Table Of ContentMARXIST
THOUGHT ON
IMPERIALISM
MARXIST
THOUGHT ON
IMPERIALISM
Survey and Critique
Charles A. Barone
M
MACMILLAN
To my father, who taught me to be critical,
and to my mother, who had faith in me
© 1985 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without written permission from the publisher.
First published in the USA in 1985 by M. E. Sharpe Inc.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1985 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS, and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Barone, Charles A.
Marxist thought on imperialism: survey and critique.
1. Imperialism
I. Title
325 '.32 JC359
ISBN 978-0-333-39947-7 ISBN 978-1-349-17880-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17880-3
Table of Contents
CHAPTER
ll Marxist Foundations and the Theory of
Imperialism 3
~
Early Marxist Theories of Imperialism 18
Monopoly Capital and Imperialism 1:
~
Surplus Absorption 57
Monopoly Capital and Imperialism II:
(}
Dependency Theory 85
The Theory of Imperialism and Unequal
~
Exchange: Arghiri Emmanuel 108
CID
Samir Amin: An Eclectic Synthesis 120
[] Recent Currents in Marxist Theory of
Imperialism 144
Appendix
I A Critique of Baran and Sweezy 188
Appendix
A Critique of Emmanuel's Theory of
II Unequal Exchange 196
Notes 211
Bibliography 229
Acknowledgments
This book is an outgrowth of my dissertation, completed at the Ameri
can University in Washington, D.C., and I wish first to thank the
members of my committee, particularly John Weeks and James
Weaver, for their invaluable assistance. I would also like to acknowl
edge the bold and pioneering efforts of the faculty members who in
1972 founded the university's Ph.D. program in radical political econ
omy-the first of its kind in the United States. They were Chuck
Wilber, Jim Weaver, Ron Muller, Howard Wachtel, Larry Stevens, and
Rick Simons. It is to this program and the people behind it, including
my fellow graduate students, that I owe my greatest debt of gratitude.
It has been a pleasure to work with the people atM. E. Sharpe, Inc.,
and I particularly want to thank Editorial Director Arnold C. Tovell
and Social Sciences Editor Patricia A. Kolb for helping me transform
my original manuscript into the present, much more readable book. My
thanks also to the academic community at Dickinson College, where I
now teach, for providing an environment conducive to productive
scholarship of this kind. Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Susan, and
my daughter, Sarah, for not allowing me to forget the importance of
family life.
vi
MARXIST
THOUGHT ON
IMPERIALISM
Il
Marxist Foundations and
the Theory of Imperialism
In the years since World War II there has been a resurgence of interest
in theories of imperialism, both Marxist and non-Marxist. Not since the
early decades of this century have there been so many studies and
analyses of imperialism. This renewed interest has been fueled by
dramatic changes in the world political economy, in particular the
emergence of the United States after the war as the most powerful
economic and political force among the capitalist countries of the West.
As the United States exercised its economic and political hegemony
over the international capitalist system, a reordering of political and
economic relationships took place and new lines of demarcation were
drawn. Under the leadership and tutelage of the United States, the
international capitalist economy experienced tremendous rates of
growth in foreign trade, investment, and public resource transfers.
This created a highly integrated world economy characterized by com
plex interdependence. A growing proportion of this increased econom
ic activity has been accounted for by the growth of multinational
corporations, which have had a significant impact on the operation and
dynamic of the international political economy.
A second factor has been the growing threat of the Soviet Union and
socialist movements in general to the capitalist world and the balance of
economic and political power. This balance has been further endan
gered by the large number of successful anticolonialist national liber
ation movements and the resulting creation of over a hundred new
nations since the war. The continuing dependency of such nations on
the rich capitalist countries, and the failure of economic development
to take place in the Third World at the expected rate, has led to in
creasing international concern and to charges of neocolonialism and
3
4 MARXIST THOUGHT ON IMPERIALISM
neo-imperialism. Military intervention by major capitalist powers at
tempting to maintain the status quo in such widely scattered countries
as Vietnam, the Congo, and the Dominican Republic further exacerbat
ed this situation. Currently the struggle between rich and poor countries
takes the form of heated political debate over a new international order.
Preeminent among those analyzing these postwar events as imperial
ist phenomena are theorists associated with the left, i.e., those who
analyze imperialism from within the Marxist intellectual tradition.
Among the better-known contemporary Marxists who have written
about imperialism are Paul Baran, Harry Magdoff, Andre Gunder
Frank, Arghiri Emmanuel, and Samir Amin. Not since the seminal
contributions ofRudolfHilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin,
and Nikolai Bukharin during the first quarter of this century have
Marxists given so much attention to this question. The result has been a
tremendous growth in the literature on imperialism and a proliferation
of Marxist theories that purport to explain the causes and effects of
capitalist foreign economic expansion.
There have been few attempts to pull together the major strands of
this literature, examine them, critique them, and place them in the
history of Marxist intellectual thought on imperialism. The many avail
able readers on imperialism do not fulfill this task.1 Tom Kemp's
excellent study, Theories of Imperialism, published in 1967, surveys
major Marxist and non-Marxist theories of imperialism, but concen
trates almost exclusively on prewar writers. Kemp's primary purpose
was to vindicate Lenin in terms of contemporary relevance. Another
work that partially meets the objective outlined above is Michael
Barratt Brown's book Economics ofI mperialism (1974). Brown devel
ops the classical, Marxist, Keynesian, and neoclassical theories of
imperialism and attempts to interpret the history of capitalist imperial
ism through each theory, in order to assess the positive aspects, as well
as failings, of each. Such an ambitious undertaking can at best provide
extensive knowledge of the many different theories of imperialism, and
Brown's work certainly does an excellent job of this, but it does not
give an intensive analysis. Indeed, by focusing on empirical verifica
tion it tends to obscure theoretical issues. 2
This book is an attempt to provide a historical survey and analytical
critique of contemporary Marxist theories of imperialism. It is not all
inclusive. Only works that represent major strands of Marxist thought
MARXIST FOUNDATIONS 5
on capitalist imperialism-and within each strand, only the most im
portant theoretical works-are singled out for discussion. This means
that many significant works had to be excluded from this study. Analy
ses of precapitalist forms of imperialism or of Soviet imperialism were
excluded entirely, not because they were considered unimportant but
because they require separate treatment.
The present study will give special attention to analyses of the causes
of capitalist foreign economic expansion and the impact of that expan
sion on other countries. Although the actual character and operation of
the imperialist system will not be ignored, this is dealt with in summary
fashion and only to the extent that it exposes and clarifies these two
more central theoretical concerns.
Our second task, providing an analytical critique of the theoretical
literature, entails assessment of the theoretical differences, commonal
ities, and shortcomings of the various theories surveyed, and will
include but not be limited to discussion of contemporary debates and
critiques. It excludes empirical assessment, beyond a broad conformity
with evidence "close at hand," and also assessment from non-Marxist
theoretical perspectives. In short, this study is an analytical survey of
the varieties of Marxist thought on imperialism, conducted from within
the Marxist intellectual tradition and at the theoretical rather than the
empirical level.
The rest of this chapter is devoted to a preliminary discussion of
Marxist theory on imperialism. It begins with a brief outline of Marx's
methodological approach and analysis of capitalism. This is followed
by a discussion on Marx's ideas concerning imperialism. The final
section of this chapter presents an overview of subsequent Marxist
thought on imperialism.
The Marxist foundation
The intellectual ancestry of contemporary Marxist thought on the
causes and impact of capitalist foreign economic expansion is to be
found in the methodology and analysis developed by Karl Marx in the
mid-nineteenth century. This body of thought was later expanded and
modified, particularly on the problem of imperialism, by Marx's intel
lectual and political followers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, who will be the subject of the next chapter.
