Marxists at least until the end of the 80’s of the past century (since from this
theoretical point of view it was impossible to find, until that moment, not even the slightest suspicion
against the matter presented as such).
Therefore and moreover, things had to be admitted as a theoretical, logical consequence of all this;
capitalism as a historical process had until then only two stages, the initial and the superior. Neither was
this questioned by the theoretical Marxist production of the time and not even nowadays. Furthermore,
looking at the qualitative differences outlined by the theorists of imperialism that justified calling it a
“stage” or “phase” different from what preceded, we can clearly see that the different characteristic of
initial capitalism was marked by its being a “free enterprise” or “free market” capitalism; this meant the
absence of monopoly or at least a qualitative development inferior of monopolism and cartelization, as
it is described in “Imperialism…”. And this characteristic “non monopolistic” of initial capitalism is
something that it had from the start. In other words, this difference marks the existence, until that
moment, of two (and only two) historical stages of capitalism: the initial and the imperialist.
We now want to agree, from a Marxist perspective, as to the “starting” date of capitalism. We’re not
going to do a detailed analysis here. We’re going to agree with these versions that gave out clear signs
of the emergence of this historical formation in years 1200 to 1300. It is certain that in these days the
context was mainly feudal but it’s also sure that the forms of capitalism that emerged in towns like:
17
Genoa, Venice, Bruges, Antwerp and in the German league of Hansa which all offered exceptional
settings, had an economic and political influence, especially in their “hinterlands” and particularly
because it is clear that they didn’t represent the emergence of a temporary and opportune
phenomenon; on the contrary, from this moment onwards these places strengthened, reproduced and
expanded their system everywhere. This shows that it wasn’t an isolated phenomenon but the
beginning of a process.
That way there was a capitalism divided in two stages. The stage from 1300 to 1889 and the imperialist
stage from 1880 to …
This leads us to the current question as to whether “globalization” or “new imperialism”, depending on
what you want to call it, is or not a new stage or phase of capitalism. We’d like to anticipate our answer
here and say that yes it is, for the same reasons that lead to understand imperialism as a new stage of
initial capitalism.
But before we tackle this subject, we’re going to make reference to a number of Marxist authors who,
without clearly stating this hypothesis, leave us to guess that there is something that justifies making
th
differences between the capitalist process experienced during the best part of the 20 century and the
one that we’re living in nowadays.
We’re going to use as extract samples of these theoretical ideas some writings published in the
magazine Socialist Register (SR) in 2004 entitled “The New Imperial Challenge” which precisely devote
this issue and the following (corresponding to 2005) to the analysis of imperialism. Therefore, according
to its editors Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, “it looks as though an increasingly more serious limitation of
contemporary socialist thinking is represented by its lack of conceptual tools capable of analyzing the
35
nature of today’s imperialism, instead of recycling theories developed in a much earlier stage” . (the
italics are ours)
Leo Panitch shows more concern in the first article of this publication that we referred to; in this article
that he wrote together with Sam Gindin and entitled “Global Capitalism and American Empire”, he
affirms that “all of this leads us to think that the left needs a new theorization of imperialism that can
transcend the limitations of the ancient Marxist theory of inter-imperialist rivalry…, thus enabling a
more complete appreciation of the historical factors that lead to the emergence of a unique informal
North American empire”
36
All the articles of these two publications of “Socialist Register” (SR) are going to refer, more or less
insistently, to the “new imperialism which is qualitatively different from the one “discovered” by Lenin
th
th
and the Marxists and non-Marxist theorists at the end of the 19 and beginning of the 20 century.
35
Panitch, Leo and Leys, Colins “El nuevo desafío imperial” Socialist Register 2004. Prefacio Buenos Aires, CLACSO. 2005.
(p13)
36
Panitch, Leo and Gindin, Sam “Capitalismo global e imperio norteamericano”, en op.cit. ( p23)
18
Nowadays if we consider it seriously and as we insinuated, it’s impossible not to recognize that the
transformations that took place in the world since the mid-80’s and until the beginning of the 90’s have
placed humanity in a new situation; however the originality of the analysis from “Socialist Register”
consists in that its Marxist influence forces them to take responsibility for the differences between
globalization and traditional imperialism such as they had been conceived since Lenin and Rosa
Luxemburgo until the 80’s by all the critics and by the Marxists currents.
In another article from the SR entitled “New imperialism: accumulation by dispossession”, David Harvey
refers to a number of authors that agree with the idea of a new imperialist period, qualitatively different
from what can be called “classic imperialism” and to which most of them refer to as “new imperialism”
or “globalization”, and he mentions Panitch, Gowan, Shaw, Petras, Veltmeyer, Went, Amin, Ignatieff and
37
Cooper . Gregory Albo in his article published in SR called “The old and new economics of imperialism”
adds to this list the name of Michael Hudson with his “Superimperialism: The origins and fundamental of
US world dominance” and the names of Hardt, Negri, Sklair and Gill, although these last four writers
have a distinct idea of new imperialism that isn’t for them, as for the other authors, a super hegemony
of North American imperialism but something else, disconnected from any existing nation state.
38
In any case what is important here is to point out that all these writers coincide with the fact that
th
imperialism, as considered and described by Marxists during the first two-thirds of the 20 century,
would have ended as a political and economic process, giving place to this new imperialism or
globalization that already emerges with relative precision during the mid 80’s and then even more
clearly after the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989.
It’s precisely Albo that most accurately, in our opinion, describes the emergence of this “new”
imperialism as opposed to historical imperialism that had been in evolution since the beginning of the
th
20 century. “In the mid 80’s, the adjustments of exchange rates and capital flow had proved to be
areas of cooperation as much as sources of tension, uncertainty and instability as a consequence of
structural and commercial asymmetries and sources of relative changes in the underlying capacities of
the three zones to produce value (this contradiction produced in turn an explosion on secondary
financial markets in order to cover the risk). The IMF, the World Bank and the G7 –with the UAE playing
a predominant role in each of them-promoted the financial liberalization of capital accounts as a
mechanism to finance commercial adjustments and for external monetary markets to impose discipline
39
upon national economies” .
From that perspective, this could well represent the birth of globalization
or “new” imperialism in economic and financial terms.
Albo goes on expanding on everything that marks the differences between the end of old (classic
imperialism) and new imperialism. “The internationalization of capital during the last two decades is
therefore not an endless spatial adjustment for a permanent economic crisis. Thinking in these terms
brings back to mind the old classic theory of imperialism that understands the interest of counting on
37
38
39
Harvey, David “El nuevo imperialismo: acumulación por desposesión”. Op cit (p125 note 7)
Albo, Gregory “La vieja y la nueva economía del imperialismo”( Op. Cit. pp134 y 162 notes 5 and 6)
G. Albo “la vieja y la…” Op. cit ( p142)
19
the markets for its excesses as an external relation. This conception is wrong because, on the one hand,
it deals with the particular situation of producing value and the relations of classes as being different
from the circulation of capital on the world market. On the other hand, it is also wrong because it sees
contradictory relations between both as symptoms of a crisis more than as a constitutive feature of the
new forms of international competition emerged from neoliberalization… In fact neoliberalization has
affirmed itself as a global and institutionalized regime that includes particular forms of development,
international competence and state reforms”
40
It’s therefore clear for Albo that the differences between historical imperialism and this new stage of
globalization are not only quantitative but also essential and the determining feature is in its
“financiarisation”.
One of the Marxists theorists that appears to express some resistance to the idea of a significant change
of period between imperialism and globalization is James Petras.
In the introduction of “Globalization unmasked”
41
Petras and Veltmeyer are surprised at the irony
resulted from “just when the conditions that explain and describe so well the concept of “imperialism”
have really become global, imperialism is no longer used as a tool to understand what is happening and
to inform about political practices.”
42
That way they make us understand that the term imperialism should go on being used, which in a way
would eliminate significant differences between the present moment and what imperialism has been
th
during the previous periods that go back to the beginning of the 20 century.
Then they refer to so-called stages of capitalism in the following way: “As in the development projects
that preceded it - modernization, industrialization, colonialism and development- the new
imperialism….”
43
This way of saying things is confusing because it looks as though they were referring to the present
moment: “new imperialism”, as one more stage of “capitalist development” but without mentioning the
“old” imperialism among its predecessors.
They immediately refer back to the question affirming that “Anyway, what is being argued is the
meaning and the sense of these changes and the question of whether globalization represents a
qualitatively speaking new phenomenon or whether it’s still a new phase within the long historical
process of imperialist expansion”
44
Petras and Veltmeyer answer negatively to this question by using a somewhat eclectic formula in the
way that for them globalization is different from what precedes in quantitative terms but not in terms of
units of the analysis that define the process.
Nevertheless two years later in “Multinationals on trial” both authors start the first chapter by saying
“The decade of the eighties introduced a series of drastic, even revolutionary, changes in economic and
40
G. Albo op.cit (p155)
In English in the original. Our translation.
Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry “Globalization Unmasked. Imperialism in the 21st. Century” Zed Books. Halifax (NS
Canadá) 2001 (p8). In English in the original version. Our translation.
43
J. Petras, and H.Veltmeyer Op. cit (p12) In English in the original version. Our translation.
44
J. Petras, et al Op. cit. (p13). In English in the original version. Our translation.
41
42
20
social organizations that have been conceptualized as a “new era”, the era of “globalization” in which all
the economies of the world are integrated by one means or the other (generally by “structural reforms”
45
in macro-economic politics) to a “new economic world order”. (our italics) .
Furthermore on pages 60 and 61 of the aforementioned publication, one can read: “Until 1990, the
structure of the new imperialism, a global economy and a neoliberal world order were already put in
place…” and “… In the decade of the 90’s, the economic structure of this new imperialism was
consolidated…”
46
To make it clear, the answer to the initial paranoia brought up by Petras and Veltmeyer can be given by
saying that the term imperialism stopped being used simply because, having referred to the previous, it
was no longer useful to describe the current period given that the latter presented substantial
differences that needed to be reflected in the terminology.
For the rest, the other authors of articles published in SR mention this situation. Leo Panitch and Sam
47
Gindin refer to the present moment as the “North American Empire” , a denomination that could not
48
have been used to refer to pre mid-1980’s imperialism; Ahmad calls it “imperialism of our times” ,
Harvey refers to it directly as “the new imperialism”
49
and Greg Albo as seen previously refers to a
“neoliberalism consolidated as a global regime”.
On the other hand, some authors that don’t contribute to these issues of SR like Michael Hudson clearly
refer to the differences between classic imperialism and the new moment of globalization. In “Super
Imperialism”, Hudson states: “What’s innovative in this new capitalist state and what’s different from
imperialism is that now it’s the state itself that draws out the economic excesses. What transforms this
monetary financial extortioner imperialism into a truly super imperialism is that the privilege to get into
debt freely belongs to just the one nation and not anyone”.
50
Hudson refers to the United States, the only nation to absorb excesses in an unprecedented way and the
only country that can allow itself to become a state increasingly more in debt and loss-making at the
expense of the rest of the world; he points out this qualitative characteristic of the times as the
fundamentals of the distinction between the current financial economic model and its predecessor. And
even though he explains how this process of becoming deeply in debt after having been a creditor state
started in the early 70’s, he then clearly affirms in the conclusion chapter of “Super Imperialism”
st
51
entitled “Monetary Imperialism: The 21 century” that the United States can now annually accumulate
hundreds of thousands of dollars as trade and balance of payment deficit without the slightest protest
from other countries around the world” and that “Since then United States diplomats have managed to
45
Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry “Juicio a las multinacionales. Inversión extranjera e imperialismo” Lumen México
2007 (p5)
46
J. Petras et al. Op. cit. (pp60, 61)
Panitch, Leo et al op cit (p19) and “El imperio recargado” Socialist Register 2005. FLACSO. Buenos Aires 2005 (p69)
48
Ahmad, Aijaz. “El nuevo desafío…” (p75)
49
Harvey, David Op cit ( p99)
50
Hudson, Michael. “Super Imperialism. The origin and fundamentals of U.S.world dominance” Pluto Press. London 2003
(p30) In English in the original version. Our translation.
51
In English in the original version. Our translation.
47
21
convince Europe, Asia and the Third world –and since 1991 even the old Soviet Union- to re-orientate
their economies in order to ease the American evolution from a balance of payment surplus to a balance
52
of payment deficit”. , which makes it clear that the super-imperialism phenomenon is for him a
th
characteristic process of the end of the 20 and beginning of the new century.
We have to understand that most of these writers (Hudson can be an exception given that most of his
work was done before 1972), from their critical Marxist position, are discussing on the one hand the
pro-globalization views of the bourgeoisie theory, the injection of big success and hope into the “new
world order”. On the other hand, they’re also discussing post-modern views, emulating Hardt and Negri,
the “dissipation” of the empire’s power into a “big haze” without any possible spatial and temporal
53
detection, dissolving the society of classes in a “shapeless mass” named “multitude” . But we have to
make it clear that, for all of them, the fact that the new order should be as, or more, imperialist than the
one that ruled in the West until the 80’s and that the United States should be even more nowadays the
main instrument of the higher classes, owners of the world’s wealth, doesn’t mean that one should not
th
acknowledge the differences between the system in place from the end of the 19 century until the fall
of the Soviet Union, the socialist movement in the hands of neo-liberalism and the new global period
that we’ve been living since then; these differences aren’t only quantitative, as Petras seems to be
suggesting, and neither is the fact that nowadays economic and financial corporations, through the
United States and with the complete complacency of its allies, have in their hands the world’s military,
economic and financial power (not even the 2008 crisis substantially altered this situation).
Whether it’s under the name of globalization, new imperialism, empire, monetary imperialism or super
imperialism, they all show the need for a new concept that defines something new, completely different
from the previous stage within the classic concept of imperialism.
Globalization, third stage
Nevertheless, we still have to answer the question as to why this new period is precisely more than just
a period within the imperialist stage and why therefore it deserves to be called a new stage or phase.
It’s clear this shouldn’t be justified simply because of what’s implied by the term globalization, in other
words because of the extension of capitalism to all parts of the world, since capitalism has had a
“globalizing vocation” since the beginning
54
Pushing it a little further, Samir Amin in a recent article entitled “Capitalism, imperialism, globalization”
in which he mentions Arrighi, Bairoch, Braudel, Gunder Frank, Szentes and Wallerstein says about
capitalism that “globalization is not a new phenomenon and the interaction between societies is
without any doubt as old as the history of humanity”
55
52
Hudson, m Op. cit. (pp377 and 378) In English in the original version. Our translation.
Concerning the critics that were made from the Marxist perspective to this line of thought, particularly to the book
“Empire” from Negri and Hardt see Itsvan Metzaros “El siglo XXI Civilización o Barbarie” Herramientas Buenos Aires, 2008. and
Atilio Boron “Imperio & Imperialismo” CLACSO Buenos Aires 2002.
54
From a philosophical perspective, in his book “En el mundo interior del capital. Para una teoría filosófica de la
globalización” (Siruela Madrid 2007), Peter Sloterdijk’s reflexions concerning the origins of “globalization” with capitalism itself
and based on travels by sailors, particularly Columbus and Magellans are suggestive
55
Samir, Amin “Capitalismo, imperialismo , mundialización” Realidad económica ( review from IADE) February 2008
53
22
In the same article, Amin makes a difference between the globalization of ancient times and that of
modern times; he argues that in the first case, the globalization process gave “opportunities” to the
least developed regions in order to get closer to the same levels of development as the most developed
regions (this must be understood as a possibility of independent development). In the second case or
“globalization associated to capitalism”, the process is “polarizing” by nature; not only does it not offer
the previously mentioned possibilities but it produces an increasing inequality and consequently an
unequal influence of some countries over others or of blocs of countries over the rest.
Focusing exclusively on the capitalist process (whose emergence, we insist, could be seen throughout an
th
extensive period of time which started in the 13 century) during what we could call its prehistory and
when the bourgeoisie started primary accumulation in the incipient citizens’ strongholds and in the
middle of feudal scenery, the crusades themselves launched by emerging national states demonstrated
this trend for searching permanent expansion of geographical space in order to increase sources of
wealth and commercial routes.
The trading deals of the Portuguese Crown and the deals of Spanish Crown state capitalism (as referred
to by Pirenne) led to colonialism and to the discovery of the world.
The mercantilism that followed these first business conquests lead to a globalization of commerce and a
globalization of the politics adopted from European metropolises that became the centre of the new
global capitalist system. Subsequently, the direct ascent of European bourgeoisie to political power
within the national states, definitely configured by the treaty of Westphalia, led the way to the
th
emergence of capitalist countries in the rest of the world. For a good part of the 19 century, the
expansion of the neo-colonialist empire led by the supremacy of England was a clear process of further
development of globalization or internationalization of the capitalist system, particularly in its
commercial aspect.
th
In the 20 century, global expansion of capitalism - not only in its commercial aspect but also as an
expression of its productive and industrial development - was given, as we’ve seen repeatedly, the name
of “imperialism”, which clearly expresses its determining globalizing nature.
If we take into account all these trends, are right those who indicate that globalization is not something
new as to what it does to the intrinsic characteristics of capitalism, at least as a permanent trend.
Nevertheless the term globalization had never been used before to describe these global processes, as if
globalization happened since the end of the 80’s and more precisely since the fall of the Berlin wall, the
implosion of the Soviet Union and the parallel explosion of global neo-liberal strategies with the United
States as the epicenter, particularly from the second of Ronald Reagan’s mandates and the first of
George H.W. Bush.
Therefore imposing this new terminology (a word choice is always significant) reveals a new situation
that differs in essential aspects from previous globalizing trends, particularly the last one: “imperialism”.
And if you’ll forgive the repetition, imperialism prevailed since the great economic crisis of 1880 and
th
clearly from the beginning of the 20 century.
23
For Held, McGrez, Goldblatt and Perraton, the protagonists of the debate about globalization (the
“cliché” of our days), there is the term “hyperglobalizers” to describe those for whom globalization is a
new era in which the population depends more and more on the discipline of the global market; the
“skepticals” to describe those for whom globalization is mainly a title behind which lies the reality of an
international economy increasingly segmented in three regional blocs where nationals governments are
still very powerful; and finally “the transformationalists” to describe those for whom globalization is
also, as for hyperglobalizers, something new and unprecedented but is not a final state that we’ve
already arrived at; it’s an open process in which states and societies are trying to adapt to a more
interconnected but also more uncertain world.
56
These writers also distinguish, within the hyperglobalizers thesis, on the one hand the neoliberals who
welcome the triumph of individual autonomy and the triumph of the principles of the market over the
power of the states; on the other hand they distinguish the radicals or neo-Marxists for whom
globalization represents the triumph of a global oppressive capitalism.
For Ankie Hoogvelt, the expansion phase of global capitalism is over. Globalization consists more in a
consolidation than in an extension of capitalist integration
57
In fact for him globalization is a concept
that is more sociological than economic; it has been developed by sociologists like Roland Robertson,
David Harvey and Anthony Guiddens in terms of change in social relations of time and space. Therefore
he recognizes that these changes in the compression of social time and space appear economically
under three forms: the discipline of the global market, the new forms of accumulation, of “flexible”
global production and the consolidation of financial globalization. Hoogvelt belongs to the ones that
consider globalization as a process and not as a goal to reach. For him there is no such thing as a
globalized economy or even a globalized society.
58
Finally and going back to Amin, we can see that in a previous study published in 1996 , he asks, while
still considering that globalist trends are present throughout the history of capitalism: what is really new
in the current globalization that makes it different from these historical trends?
We shall say that there’s nothing else we can do than agree with him in the characterization of the
political and economic innovations of globalization that are precisely what gives it the status of stage
“per se”.
Amin affirms (keeping in mind the references of historical materialism) that, in his view, the old form of
polarization (the contrast between the industrialized centre and the non-industrialized periphery) that
prevailed from 1800 to 1950 has been progressively left behind for an industrialization of the east and
the south (even if the process has been unequal). In these conditions, the globalized law of value
defined by that period should be revised bearing in mind that qualitative transformation and
synthesizing its previous descriptions about the characteristics of this new situation and those brought
56
Held, David; Mc Grez, Anthony; Goldblatt, David and Perraton,Jonathan: “Global transformations. Politics, economics
and culture” .Standford (Cal.)1999. Standford University Press (Introduction)
57
Hoogvelt, Angie; “Globalisation and the Postcolonial world. The new political economy of development” 1997
Macmillan Press LTD London
58
Amin Samir, “The challenge of globalization” in “Review of international political economy” Vol 3 nº 2 Summer 1996
University of Sussex Brighton UK
24
by the works of Francois Chesnais (1994), Giovanni Arrigí (1994), Michel Beaud (1989), Kostas
Vergopoulos (1993), Olivier Pastré (1992) and Michel Aglietta (1986). He refers to three new differential
characteristics of this new period: 1) The deepening of interdependence of the production processes
that have pushed forward the dismantling of national systems of production but that haven’t evolved
much in their substitution for a coherent globalized order of production - 2)The emergence of new
forms of company organization which have reduced the distinction between financial and industrial
contributors and 3) The impact that all of this has had in terms of exclusion, internal exclusion of the
richest societies as well as global exclusion of whole continents like Africa.
In an article from the magazine “Carré Rouge”, François Chesnais affirms with conviction that “With the
change of century, between more or less 1992 and 2001, a shift of period has occurred: not only a
change of phase within the struggle of the classes but also of historical period. This change hasn’t been
analyzed much by the ones who are involved in the fight for social emancipation…”
59
Beyond this arbitrary use that Chesnais makes of the terms period and phase for which he doesn’t give
any justification whatsoever in the rest of the article (and neither in any of his other publications), what
is certain is that he tells us of a very important historical change. As for the date when this change
occurred, he refers “more or less” to a period of time of almost a decade between 1992 and 2001.
Therefore what we think is most important in Chesnais’ reflections are the descriptions he makes in the
second part of his article of all the characteristics that differentiate this new “period” from the previous
one/ones?
At first Chesnais affirms that “the globalization of capital that emerged from liberalization and
deregulation has led to the formation of a space (the “global market”) that enables the capital to make
workers of different countries compete against each other. Making workers compete against each other
60
at distance is one of the characteristics of the new period” He says that the formation of this “global
industrial army” has been developing in the last two decades (the article is from 2007) but that they’d
been a big leap in 2001 with China joining the WTO and when “ex-socialist” countries joined the
European Union. He also significantly refers to the fact that “competition has gone back to being a blind
mechanism as described in “The Capital” which in his view talks about a predominance of “the anarchy
of production” as referred to by Marx. In this last reflection, we can see some indication of a dialectic
change of this post imperialist period as a return to original capitalism in the form of negation of the
negation.
Another distinctive characteristic that Chesnais observes is that “There is ‘no return of the countries’.
Globalization has emptied from its substance the notion of sovereignty for all the bourgeoisie or
bureaucratic-capitalist elites to the exception of just a handful. Salaried employees will no longer modify
61
their relations with the capital within the limits of just the one country” . This is not a light statement;
59
Chesnais François “Constatar el cambio radical de período, ayudar a comprender su contenido y consecuencias”
published in www.argenpress.info on 19 and 20 June 2007 as part I and part II
60
Chesnais F op cit. Parte II p3
61
Chesnais F. op. Cit. Parte II p4
25
here we have a new setting in terms of the forms of accumulation of capital as much as in terms of the
bases for the strategy of popular and working class movements.
Another question described by Chesnais as being new for the period is that of the environmental crisis
which he considers is at the heart of the new historical movement and is perceived as a ”new area for
the struggle of the classes”.
Chesnais is also renowned for his analysis of what can be called the “financial problem”. From this
perspective, he also points out some important changes affecting “current capitalism”.
Referring to current financial crises (of which he says that in some way they were perceived by Marx as
an explanation for the “money crisis”), he affirms that “they reflect the maturing of the contradictions
concerning the formation of profit rates as well as the conditions in which capital and capital gain are
62
obtained (our italics) ; he cites Michel Aglietta in one paragraph of his article “Le Capitalisme de
Derain” which in spite of its length deserved to be reproduced for the clarity of what it exposes
concerning the role of finances in the current period: “in order to maintain high and regular profits, a
dynamic demand is needed. The latter can’t come from emerging countries because they’re in a
structural situation of surplus in balance of payments. Neither can it come from salaries whose growth is
weak. It comes from the income distributed to shareholders and to the ruling elite, however the global
mass of this income isn’t sufficient to maintain an added and rapidly increasing demand. Contemporary
capitalism finds the demand that enables to fulfill the requirements of shareholding value in the
household mortgage loans. This process reaches its climax in the United States. It compensates financial
imbalance that accumulated following a decline without any counteracting trend. There’s a strong bond
between credits and the principle of shareholding value. If we push the price rise of equity assets,
credits will disconnect available income consumption (our italics)
63
The “financiarisation thesis” have been criticized regarding their radical affirmation that from the
neoliberal reaction, production revolves around the necessities and demands of financial capitalism.
One of these critics is Astarita; for him it’s a mistake to characterize the ascent of neoliberalism as an
assault from the financial sector onto the commanding posts of the capital. “We think that what was
called neoliberal politics was much more than that. It was the ascent of the reaction of all the capitalist
class, supported by a large part of the bourgeoisie against the workers and the most impoverished
sectors of the population -for example poor farmers- in order to re-establish profitability and strengthen
the positions of the capital against the exploited… it was something a lot deeper than the mere assault
from the financial sector and the imposing of high interest rates during a few years at the beginning of
the 80’s. Industrial or commercial capital has not been “subjugated” by financial capital since the end of
the 70’s. Joint work was indeed more completely subsumed to the capital, without any differences of
reactions within the latter.
64
62
Chesnais Françoise “El fin de un ciclo. Alcance y rumbo de la crisis financiera” Article Published in Carré rouge/ La
brèche nº 1 December 2007 January February 2008 (translated into Spanish by the magazine Herramienta. p3)
63
Chesnais F. op cit. p17
64
Astarita Rolando “Crítica de la tesis de la financiarización” (December 2008)
26
Therefore, beyond the debate about whether there was or is a substitution of the production sector by
the financial sector of the capital, the supporters of one sector as well as of the other make it clear that
we’re facing a historical change in the way the capital functions; moreover the financial sector plays a
role, as least quantitatively speaking, that it didn’t play before.
We’d like draw attention to an author whose opinion regarding this topic is particularly interesting,
Spanish sociologist Andres Piqueras.
Piqueras defines globalization as follows: “The current fundamental process conditioning the
interrelationships of forces between the capital and work is represented by the offensive globalization
(of unilateral regulation of the System) performed by the Capital and supported by the current drastic
scientific and technological revolution (in which converge the progresses in the fields of microelectronics, information technology, biogenetics and robotics) that deeply affect all the social relations
of production, that have an influence over productive processes and stimulate the redimensionalization
of the role of Work as a social and productive agent just like its possibilities to become a historical
subject.”
65
But Piqueras in this work that was initiated as a criticism of certain positions of the so-called “open
Marxism” goes a little further as to the question of historical periodization: “Every capitalist ‘phase’
corresponds dialectically to different organization forms of Work and forms of expression as a political
subject (The phases don’t have to be interpreted as hermetic compartments that explain everything
within themselves but, like the structures, they can be interpreted as unstable expressions of a
“continuum” of struggles of classes, vertical, horizontal and transversal. In each of these, forms or
expressions coexist; they are characteristic of other moments or interrelationships of force of the
relation Capital/Work. However accepting the ‘autonomist’ offer that avoids understanding the most
outstanding features of this interrelationship at every moment would mean contributing to prevailing
obscurantism – that is, for what value as a retrospective analysis this periodization has, capable, with
66
time, to shed some light on the future-)…” and he proposes: “Let’s re-examine all of them during the
‘stages’ of capitalism from when he gets more mature or, which is pretty much the same, since he
becomes the hegemonic production mode in the most important societies first and then in the rest of
the world”
67
From this proposal Piqueras periodizes capitalism in three ‘phases’ 1) Competitive liberal capitalism
th
(first industrialization) 2) State monopolist capital (two last decades of 19 century to the 70’s in the
th
th
20 century) and 3) Transnational monopolist capital (mid 70’s of the 20 century to nowadays).
More than the lack of clarity concerning the difference between phases and stages (that for us is
inexistent) and some disagreements as regards the moments when changes from one phase to the
other occurred, what is certain is that Piqueras is one of the only writers among those who debated
these topics that proposes a periodization that respects the stages of initial capitalism and imperialism
65
Piqueras, Andrés “La mutua conformación del capital y el trabajo desde el capitalismo maduro al capitalismo senil y las
formas sociales a que da lugar” Presentation/talk at the 3rd internacional conference “La obra de Carlos Marx y los desafíos del
siglo XXI” La Habana Cuba, 3 to 6 May 2006 (page 8)
66
Piqueras A. op cit. Pags 8 y 9
67
Piqueras A. op. Cit pag 9
27
th
established by Marxists since the 20 century and who also recognizes globalization as being the third
stage. Furthermore, he proposes to establish distinctive “modes” within the imperialist stage.
In “Socialism or Barbarism, István Mészàros, writing in the format of an essay and not using much in the
way of a preface, tells us that the “history of imperialism” has three distinctive phases”
68
and he lists
them as follows: 1) “Modern colonial imperialism, early constructor of empires”, 2) “’Redistributing’
imperialism disputed antagonicaly by the big superpowers in the benefit of its quasi monopolist
corporations” and 3) “Global hegemonic imperialism”.
Since we are forced to deduct - Mészàros doesn’t expand himself much more on the subject - that for
this author all capitalism must be referred to as imperialism, what defines the first “early modern
colonialism” phase of some European countries to expand to “parts of the world that are relatively easy
to penetrate” can already be found in the early days of capitalist modernity.
The second “redistributing” phase would coincide with what Lenin indeed named imperialism, which
according to Mészàros would have finished towards the “end of the Second World War” and, from
then, became with the “emergence of the structural crisis of the capitalist system in the seventies” the
“global imperialism”, with the United States as the predominant force.
Ernst Mandel and the periodization of capitalism
Some paragraphs aside deserve Ernst Mandel’s view concerning periodization of capitalism and
particularly its relation with economic waves and cycles.
At first, we want to point out that Mandel was one of the first (and one of the only ones) to clearly
express some concern about the importance of the subject: “The relationship between general rules for
movements of capital, as Marx discovered, and the history of capitalist production mode represents one
of the most complex issues of the Marxist theory. The magnitude of its difficulty can be measured by the
69
fact that so far there had never been a satisfactory clarification of this relationship” . “What is the
reason for the integration of the theory and of the history brilliantly applied by Marx in the “Grundisse”
and in “The Capital” not to be ever repeated successfully in order to explain these successive stages of
the capitalist production mode? Why isn’t there yet a history of satisfactory capitalism as a function of
the internal rules of capital?
70
In order to explain in a few words the contents of Mandel’s work in relation with periodization of
capitalism, it’s better to refer to a quote by Claudio Katz from March 2000 entitled “Ernest Mandel and
the long waves theory”: “Its focus is related to the tradition of historical periodization of capitalism
inaugurated by Lenin and not to the thesis of regular and successive cycles presented by Kondratieff and
Schumpeter. He details a qualitative distinction between the cycle and the wave and its main originality
is the connection that it makes between the theory of value and the extensive periods of economic
contractions and expansions. He gives to the struggle of the classes an explanatory and central role in
these processes as being controversial with institutionalist and hegemonist interpretations, although he
68
69
70
Mészâros, István “ El siglo XXI. Socialismo o Barbarie” Herramienta Buenos Aires 2007 (p.61)
Mandel, Ernst “El capitalismo tardío” Editions Era México 1979 (p14).
Mandel E, Op.cit. (p25)
28
doesn’t manage to formulate a satisfactory demonstration of the recurring logic of this clash. His focus
includes an original theory of technological revolutions that reformulate the Schumpeterianan
conception according to the objective dynamics of the evaluation process. Furthermore, he criticizes the
situation of stagnation, pointing out that the dynamics of capitalism is incompatible with the paralysis of
productive forces” (p1).
However Mandel doesn’t fail to show contradictions, confusions and limitations in the presentation of
the historical periodicity of capitalism to which we were referring generically at the beginning of this
work; maybe for this reason and among other things he reaches conclusions whose lack of precision he
left to be verified with the passing of time.
In “Late capitalism” Mandel initially states what looks pretty much like a definition: “The era of late
capitalism isn’t a new period of the development of capitalism. It’s only a subsequent development of
the imperialist and monopolistic period of capitalism. Therefore as an implication, the characteristics of
the imperialist period listed by Lenin are just as valid in the late capitalism”
71
Beyond the discriminatory use of terms like “era” or “period” instead of “stage” or “phase” in order to
refer to imperialism, the main point of the statement is that for Mendel the late capitalism that he’s
living through and that he affirmed has existed since the mid 60’s forms part of Lenin’s imperialist stage;
in other words it keeps the Leninist terminology, would be a sub-stage or sub-phase or a period within
the stage and would form part of that intelligence of whose imperialist characteristics Mandel affirms
“keep all their value”.
Nevertheless shortly afterwards in this same piece of work, Mandel complains that there’s no
“satisfactory explanation for the new stage of the history of capitalism that clearly began after the
Second World War”
72
and later he affirms that combining the unequal trends of development of
fundamental proportions of the capitalist production mode “will enable us to explain the history of
capitalist production mode and above all the third phase of its development that we’ll call late
capitalism”, by means of the laws of movement of the capital itself…”
73
Furthermore, Mandel tries out explicitly his hypothesis of periodization by saying: “The history of
capitalism at a global level doesn’t only emerge as a succession of cyclical movements with a duration of
7 to 10 years but also as a longer succession of periods, of approximately 50 years, of which we’ve
experienced four so far:
th
1) The long period that runs from the end of the 18 century until the crisis of 1847, defined basically by
the gradual extension of manual manufacture or the steam manufacture process to the most important
branches of the industry and to industrialized countries. This was the long wave of the industrial
revolution that gave birth to capitalism.
th
2) The long period that runs from 1847 to the beginning of the last decade of the 19 century, defined
by the emergence and the expansion of steam engine machinery as the first motorized machines. This
was the long wave of the first technological revolution.
71
72
73
Mandel , E. op cit. pag 11( our italics)
Mandel E op cit pag 25 ( our italics)
Op cit pag.42
29
th
3) The long period that runs from the end of the 19 century until the Second World War and that is
defined by the general use of internal combustion and electric engines in all the branches of the
industry. This was the long wave of the second technological revolution.
4) The long period that started in North America in 1940 and in other imperialist countries in 1945/48,
defined by a generalized control of machines by the use of electronic devices (as for example the
progressive introduction of atomic energy). This is the long wave of the third technological revolution”
74
Here Mandel doesn’t talk about times or eras anymore and neither does he use the Leninist terminology
of stages or phases but he introduces the concept of “periods”, more precisely “long periods”. However
he also distances himself from the classic Marxist periodization of at least two stages: free trade
capitalism and monopoly capitalism (imperialism) that came one after the other since more or less
1870/1890 and introduced a succession of four periods defined by technological development. He
doesn’t explain anything as to why this must replace the Marxist-Leninist periodization or what would
be, if such was the case, the articulation between both.
Furthermore if the “history of capitalism” is a succession of periods that start at the “end of the 18
th
century”, we might want to think what Mandel disagrees about with Marx (and various others) as to
capitalism having its origins a long time before that, but Mandel doesn’t say anything about that
historical question.
In his work done in 1980 about a Marxist interpretation of capitalism’s long waves of development,
Mandel gives us some evaluations of the matter that turn out to be more advanced than what can be
found about this matter in Marxist bibliography. For example he tells us that: “Long waves are not only
empirically demonstrable. They don’t only represent the statistical average of determined extensions of
time… They represent historical realities, segments of history exclusively of capitalist production that
75
definitely have different characteristics” . The importance of this materialistic focus of the question,
disconnected from all formalism is completed with an even deeper dialectical view “We can find an
important confirmation of the historical “totality” of long waves in the correlation between series of
predominant ideological trends (predominant at least within the ideological framework of the higher
classes) and the general trends of economic development that they reflect from a given perspective”
76
In other words the different moments determined by the waves aren’t only economic moments but also
real historical moments in which the structural and the superstructural (to resort to a certain expositive
simplification) go together and influence each other within the historical rhythm determined by the
development of the system.
Therefore Mandel states that precisely the moment of accelerated economic growth corresponding to
the period he situates between 1948 and 1968 is ideologically determined by the “credo” of growing
optimism guaranteed by full employment and technological rationality. To this we could add that it was
a systemic functionalism from the social theory that could then rule in these conditions.
74
Op. Cit. pag117/118 (our italics)
Mandel Ernest “Long waves of capitalist development. A Marxist interpretation” Verso London 1995 p76 (our
translation).
76
Mandel E op cit pag 76 (our translation)
75
30
But then since the decline of the long wave of depression of the 70’s and 80’s, the economic Keynesian
theory corresponding to the previous period is replaced by monetarism. The conditions of exploitation
deteriorating due to a higher economic pressure applied by the dominant classes had as an ideological
effect the proliferation of irrationality and skepticism; this was expressed in France, for example,
through the “new philosophers” and in North America from the extreme right perspective through
Darwinism or “socio-biology” and through the “scientific” justification of racism. With a dialectical
reflection Mandel also warns us that this predominance of the irrational theoretical ideological bias is
identical to what represented the base of the bourgeois thinking before the big growth, in the period
between the two world wars.
Therefore Mandel manages to tell us about the real existence of a material process of history that is
complete when it comes to cover all aspects of social movement - whether economic, political and
cultural - and that is somehow made of a succession of phases that deny each other, although he
doesn’t say so explicitly. This is a lot more than what has been perceived by others until now.
Other views
Inmanuel Wallerstein from his conception of “world system” coincides in a way with Braudel’s positions
as concerns the interpretation of historical moments of initial capitalism. In relation with what occurred
after the French Revolution, he holds his own views.
He asks “The years 1989-1991 mark a decisive turning point in contemporary history. Everybody seems
to agree with this. But a turning point from where to where?”
77
He finds the answer in the assumed discovery of a period politically homogenous that in his view runs
from 1789 to 1989, that he defines ideologically as the “rule” of liberalism and within which he identifies
two “key global revolutionary movements”: 1848 and 1968. In the first internal period of this big stage,
in other words from 1789 to 1848, is when the three modalities of liberal thinking are formed and take
shape; to him these would be liberal conservatism, liberalism as such and socialism. In this first period,
the three modalities would have had a strong anti-state bias. In the second period or the one that runs
from 1848 to 1968 these ideological modalities, under the cover of liberalism, would have showed an
abnormally strong pro-state position. And from 1968 to 1989, the “strategy of the world capitalist
economy” is transformed again and is defined by the “destruction of liberal consensus” resulting in the
global socialist system collapsing in 1989 at the end of liberalism.
It has to be said that, although more because he avoids without saying a word the classic division of free
trade capitalism from monopolistic capitalism recognized by various important Marxist authors, this
version by Wallerstein is a bit more than fanciful.
Therefore, we’re not going to start criticizing his version in more details, in the way that it’s not
something connected with his fundamental perception of the global system and its Braudelian
conception of world history but more that they’re ideas published in various articles during the 90’s and
finally recollected in the previously mentioned piece of work.
77
Wallerstein Inmanuel “Después del liberalismo S XXI México 1996 p231
31
In fact, a theory whose intention is to find a homogenizing element in the historical period that goes
from the French Revolution to the neoliberalism of the 90’s doesn’t go anywhere.
“Globalization is a reality that involves the whole world and because of its extreme complexity it
requires to be scientifically confronted; this means new expositive synthesis that support the old ones in
order to show its evolution, as a new stage of capitalism, a system that from its emergence has
maintained itself in the global market”
78
This phrase that we completely agree with is not ours but was written by Ecuadorian professor Alberto
Moreno Cornejo; it’s the initial sentence of his work that goes in the same direction as this essay
“Globalization, last phase of capitalism”
However, it’s not only this title and this initial sentence that go along with our ideas. Let us read the
following “On the other hand, debating about globalization – if we still follow the line of Marxist thinkers
- could be seen as enrolling rather late when so much has been said about the subject; however I believe
that something can be contributed to in order to understand globalization as a new phase of capitalism,
qualitatively different from imperialism; and although many of its aspects can be left unchanged, in the
same way as with imperialism were left unchanged forms of the system in its free competition phase,
we can protect the outlined possibility that this is the last phase of this system, combining the
interrelation of necessity and coincidence in which overcoming is required, as observed by Marx
himself; globalization is integrated with the coincidence of the system getting weaker for want of an
absolute domination of the world, with the market as a base, technology and communication increasing
poverty and wealth, lumpenproletariat and lumpenbourgeoisie; it’s the omnipotence of a few and the
subjugation of millions”
79
Moreno Cornejo exposes here a hypothesis that is similar to ours, not only in terms of considering
globalization as a distinctive stage or phase of imperialism but as the third and last of the system and, he
adds his conception of thirdness, as a mode of synthesis in which the categories of dialectics are
resolved (he gives the example of needs and coincidences).
Moreno Cornejo gives a deeper analysis when he refers to the qualitative difference between
globalization and imperialism: “The marriage between industrial capitalism and financial capitalism and
the close relationship with commercial capital has grown; therefore there’s a qualitative change in the
way the control of the situation has been reversed and ultimately it’s the financial capital, or fictitious
capital, which dominates the situation. In no way does this mean that industrial capitalism, with its
important production in the fields of energy and transport, doesn’t carry any weight in the
determinations that are taken; however, because it belongs to the big industrials themselves and their
financial institutions, these institutions receive the contributions of commercial capital and the money
received with the interests; that way big available resources are obtained through current and future
78
Moreno Cornejo, Alberto “La globalización última fase del capitalismo”
http://www.globalizate.org/globalizacioncapitalismo.rtf p 4 (our highlighting)
79
Moreno Cornejo , A. op cit pags 4 y 5 (our highlighting)
32
investments, therefore the financial oligarchy feels it owns the world and places its credits in activities
that favour the current capital centralization process.”
80
In consequence, globalization is the third stage, the last one and its inclination is financial.
Concerning the much debated topic of national states and globalization,
Moreno Cornejo gives us a real dialectic perspective of the situation, overcoming common antinomy
“Nowadays the centre is dissolving, although Amin’s capitalist nation state remains in its full capacity of
action as concerns maintaining the rules of the system; however it gives way to the importance of the
forms of inversion because things are not done for the central country and through it for its higher social
classes thus converting the state in a monopolistic entity but they’re done directly for the monopolies
that keep their headquarters within the hegemonic State or world centre. That is because in the
surrounding nations themselves, this monopolistic company is used in its national version which, to its
convenience, gives the impression that we’re dealing with an entity of its own and not with an entity
acting from the outside”
81
Finally, as concerns the periodization of capitalism, Moreno Cornejo makes a proposal that is very
similar to ours although with specific denominations for each stage. For him there are three historical
phases of capitalism: “a) free competition; b) colonialist imperialism; and c) globalizing imperialism,
which doesn’t mean there are no intermediary situations of transition”
82
He also coincides with our
speculations, at least in general terms, concerning the three internal divisions of the first stage in
periods “The bourgeoisie of the third estate subjugated to the King’s and the nobles’ will, ignored,
subjugated and mainly dependent, made its way by accumulating in any way whatsoever, to the
economic power of the seigneury by giving the latter primary accumulation (what we consider as the
first periods of the initial capitalist stage). This contributed to a specialization of the production and to
the emergence of manufacturing associated with the collective worker (what we consider as being the
third period of the initial capitalist stage). These changes of quantity or of quality determined the
aspects of the social and economic reality of capitalism”
83
Beyond the precisions concerning the moments when these periods started, were consolidated and
ended, we can only agree with the succession of internal moments of the first stage of capitalism and
with the specific characterization of each of them with a financial inclination: the first is characterized by
the user, the second is commercial and the third productive (which moreover gives place to the working
class); the three being within the general commercial inclination of the whole stage.
Our hypothesis concerning globalization:
From a perspective which is certainly historical and materialistic, as we’ve previously said, we also have
to propose a hypothesis of the capitalist stages. We have to differentiate them from an initial capitalism
80
81
82
83
Moreno Corenjo , A, op cit pag 13
Moreno Cornejo, A. op cit p14
Moreno Cornejo op cit p29
Op cit pag 29
33
th
that lasted until the end of the 19 century, an imperialist stage that lasted until the 1980’s and a
globalized capitalism that has been going on since the end of the 80’s until nowadays and in which we
are now immersed.
If you accept this hypothesis you can, from a dialectical point of view, find features of globalization that
synthetically repeat the aspects of the first two stages in a “closed circuit” movement of negation of the
previous stage (imperialism) which in turn is a negation of the one before (initial capitalism).
Therefore, globalization would go back to initial capitalism but would follow a spiral movement that
places it at a superior level and that incorporates central aspects of the intermediate stage. This triad
movement that forms the essence of dialectical thinking is an integral part of the materialistic and
historical perspective which (put simply) is nothing else than an application of the principles of the
philosophical conception of dialectical materialism to the interpretation of human history.
Thus if the economic paradigm of the first capitalism was liberalism, which owes its theoretical maturity
th
to Adam Smith and reaches its peak, in practice, with the free trade of the 19 century neo-colonial
British Empire, the economic matrix from the end of the 1980’s is neoliberalism; just mentioning the
word neoliberalism automatically gives clear indications of a certain synthetic return to the original
economic model in its “neo” form. That is to say a return to the free model of supply and demand but in
a global market version and without losing the states that run the process (particularly the United
States) and the Keynesian inclination of the powerfully interventionist state, representative of the
intermediate stage of imperialism (basically through protectionism and military spending, precisely
called “Military Keynesianism”.
Along these lines and in terms of predominant reproduction form of the capital, it looks as though that if
the first capitalism was commercial in the way that it was based on a free market of goods and
manufactured products, the second (imperialism) was productive, industrial and of direct added value
extraction; the difference, in terms of exchanges with dependent countries and hence the current stage
of globalization, is predominantly financial, under the form of a free global market of capitals.
If this was so in the succession of historical stages of the modern-capitalist era, we’d have a
reproduction of the moments of Marx’s D-M-D dialectics of merchandises in a more detailed formula D
– M (WF and MP) P M’ – D, where WF represents work force, MP are the means of production and P
84
the productive process . Therefore, the first capitalism of commercial inclination corresponds to the
initial moment of merchandises (D-M), the second (imperialism) of productive inclination corresponds
to the intermediate moment (MPM’) and the third which is the globalization of financial inclination
corresponds to the commerce of money (M-D). So from a logic of dialectics perspective, the internal
movement of the element that forms the basis of the system determines the historical dynamics of the
system itself.
On the other hand, the inclinations of the stages are strongly determined by the level of development of
the respective productive forces. If what has most evolved from the beginning of capitalism to the 19
th
century are the means of transport - whether at sea or on land, from caravans, crusades and
84
Conf. Astarita,Rolando “Crédito, crisis financiera y ciclo económico” (October 2008)
34
th
“discoveries” of continents at first to steamboats and 19 century trains later - this led mainly to the
development of commerce and its full completion with the British commercial empire in the 19
th
century; however and as we’ve just seen, neither the financial nor the industrial aspects have been
absent of the process, on the contrary they gave the development an extra financial-commercial
inclination and an extra industrial-commercial inclination in the first and third periods of the stage. The
second and industrial stage corresponded mainly to the evolution of energy production - electricity,
petroleum and steel extraction – which led to the industry of industries on a big scale; the third and
financial stage has been greatly boosted by the particularly important development of communications
which represent one of the main features of globalization. From a perspective that is not too focused on
the economical aspect, if the first capitalism corresponded to an era of formation, consolidation and
affirmation of nation states, with all that this means in terms of organization of a unique internal order
within each country, globalization then seems to put forward the same drive to order and unify;
however, globalization doesn’t do that with nation states, whose sovereignty is somehow loosing
importance (although not completely) but with the order of the world and only one state hegemony,
that of the United States (followed with an almost silent position of consent by the European Union and
Japan). There’s therefore the emergence of international supranational organizations in which the
decisive influence of the United States is more than obvious. So we’re talking of a bloc of power and
global domination formed by the capitalist groups that most concentrated over the last decades and
that have once and for all colonized the states of the most important central countries, particularly the
North American state and as an extension the states of the most powerful countries of the European
Union together with the Japanese state. It’s almost impossible nowadays for any state to aspire to
disengagement and search for its own destiny isolated from the globalized world. Here nation states
seem to be playing the same role played by cities, towns and feuds in their initial resistance to the
acceptation of central national power imposed by the absolute monarchies of the past. Therefore,
globalization is also a centripetal concentration process of political power in the same way as the initial
structuring of capitalism, however no longer on national scenes but at a global level (hence the political
idea of a global government), integrating and developing as a synthesis the inter-nationalistic trend that
emerged during the intermediate stage of capitalism.
In that way, the feeling of national states or of so-called emerging countries, particularly China,
becoming stronger or the pathway to self-determination and protection of sovereignty that appeared in
various Latin American countries are political facts that confront and challenge imperial hegemony and
that have therefore been put forth.
Another aspect of globalization that supposes a dialectical return to the stage of first capitalism is
represented by the exclusion phenomenon, contrasting with a model of society inclusive of capitalism
and whose paradigm of political and institutional organization is the welfare state and full occupation as
tendencies of hegemony. This phenomenon of exclusion is comparable with the segregating society of
the first capitalism which since its early stages, during the formation of modern national states (1200-
35
1300), religiously separated (and excluded) heretics as “the others outside the faith” and then with the
development of manufacturing systems and mercantile capitalism excluded a great part of the rural
population (the vast majority of the total population). Expelled from feudal lands because of the impact
of the subdivision system and capitalist practices in the exploitation of the land, the rural population
was stuck in a limbo between this land that no longer needed them and the incipient industry of the
st
towns that didn’t need them yet. This process is clearly described by Marx in the 1 volume of “The
Capital”. The lazy, the poor, the beggar and the sick - generally excluded from any fixed place and from
any stable work, without any possessions - took the place of the “other outside the faith” and were
suspected of crimes, persecuted and executed. It’s not surprising that the first penal laws of the modern
th
era in Elizabethan Britain were named “Poor Acts”. Finally in the 19 century, criminal theories of
positivism and racism took in charge the development of theoretical “scientific” reasoning to
demonstrate the sub-humanity of the members of the proletarian mass using stereotypes like homocriminals, malicious and idle in order to justify segregation, elimination, imprisoning or stigmatized
exclusion.
Even away from the European centre - this first capitalist society and political power of the structuring
and consolidation stage of initial capitalism - the dynamics of exclusion were carried out towards the
infidels, the colonized, the new slaves of capitalist agricultural production in the colonies and also
towards the aboriginal peoples in neo-colonized countries.
Globalization, on the other hand, also presented as a new defining aspect the exclusion and segregation
of the ones that didn’t fit in the economic markets of the new neoliberal order and as such were
considered strange, dangerous and again as “the others outside the faith”. In central countries, this role
was played mainly by the immigrants and also by marginal national sectors. In underdeveloped
countries, the society is divided; the rich and the upper middle-class that concentrated economic power
by taking advantage of the impact of the new economic globalized system in their countries isolated
themselves in clubs or gated neighborhoods, away from the many others that were excluded and who
roamed the streets searching the rubbish containers or ended up waiting (or being on the lookout) for
an opportunity. As a consequence, this situation caused a sharp increase in crime rate. In a way, the
unemployed, misfits and illegal immigrants of the current globalization are the main victims of the new
“reckless neo-capitalism” and remind us inevitably of the “needful” that lived the ruthless times of the
emergence of initial capitalism. The last words of chapter 7 in Hoogvelt’s previously mentioned work
take all their meaning here “… the key for the preservation of this new emerging order is therefore not a
question of economy but a question of law and order. The problem is how to deal with these
marginalized segments of society. Policies of exclusion come under different forms. We can see
examples with kids being shot down on the streets in Brazil and Columbia and with anti-immigration
laws and surveillance in the Mediterranean Sea around the European fortress. We are the witnesses of
mass incarceration policies in the United States where more than two million people (of which the black,
the youth and the unemployed form by far the most part) are in prison...”
36
In the imperialist stage, the international political tie in terms of opposed ideological forces which
means the existence of countries with a powerful ideology and social-political economic structures
opposed to capitalism pushed the limits of segregation towards the outside (neo-colonialism crisis and
emergence of Third World movements) and opened spaces on national scenes for the development of
alternative political movements with a real potential for taking power.
All of this ended up with the emergence of globalization generating itself new and different areas of
political struggle. Nowadays, there isn’t a centre of alternative power to which one way or the other
anti-systematic local forces are referenced. Today’s anti-global (and anti-capitalist) seems to have
somehow acquired the prevailing spirit of original proletarian internationalism that emerged at the end
of the first stage of capitalism. This new form of anti-conformist political movements against
globalization seems, in a way, to be responding to a need and no longer to a rally of forces behind an
international political strategy conformed and institutionalized from the power standpoint of just one
state or group of states but to the incorporation into a global struggle network of individuals and
organizations in which we can hear echoes of the rallying “unite” cry from the old manifesto.
Let’s conclude therefore with a new perspective, from the Marxist perspective, that affirms the
existence of three stages of capitalism that we could call global capitalism (1300-1880), capitalist
imperialism (1890-1985) and capitalist globalization (1990….).
Depending on the dynamics of the historical process, the duration of the stages are significantly
reduced. This is understandable given that these dynamics are determined by how fast productive
forces develop
85
IV The periods within the stages
The three stages of capitalism we’ve mentioned enable us to visualize its development process with
more clarity and above all to advise that this is precisely what it’s about, a historical process with a
beginning and an end. We understand this is an approximation of the phenomenon of capitalist
modernity that more deeply reflects its reality and opens the way to a more accurate investigation of its
qualities and its trends.
However, the historical materialistic perspective allows us to go for more. Every stage of capitalism
represents a historical process in itself with its own contradictions which then determine its movement
and its evolution. These processes can also be understood from their dialectical subdivision in processes
of thesis, antithesis and synthesis that show their characteristics and their internal trends within the
general evolution of the whole system.
85
Giovanni Arrighí expressed himself along the same lines concerning Pirenne’s “recurring oscillations”: “… on the other
hand, the speed of each oscillation, measured according to the period of time each regime needed to form itself, become
dominant and reach its limits has constantly increased with the scale and span of action of the leading agencies for the systemic
processes of capital accumulation”
Arrighi, Giovanni “El largo siglo XX. Dinero y poder en los orígenes de nuestra época” AkalMadrid .1999 (p396)
37
Initial capitalism or capitalist globalization and its internal periods
In order to explain the internal dynamics of the first stage of capitalism, in other words initial capitalism
or, as it shall also be called now, capitalist globalization, we’ll have to follow closely Braudel’s thesis
th
86
concerning the three accumulation cycles of capitalism until the 19 century , as interpreted by Arrighi
th
in his previously mentioned work “El Largo Siglo XX”, (“The Long 20 Century”) although, as we shall
see, we’ll have to differ from Arrighi as regards Braudel’s original suggestion.
In that way, we’ll have to coincide with the perspective of “longue durée” of this stage that Braudel
proposes as regards the emergence of capitalism as a system.
We shall therefore say that this first stage, previously described as having a commercial inclination,
starts approximately with the commercial revolution at the end of 1200, led by the Genovese and
Venetian bourgeoisies, reaches its peak in the Genovese-Spanish economic-financial circuit and has, as
its greatest achievement, the ‘discovery’ of America and the consolidation of capitalist globalization,
approximately between the end of 1500 and the beginning of 1600. This first period of capitalism’s
initial stage tires out to give way to what Braudel calls the “Dutch cycle of accumulation” with the
development of statutory companies by shares. This Braudelian cycle coincides with the religious
consolidation of Protestantism in various countries of the new Europe whose map basically took form
after the Westphalian peace treaty (1648). Then starts the ascent of the bourgeoisie to a direct political
exercise of power in Europe as well as in the colonies (this completes the map of capitalist globalization
with independent nations within and outside the European territory). It’s precisely during this period
that the English and French bourgeoisies end up taking direct control of political power in the
governments of their respective countries as had previously been done by the Dutch bourgeoisie.
This second period ended up half-way during the Napoleonic wars (1802-1815) and gave way to the
third and last period of capitalism’s first stage that coincides with Braudel’s “English cycle of
accumulation” ; in our view this last period is marked by the extraordinary event of the industrial
revolution, together with the great economic development of Germany and the United States.
Fernand Braudel is one of the most prominent writers about the history of capitalism; he doesn’t
establish his point of view from the historical materialism perspective (at least not specifically). That’s
why his reflections, which we’ll be referring to, from the third volume of his monumental work
th
87
published in English under the title of “Civilization and Capitalism 15 -18th Century” are extremely
important to us as a confirmation of our general approach of the historiographical issue.
At first Braudel ingeniously and very clearly says that if we want to understand thoroughly the history of
civilization and particularly that of capitalism, we can only do so if we consider its evolution according to
the only valid scale to make comparisons with, the universal scale
88
86
Braudel, Fernand “Capitalism and Material Life 1400-1800” Harper Collins Uk 1985
Braudel, Fernand “Civilization & Capitalism 15th-18th Century. Volume 3 The Perspective of the World” University Of
California Press Berkeley 1992
88
Braudel op.cit. p18
87
38
Therefore, it is clear that the “world-economies”, which have been dominating in each historical
moment of capitalist Europe, have come in succession one after the other. It’s also obvious that, during
whichever period, the outstanding characteristics of the dominating world-economy are more clearly
noticed from their centre (in the case of the first Western Europe capitalism) and that the periphery,
even though it belongs to this unique dominant system, has a lot more differences and contradictions,
which presents it in a less “pure” form.
89
Braudel clearly explains that, in his view, capitalism didn’t emerge as a historical process in 1500 as
Wallerstein would insist it did (and he would have considered Marx at first) but between 1200 and 1300,
as Marx would have subsequently written
90
Perhaps one of the most important conclusions is the reference to historical time, its division and its
periodicity.
And one of the most famous orations precisely as regards historical times precisely - the detractors of
long term interpretations - comes from Keynes when he told the ones who in spite of the important
economic world recession still had faith in the conservative views of capitalist economy, that “in the
long run we’ll all be dead”.
This point of view of Keynes comes as no surprise. It reflects the most intelligent (of this period at least)
capitalist view concerning the future of the system. It’s a perspective that ignores and sets aside the
argument over long terms because it’s fully aware that in long term analyses the unsolvable
contradictions of capitalism itself stand out too clearly and the inevitable death, not only of Keynes
fortuitous interlocutors but also of all the system as such, becomes obvious. Therefore all the sociopolitical theorization of the dominant bourgeois ideology from the imperialism period, mainly the socialdemocratic one, prefers to stick to interpretations reserved to short and medium terms (medium range
interpretations). And nowadays, while already in the last period of capitalism and going through its last
(and shortest) stage, the repetitive insistence (that has regrettably made a strong impression on many
progressive theorists with good intentions) of the necessity to avoid “long accounts”, in other words
explanations on the only scale of analysis really valid, according to Braudel, comes as no surprise either.
We also agree with Braudel therefore that the words of Keynes, had they not been intended as a joke,
would represent an “ordinary and absurd” reflection.
The short term coexists with the long term and both of them must be taken into account when doing a
serious historical analysis
91
But Braudel pushes it a little further and not only does he propose to consider the long term but also
promises to investigate its periodization, its cycles and it’s in this way that we find an essential support
to our theoretical suggestion since it enables us to move on with more confidence into the
periodizations of capitalism’s initial stage that we’ve experienced until now.
It’s amazing for us that we should have ended up in contact with Braudel’s theory of cycles after having
reached our own conclusions, that our historian finds three world-economies that cover all the first
89
90
91
Op. Cit Pag 53
Op. Cit. Pag. 57
Op.cit pag. 85
39
stage of initial capitalism within a temporal extension identical to the one we suggest and that the
moments of beginning and substitution of each one by the other coincide with our own suggestion of
three periodizations for this first capitalist stage.
And so much for our coincidences with Braudel. However from here neither Braudel nor Arrhigi have
noticed that the new “cycles of accumulation” are no longer present within the initial mercantile stage
framework, but they emerge on a second historical scene qualitatively different within capitalist
modernity, which is what Lenin observed and named imperialism.
For Braudel this is apparently an infinite succession of cycles in which the new winners “take the place
of previous winners”. That way he states that
“The violent distribution of the world that Lenin reported during the First World War is not so much an
92
innovation as he thought it was” .
In fact, it’s not that Lenin ignored that there had been “distributions of the world” prior to imperialism
or that he conceived as the only qualitative difference between initial capitalism and imperialism the
distribution of the world by the capitalist powers. Imperialism was, for Lenin, a stage that was distinctive
and superior to original capitalism because, among other things, the cycles of accumulation were no
longer produced like they were before, through the game of competitions on the free global market but
through a secret inter-monopolistic agreement, once the wars had finally established which monopolies
would be part of the game and which ones wouldn’t, and how the ones and the others should play.
So in connection with what we referred to as the first stage of capitalism, we coincide with Braudel and
Arrighi in the way that the first period of the stage runs from approximately 1200 or 1300 until half-way
th
through the 17 century, the second from there until the end of the Napoleonic wars or around 1815,
but the third that starts at that moment doesn’t extend until 1974 but lasts approximately until
1885/90, when the whole first capitalism entered the crisis that will transform it into imperialism; from
there and beyond, three more periods or world economic-political forms will follow but no longer within
the now behind stage of initial capitalism but within the second capitalist stage, namely: imperialism.
We must here mention the influential Braudelian thesis, completed by Arrighi together with Jason
Moore in his article “Capitalist development in World historical perspective”
93
The points made in this work by Arrighi and Moore are particularly important for the theoretical
analyses that, as tried out here, acknowledge the meaning of periodization of capitalism as a global
system; they connect this periodization with the forms of accumulation of capital (what they call
systemic cycles of accumulation), make reference to the recurrence, at a micro historical level, of the
internal movement of merchandises according to Marx’s D-M-D formula and to the reduction of the
duration of cycles or periods in proportion with the development of the capital (although in less drastic
proportions than ours).
The position of the authors follows that of previous works done by Arrighi and inspired by Braudel as
concerns dividing the “longue durée” of capitalism from 1300 until nowadays into four systemic cycles
92
93
Braudel , Fernand “La dinámica del Capitalismo” Fondo de Cultura Económica , México 1986 (p97)
Arrighi, Giovanni uMoore, Jason W. “Capitalist development in world historical perspective” en Albritton et al op cit
pp 56 a 75
40
of accumulation, each of which making up real stages. In turn these stages register an internal
movement of phases of 1) material expansion and 2) financial expansion.
These systemic cycles of accumulation last a period of time that is referred to as “long centuries”
(although some of these cycles last 200 years or more) and they superimpose each other during the
transition stage from one to the other.
The phases within these cycles (which are also called segments or periods) follow one another in triads
1) one initial triad of financial expansion during which the new accumulation system develops within the
old one
(overlapping) 2) another triad of complete consolidation and development of a new accumulation
system in which the agencies that lead it promote, control and extract benefits from the material
expansion of the global capitalist system as a whole and 3) finally a second period of financial expansion
in the course of which the completely developed accumulation system creates a space for the
emergency of competition from alternative regimes, one of which becomes eventually the dominant
system.
Therefore Arrighi and Moore identified 4 systemic cycles of accumulation:
The Genovese cycle (from the beginning of 1400 to mid-1600), the Dutch cycle (from mid-1500 to the
end of 1700), the British cycle (from mid-1700 to the beginning of 1900) and the North American cycle
(from the end of 1800 until nowadays), although a fifth cycle would have started at the end of last
century.
Within each of these cycles, there are periods of financial and material expansion corresponding to
internal periods of the stage, as discussed previously.
When it comes to confronting coincidences and disagreements with the Arrighi-Moore thesis, we must
admit that we’re not in a position to tackle the analysis of the internal moments that emerged as an
evolution of each of the cycles between the periods of material and financial expansion. The study that
was carried out is serious and consistent and maybe it should be used as a topic for future discussions.
What is conform to the thesis is our appreciation that for us the historical process that runs from
th
approximately 1300-1400 to the end of the 19 century is dividable in three temporal sections in the
same way Arrighi and Moore refer to the Genovese, Dutch and British cycles. The difference, as we’ve
previously mentioned when referring to Braudel (p…), is the rank that each one gives to them within the
general periodization outline of the whole capitalist process. Indeed, while for Arrighi-Moore these
cycles are stages, that is to say the most important subdivision that can be found within the whole
“longue durée”, for us they correspond to an inferior rank, they are subdivisions of a previous division
that corresponds to the stage of free competition capitalism, a stage that runs from 1300 until the end
th
of the 19 century. This is the moment when a new stage starts, which neither Braudel nor Arrighi were
aware of. What they refer to as the North American cycle is not a new temporal section of the same
rank as the previous ones. It corresponds to an interval that is the product of a qualitative leap within
the extended capitalist process unit. The previous sections that they perceived as the Genovese, Dutch
and British cycles are in fact internal periods that build up and exhaust the initial capitalism stage of free
41
competition. The dialectical analysis, which the previously mentioned authors don’t systematically
apply, indicates that the three movements in “cycle”, that these authors are indeed aware of, represent
the affirmation, the negation and the negation of the negation of a form of paradigmatic accumulation
of all the stage; these movements then exhaust this stage so that the qualitative leap to imperialism can
be produced, which corresponds to a qualitatively different way of accumulating capital.
This new form that represents a new stage will in turn include three other periods that have to evolve
dialectically in the same way so as to also reach exhaustion. However our authors could not see that
because they were caught in a continuum perspective of cycles added one to the other in an
undetermined and imprecise way.
To sum up and as we’ve been saying, either one can’t see the qualitative leap from non monopolistic
capitalism to imperialism - this qualitative leap left us Lenin who had warned us about it - or one goes
down one category in terms of differentiated stages of imperialism in relation with previous capitalism,
converting this in just one more period that is added to the three previous ones, without any distinction
and without any other meaning than a progressive change in the forms of accumulation, with no
qualitative difference from one moment to the other. This would represent a serious appreciation
mistake of determining consequences for political strategies, in other words for discussions at a
subjectivity level. In fact and if it was so, globalization could be added as another more indistinct period
(this is what our authors suggest) and not as a new and third fundamental stage, containing important
qualitative modifications that in turn imply changes in political views and in tactical and strategic
evaluations in relation with imperialism, with the historical framework.
Finally we believe that the stages, as well as the periods within the stages, have, as we explained in
relation with the latter, determined inclinations which are dialectically connected with the fundamental
moments of the capital accumulation process. These inclinations are commercial, productive and
financial. And if, as we mentioned, the first had a commercial inclination, the second (imperialism) a
productive slant and the third (globalization) a financial inclination, the periods within them also have
these inclinations, although not in the same order of preference.
Therefore what would approximately correspond to the Arrighi-Moore Genovese cycle is, for us, the
period of financial inclination within the first stage of capitalism, of commercial inclination. In other
words, it would be a commercial-financial period corresponding to what Marx named original
accumulation. The Dutch cycle is for us the second period, of commercial inclination, within the also
commercial first stage; therefore, it would be a commercial-commercial period, corresponding to the
moment the bourgeoisie achieved direct political power, to the big revolutions in the Netherlands,
Great Britain and France, to the wars for colonial markets (which include the revolutions and liberation
wars again the metropolises, mainly in America) and to the emergence of liberalism as an economic and
political theory.
And finally the British cycle is, for us, the third period, of productive inclination within the commercial
period; in other words it’s a commercial-productive period that corresponds to the British commercial
th
empire, to the 19
century industrial revolution; it finishes in the 80’s of that century with the
42
finalization of the whole initial commercial stage giving way to the second imperialist stage of
productive inclination which in turn includes three internal periods, each of them, as we shall see, with
its own inclination.
Imperialism
The historical period that runs from the economic recession that followed the price crisis of 1873 (which
forced the powerful capitalist nations to first look for new markets because they were being faced with
an emerging protectionism within each of these nations and then to go for ruthless competition) indeed
started developing from 1880/1990 and is known by the name which Lenin made popular:
“imperialism”. From that moment until halfway through the 1980’s and fundamentally until the global
effects of the economic measures taken by the governments of Margaret Thatcher’s in Britain and
Ronald Reagan’s in the United States, there’s a period of time of approximately 100 years during which
many things took place and many changes occurred in the world, at an economic, political and social
level, among them: two world wars, the 1929 financial crisis, the emergence of fascism and Nazism in
Germany, the Russian revolution in 1917, the emergence and consolidation of the USSR and its
subsequent final implosion, the Chinese revolution, the Korea and Vietnam wars, the Cuban revolution,
the Six-Day War and the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the decolonization of the old colonial
world and the great political repression with dictatorships in Latin America and other parts of the world.
However in spite of the substantial differences concerning these events - between them and many
others, equally important and that took place in that interval - this period of a 100 years which is part of
the modern capitalist process shows specific and basic characteristics that enable us to confer it a
homogeneity that differentiates it from the form and the dynamics of previous and subsequent
capitalisms. For that reason it is a “stage” in itself.
These characteristics which had been previously exposed in the pioneering works of Hobson, Hilferding,
Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg are what give its conceptualization of “imperialism”; for sure, such
characteristics were modified prior to the time when these authors analyzed and described them,
modifications in terms of evolution and political-economic transformations which they couldn’t have
predicted when they were doing their reflections and descriptions. However and as mentioned
previously, beyond its evolution and the countless succession of historically important and very different
events it contains, the imperialist process preserved since its origin in 1880 until its end in 1990 certain
substantial regularities that enable it precisely to be considered as a different process from previous and
subsequent moments of capitalism.
As we said, this point is fundamental since not only does it impose developing the characterization of
imperialism as a particular historical era but also it establishes the division of capitalism in at least three
stages: the one previous to imperialism, imperialism and the one after imperialism; it also imposes
characterizing the stages previous and subsequent to imperialism. We shall insist therefore that this
43
means obviously and precisely that we have to characterize the present stage that we are living in,
which has been vulgarly named globalization, as a different stage from imperialism.
However there is even more to this. If the imperialist stage appeared, as we shall try to demonstrate
further on, as a negation (dialectics) of the previous stage that we’re going to call initial capitalism or
capitalist globalization, the complete historical process would be presented as a typical spiral movement
or dialectical loop in which the last of the three moments of the spin (present moment), because it is a
negation of the negation, evokes the first of the three moments and creates a sort of synthesis between
present moment and second moment and even ends up as the final stage of the whole process.
Characteristics specific to imperialism
In “Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism”, Lenin gives a complete description of the main
economic features of the new period characterized by the development of transnational monopolies,
cartels and trusts and by the domination that these have over the states in their countries of origin and
the political use of this relationship within the new international domination strategy.
There’s also another extension that comes into play, a political-geographical one, that didn’t exist
before: the extension of dependent countries. These are no longer colonies or neo-colonies (although
these countries have been together for a long time and many of these old domination forms transform
into the new one) but they reflect the new domination in the global terms of the imperialism stage.
Dependent countries are therefore an exclusive characteristic of this stage.
What is dependence? The theory of dependence couldn’t have taken place before imperialism and
neither could it be elaborated nowadays. It reflects the situation of these countries whose economies or
at least the most dynamic sector of their economies depend on big companies that are operating on
their territory but as subsidiaries of their headquarters established in central countries, within the
context of a deep inequality in terms of commercial exchange.
The expansion of big trusts that invaded the world, first commercial-based, then industrial and finally
financial - and the interweaving of their relationships with national imperialist states imposed its mark,
not only from an economic but also a political perspective, on every period of this process. The interimperialist rivalry is another essential characteristic of imperialism and it represents a natural evolution
of the global power system in place. The tremendous tensions that originated in the First World War at
the beginning of this imperialist stage demonstrate this. These tensions will remain during all the period
and another tension that will prove to be an essential characteristic of the imperialist stage will be
added onto them: the tension generated by the emergence on the international scene of the first
socialist country and its impressive evolution and resistance to all the attacks which at first tried to
prevent its growth, then to besiege it politically and finally to asphyxiate it economically.
The Second World War clearly shows these mixed rivalries, demonstrating how the different imperialist
countries were fighting for markets and trying to eliminate each other as competitors and also how each
of them respectively was interested in seeing the war weakening and if possible wiping out the USSR.
44
After the Second World War, the United States emerge as a hegemonic power opposed to the other
capitalist powers; however its hegemony is limited by the Soviet Union having survived the conflict (not
without having paid a high price in human lives and material resources). As a result of which, a race will
start so as to improve industrial growth and inter-systems weapons manufacturing, which forces the
United States to help developing the other capitalist powers defeated or seriously affected by the war
(Marshall Plan). This tense situation of rivalries, first against communism then and simultaneously of the
same capitalist countries against each other, is reflected at the end of the imperialist stage (1960 to
1980) and in the second cold war that at times turned into a sort of low intensity Third World War; it’s
also reflected in the way international strategies of power were acquired among capitalist countries, like
for example the trilateral commission.
For being a capitalist system based on big “trusts” and cartels imbricated with the states of central
countries, imperialism demonstrates being strongly interventionist and at times shows a tendency
towards statism and dirigisme that denies the predominant feature of initial capitalism’s “pure”
liberalism. If at the beginning of the imperialist stage, this situation is insinuated a little more each time,
after the 1929 crisis it appears as a determining feature and the model is represented by Roosevelt’s
“New Deal” and as a hypertrophy case, by European fascisms. This is also a system that enables the
capitalist world to compete, especially in social achievements like the planned economy of communism.
For this reason, it’s said that this was a stage of great inclusion and of tendency towards full
employment as opposed to the segregating and excluding mode of initial capitalism that ended up being
called “reckless capitalism” and was managed with big “reserves” of wretches and indigents.
Another characteristic of this imperialist capitalism is that, against the strongly commercial mark left by
initial capitalism reaching its pinnacle with the consolidation of the free trade and free market British
Empire, it particularly emphasizes on increasing production, especially the great industrial production
and towards its last years, it emphasized on a systematic incorporation of technology into the
production. It can be said that the 20
th
century has been a productivist century and this was the
yardstick that measured and separated developed from underdeveloped countries. Obviously the
central ideological and political confrontation that marked all the political rhythm of the period is
definitely somewhere between socialism and capitalism. Therefore a global bipolar power system
settles in, which contrasts with the multipolarity of initial capitalism where the multitude of national
states that emerged as bourgeois found themselves tangled up in a sort of constant equilibrium of
alliances and counter-alliances in a virtual power tie, only partially overcome by the British hegemony of
th
the last period of this stage, at the end of the 19 century. As opposed to the anarchic production of the
first capitalism, imperialism moves on with systematic planning and functionality; its great theorists are
Keynes and Parsons. The world also becomes a system world. With North American superiority it gets
organized, first with the League of Nations and later with the United Nations. The statist, interventionist,
industrialist and productivist characteristics and also the characteristics of centripetal tendency to
inclusion, of inter-imperialist rivalry and of bipolar global power systems between capitalism and
socialism are in contrast with free market and free enterprise, with centrifugal and excluding tendencies
45
and multipolarity, typical of the previous stage of initial capitalism (1300-1880). This is where the
dialectical movement of the historical cycle of capitalism becomes obvious in the form of a negation of
the characteristics of a capitalist stage for the characteristics of the following stage.
In turn imperialism, as a stage of capitalism, registers substantial differences at various moments during
its evolution as a historical process
(1880-1985), which makes it necessary to then divide it in three different periods.
The beginning of imperialism
The theoretical agreement as to the starting point of this stage of capitalism called imperialism is more
than obvious among the different SR authors.
In a paragraph entitled “Rethinking Imperialism” from their article written in 2004, Panitch and Gindin
refer to the structural expansion logic of capitalism that is triggered by structural crises; they situate the
94
first crisis immediately after 1870 .
After agreeing with Gallagher and Robinson’s thesis which states that imperialism in fact emerges with
th
and at the end of 19 century British neo-colonialism, they say that “Indeed, the transition to the
modern form of imperialism can be situated at the articulation of the formal mercantilist empire of the
th
British state with the informal empire that expanded towards the middle of the 19 century during the
95
free-trade era-” . However, they add that it wasn’t only the imperialism that was in the minds of the
British that emerged at that moment but the imperialism with base in the North American state itself, as
expressed here: “The expansionist tendencies of North American capitalism in the second half of the
th
19 century (reflecting as much the tensions of commercialized farmers as of industrials and financiers
from the period that followed the civil war) were more prone to adopt informal forms of imperialism
than British capitalism, even in spite of not being subject to a free trade policy”
96
In the same publication, David Harvey while expanding on the contradictions of capitalism and on the
necessary spatial-temporal adjustment reminds us that: “The over-accumulation within a determined
territorial system supposes an excess of work (increasing unemployment) and an excess of capital
(expressed as an over-abundance of goods on the market that cannot be sold without losses as an
unused productive capacity, and/or excesses of capital money that lack opportunities of productive and
profitable investment). These excesses can be absorbed by: (a) the temporal shift through capital
investments in long term projects or social projects (like education or research) which postpone to a
future date the circulation of the excesses of current capital; (b) spatial shifts through the creation of
new markets, new productive capacities, new possibilities of resources and work in other places; or (c)
any combination of (a) and (b).”
94
95
96
97
97
Panitch, L. et al Op. Cit. (p24)
Panitch, L. et al Op. cit. (p27)
Panitch, L. et al Op. cit. (p32)
Harvey, D Op.cit. (p100)
46
This is the classic Marxist dialectical explanation concerning the emergence of imperialism as a stage
that is superior and different from initial capitalism. Actually, Harvey later makes references to Hegel’s
and Lenin’s views about this point
98
and turns to Hannah Arendt saying that “Arendt suggests for
th
example that for 19 century Britain, the depressions in the 60’s and 70’s gave the initial boost to a new
form of imperialism in which the bourgeoisie became aware that –for the first time the original sin of
simple theft, which centuries ago had enabled the “original accumulation of capital” (Marx) and which
had made possible all subsequent accumulation, had to be repeated time and again otherwise the
99
engine of accumulation would suddenly come to a standstill (H. Arendt “Imperialism”)” . Therefore, it’s
clear where Harvey referring to Arendt situates the beginning of this “new imperialism” which is nothing
else than the only imperialism that has existed since the previous forms to which Arendt refers were
given the name of neo-colonialism or formal empire (Panitch) by political and economic theorists in
order precisely to make the difference. In any case, Harvey says it in full detail when he affirms that “It’s
possible however to periodize the historical geography of these processes if one takes seriously into
account Arendt’s view when he says that the imperialism centered in Europe in 1884-1945 represented
the first attempt at a global political domination by the bourgeoisie”
100
Beyond these articles from the Socialist Register, other authors like Petra and Veltmeyer have tried
periodizing imperialism and they’ve also situated the genesis of this stage at around 1870
101
As we’ve seen it, the authors that we revisited don’t precisely intend to delimit the beginning and the
end of the economic and political process called imperialism but, more than that, they mark differences
in its interpretation with Hobson, Lenin, Kautsky, Hilferding and Rosa Luxemburg, the first interpreters
of the process. They highlight the advantages of some of these ideas over others concerning the periods
but, as could be seen, they all converge when saying that imperialism has a birth date that separates it
from any other previous capitalist process, even of similar characteristics, and they all acknowledge
receipt of a substantial and recent change that would put us all into a new stage.
Finally Lenin, to whom a reference needs to be made here, also situates the beginning of monopolist
th
imperialism in the 70’s of the 19 century
102
After having confirmed the moment of its beginning, we shall affirm therefore, as we’ve said previously,
that imperialism is a period which can be delimited from its origin to its expiration and if, as some wellth
known authors, we unsynchronize the 20 century from its strict chronological determination and we
make it coincide with the imperialist process by which it is framed, for us it would neither be a short
103
104
century like for Hobsbawm , nor a long century, like for Arrighi , but a century of approximately…
one hundred years (from 1970 or 1980 to 1980 or 1990).
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
Harvey, D Op. cit. (p106)
Harvey, D Op. cit. (p115)
Harvey, D Op. cit.(p116)
Petras J. y Veltmeyer H. “Globalization unmasked…” (p13) and “Juicio a las Multinacionales …” (p29)
Lenin. “El imperialismo etapa superior del capitalismo” Obras escogidas Cartago Bs As 1974 (p389)
Hobsbauwm, Eric “Historia del siglo XX” Crítica Barcelona. 1995
Arrighi, G. Op. Cit.
47
Internal periods of imperialism
As we’ve said previously, the cycles or periods that confer to capitalism its rhythm have been the subject
of many theories and perhaps the best known among them are Kondratieff’s cycles and price logistics
(or secular cycles). Both interpretations have been criticized by Giovanni Arrighi for not looking as
though they were specifically capitalist phenomenons, basing his opinion on various critical analyses of
105
these theories .
We’ve already discussed that, based on the notorious and explicitly recognized influence of the French
school of historiography led by Henri Pirenne and more so by Fernand Braudel, Arrighi identified four
systemic cycles of accumulation: the Genovese, the Dutch, the British and the North American. The
point is not to analyze Arrighi here but it’s obvious that his interpretation doesn’t correspond to the
division that we came up with in our recent attempt at delimiting stages. It’s enough to say that we
conform to the idea that he himself confessed to have had when he started writing “The long 20
th
century” and that he modified subsequently; this idea is that there were three important moments that
would define the century: the great depression of 1873-1896, the 30-year crisis between 1914 and 1945
106
and the world economic crisis of the 1970 decade .
The first date coincides, in relation with what we’ve just discussed, to the emergence of imperialism as a
th
period different from original capitalism, precisely during the crisis at the end of the 19 century, a fact
that, as we’ve seen, most authors agree with. The second date marks a very important change within
the imperialist process with which, as we shall see, the authors also agree particularly concerning the
change from a first capitalism, that could be called “mercantile” to a clearly “productivist” imperialism.
The third date wouldn’t represent, in our view, the end of the imperialist stage as such; it corresponds
more to another period, the third and last of imperialism itself, with some important financial
connotations but always within the productivist system of the stage, which ends the imperialist cycle
and gives way, when finished in the 80’s, to globalization.
Now we are left with the following perspective: capitalism, as we shall see, divided in three big stages,
i.e. (a) Original, initial capitalism or capitalist globalization, (b) imperialism as such or classic imperialism
and (c) globalization or new imperialism. And within this perspective, stage a) divided in three periods
that match the first three cycles of Braudel 1) - the Genovese-Venetian-Spanish cycle, from 1200 to
1600, 2) - the Dutch cycle (English-French) from 1600 to 1800 and 3) the British cycle, from 1800 to 1990
and another stage, b) of imperialism also divided in three periods 1) - the first imperialism or
imperialism of “productivist-mercantile” aspect (from 1870 to 1930 approx.), 2) - the second imperialism
or imperialism of “pure productivist” aspect (from 1930 to the end of the 60’s approx.) and 3) - the third
and last imperialism or imperialism of “productivist-financial aspect” (from the end of the 60’s until the
mid 80’s, approximately).
105
106
Arrighi, G. Op. cit. (p20)
Arrighi, G. Op. cit. (p7)
48
st
1 imperialism
Imperialism begins with a hyper-development of capitalism’s productive unit: the capitalist company, in
mega-company, in monopolistic company, in a big and stable unit, which according to Sombart was
“alive” as opposed to the “standard” company from the initial stage of capitalism which, as indicated by
its own name, was generally a short or medium term “enterprise” with a punctual purpose. The
evolution of this new economic unit that was in conditions to produce, on an unprecedented scale, and
that consequently needed massive and if possible extraterritorial markets represents one of the
distinctive features of the transformation of capitalism in imperialism, that as we’ve seen so far, took
place in the middle of the crisis that started in Europe in 1870.
This first imperialism is still morphologically multipolar; it’s the beginning of a race in which it’s still not
clear who’s going to win, although there are some obvious candidates to hegemony. Are bidding
simultaneously: British companies, which have developed during the industrial revolution and gained
foreign markets in the shadow of the empire’s neo-colonialism, German companies, which have been
revived after the Franco-Prussian War won by Germany and finally American companies, also going
through a fast development stage after the triumph of the capitalist North over the neo-colonialist
South in the Civil War.
This only shows the countries that stand out; no harm is done to the parallel development of companies
from other nationalities. This is a competition for national and extraterritorial markets in order to sell
the surplus from the ultra-production. All of this is going to experience its first shock with the First
World War and its final announcement with the 1929 crisis.
Three extracts from the SR illustrate part of what we’re saying:
th
- “This had gone so far in the second half of the 19 century that when the capital expanded beyond the
borders of some European states, it could do so within certain determined capitalist orders that had
been established by other states… but even so, it was not enough to support the capital’s tendency to
expand globally. It these days, there was no mechanism of global capitalist regulation, leaving therefore
the international economy and its models of accumulation fragmented and consequently nurturing the
inter-imperial rivalry that led to the First World War”
107
-“However, the conception of “inter-imperialist rivalry” presupposes a phase within the global evolution
of the capitalist production mode in which national capitals were mainly discreet by nature and limited
inter-penetration. Therefore, it presupposed a type of state that represented national bourgeoisies as
such, in competition with other national bourgeoisies and their respective states”
108
-“With the turn of the century this first system, stabilized under British hegemony and built around
goods on the global market and capital-free flows, broke down into geopolitical conflicts between the
107
108
Panitch, L. et al Op. cit. (p25)
Ahmad, A Op.cit (p83)
49
main powers that attempted to obtain self-sufficiency in systems that were more and more closed.
Confirming quite strongly Lenin’s prediction, this system burst into two world wars”
109
nd
2 imperialism
With different considerations as to dates and events and attributing more or less prevalence to the First
World War and to the beneficial situation for the United States that emerged from it, to the Ford
production system, to the 1929 financial crash and to the subsequent recession, to Roosevelt’s “New
Deal”, to the necessary emulation caused by the communist planning and welfare state that appeared in
1917 or finally to the technological and productive development of the United States during the Second
World War and the undeniable position as the only strong capitalist state that emerged from this
conflict, all the writers agree in saying that the breakdown that happened then completely changed the
type of universal economic system and the type of imperialist domination.
Moreover they agree to say that this new system institutionalized in Bretton Woods, while abandoning
gold as the main trading currency in 1944, was the system that later worked until the 60’s within a stage
that coincided with the first cold war and the so-called golden years of capitalism, especially North
American capitalism.
. The predominant role played by the U.S.A and the unilateral imposition of a model based on the
internal New Deal is also recognized by the theorists of imperialism, as in this case Leo Panitch and Sam
Gindin “Recentlty with the New Deal, The North American state started developing the modern planning
capacities which, once deployed during the Second World War, would transform and widely extend
North American informal imperialism”
110
What characterizes this period is the development of capitalist infrastructure. In these days, competing
for markets was mainly replaced by establishing companies overseas, especially North American
companies in Europe and Latin America. These were years of protectionism and developmentalism.
Arrighi explains this by saying: “the big increase of wealth and power for the United States between
1914 and 1945 was principally a reflection of the income protection they benefited from, thanks to their
unique and privileged position within the spatial configuration of the world’s capitalist economy”
111
Also David Harvey, in the continuation of his paragraph that we previously quoted says: This system was
replaced in 1945 by another one led by the U.S.A, the point of which was to establish a global alliance
between all the main capitalist powers in order to avoid wars of reciprocal destruction and find a
rational way of facing the excess of accumulation that riddled the decade of the 30’s. In order for this to
happen, it was necessary to share the profits of the intensification of a capitalism integrated in the
109
110
Harvey, D. Op. cit. (p116)
Panitch Leo y Gindin Sam “Capitalismo global e imperio norteamericano” en Panitch Leo et al “El nuevo desafío….” (
p3)
111
Arrighi, G. Op. cit. (p331)
50
central regions (hence the support of the United States to the initiatives of forming the European Union)
and get involved in the systematic geographical expansion of the system (therefore the North American
insistence for decolonization and “developmentalism” as a generalized objective for the rest of the
world”
112
rd
3 imperialism
The political and economic period of humanity between the mid 60’s and the mid 80’s was one of deep
changes, which some even described as a change of era (this can also be understood as deep changes
not only in terms of dynamics but also in terms of how the world power is being exercised). If we
position ourselves within the currents of thought that tell us about a division of the world in between
international power centers and a dependent and underdeveloped periphery, we shall have to
recognize that at least two important changes have occurred within the mentioned period. The second
change deeper than the first one.
The first change, at the beginning of the period, starting perhaps a little earlier (early 60’s) but
consolidated in the early 70’s with the emergence of the Trilateral Commission and Nixon’s decision to
terminate the gold/dollar convertibility in 1971.
This situation ended the imperialism stage initiated with the Bretton Woods agreements.
This change can’t be considered as a change of era as regards the dynamics of world economic and
political power and even if it presents some important transformations, these aren’t important enough
to alter the paradigmatic system of imperialist countries and dependent countries, installed globally
th
th
since the end of the 19 century and the beginning of the 20 century. In fact the idea of trilateralism,
although imposed by one country (the U.S.A) obviously involves the need for an agreement between at
least three imperialist countries or groups of countries in order to plan the pillaging of the rest of the
world.
As we’ve just said, the imperialist system had already been through a first important change when, after
the First World War and the 1929 economic crisis, it reformulated itself using a system based on
Keynesianism and the “New Deal” and left for good the spontaneism influence through which the first
theorists of its nature like Lenin, Kautsky, Hilferding y Rosa Luxemburgo had known it.
During the period that we’re referring to now, there’s precisely a new political change within the
imperialist process, determined by global transformations in the forms of accumulating capital which
will gradually lead to abandoning this imperialism with a New Deal “developmentalist” and industrial
inclination and its particular mechanisms of transfers of excess by an ultra-exploitation of industrial
estates labor in dependent countries and by charging royalties and patents.
This new change gives way to the emergence of what can be called “financial imperialism”.
112
Harvey, D. Op. cit. (p116)
51
It could also be named, as proposed by Hudson, “monetary imperialism” in the way that handling the
value of the dollar represents the instrument used by the US to play its hegemonic role at that particular
moment of the imperialist process.
If one of the important economic characteristics of globalization is the United States’ final shift from a
position of creditor to a position of debtor and mainly the use of this new status to achieve obvious and
absolute economic hegemony, this is the moment when this transition begins but without managing to
establish itself for good, as Hudson explains it very well: “After the collapse of the Gold Pool in 1968, the
US government faced three possible courses of action: retreat immediately from the Southeast Asian
war and cut down on internal and external military expenses to enable the dollar to establish itself again
on international markets; continue the war, paying external markets costs with consequent losses of
gold; or induce Europe and other surplus areas to continue accumulating dollars and the equivalent of
dollars that are exchangeable against other dollar equivalents only and non convertible into gold”.
113
As we know, the United States chose the third option, which resulted neither free nor easy; instead this
choice determined a whole period of equilibriums and tensions, mainly with Western Europe and Japan
on the one hand, and in parallel with the Soviet Union and the third world on the other; this period that
lasted from the end of the 60’s until way into the 80’s is the one we call third imperialism.
This paragraph by Hudson is extensive but it shows with clarity the global situation of tensions and
struggles of these times, together with its different leading roles: “…When Egypt and Syria attacked
Israel, the Arab countries put an embargo on oil exports to the United States, Holland and Denmark. The
price of oil quadrupled, reflecting the parameter of previous prices of food exports in 1972-1973. The
embargo on oil changed the parameters of international payments, returning surplus to the North
American balance of payments but creating a wedge between North America and Europe. More than
Europe and Japan, the OPEC banks became the ones who accumulated most dollars. Seeing themselves
as third world countries, they decided to get together in order to withstand inflated international prices
affecting raw materials. The American-European-Japanese trilaterism collapsed under the pressure of
the balance of payments imposed by the internal as well as external expenses of the North American
cold war. The way the United States chose to solve these problems was to sell its reserves of grains to
the Soviet Union. This tripled or quadrupled international prices of grains and soybeans and determined
embargos on exports that put an end to the post-war trends of free market and investment policies. Led
by the United States, non-communist countries were becoming more statist day by day. The post-war
economic order was giving way to a new international economic order”
114
Eric Helleiner also shows in 1994 through various extracts of his extensive work about global finances
the meaning of these tensions that were the fate of imperialism in this period “It was only through the
formation of the Trilateral Commission in the early 70’s that an effort seemed to have been made to
maintain the old alliance. Managing the commission based on a more cooperative external economic
113
114
Hudson, M. Op.cit (p309) In English in the original version. Our translation.
Hudson, M. Op. cit. (p376). In English in the original version.
52
policy towards Western Europe and Japan turned out to be attractive for the strategists who had hoped
to see relieved the tensions within the alliance.”
115
“In 1978-79, there was a crisis of confidence in the dollar of the same magnitude as the crisis of the
pound in 1976. This crisis was due to the failure of the “engine” strategy of the Carter administration.
Carter’s assessors were in favor of a cooperative and managerial focus in order to deal with the
problems of the world’s economy, in contrast with the more aggressive external economic policy of the
United States in the early 70’s. They were hoping to be able to get the support from Japan and West
Germany to establish a global deflationary strategy in which the three nations were going to act as
“engines” pulling the world out of the 1973-75 recession by simultaneously applying expansionist
policies. The strategy was confronted by considerable resistance from Japan and West Germany and the
Carter administration was forced to change its plan.”
116
The circumstances described in both previous paragraphs demonstrate a global situation and
particularly the capitalist leadership of the United States that not only no longer fits the parameters of
the situation in place before and after the Second World War but also is not in line with “globalization”
such as we later discovered it. This proves, to our criteria, the existence of this third period or moment
of imperialism that shares with early century imperialism and “New Deal” imperialism, the characteristic
of permanent tension for the North American state to achieve complete hegemony by using American
transnational monopolist companies and conditioned by its capitalist “allies”, by the existence of the
socialist world and by the real weight of an economically and politically active third world.
We’ve dissected, and as we shall see now, the imperialist stage of capitalism in three periods a) the first
one until the 1929 crisis or until the years prior to the Second World War, an imperialism which is still
almost-multilateralist and with unclear hegemonies, an imperialism of confrontations and “rivalry” with
a clear inclination for commercial markets; b) the second one emerges from the big crises of the 30’s
th
and 40’s during the 20 century, the ones which give birth to an imperialism with a clear epicenter
situated in the USA, with an inclination for production and development, ordering and programming
internal and global economies with the interference of public policies; and c) the third one that also
caused the emergence of another crisis, the 60’s-70’s crisis and that shows a significant tension between
the USA and developed capitalist countries, especially Western Germany and Japan. The system used to
fight for hegemony was no longer occupying the markets or the productive frontlines but managing
monetary and financial or commercial variables causing a financial and monetary impact.
115
Helleiner, Eric “States and the reemergence of global finance. From Bretton Woods to the 1990s” Cornell University
Press. London 1994. (p120) In English in the original version.
116
Helleiner, E. Op. cit. (p131)
53
VI Latin America and Imperialism. An excursus over the periphery
Until now, we’ve been talking about the general dynamics of the capitalist process based on its impact
on what could be considered the centre of its evolution. But since, as we’ve said, the capitalist process is
globally expansive its effects are parallel but different depending if we’re referring to the centre or the
periphery of the system. Therefore, it is explanatory to observe the impact of the various periods of one
stage of capitalism like imperialism on a peripheral area of dependent countries, like for example in
Latin America.
Modern political and social history in Latin America, very rich in autochthonous contrasts, characteristics
and products, which at times seems to have not received any genetic legacy from the “first world”, will
never be completely understood as a “movement towards…”that is like historical aspect always has to
be understood at the end -, without understanding the meaning of the general lines of the whole
movement affecting the rest of the world, particularly the part of the world that has had the strongest
impact on the future of Latin America, in other words the “developed” or “central” or “first” world,
whichever way you want to call it.
It’s not only essential to permanently define the peculiar Latin American historical movement on the
global scene in order to understand its principal events and processes, but it’s also necessary to
comprehend the meaning of the internal movement of this global scene in order to then take in the
54
sense of the dialectics of the impact and the relation between one process (central) and the other
(peripheral).
The centre of the imperialist scene has always been a convergence of various national states, although
later the United States of America stood out of the pack, first as a potentiality and then as a reality.
As mentioned, the United States already clearly emerged as a country with an imperialist fate after the
civil war and went for the imperialist process as such after the European crisis in 1870, in the same
conditions (at least potentially) as decadent Britain and emerging Germany.
First imperialism and its impact on Latin America
The first period of this stage of capitalism, called imperialism, therefore runs from its emergence until at
least the great crisis in 1929, from which the commercial system of free markets stops being a main
objective and even becomes an obstacle to the development of capitalism’s productive forces.
We’ve also seen that within this first period of imperialism, the First World War, the Russian revolution
in 1917 and imperialism itself are characterized by an inter-imperialist fight for the markets which
developed countries needed for their products. These world powers were mainly, as mentioned
previously, the United States, Britain and Germany.
The impact of imperialist strategies concerning Latin America of the first two world powers mentioned is
the imposition of the pre-formative direction taken by Latin America, born colonial and become
dependent.
It’s clear that during this first period, the weakness itself of a recently-born and growing imperialism
together with the non-consolidated hegemony of the United States added to perhaps the current
remains of independence movements from anti-colonial fights contributes to an appreciation of
imperialist influence in Latin America only through punctual processes, in various countries, with
different impacts and not as the result of a unique and systematic strategy, as opposed to the second
and particularly the third period of imperialism, marked then by a clear North American hegemony.
The common characteristics that coincide with the impact of the new imperialist strategies within this
first period over the whole Latin American “continent” could be listed as follows:
Economically speaking, an increase of primary and exporter economies and an organization that
depends more and more on the markets because of technical transformations and new financial
structures. The primary activities that require from the start a considerable input of capital are now
dominated by imperialist countries, and so as activities connected with transport and commercialization
(railway systems, cold storage, cereal silos, mills).
55
Socio-politically speaking, an obvious weakening of the landowning upper classes faced with imperialism
and the emergence of the urban middle class and the working sector, although the oligarchies have also
become stronger economically because of the exports boom for coffee, sugar, copper, meet and grains,
saltpetre, rubber, etc.
Terms of trade are deteriorating and then starts a (gradual) replacement of trains by engine powered
vehicles and carbon gets substituted by petroleum. It’s the beginning of more intensive agriculture (rural
flight) and big cities triplicate their populations.
As for institutional politics, we can observe the beginnings of democratization (a result of the
emergence of an urban middle-class) faced with progressive authoritarianism (of positivist type)
consolidated in the last half of the 19
th
century and which represented the interests of the most
conservative oligarchies, very often associated with British interests.
Latin America changes a little more each time from being a reserved territory under British influence to
becoming a place of dispute between old and new influences.
Financial dependence is added to mercantile dependence.
The U.S.A play the role of the policeman (Theodore Roosevelt and the “big stick” ideology).
The United States’ advance especially in the area of the Caribbean has had, as a paradigmatic
consequence, the creation of a country - Panama - which corresponds to the result of North American
interests in dominating the inter-oceanic canal.
In the most developed countries of Latin America, the urban middle classes enter into local politics and
create movements like ‘Batllismo’ in Uruguay, universal suffrage and radicalism in Argentina and the
first republic in Brazil. In Mexico, the progressive dictatorship led by Porfirio Díaz is followed by a 15
year-period of revolution. In Argentina, Roca’s progressive dictatorship is followed by the 1890, 1893
and 1904 crises and radicalism achieving power in 1914.
This situation of exporting raw materials, a phenomenon that started initially in the USA, of progressive
dictatorships that were generally anti-clerical but based on oligarchic interests and on their alliance with
imperialist centers, which in turn are questioned and put in crisis in various countries by the urban
middle-classes reaching power, by limited immigration in rural areas, single crop farming and export
booms is going to be shattered by the great traumatic change that imperialism will undergo from 1930
and that will lead to the second period, with special implications affecting Latin America.
Second imperialism and its impact in Latin America
After the crisis in 1930 and the financial system collapsing and more specifically the volume of
international commerce decreasing by 50%, particularly when the “New Deal” internal policy was
56
established in the U.S.A, emerges a new stage for global economics and world politics that will be
consolidated at the end of the Second World War, especially with the “Bretton Woods” agreements.
This period, as we shall see later, is different from the previous period in which imperialism exercised its
power subjugating dependent countries using mainly commercial strategies. This new stage is
characterized by its tremendous productive impulse. Obviously, the consequences of this impulse are
different for imperialist countries and dependent countries.
Halperin himself stated that “The global crisis from 1929 had an immediate and devastating impact on
Latin America, with its most resounding indicator being, between 1930 and 1933, the collapse of most
political situations that had achieved consolidation during the last period of prosperity”
117
This crisis started a “new era” in which the solutions, that with enormous difficulty had enabled Latin
America to be incorporated in an economy that was becoming global, were loosing efficiency.
This was the end of the primary-exporter economy’s expansion advance line, like for the sugarcane in
Cuba, agriculture and cattle in Argentina and Uruguay or Brazilian coffee and Chilean saltpetre that will
end up having to be subsidized in order to survive.
From an economic perspective, Latin America was becoming weaker in its foundations but at the same
time was acquiring a new complexity. In the biggest countries, industrialization is developed and foreign
investments that only used to be meant for the primary sector were moving in the direction of that
process.
The imbalanced situation between the primary sector getting weaker and the tendency to industrial
expansion is compensated by foreign credits, mainly North American (New York is now the centre of
finances).
To the contraction of international commerce has to be added North American protectionism which will
generate a global trend. Within this new mercantile order, the state becomes the commercial agent of
each national economy and immediately takes on much more important economic functions.
However reorienting the economy towards the industrial sector is not immediate and the first result of
the crisis is the collapse of the consumer goods internal market since it will no longer be possible to
keep on importing and, while this market doesn’t show any sign of reactivation, industrializing in order
to substitute imports which in retrospect will appear as being the solution to the crisis won’t have the
chance to become immediately established. Moreover in the mean time, there was a more urgent task
for the state to tackle: avoiding that the reaction of primary products faced with the catastrophe should
worsen it as the quantity of exportable goods increases. For this not to happen, the state will have to
117
Halperin Donghi, Tulio “Historia contemporánea de América Latina” Alianza Buenos Aires 2005 (p371)
57
intervene and be authoritarian, fixing official prices and maximum production quotas and destroying the
excess of production, without always previously compensating the producers.
Industrialization marginalized the countries that are small and with a low level of consumption. However
the big ones (Brazil, Mexico and Argentina) and the medium-sized ones like Chile, Peru, Columbia and
Venezuela and another small country but with a very high level of consumption per capita like Uruguay
were going to go through a rehabilitation process during the second part of the 30’s.
The Second World War is going to introduce a change within the external context in which it’s the Latin
American economies that are isolated from the rest of the world apart from the U.S.A that are going to
progress. This extends even more the role of the state as to the orientation and control of the economy
and it’s going to force the new international regime of commerce to improve from the moment the
U.S.A enter the war.
The war revives external demand but more so as to the volume of products than as to the prices and
consequently this makes importing difficult. This situation also stimulates industrialization but its very
rapid progress comes now together with the negative features that characterized it from the start
getting worse. To an insufficient infrastructure that doesn’t expand are added technical failures of the
industries themselves.
After the war came peace and a developed but fragile industrial sector. However, when it came to
correcting the failures and to having the contradictions within the primary sector move on, the exports
which were supposed to have made the effort to finance the industrial sector, collapsed.
Of course, no external financing came for help in order to implement serious industrial development
since this wasn’t the place the global power and particularly its new organizer, the U.S.A, had reserved
for the continents located south of Rio Bravo.
The industrial process is going to continue but its internal limitations are little by little going to be
substituted by the local branches of foreign companies, especially North American (economic openness
to investments)
These investments mainly consisted of machinery which in most cases had been abundantly used in the
country of origin and was about to be replaced within the system of constant renovation that defines
the North American consumer’s society. On the other hand, on opening a subsidiary in a Latin American
country the company had gained access to a closed market in which it could dictate its own terms.
So we got to the end of the war with a sector which, instead of having expanded, was very fragile.
Correcting this situation of weakness demanded that the funds created for the exporter primary sector
should be transferred to the industrial sector and this is the point around which will be accumulated all
the tensions of this second imperialism period. With these tensions, industrialization has to move on
58
while maintaining an alliance or an understanding with the workforce, basically with the industrial
working class.
On the other hand, assistance from the U.S.A never arrived in Latin America as it did in Europe, using as
a justification a necessary reconstruction of the continent following a devastating war. But the
concentration of resources was in this sense unidirectional and Latin America didn’t even have the
products that it badly needed to import in order to restructure its weakened and malformed industrial
development.
Latin American countries gradually renounced to confront economic modernization as a priority, which
had been their first objective and instead they focused on ensuring the survival of an incurably primitive
industry by transferring resources between sectors and by using monetary manipulations (this
accidental process was known in economic terms by the English expression of “stop and go”).
This industrializing process that began before the Second World War and secured itself after the war together with its internal contradictions - caused different situations in various Latin American countries
although one can find some common points in the political and social processes of most of these
nations.
Therefore the movements inspired by Varga, Perón and Cárdenas or by leading figures like Rómulo
Betancourt in Venezuela or other movements led by the political party Apra in Peru or the MNR in
Bolivia were typical political products of that period.
In Brazil after the 1930 revolution, Getulio Vargas takes control of the country and from the start shows
strong authoritarianism. He overcomes the mid 30’s crisis with a military coup in 1937 through which he
introduces the “Estado Novo”. Using modes and methods that evoked fascism, which was expanding in
Europe, Vargas ruled with centralist, authoritarian management and had the state interfering strongly
with the economy. This industrialist process reaches a paradigmatic point when Vargas quickly
reoriented the direction of his international friendships; although it wasn’t clear yet that the axis would
be defeated when the U.S.A entered the war in 1941, the subsidy for the contraction of a huge iron and
steel project in “Volta Redonda” in the Rio de Janeiro state was agreed to with the big imperialist power,
whose hegemony was clearly starting to be defined. This industrialist, interventionist and subsequently
developmentalist strategy went a bit out of its way at times but generally it lasted during Dutra’s
mandate and until the return of Vargas in 1950, went on with its successor Juscelino Kubitschek in 1955
and with the following governments of Quadros and Goulart. In fact, among the collaborators of Goulart
– who had been an essential member of Vargas’ government – was the prestigious economist of
developmentalist strategy CEPAL: Celso Furtado.
It was during the Cárdenas period in Mexico that the agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil wells
took place, which caused Mexico and Great Britain to break off their diplomatic ties; his successor Avila
59
Camacho developed deeper relations with the United States and later, with Miguel Alemán and the PRI,
there was impressive industrialized progress.
In Argentina, authoritarianism didn’t come from a popular leader but from a complot of alvearist
radicals, the military and conservatives who were behind what would later be called the infamous
decade; and if the dominating pro-fascist tendencies didn’t make any progress then, it was because of
the proximity of the Argentine oligarchic power with Great Britain with whom was signed, precisely
during that period, the Roca-Runciman agreement which enabled Argentina to continue making
economic deals with special exclusive favors from the “Commonwealth”. However at the end of the
decade, the tendency in favor of the Axis was going to become more clearly defined, especially from the
moment a group of military appeared and acted behind the ultra-conservative president Castillo and,
quite casually then, with one of its representatives exercising as first magistracy, general Pedro Ramírez.
In this group of military, there was man who was already very influent, a man who was back then
colonel Perón.
Once the victory in favor of the Allied forces was decided, it’s precisely Perón who’s going to lead the
paradigmatic movement of power in Latin American countries during the second imperialism period: a
nationalistic and industrialist populism.
The tensions surrounding a model of industrialization instead of imports (industrialización por
sustitución de importaciones - ISI) in all of these countries created an overwhelming situation; the
reorientation of the world economy from the end of the 60’s will have a strong impact and will form
what we can call third imperialism.
In a very interesting study on the transformations that occurred in Chile in those years, Mazzei de Gracia
th
reports that “From the middle of the 19 century this economy had been oriented outwards by the
economic development system, in other words based on the exports of raw material.
The collapse of international trade demonstrated the need for a change of orientation in the economy…
It moved from being an economic model based on exports to another model of substitution based on
imports… According to CEPAL’s interpretation, it was then that started in Chile the industrial process of
substituting imports in which private initiative assumed the production of common consumer goods”
118
Third imperialism and its impact on Latin America
During the mid-60’s, the contradiction of the economy in developed countries was based on the
progressive lack of balance between the increase of productivity and the increase of salaries. This
phenomenon first took place in the United States but then appeared in Europe and later in Japan. The
118
Mazzei de Gracia, Leonardo “Chile: del estado desarrollista y empresario a la revolución neoliberal. Una síntesis”, in
“Calidoscopio latinoamericano. Imágenes históricas para un debate vigente” Waldo Ansaldi (coord.) Ariel Buenos Aires 2006 (p183
and 184)
60
overlapping of a productivity that expands more slowly with a continuous increase of real salaries
resulted in a progressive decrease of profit rates.
An important characteristic of this reduction of profit margins with full employment was that it was
occurring way before the oil crisis in 1973 and it was probably due to a long and sustained period of
growth; to a weakening of vitality; to high levels of employment and increasing security for workers. As
a consequence of salaries going up and less productivity, the increase in production and employment
got ever more connected with high inflation rates. The oil crises that occurred in the seventies worsened
these problems and contradictions although they were not their original cause; in fact, even without the
oil crises, it would have been difficult to sustain a non inflationary growth.
Due to the fact that the previously described phenomenons appeared first and in a more defined way in
the U.S.A, the previous position of this country as world leader was questioned.
Combined with the political and economic effects of the Vietnam War, the relative decadence of U.S
economy eroded the foundations of the “Bretton Woods” system based on this country’s hegemony in
the sixties. The dollar changed from being an undervalued currency to being an overvalued currency and
the first step to get out of the old system was to cancel the full convertibility of the dollar into gold in
1971.
There was not much left of the initial and exclusive trust of Latin America in the ISI - industrialización por
sustitución de importaciones (Industrialization Instead of Imports system) - as the road to
industrialization at the end of the fifties when imports coefficients went down to their minimum level
and the proportion of basic products exports in the GDP fell by 50%. Therefore in the early sixties, this
model was no longer used as can be demonstrated by the increasing external and internal imbalances,
typical of Latin American economies in these days.
The most significant economic occurrence of the seventies was that the price of oil quadrupled in 197374 after a few years of decrease in real terms. This unexpected increase of prices was added to growing
economic problems in developed countries. However the abundance of big volumes of capital in the
OPEC member countries didn’t mean that first world countries would exit the financial system since this
capital was not used to promote the development of countries belonging to the petroleum organization
or of other third world countries; that capital was immediately deposited in the world’s biggest banks.
From there of lot of this liquidity ended up as credits initially cheap for a Latin America which the last
tensions of the ISI had transformed into an avid recipient of this money.
The vigorous recycling of OPEC’s surplus and a generalized increase of international liquidity encouraged
transnational private banks to give loans. The net movements of capital to Latin America increased
rapidly in real terms; the annual average from 1974-1981 quadrupled that from 1960-1970.
61
Latin America had accumulated big reserves of currency and a substantial surplus in its commercial
account during the Second World War. After the war, the volume and prices of imports from Latin
America increased rapidly and by the mid-50’s most of these reserves and half the commercial surplus
had disappeared. In the second half of the decade, Latin American countries faced a general lack of
currency and important fluctuations in their terms of exchange. The unusual situation of easy access for
underdeveloped countries to external credits that was therefore produced in the seventies led the
region to a process of taking out loans that were absorbed the same way as someone who’s drowning
and given an oxygen mask at the appropriate moment. So these countries got into debt without
anticipating their capacities to use currency and behaving as if the almost unlimited offer of external
credit was going to last for ever under the same terms and conditions.
At the beginning of the eighties, Latin America had the biggest volume of debts among third world
countries. It had also adapted its models of consumption and production to the abundance of external
credits as if it was a permanent situation. This put Latin America in a vulnerable position in the face of
the negative evolution of international economy.
On the political front, Latin America had had, since the early days of this period of imperialism, a
revolutionary awakening that influenced the whole region and had as a strong starting point the Cuban
revolution in 1959.
The culmination of the industrialist and developmental model together with the beginning of the strong
indebtedness stage therefore coincides with the rise of mass movements and the influence of left-wing
parties and organizations, which in many cases had governmental representation.
It didn’t take long for imperialism to react strategically, planning a number of deadly military coups that
destroyed left-wing parties, mass movements and trade-unions and also, in passing, all open expression
of continuity with the industrialist model; it therefore left the political scene in conditions so the
governments that came out of these military coups could administrate without a hitch the adjustments
and the rigorous payment of the very high indebtedness, which meant a complete destruction of the
economic and institutional system which the previous stage had left behind.
In this sense, the Chilean process was paradigmatic in the way that the left-wing government Unidad
Popular that assumed power in 1970 and nationalized the copper mines was brusquely overthrown by
the military coup of September 1973, supported and assisted almost explicitly by the U.S government
and by North American companies like ITT, which lined up the country with discipline to the new
financial order and even advanced in the 80’s structural changes of the economy that were typical of the
posterior neoliberal globalizing stage.
The strategic plan for the Southern Cone was even given the name of “Plan Cóndor”, the results of
which were the coups in Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay.
62
In Argentina, the military coup of general Onganía in 1966 and his economic project led by Adalbert
Krieger Vassena caused the change of direction in the economy to begin, abandoning the
developmental model which clearly privileged foreign capital with its very attractive interest rates and
inaugurating the new monetary system typical of this period: devaluation.
After a democratic spring of approximately one year, the constitutional government of Juan Perón
started breaking down and one of its last ministers of economy -Peron had died-, Celestino Rodrigo,
used the devaluating monetary strategy to lead the country, definitely this time, on the road to pillage,
which is what the third imperialism was promoting for Latin America. After the 1976 military coup, this
situation only lasted more and went deeper, causing a financial valuation process led by economy
minister Martínez de Hoz, leaving the country shaken by its external debt. Argentina will suffer the final
blows of these adjustments during the years of Raúl Alfonsín’s democratic government reaching
paradigmatic heights with the 1989 hyperinflation.
119
In Brazil the shift to the left of the developmental process, influenced by the Cuban revolution and that
had some effects on Quadros and Goulart’s governments was interrupted by the 1964 military coup by
means of which general Castelo Branco took power; the economic plan managed by the new minister
Roberto Campos put in place a control of the salaries and a tough recession of the economy, typical
recipes of the new economic spirit of these days. There was more repression in the dictatorships that
followed each other without any solution of continuity. Nevertheless Brazil, as opposed to other Latin
American countries, went from this change of industrialist and developmental model to chronic
indebtedness and an adjustment with a big difference in its favor which caused an important growth of
its economy and a restructuring of part of its light industry into heavy industry. This produced what is
called the “Brazilian miracle” which even lasted until the mid 80’s and left the country quite a distance
away, in macro-economic terms, from the rest of South America. In 1987, Brazil suspended its debts
service in the midst of a deep recession.
In Mexico, the third period of imperialism came through with such an increase of the external debt that
it was precisely the suspension of payments of the Mexican state in 1982 that initiated adjustments in
the whole continent.
In Chile, Mazzei de Grazia himself states that “…the global growth of the economy persisted until the
1981-82 crisis which made the triumphant economy lose its stability, causing Gross State Product to
drop by 14.4% in 1982 while external debt reached 17,100 million dollars that same year; among other
measures it was necessary to resort to monetary devaluation”
120
119
This process in Argentina is very well described byAlfredo Pucciarelli in his article “La última dictadura militar y el
origen del liberalismo corporativo argentino” in Ansaldi, Waldo (coord) “Calidoscopio…” (p251)
120
Mazzei de Grazia, Leonardo Op cit. (p197)
63
As a conclusion to this “excursus” it must be said therefore that the meaning of these reflections has
been to show, although incipiently, how possible it is to find a synchronicity between the movements of
global power and the path followed by dependent countries, in this case from the Latin American
region. The facts, events and processes of different types and distinctive characteristics from the
countries of this area are always defined and connected to a general rhythm that marks the
development of a global system in which, like it or not, we are immersed.
The question of democracies in Latin American countries during this lapse of time that we tried to
summarize is obviously not directly determined by the period of imperialism here described; however
we can’t deny that the characteristics of the global moment and its impact on Latin American soil
facilitated or influenced the development of democratic forces, and in some countries more than in
others.
It’s clear, like in the case of the first imperialism, that the displacement of power by traditional oligarchic
forces - represented in many cases by authoritarian progressive governments - and the evolution of
urban classes often hastened the claim for democracy and participation of the masses in politics. It’s
also obvious that the third imperialism’s strategy to prepare the financial valuation adjustment
produced a special and completely successful effort to impose military dictatorships that cleaned up any
remains of democratic institution they could. In the case of the second imperialism, the Latin American
political scene was in favor of nationalistic governments elected by the people and with clear
distributive policies but with strong leaderships who, on the one hand, took advantage of the
redistribution mechanism to satisfy clientelism purposes and, on the other hand, even if in most cases
they lost their legitimate democracy, they did impose strong restrictions upon the daily practice of
democracy from one election to the other; these points, as we know, contribute to the quality of
democracy and to the possibility that the regime in question deserves the full measure of the word.
Therefore the attempt at drawing lines of correlation between the rhythms of central power global
strategy development and the realities of our margin is not done with the intention of causing
resignation or enjoyment in any mechanically deterministic conception that will not, on the other hand,
coincide whatsoever with reality. At first we made it clear that the relation of the impact of imperialism,
and in general of anything happening in the central countries, over the periphery is obviously a
dialectical relation, that is to say that there’s inevitably a movement of come and go in which the
“impactor” is also impacted.
However, observing the existence of the relation and study of correlations between global frameworks
and local events always gives a deeper notion of the substance of these processes, an indispensable
notion if one wants to prepare a praxis that must always, as it is its function, search to break rhythms,
challenge the scenes and create new paths.
VII Globalization: third and last stage of capitalism.
64
If we look on the web for references, in Spanish as much as in English, about globalization as a “stage of
capitalism”, we will see that concrete references are very rare. We’ll find a lot less of them if, on top of
that, to the keys words entered to run the search we add the circumstances by which it corresponds to
“the last” stage of the whole capitalist process.
Why a phenomenon which contrasts so tremendously with the imperialism that we’re living in, without
any solution of continuity from the beginning of the century until the mid 1980’s, hasn’t made
intellectuals and Marxist politicians think about a new stage of capitalism? Especially when its
consideration as a “stage” implied such a triadic dialectical division of the total process of capitalism
itself, demonstrating the brutal globalizing avalanche, elements that are so obviously synthetic of the
two previous moments of this total process.
The explanation is perhaps to be searched for, precisely, in the meaning given here to the word
“avalanche”. The erroneous imaginary (however inevitable) of the finalization of capitalism and the
advent of socialism at one moment during the imperialist stage, accepting exaggeratedly to the word
Lenin’s circumstantial affirmation concerning the “last stage”, comforted by socialism’s impressive
th
achievements in the 20
century and particularly the comfort of the revolutionary enthusiasm
generated by struggles that were at their peak during the 60’s and 70’s, led people like us who actively
participated in that last moment of revolutionary excitement to experience a very tough frustration with
the exhaustion and fall of a real socialist process in the places where it had developed the most.
The revival of a tough ideological blow and the efforts made to resist the downpour of theories about
globalization - the latter tried to destroy all Marxism fundamental principles and contributions - to
understand reality and to deny scientific truths that we thought had achieved an unshakable consensus
with the theory of evolution, made it impossible that at first there could be space and time for a deep
analysis of these new elements that allowed a serious dialectical reflection.
From the very beginning, we could also start hearing supposedly Marxist interpretations which, if we
resort to valid elements represented by the contribution of social and political sciences in the 80’s and
90’s, gave rise to highly complex theoretical constructionisms and to effective power of confusion;
among the ones who stood out, we have for example the theories of Holloway and Negri, and others
that we had to leave out along the way. The task hasn’t been an easy one since the structure of
theoretical bourgeoisie propaganda itself supported them, especially in the most claudicant aspects.
However, with the passing of time and mainly with the evolution of achievements over all of this
globalized world, we now have the possibility of moving on from a certain necessary defensive attitude
to tackling the challenges of how the revolutionary theory itself evolved and without which - this has
been endlessly repeated after the classics of Marxism, although most of the time without understanding
the deeper meaning of the affirmation- revolution is impossible.
65
There are two roads that don’t lead to an evolution of Marxism: one is the road to a hidden return,
behind innovative terminology and original theoretical constructions, to old upper-class interpretations
of reality which precisely Marxism took, in its days, the responsibility of demonstrating it as being false.
Another is the simple adequation - sometimes by “forceps”- of Marxist theoretical constructions developed to understand other social, political and economic moments of historical realities - to
nowadays reality.
We believe that conceiving globalization as a third stage of capitalism opens the door to the
development of Marxism-Leninism as a revolutionary theory and allows us to interpret not only more
precisely and directly current human achievements but that (and this is also essential for a correct
interpretation of the present) it enables a better understanding of recent past times like the imperialist
stage and its internal periods, its final moments and above all the question of the material impossibility
that capitalism would have ended then. This is not a question of minor importance since if we
understand this point, then the termination of the Soviet experience and its incapability to continue and
extend can’t be attributed simply to circumstantial problems and much less to tactical or strategic
errors.
In our opinion, such a focus would do a lot more justice to the Soviet process as a whole and would help
reorder things about this matter, which on the other hand is necessary in order to be successful in the
current revolutionary ideological and theoretical battle.
The other element that integrates our theoretical proposal about globalization is that this third stage is
the last one.
A powerful thing that can help one to see with more conviction the imminence of the end of an era
which goes way beyond the transition from one stage to another and which means a change of
121
civilization , is the more and more demonstrable fact that the world itself is at risk and that the “in
crescendo” damage is impossible to stop within the parameters of the social and political organization
that involve capitalism, competition and wars
122
The density of this prediction of terminality gets thicker if one takes into account the historical times
which result from the linear projection together with the corresponding proportional limit within the
framework of our proposal. This is because the conclusion of capitalism as a production mode
characterizing its period is entering its first stages in the upcoming decades.
121
It is not of minor importance that one of the main Marxist leaders in the world, Fidel Castro Ruz, uses this term in a
way that is not casual at all.
122
Therefore the book written by French journalist Hervé Kempf “Para salvar el planeta salir del capitalismo” (Capital
Intelectual BS. As. 2010) is very significant, not only because of its contents which are very comparable to other publications about
the same topic but more because of its analytical inflection that leads this non-communist intellectual and of liberal positions
about everything to start understanding that as long as there’s capitalist competition, consumerism and social differences, the
destruction of the planet is unstoppable. His previous publication was entitled “How the rich destroy the planet”
66
The affirmation can (fortunately) only: disturb responsible minds, take back countless adverts for prerevolutionary situations that haven’t been consolidated in any global revolution and lead to the
question about the historical subject.
We’re not worried about the intellectual concerns of the ones that feel genuine commitment for the
future of humanity because in fact we share the same objective.
We won’t take charge either for previous frustrated revolutionary announcements for what we present
here is a coherent theoretical analysis with an internal analytical logic that we won’t be discussing with
past sensations or intuitions of which we ignore the concrete foundations, if they ever were any, but
with those ideas they discuss (with their respective foundations) which we here expose and / or with
our method of analysis.
As for the historical subject, it doesn’t correspond to the purpose of this work which, as we must have
mentioned, focuses more on “objective” aspects of the historical process. However, it has to be said
that from a dialectical materialistic perspective the objective and the subjective approach are nothing
else than two aspects in tension of a same reality.
And if we look away from the immediate emergencies and obstacles to overcome in every place where
political and social change is being encouraged through popular struggle, we’ll see that the dimension
acquired by these struggles in terms of quantity and quality all over the world is unprecedented; its
forms of organization exceed everything that could be previously imagined and the level of
communicability and interconnection is taking on an aspect that we’d have liked to see during the
imperialism periods.
On the other hand, the historical subject is not “something” that one can sit and wait for to be formed in
order to then join but rather “something” that is in us, in the (scientific) confidence that changes are
inevitable and particularly in the extent that this confidence predisposes us to go for more.
There’s one chapter left in this essay and it should tackle the issue of internal periods of the third and
last stage of capitalism, the globalization in which we’re living. It’s always more complex to write about
current historical trends because we lack the perspective we had when describing past events.
Globalization as a third and final stage of the whole process is also the shortest and if we make simple
proportional calculations of duration times of previous stages such as what’s been done in our
hypothesis presented here, it couldn’t last more that a few decades.
We believe that a first period of this last stage ended in the early years of the 2000 decade. The
characteristics of a more important financial inclination of the stage are particularly significant since the
end of the 90’s and the beginning of 2000 and the political changes are particularly suggestive from
2001.
67
At first, with those elements that are visible for the moment, we could start affirming that globalization
repeats the inclinations of the first stage periods but the other way around. That is to say that first we’d
have a financial-productive globalization, then a financial globalization and finally a financial-commercial
period.
Evidence of this first period is in the so-called “productive revolution” which meant big scale privatizing
of neuralgic elements of the production system and services during the 90’s and which included the
huge production machine of the imploded socialism and setting up a global hyper-factory in China and
part of India. Everything that involved the installation of an unprecedented industrial system and all of
this obviously determined by the financial dynamics of the stage, in other words structuring the global
financial hypermarket.
The second period in which we are now is “pure” financial and is made evident by the financial bubble
that reproduces itself with complete independence from the real production and commercial system. In
fact we are at the end of this period which, “with pots and pans”, is falling over a precipice towards the
financial crisis (with serious consequences in the real economy), an unprecedented crisis..
The third and ultimate period of the last stage of capitalism threatens with commercial hypercompetition from the markets, overwhelming self-defense protectionist measures and the risk that, as
in similar situations in the past, the economic battle leads to unmasked wars or in “low intensity” forms
of war, getting every time worse. Let us not forget that commerce, in the era of violence of man against
man, has always been the other side of war. To this must be added the precisely named “currency wars”
which in reality is the financial-exchange form of war.
But these are only brushstrokes. The development of those urgent analyses is a collective task that
should be taken on as soon as possible and if the fundamental statements made in the previous pages
arouse any interest among the current Marxist intelligentsia.
At this point we must refer to an author who for various reasons is an essential reference when it comes
to establishing a characterization of the period and above all of the moment of making minimal
predictions without which no political analysis makes any sense. This political-economic analyst is Jorge
Beinstein.
Referring to him at that point in our reflections is imperative, at first because Beinstein has announced a
long time ago and with sufficient details the arrival of this crisis of the system as a terminal crisis.
Without making the effort to go back any further, in 2004 Beinstein published his article “Estados
Unidos en el centro de la crisis mundial (1)”
123
- The United States at the centre of the world crisis – in
which, among other things, he affirms “The United States came out of the crisis towards the end of 2001
123
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=6924 Article published in "Enfoques Alternativos", n° 27, Buenos Aires,
October 2004
68
by inflating a second financial bubble whose base this time wasn’t stock market speculation but the real
estate business. There was another concentration of revenue boosted by tax reductions made to the
rich, by military expenses and other transfers of public resources to economic pressure groups
connected with the government, among which multinational oil companies who orchestrated the war in
Iraq. This reactivation increased old imbalanced situations, generated new ones and restored others
that were inactive during the Clinton era. The result was a pile of problems overflowing the system’s
control capacity and pushing it towards the crisis……in any case, continuing in that way this perverse
relation in which North Americans accumulate deficits and debts while others amass enormous
mountains of paper destined to be devaluated and in which everybody swiftly pillages oil resources (the
decisive pillar of global economy); the bourgeoisie will soon enter a series of turbulences and
depressions impossible to control.
. …..Consequently the responsibility is shared, the globalization of capitalism puts all dominant classes
from the central countries on a same boat which also disposes of second and third class lifeboats for the
periphery bourgeoisie caught up in the financial spider web. None of them can take distance from the
disaster; the one that leaves the game falls and even if it persists it will fall sooner or later, dragged by
the future global depression. This means that there’s no historical space for substitute powers of the
decadent Empire and neither are there any for the lasting automation of underdeveloped capitalisms”
Secondly, even if various authors refer to terminal moments of capitalism and use words like “late”
(Mandel) or “senile” (Amin) only Beinstein, sharing the allusion to senility, describes the dynamism of
the crisis as final in its details and its interrelations and talks of the idea of imminence (in historical
terms) of the final fall of the system.
Beinstein doesn’t let continuity or recovery auguries confuse him. He explains the inconsistency of
cyclical visions (which at the end always leave an aftertaste of conservatism): “This enables me to
suggest the hypothesis that, as what happened about a century ago with Juglar’s decennial cycles, we
can now say that Kondratieff’s long waves have lost scientific value, the descending phase of
Kondratieff’s quarter has been crushed by the new reality; the global economy which is completely
hegemonised by the financial parasite follows a completely different dynamic from the one which
prevailed during the industrial capitalism period”
124
Thirdly, we can see important connections between Beinstein’s periodizing perspective of capitalism
and ours.
BEINSTEIN’S TABLE (At the beginning of a long journey)
124
Beinstein , Jorge “La crisis en la era senil del capitalismo” El viejo Topo Barcelona nº253 February 2009
69
In this graph, Beinstein demonstrates how the evolution of various internal processes of capitalism
st
already show either a finalization or the beginning of the decline from the early years of 21 century.
125
At the bottom of the table where the x-axis represents the chronological progression, there’s a
separation in three stages. The first one goes from 1780 to 1900, the second one from 1900 to 1970 and
the third one from 1970 to 2000, from where starts what he calls “CRISIS”.
If we strictly compare this representation with ours (pag.), we can see there aren’t exactly similar.
However, the general criterion seems as a last resort to follow the same direction.
th
At first, the date when the first stage starts; even if in his table Beinstein places it in the 18 century, in
his texts it appears many times that the beginning of the process could have occurred a lot earlier. This
stage is called “liberal ascending state” which corresponds to the economic dynamics of free
competition capitalism. The second stage in Beinstein’s table corresponds to the “interventionist stage”,
characteristic of imperialism or state monopoly imperialism. The third stage corresponds to
“neoliberalism”, in other words globalization.
As for the beginning of the third stage Beinstein believes that its preparation started in the 70’s
although he always stresses that it was consolidated in the 80’s/90’s. In any case, Beinstein doesn’t
concentrate his work on periodizations and even less on dates or periods of changes from one historical
moment to the other; however eventually he ends up showing a triadic process in which the third stage
of neoliberal globalization turn out to be the last one and precisely, and this is mostly important, in the
way that it caused a general, irreversible and imminent crisis of the whole system.
Here a paragraph written by Beinstein that is crucial when it comes to asking questions about the
“historical subject”
“It’s necessary here to point out a crucial difference between the current situation and the cultural
conditions upon which was based the cycle of revolutions that triggered the First World War. The
beginning of the current crisis disposes of a unique heritage that we can sum up as the existence of a
th
huge democratic, equalitarian patrimony accumulated during the whole of the 20 century through
great emancipation, revolutionary, reformist, more or less radical anti-imperialist attempts, most of
them including socialist objectives. Hundreds of millions of oppressed and exploited people in every
continent learnt a great lesson, achieved victories, failed, were cheated by usurpers of all kinds, were
th
given the example of heroic leaders, etc. This is another way of looking at the 20 century: like a great
school of battles for freedom where the best of humanity has learnt many things which have been
125
When we talk about final crisis of capitalism, we need to take into account that capitalism itself or modern era would
be in turn the last period of a whole era. This brings to mind a change on an extraordinary scale since we wouldn’t be only
summarizing 800 years of capitalist modernity but also the 15000, 20000 of all the era of violence and exploitation of man
against/by man. Perhaps, this is the feeling felt by the likes of Fidel Castro Ruz, one of the cleverest and most intelligent Marxist
thinkers of our times, when he talks about of “civilization crisis”.
70
stored in its historical memory, not as a pessimistic memory of an irreversible past but as a discovery, as
a cultural tool which will be part of its combat kit forever. Until 1789, when hopes generated by the
French Revolution were fading away, Kant supported with obstinacy that ‘a phenomenon like that one
would never be forgotten in human history…. It’s too big, too tied to the interests of humanity, too
widespread in virtue of its influence over the world, everywhere, for the people not to remember it on
th
any appropriate occasion and not to be encouraged by this event to repeat it again. The 20 century is
the equivalent of dozens of libertarian revolutions like the French one and a lot more if we look at it
from a qualitative perspective. The democratic cultural patrimony available for the oppressed part of
humanity, stored in its memory at the beginning of the biggest crisis in history of capitalism is a lot
richer, a lot more vast and more dense that the one that prevailed at the beginning of the previous
extensive crisis of the system (1914-1945). Postcapitalism not only represents a historical necessity
(determined by the decadence of bourgeois civilization) but also a real possibility; it has a huge cultural
base, available like never before. Hope, historical optimism are visible through the ruins of the
deteriorated structures of an unfair world.”
126
This is the idea which must be internalized by the ones who are concerned with the historical subject
and whose worry prevents from seeing that history is moving on and leaving them behind.
th
Along the same lines, left-wing parties, revolutionaries which have been the protagonists of 20 century
great epic work and which find themselves preferentially well-equipped with this democratic and
revolutionary patrimony are those with most possibilities to understand the meaning of the current
period, the imminence of changes. Those with most possibilities of coming across ideas like the ones
expressed in Beinstein’s work or like the ones we’re presenting here in order to discuss in depth its
foundations. Particularly those parties or organizations with international network structures, since the
complexity and imminence of the changes require an urgent collective international discussion from
left-wing and Marxist groups based on what characterizes the period and the articulation of regional
and international strategies which meet the circumstances.
If not they may be ignored by the circumstances.
--------------------------------------------MARIANO CIAFARDINI
126
http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/comienzo-largo-viaje-crepusculo-capitalismo-nostalgias-herencias-barba ( p13)
71