The Marxist theory of Imperialism

Modern economists with Marxist sympathies really should know better than to say that even now their bourgeois colleagues do not see the relation between the trend toward protectionism and the trend toward big units of control, though these colleagues may not always think it necessary to stress so obvious a fact.

Not that the classics and their successors to this day were right about protection: their interpretation of it was, and is, as one-sided as was the Marxian one, besides being often wrong in the appraisal of consequences and of the interests involved. But for at least fifty years they have known about the monopoly component in protectionism all that Marxists ever knew, which was not difficult considering the commonplace character of the discovery.

And they were superior to the Marxist theory in one very important respect. Whatever the value of their economics—perhaps it was not great— they mostly 6 stuck to it.

In this instance, that was an advantage.

The proposition that many protective duties owe their existence to the pressure of large concerns that desire to use them for the purpose of keeping their prices at home above what they otherwise would be, possibly in order to be able to sell more cheaply abroad, is a platitude but correct, although no tariff was ever wholly or even mainly due to this particular cause. It is the Marxian synthesis that makes it inadequate or wrong.

If our ambition is simply to understand all the causes and implications of modern protectionism, political, social and economic, then it is inadequate.

For instance, the consistent support given by the American people to protectionist policy, whenever they had the opportunity to speak their minds, is accounted for not by any love for or domination by big business, but by a fervent wish to build and keep a world of their own and to be rid of all the vicissitudes of the rest of the world.

Synthesis that overlooks such elements of the case is not an asset but a liability. But if our ambition is to reduce all the causes and implications of modern protectionism, whatever they may be, to the monopolistic element in modern industry as the sole causa causans and if we formulate that proposition accordingly, then it becomes wrong. Big business has been able to take advantage of the popular sentiment and it has fostered it; but it is absurd to say that it has created it.

Synthesis that yields—we ought rather to say, postulates—such a result is inferior to no synthesis at all. Matters become infinitely worse if, flying in the face of fact plus common sense, we exalt that theory of capital export and colonization into the fundamental explanation of international politics which thereupon resolves into a struggle, on the one hand, of monopolistic capitalist groups with each other and, on the other hand, of each of them with their own proletariat.

This sort of thing may make useful party literature but otherwise it merely shows that nursery tales are no monopoly of bourgeois economics. As a matter of fact, very little influence on foreign policy has been exerted by big business—or by the haute finance from the Fuggers to the Morgans—and in most of the cases in which large-scale industry as such, or banking interests as such, have been able to assert themselves, their naïve dilettantism has resulted in discomfiture.

The attitudes of capitalist groups toward the policy of their nations are predominantly adaptive rather than causative, today more than ever. Also, they hinge to an astonishing degree on short- run considerations equally remote from any deeply laid plans and from any definite “objective” class interests. At this point Marxism degenerates into the formulation of popular superstitions. 7

There are other instances of a similar state of things in all parts of the Marxian structure. To mention one, the definition of the nature of governments that was quoted from the Communist Manifesto a little while ago has certainly an element of truth in it. And in many cases that truth will account for governmental attitudes toward the more obvious manifestations of class antagonisms.

But so far as true, the theory embodied in that definition is trivial. All that is worth while troubling about is the Why and How of that vast majority of cases in which the theory either fails to conform to fact or, even if conforming, fails to describe correctly the actual behavior of those “committees for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.” Again, in practically all cases the theory can be made tautologically true. For there is no policy short of exterminating the bourgeoisie that could not be held to serve some economic or extra-economic, short-run or long-run, bourgeois interest, at least in the sense that it wards off still worse things. This, however, does not make that theory any more valuable. But let us turn to our second example of the problem-solving power of the Marxian synthesis.

The badge of Scientific Socialism which according to Marx is to distinguish it from Utopian Socialism consists in the proof that socialism is inevitable irrespective of human volition or of desirability. As has been stated before, all this means is that by virtue of its very logic capitalist evolution tends to destroy the capitalist and to produce the socialist order of things. 8

How far has Marx succeeded in establishing the existence of these tendencies?

As regards the tendency toward self-destruction, the question has already been answered. 9

The doctrine that the capitalist economy will inevitably break down for purely economic reasons has not been established by Marx, as Hilferding’s objections would suffice to show. On the one hand, some of his propositions about future facts that are essential to the orthodox argument, especially the one about the inevitable increase of misery and oppression, are untenable; on the other hand, the breakdown of the capitalist order would not necessarily follow from these propositions, even if they were all true. But other factors in the situation that the capitalist process tends to develop were correctly seen by Marx, as was, so I hope to show, the ultimate outcome itself. Concerning the latter, it may be necessary to replace the Marxian nexus by another, and the term “breakdown” may then turn out to be a misnomer, particularly if it be understood in the sense of a breakdown caused by the failure of the capitalist engine of production; but this does not affect the essence of the doctrine, however much it may affect its formulation and some of its implications.

As regards the tendency toward socialism, we must first realize that this is a distinct problem. The capitalist or any other order of things may evidently break down—or economic and social evolution may outgrow it—

and yet the socialist phoenix may fail to rise from the ashes. There may be chaos and, unless we define as socialism any non-chaotic alternative to capitalism, there are other possibilities. The particular type of social organization that the average orthodox Marxist—before the advent of bolshevism at any rate—seemed to anticipate is certainly only one of many possible cases.

Marx himself, while very wisely refraining from describing socialist society in detail, emphasized conditions of its emergence: on the one hand, the presence of giant units of industrial control—which, of course, would greatly facilitate socialization—and, on the other hand, the presence of an oppressed, enslaved, exploited, but also very numerous, disciplined, united and organized proletariat. This suggests much about the final battle that is to be the acute stage of the secular warfare between the two classes which will then be arrayed against each other for the last time. It also suggests something about what is to follow; it suggests the idea that the proletariat as such will “take over” and, through its dictatorship, put a stop to the “exploitation of man by man” and bring about classless society. If our purpose were to prove that Marxism is a member of the family of chiliastic creeds this would indeed be quite enough. Since we are concerned not with that aspect but with a scientific forecast, it clearly is not. Schmoller was on much safer ground.

For though he also refused to commit himself to details, he obviously visualized the process as one of progressive bureaucratization, nationalization and so on, ending in state socialism which, whether we like it or not, at least makes definite sense. Thus Marx fails to turn the socialist possibility into a certainty even if we grant him the breakdown theory in its entirety; if we do not, then failure follows a fortiori. In no case, however—whether we accept Marx’s reasoning or any other— will the socialist order be realized automatically; even if capitalist evolution provided all conditions for it in the most Marxian manner conceivable, distinct action would still be necessary to bring it about. 10 This of course is in accordance with Marx’s teaching. His revolution is but the particular garb in which his imagination liked to clothe that action. The emphasis on violence is perhaps understandable in one who in his formative years had experienced all the excitement of 1848 and who was, though quite able to despise revolutionary ideology, yet never able to shake off its trammels. Moreover, the greater part of his audience would hardly have been willing to listen to a message that lacked the hallowed clarion call. Finally, though he saw the possibility of peaceful transition, at least for England, he may not have seen its likelihood. In his day it was not so easy to see, and his pet idea of the two classes in battle array made it still more difficult to see it.

His friend Engels actually went to the trouble of studying tactics. But though the revolution can be relegated to the compound of non-essentials, the necessity for distinct action still remains.

This should also solve the problem that has divided the disciples: revolution or evolution?

If I have caught Marx’s meaning, the answer is not hard to give. Evolution was for him the parent of socialism.

He was much too strongly imbued with a sense of the inherent logic of things social to believe that revolution can replace any part of the work of evolution. The revolution comes in nevertheless. But it only comes in order to write the conclusion under a complete set of premises.

therefore differs entirely, in nature and in function, from the revolutions both of the bourgeois radical and of the socialist conspirator. It is essentially revolution in the fullness of time.11

It is true that disciples who dislike this conclusion, and especially its application to the Russian case, 12 can point to many passages in the sacred books that seem to contradict it. But in those passages Marx himself contradicts his deepest and most mature thought which speaks out unmistakably from the analytic structure of Das Kapital and—as any thought must that is inspired by a sense of the inherent logic of things—carries, beneath the fantastic glitter of dubious gems, a distinctly conservative implication. And, after all, why not? No serious argument ever supports any “ism” un-conditionally. 13

To say that Marx, stripped of phrases, admits of interpretation in a conservative sense is only saying that he can be taken seriously.