3 Contemporary Marxist response to world polarisation
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Sam King
Abstract
Influential Marxist work written inside the rich, imperialist countries this century either ignores the enormous and growing global polarisation between rich and poor countries or acknowledges it only weakly and partially. No major work adequately explains how this fundamental global social divide is maintained and reproduced. Harvey’s theoretical framework of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ allowed him to move from The New Imperialism (2003) to arguing by 2014 that there is no imperialism. The Monthly Review tendency, by contrast, argues that imperialism and the global rich–poor divide is a centrally important problem. However, contemporary Monthly Review writers such as Bellamy Foster cannot demonstrate how this situation is maintained – that is, how the imperialist countries maintain their dominance. Researchers influenced by world-systems theory have developed empirical evidence about how contemporary imperialist economic domination works. This contributed to an upturn in new Marxist work from around 2011attempting to explain the global divide. Among the most important, and most ambitious of these works is John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty First Century (2016). Smith’s explanation of how surplus value is transferred from poor to rich countries is shown to repeat core arguments of Arghiri Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange (1972) and Samir Amin. However, Smith’s work does not explain how rich countries reproduce their dominance. The common weakness is that no work explains imperialist domination through analysis of the global labour process itself. That is why none can demonstrate how imperialism can keep dominating.
Abstract
Influential Marxist work written inside the rich, imperialist countries this century either ignores the enormous and growing global polarisation between rich and poor countries or acknowledges it only weakly and partially. No major work adequately explains how this fundamental global social divide is maintained and reproduced. Harvey’s theoretical framework of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ allowed him to move from The New Imperialism (2003) to arguing by 2014 that there is no imperialism. The Monthly Review tendency, by contrast, argues that imperialism and the global rich–poor divide is a centrally important problem. However, contemporary Monthly Review writers such as Bellamy Foster cannot demonstrate how this situation is maintained – that is, how the imperialist countries maintain their dominance. Researchers influenced by world-systems theory have developed empirical evidence about how contemporary imperialist economic domination works. This contributed to an upturn in new Marxist work from around 2011attempting to explain the global divide. Among the most important, and most ambitious of these works is John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty First Century (2016). Smith’s explanation of how surplus value is transferred from poor to rich countries is shown to repeat core arguments of Arghiri Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange (1972) and Samir Amin. However, Smith’s work does not explain how rich countries reproduce their dominance. The common weakness is that no work explains imperialist domination through analysis of the global labour process itself. That is why none can demonstrate how imperialism can keep dominating.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Figures vii
- Tables viii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Two worlds
- 1 Income polarisation in the neoliberal period 13
- II Contemporary Marxist analysis 39
- 2 Decline of Marxist analysis of imperialism 41
- 3 Contemporary Marxist response to world polarisation 61
- 4 The idea of China as a rising threat 75
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Part III: Lenin’s theory of imperialism and its contemporary application
- 5 What Lenin’s book does not say 85
- 6 Is imperialism the ‘highest stage of capitalism’? 96
- 7 Lenin’s monopoly capitalist competition 114
- 8 Monopoly and Marx’s labour theory of value 136
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Part IV: Monopoly and non-monopoly capital: the economic core of imperialism
- 9 Neoliberal polarisation of capital 147
- 10 Polarised specialisation of nations 159
- 11 Non-monopoly Third World capital 166
- 12 Neoliberal globalisation in historical context 185
- 13 The industrialisation of everything 193
- 14 Growing state dominance 202
- 15 Stranglehold 208
-
Contemporary Marxist response to world polarisation
- 16 China 219
- 17 The new Imperialist cold war against China 235
- 18 Trade war and China’s latest attempts at upgrading 244
- Conclusion 258
- Bibliography 263
- Index 282
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Figures vii
- Tables viii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Two worlds
- 1 Income polarisation in the neoliberal period 13
- II Contemporary Marxist analysis 39
- 2 Decline of Marxist analysis of imperialism 41
- 3 Contemporary Marxist response to world polarisation 61
- 4 The idea of China as a rising threat 75
-
Part III: Lenin’s theory of imperialism and its contemporary application
- 5 What Lenin’s book does not say 85
- 6 Is imperialism the ‘highest stage of capitalism’? 96
- 7 Lenin’s monopoly capitalist competition 114
- 8 Monopoly and Marx’s labour theory of value 136
-
Part IV: Monopoly and non-monopoly capital: the economic core of imperialism
- 9 Neoliberal polarisation of capital 147
- 10 Polarised specialisation of nations 159
- 11 Non-monopoly Third World capital 166
- 12 Neoliberal globalisation in historical context 185
- 13 The industrialisation of everything 193
- 14 Growing state dominance 202
- 15 Stranglehold 208
-
Contemporary Marxist response to world polarisation
- 16 China 219
- 17 The new Imperialist cold war against China 235
- 18 Trade war and China’s latest attempts at upgrading 244
- Conclusion 258
- Bibliography 263
- Index 282
