How useful is the Marxist concept of imperialism to our understanding of contemporary international relations?

        Since finance capitalism is the source of imperialism, for Marxist-Leninists it also becomes the principle source of international wars in the capitalist era, or at least the only source which concerns them. If there were other sources of conflict, Marxists prefer not to pay much attention to them. Hobson, who was a liberal rather than a Marxist, had conceded that there are ‘primary instincts’ of the human race that played a part in nineteenth-century imperialism. The instinct for the control of land, the ‘nomadic habit’ that survives as love of travel, the ‘spirit of adventure’, the sporting and hunting instincts, and the ‘lust of struggle’, which in the age of spectator sports is transformed into gambling on the outcome of athletic games. But Hobson circumvented the theoretical difficulty implicit in the plurality of factors merely by accusing the dominant classes in capitalistic societies of advancing their own interests by playing upon the primitive instincts of the race and channelling them to imperialistic ventures.

        Lenin saw imperialism as a special, advanced stage of capitalism. In capitalist systems, competition is eventually replaced by capitalist monopolies. Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. The countries that are the principle exporters of capital are able to obtain economic advantages based on the exploitation of peoples abroad. Moreover, the greater the development of capitalism, the greater the need for raw materials and markets, and hence the greater scramble for colonies. The establishment of political control over territories overseas is designed to provide a dependable source of raw materials and cheap labour and to guarantee markets for the industrial combines of advanced capitalist countries. Lenin held that imperialist policies would enable capitalist powers to stave off the inevitable revolution, since conditions of the domestic proletariat would be improved by the exploitation of the working class in colonial territories.

        

        Writing in the spring of 1916, nearly two years after the outbreak of World War I (WWI), Lenin viewed the history of the previous generation as a struggle between the advanced capitalist powers for the control of colonies and markets. Capitalist countries have formed alliances for the exploitation of the underdeveloped areas. Especially in East Asia and Africa, the imperialistic powers have claimed territories and areas of influence. Such alliances are, however, breathing spells between wars, since the capitalist powers find it necessary to fight for control of limited overseas markets and raw materials. Because of the ultimate dependence of capitalist economic systems upon such markets and natural resources, international conflict is endemic in a world of capitalist states. The elimination of capitalist states, Lenin concluded, was the essential starting point to abolishing international conflict.

        The history of international relations has since World War II (WWII) has not dealt too kindly to the Marxist theory of imperialism. The theory is hard pressed to explain Soviet Communist imperialism in Eastern Europe, and Stalin’s ‘last thesis’ about the inevitability of war within the capitalist camp not being validated. On the other hand, the communist state system itself has been torn by serious conflicts. Soviet troops suppressed the workers’ revolt in East Germany in 1953 and crushed the Hungarian uprising in 1956. In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev pledged the Soviet Union to support ‘wars on national liberation’ in the developing world, however, when Czechoslovakia in 1968 experienced the liberal stirrings known as the ‘Prague Spring’, it produced an invasion by the armed forces of the five Warsaw Pact countries. 

        According to the Marxist concept on imperialism, where future wars would be between two capitalist nations competing for dwindling colonial resources, therefore future potential conflicts would not be between two communist nations. However, throughout the decade of the 1960s, the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China became increasingly polarised over a number of issues - ideological purity, support for world revolution, foreign development assistance, nuclear proliferation, territorial disputes as a result of old unequal treaties, and the foolhardiness of socialist states entering into disarmament and arms control negotiations with capitalist states while the capitalist states remained militarily powerful (this last point was the Orthodox Leninist position). In 1969, when U.S. - Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were getting under way, at a time of rising Sino-Soviet tension and hostilities along the Amur-Issuri Rivers, Mao Zedong decried the ‘collision’ of the imperialist powers, both capitalist and socialist. Within a few years, as the United States prepared to disengage from Southeast Asia, the leadership of the PRC concluded that growth of Soviet Military power was becoming a greater danger than a waning U.S. imperialist power, and began to warn Japan and other Asian States against Soviet hegemonic aims within the region.

         Although the Sino-Soviet relationship became less confrontational in the 1980s, Beijing continued to regard Moscow as the primary threat to world peace largely as a result of what was perceived to be its main effort to encircle and contain China through political-military moves in Mongolia and along the common border. In Afghanistan and Southeast Asia, and in the growth of the Soviet Pacific Fleet as well as the deployment of immediate-range missiles in the Far East. On the Western Front, the Polish military and police forces were compelled to exercise severe disciplinary action against the Solidarity Labour Movement in order to avoid a direct Soviet intervention and crackdown in the early 1980s. Some Marxists continued to explain Soviet interventions in Eastern Europe and Vietnam in terms of a moral struggle between the forces of good and evil, of socialism and capitalism. But such explanations have grown more feeble with time, after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1973, the PRC attack on Vietnam in February 1979, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

        The Andropov-Chernenko interregnum (1982-1985) was a transitional period of unstable leadership without precedent in Soviet history. From 1985 until the collapse of the Soviet union, the Gorbachev gave rise to a spirited debate throughout the West, before the collapse, as to whether glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) are harbingers of fundamental change in the Soviet world outlook, change that would so transform Lenin’s ideological-political heritage as to be tantamount to abandoning it. The major critique of any Marxist concept, when applying them to contemporary international relations is the fact that the vast majority of Communist nations have fallen. Granted, communism was not totally based on Marxist theory, however it was its backbone.

        In conclusion, the Marxist concept of imperialism is partially usefull to our understanding of contemporary international relations in terms of a theory. All theories of international relations  can cite examples from issues which arise in world affairs, equally, critics can cite examples where the reverse has occurred. The fall of the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes dispelled many of the Marxist views. One of the major critiques of the Marxist view is the fact that Lenin stated that imperialism was the highest form of capitalism. This view does not explain why a communist state, the Soviet Union, had Eastern European colonies of its own.  

Word Count: 1615

Bibliography

• Dougherty, J. E., and Pfaltzgraff, R. L., Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Study, Third Edition, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990).

• Hobson, J. A., Imperialism, A Study, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965).

• Little, R., and Smith, M., Perspectives on World Politics, Second Edition, (London: Routledge, 1991).

• Lorenz, K., On Aggression, (New York: Bantam, 1967).

• Williams, H., International Relations in Political Theory, (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992).

---