Charlie has not answered Sartesian’s query as to whether he believes China is displacing the US as the global hegemon, but it is clear from his frequent posts to the list that this is his position. He views China as a rival imperialist power bent on displacing the US much as the German empire aimed at supplanting the British and French prior to the onset of WW I. Like others on the Marxist left who theorize about a multipolar world divided by rival imperialisms, he is certain that history will repeat itself, making a third world war inevitable. This view is broadly shared by bourgeois theoreticians who persistently warn of a “Thucydides trap”
In invoking Lenin’s imperialism, Charlie and his co-thinkers ignore that one of the essential characteristics of that period was the scramble of the rival powers for territory which they could exclusively control and shield from competition from foreign corporations, Lenin makes this clear in discussing “the division of the world among the great powers.” > > https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch06.htm > A few quotes will suffice: “Finance capital is connected with the intensification of the struggle for the partitioning of the world.,,Colonial possession alone gives the monopolies complete guarantee against all contingencies in the struggle against competitors...The more capitalism is developed, the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world, the more desperate the struggle for the acquisition of colonies...The inevitable striving of finance capital is to enlarge its spheres of influence and even its actual territory...Finance capital in general strives to seize the largest possible amount of land of all kinds in all places, and by every means, taking into account potential sources of raw materials and fearing to be left behind in the fierce struggle for the last remnants of independent territory, or for the repartition of those territories that have been already divided...The interests pursued in exporting capital also give an impetus to the conquest of colonies, for in the colonial market it is easier to employ monopoly methods (and sometimes they are the only methods that can be employed) to eliminate competition, to ensure supplies, to secure the necessary 'connections,' etc..The non-economic superstructure which grows up on the basis of finance capital, its politics and its ideology, stimulates the striving for colonial conquest.” There is no evidence whatsoever that the Chinese state and its own large state-owned corporations have the will or the means to seize territories to wall off from US and other foreign competitors. Nor for that matter have the US state and its corporations had that intent for most of its history, preferring instead to wield control over a vast informal empire through economic supremacy and a worldwide network of subordinate allies and military bases which China is far from replicating. The current period of economic rivalry might in fact be seen as more akin to what Lenin described as "premonopoly capitalism, of capitalism in which free competition was predominant which reached its limit in the 1860s and 1870s”. It was "precisely after that period”, Lenin writes, "that the tremendous 'boom' in colonial conquests begins, and that the struggle for the territorial division of the world becomes extraordinarily sharp.” In making the point, Lenin was rejecting a dogmatic adherence to past templates. “General' disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental difference between socio-economic formations, inevitably turn into the most vapid banality", he wrote, "like the comparison: 'Greater Rome and Greater Britain.' Even the capitalist colonial policy of previous stages of capitalism is essentially different from the colonial policy of finance capital." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#35408): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/35408 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/111336789/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
