China: Neither imperialist nor part of the Global South

China’s insertion in the global capitalist system has prompted many critical analyses among the Marxist left. Most debated is a simple but basic question: is China socialist, or capitalist? Some are unequivocal. For example, a recently published “manifesto” of a group centered at the University of Manitoba[1] states grandiosely that “no country represents working people’s advance – economic, technological, ecological and social – more than China….” Its ruling Communist party “has made China the indispensable nation in humankind’s struggle for socialism, offering aid and inspiration as a worthy example of a country pursuing socialism,” more precisely, a form of “market socialism.”

Other analysts sharply differ with this jovial portrayal. Some argue that post-Maoist China has experienced a counter-revolution that now ranks the country as a major imperialist power, second only to the United States in its geopolitical weight, while still others – unfortunately, very few – go behind these binary alternatives to engage in a dialectical examination of the evolving geopolitical reality and to probe the evolution of the conflicting social forces within the Chinese social formation.

A notable example of the latter group of scholars is the Argentine Marxist economist Claudio Katz. In the following article, which appeared first on his website (my translation), Katz confines his analysis to assessing China’s location within the global constellation of national forces. I follow it below with links to a series of articles Katz published in 2020 discussing, inter alia, the evolution of China’s internal class relations in the post-Maoist period.

- Richard Fidler

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China: Neither imperialist nor part of the Global South

By Claudio Katz

ABSTRACT

China’s geopolitical status is the subject of increasing controversy. Its presentation as an imperialist power is based on mistaken analogies that overlook the way in which its productive expansion is accompanied by geopolitical restraint. An imperial profile is defined by international acts of domination and not by economic parameters.

China exhibits the features of an empire in formation, but only in an embryonic form. The limits to its capitalist restoration affect the degree to which it resembles an empire. It profits from Latin America’s dependence on raw materials exports, but its intervention there is a far cry from that of the United States.

The tensions that capitalism generates in China are disguised by indulgent views that ignore the incompatibility of that system with an inclusive globalization. Its current trade and investment relations contradict calls for cooperation. China is not part of the Global South. It is grappling with the imbalances of a developed economy and the tensions of a creditor. Three possible scenarios can be envisaged for the medium term.

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The imperialist character of the United States is an indisputable fact of contemporary geopolitics. Extending this qualifier to China, on the other hand, arouses passionate debates.

Our approach highlights the asymmetry between the two contenders: Washington’s aggressive profile and Beijing’s defensive reaction. While the United States seeks to restore its ailing world domination, China is attempting to sustain capitalist growth without foreign confrontations. It also faces serious historical, political and cultural limits on its ability to intervene forcefully on a global scale. That is why it cannot at present be classed as part of the empires club (Katz, 2021).

This approach contrasts with approaches that describe China as an imperial, predatory or colonizing power. It also defines the degree to which it approximates such status, and what conditions would be needed to acquire it.

In our view, China has left behind its old status as an underdeveloped country and now is a core country among the world’s central economies. This allows it to capture large flows of international value and benefit from its expansion with access to natural resources from the periphery. Because of its location in the international division of labor it does not form part of the Global South.

This view shares the various objections that have been raised to identifying China as a new imperialism. But it questions the presentation of China as an actor interested only in cooperation, inclusive globalization or the overcoming of its partners’ underdevelopment.

A review of all the arguments being debated helps to clarify the contemporary complex enigma of China’s international status.

INADEQUATE COMPARISONS

The theses that postulate the total imperial alignment of China attribute it to the post-Maoist turn initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. They hold that this turn established a model of expansive capitalism that meets all of the characteristics of imperialism. They argue that this is confirmed by the African continent’s economic subjection by China. And they denounce the hypocritical discourse used to hide this recurrence of the old European oppression (Turner, 2014: 65-71).

But this ignores the significant differences between the two situations. China – unlike France – does not dispatch troops to the African countries to protect its business. Its only military base, in a commercial hub, Djibouti, contrasts with the cluster of facilities installed in Africa by the United States and Europe.

China avoids getting involved in the explosive politics of the African continent and its participation in “UN peacekeeping operations” does not give it imperial status. Countless countries clearly outside of that category, such as Uruguay, contribute troops to UN missions.

Also debatable is the comparison of China with the trajectory followed by Germany and Japan during the first half of the 20^th century (Turner, 2014: 96-100). This is not a course consistent with the facts. China has to this point avoided taking the warmongering path travelled by those predecessors. It has achieved impressive economic protagonism, taking advantage of the competitive openings encountered in globalization. It does not share the compulsion for territorial conquest associated with German or Japanese capitalism.

China has developed in the 21^st century globalized forms of production that did not exist in the previous century. This has given it novel and unprecedented leverage to expand its economy with patterns of geopolitical discretion that were inconceivable in the past.

The erroneous analogies extend as well to what happened in the Soviet Union. China, it is said, is establishing capitalism in a similar way and substituting “social imperialism” in place of internationalism. This is a foretaste of conventional imperialist politics (Turner, 2014: 46-47).

But China has not followed the lead of the USSR. It has imposed limits on capitalist economic restoration and maintained the political regime that collapsed in the neighboring country. As one analyst rightly notes, Xi Jinping’s management has been guided throughout by an obsession with avoiding the disintegration suffered by the Soviet Union (El Lince, 2020). The differences currently extend to the foreign military terrain. China has not taken any action similar to what Moscow has deployed in Syria, Ukraine or Georgia.

WRONG CRITERIA

Assessments inspired by a widely-used text of classical Marxism, Lenin’s Imperialism, are also used to situate China in the imperialist camp. It is said that China conforms to the economic characteristics listed in that book, such as the weight of capital exports, the size of its monopolies, and the existence of financial groups (Turner, 2014: 1-4, 25-31, 48-64).

But those economic features are insufficient to define China’s international place in the 21^st century. To be sure, the increasing weight of monopolies, banks or exported capital accentuates rivalries and tensions among the powers. But those commercial or financial conflicts do not illustrate imperialist confrontation or define the specific status of each country in the pattern of global domination.

Switzerland, the Netherlands or Belgium occupy an important place in the international ranking of production, exchange and credit, but they do not play a leading role in the imperialist realm. France and England do play a prominent role on that terrain, but this is not derived strictly from their economic primacy. Germany and Japan are economic giants, but their intervention is largely confined within that sphere.

China’s case is much more unique. The pre-eminence of monopolies on its territory is simply consistent with the existence of such conglomerates in any country. So also with the influence of finance capital, which plays a lesser role than it does in other large economies. Unlike its competitors, China has achieved its position in the global order without resorting to neoliberal financialization. Furthermore, it bears no resemblance to the German banking model of the early 20^th century studied by Lenin.

It is true that the export of capital – which Lenin singled out as an outstanding characteristic in its time – is a significant characteristic of China today. But its influence simply confirms the country’s significant connection with global capitalism.

None of the analogies with the economic system prevailing in the past century is of help in defining China’s international status. At most, they help us to understand the changes registered in the functioning of capitalism. It takes another type of thinking to clarify what is happening in global geopolitics.

Imperialism is a politics of domination exercised by the global powers through their states. It is not an enduring or final stage of capitalism. Lenin’s writing clarifies what occurred a century ago, but not the course of recent events. It was developed in a setting quite distant from one of generalized world wars.

The dogmatic attachment to this book leads to a search for forced similarities in the present conflict between the United States and China to the conflagrations of the First World War. The major contemporary struggle is seen as a mere repetition of the inter-imperialist interwar rivalries.

China’s militarization of the South China Sea is denounced using a similar comparison. Xi Jinping, it is said, is pursuing the same goals covered up by Germany in seizing Central Europe or by Japan in conquering the South Pacific. But overlooked is the fact that China’s economic expansion up to now has been achieved without firing a single shot outside of its borders.

It is also forgotten that Lenin did not claim to be elaborating a classificatory guide to imperialism based on the capitalist maturity of each power. He simply emphasized the catastrophic militarism of his time without specifying the conditions that each of the participants in this conflict had to meet in order to qualify as part of the imperialist world order. For example, he placed an economically backward power like Russia within that group because of its active role in the military bloodbath.

Lenin’s analysis of classical imperialism is a theoretical acquisition of great relevance, but another toolbox is needed to clarify China’s geopolitical role in the 21^st century.

A POTENTIAL STATUS ONLY

The basic Marxist notions of capitalism, socialism, imperialism or anti-imperialism are not enough to characterize China’s foreign policy. These concepts provide only a point of departure. Additional notions are needed to account for the country’s course. Its conversion into the “second biggest economy in the world” (Turner, 2014: 23-24) is not enough to deduce imperial status, or to ascertain the enigmas involved.

More successful is the search for concepts that register the coexistence of China’s enormous economic expansion with its great distance from the primacy of the United States. The formula of an “empire in formation” is an attempt to portray its place in this gestation, still far from North American predominance.

But the specific content of that category is controversial. Some are prepared to assign it a scope that is more advanced than embryonic. In their view, China is already on the fast track toward acting as an imperial power. The military base in Djibouti, the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea, and the offensive reconversion of the armed forces are evidence of a turn, they say.

According to this view, several decades of intensive capitalist accumulation have now led to the beginning of an imperial phase (Rousset, 2018). This assessment approximates the typical contrast between a dominant imperial pole (United States) and another imperial power on the rise (Turner, 2014: 44-46).

But there are still major qualitative differences between the two powers. What distinguishes China from its North American counterpart is not the degree to which the same model has matured. China has yet to complete its own capitalist restoration before it can embark on the imperial adventures undertaken by its rival.

The term “empire in formation” could serve to indicate the embryonic character of that gestation. But the concept would only be meaningful if China were to abandon its present defensive strategy. Neoliberal capitalism exhibits this tendency in its investments abroad and its expansive ambitions. However, for that faction to prevail, China would have to subdue the opposing faction, which privileges internal development and preserves the present modality of the political regime.

China is an empire in the making only in potential terms. Its GDP is second in the world, it is the primary manufacturer of industrial goods, and it receives the largest volume of funds. But that economic weight has no equivalent correlate in the geopolitical-military sphere that defines imperial status.

UNRESOLVED TRENDS

Another view is that China has all the characteristics of a capitalist power but lags in developing a hegemonic imperial profile. In its description of the spectacular growth of China’s economy it points to the limits the country faces in order to achieve a winning position in the world market. And it notes the restrictions it confronts technologically compared to its Western competitors.

From these ambiguities it concludes that China is a “dependent capitalist state with imperialist features.” It combines restrictions on its autonomy (dependency) with ambitious projects of foreign expansion (imperialism) (Chingo, 2021).

But while this view is correct in assigning China an intermediate location, it includes a conceptual blunder. Dependency and imperialism are two antagonistic notions that cannot be integrated in a common formula. We cannot refer to them – as we do in the distinction between center and periphery – as economic dynamics of transfer of value or hierarchies in the international division of labor. That is why the specific pattern we find in the semi-periphery is excluded.

Dependency presupposes the existence of a state subject to external orders, requirements or conditioning, while imperialism implies the opposite: international supremacy and a high degree of external interventionism. These should not be intermingled in the same formula. In China the lack of subordination to another power coexists alongside great restraint in its involvement with other countries. This is neither dependency nor imperialism.

The characterization of China as a power that has completed its evolution toward capitalism – without being able to jump to the next stage of imperial development – presupposes that the initial development does not provide sufficient support to consummate advances toward global domination. But this reasoning presents a set of different economic and geopolitical-military actions as two stages in the same process. It overlooks an important differentiation.

A similar view of China as a finished capitalist model navigating in a lower echelon of imperialism is expressed by another author (Au Loong Yu, 2018) along with two auxiliary concepts: bureaucratic capitalism and sub-imperialist dynamics.

The first term indicates the fusion of the ruling class with the governing elite and the second portrays a limited policy of international expansion. But because the country is also assumed to act as a superpower (competing and collaborating with the US giant), it is only a matter of time before it becomes fully imperialist.

This assessment emphasizes that China has completed its capitalist transformation without explaining the reasons for the delays in this imperial conversion. But those delays could also be noted in terms of its capitalist transformation.

To avoid these dilemmas, it is easier to note that the continued insufficiencies of capitalist restoration explain the restrictions on its evolution toward imperialist status. Since the dominant class does not control the levers of the state, it must accept the cautious international strategy promoted by the Communist party.

In contrast to the United States, England or France, China’s capitalists are not accustomed to calling on the political-military intervention of their state when they confront difficulties in their international business. They have no tradition of invasions or coups when confronted by countries that nationalize companies or suspend debt payment. No one knows how quickly the Chinese state will or will not adopt those imperialist habits, so it is incorrect to think that trend is consummated.

PREDATORS AND COLONIZERS?

The presentation of China as an imperial power is frequently exemplified with descriptions of the impact it is having in Latin America. In some cases it is argued that China acts in the New World with the same predatory logic employed by Great Britain in the 19^th century (Ramírez, 2020). In other visions warnings are issued against the military bases that China is said to be building in Argentina and Venezuela (Bustos, 2020).

But none of these characterizations makes any solid comparison with the overwhelming intrusion of the US embassies. That is the type of intervention that signifies imperialist conduct in the region. China is miles away from any such encroachment. Profiting from the sale of manufactured goods and the purchase of raw materials is not the same as sending the Marines, training police and financing coups d’état.

Saner (and more debatable) is the presentation of China as a “new colonizer” of Latin America. It is argued that the ascendant hegemon tends to agree with its partners in the area on a “commodities consensus” similar to the one previously forged by the United States. This networking with Beijing is said to complement the one secured by Washington and to increase the region’s international insertion as a supplier of unprocessed commodities and purchaser of manufactured products (Svampa, 2013).

This approach accurately portrays how Latin American’s current relation to China deepens the dependency of the region on raw materials exports or its specialization in basic lines of industrial activity. Beijing is emerging as the continent’s primary trading partner and it exploits the advantages of this new position.

On the other hand, Latin America has been gravely affected by transfers of value in favour of the powerful Chinese economy. It does not occupy the privileged position China assigns to Africa, nor is it an area of manufacturing relocation like Southeast Asia. South America is courted for the extent of its natural resources. The present oil, mining and agricultural supply scheme is very favorable to Beijing.

But this economic exploitation is not synonymous with imperial domination or colonial invasion. The latter concept applies, for example, to Israel, which occupies other peoples’ territories, displaces the local population and seizes Palestinian wealth.

Chinese emigration plays no similar role. It is scattered in all corners of the planet, with significant specialization in retail trade. Its development is not remotely controlled by Beijing, nor does it adhere to underlying projects of global conquest. A segment of the Chinese population simply emigrates in strict correspondence with contemporary movements of the labour force.

China has consolidated unequal trade with Latin America, but without consummating the imperial geopolitics that is still represented by the presence of the Marines, the DEA, Plan Colombia and the Fourth Fleet. Lawfare and coups perform the same function.

Those who are unaware of this difference tend to denounce China and the United States alike as aggressive powers. They situate the two contenders on the same plane and stress that they intervene indifferently in those conflicts.

But this neutralism fails to note who is primarily responsible for the tensions that shake the planet. It fails to see that the United States sends warships to its rival’s coast and raises the tone of its accusations in order to generate a climate of growing conflict.

The consequences of this positioning are especially serious for Latin America, with its stormy history of US interventions. Equating this trajectory with some equivalent conduct by China in the future confuses realities with possibilities. And it overlooks the role of potential counterweight to US domination that China could develop in a dynamic of Latin American emancipation.

On the other hand, the discourse that places China and the United States on the same plane is permeable by the anticommunist ideology of the Right. Those tirades reflect the combination of fear and misunderstanding that predominates in all the conventional analyses of China.

The Latin American spokespersons for this narrative tend to combine it with broadsides against Chinese “totalitarianism” and regional “populism.” Using the old language of the Cold War, they warn of the dangerous role of Cuba or Venezuela as pawns in a forthcoming Asian capture of the entire hemisphere. Chinaphobia encourages absurdities of all kinds.

FAR FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Approaches that rightly reject the characterization of China as an imperialist power include many nuances and differences. A wide spectrum of analysts – who correctly object to its classification among the dominators – tend to include it as part of the Global South.

This view confuses China’s defensive geopolitics in the conflict with the United States with membership in the segment of economically backward and politically subordinate nations. China has so far avoided the actions carried out by imperialist powers, but its conduct does not place it on the periphery, or in the universe, of dependent nations.

China has differentiated itself from the new group of “emerging” nations, becoming now a new hub for the global economy. Suffice it to note that in 1990 it accounted for less than 1% of total manufacturing exports, while today it generates 24.4% of industrial added value (Mercatante, 2020). China absorbs surplus value through firms located abroad and profits from the supply of raw materials.

In this context, it has mounted the podium of the advanced economies. Those who continue identifying it with the agglomeration of Third World countries ignore this monumental transformation.

Some authors maintain the old image of China as an area of investment by multinational corporations that exploit the huge eastern workforce and transfer their earnings to the United States or Europe (King, 2014).

This outflow was indeed present in the takeoff of the new power and persists in certain segments of production. But China has achieved its impressive growth in recent decades by retaining the bulk of that surplus.

Today the mass of funds captured through trade and foreign investment is far greater than the outward flows. One need only look at the size of its trade surplus or its financial claims to gauge what this means. China has left behind the major features of an underdeveloped economy.

The scholars who posit the continuity of underdevelopment tend to play down the development of recent decades. They tend to highlight signs of backwardness that are now of second-rate importance. The imbalances China faces derive from over-investment and processes of overproduction or over-accumulation. China has to deal with the contradictions characteristic of a developed economy.

China does not suffer the outflows that typically drain the dependent countries. It is exempt from the trade imbalance, technological deficiency, scarcity of investment or strangling of purchasing power. There are no data from today’s China suggesting that its stunning economic might constitutes a mere statistical fiction.

This new power has risen in the global economic structure. It is incorrect to situate it in a place similar to the old agrarian peripheries, subordinate to the metropolitan industries (King, 2014). That is today the place occupied by the enormous cluster of African, Latin American or Asian nations which provide the basic inputs for Beijing’s manufacturing machinery.

China is from time to time ranked along with the United States as the G2 powers, those that define the agenda established for the G7 of the big powers. This is hardly compatible with ranking the country in the Global South. Assigning it to the Global South cannot explain the battle it wages against its North American rival for leadership of the digital revolution, or the leading role it has played during the coronavirus pandemic.

As a result of its accelerated development, China is now in the position of a creditor, in potential conflict with its clients in the South. The indications of those tensions are numerous. Fear that China will seize the assets that guarantee its loans has generated resistance (or cancellation of projects) in Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar or Tanzania (Hart-Landsberg, 2018).

The controversy over the port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka illustrates this typical dilemma of a major creditor. The non-payment of a large debt led in 2017 to a 99-year lease of those facilities. Malaysia reviewed its agreements and questioned the accords that locate the best employment activities in Chinese territory. Vietnam raised a similar objection to the creation of a special economic zone, and investments involving Pakistan re-ignite disputes of all kinds.

China is beginning to contend with a status opposed to any membership in the Global South. At the end of 2018 there was fear that China might take control of the port of Mombasa if Kenya were to suspend payments on its liabilities (Alonso, 2019). The same concern is beginning to emerge in other countries with many commitments of doubtful collectability such as Yemen, Syria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe (Bradsher; Krauss, 2015).

INDULGENT VIEWS

Another stream of authors that is tracking the unprecedented role of today’s China praises its convergence with other countries and hails the transition toward a multipolar bloc. These scenarios are expounded with simple descriptions of the challenges facing the country as it continues its upward course.

But these cheerful portraits overlook the fact that the consolidation of capitalism accentuates in China all of the imbalances already generated by overproduction and surplus capital. These tensions, in turn, accentuate inequality and deterioration of the environment. Ignoring these contradictions prevents us from noting how China’s defensive international strategy is undermined by the competitive pressure imposed by capitalism.

The presentation of the country as “an empire without imperialism” – a self-centered operation – is an example of those condescending views. It posits that China is developing a respectful international demeanour so as not to humiliate its Western adversaries (Guigue, 2018). But it forgets that this coexistence is broken not only by Washington’s harassment of Beijing but by the existence in China of an economy increasingly subject to the principles of profit and exploitation, which amplifies that conflict.

It is true that the current scope of capitalism is limited by the state’s regulatory presence and by the official restrictions on financialization and neoliberalism. But the country already suffers from the imbalances imposed by a system of rivalry and dispossession.

The belief that a “market economy” governs in the East that is qualitatively different from capitalism and oblivious to the disruptions of that system is the enduring misunderstanding cultivated by a great world systems theorist (Arrighi, 2007: ch. 2). This interpretation fails to note that China will be unable to escape the consequences of capitalism if it continues with the as-yet unfinished restoration of that system.

Other ingenuous views of the present developments tend to characterize China’s foreign policy as “inclusive globalization.” They highlight the peaceful tone that characterizes an expansion based on business and boasting the alleged benefits shared by all participants. They also praise the “intercivilizational alliance” generated by the new global linkage of nations and cultures.

But is it possible to forge an “inclusive globalization” under capitalism? How could the principle of mutual gains be reflected in a system governed by competition and profit?

In fact, globalization has involved dramatic rifts between winners and losers, with the consequent widening of inequality. China cannot offer magic remedies for those hardships. On the contrary, it boosts their consequences by expanding its participation in economic processes governed by exploitation and profit.

So far it has managed to limit the volatile effects of that dynamic, but the ruling classes and neoliberal elites of the country are determined to break from all restraints. They press for Beijing to accept the increasing asymmetries imposed by global capitalism. Ignoring the reality of this tendency is an exercise in self-deception.

The Chinese government itself praises capitalist globalization, exalts the Davos summits and extols the virtues of free trade with vacuous praise of universal values. Some versions attempt to reconcile this claim with the basic principles of socialist doctrine. It is claimed that the Silk Road synthesizes the contemporary modalities of economic expansion analyzed by the Communist Manifesto in the mid-19^th century.

But critics of this unlikely interpretation have recalled that Marx never applauded that development (Lin Chun, 2019). On the contrary, he denounced its terrible consequences for the popular majorities of the entire planet. The irreconcilable cannot be reconciled with theoretical alchemy.

CONTROVERSIES OVER COOPERATION

Another complacent view of the present course underscores the cooperation component of Chinese foreign policy. It notes that China is not responsible for the misfortunes suffered by its clients in the periphery and highlights the bona fide nature of investment powered by Beijing. It recalls as well that export strength is based on increases in productivity which in themselves do not affect the subordinated economies (Lo Dic, 2016).

But this idealization of business relations omits the objective effect of unequal exchange, which marks all transactions carried out under the aegis of global capitalism. China appropriates surpluses from the underdeveloped economies through the particular dynamic of these transactions. It obtains large profits because its productivity is superior to the average productivity of those clients. What is presented naively as a peculiar merit of China is the principle of generalized inequality that reigns under capitalism.

Affirming that China does not relegate its partners in Latin America or Africa to production of raw materials tends to assign exclusive responsibility for this misfortune to the world system. This overlooks the fact that China’s leadership is a central fact of international trade.

To suggest that China is “not to blame” for the general effects of capitalism amounts to covering up the benefits obtained by the country’s dominant classes. They profit from the weighted increase in productivity (through mechanisms of exploitation of salaried employees) and realize those earnings in the exchanges with the lagging economies.

When Chinese expansion is praised as “based more on productivity than on exploitation” (Lo, Dic, 2018), this fails to note that both components are interrelated aspects of the same process of appropriation of alienated labour.

The contrast between the vaunted productivity and the spurned exploitation is characteristic of neoclassical economic theory, which envisions the convergence in the market of distinct “factors of production,” forgetting that all of those components are based on the same extraction of surplus value. That expropriation is the only real source of all profits.

The mere recognition of China’s productive profile also tends to highlight the counterweight it has introduced to the international primacy of financialization and neoliberalism (Lo Dic, 2018). But the limits imposed on the first of these (international streams of speculation) do not dilute the support provided to the second (capitalist abuses of workers).

The reintroduction of capitalism in China has been the great incentive for the relocation of firms and the consequent cheapening of the labour force. This turn has helped to reconstruct the rate of profit in recent decades. If China were to play an effective role in international cooperation it would have to adopt internal and external strategies for the reversal of capitalism.

DICHOTOMIES AND SCENARIOS

China has left behind its former status as a territory torn apart by foreign incursions. It is no longer experiencing the tragic situation it faced in recent centuries. It confronts the North American aggressor from a status far removed from the prevailing destitution in the periphery. Pentagon strategists know they cannot treat their rival as they treat Panama, Iraq or Libya.

But that consolidation of sovereignty has fragmented with China’s abandonment of its anti-imperialist traditions. The post-Mao regime has turned away from the radicalized international politics sponsored by the Bandung Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement. And it has buried any gesture of solidarity with the popular struggles in the world.

This turn is the other side of its international geopolitical restraint. China avoids conflicts with the United States, without interfering in the outrages that Washington commits. The governing elite has buried all traces of sympathy with the resistances to the planet’s main oppressor.

But this turn confronts the same limits as restoration and the leap toward a dominant international status. It is subject to the unresolved dispute over the internal future of the country. The capitalist orientation favoured by the neoliberals has pro-imperialist consequences as compelling as the anti-imperialist course promoted by the Left. The conflict with the United States will directly affect these demarcations.

What are the scenarios envisioned in the conflict with the North American competitor? The hypothesis of a détente (and consequent reintegration of both powers) has been attenuated. The signs of enduring struggle are overwhelming and refute the predictions that China will be assimilated into the neoliberal order as a partner of the United States, as some writers have posited (Hung, Ho-fung, 2015).

The current context also dispels the anticipation of the gestation of a transnational capitalist class with Chinese and US participants. The choice of a path that is distinct from neoliberalism is not the only reason for this divorce (Robinson, 2017). The “Chinamerica” association – prior to the 2008 crisis – included neither amalgamations of the ruling classes nor the outlines of an emerging shared state.

In the short term, there is the robust rise of China in the face of an obvious decline of the United States. China is winning the dispute in all areas and its recent management of the pandemic is a confirmation of this. Beijing quickly achieved control over the spread of the infection while Washington coped with an overflow of cases that left the country with one of the highest numbers of deaths.

China has also excelled in its international health assistance, in contrast to the shocking self-interest of its rival. The Chinese economy has regained its high rate of growth while its US counterpart is coping with a doubtful recovery in its level of activity. Trump’s electoral defeat capped the failure of all the US operatives to subdue China.

But the medium-range scenario is more uncertain and the military, technological and financial resources maintained by North American imperialism stand in the way of any prediction as to which power will emerge victorious from the confrontation.

In general terms, it is possible to conceive of three dissimilar scenarios. Should the United States gain the upper hand it could begin to reconstitute its imperial leadership, subordinating its Asian and European partners. If, on the other hand, China manages to triumph with a capitalist free-trade strategy, its transformation as an imperial power would be confirmed.

But a victory for the Eastern giant achieved in a context of popular rebellions would completely modify the international context. It could induce China to resume its anti-imperialist stance in a process of socialist renewal. The profile of 21^st century socialism will be determined by whichever of these three scenarios ultimately prevails.

April 20, 2021

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-Lo, Dic (2018). Perspectives on China’s Systematic Impact on Late Industrialization: A Critical Appraisal SOAS University of London July

-Mercatante, Esteban (2020). Desarrollo desigual e imperialismo hoy: una discusión con David Harvey, 30-08 https://www.laizquierdadiario.com

-Ramírez, Sebastián (2020). Más sobre el carácter de China 05 de diciembre https://pcr.org.ar/nota/mas-sobre-el-caracter-de-china/

-Robinson, William (2017). I China and Trumpism: The Political Contradictions of Global 14 feb. https://www.telesurtv.net

-Rousset, Pierre (2018). Geopolítica china: continuidades, inflexiones, incertidumbres, 25/07/ https://vientosur.info/spip.php?article14038

-Svampa Maristella, (2013), “El consenso de commodities y lenguajes de valoración en América Latina”, www.iade.org.ar, 02/05.

-Turner, N. B (2014). Is China an Imperialist Country? Considerations and Evidence March 20, https://redstarpublishers.org/

FURTHER READING

In the following articles (unfortunately, unavailable in English), Claudio Katz focuses on the major dichotomies of China’s heterogeneous class structure and socio-political regime: in particular the creation in recent years of a new urban proletariat that is already mobilizing in defense of its interests; the rise of a new capitalist class heavily involved in international trade and investment but not in direct control of the state; and a bureaucratic and autocratic ruling elite that is still autonomous of this bourgeoisie. China’s future evolution, he concludes, depends very much on external circumstances, and in particular the impact of mass workers’ and popular struggles in the global context.

DESCIFRAR A CHINA I. ¿DESACOPLE O RUTA DE LA SEDA?https://katz.lahaine.org/b2-img/DESCIFRARACHINAI.DESACOPLEORUTADELASEDA.pdf

DESCIFRAR A CHINA II. ¿CAPITALISMO O SOCIALISMO? https://katz.lahaine.org/b2-img/DESCIFRARACHINAII.CAPITALISMOOSOCIALISMO.pdf

DESCIFRAR A CHINA III. PROYECTOS EN DISPUTA https://katz.lahaine.org/b2-img/DESCIFRARACHINAIII.PROYECTOSENDISPUTA.pdf

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[1] Through Pluripolarity to Socialism: A Manifesto, https://internationalmanifesto.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/through-pluripolarity-to-socialism-a-manifesto-final.pdf

The ‘Free trade’ Agreement of 1989, a decisive moment in the rise of neoliberalism in Canada

The Society for Socialist Studies has just published a special issue of its journal Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes featuring articles on the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, the predecessor of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its recent successor the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

From the introductory article, “Reflections on the Struggle Against the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA), 30 Years Later,” by Chris Hurl and Benjamin Christensen:

“The implementation of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) in January 1989 marked a decisive moment in the rise of neoliberalism as a political project in Canada. While the left, and socialist political economists in particular, played a central role in galvanizing [opposition to] the agreement and contributed in no small part to the demise of the Conservative government in 1993, the free trade agenda continued to move forward through the 1990s. This Special Issue revisits the history of struggles against free trade in Canada with two aims in mind: first to remember the coalitions through which opposition was organized, the mobilization of socialist critiques by activists and intellectuals, and the key events leading up to the adoption of the agreement. Second, drawing from this history to make sense of how things have changed over the past 30 years, as right-wing nationalists have increasingly taken the lead in opposing free trade, while neoliberals have sought to rebrand their project as ‘progressive’. How can those on the left effectively confront the project of free trade today while at the same time challenging both far-right nationalism and neoliberal globalization?”

I recommend in particular the article by Marjorie Griffin Cohen, “Confronting Power, Money and Most Economists: The Class Action of the Anti-Free Trade Movement.” The Canadian movement against this novel trade and investment deal, she writes,

“was a genuine ‘movement’ that originated locally in many different places throughout the country and was soon consolidated in a loose coalition at the national level. It was extraordinary for several reasons. First, it brought together a large number of groups that had never worked with each other before and their coalitions were strong and effective. Second, it was a movement based on class issues and was understood that way by its leaders and most of those who participated in it. Third, it democratized thinking and knowledge about economic policy, and this, in turn, meant that many groups and issues that were normally absent from a discussion of macro-economic policy, became central to the debate. Fourth, the critical arguments that developed over time focused on the problems of having market mechanisms dominate both the economic and social spheres. This scrutiny and discussion of the market system itself has not been replicated in debates on any subsequent major policy issue.

“The loss of the free trade election in 1988 and the subsequent proliferation of comprehensive international free trade agreements profoundly changed Canada. [...] [Y]et the many successes of the anti-free trade movement should be remembered for the way it propelled masses of people to deal with an issue that, until then, was in the hands of government, business, and mainstream economists. It showed that thinking about economics could be shifted away from establishment professionals to become more accessible and that large groups of people can focus on complex details, such as those in the proposed agreements, as they develop their analyses and strategies.”

This issue of Socialist Studies can be accessed here. The issue was launched at an on-line panel on March 19 featuring, in addition to Cohen’s comments, presentations by Professors Bill Carroll and Paul Kellogg, and Claude Vaillancourt of ATTAC-Québec. It is to be hoped that the journal will soon make their analyses and other articles in this issue available to non-subscribers.

Twenty-first century global capitalism reconfigures the imperialist disorder

The following is the third of a series of articles on contemporary imperialism by Argentine Marxist Claudio Katz. I translated the first article (The United States’ failed imperial recovery) and cited a section of the second in my review of the work of Leo Panitch (Remembering Leo Panitch). In this third instalment, Katz draws attention to what he considers an increasing asymmetry between the enduring geometry of post-WWII imperialism and the changing features of 21^st century global capitalism.[1] Katz published his text under the title “La indefinición imperial contemporánea.”

- Richard Fidler

* * *

Today’s imperialism still lacks clear definition

By Claudio Katz

Abstract

Imperialism is a mechanism of domination with changing historical modalities. The territorial, commercial and intermediate variants preceded the capitalist imperative of profit. This difference is diluted in the model of hegemonic successions.

Classical imperialism was characterized more by war than by economic transformations. The later model led by the United States has sought to stifle revolutions and prevent socialism. The current North American impotence contrasts with the flexibility of its British predecessor.

Mutations in contemporary capitalism have no equivalent imperial correlates. Neoliberalism disrupted the functioning of the system, but imperialism continues without a compass. The defining features will be determined in the clash with the Asian rival and popular resistance.

* * *

Imperialism is the principal instrument of capitalist domination. This system requires military deployments, diplomatic pressure, economic blackmail and cultural subjugation. A social regime based on exploitation needs coercion, deterrence and deception mechanisms to protect the profits of the powerful. The same tools are used to resolve conflicts between rival powers.

Imperialism operates in different latitudes through multiple arrangements. But its dynamic has adopted forms in each era that are quite distinct. An historical review clarifies this mutation and the current meaning of the concept.

A variety of models

Empires preceded capitalism. But in feudal, tributary and slave regimes, the mechanisms of subjection were based on territorial expansion or control of trade. This distinction is based on the conceptualization proposed by Marxist historian Ellen Meiksins Wood.

She points out that Rome forged an empire of property founded on military coercion, revenue from slavery and the conquest of territories. It managed systems of government that associated the aristocracies of each place with processes of colonization and administration of a gigantic space. This empire combined the extension of private property with military power and coalesced the Romanized local elites through an ideology rooted in religion.

Spain also commanded a vast territorial empire organized around the granting of lands in exchange for military service. The conquistadores assumed full control of populations that were devastated by super-exploitation. The Crown’s emissaries justified this undertaking with the messages of Christianity (Wood, 2003 24-41)

Commercial empires took on another profile. The Arab-Muslim variant linked dispersed communities in common activity governed by laws, moral codes and cultures articulated by the religious leaders of the urban elites.

In the Italian cities, the commercial empire was controlled by the financial aristocracies that monopolized trade in the fragmented feudal universe. The use of mercenaries to carry out military actions illustrated that priority of mercantile management. Holland developed another modality of this commercial type, dominating maritime routes through large companies. It sought not tribute, lands or minerals but full control of those connections (Wood, 2003: 42-70).

From this standpoint, no commercial empire achieved capitalist status. They were sustained in gains arising out of trade and the consequent sequence of buying low and selling high. They did not include the basic principle of a process of accumulation, sustained in the competition to reduce costs through increasing productivity. They simply embodied distinct patterns of pre-capitalist empires.

This approach considers that it was Great Britain that inaugurated the passage to the current forms of imperialism through prolonged transition and different paths. The expansion of the English empire in North America synthesized that combination of forms that both obstructed and promoted capitalism: obstruction, through the reintroduction of permanent and hereditary slavery on cotton plantations, in order to facilitate English industrialization. Promotion, by the introduction of capitalist agriculture through the transfer of settlers who completed the appropriation of the New World (Wood, 2003: 71-86).

This empire of settlers — rehearsed in the laboratory of Ireland — incorporated capitalist relations in American agriculture through the occupation of lands and the extermination of the indigenous population. In the thirteen colonies of New England there emerged the principle of competition for profits arising from exploitation, which later spread to industrial accumulation in the cities. This new pillar of profit (no longer commercial) was introduced through a form of pro-capitalist colonialism.

Wood also recalls that the English model in other regions (such as India) adopted the old forms of tribute. It started as a commercial enterprise and was extended to territorial conquest. Under the management of a private company it forged a lucrative market for British industry at the expense of local artisans.

This interpretation postulates, therefore, that capitalist imperialism emerged only in the nineteenth century under English leadership, mixed with the preceding archaic forms. Great Britain combined three anticipatory modalities of contemporary imperialism. It spearheaded forms of colonialism (implantation of populations in conquered territories), formal empire (explicit domination over other nations) and informal empire (pre-eminence through economic supremacy).

This diversity of English variants was established in their colonial (Canada, Australia), formal (India), informal (Latin America) and hybrid (Southern Africa) possessions. But in general it underpinned the capitalist component through the expansion of free trade to ensure the disposal of manufactured surpluses.

Capitalist imperialism has been categorically dominant in the 20th century under the leadership of the United States. That power only took the form of a formal empire for a brief expansionary period. It quickly internationalized the imperatives of capitalism. It resorted to some territorial expansion in the American hemisphere, but in general dispensed with colonies and privileged the mechanisms of association and subordination of local elites.

Wood emphasizes that this form of pure empire of capital is governed by the logic of profit. The occupation of new space is complementary or non-essential. The old explicit and transparent coercion is replaced by the opaque and impersonal modes of economic tyranny.

The underlying social regime is the main differentiating factor in the different empires. The old territorial, commercial and intermediate forms operated in societies very different from contemporary capitalism.

Hegemonic cycles

Another model of imperial dynamics privileges the concept of hegemony in order to distinguish historical varieties. It explores how coercion was combined with consensus and studies the way in which economic supremacy overlapped with territorial expansion and geopolitical superiority (Arrighi, 1999: 42-106).

According to this framework, empires have developed in a succession of systemic cycles of accumulation since the 15th century, mixing economic logics of productive development and financial control with territorial logics of military advantage. Each hegemony entailed distinct global primacies, in the Genoese (1340-1560), Dutch (1560-1780), British (1740-1870) and American (1930-2000?) eras.

The first cycle of Italian cities disrupted the interstices of the medieval system. It privileged long-distance trade through a partnership with the Hispanic-Portuguese empire. That model was succeeded by the Dutch domination, which introduced state structures and military techniques without using them for territorial control. It prioritized financial networks and trading links.

In contrast, British hegemony introduced the territorial component and took advantage of the new centrality of the Atlantic Ocean to forge a maritime empire. It used the advantages of insularity and consolidated a new nation-state by defeating its French adversary. It resorted to settlement of colonists and the use of slavery to build a global supremacy based on free trade and industrial pre-eminence.

The United States achieved global primacy after completing an internal development dominated by the extermination of the indigenous population, widespread slavery and immigration. It promoted the use of gigantic natural resources along with profitable protectionist strategies. In the military expansion of the internal frontier it brought into being the foundations of the planetary gendarme of the 20th century (Arrighi, 1999: 288-390).

This model of hegemonic successions highlights the duration of common capitalist norms over five centuries. It diverges from Wood’s approach, centred on the existence of differentiated social foundations in the tributary, feudal and capitalist regimes. In this framework only England (with intermediate forms) and the United States (fully) conform to the checklist.

The main advantage of Wood’s approach lies in its distinction among the different empires, based on clear definitions of capitalism. This system is based on competition for profits arising from the exploitation of waged workers and not in the pre-eminence of trading channels. The Italian cities and Holland spearheaded varieties of commercial empires and their counterparts in Rome or Spain formed territorial modalities. Capitalism was absent in the domains based on mercantile leadership or spatial primacy.

The empires of the last two centuries were not distinguished from their forerunners by the magnitude of commercial transactions. Such transactions were involved in all the systems of the last two millennia. Nor are the differences derived from the duration of multinational (Great Britain) or continental state modalities (United States), compared to the limited city (Genoa) or protonational (Holland) precursors. Rome and Spain already had gigantic state structures.

The novelty of the English empire was the introduction of a singular base, industrial profit, which the United States subsequently amplified. This peculiarity is erased if one relies on globalized accumulation models that have existed since the 15th century.

It is true that the various empires did not dominate through force alone. Hegemony was equally decisive. But the variety of ideologies reflected the existence of differentiated social foundations. The lust for profit arising from exchange (Genoa and Holland) was based on very different pillars from the drive for profit derived from the investment imperative (England and the United States). If the specificity of each cycle is analyzed by observing these pillars, it clears the path to understanding ancient and contemporary forms of domination.

The classic period

The era of informal empire began in 1830 — with English domination of free trade – and closed in 1870 with the reintroduction of armed confrontation. The return to conflict among the main powers generalized the use of the term imperialism. That notion was put forward by theorists like Hobson, who contrasted the new climate of world confrontation with the previous era of post-Napoleonic equilibria (Hobson, 1980).

In this new framework, all the powers sought to renew their credentials on the battlefield. The stragglers (Germany) wanted to expand their territory to build a formal empire. The rising power (United States) already possessed a favourable economic structure and was preparing to replace the declining English leader. Militaristic effervescence, racist aggressiveness, and chauvinist intolerance led to the death toll of the First World War (Arrighi, 1978: ch 3).

The new empires (Germany, Japan, the United States) fought in alliances or disputes with their predecessors (France, England) for control of the world market, to the detriment of the dying empires (Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal). Disputes were settled through protection and the establishment of monetary areas in the distribution of the periphery.

Lenin’s theory of classical imperialism provided the main conceptualization of that period of traumatic inter-imperialist wars and revolutionary outbreaks. The Bolshevik leader attributed these conflagrations to competition for external markets and sources of supply, amidst a background of colonial possessions that already existed among the older powers. The drive to dispute those territories reinforced the likelihood of war and reduced the margins of diplomatic coexistence.

Starting from this characterization Lenin wrote a political pamphlet that polemicized with the social democratic expectation that war could be avoided through proposals for disarmament and cooperation between rival powers. The communist leader objected, arguing that militarism was not a mistaken policy of the capitalists but the cruel result of competition for profit.

The Russian leader stressed the futility of pacifist persuasion, when the wealthy interests were preparing to settle their differences in the trenches. He argued that the war drive arose from objective tendencies and strategic decisions by the powerful. The warmongering of the time meant that rivalry prevailed over international association in the relationships among large capitalist enterprises (Lenin, 2006).

The leader of the Russian revolution recorded with great realism the main contradictions of his time, as against the utopian expectations of his critics. He advocated internationalist policies of resistance to the immolation of recruits and pointed out that peace could only be won in a simultaneous struggle against capitalism.

In our interpretation of this approach we highlighted this political function of Lenin’s text in the ever-present context of the war. We emphasized that meaning in opposition to other interpretations focused on the economic aspects of that influential text (Katz, 2011: 17-32).

In this connection, Lenin’s conception reformulated the vision expressed by Hilferding. It emphasized the existence of a general shift towards protectionism and the increasing tendency of banking capital to subordinate its peers in commerce and industry. It also highlighted the novel weight of monopolies through the increasing size of companies and the pre-eminence of capital exports as a way of absorbing the profits made in the periphery.

The debate among Marxists about the relevance of these characterizations persists to this day. Several theorists argue that they are not suitable to the interwar period (Harvey, 2018), while others allege an exaggeration of the role of monopoly and the limited relevance of capital exports (Heinrich, 2008: (218-221). Some also single out for criticism the extrapolation of features of the German economy to the rest of the powers (Leo Panitch, 2014).

These objections refer to problems actually present in the theory of classical imperialism, but with little implication in its original formulation. Lenin’s interest was in demonstrating how certain economic imbalances led to inter-imperialist clashes. He analyzed how each productive, commercial or financial feature of the new epoch accentuated the rivalries that were determined on the battlefield.

The primary function of his text was political. That is why he converged in the battle against militarism with the revolutionaries who objected to his economic standpoint (Luxemburg). And on the contrary, he clashed with thinkers who shared his approach to the financial-productive changes but from the opposite side of reformism (Hilferding). The polemical tone of his writings was directed not to protectionism, financial hegemony or monopolies, but to the attitude of the socialists towards the war.

Another great misunderstanding has surrounded the Leninist assessment of imperialism as a “final stage” of capitalism. The communist leader was effectively looking to a revolutionary popular response to the bloodletting of war that would put an end to the global tyranny of profit. The beginning of socialism in Russia corroborated the validity of that expectation.

The subsequent course of history led to another outcome and the period analyzed by Lenin was confined to a classical stage of the capitalist empires. He had managed to perceive the peculiarity of a phase that could have ended the historical persistence of capitalism. But subsequent events did not lead to that extinction.

The postwar changes

The end of the warlike confrontations between rival powers differentiates the imperialism of the second half of the 20th century from its classical precedent. Confrontations persisted but without generalized armed conflicts. They did not extend to the military sphere, and a more concerted geopolitical administration prevailed. The monumental war arsenal of the West was generally used to consolidate the dispossession of the periphery.

The management of the new model under the command of the United States included a novel form of collective imperialism. Western military solidarity was joined ​​with the growing international economic association between firms of different origins. The multinational company expanded and protectionism lost weight against the free trade pressures deployed by the companies that preceded globalization.

The size of the markets, the diversification of supplies and the scale of production were determinants of this new scenario. The drive to reduce costs and increase productivity reinforced alliances between firms. In contrast to the previous period, this interconnection was not limited to companies of the same nationality (Amin, 2013).

But since this internationalization of the economy had no direct correspondence at the state level, imperialism continued to be located in the old institutional structures. No global entity contributed the legal systems, social traditions and political legitimacy required to ensure the global reproduction of capital.

The supremacy of the United States was overwhelming and the imperialism of that period was identified with its imprint. NATO was forged under the leadership of the Pentagon and the United Nations were located in New York. That predominance reflected an economic superiority that was stabilized with the neutralization of rivals. The old demolition of defeated competitors was replaced by support for their reconstruction under the command of the winning power. The United States introduced a system of subaltern alliances to counter the resurgence of its adversaries.

The leading power acted as a global sheriff. It protected all ruling classes from popular insurgency and geopolitical instability. To ensure compliance with this role it obtained external financing to sustain the dollar and Treasury Bonds. The Pentagon was the structural support of Wall Street.

In contrast to classical imperialism, the ruling classes of the First World accepted that military patronage. That is why collective security replaced national defense as the guiding principle of armed intervention. Washington established privileged links with the main elites of the planet and universalized its ideology of celebration of the market and the exaltation of individualism.

The main function of postwar imperialism was to contain the revolutionary surge and the danger of socialism. US bases were established throughout the planet to counter popular uprisings in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The cold war against the USSR was another decisive component of this action. All capitalist classes were aligned in a strategy of tension with the socialist bloc. This confrontation differed qualitatively from the inter-imperial clashes of the past due to the absence of bourgeois primacy in the Soviet Union.

The system of that country was not commanded by a ruling class that owned the means of production and oriented to accumulating capital. The ruling bureaucracy defended its own interests and sought coexistence with Washington to settle disputes in the respective areas of influence. But it did not follow the imperial pattern of subduing territories to increase profits. Harassment of the USSR was a decisive feature of postwar militarism and the end of that regime inaugurated the current stage of 21st century imperialism.

Comparison with the British antecedent

In the last four decades there has been a radical change in the international role of the United States. A persistent crisis of leadership has succeeded the unquestionable postwar primacy of North America. Many authors highlight the similarity of declining trajectories with the English precedent (Roberts, 2016: 39-40). They point to the similarities in monetary management and political action.

Both powers formed the only global capitalist empires. The pre-capitalist (Rome, Spain, Netherlands) and non-capitalist (Soviet Union) rulers could not be pigeon-holed as such. Other failed empires (France) or defeated ones (Germany, Japan) never achieved planetary pre-eminence.

The dominant world status of the Anglo-American duo was based on military superiority and also included the economy, finance and culture. Both powers achieved industrial supremacy and capture of financial flows. They exercised in addition an overwhelming intellectual influence that was confirmed in the universalization of English as a lingua franca.

But the UK distinguished itself from its transatlantic peer by its adaptability to redeployment. It exhibited a flexibility that the United States has not even hinted at (Hobsbawm, 2007: ch 3).

Size is a factor in this disparity. The limited surface area of the British isles promoted emigration and settlement in the immensity of the North American territory. While England had to conquer other regions to dispute pre-eminence, the United States developed with the arrival of the dispossessed families. It based its development on land and not on external maritime incursions. It had certain similarities with the expansion of old Russia into the steppes from the central nucleus in Moscow. It also resorted to a self-centred model based on the domestic market and acted on a global scale only when its endogenous accumulation process had matured. It then entered the battle for imperial leadership.

But that size advantage has proved to be a double-edged sword. It allows it to contend with territorially equivalent rivals (China), but obstructs the adaptation displayed by its predecessor to a location more suitable to pursuing the competitive race.

This lack of North American flexibility also derives from its industrial model. The United States forged the vertically integrated company, with bureaucratic structures commensurate with its huge internal market. On the contrary, England transformed itself into the workshop of the world — with external supply and demand from foreign clients — using highly specialized and flexible companies (Arrighi, 1999: 288-322).

When the transformations of world capitalism affected the competitiveness of this model, Great Britain relegated industry to a renewal of its primacy in commerce and finance. The old manufacturer was converted into a new centre of intermediation and banking. The United States has been unwilling or unable to emulate that mutation. Its industry persists at a disadvantage rooted in the continental dimension of the country and experiments with dubious forays into the transnational sphere. It has sought to compensate for the manufacturing retreat using its the pre-eminence in currency, finance and technology. But it faces trade deficits and debt imbalances of greater size than its predecessor.

American inflexibility in the face of British plasticity has some outstanding military determinants. The United States has forged a military structure that goes qualitatively beyond anything established by England. It has assumed a role of protection of world capitalism that the British never adopted. That unprecedented power reduces its ability to maneuver in the context of the contemporary multipolar scenario.

Britain knew its limits to maintaining world leadership and resigned itself to the loss of its empire through decolonization. America has closed off the paths to replicating that retreat. That is why it engages again and again in unsuccessful operations to rebuild its leadership.

England was able to process its departure from the foreground without giving up external interventionism. It has participated in countless military operations since 1945 and maintains 145 military bases in 42 countries (Pilger, 2020). Under Thatcher it even carried out naval raids of colonial reconquest (Malvinas), to shore up its internal onslaught against the working class and unions.

But those actions are framed in association with the North American imperial substitute. That is why the corollary of the military operation against Argentina developed under Blair’s command in a more subordinate accompaniment to the US wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq (Anderson, 2020).

Washington cannot emulate that British course of secondary military action complementary to that of the imperial leader. No partner replaces it in its pre-eminent role and in the global function that it continues to exercise.

These differences affect the variable application of the informal empire concept. That notion fit perfectly with the UK, but it is of questionable relevance to the North American case. The United States has dominated since the postwar period not only with economic primacy but with unprecedented military blackmail. True, it has never based its power on occupation nor has it built areas of domination or colonization. But it has used its firepower like nobody else.

Britain did not lead crusades on behalf of capitalism as a whole against popular revolutions or threats of socialism. It adapted to the postcolonial context in return for favourable economic agreements. The Pentagon manages the largest arsenal in history and is barred from that course.

The concerted imperial replacement taken by the Anglo-American model is not applicable to the current tension with China. That is why the United States needs to update its primacy with displays of force, but amidst increasingly more adverse results.

Finally, the ideological peculiarities of both powers are also shifting. Although in its heyday England administered a quarter of the planet, it always was explicit in the defense of its economic interests. True, it invoked “civilization” as its purpose, but more often resorted to messages of national superiority based on some founding myth of its own history. It did not abuse its mandate of salvation of the overseas subordinates.

In contrast, the United States forged itself as a nation without ancient roots and extended its domination using universalist ideologies.It has always masked its imperial action with pleas that it was coming to the relief of humanity. That self-deception not only contrasts with British flexibility. It empowers all the ingredients of megalomania that now snarl Washington in a dead end. We will need to see if that impasse now extends to England, or if on the contrary Brexit embodies another episode of the British flexibility to adapt to a new era.

Two different mutations

The three models of imperialism that have ruled since the 19th century were each closely connected with the functioning of capitalism in each era. But the two dimensions are not subject to the same pattern of transformation. Imperialism ensures the continuity of the system and plays a protagonistic role in the major crises. But it operates only as a mechanism of protection for that foundation. It does not constitute, like capitalism, a mode of production or a defining structure of the governing rules in society.

It is important to recognize these differences between the system and its mechanisms, to note how imperialism conforms to each historical period of capitalism. It does not form one of those stages. It only adapts its modalities to the required changes in the system. Capitalism has always included colonial or imperial modalities and has used changing forms of oppression to exercise its growing dominance.

That is why the geopolitical and military dimension of imperialism is so relevant. It helps us to understand how capitalism deals with its own crises and how it responds to popular resistance and revolutionary challenges.

Imperialism presents economic and ideological contours akin to the prevailing mode of capitalism, but its specific imprint is marked by the militaristic aspect. The current identification of the term imperialism with war, occupations and massacres expresses an accurate perception of its meaning. It applies as well to the international scope of its actions.

Certainly there is a peculiar economic facet of imperialism that must be studied in its specific form. That inquiry has led to important discoveries in recent decades. It has demonstrated how the capitalists of the centre appropriate the resources of underdeveloped countries.

The analysis of this dispossession corroborates the contemporary weight of imperialism, but it involves only one component of the phenomenon. The principal firms in advanced countries capture rents and profits from the periphery, based on the geopolitical-military domination that its states exercise globally. The epicentre of imperialism is located in that control. Before investigating the complex mazes of imperial economy it is necessary to clarify those military and state pillars of the arrangement. That is why we have begun our evaluation of 21^st century imperialism using this dimension.

Understanding this arrangement requires clarifying the recent economic transformations of capitalism. It is necessary to clarify the changes in the dynamics of surplus value, accumulation and the rate of profit. The initial evaluation of imperialism has proceeded along another path, however. Before investigating foreign investment, the terms of trade or differential rates of exploitation, it is necessary to determine how and by whom geopolitical-military domination is exercised at the global level.

These differences of analysis in the study of capitalism and imperialism are revealed in the dissimilar results of both inquiries. While the transformations registered in capitalism are visible, the changes in imperialism have not yet been defined. They are two processes subject to modifications of a distinct nature.

Contemporary capitalism has radically mutated under the impact of neoliberalism, globalization, digitization, precariousness and financialization. These transformations have no direct correlation in imperialism. The changes on both planes unfold at a differentiated rhythm. The economic mutation is drastic and its geopolitical manifestations are diffuse. Twenty-first century capitalism is totally different from its postwar precedent. But imperialism at present maintains many features of continuity with the previous model. There is ample proof of this asymmetry.

Categorical transformations

Today’s capitalism emerged from the great crisis of the 1970s. This upheaval ended in the new model that neoliberalism embodied. Since then low growth has prevailed in the West with a significant expansion in the East that is not enough to reboot the world economy. The decline of the United States and the rise of China — in a framework of reduced increase in global GDP — synthesize that scenario (Katz, 2020).

Globalization has impacted all areas of the system. It has modified the industrial geography by shifting production to the Asian continent. That region has become the great workshop of the planet, to the detriment of the old manufacturing primacy of Europe and the United States. This turn is based on the increase in exploitation of workers and in a novel process of productive internationalization, accompanied by significant commercial and financial correlates.

The globalization of the economy has shortened times spent on productive activity. It has reinforced the leadership of transnational companies through the international cleavage in the manufacturing process.

It has deepened a new global division of labour, propping up models oriented to exports and articulated by global value chains. These circuits enhance the weight of intermediate goods and consolidate vertical specialization and outsourcing, the relocation of investments and the fragmentation of inputs and outputs.

This drastic change in the productive profile has in turn deepened the subdivision of the old periphery between a group of emerging countries that is industrializing and another that replicates the old pattern of export of primary goods.

The new productive globalization is also based on the revolution in computing that gave birth to digital capitalism. This mutation replicates many characteristics of analogous processes of radical technological transformation that have occurred since the 19th century.

The information revolution has facilitated the cheapening of the labour force and inputs through a significant reduction in the cost of transportation and communications. It has opened the way for multi-million dollar investments in digitization processes, modifying the ranking of the large firms. The high-tech companies lead in earnings and set the pace for all players in the system.

These transformations also consolidate a new situation for labour marked by precariousness, insecurity and flexibilization. The capitalists implement these abuses taking advantage of the enormous reserves of the global labour force. They move plants to regions with weakened, banned or non-existent unions in order to create a climate of fear of job losses. The reconversion of jobs is conditioned by this huge geographic remodeling of industry and services.

The labour process is also registered in an internal differentiation between activities of design, development and manufacture that upset all the distinctions between manual and mental labour. Work identities have been drastically affected by this restructuring.

Financialization constitutes another visible mutation in contemporary capitalism. It includes not only the gigantic increase in financial assets but significant qualitative modifications in the self-financing of companies, the securitization of finance and family management of mortgages and pensions. The convulsions generated by this expansion of the financial universe intertwine with shocks derived from the deterioration of the environment.

Capitalist valorization has undermined for centuries the material foundations of economic reproduction. But the environmental disaster of recent decades tends to break the age-old equilibria that allowed the construction of societies based on exchange with nature. If global warming continues to deepen the ecological footprint, the looming disaster will leave all the known convulsions far behind.

The environmental debacle has some similarities with the demolition generated by the two world wars of the last century. Destructive tendencies have been forged that are beyond the control of the capitalists themselves and can lead to endless disasters.

These dangers periodically surface through capitalist crises of the 21st century. Those outbreaks were not spawned from previous downturns. They burst like market explosions from the bubbles generated by financialization. The 2008 disruption was illustrative of that variety of misalignments. It began with the default of subprime debtors and resulted in a traumatic collapse of interbank operations.

These crises differ significantly from those prevailing in the 1930s. They are not marked by deflation and bank failures. In the contemporary dynamics, they are marked by state rescue of banks and the combination of monetary expansion with fiscal austerity. This sequence confirms the enduring character of state interventionism.

When those financial crises precipitated by speculation in securities and currencies reach intensities of capital importance, underlying productive imbalances also emerge. The old and well-known overproduction is the main cause of these convulsions, but it assumes another scale in the globalized economy.

New forms of itinerant global overproduction impact on all value chains. These tensions go beyond the traditional dispute between powers over the placement of surplus goods and they provoke turbulent processes of capital devaluation.

Mutations in purchasing power, in turn, increase the effect of these contemporary crises. The old stable consumption norm has been replaced by more unpredictable procurement patterns and the erosion of purchasing power deepens income decline and job insecurity. That retraction of consumption crowns the spiral of contradictions of today’s capitalism.

This review of changes in the functioning and stresses of that system illustrates the enormous scale of the registered mutations. The capitalism of the 21st century is radically different from its predecessors of the past century.

Uncertain alterations

The transformations in the imperial sphere do not appear as forcefully as the modifications in capitalism. In imperialism there is a crisis marked by the repeated failure of the US project to recover its world leadership.

The correlation between free-trade capitalism and English supremacy that prevailed in the 19th century or between interventionist capitalism and North American primacy in the 20th century does not exist today. Globalized, digital, precarious and financialized capitalism develops without a geopolitical-military command. The United States fails to lead it, nor are replacements in view.

The United States continues to be the system’s gendarme. With its humungous military budget it rules the seas, controls the skies and manages the computer networks. The bloody air raids of recent decades are a constant reminder of the deadly warning it issued with the atomic bombing of Japan.

But that power has been undermined by the limitations of a power corroded by internal crises that paralyze its leading role in global politics. NATO remains as a behemoth affected by sharp differences over funding. The old empires continue to endure in a furtive (England) or conflictive way (France), but each power seeks to achieve its own global relocation by distancing itself from obedience to Washington.

The United States relies on regional ramifications to sustain its global power. It promotes Israel’s late colonialism to control the Middle East and bolsters Australia’s arsenal to guard Oceania. It retains Canada as an accomplice in its operations and consolidates the bases in Colombia to keep an eye on Latin America. Its Eastern European missiles are aimed at Russia and the weapons provided to Japan and South Korea threaten China.

But what capacity does Washington show to impose its agenda on this network of partners, appendages or vassals? In recent decades it has failed in all regions. It maintains the same formal postwar primacy in a radically opposite setting. It exhibits an enormous warlike power, without the cohesion required to enforce that power.

That is why the imperialism of the 21st century does not present a defined physiognomy. It is a category in gestation, which will only adopt a clear contour when the crisis of the United States reaches a point of resolution.

Turmoil ahead

Studies of imperialism flourished during the last century but decreased dramatically at the beginning of the new millennium. The very use of the term was excluded from the current vocabulary of the Social Sciences. Neoliberalism and globalization monopolized the attention of analysts and dominated all reflections on contemporary capitalism.

The escalation of regional wars, the drama of the refugees and the impact of terrorism reintroduced interest in the issue. Questions about imperialism were associated with the evaluation of the flagging American attempt to recover primacy.

In the past decade that inquiry included a generalized revitalization of the term empire. But that change in language did not change the substance of the problem. In fact, the way in which the two terms are handled is unclear. Imperialism and empire equally fit the role of the United States. Since World War II it no longer operated as just one more opponent on the inter-imperialist chessboard nor did it shrink from serving as a single empire in the entire system.

The United States has not confronted its rivals in war nor has it incorporated in its structure the main ruling classes or states of the planet. It stood at the top of an associated structure of collective imperialism.

As this arrangement is in the process of being remodeled, whether it is to be classified in the plural (imperialism) or singular (empire) is quite unclear. The system of current world domination does not resemble the classic era of inter-imperial battles, nor does it establish an exclusive global management centre.

Other more evaluative applications of empire and imperialism face more drawbacks. They tend to consider or denigrate the modalities of global governance. In conventional Political Science the first term is synonymous with order and the second with confrontation. Both meanings avoid investigating the connection of these variants with the functioning of capitalism or with the needs of the ruling classes.

All the questions generated by 21st century imperialism have taken on another dimension from the shock generated by the Great Confinement of 2020. The crisis of the pandemic has highlighted the magnitude of the natural disasters that capitalism promotes. The coronavirus alarms us to the looming catastrophe if climate change cannot be tempered.

The extensive paralysis of the economy and the unprecedented state aid to avoid depression converged last year with the contraction of workers’ income, increased job insecurity and the reinforcement of inequality. The pandemic has portrayed the functioning of a system based on oppression. This regime could not survive without the protection that imperialism offers to the dominators.

This arrangement performs numerous functions, but it prioritizes the subordination of workers. It is a mechanism built to deal with mass popular resistance. Imperialism includes military intervention against those uprisings and the fomenting of war among the dispossessed themselves to deflect popular discontent.

The great popular revolutions were the main background for the system’s militarism. These uprisings determined the course taken by classical imperialism and its postwar corollary. The current variant will also remain marked by the dynamics assumed by the rebellions of the oppressed. But the more immediate arena of definition of 21st century imperialism is located in the clash that opposes the United States to China.

Katz adds: “We will address that issue in our next text.”

24-1-2020

REFERENCES

Amin, Samir (2013). Transnational capitalism or collective imperialism?, 23-03.

Anderson, Perry (2020) ¿Ukania perpetua? New Left Review, 125, nov dic

Arrighi, Giovanni (1978). Geometría del imperialismo, Siglo XXI, México.

Arrighi, Giovanni (1999). El largo siglo XX. Akal, Madrid.

Harvey, David (2018). Realities on the Ground, http://roape.net/2018/02/05

Heinrich, Michael (2008). Crítica de la economía política: una introducción a El capital de Marx, Escolar y Mayo Editores, 2008 Madrid.

Hobsbawm, Eric (2007). Guerra y paz en el siglo XXI, Editorial Crítica, Barcelona.

Hobson, John Estudio Del Imperialismo (1980) [1902], Madrid, Alianza. https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south

Katz, Claudio (2011). Bajo el imperio del capital, Luxemburg, Buenos Aires.

Katz, Claudio (2020). América Latina en el capitalismo contemporáneo. I-Economía y crisis 7-2-2020, www.lahaine.org/katz

Lenin, Vladimir (2006). El imperialismo, fase superior del capitalismo Buenos Aires, Quadrata

Panitch, Leo (2014). Repensando o marxismo e o imperialismo para o século XXI, Tensões Mundiais. Fortaleza, v. 10, n. 18, 19.

Pilger, John (2020). El virus más letal no es el covid-19, es la guerra. 19-12, https://rebelion.org

Roberts Michael (2016). The long depression, Haymarket Books, 2016.

Wood, Ellen Meiksins (2003) Empire of capital, Londres/Nueva York, Verso

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[1] For another, not unrelated attempt to analyze these disparities, see Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber, “Complex Stratification in the World System: Capitalist Totality and Geopolitical Fragmentation,” Science & Society, Vol. 84, No. 1, January 2020, 95-125.

Cuba responds to Trump’s roll-back of its bilateral relations with United States

The following statement was issued June 16 by the Revolutionary Government of Cuba. Here is the official English translation, modified very slightly for punctuation and syntax. The original text, in Spanish, is here.

On June 16, 2017, in a Miami theater, US President Donald Trump delivered a speech full of hostile anti-Cuban rhetoric reminiscent of the times of open confrontation with our country. He announced his government’s Cuba policy, which rolls back the progress achieved over the last two years since December 17, 2014, when Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama announced the decision to re-establish diplomatic relations and engage in a process towards the normalization of bilateral relations.

In what constitutes a setback in the relations between both countries, President Trump gave a speech and signed a policy directive titled “National Security Presidential Memorandum,” which provides for the elimination of private educational “people-to-people” exchanges and for greater control over all travelers to Cuba, as well as the prohibition of business, trade and financial transactions between US companies and certain Cuban companies linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the intelligence and security services, under the alleged objective of depriving us of revenue. The US president justified this policy using alleged concerns over the human rights situation in Cuba and the need to rigorously enforce the US blockade laws, conditioning their lifting, as well as any improvements in US-Cuba bilateral relations, to our country’s making changes inherent to its constitutional order.

Trump also abrogated Presidential Policy Directive “Normalization of Relations between the United States and Cuba,” issued by President Obama on October 14, 2016. Although said Directive did not conceal the interventionist character of the US policy nor the fact that its main purpose was to advance US interests in order to bring about changes in the economic, political and social systems of our country, it did recognize Cuba’s independence, sovereignty and self-determination and the Cuban government as a legitimate and equal interlocutor, as well as the benefits that a civilized coexistence would have for both countries and peoples despite the great differences that exist between both governments. The Directive also conceded that the blockade is an obsolete policy and that it should be lifted.

Once again, the US Government resorts to coercive methods of the past when it adopts measures aimed at stepping up the blockade, effective since February 1962, which not only causes harm and deprivations to the Cuban people and is the main obstacle to our economic development, but also affects the sovereignty and interests of other countries, which arouses international rejection.

The measures announced impose additional obstacles to the already very limited opportunities that the US business sector had in order to trade with and invest in Cuba.

Likewise, those measures restrict even more the right of US citizens to visit our country, which was already limited due to the obligation of using discriminatory licenses, at a moment when the US Congress, echoing the feelings of broad sectors of that society, calls not only for an end to the travel ban, but also for the elimination of the restrictions on trade with Cuba.

The measures announced by President Trump run counter to the majority support of US public opinion, including the Cuban emigration in that country, to the total lifting of the blockade and the establishment of normal relations between Cuba and the United States.

Instead, the US President, who has been once again ill-advised, is taking decisions that favor the political interests of an irrational minority of Cuban origin in the state of Florida which, out of petty motivations, does not give up its intent to punish Cuba and its people for exercising the legitimate and sovereign right of being free and having taken the reins of their own destiny.

Later on, we shall make a deeper analysis of the scope and implications of the announcement.

The Government of Cuba condemns the new measures to tighten the blockade, which are doomed to failure, as has been repeatedly evidenced in the past, for they will not succeed in their purpose to weaken the Revolution or bend the Cuban people, whose resistance against aggressions of all sorts and origins has been put to the test throughout almost six decades.

The Government of Cuba rejects political manipulation and double standards in human rights. The Cuban people enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms and can proudly show some achievements that are still a chimera for many countries of the world, including the United States, such as the right to health, education and social security; equal pay for equal work, children’s rights as well as the rights to food, peace and development. Cuba, with its modest resources, has also contributed to the improvement of the human rights situation in many countries of the world, despite the limitations inherent to its condition as a blockaded country.

The United States are not in the position to teach us lessons. We have serious concerns about the respect for and guarantees of human rights in that country, where there are numerous cases of murders, brutality and abuses by the police, particularly against the African-American population; the right to life is violated as a result of the deaths caused by fire arms; child labor is exploited and there are serious manifestations of racial discrimination; there is a threat to impose more restrictions on medical services, which will leave 23 million persons without health insurance; there is unequal pay between men and women; migrants and refugees, particularly those who come from Islamic countries, are marginalized; there is an attempt to put up walls that discriminate against and denigrate neighbor countries; and international commitments to preserve the environment and address climate change are abandoned.

Also a source of concern are the human rights violations by the United States in other countries, such as the arbitrary detention of tens of prisoners in the territory illegally occupied by the US Naval Base in Guantánamo, Cuba, where even torture has been applied; extrajudicial executions and the death of civilians caused by drones; as well as the wars unleashed against countries like Iraq, under false pretenses like the possession of weapons of mass destruction, with disastrous consequences for the peace, security and stability in the Middle East.

It should be recalled that Cuba is a State Party to 44 international human rights instruments, while the US is only a State Party to 18. Therefore, we have much to show, say and defend.

Upon confirming the decision to re-establish diplomatic relations, Cuba and the United States ratified their intention to develop respectful and cooperative relations between both peoples and governments, based on the principles and purposes enshrined in the UN Charter. In its Declaration issued on July 1, 2015, the Revolutionary Government of Cuba reaffirmed that “these relations must be founded on absolute respect for our independence and sovereignty; the inalienable right of every State to choose its political, economic, social and cultural system, without interference in any form; and sovereign equality and reciprocity, which constitute inalienable principles of International Law”, as was established in the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed by the Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC), at its second summit held in Havana. Cuba has not renounced these principles, nor will it ever do so.

The Government of Cuba reiterates its will to continue a respectful and cooperative dialogue on topics of mutual interest, as well as the negotiation of outstanding issues with the US Government. During the last two years it has been evidenced that both countries, as was repeatedly expressed by the President of the Councils of State and of Ministers, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, can cooperate and coexist in a civilized manner, respecting the differences and promoting everything that benefits both nations and peoples, but it should not be expected that, in order to achieve that, Cuba would make concessions inherent to its sovereignty and independence, or accept preconditions of any sort.

Any strategy aimed at changing the political, economic and social system in Cuba, either through pressures and impositions or by using more subtle methods, shall be doomed to failure.

The changes that need to be made in Cuba, as those that have been made since 1959 and the ones that we are introducing now as part of the process to update our economic and social system, will continue to be sovereignly determined by the Cuban people.

Just as we have been doing since the triumph of the Revolution on January 1st, 1959, we will take on every risk and shall continue to advance steadfastly and confidently in the construction of a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable nation.