WITHIN Britain’s labour movement there is a longstanding tradition of internationalism and anti-imperialism, but not always a clear understanding of what imperialism is.
With the TUC’s annual Congress coming up next week, it is worth reviewing the issue.
Writing in 1916, at the height of the first world war, Russian Bolshevik leader Lenin described imperialism as the stage of capitalist development “in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; 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.”
After the political liberation of the colonies, the popular conception in Western capitalist media has been that the era of imperialism is over — except when the term is applied to the Soviet Union, to Chinese investments in Africa or indeed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The reality is quite different. Although the world has moved on since 1916, and there is no longer political division of all territories among the major capitalist powers, the concentration and export of capital has intensified, and with it the imperialist economic domination of most of the globe.
Cuban Marxist Isabel Monal has described the current period as a new aggressive phase of imperialism, characterised by a dominant metropolitan centre and a periphery.
A limited group of countries constitute the centre — the United States (the “centre of the centre”), the EU, Britain and Japan (or more broadly, the G7).
The military aspect has been an essential component of strengthening the hegemony of this “centre” — for example, the wars on Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
But it is also exercised through such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, whereby the economies of developing countries are prised open in the interests of big banks and transnational corporations.
The economic neoliberalism which goes along with imperialism is also applied to workers in the imperialist countries themselves, through precarious employment and attacks on workers’ and democratic rights.
At the heart of the US’s economic and military doctrine is that no other power can be allowed to challenge its supremacy. This is very much behind the new cold war against China and Russia, and the eastward drive of the EU-Nato bloc, including the enormous resources being poured by the West into the conflict in Ukraine.
China represents no military threat to the West, but its economic and technological progress is outstripping it, having now reached 19 per cent of global GDP.
China’s relations with other countries, particularly in the Third World, are co-operative rather than exploitative — for example, the Belt and Road Initiative.
Even though using capitalist methods to develop its economy, China cannot be classed as imperialist.
Recent events suggest that we are at something of a watershed in the ability of Western imperialism to dominate the world. Over the past three years the share of the G7 powers in the world’s economy has fallen from 43 per cent to 30 per cent.
The failure of the US to get worldwide backing for isolating Russia economically shows that many countries are starting to break free from imperialist hegemony.
Further examples of this process are the expansion in the Brics group, likely to be enlarged still further, and the succession of military coups in Africa, directed largely against French imperialist interests.
Yet, while even on the back foot politically, US imperialism and its allies in Britain, France and other countries have the ability to wreak military havoc, and there is clearly the intention to pursue the war against Russia to the last Ukrainian.
Britain’s labour movement needs to break free of imperialist influence, join the calls for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement in Ukraine and recognise that the end of Western hegemony is essential to building a fairer, more democratic world order.
