Explore the relationship between imperialism, capitalism, and colonialism. Learn about Marx's views on British capital accumulation through conquest and murder. Understand the transition from colonialism to imperialism and the definition of imperialism. Discover the dominance of monopolies in the global north and the concept of finance capital. Explore the challenge of imperialism and the need for proletarian internationalism.
Marx argued that anti-colonial movements could be the key to global capitalism's overthrow.
Marx's theory recognized that colonialism was necessary for capital's expansion and profit.
Deep dives
The Relationship Between Colonialism and Capitalism
Marx argued that colonialism was the backbone of capitalism and that anti-colonial movements could be the key to global capitalism's overthrow. Proletarian solidarity across nations is necessary to combat the global system of imperialism.
Marx's Critique of Political Economy and Colonialism
Marx identified British industrial capitalism as an advanced system due to its status as a colonial power. He highlighted how British capital was accumulated through conquest, enslavement, and looting of the East Indies. Marx's theory recognized that colonialism was necessary for capital's expansion and profit.
Transition from Colonialism to Imperialism
After Marx's death, the 1884 Conference of Berlin accelerated the shift from colonialism to imperialism. Lenin defined imperialism as the final partition of the globe, where the colonizing powers had already divided the world between themselves and further expansion required redividing colonial territories, leading to inevitable wars. Imperialism is a stage in the development of capitalism, marked by monopolies and finance capital domination.
In the suffering of the Global South, the brutality of capitalism lies bare. In a footnote toward the end of Capital, Marx wrote that the colonized subject reveals “what the bourgeois makes of itself and of the labourer, wherever it can, without restraint, model the world after its own image”. The forms of primary accumulation he articulates there were in their most naked form in the colonies. Contrary to liberal and academic misreadings, Marx paid great attention to the relationship between colonialism and capitalism. Marx came to argue that colonialism was the backbone of capitalism, and that anti-colonial movements could even be the key to global capitalism’s overthrow. This is why anti-colonial struggles have long been guided to victory by Marxist theory.
Read the full article here: https://liberationschool.org/09-what-is-imperialism-html/
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