Torkil Lausen: The Crises of Imperialism and the Prospect of Socialism
Talk in an International Forum in Denmark, first published in JOURNAL OF GLOBAL STUDIES (REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS GLOBALES) March 2024.
About the Author: His major books include: The Principal Contradiction; The Global Perspective: Reflections on Imperialism and Resistance: Riding the Wave: Sweden’s Integration into the Imperialist World System.
Abstract: In this article, I take the global and long-term perspective on imperialism, from the rise of colonialism and capitalism through its different stages. I do this analysis because it gives a sense of direction of how the world-system will move in the current ecological, economic, and political endgame of capitalism. I use the lens of world-system analysis and dependency theory in my inquiry, to show its relevance in the twenty-one-century. Finally, I discuss the possibilities for a transformation towards a socialist mode of production as an outcome of the current crises. I argue that since the late 1970s, the principal contradiction in the global arena has been between transnational capital’s neoliberal globalization project and the nation-state’s attempt to regulate capitalism.
Colonialism and the birth of capitalism
The birth of capitalism, and the creation of the world as a connected economic and political system was one process, stretching from the Italian city states in the mid-1400s, to the European colonization of the world in the following centuries (Wallerstein, 1974). It was the process of colo nial exploitation and of settler-colonialism creating clones of Europe in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, Rhodesia, and South Africa, dis placing and eliminating the original population.
A global transfer of value –Imperialism– was an essential, necessary and in tegrated part of this process. The silver and gold from Latin America became the coins, which simulated the capitalist manufacture in Northwestern Eu rope; the so-called original – or primitive accumulation. The sugar, coffee, ca cao, tobacco, tea, and cotton, -all the colonial products- produced by slaves and super-exploited labor and consumed in Europe and North America, was also a value transfer, that united the modern world-system, but at the same time, polarized it in a center-periphery structure.
The capitalist mode of production accumulates on a global scale. The world-system of national states, in the formation of the center-periphery structure, provides the political, cultural, ideological, and military framework of this mode of production. Through inter-imperialist wars, we have seen the rise and fall of shifting hegemony: The Netherlands, Britain and the United States. The hegemonic power sets the rules of the world system, in the last resort by military means.
By the 1880s, the unequal relationship between the center and periphery had been cemented. Only subsistence wages – or less – were being paid in the colonies, while wages became higher in the center, as a result of the struggle of the working class. Settler-colonialism significantly reduced the «industrial reserve army» in Europe, thus creating better conditions for the remaining workers’ wage struggle; and super-profits from colonial exploitation, made it possible for capital to accommodate the demands from the trade unions (Lauesen, 2018: 60-67).
European capitalism engulfed the world, expanding international trade, by importing raw materials and agricultural products and exporting industrial goods. The low wages in the colonies and a rising wage level in the center, en tailed an unequal exchange of value, through the price structure, when goods were traded on the world market (Emmanuel, 1972a).
The development of «unequal exchange» became the historical solution to mediate the contradiction between capitalism’s need to expand production on one hand, and the ability of consumption power to absorb the produced commodities on the other hand. Emmanuel writes: «Overproduction […] is always latent in capitalism and it does become manifest under certain conditions…After 1870, the trade-union struggle and the rise in salaries helped advanced capital ism out of this dilemma, at any rate to a certain extent» (Emmanuel, 1972b: 56)
This was not a cunning plan by capital. The working class in the center had to fight for their economic and political improvements in fierce trade union and political strife against the bourgeoisie. However, the rising wage level, the improved working conditions and the expanded political rights strength ened the belief in the possibilities of reforms within the system in the working class, which in turn made it less risky for the capitalists to give the working class additional political rights. The compromises made the class struggle less hostile. The revolutionary part of the labor movement weakened as reform ism was strengthened in the center (Lauesen, 2018: 60-67).
In this specific way «history» found a way, in which the inherent contradic tion of the capitalist mode of production was solved temporarily on the global scale. The super-exploitation in the periphery secured the profit-rate, and the rising wage level in the center, created the consumption power which realized profit by the sale of cheap commodities. This created a dynamic economic de velopment in the center and under-development in the periphery. The focus on consumption power as the driver of development – the emphasis on the problems of the realization of production – the circulation sphere – is, howev er, not done at the expense of analyzing what takes place in the sphere of the production of goods.
It is the human labor in the production process that is the source of value; however, the specific determination of the exchange value is defined by the relationships between seller and buyer in the circulation sphere. The term ex change value was not randomly chosen. The Marxist concept of value is at the core of the theory of unequal exchange. A global value of labor on one side and historical capitalism on the other have polarized the world-system into a center and a periphery, with correspondingly high- and low-wage levels. The central point is not the exchange, but the difference between the global value of labor and the different prices of labor power. The concept of value unifies the production and circulation spheres, both necessary in capitalist accumulation. Marx was very clear about the relationship between production and cir culation in the valorization of capital: «Capital cannot arise from circulation, and it is equally impossible for it to arise apart from circulation. It must have its origin both in circulation and not in circulation» (Marx, 1867: 268).
The divorce that exists between the location of production and the loca tion of consumption in the dependent economy generates peculiar conditions for the exploitation of labor in the productionsphere, which Marini calls «super-exploitation.» This super-exploitation aggravates the split between national production and domestic consumption, from the heart of the pro duction sphere (Marini, 1973:157). Marini’s concept of super-exploitation in the colonies and Emmanuel’s explanation of the wage rise in the imperialist center, as the driver of unequal exchange, supplement each other nicely. Both Marini and Emmanuel see the deviation of the wage from the global value of labor power as the generator of unequal exchange.
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