Economic imperialism

“ Thread by thread they have been woven together on the loom of an inexorable natural development, until the firm net of imperialist world politics has encircled five continents. It is a huge historical complex of events, whose roots reach deep down into the Plutonic deeps of economic creation, whose outermost branches spread out and point away into a dimly dawning new world, events before whose all-embracing immensity, the conception of guilt and retribution, of defense and offense, sink into pale nothingness.
Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. ”

“ Imperialism, thanks to the universality, penetrability, and mobility and the break-neck speed of the formation of finance capital as the driving force of imperialism, lends vigor to both these tendencies. Imperialism links up incomparably more rapidly and more deeply the individual national and continental units into a single entity, bringing them into the closest and most vital dependence upon each other and rendering their economic methods, social forms, and levels of development more identical. ”

“ From an economic point of view, this special interest of the nations in imperialism, like their common interest, is three-fold: markets for manufactured products, opportunities to invest capital and access to raw materials. If trade never followed the flag, if India imported as much from Germany as from Great Britain, and Madagascar as much from Austria as from France, if there were an absolutely open door in each colony and a real as well as legal equality for all merchants, there would be a weaker competition for the dominion of backward countries. ”

“ The building of international industrial empires by the progressive business men of the United States lays the foundation for whatever political imperialism is necessary to protect markets, trade and investment. Gathering floods of economic surplus are the driving forces which are guided by ambition and love of gain and power. ”

“ By thus increasing our agricultural product, and developing our home market and our less directly competitive industries and by slackening an increase in our population, which would otherwise force us into foreign adventures, we tend to approach a balanced economic system and a parallel growth of extractive and manufacturing industries. Such a dependence in the main on home resources for the nation's primal needs is in the circumstances the best preventive of an imperialistic policy that might lead to war. But there is an even closer-lying incentive to imperialism and war. ”

“ This attempt stimulates national pride, it creates bureaucrats with a vested interest in imperialism, it sucks in and receives added strength from concessionaires and traders who are looking for economic privileges. There is no doubt that certain classes in a nation gain by imperialism, though to the people as a whole the adventure may mean nothing more than an increased burden of taxes. ”

“ Domestic problems of economic development and national unification were all-absorbing, and capitalistic imperialism was quite outside the scope of German policies. France and Russia, not Germany, were the disturbers of British tranquillity in the Orient. ”

“ But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized coöperation of all of humanity's producers, but through the exploitation of the world's economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country; which country is by this War to be transformed from a great power into the world power. ”

“ But the capitalists cannot choose. They are embedded in an economic system which has driven them—whether they liked it or not—along a path of imperialism. Once having entered upon this path, they are compelled to follow it into the sodden mire of international strife. ”

“ The new "financial" imperialism is based on economic opportunities and advantages. Under this new régime, territorial domination is subordinated to business profit.
While American public officials were engaged in the routine task of extending the political boundaries of the United States, the foundations of imperial strength were being laid by the masters of industrial life—the traders, manufacturers, bankers, the organizers of trusts and of industrial combinations. These owners and directors of the nation's wealth have been the real builders of the American Empire. ”

“ To promote an economic internationalism we must make our own internal economic development sound; to help cure the World we must maintain our own health. Internationalism begins at home.
[1] It is difficult to find terms in which to express clearly the two policies between which we are choosing. In a sense the issue is between imperialism and internationalism, but since any international attempt to solve the problem of the backward countries must lead to some joint occupation, exploitation or dominion, which may be called imperialistic, the opposition of the two terms is not complete. ”

“ They can foster the Imperialist spirit, which may mean the acquisition of more territory and the opening out of fresh markets for the investment of their capital. Meanwhile these enthusiastic Imperialists can pose as patriots, although the further filling of their pockets, and not the nation’s honour, is their objective. “The economic root of Imperialism,” says a modern economist,13 “is the desire of strong organised industrial and financial interests to secure and develop at the public expense and by the public force private markets for their surplus goods and their surplus capital. ”

“ As against this, Imperialism, that is, capitalism of the monopolistic era, which has finally matured in the twentieth century, is in virtue of its fundamental economic traits distinguished by least attachment to peace and freedom ,and by the greatest development of militarism everywhere. ”

“ But in accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the subjection of the world-embracing economic system to the profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each country. What the politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state that was created in the revolutions and the wars of 1789-1815, 1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development.
The present War is at bottom a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and state. ”

“ In France, Germany, Italy and Japan they have existed for less than a century. The great burst of economic activity which has pushed the United States so rapidly to the fore as a producer of surplus wealth dates from the Civil War. Only in the last generation did there arise the financial imperialism that results from the necessity of finding a market for investable surplus.
The struggle for world trade had been waged for centuries before the advent of capitalism, but the struggle for [Pg 126] investment opportunities in undeveloped countries is strictly modern. ”

“ The trust magnate, the new conductor of vast industrial enterprises, was looking forward toward a strong unified banking control over industries and a definite expansion of American trade in foreign countries. American capitalists were beginning to believe that their economic needs were the same as those of the European capitalists, who were enticing their nations into imperialism. ”

“ For, if close nationalism or imperialism should prevail, the weaker placed nations could not acquiesce. Close economic nationalism is not for them a possibility. They must win access to the world's supplies, peacefully if possible, or else by force.
The fatality of the great choice is thus evident. Nations must and will fight for the means of life. Close economic nationalism or imperialism on the part of the great empires must, therefore, compel the restricted countries to organize force for their economic liberation. ”

“ We suddenly believed that we too were over-filled with capital and compelled to find an outlet for investments and trade. Innumerable editorials appeared, presenting the arguments for imperialism that had been {48} urged ad nauseam in Europe. We could not resist, it was argued, the ubiquitous economic tendency toward expansion. In all countries, including America, capital was to become congested. An over-saving of capital, invested in manufacturing plants, produced far in excess of the possible consumption of the people. ”

“ After it was over, British workers dropped back into the unemployment slough.
Capitalist imperialism is an economic failure. The British Empire was the first among the capitalist empires. Britain furnishes a classic example in this field. Capitalist imperialism succeeds as long as it can find new resources, new markets, and new workers to exploit. When the opportunity for exploitation fails, capitalist imperialism fails. This is necessarily true because capitalist imperialism is a system of exploitation. ”

“ The realities of foreign policy in every state are more and more concerned with issues of trade, communications, and concessions, and the treaties and other formal arrangements between states are to a growing extent the instruments and the expressions of the internationalism of economic interests. The imperialism and the colonial policy of each great Power, though composed of various ingredients, are mainly directed by commerce and finance. ”

“ Moreover, under State Socialism even the working classes gain a share (of course, a small one) of whatever profits accrue from the successful competition of one’s own nation with other nations, and especially from such competition in its aggressive form, “imperialism.”
Socialists have sometimes denied that the economic interests of the working people of the various nations conflict. ”

“ One of its mainsprings is the nationalist spirit, the mystical cult of nationality, of the chosen people; the sacred egoism of the fatherland. Never before has imperialism been so savage and unscrupulous as it has become to-day, owing to the economic conditions of contemporary society. "Imperialism is the inseparable companion of capitalism. In each country, capitalism requires as its main prop a vigorous and powerful state which can enter into successful competition with the capitalism of any other country. ”

“ Imperialism: The Last Stage
of Capitalism
By N. LENIN.
INTRODUCTORY
During the last ten or fifteen years, especially since the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) , the economic and political literature of the two hemispheres has studied more and mare often the notion of imperialism as a characteristic feature of our era. In 1902, a book by the English economist, J. A. Hobson, Imperialism was published in London and New York. ”

“ This is no idle question, for men have always claimed to be guided by ideas, and generally they are, but they rarely know where their ideas come from or in what they consist. Without intellectual expression imperialism would not have extended to all the classes of society. The passion of economic conquest did not prevail throughout the whole of Germany. The bourgeois in the Liberal provinces, the corps of officers, the corps of teachers, the clergy were refractory to it. This direct form of imperialism does not seduce them. ”

“ High wages in the United States and England might be the skilfully manipulated result of slavery in Africa and of peonage in Asia.
With the dog-in-the-manger theory of trade, with the determination to reap inordinate profits and to exploit the weakest to the utmost there came a new imperialism,—the rage for one's own nation to own the earth or, at least, a large enough portion of it to insure as big profits as the next nation. ”

“ At first capitalists exploited the resources of their own country. Then they competed nationally for the exploitation of colonies and dependencies, and this policy led to imperialism and war. Now they are beginning to unite for the joint exploitation of all backward lands. Competitive imperialism is making way for imperialism by combination, just as competitive industry gave way to the trust. English, French, German, and Belgian capitalists will unite to exploit dependencies, will have joint spheres of influence, and the result will be peace with profits. ”

“ If the countries still to be overrun are not adapted for colonisation, the benefits accruing from imperialism, according to these anti-imperialists, will go to merchants, manufacturers and investors and not to wage-earners. It is often claimed that this trade which arises from an imperialistic policy is not great enough to exercise a beneficent influence upon the fortunes of the masses. ”

“ If German trade with the British colonies is developing more rapidly than that of Britain with the same colonies, that only proves that German imperialism is younger, stronger, and better organised than British; in short, is superior to it. But this by no means proves the superiority of free competition, for it is not free competition fighting against protectionism and colonial dependence in this struggle, but two rival imperialisms, two monopolies, two groups of finance-capital. ”

“ Stunted, overcrowded town populations, irregular employment, sweated industries, these things are as detestable to true Imperialism as they are to philanthropy, and they are detestable to the Tariff Reformer. ”

“ Only as the material conditions for the destruction of capitalism and the abolition of class society can the effects of the capitalist triumphal march through the world bear the stamp of progress in an historical sense. In this sense imperialism, too, is working in our interest.
The present world war is a turning point in the course of imperialism. For the first time the destructive beasts that have been loosed by capitalist Europe over all other parts of the world have sprung with one awful leap, into the midst of the European nations. ”