Art by leftaesthetic
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin observed that by the last quarter of the twentieth century, capitalism’s original type of monopoly had been replaced by a more significant one. A monopoly which has since allowed for the bourgeoisie to solidify their control to an extent that all previous ruling classes could never have dreamed of—but that’s also brought capital closer towards its implosion.
The hidden new imperialism
Whereas the old kind of monopoly allowed the countries where capitalism initially developed to merely create exclusive goods which other countries received in exchange for raw materials, the new monopoly uses capital itself as the instrument for siphoning wealth from the exploited countries. Wrote Lenin:
Typical of the old capitalism, when free competition held undivided sway, was the export of goods. Typical of the latest stage of capitalism, when monopolies rule, is the export of capital….On the threshold of the twentieth century we see the formation of a new type of monopoly: firstly, monopolist associations of capitalists in all capitalistically developed countries; secondly, the monopolist position of a few very rich countries, in which the accumulation of capital has reached gigantic proportions. An enormous “surplus of capital” has arisen in the advanced countries….The need to export capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become “overripe” and (owing to the backward state of agriculture and the poverty of the masses) capital cannot find a field for “profitable” investment.
Lenin observed that “As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilized not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries.” Which is just what’s happened throughout the last century. To compensate for their internal economic crises, the imperialist powers have exported capital even far beyond the level that Lenin was referencing.
During the decades after World War II, where the United States had become the central imperialist country, the bourgeoisie built an empire that’s simultaneously unprecedented in its scope, and invisible to the followers of bourgeois orthodoxy. They did this with debt traps throughout the so-called “Third World,” enforced by CIA interventions that went unacknowledged by the official narratives about why the USA had gotten so powerful. It was through this expanded exploitation that the imperialist countries were able to build up the living standards of their people during the mid-20th century, with their social welfare policies from this time being portrayed as independent of any outside wealth source. In reality, this prosperity was built on the blood of countless people in the exploited world, who were forced to either toil as slaves or risk being killed in the purges of the U.S.-installed dictatorships.
This was the utopian narrative which the adherents of the imperialist orthodoxy put forth: that capitalism and Americanism had reached a state of permanent prosperity and dominance, made possible by the merits of the U.S. empire’s own ingenuity and moral superiority. But there was a contradiction implied in this view: the postwar economic growth was supposedly attributable both to America’s greatness, and to America’s place as the most powerful arbiter of global capitalist investment. The USSR didn’t have this contradiction in its economic success story. It was able to build socialism in one country, achieving a rapid leap from feudalism to prosperous industrialism, without having to exploit the Global South or with any other socialist countries existing during its first several decades.
Socialism’s long-term economic advantages over capitalism
The capitalist world would never be able to achieve the equivalent of what the USSR did. Capitalism in one country is impossible due to capitalism’s need to expand into new markets, capitalism perpetually creates crises which blunt its capacity for growth, the rate of profit has an innate tendency to fall, and capitalism can’t survive without the exploitation of the peripheral countries. Therefore, the USSR and the countries that followed in its ideological footsteps would be able to bypass the economic vulnerabilities that the capitalist countries have. The vulnerabilities that arise from constantly needing to make up for an economy’s internal crises by foisting the costs onto potentially unruly external neo-colonies.
While the capitalist bloc won the Cold War, prompting further claims of the liberal international order’s final triumph, this reality continued to haunt the imperialists. Even well before capitalism’s supposed final victory in the early 90s, capitalism was forced into an unprecedented contraction. The depression of the 70s, brought on by the start of U.S. imperialism’s decline following its defeat in Vietnam, made the bourgeoisie have to dismantle the welfare state in order to keep profits up. Neoliberalism was introduced throughout the capitalist world, starting a rise in global poverty that’s since remained consistent within the countries ruled by capitalist states; socialist China and Vietnam have overwhelmingly been where poverty reduction has occurred during the last half-century. And as the global working class languished in a paradigm of ceaseless losses in living standards, the working class in the exploited world were forced to fight back.
Following the 20th century’s wave of revolutions, which started ongoing socialist experiments in numerous countries, Washington’s neo-colonies kept breaking away. Venezuela shook off imperial control with the Chavista revolution, Bolivia elected and ultimately defended its own socialist party, and countries like Peru and Honduras were set on a path that’s recently brought them anti-imperialist governments. Mexico has also gained a social democratic president, who’s maneuvering towards an end to neoliberalism.
As this “Pink Tide” has progressed, Washington’s geopolitical and economic grip has created the potential for anti-imperialism to triumph on a far wider scale. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were the catalysts for the U.S. empire’s rapid downfall, alienating many of Washington’s traditional allies and paving the way for the rise of the multipolar world—which was coming anyway. One of the empire’s biggest mistakes was trying to fight China’s rise, instead of cooperating with the emerging superpower. It’s been like if Britain had tried to fight the USA’s rise.
This reactive drive to restart the Cold War has ignited a trade conflict that Washington remains unable to win, despite the initial U.S. bluster surrounding it. And Washington’s division of the world into two opposing blocs has forced many powers to side against the U.S. out of economic pragmatism. Demanding that struggling countries like Ethiopia forsake China’s development projects has been too much to ask, and even the richer countries have largely embraced Chinese investment rather than siloing themselves off out of loyalty to Washington. The vast majority of African countries have accepted China as a larger trading partner than the U.S., as have an only somewhat smaller proportion of European countries.
China has accomplished this by creating a dynamic which is opposite to the exploitative system Lenin described. Instead of using its surplus to increase profits, as the imperialist powers do, China has used it for lifting up the living standards of the countries it exports to. In addition to bringing over 800 million of its own people out of poverty, socialist China has lifted more Africans out of poverty than any other country.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative has made it possible for Ethiopia to become independent in terms of infrastructural and economic development, bringing the country—along with much of the rest of the Global South—towards a new paradigm. A paradigm where the imperialists can no longer prey upon economically vulnerable countries, because these countries will no longer be vulnerable.
Despite Washington’s narratives to the contrary, the New Silk Road and the BRI are the antithesis of neo-colonialism, because they’re undoing the inequities created by the new imperialism. Should China bring this project to completion, it will break the financial grip of imperialist institutions like the International Monetary Fund. It’s this dominance that’s held back the revolutionary struggles in the Global South since the last wave of socialist revolutions, that’s rendered their liberation efforts obstacle-filled and discontinuous despite the ever-growing inequality of the neoliberal era.
When this foundation for the new imperialism falls out, a 21st century wave of revolutions will come, and socialism will gain more economic leverage than ever. The U.S. empire’s current war maneuvers are a preemptive attempt to stop this scenario, to hold back history’s progression.
Sowing chao to try to reverse the changes towards multipolarity
Washington has been so focused on regime change in Iran and Venezuela because it’s grown desperate to maintain the dominance of the petrodollar, which these countries have great potential to weaken. It’s been waging a war for destabilization against Syria, and continues to covertly wage such a war on Afghanistan, because these countries are crucial parts in the U.S.-China trade competition over Eurasia. It’s been sowing chaos in the horn of Africa, much of south Asia, and growing parts of Latin America for the same purpose: to stop China’s rise at any cost.
This includes the cost of greatly accelerating the civilizational collapse which global warming is producing. A collapse that even the U.S. military expects to bring unprecedented humanitarian catastrophes not just to the countries Washington is targeting, but to the core imperialist countries. This was revealed in a 2019 Pentagon report which predicted that global warming will create the supposed need for more Syria-style interventions, naming Bangladesh as one of the many places which will likely be invaded and occupied during the next few decades.
When these interventions come, they won’t be about “humanitarianism,” any more than the one in Syria is. They’ll be about reversing the development of these countries towards the equitable new paradigm China is cultivating. It’s no surprise that Bangladesh is one of BRI's benefactors. This year, China Daily celebrated the progress the country has made:
Work on BRI-related projects has been progressing rapidly even in the wake of the recent coronavirus pandemic, even though last year saw a slight decline in foreign investment. Now Bangladesh is going to see the implementation of Padma Bridge, which is nearing completion. The 6.15 kilometer Padma Bridge will greatly enhance connectivity across Bangladesh and South Asia. The bridge's construction has implications beyond the Bangladeshi economy, and will further portray Beijing as setting technological and construction standards in South Asia. This not only exemplifies China's soft power, but also stands as a shining example of the mutual benefits that follow when China and Bangladesh join hands through the BRI.
Should the imperialists invade Bangladesh, they’ll destroy all of this progress, like they destroyed the material gains made by Gaddafi when they bombed Libya in 2011. And this invasion, as well as the numerous other invasions the Pentagon’s report implies will occur, is going to be doubly destructive, as the imperialists explicitly plan to exploit the climate crisis in order to intervene. This is what they’ve done in Syria; the terrorists Washington backed there wouldn’t have succeeded at instigating a civil war if not for the drought within the country that global warming exacerbated.
As the years go on, and as the climate gets more destabilized, the imperialists will further employ this tactic of taking advantage of crises to start their wars. The Syria operation even created a model for these future wars to follow: back terrorists, use the environmental crises to ignite internal conflict, demonize the government as a human rights abuser for responding to the terrorism, and intervene with military involvement and sanctions. Plus support ethnic separatists like the Rojavans, who’ve been facilitating the U.S. military’s illegal extraction of northeastern Syria’s oil.
So far, this model has run up against limitations. Since the imperialists began employing it to try to break up Ethiopia, their backing of Tigrayan terrorists, disinformation campaigns against the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments, and sanctions haven’t destroyed Ethiopia’s BRI gains. Which could be a sign that the imperialists will fail there, considering how inadequately the Syria model has succeeded in Syria itself. Washington remains unable to overthrow Ba’athism in Syria, allowing the country to keep rebuilding the schools, electrical grids, roads, and other essential services that the destabilization scheme laid waste to. As Modern Diplomacy assesses, this allows Washington’s rivals to grow their influence in Syria and other parts of the region:
We find that Sino-Syrian cooperation extends to joint security and diplomatic fields. China has stood by Syria in the Security Council, and China has not hesitated to (use its veto several times with Russia to support the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad). Beijing is also coordinating with Damascus in the field of (fighting extremism and eliminating terrorism and its extensions inside China in the Xinjiang region, especially after the participation of more than five thousand Uyghur Muslim fighters in the Syrian war alongside ISIS). Here, the Chinese and Russian influence in Syria and the expulsion of the United States of America from it paves the way for activating the (Iranian plan to establish a corridor to the Mediterranean through Syrian ports), and emphasizing the importance of this Iranian corridor to the Chinese Silk Road Initiative, especially as it passes through Syria, Iraq and Iran. Therefore, the Chinese interest in developing the Syrian railways and ports comes as a prelude to linking them with regional neighboring countries, such as: (Lebanon, Iraq and Iran), which (contributes to reconstruction and economic development).
Even Erdogan’s Turkey, a reactionary regime that’s a member of NATO, has been participating in this undoing of the damage Washington has done to Syria. It’s been liberating Syrians from the threat of torture at the hands of the Rojavans, and it’s been rebuilding the country’s roads. As a consequence, Erdogan has joined Putin, Kim, Xi, Maduro, Ortega, Assad, and Lukashenko as one of the vilified leaders within the imperialist media. Erdogan is still an anti-democraticfigure, but he’s one who’s forsaken blind loyalty to the U.S. out of rational self-interest amid rising multipolarity. That’s how much the world has changed since the peak of U.S. power.
A never ending war
In this environment, where neo-colonial regimes and even some imperialist powers keep behaving inconsistently with Washington’s preferences, the U.S. empire has turned to perpetual war as its means for self-preservation. Throughout the last two decades of imperial decline, there’s been a correlation between the shrinking of U.S. hegemony and the cementing of the perpetual war paradigm.
Prior to 9/11, Washington’s aggressions had been continuous in terms of underhanded warfare, with the operations against Yugoslavia and Iraq filling the conflict lull following the Gulf War. But it was after the empire reacted to 9/11 by plunging into a new military quagmire in Afghanistan that the current paradigm began. A paradigm where U.S. wars—despite never being officially declared, as has been the case since World War II—have taken the form of direct combat for twenty unbroken years.
This is different from the empire’s relationship with war throughout the mid-twentieth century. Now the wars never end, and therefore entail an ever-increasing military budget that’s made U.S. social services exceptionally poor even compared to the other imperialist countries. Now the ruling class can’t afford to allow lulls in the periods of conflict, because capital has come to depend on the military-industrial complex more than ever. And now the wars need to be continuous in order to hold back the tipping of the balance which capital depends on. To keep profits up enough for the system to stay intact. It’s a delicate arrangement, one that will be broken if the empire loses its present series of battles to sabotage the BRI.
As Moscow-based analyst Andrew Korybko observes about what’s at stake in the hybrid war on Ethiopia:
Ethiopia is successfully resisting the U.S. hybrid war against it….The American Hybrid War on Ethiopia will likely continue since the US doesn't like to lose. It keenly understands what's at stake in the realm of international perceptions, and it's that the US cannot afford to have an African country – let alone one as large and influential as Ethiopia is – successfully resist its pressure campaign. Ethiopia's resolute resistance can inspire other countries across the Global South, which can complicate the US' efforts to pressure them into curtailing ties with China in the New Cold War. Had the US simply accepted Ethiopia's balancing act, then the conflict might have ended by now, but its zero-sum policies prevented that.
Why will the imperialists never let the wars end? Because the exploited countries have the economic leverage to deprive the exploiter countries of what’s needed to make imperialism work, and China is giving them an avenue for exercising that power. They’re the factor that could bring down the U.S. empire, and therefore the ability for capitalism to continue functioning in its current stage of crisis.
Neoliberalism was imposed because the ability to make profits had declined so much that within a few decades after the peak of the imperialist bloc’s power and prosperity, the bourgeoisie were forced to effectively engineer a collapse of society as it had existed. Wages were driven down, taxes were pushed onto the poor, deregulations occurred which enabled an explosion in corporate crime, and privatization left social services in tatters. This made way for the financializations behind the 2008 crash, which started a depression that’s been ongoing since. With the pandemic, which has vastly driven up inequality both globally and within the imperialist countries, class conflict has intensified to its highest point in a century.
Should the economic foundations of imperialism fall out, and the neo-colonies start breaking free in massive chunks, capital will be weakened to the point where revolution becomes possible in the imperialist countries. Cecil Rhodes observed that “In order to save the forty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, our colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country, to provide new markets….The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question.” Trying to destabilize Ethiopia and the other Chinese trading partners is the bourgeoisie’s bid to maintain the dynamic of modern global exploitation which Rhodes pioneered, and to stop the masses from rising up like he described.
If the U.S. can manufacture consent for intervention in Ethiopia, and in the other places it plans to “help,” the transition into worldwide communism will be far bloodier than we could avoid.
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