Several critical comments are necessary regarding the article WHEN WAR WILL BE REALLY WORLDWIDE (Prospettiva Marxista – March 2024)
This article contains several valid and appropriate statements about imperialist capitalism and the various forms of warfare it engenders. It is an excellent article against the Pope and others who sow confusion about what – in our opinion – are proxy wars in preparation for World War III by the U.S. and Sino-Russian imperialist blocs.
However, Prospettiva Marxista conveniently sidesteps the question in the current wars in Ukraine and the Middle East: are they inter-imperialist wars, i.e., imperialist on both sides or is one of the opposing sides merely capitalist but not imperialist? It is not possible to give a clear answer by appealing to Cervetto. Behind Cervetto is Lenin with “the right of self-determination of the peoples” and Trotsky with the “uneven development of capitalism”. On the contrary, the German-Dutch communist left argued:
“… from the completion of the division of the Earth (at least of its main parts) among the capitalist powers at the beginning of the 20th century. This completion of world capitalism did not mean that the relations of production and the productive forces of capital in various regions of the planet all showed the same level of development. It only meant that any effort to compete between capitalist powers – small or big, young or mature – brought with it the re-division of spheres of influence and the aim of all the powers mentioned above to make the most of this re-division. A re-division was based on the force deployed between capitalist states, and the tensions of which, under certain conditions, exploded in imperialist war.”
And it is clear:
“In this world-historical framework forged at the beginning of the 20th century, and in a necessarily competitive dynamic, the action of these ‘young capitalisms’ is inscribed from their birth as State entities.
It has also been demonstrated that even before gaining national independence, they were engaged in the world war when they were aspiring states or national “liberation” movements.”
Aníbal and Fredo Corvo, National liberation movements and capitalist imperialism – Leninism, neo-Leninism and the German-Dutch communist left –
We observe in the article by Prospettiva Marxista a series of erroneous approaches. The essence of our critique of the content lies in these three paragraphs:
1) “Marking the new times of this destructive process will essentially be the progress of imperialist maturation of what were once the export spaces, along with commodities and capital, of the contradictions developing in imperialist metropolises.”
What does “progress of imperialist maturation” mean, when did it begin, and, above all, did it lead to the fact that all capitalist states on the planet are necessarily imperialist and all bourgeois factions are inscribed in such an imperialist movement of capitalism? It is not clear. Prospettiva Marxista should answer clearly.
In the article, Prospettiva Marxista speaks in this sense from World War II onwards. Let’s see:
2) “The once “virgin” and salvific spaces of imperialist export – the spaces that allowed for a long period of containment of the clash between imperialist centrals after the end of World War II – have become, and are becoming in an increasingly fierce form, the support bases of new global competitors, thus further accelerating contradictions and crises in the world market.”
Support bases or imperialist capitalist states?
The process was completed before WW1, and we will show the data in endnote 3.
Prospettiva Marxista repeats the errors of Lotta Comunista and one of its leading theoreticians, Arrigo Cervetto. It goes against what is adequately defended by the German-Dutch communist left. [1]
3) “Thus, the fundamental question of that nexus between spaces of capitalist expansion, times of generalized crisis and revolutionary possibility with which Arrigo Cervetto already measured himself with the “Theses of ’57” *) still arises.” [2]
*) Tesi sullo sviluppo imperialistico, durata della fase controrivoluzionaria e sviluppo del partito di classe (Tesi del ’57) https://www.marxists.org/italiano/cervetto/1957/tesidel57.htm
Was this expansion in pre-capitalist spaces “after the end of the Second World War”? This is fallacious, for this process began when the main capitalist forces and states expanded and developed capitalist relations everywhere, completing the world capitalist market, disseminating capital investments throughout the planet, and limiting and eliminating on an accelerated scale the old relations prevailing in parts of the Earth where the imperialist capitalist powers directed their capitals and their political and military influences. The previous colonialism had cemented a robust basis for this. The conditions determining the First World War have already been clearly expressed. Lenin himself argued:
“Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. “. (Lenin, Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, Ch. VII https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm )
This final point in “the division of all territories of the glove among the biggest capitalist powers” generated capitalism in those zones. Let us see how Lenin periodizes:
“The epoch of capitalist imperialism is one of ripe and rotten-ripe capitalism, which is about to collapse, and which is mature enough to make way for socialism. The period between 1789 and 1871 was one of progressive capitalism when the overthrow of feudalism and absolutism, and liberation from the foreign yoke were on history’s agenda.” (Lenin, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International,” January 1916: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x02.htm)
Imperialist capitalism developed in 1871, and until the First World War (1914), it shaped the world from the dominance of capitalist relations. That is what happened, but Lenin assures that it has only happened in Europe:
“For Europe, the time when the new capitalism definitely superseded the old can be established with fair precision; it was the beginning of the twentieth century.” (Lenin, “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism,” Ch. I)
Therefore, for him, there were possibilities that the struggle of the bourgeois movements for national independence was an effective struggle against imperialism. It was a movement between bourgeois forces in which those of lesser capacity needed to make alliances with the old powers. All this is not to end pre-capitalism but to develop capitalism, intensifying the inter-imperialist struggles for the redistribution of spheres of influence, again and again, with the militaristic needs that this entails. Thus, the world market has expanded but has done so amid constant movements of redistribution of influence, of a generalized competitive struggle that necessarily unfolds on an international scale. In such a determining framework, the “young capitalisms” of which Arrigo Cervetto spoke must necessarily behave as imperialist States of lesser capacity. Still, he and neo-Leninist expressions see them until the Second World War as non-imperialist States trying to mend the faulty Leninist theses, loosely due to their numerous inaccuracies and contradictions concerning what really and factually happened in the world-historical development of capitalism. [3]
In Bordigism we have seen something similar, harboring a hope of anti-capitalist conflictivity in these “young barbarian movements against imperialism”.[4] But time in this case does not forgive, and no movement of this type has been able to escape the determinations of imperialist capitalism as they had been conceived by the German-Dutch communist left (See endnote 1).
For Lenin, from 1871 onwards, capitalism, dominated by imperialism, has become a decadent mode of production, “which is entering its ruin”. The world dynamism of capitalism up to the present has shown that this is not the case.
Lenin focused on the fact that with imperialism “certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites.” And: “… capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. (Lenin, “Imperialism, Higher Stage of Capitalism” Ch. 7: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm)
Thus, according to Lenin: “Monopolist strangulation”, agreements, manipulations of prices and labor become decisive, so that.… “mercantile production is already broken.” Profits are the product of “financial machinations” and “swindles”, “a relationship of domination and violence prevails”… “In other words, the old capitalism, the capitalism of free competition, with its indispensable regulator, the Stock Exchange, is passing into history”… “…like any monopoly, the capitalist monopoly inevitably engenders a tendency to stagnation and decadence. Insofar as monopolistic prices are fixed, even if only momentarily, the factors which stimulate technical progress and, consequently, any other progress, disappear to a certain extent, thus arising, moreover, the economic possibility of deliberately retarding technical progress…””in imperialism there is a chronic overproduction of capital”… “In the case of Europe the moment when the new capitalism definitively replaced the old one can be fixed quite precisely: the beginning of the 20th century”… “This no longer has anything to do with the old free competition of dispersed bosses, who knew nothing of each other and who produced for an unknown market”… “We are no longer dealing with a new capitalism, but with a new capitalism, a new capitalism, a new capitalism, a new capitalism, a new capitalism, a new capitalism…”. We are no longer faced with a competitive struggle between large and small enterprises, between technically backward and technically advanced enterprises, but with the strangulation by the monopolists of all those who do not submit to the monopoly, to its yoke, to its arbitrariness”…..”Translated into common language, this means that the development of capitalism has reached such a point that, although mercantile production continues to “reign” as before and is considered the basis of the whole economy, in reality it has been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial intrigues.” (Lenin, “Imperialism, Higher Stage of Capitalism”, our English translation from a Spanish version)
These are theses with a great deal of erroneous content. For the remainder, we refer to our critique of the neo-Leninist approaches of Arrigo Cervetto in the article Fredo Corvo and Aníbal, National liberation movements and capitalist imperialism – Leninism, neo-Leninism and the German-Dutch communist left –
Aníbal and Fredo Corvo, March 2024
Endnotes
[1] See the accrediting texts:
- Fredo Corvo, The inter-imperialist war in Ukraine – From Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Gorter, and Lenin to “Council-Communism”
- L’Ouvrier Communiste, Imperialism and the National Question (1929)
- Paul Mattick, Luxemburg versus Lenin (1935)
- Internationalisme (GCF), On the National and Colonial Question (1945/1946)
- Anton Pannekoek, Class Struggle and Nation (1912)
- Herman Gorter, Imperialism, the World War and Social Democracy (1914)
- Anton Pannekoek, The economic necessity of imperialism (1916)
- Rosa Luxemburg, fragmentos sobre la guerra, la cuestión nacional y la revolución
- Aníbal, Errores y desbarres desarrollados por Lenin sobre el imperialismo capitalista.
- Aníbal, Pasados más de cien años. La izquierda comunista germano-holandesa y Lenin ante el capitalismo, el imperialismo, la autodeterminación nacional y los nacionalismos
[2] In those theses, Arrigo Cervetto argues:
“The analysis of the whole period of international politics we are passing through and the more detailed analysis of the events that have taken place on the world scene during the last year confirm the classical characteristics of imperialism described in the Leninist theory. The Leninist theory has not only received historical validation, but its most peculiar sides help us today in our examination of the world situation”.
“Imperialism is essentially the conquest or division of the market and the ensuing struggle by peaceful-diplomatic or coercive-military means: conquest and division brought about through commercial supremacy and the export of capital by the most industrialized countries.”
“As long as there exists in this market a vast area, comprising two-thirds of the world’s population, in pre-capitalist backwardness, the production of the advanced countries will find there an outlet and a solution to its contradictions.
The entire political-ideological-military struggle waged by the great powers in the past and in the present is, in the final analysis, a struggle for the conquest and sharing of the gigantic world economic market”.
“Given the present level of the world market, in which vast areas are still in the first stage of the construction of capitalism, the revolutionary problem of the advent of the socialist economy on an international scale does not yet arise concretely.”
“Inevitably, all the countries which yesterday and today remain in a colonial and semi-colonial condition will acquire, in the course of more or less bloody struggles, their political independence. This important fact, if it weakens certain political superstructures of imperialism, does not, however, weaken its economic dynamics. The political independence of the colonial and semi-colonial countries in no way represents economic independence. On the contrary, the more political independence is produced, the greater are the economic demands and the greater, consequently, the economic dependence of those countries whose productive capacity alone allows them to intervene with aid, loans, capital exports and trade in the promotion of industrial and agricultural development in the backward zones. Without this intervention of the imperialist countries there is no possibility for the backward country to progress economically. The example of China and India may suffice to indicate the validity of this statement”.
“Rather, it can be said that, by entering a new economic phase and breaking the old colonial immobility, the countries of the backward sector expand the capacity of the world market and offer imperialism the possibility of economic expansion.
Indirectly, the awakening of the backward countries, on the one hand, undermines the political positions of imperialism and provokes some of its most typical contradictions, while, on the other hand, economically favors its survival”.
“The indispensable premises of imperialist development lie, therefore, in the struggle for the independence of the colonial countries. The external aspects of this struggle cannot be considered objectively anti-imperialist, but as manifestations of a strong internal contrast of the currents of imperialism; a contrast in which an “old” stratification and a “new” dynamism confront each other, with a clear predominance of the latter over the former and with contingent compromises of equilibrium.
In no case, as Khrushchev’s thesis pretends, can the struggle of the backward countries for independence be considered as a stage of the restriction of the world market to the detriment of imperialism. On the contrary, just the opposite is the case, for the market is bound to expand more and more as the demands of capitalist development impose themselves within each backward country. The market will only be reduced for imperialism when the development of these new countries has reached a minimum of self-sufficiency.
https://www.marxists.org/italiano/cervetto/1957/tesidel57.htm
We see that the Leninist approach is considered the only valid one. Imperialism is also conceived unilaterally as a mere exercise of conquest by the great capitalist powers. They made such conquests and exported capital. Still, we also find investments and loans in the opposite direction, as in the case of Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century.
Arrigo Cervetto speaks of two-thirds of pre-capitalist markets and then speaks of the struggle for the sharing of the world market, but then introduces this zone “in the first phase of the construction of capitalism,” therefore there is already a national bourgeoisie that reaches or is about to get its national self-determination, and that is inscribed in the dynamics of valorization and accumulation of capital, competition, and inter-imperialist clash. Arrigo Cervetto, however, continues to speak, following Lenin, of imperialist countries and non-imperialist, colonial, or neocolonial countries in a state of dependence, which can only grow economically through the intervention of the “imperialist countries.” That is to say that based on these theses and their underlying Leninist approaches, it cannot be adequately understood what has happened in the world development of capitalism, particularly in the countries that have been improving to reach a higher level of development, in which the rate of growth of capital has in many cases become higher than that of the former powers, and this despite such investments, loans and competitive pressures from the major powers. Nor is it possible to understand the dynamics between the middle and minor powers among themselves and concerning the major powers. Therefore, as happened to the famous theory of dependence, class relations and exploitation were disfigured in a biased and limiting ideological construction, unable to explain the international capitalist dynamism and the complex links between its constituent parts. The consequence is always to download capitalist responsibility, exploitative and dominant over the proletariat, to those national bourgeoisies called “dependent.”
For Arrigo Cervetto the national awakening of these capitals (supposedly) undermines imperialism, but also “the countries of the backward sector expand the capacity of the world market and offer imperialism the possibility of economic expansion”….” “The indispensable premises of imperialist development lie, therefore, in the struggle for the independence of the colonial countries. The external aspects of this struggle cannot be considered objectively anti-imperialist, but as manifestations of a strong internal contrast of the currents of imperialism.” What are we left with? Are they anti-imperialist struggles or moments of inter-imperialist confrontation? What are such “external aspects” and what would then be internal? Such theorization is neither clear nor rigorous, nor adjusted to the factual dynamism of international capitalism, nor convincing.
If the “new dynamism” expresses the “internal contrast of the currents of imperialism,” Arrigo Cervetto would be speaking not as a Leninist but in terms of the German-Dutch communist left, thus contradicting his initial affirmation on the validity of Leninism as regards the analysis of imperialism. The contradictions are patent.
[3] Economic period 1870-1914
“Economic growth was linked to those sectors dedicated to the export of food and raw materials; and the importance of imports of manufactured goods and capital goods by Latin American nations for the rise of the more developed economies should not be forgotten. Thus, prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the international economy had changed considerably: the United Kingdom was no longer the only fully industrialized country; in 1913 the United States contributed 46% of world industrial and mining production, Germany 23.5%, the United Kingdom 19.5% and France 11%; in 1860, 50% of exports from Africa, Asia and America were destined for the United Kingdom, but by 1900 it was only 25%”.
(Aparicio Cabrera, Abraham. “Historia económica mundial 1870-1950“)
Economic period 1860-1915
– “The world merchant marine, whose growth roughly indicates the expansion of the global economy, remained more or less unchanged between 1860 and 1890, fluctuating between 16 and 20 million tons. But between 1890 and 1914, that tonnage nearly doubled.”
– “The international market for raw materials expanded extraordinarily, between 1880 and 1913 the international trade in these products tripled, which also implied the development of the areas dedicated to their production and their integration into the world market.”
– In 1894 the price of wheat was little more than a third of that of 1867…. That of iron fell by 50% between 1871 and 1898…. Prices fell by 40% between 1873-1896 in the United Kingdom.”
– “Between 1876 and 1915, approximately a quarter of the surface of the planet was distributed or redistributed in the form of colonies among half a dozen states…. Most of the world outside Europe and the American continent was divided into territories that came under the formal rule or informal political domination of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. In 1914, Africa belonged in its entirety to the British, French, German, Belgian, Portuguese and, marginally, Spanish empires. The American continent was an exception, since the economic and political domination by the United States of America was carried out without a formal conquest”.
(Hobsbawm, Eric. “The Age of Empire 1875-1914.” Barcelona. 1989. Labor Universitaria).
Colonialism.
“This phase began at the end of the 18th century, when the Industrial Revolution began in England, and lasted until the Great Depression of 1873. Trade ceased to be a secondary element and the private entities endowed with sovereignty which had carried out imperialism in the previous period (privateers and the Companies of Commerce and Navigation) disappeared, to be replaced by specifically state imperialist organs, which directly and regularly assumed foreign expansion. This expansion will entail a shift in the axis of imperialism from America – the epicenter of the first imperialist stage, but which by 1825 is almost independent after the anti-colonial revolts – to Asia and Africa. This stage witnessed the imposition of the conqueror’s mode of production on the society of the conquered. This was achieved in two ways: 1) by the use of force or threat to transform the existing societies, in order to satisfy the conqueror’s needs in the field of raw materials, trade and investment, through the implantation of the division of labor most profitable to the metropolitan centers, as well as the securing of the mechanisms to reproduce that division of labor; and 2) by annihilating the indigenous population and/or relegating it to reserves, in order to create the necessary space for the transplantation of the capitalist system – based on the emigration of the populations and capitals of the advanced imperialist centers.
As examples of the first type of action, which has come to be called ‘free trade imperialism’, two cases can be cited: the British war of 1839 to 1842 against China, or the intervention of the United States in Japan in 1854. As for examples of genocide, we can cite those perpetrated by the Europeans in New Zealand, Polynesia and Melanesia, and by the Americans against the aboriginal Indians. This phase also saw the disintegration of the feudal empires: the Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish empires, which had been in decline since the 17th century.
Precisely, the Iberian colonies in America would become part of the Anglo-Saxon ‘informal empire’. And not only the colonies, but the Iberian metropolises themselves would become part of this model of imperialism throughout the 19th century”.
http://www.espacio-publico.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1355-IMPERIALISMO.pdf
World capitalist development in the 20th century
“World production in the 100 years of the 20th century could have multiplied almost eighteenfold according to the detailed calculations of Angus Maddison, one of the leading specialists in this type of statistics and author of several books published by the OECD on these topics.
(“Economics in the 20th Century“: http://www.antoniopulido.es/documentos/con120618.pdf )
In “The economy between the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century” we can read very eloquent data in this sense:
XIII. THE INCREASE IN INVESTMENT STIMULATES THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD TRADE
“The development of commercial traffic in the world, supported mostly by the exploitation of new areas, could hardly have taken place if these had not been based on large imports of capital from the advanced countries. The main investor in the overseas countries was Great Britain, which in 1913 accounted for nearly half of all foreign investment. From 1900 onwards, there was a notable increase in British investments abroad: their total volume rose from 2.4 billion pounds to about 4 billion pounds in 1914. Other major exporters of capital were France and Germany, and, to a lesser extent, Belgium. The United States also invested in other countries, but until the First World War it was always a net debtor, in view of the greater volume of foreign investments on its soil”.
XIV. INVESTMENT IN AGRARIAN ECONOMY NATIONS
“In the period between 1850 and 1900 there was a great explosion in several directions of international capital flows. Until that period, most of the investments had been directed to European nations and the United States, either to service government loans or to form railroad companies. Since the end of the Empire of Napoleon III (1870), capital, in general, has been investing more and more in the countries of the primary (agricultural) sector, which were beginning to enter into the flows of the world economy. Great Britain, for example, made enormous investments in its Empire and in South America: around 1913, approximately half of British capital investment abroad was in the Empire, especially in Canada; another important part was concentrated in South America, especially in Argentina, and another part in the United States, which was the importing country par excellence of the highest proportion of capital of British origin.
France invested most of its capital in its colonies, mainly in Algeria and Tunisia and in Southeast Asia (Indochina); in any case, most of it had been invested in European nations, and especially in Russia, which in 1911 accounted for a quarter of all French foreign investments. Germany was also mainly focused on European countries, although it had invested enormous sums in the United States and South America”.
XV. THE INCENTIVE CREATED BY THE SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN INVESTMENT ABROAD
“Rail transport continued to be the main attraction for most foreign investment, and the triggering effects of its construction on the development of the world economy were very noticeable all over the world. Transport, especially rail transport, made a significant contribution to the integration of new regions of the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia into world trade. The enormous quantities of raw materials arriving in Europe from Argentina, Australia, India, Malaysia, West Africa, Canada and many other parts of the world were often an immediate consequence of the changes in the means of transport created by the railroads in these nations. Investments from abroad were also sometimes focused on the production enterprises themselves: French investments, for example, assisted in the development of Russian coal and iron resources, while French and British capital investments developed the oil fields of the Caucasus”.
(Guillermo de León Lázaro. La economía entre finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX.The economy between the end of the 19th centuryç and the beginning of the 20th century.Real Centro Universitario “Escorial-María Cristina “San Lorenzo del Escorial-AJEE, LII (2019) 359-370/ISSN 1133-3677)
Dialnet: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/ download ‘ article PDF
Let’s broaden our vision:
“World production in the 100 years of the 20th century could have multiplied almost eighteenfold according to the detailed calculations of Angus Maddison, one of the leading specialists in this type of statistics and author of several books published by the OECD on these subjects 1. Adding four billion inhabitants to the Earth in the last century is, of course, a worrying figure in terms of habitability and possible environmental degradation but, compared to economic growth, it shows a significant improvement in the production of goods and services that, as a global average, each person has and that, approximately, has multiplied by six. Of course, this greater economic well-being does not mean that it is equivalent to an improvement in the quality of life, and even less so that it has been distributed equitably, but it is a fact to be taken into account. The reality is that in the last century the inequalities between countries have not been corrected, far from it, but there have been important changes in their relative economic weight”.
(Pulido, Antonio. “Economía en el siglo XX”. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. http://www.antoniopulido.es/documentos/con120618.pdf)
“In the second half of the 20th century we have witnessed a formidable expansion of international trade flows. World exports increased from $61 billion in 1950 to $315 billion in 1970 and $3.5 trillion in 1990. Over this period, the growth of world trade was significantly greater than the growth of world output, although the gap narrowed after the early 1970s. Consequently, an increasing share of world production entered world trade. The share of world exports in world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose from 6 percent in 1950 to 12 percent in 1973 and 16 percent in 1992. For industrialized countries, that share rose from 12 percent in 1973 to 17 percent in 1992. This is not new for the world economy. The period from 1870 to 1913 saw a similar expansion of international trade flows .For the 16 major industrialized countries, now in the OECD, the share of exports in GDP rose from 18.2 percent in 1900 to 21.2 percent in 1913 .
– The story is much the same for international investment flows. The volume of foreign direct investment in the world economy increased from $68 billion in 1960 to $502 billion in 1980 and $1.9 trillion in 1992. Foreign direct investment flows into the world economy increased from less than $5 billion in 1960 to $52 billion in 1980 and $171 billion in 1992. Consequently, total foreign direct investment in the world as a share of world output increased from 4.4 percent in 1960 to 4.8 percent in 1980 and 8.4 percent in 1992. Over the same period, world foreign direct investment flows as a percentage of world gross fixed capital formation increased from 1.1 percent in 1960 to 2 percent in 1980 and 3.7 percent in 1992. In the industrialized countries, this share increased from 2.3 percent during the period 1981-1985 to 4.4 percent in the period 1986-1990, but fell to 2.9 percent in 1992. In developing countries, however, it increased slightly from 2.4 percent during 1981-1985 to 2.7 percent during 1986-1990, but jumped to 7.8 percent in 1992.
Any comparison with the period 1870-1913 would be incomplete because we do not have similar data. An estimate made by the United Nations suggests that total foreign direct investment in the world economy as a proportion of world output was 9 percent in 1913. The total mass of long-term world foreign investment reached $44 billion in 1914, of which $14 billion about one-third was foreign direct investment.” http://www.fbbva.es/TLFU/tlfu/esp/areas/econosoc/publicaciones/cuadernos/fichacuaderno/inmundial.dex.jsp?codigo=581
“To begin with, and as already mentioned, the growth of the world economy between 1870 and 1913 (the period of monopoly consolidation, according to the usual thesis) was greater than in the previous half century (the period of free competition): world product per person grew, between 1870 and 1913, at an average annual rate of 1.3%. Between 1820 and 1870 it had grown at an annual rate of 0.5%.
On the other hand, the rate of growth of global product per capita between 1870 and 1913 was approximately equal to the rate of the last quarter of the twentieth century. This growth was much lower than in the boom decades of the second post-war period – when global output per capita grew at 3% per year – but does not reflect stagnation (data are from Maddison, 2001).
But also, in a longer perspective, between 1960 and 2016, the annual growth of global per capita output was 2.1%, considerably higher than that of the period 1870 – 1960, which was 1.3% (taken from the Maddison Project Database site). Of course, this growth was accompanied by deep economic crises, whether global, regional or country-specific. For example, the world crises of overaccumulation (and overproduction) in the 1870s, the 1930s, 1974-5, or (albeit of lesser intensity) 2007-9; or the long crisis and stagnation in Japan, which began in the early 1990s. Everything seems to indicate that these developments are better explained by Marx’s thesis than by the stagnationist approach”.
(Data quoted by Rolando Astarita in “Lenin y el estancamiento debido al monopolio”).
https://rolandoastarita.blog/2019/05/16/lenin-y-el-estancamiento-debido-al-monopolio
“There are 32 million SME companies in the U.S., 52% of the total and 68% in number of workers employed.”
Collected in:
More. https://es.statista.com/estadisticas/638282/numero-de-empresas-comerciales-en-ee-uu–por-sector/
[4] Let us see Bordigist positions and their Leninist bases of analysis.
In the text: THE IMPERIALISM OF AIRCRAFT CARRIERS. The communist program-Following the thread of time (1957), they state:
“Imperialism, in its general aspect of conquest and domination of political and economic organisms by a superior state center, is not an exclusive fact of capitalism. Regardless of its social content, there are numerous types of the same historical phenomenon: an Asiatic imperialism, a Greco-Roman imperialism, a feudal imperialism and finally a capitalist imperialism. We revolutionary workers are interested, above all, in the substantial difference which distinguishes capitalist imperialism from its historical counterpart, that is to say, feudal imperialism”.
“Capitalist imperialism is above all hegemony in the world market. But, to conquer such supremacy, a powerful industrial machine and a territory that assures them raw materials are not enough.
An immense commercial and military navy is needed, that is, the means with which to control the great intercontinental routes of commercial traffic. Historical events demonstrate, in fact, how the succession in the imperialist primacy is closely linked, in a regime of capitalist mercantilism, to the succession in the naval primacy”.
“in the confrontation of imperialist powers, or aspiring to imperialism, is in the first place the power that possesses the largest fleet”.
“Now, what world power today can carry out declassified police operations anywhere in the world, if not the one that possesses the greatest strength and mobility? Russia, then? No”.
In the text :
Racial” pressure of the peasantry, class pressure of the colored peoples(1) (Communist Program, n.16 of 1953), they state:
“In the same way, it often happens that the liberation of forces compressed by the old relations can only take place following a war of national independence or a war linked to an irredentist demand. These situations must not only be recognized and foreseen in doctrine, but also, when there are already mature proletarian class forces, these must support those movements that open the way to modern productive forces. Consequently, in the areas and phases evoked above (and from which post-1871 bourgeois Europe must be resolutely excluded), the proletarians will support those movements in which it is indisputable that the most radical bourgeois layers and forces are essentially fighting”.
“To quote more recent works, the “Elements of Marxist Orientation”, although it does not expressly deal with the colonial question, says in this passage: “The workers of all countries cannot stop fighting alongside the bourgeoisie for the overthrow of feudal institutions (…). Even in the struggles carried on by the young capitalist regimes to prevent reactionary restorations, the proletariat cannot refuse its support to the bourgeoisie” (10).
Obviously, this is applicable to France in 1793 or Germany in 1848. But it would be incoherent to refuse to apply it to the Chinese revolutionaries of 1953 who, moreover, are fighting against the most advanced capitalist imperialism”.
“Precisely, the problem is historical and not tactical. Support for democratic and independence movements that place themselves on the insurrectionary terrain was logical in the first half of the 19th century. It remains fully valid today for the East, as it was for Russia before the 17th.”
“It must be realized that in the overseas countries live immense collectivities of yellow, black, olive race, whose peoples, having been awakened by the clatter of capitalist machinism, seem to open the cycle of a patriotic struggle for independence and national liberation like that with which our grandparents were intoxicated but, in reality, they represent a considerable factor in the class struggle which present-day society carries in its bosom and which tomorrow will break out all the more violently the longer it has been stifled.” https://www.quinterna.org/lingue/espanol/historico_es/presi%C3%B3n_racial_del_campesinado.htm
In the text ” Factors of race and nation in Marxist theory”:
“The dialectical crux of the question is the following: it is not a question of considering an alliance of the working class and its party with bourgeois layers in armed struggle for revolutionary anti-feudal objectives as a negation of the doctrine and politics of the class struggle, but of demonstrating that even in historical situations and in geographical areas where this alliance is necessary and inescapable, it is necessary to maintain in its entirety, and even raise to its highest degree, the theoretical, political and programmatic criticism of the objectives and ideologies for which the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements are fighting.”
“The fact of recognizing that the Marxist method admitted – in a historical and geographical framework very different from that of 20th century Europe – the participation of the workers’ parties in revolutionary national alliances, in no way diminishes the infamy of the parties which, under the usurped name of communist and socialist parties, claim today to represent the workers. In the war that confronted France, England, the United States, Italy, Germany and Austria in the developed West, when we saw the Russian State and all the parties of the former Third Communist International successively allying themselves with all the struggling bourgeois States, the Napoleon III and Nicholas II had long since disappeared. To practice such alliances was simply to deny the Marxist theses, expressed on the one hand in the “Speech” of the First International to the Paris Commune in 1871, and on the other hand in Lenin’s theses on the war of 1914 and for the founding of the Third International. In the former, Marx declared a period closed and condemned forever any alliance with the national armies, “henceforth all allied against the insurgent proletariat” (3); in the latter, Lenin established that once the phase of the general imperialist wars had begun, the policy of the States no longer had anything to do with democratic demands and national independence, and jointly condemned the social traitors on both sides of the Rhine and the Vistula.
Any revision which would delay the cut-off dates from 1871 and 1917 to 1939 and 1953 – not to speak of a subsequent extension ad infinitum – would be a concession to capitalism which would amount to a pure and simple negation of the Marxist method of reading history as a whole, by erasing the decisive turning points which it has brought to light: 1848 for Europe, 1905 for Russia. Moreover, this revision clashes with the whole economic and social analysis of Marxism, since it attempts to equate recent fascist totalitarianisms (and even non-fascist ones, at the time of the partition of Poland!) with feudal survivals of that period.”
“It would be a very serious mistake not to see or to deny that ethnic and national factors continue to have a very important impact in today’s world. That is why one of our current tasks is to carry out a precise study of the historical and geographical limits within which the uprisings for national independence linked to a social revolution against pre-capitalist forms (Asian, slave, feudal), as well as the foundation of national states of a modern type, continue to represent a necessary condition for the transition to socialism (e.g. in India, China, Egypt, Iran, etc.).”
“Facteurs de race et de nation dans la théorie marxiste”, Editions Prométhée, novembre 1979.
https://www.sinistra.net/lib/bas/progra/vako/vakomfefaf.html
In the text THE BURNING AWAKENING OF THE “PEOPLES OF COLOR” IN THE MARXIST VISION (Bologna Meeting, November 12-13, 1960), edited in Programma Comunista nº 36, they defend:
“In reality, the colonial movements of today reproduce on a world scale the situation that the Europe of 1848-50 presented to Marxist critique, but with a greater explosive charge: petty-bourgeois movements of a radical and violent character whose ideological and practical “horizon” can only be widened by the entry on the scene and the open struggle of the revolutionary proletariat, without which this horizon is necessarily restricted.”
“The task of “provisionally taking charge” of the colonies with an indigenous population becomes that of “definitively taking the leadership” of violent insurrections, of national and radical petty-bourgeois origin, which, however, contain on the international level and, in part, even on the national level, much more vast and fruitful potentialities”.
“The Third International made this task its own, as we have recalled and illustrated many times, and today we cannot but repeat it to those who have forgotten it. It recognized in those movements whose non-proletarian social character it did not hesitate to define, a cardinal element of the revolutionary strategy of the world proletariat. It set the communist parties the task of supporting them on the terrain of armed struggle while having to denounce the social and therefore programmatic limits of the leading forces of these movements, and having to push them, with their active but autonomous presence on the level of ideology as well as organization, beyond the limits traced by their very social structure and their historical origin”.
“The Western revolutionary proletariat must make up for the time and space tragically lost by following the mirage of democratic solutions to a problem which, on a world scale, can only be solved by communist revolution. It cannot demand from the colonial movements something that depends only on it. But, even so, it greets them with a devouring passion. Even so, because they are the only spark of life in a deadly present which disturbs the international equilibrium of the established order (later we shall see that the “exploitation of the colonial movements by the imperialists” must be taken with many reservations); because they catapult into the arena of history gigantic popular masses (embracing even proletarian masses) which hitherto vegetated in “isolation without history”; because even if they could be reduced – but Marxist dialectics refuses to do so – to purely bourgeois movements, they would raise in their midst the gravediggers that the rotten West, sunk in a stupid and murderous prosperity, lulls into a sleep deeper than that caused by the “soporific drug called opium”; because in short, in a tradition of a history that is more than a century old, they are “revolutionary in spite of themselves” “.
https://sinistra.net/lib/upt/elproc/moqa/moqankecos.html
In the text “The National and Colonial Question” (Turin Meeting, June 1, 1958), published in The Communist Program No. 36, they defend:
“Let us turn now to the contemporary period in the countries of Asia, the East and Africa, where the anti-feudal revolution and its popular cycle are the order of the day. Here, as far as the task of the bourgeois class and the barely born proletarian class is concerned, there is added the problem of the struggles against the white imperialisms that want to import, at the same time, the industrial structure and the colonial political domination of the metropolises. With even more reason than in 19th century Europe, the struggle must be directed against the traditional despotic feudalism, local and autochthonous in the interior and against the white foreigner; and it is inevitable that this class polarization follows the road which, following complex forms, leads from the popular and national revolution to the proletarian and class revolution, a road which the events of Europe (Americas, Australia, etc.) not only have they not abbreviated, but by no means would they have totally eliminated the struggle against white imperialism, even if the proletariat had triumphed in some of the metropolises, instead of being lulled and disarmed as it is thanks to the hypnotic policy of Russia.” “.
“In our countries, the proletariat does not move and turns its back on the revolution and on the only revolutionary road, that of the historic International. Would it be a remedy against this to deny (obviously, we do not say to try to stop) the irruption of the masses of color with the scholastic and philistine pretext that they should only get in motion to fight against capitalism without going through the popular and national demand? In those areas, this demand is still in force and is revolutionary; on the contrary, here, due to the Russian betrayal, they make us swallow it precisely in the area and in the historical cycle where it is possible to overcome it and vindicate the integral dictatorship of the proletariat”.
Left wing communism 
Pingback: When war becomes truly worldwide | Left wing communism
Pingback: With Lenin and Trotsky: For or Against war ? | Left wing communism
Pingback: Avec Lénine et Trotski : Pour ou contre la guerre ? | Left wing communism