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Ultra-imperialism (occasionally hyperimperialism and formerly super-imperialism) is a potential, comparatively peaceful phase of capitalism, meaning after or beyond imperialism. It was described mainly by Karl Kautsky. Post-imperialism is sometimes used as a synonym of ultra-imperialism, although it can have distinct meanings.
The suggestion of a possible ultra-imperialism is normally attributed to Karl Kautsky, the leading theoretician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the era of Imperial Germany. Kautsky coined the term in 1914, but he had speculated on the issue several times in 1912 already. He postulated that in the field of international relations a "stage [approaches], in which the competition among states will be disabled by their cartel relationship". [1] Thus, Kautsky's ultra-imperialism concept was shaped by the idea of cartels made up by states for the purpose of international policy.
However, the basic idea of a possible pacification of imperialism did not really originate from Kautsky. The British left-liberal John Atkinson Hobson had written in 1902 in a similar context about a potential inter-imperialism which could be established by a combination of great powers (combination or combine then being used to designate cartels). [2] In 1907, Karl Liebknecht stated in his brochure Militarismus und Antimilitarismus that "a trustification of all actual and potential colonies among the colonial powers, so to speak, […] a disabling of the colonial rivalry among the states [could take place in the future], as it occurred to some extent for the private competition among capitalist entrepreneurs in the cartels and trusts". [3] On the eve of World War I, these peace-loving social-democrats and liberals in Europe hoped that the great powers—beginning with the British Empire and the German Reich—would unite into a states' cartel or a combination of states giving the rivals organization and reconciliation. [4]
In 1914, Kautsky published an article on imperialism which subsequently was translated into English and published in the United States. In these, he argued there could be a way out of direful wars among the imperialist powers, a solution now named ultra-imperialism or super-imperialism. [5]
Kautsky elucidated this thought in the September 1914 issue of Die Neue Zeit . He described the current phase of capitalism as imperialism. In Marxist theory, imperialism consists of capitalist states superexploiting labour in agrarian regions in order to increase both the imperialist nation's productivity and their market. However, imperialism also required capitalist states to introduce protectionist measures and to defend their empires militarily. He believed that this was the ultimate cause of World War I. [6]
Kautsky noted that before the war while industrial accumulation had continued, exports had dropped as a result of a tendency of industry to expand out of proportion to agriculture. He pointed out that growing nationalism in the more industrially advanced colonies would necessitate a continuation of the arms race after the war and that should this occur, economic stagnation would worsen. [6]
In Kautsky's view, the only one way in which capitalists would be able to maintain the basic system while avoiding this stagnation would be for the wealthiest nations to form a cartel in the same manner as which banks had co-operated, agreeing to limit their competition and renounce their arms race in order to maintain their export markets and their systems of superexploitation. [6] In doing so, he postulated that war and militarism were not essential features of capitalism and that a peaceful capitalism was possible. [6]
Vladimir Lenin disagreed with Kautsky's approach. In an introduction to Nikolai Bukharin's Imperialism and World Economy written in 1916, he conceded that "in the abstract one can think of such a phase. In practice, however, he who denies the sharp tasks of to-day in the name of dreams about soft tasks of the future becomes an opportunist". [7]
Lenin developed Bukharin's theories of imperialism and his own arguments formed the core of his work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism . He wrote that Kautsky's theory supposed "the rule of finance capital lessens the unevenness and contradictions inherent in the world economy, whereas in reality it increases them". He gives examples of disparities in the international economy and discusses how they would develop even under a system of ultra-imperialism. He asks under the prevailing system "what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the other?" [8]
Some Marxists have pointed out similarities between the co-operation between the capitalist states during the Cold War and ultra-imperialism. [9] [10] Martin Thomas of Trotskyist Workers Liberty points out that "since the collapse of the Stalinist bloc in 1989-91, that 'ultra-imperialism' has extended to cover almost the whole globe". Thomas goes on to say that it is not simply “a sharply polarised world of industrial states on one side, agrarian states on the other, with the industrial states joining together to keep the agrarian states un-industrial by force”. Rather, “it is a very unequal but multifarious system, with political independence for the ex-colonies, rapidly-permuting new international divisions of labour, and many poorer states exporting mostly manufactured goods". [11]
Opponents of the theory of ultra-imperialism argue that whatever similar forms may have existed during the Cold War, since its end inter-capitalist competition has tended to increase [12] [13] and that the nature of capitalism makes it impossible for capitalists to make conscious decisions to avoid behaviour if in the short term it proves beneficial. [9]
State cartel theory, a new concept in the field of international relations theory, uses the basic conception of Kautsky's ultra-imperialism, but it is not a Marxist theory.
State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises. The definition can also include the state dominance of corporatized government agencies or of public companies in which the state has controlling shares.
John Atkinson Hobson was an English economist and social scientist. Hobson is best known for his writing on imperialism, which influenced Vladimir Lenin, and his theory of underconsumption.
Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he began to identify what he believed to be errors in Marxist thinking and began to criticize views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history. He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics and rejected the Hegelian perspective of an immanent economic necessity to socialism.
Imperialism: A Study (1902), by John A. Hobson, is a politico-economic discourse about the negative financial, economic, and moral aspects of imperialism as a nationalistic business enterprise. Hobson argues that capitalist business activity brought about imperialism.
Heinrich Cunow was a German Social Democratic Party politician and a Marxist theorist.
Rentier capitalism describes the economic practice of gaining large profits without contributing to society. A rentier is someone who earns income from capital without working. This is generally done through ownership of assets that generate yield, such as rental properties, shares in dividend paying companies, or bonds that pay interest.
Before the perestroika Soviet era reforms of Gorbachev that promoted Eurocommunism, the majority of its history it went the formal ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Marxism–Leninism, a form of socialism consisting of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state that aimed to realize the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union's ideological commitment to achieving communism included the national communist development of socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries while engaging in anti-imperialism to defend the international proletariat, combat the predominant prevailing global system of capitalism and promote the goals of Russian Communism. The state ideology of the Soviet Union—and thus Marxism–Leninism—derived and developed from the theories, policies and political praxis of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
State cartel theory is a new concept in the field of international relations theory (IR) and belongs to the group of institutionalist approaches. Up to now the theory has mainly been specified with regard to the European Union (EU), but could be made much more general. Hence state cartel theory should consider all international governmental organizations (IGOs) as cartels made up by states.
Super-imperialism is a Marxist term with two possible meanings. It refers either to the hegemony of an imperialist great power over its weaker rivals which then are called sub-imperialisms, or to a comprehensive supra-structure above a set of theoretically equal-righted imperialist states. The latter meaning is the older one and had become rare by the middle of the 20th century.
Rudolf Hilferding was an Austrian-born Marxist economist, socialist theorist, politician and the chief theoretician for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) during the Weimar Republic, being almost universally recognized as the SPD's foremost theoretician of this century. He was also a physician.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, originally published as Imperialism, the Newest Stage of Capitalism, is a book written by Vladimir Lenin in 1916 and published in 1917. It describes the formation of oligopoly, by the interlacing of bank and industrial capital, in order to create a financial oligarchy, and explains the function of financial capital in generating profits from the exploitation colonialism inherent to imperialism, as the final stage of capitalism. The essay synthesises Lenin's developments of Karl Marx's theories of political economy in Das Kapital (1867).
Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century, expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades, and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914, whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify, codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism.
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theorist. A leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Second International, Kautsky advocated orthodox Marxism, which emphasized the scientific, materialist, and determinist character of Karl Marx's work. This interpretation dominated European Marxism for two decades, from the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Various Marxist authors have focused on Marx's method of analysis and presentation as key factors both in understanding the range and incisiveness of Karl Marx's writing in general, his critique of political economy, as well as Grundrisse andDas Kapital in particular. One of the clearest and most instructive examples of this is his discussion of the value-form, which acts as a primary guide or key to understanding the logical argument as it develops throughout the volumes of Das Kapital.
Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is opposition to imperialism or neocolonialism. Anti-imperialist sentiment typically manifests as a political principle in independence struggles against intervention or influence from a global superpower, as well as in opposition to colonial rule. Anti-imperialism can also arise from a specific economic theory, such as in the Leninist interpretation of imperialism, which is derived from Lenin's 1917 work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. People who categorize themselves as anti-imperialists often state that they are opposed to colonialism, colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism and the territorial expansion of a country beyond its established borders.
The theory of imperialism refers to a range of theoretical approaches to understanding the expansion of capitalism into new areas, the unequal development of different countries, and economic systems that may lead to the dominance of some countries over others. These theories are considered distinct from other uses of the word imperialism which refer to the general tendency for empires throughout history to seek power and territorial expansion. The theory of imperialism is often associated with Marxist economics, but many theories were developed by non-Marxists. Most theories of imperialism, with the notable exception of ultra-imperialism, hold that imperialist exploitation leads to warfare, colonization, and international inequality.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Marxism:
Foundations of Leninism was a 1924 collection made by Joseph Stalin that consisted of nine lectures he delivered at Sverdlov University that year. It was published by the Soviet newspaper, Pravda.
Holm Arno Leonhardt is a German scientist in the fields of International Relations and economic history, especially in the realm of cartel history and theory. He was born in Manila (Philippines) the son of Brigitte and Arno Leonhardt. Arno became a German expatriate since 1930, moving up the career ladder from accountant to vice director in the branch office of an American paper machine company in Manila. Brigitte came from a liberal merchant family in Saxony (Germany) holding critical distance to the Nazi regime.
Cartel theory is usually understood as the doctrine of economic cartels. However, since the concept of 'cartel' does not have to be limited to the field of the economy, doctrines on non-economic cartels are conceivable in principle. Such exist already in the form of the state cartel theory and the cartel party theory. For the pre-modern cartels, which existed as rules for tournaments, duels and court games or in the form of inter-state fairness agreements, there was no scientific theory. Such has developed since the 1880s for the scope of the economy, driven by the need to understand and classify the mass emergence of entrepreneurial cartels. Within the economic cartel theory, one can distinguish a classical and a modern phase. The break between the two was set through the enforcement of a general cartel ban after Second World War by the US government.