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Capital and Imperialism

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Imperialism is a relationship between capitalism and its setting, central to which is an imposition of a regime upon the setting that entails income deflation as a means of preventing the threat of increasing supply price. No matter what happens to the bourgeoisies of the South or the workers of the North, this relationship, which existed in the colonial era, persists to this day and the system cannot do without it. But though the content of this relationship remains unchanged, the form of it has changed over time. — location: 1295 ^ref-51528

if we are to talk of a period when capitalism becomes historically obsolete then that period can be said to begin now, when we have seen that capitalism has run into an impasse from which there is no clear way out. — location: 5117 ^ref-50367

in the Danielson letter he talks of the railways as being “useless to the Hindoos.” Marx clearly had developed by 1881 much skepticism over the limited regeneration of the colonial economy, which he had earlier believed possible as a spontaneous effect of imperialism. — location: 5144 ^ref-38334

The case for socialism arises from this “spontaneity,” for if capitalism were a malleable system (as the liberal tradition from Smith to Keynes believed), then there would be no need to overthrow it. Ours therefore is a call for a broader analysis that incorporates imperialism as an essential feature of the system, within Marx’s perspective of a “spontaneous” system. — location: 5161 ^ref-4635

not only exploitative but also antagonistic in a deeply ontological manner, in the sense that even when, for instance, a rise in wages does not reduce profits, capital is still opposed to it. Any improvement in the conditions of the workers, even if it does not come at the expense of profits, poses a threat to the system by making the workers more resilient and powerful. — location: 5169 ^ref-48651

workers whose distinguishing characteristic is that they, having no property of their own, can move directly to collective ownership of property. — location: 5180 ^ref-17692

the concept of nationalism that underlay the anti-imperialist struggle over much of the third world was inclusive: it had to be inclusive in order to mobilize an entire people against the might of imperialism. — location: 5339 ^ref-64216

This nationalism was not anti-imperialist but was directed against a religious, ethnic, or linguistic minority at home, and was usually encouraged by imperialism to counter anti-imperialist nationalism. — location: 5348 ^ref-4433

The historical obsolescence of the system was established by these outstanding Marxist writers not in terms of GDP growth rates, but in terms of the fact that it had brought mankind to a state of barbarism, from which socialism alone could rescue it. — location: 5381 ^ref-14220

Capitalism was always barbaric in the colonies in the pre-decolonization period. And it continues to be barbaric even today, despite the absence of formal colonies, because of its ruthless imposition of income deflation on the working people of the third world. — location: 5392 ^ref-40128

What we shall witness, in other words, is not necessarily wars and death camps, but a more or less protracted period of fascification of society, from which socialism alone can rescue mankind. — location: 5399 ^ref-23450