An Anarchist FAQ (0517) by The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective & The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective

Author:The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective & The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: affinity groups, An Anarchist FAQ, anarcho-communist, anti-capitalist, anti-civ, anti-voting, autonomy, Benjamin Tucker, bibliography, capitalism, children, Chile, class, crime, crisis, critique, democracy, direct action, ecology, economics, environment, ethics, feminist, France 1968, green, health, Herbert Spencer, history, Iain McKay, individualist, introductory, Leninism, marxism, Max Stirner, media, movement, Nestor Makhno, not-anarchist, organization, oxymoron, Paris Commune, platform, practice, prefigurative politics, primitivist, propaganda of the deed, property, proprietarians, reformism, religion, revolution, Russian Revolution, science, self-determination, sexuality, socialism, social revolution, society, Spain 1936, symbols, syndicalist, technology, terrorism, theory, the State, trade, trade unions, Trotskyism, vanguard, violence, work
Published: 2009-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

D.5.2 Is imperialism just a product of private capitalism?

While we are predominantly interested in capitalist imperialism, we cannot avoid discussing the activities of the so-called “socialist” nations (such as the Soviet Union, China, etc.). Given that modern imperialism has an economic base caused in developed capitalism by, in part, the rise of big business organised on a wider and wider scale, we should not be surprised that the state capitalist (“socialist”) nations are/were also imperialistic. As the state-capitalist system expresses the logical end point of capital concentration (the one big firm) the same imperialistic pressures that apply to big business and its state will also apply to the state capitalist nation.

In the words of libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis:

“But if imperialist expansion is the necessary expression of an economy in which the process of capital concentration has arrived at the stage of monopoly domination, this is true a fortiori for an economy in which this process of concentration has arrived at its natural limit ... In other words, imperialist expansion is even more necessary for a totally concentrated economy ... That they are realised through different modes (for example, capital exportation play a much more restricted role and acts in a different way than is the case with monopoly domination) is the result of the differences separating bureaucratic capitalism from monopoly capitalism, but at bottom this changes nothing.

“We must strongly emphasise that the imperialistic features of capital are not tied to ‘private’ or ‘State’ ownership of the means of production ... the same process takes place if, instead of monopolies, there is an exploiting bureaucracy; in other words, this bureaucracy also can exploit, but only on the condition that it dominates.” [Political and Social Writings, vol. 1, p. 159]

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