Karl Kautsky, “Ultra-imperialism,” and Multipolarity

The fashionable term “multipolarity” -- popular with a significant section of the international left-- has an historical antecedent. In 1914, Karl Kautsky-- then possibly the most prominent Marxist theoretician in the world-- wrote an essay on the phases of capitalism-- past, current, and future. Like many modern-day multipolaristas who imagine a stable, peaceful imperialism after the taming of the US, Kautsky foresaw a benign phase of capitalist cooperation and peace after the war, after the belligerents were exhausted.  

The capitalist countries would find peace on the international level through a process similar to cartelization-- the formation of monopolies. Kautsky believed that the growth of monopoly concentration on the corporate level-- a process ongoing in the late nineteenth century and acknowledged by nearly everyone-- was parallel with the concentration of countries, their colonies, and spheres of interest on the international level. As monopolies reduce competition among corporations, Kautsky reasoned, ultra-imperialism would reduce competition and rivalry among state powers.

Written a few months before the First World War and published a few months after the war began (with revisions), Ultra-imperialism (September, 1914) sought-- first and foremost-- to explain qualitative changes in capitalism: from its nineteenth-century phase as “free market” capitalism led and dominated by Great Britain, to its imperialist phase or form, existing at the time of Kautsky’s essay, to its ultra-imperialist phase, anticipated by Kautsky after the war would end. 

To today’s reader, Ultra-imperialism may express some unusual, even eccentric ideas, though they reflect the rapidly changing circumstances that engaged Marxists at the turn of the last century. Capitalism was changing; the working-class movement was changing; the socialist parties were changing; and the movement’s leaders were changing. 

Capitalist enterprises were growing larger and larger, absorbing smaller competitors and concentrating significant industries into fewer units. Capital accumulation had grown as well, with the result that financiers were looking farther afield for investment opportunities. And states were encouraging the export of capital, while committing to protection of those investments through acquiring colonies and developing spheres of interest. 

These profound qualitative changes did not go unnoticed; within Marxist circles, not only Kautsky, but others-- Bukharin, Luxemburg, and, of course, Lenin-- were exploring the meaning of these changes. Without question, Lenin’s contribution-- the book, Imperialism-- placed the most indelible stamp on the left’s understanding of imperialism over the next one hundred years.

For Kautsky, changes in the form or phase of capitalism sprang from disproportionalities between industrial and agricultural production. Granting that capitalist industrial production knew no bounds, exchange with the agricultural sector was always limited by the slower growth in the production of foodstuffs and the availability of raw materials, as well as the number of customers for industrial goods. While drawing a distinction between industrial and agricultural sectors may seem artificial to today’s readers, it reflects a difference better expressed as the difference between advanced capitalist countries and pre-industrial regions, countries, and even continents in the early twentieth century.

Kautsky sketches a plausible natural history of the advanced capitalist countries seeking answers to the problem of the “agricultural sector” through exporting capital to other countries for trade and markets. Colonization arises because these new markets lack infrastructure and--frequently-- state structures. The capital exporter finds it easier to impose its state than to create a new state: “Naturally, this is best supplied by the State power of these capitalists themselves… Hence as the drive for increasing capital export from the industrial States to the agrarian zones of the world grows, so too does the tendency to subjugate these zones under their State power.”

This is Kautsky’s theory of the rise of imperialism. Interestingly, Kautsky, unlike Lenin, characterizes this relationship between colonizer and colonized as oppressive, rather than exploitative. 

Not all countries that develop by the importation of capital are locked into a subordinate role by the industrialized countries; Kautsky cites the US and Russia as enjoying exported capital from other countries, but possessing “the strength to protect [their] autonomy… The desire to hinder this [autonomy] is another motive for the capitalist states to subject the agrarian zones, directly-- as colonies-- or indirectly-- as spheres of influence…”

Where Lenin sees imperialism as an imperative of mature monopoly capitalism-- a stage dictated by the very mechanism powering capitalism-- Kautsky understands imperialism as a policy, a choice made somehow by the collective capitalist: “Does [imperialism] represent the last possible phenomenal form of capitalist world policy, or is another still possible?” 

Significantly, Lenin’s Marxism engages laws of motion to explain the imperialist stage, while Kautsky’s Marxism counts imperialism as a path taken, among others available. 

Further, Kautsky separates the arms race, militarism, and war from the logic of capitalism:

But imperialism has another side. The tendency towards the occupation and subjugation of the agrarian zones has produced sharp contradictions between the industrialized capitalist States, with the result that the arms race… and… the long-prophesied World War has now become a fact. Is this side of imperialism, too, a necessity for the continued existence of capitalism, one that can only be overcome with capitalism itself?

There is no economic necessity for continuing the arms race after the World War, even from the standpoint of the capitalist class itself, with the exception of at most certain armaments [sic] interests. On the contrary, the capitalist economy is seriously threatened precisely by the contradictions between its States. Every far-sighted capitalist today must call on his fellows: capitalists of all countries, unite! [my emphasis]

Thus, for Kautsky-- as opposed to Lenin-- war is not a constant, expected outcome of imperialism. Certainly, the call for capitalists to unite behind peace underscores the difference!

Because the economics of imperialism are turning against the capitalist-- returns on capital exports evidenced a decline, according to Kautsky-- “Imperialism is thus digging its own grave… the policy of imperialism therefore cannot be continued much longer.”

So, what comes next, in light of the pitfalls of continuing imperialism?

Kautsky answers:

What Marx said of capitalism can also be applied to imperialism: monopoly creates competition and competition monopoly. The frantic competition of giant firms, giant banks and multi-millionaires obliged the great financial groups, who were absorbing the small ones, to think up the notion of the cartel. In the same way, the result of the World War between the great imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who renounce their arms race.

Hence from the purely economic standpoint it is not impossible that capitalism may still Jive [sic] through another phase, the translation of cartelization into foreign policy: a phase of ultra-imperialism, which of course we must struggle against as energetically as we do against imperialism, but whose perils lie in another direction, not in that of the arms race and the threat to world peace.

So Kautsky effectively bails out capitalism as the source of war and aggression.

With the finished manuscript about to be published in Die Neue Zeit only a few months after the beginning of what was shaping up to be a world war, Kautsky recognized that readers might find the promise of a post-imperialist lasting peace somewhat questionable. Nonetheless, he foresaw “this last solution, however unlikely it may seem at the moment.”

How do we judge this remarkable projection? Is there merit to the theory of ultra-imperialism?

Clearly, Lenin scathingly rejected it. He wrote in a December, 1915 Introduction to N. Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy in his characteristically caustic fashion:

Reasoning theoretically and in the abstract, one may arrive at the conclusion reached by Kautsky… that the time is not far off when those magnates of capital will unite into one world trust which would replace the rivalries and the struggle of nationally limited finance capital by an internationally united finance capital…

 

Particularly as regards Kautsky, his open break with Marxism has led him, not to reject or forget politics, nor to skim over the numerous and varied political conflicts, convulsions and transformations that particularly characterise the imperialist epoch; nor to become an apologist of imperialism; but to dream about a "peaceful capitalism." "Peaceful" capitalism has been replaced by unpeaceful, militant, catastrophic imperialism… If it is thus impossible simply, directly, and bluntly to dream of going from imperialism back to "peaceful" capitalism, is it not possible to give those essentially petty-bourgeois dreams the appearance of innocent contemplations regarding "peaceful" ultra-imperialism? If the name of ultra-imperialism is given to an international unification of national (or, more correctly, statebound) imperialisms which "would be able" to eliminate the most unpleasant, the most disturbing and distasteful conflicts such as wars, political convulsions, etc., which the petty bourgeois is so much afraid of, then why not turn away from the present epoch of imperialism that has already arrived -- the epoch that stares one in the face, that is full of all sorts of conflicts and catastrophes? Why not turn to innocent dreams of a comparatively peaceful, comparatively conflictless, comparatively non-catastrophic ultra-imperialism? And why not wave aside the "exacting" tasks that have been posed by the epoch of imperialism now ruling in Europe? Why not turn instead of dreaming that this epoch will perhaps soon be over, that perhaps it will be followed by a comparatively "peaceful" epoch of ultra-imperialism which demands no such "sharp tactics"[?]

In this tendency to evade the imperialism that is here and to pass in dreams to an epoch of "ultra-imperialism," of which we do not even know whether it is realisable, there is not a grain of Marxism… [H]e offers us not Marxism, but a petty-bourgeois and deeply reactionary tendency to soften contradictions… Kautsky again only promises to be a Marxist in the coming epoch of ultra-imperialism, of which he does not know whether it will arrive! …For to-morrow we have Marxism on credit, Marxism as a promise, Marxism deferred. For to-day we have a petty-bourgeois opportunist theory -- and not only a theory -- of softening contradictions.

Lenin was, first and foremost, a political polemicist. While he was a profoundly deep thinker, he worked most often in the heat of political battles, where sarcasm and ridicule struck with the greatest force.

He explains Kautsky’s theory in the context of opportunism. Because Kautsky’s intellectual ship-- and that of other Social Democratic leaders- - had left their Marxist moorings, they were susceptible to the allure of idealized, dream-like illusions of peaceful capitalism and, subsequently, peaceful imperialism.

Against these illusions, Lenin pressed the realities of a growing human catastrophe-- World War I-- which was only beginning to reveal the human misery that lay ahead. It was this imperialist war-- a war with no meaning besides imperialist rivalry-- that shatters Kausky’s dream.

With over a hundred years and the benefit of hindsight, we can better judge whether Kautsky’s “Marxism on credit, Marxism as a promise” can be cashed or redeemed. History is always the laboratory for the science of Marxism.

Clearly, Lenin was correct and Kautsky wildly mistaken-- no period of peaceful capitalism or peaceful imperialism followed the first great war of the twentieth century. To the contrary, the last century was one of constant wars, imperialist aggression, and unprecedented human devastation. Nor could it be otherwise, as Lenin would argue, as long as capitalism continued to generate competition and rivalry.

Movements could and should rise to oppose this tendency. Revolutionaries should stand firmly against these wars and they should attempt to marshal as much broad support to delay, thwart, and stop these wars, but they should not be under the illusion that capitalism and its instrument, imperialism, would not continually express this tendency.

Kautsky’s theoretical argument for ultra-imperialism rests on a common mistake in understanding both Marx and monopoly. On the level of enterprises, Kautsky sees discrete stages where a competitive industrial sector moves inexorably towards a monopolized industry (he concedes that Marx always notes that monopoly always goes to competition, as well-- an inconvenient formulation that he conveniently ignores). His theory of imperialism builds on this model: on the level of countries, he argues that imperialist competition (rivalry) always moves towards a global monopoly, an imperialist combine or cartel.

Hence, the global economy will usher in an era of stability and peace-- ultra-imperialism.

But this is neither true to Marx’s thinking nor consistent with the dialectics of competition. The foundation of the Marxist theory of competition is found in the earliest published Marxist tract on political economy, Frederich Engels’ neglected Outlines of A Critique of Political Economy (1844), which gives considerable attention to competition and monopoly and birthed the proposition: “Monopoly produces free competition, and the latter, in turn, produces monopoly.”

While Engels understands the dialectical relation of competition to monopoly, he insists on the constancy of competition: “We have seen that in the end everything comes down to competition, so long as private property exists.” 

In this, one of the clearest statements of the dialectics of competition, Engels explains this as, not necessarily discrete stages, but as a fundamental interplay:

The opposite of competition is monopoly… It is easy to see that this antithesis is again quite hollow…Competition is based on self-interest, and self interest in turn breeds monopoly. In short, competition passes over into monopoly. On the other hand, monopoly cannot stem the tide of competition-- indeed, it itself breeds competition.

Engels emphasizes that competition is fundamental to what Marxists would call the capitalist mode of production-- it permeates every aspect of capitalist social and economic life. While concentration (monopoly) is an ever-present process, it never supersedes competition, nor does it erase competition. Kautsky’s mechanical Marxism-- like later day theorists of monopoly such as Sweezy and Baran-- misunderstands both the constancy of competition and the process of monopoly or cartelization. Competition (rivalry) is the mainspring of capitalism in all of its forms and remains so as capitalism evolves. 

Is Today’s Multipolarity the same as Kautsky’s Ultra-imperialism?

It has become popular, especially with the left, to hail the weakening of US and NATO imperialism as the singular goal of the anti-imperialist project. Certainly, a weaker, defanged US foreign policy, corporate reach, and military posture is both an urgent task and a fully justified goal for anti-imperialists. But should it be the singular goal? 

After the fall of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, the world might have appeared to be unipolar. The US, the remaining superpower that survived the Cold War, exercised near-absolute control over global institutions, maintained military bases in every region, and met little early resistance to its plans. As the US intervened in more and more countries' internal affairs, the description of a “unipolar world” seemed more and more apt.

Predictably, resistance emerged. Several countries rebelled, especially in the Middle East and Central and South America. Popular movements, in defiance of the US, chose independent policies, insisted on national sovereignty, even waged what Lenin called “national wars” -- direct or proxy national liberation wars (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria) -- against the US.

The twenty-first century saw further erosion of the US’s unipolar status and increasing resistance to the US government’s diktats. The growing economic might of People's China, largely untouched by global economic turmoil, challenged the US on that front, as did Russia’s growing military might and energy competitiveness. 

Clearly, only decades after declaring itself the global leader, US hegemony was under stress. Influence, power, and leadership were diversifying. In significant ways, the world was becoming multipolar. And, insofar as this new order restricts the US arena of action, it is a good thing.

But multipolarity as reality is different from multipolarity as a doctrine. To welcome multipolarity because it restrains the US is one thing; to welcome multipolarity because it heralds a new age of peaceful coexistence and world harmony is another-- something far more misleading and dangerous. 

Like Kautsky, some on the left leap to the conclusion that capitalism can be delinked from competition or rivalry, if only the US were contained. As Lenin observed, there is more wishful thinking in this position than a reflection of reality. 

For doctrinaire multipolaristas, a century-old history of imperialist rivalry among the great powers, disrupted only partially by a united anti-Soviet, anti-Communist crusade, counts as little evidence that capitalism invariably stokes imperialist rivalries. They choose to overlook this pattern.

Less than two decades after the end of the great imperialist war, Japan, Italy, and Germany had begun quests of imperialist expansion, often at the expense of the empires of other great powers like the UK and France.

At mid-century, the Cold War confrontation and the threat of nuclear annihilation tempered the danger of global war, yet wars of both national liberation and anti-insurgency raged-- imperialist wars. In many cases, economic aggression replaced military aggression, as former colonial masters sought to establish neo-colonial relations.

Despite this backdrop of persistent, unending imperialist competition and conflict, multipolaristas imagine a coming era of multilateral cooperation and mutual respect. 

They imagine that India and Pakistan will establish an unprecedented harmony; that Japanese claims to the Kuril Islands will dissolve; that Balkan rivalries and Armenian and Azerbaijan conflicts will magically resolve; that the long-standing and always simmering rivalries in the Middle East will disappear; and that the struggle to control the vast wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo will wither away and be settled peacefully, once US imperialism is contained.

They see no ominous signs in the growing belligerence and greatly expanded military budgets of Germany and Japan. They hail global realignments and new alliances as steps toward peace, rather than potential sources of conflict.

The war in Ukraine unleashed a far greater threat to local, regional, and even global war than we have seen in fifty years. As Ian Buruma has noted, the war has licensed Germany to expand its war budget by 100 billion euros, while loosening the post-war shackles on this former instigator of the last global war, a moment that Chancellor Scholz calls a “historic turning point.”

Buruma cites a commitment that Japanese prime minister Kishida makes to increase military spending by 50% in 5 years, a dangerous break with Japan’s constitutional fetters. This is an omen of the utopian multipolarity to come? 

Like Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism, this theory of a peaceful and harmonious world of capitalist powers is a radical departure from what history teaches and from today’s realities. And like Kautsky, its proponents have lost touch with the dynamics of capitalism in the era of imperialism. Kautsky saw the basic contradiction of his time between competitive capitalism and monopoly capitalism, with the “cartelization” of empires eliminating global rivalries.

Today’s multipolaristas see the struggle between unipolarity and multipolarity as the principal contradiction facing the world. As with ultra-imperialism, this is an illusion that allows them to evade the great contradiction of our time: the struggle between an overripe, failed system-- capitalism-- and socialism.

Since the demise of Soviet socialism, advocacy of socialism has fallen out of fashion. To most on the left, socialism is, at best, a far-off dream, well beyond our reach. No doubt this despair-- unmatched even by the most desperate times of the past-- informs the attraction of multipolarity, something that appears within reach.

But intellectual integrity requires that we go where the truth takes us. And the truth in our day-- like the truth in Kautsky’s day-- demands that we recognize that capitalism generates war. And the final solution to war is socialism.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Red Rosa, “Junius,” and Leninism

During the early years of the First World War, revolutionary Marxists-- those who opposed the war in its entirety-- were bitterly disappointed in the leaders of the socialist parties and the workers’ organizations who chose to take the side of their governments in prosecuting the great war. They used their isolation and alienation from these parties to examine some of the burning questions opened by the ongoing slaughter of millions.

Vladimir Lenin, in exile in Bern and Zurich, Switzerland used this time to write extensively on the relation between late capitalism, monopoly capitalism-- an era given the name “imperialism” -- and war. His thinking on national self-determination, revisionism, and opportunism were also taking shape in his writings.

At the same time, another revolutionary Marxist, Rosa Luxemburg, was jailed for her opposition to the war. She used her time, like Lenin, to develop fresh ideas on the trajectory of the socialist project-- its missteps and prospects. From this effort came The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The Junius Pamphlet), a pseudonymous [Junius] contribution smuggled from her jail cell and published in 1916.

Lenin read The Junius Pamphlet. He made the egregious error of assuming that the author was a man, an error all too common in the time. However, he is uncharacteristically fulsome with his praise: “Written in a very lively style, Junius’ pamphlet has undoubtedly played and will play an important role in the struggle against the ex-Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which has deserted to the side of the bourgeoisie and the Junkers, and we heartily greet the author.”

Lenin added: “On the whole, Junius’ pamphlet is a splendid Marxian work, and in all probability its defects are, to a certain extent, accidental.” Lenin, typically, was a critical reader who let nothing pass without exposing defects.

In the case of Luxemburg’s pamphlet, Lenin objects to her lack of dialectical rigor. In the heat of her condemnation of the betrayal of the working class by the socialist leadership, she too-often generalizes features of this specific imperialist war at this specific time and place as though they were universal truths. For example, Luxemburg’s universal claim that “In the epoch (era) of this unbridled imperialism, there can be no more national wars” violates Lenin’s oft-repeated practical understanding of dialectics: “But it would be a mistake to exaggerate this truth; to depart from the Marxian rule to be concrete; to apply the appraisal of the present war to all wars that are possible under imperialism; to lose sight of the national movements against imperialism.”

He elaborates:

The fallacy of this argument is obvious. Of course, the fundamental proposition of Marxian dialectics is that all boundaries in nature and society are conventional and mobile, that there is not a single phenomenon which cannot under certain conditions be transformed into its opposite. A national war can be transformed into an imperialist war, and vice versa. For example, the wars of the Great French Revolution started as national wars and were such. They were revolutionary wars because they were waged in defence of the Great Revolution against a coalition of counter-revolutionary monarchies. But after Napoleon had created the French Empire by subjugating a number of large, virile, long established national states of Europe, the French national wars became imperialist wars, which in their turn engendered wars for national liberation against Napoleon’s imperialism.

Not sharing Lenin’s dialectical rigor, Luxemburg’s claim becomes a denial of the possibility of wars of national liberation.

Lenin seldom missed an opportunity to explain dialectics as a concrete analysis of a concrete situation-- an insistence on avoiding broad generalities that failed to respect changing circumstances and changing relations of social forces. His dialectical method separated his views from some of his comrades on the national question, strategy, and tactics.

But “[t]he chief defect in Junius’ pamphlet… is its silence regarding the connection between social-chauvinism (the author uses neither this nor the less precise term social-patriotism) and opportunism.”

Left social-chauvinism-- the unquestioned support for the “fatherland,” the homeland, my country, right or wrong, and its policies by leftists-- does not spring from nothing. As Lenin argued often, but most straightforwardly in Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International (January, 1916):

The relatively “peaceful” character of the period between 1871 and 1914 served to foster opportunism first as a mood, then as a trend, until finally it formed a group or stratum among the labour bureaucracy and petty-bourgeois fellow-travellers. These elements were able to gain control of the labour movement only by paying lip-service to revolutionary aims and revolutionary tactics. They were able to win the confidence of the masses only by their protestations that all this “peaceful” work served to prepare the proletarian revolution. This contradiction was a boil which just had to burst, and burst it has.

Where Luxemburg leaves the betrayal of the socialist antiwar policy dangling, as though it fell from the sky or happened through incompetence, Lenin insists that it was a process, an ideological deterioration based upon “the alliance of a small section of privileged workers with ‘their’ national bourgeoisie against the working-class masses; the alliance between the lackeys of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the class the latter is exploiting.” His condemnation of this development is emphatic:

Social-chauvinism is opportunism in its finished form. It is quite ripe for an open, frequently vulgar, alliance with the bourgeoisie and the general staffs. It is this alliance that gives it great power and a monopoly of the legal press and of deceiving the masses. It is absurd to go on regarding opportunism as an inner-party phenomenon… Unity with the social-chauvinists means unity with one’s “own” national bourgeoisie, which exploits other nations; it means splitting the international proletariat. This does not mean that an immediate break with the opportunists is possible everywhere... It means only… that history, which has led us from “peaceful” capitalism to imperialist capitalism, has paved the way for this break.

We can summarize Lenin’s objections to The Junius Pamphlet-- reluctant though they be-- with the following points:

1. Luxemburg fails to fully explain the link between the ideological drift of the left in the decades before the First World War which led to the ensuing corrupted politics and the capitulation of the left to war fever.


2. Luxemburg does not acknowledge that there can be justifiable “national” wars (wars of national liberation) in the era of imperialism.

But where Lenin’s writing on imperialism is an argument-- a polished, profound argument, Luxemburg’s pamphlet is a rich, vivid essay, exposing the direct, unbroken line from capitalism to imperialism to war and its barbaric consequences.

Is there a more eloquent description of imperialist war?

Business thrives in the ruins. Cities become piles of ruins; villages become cemeteries; countries deserts; populations are beggared; churches, horse stalls… Every government sees every other as dooming its own people and worthy of universal contempt… Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth-- there stands bourgeois society… the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity.

And what does imperialist war in the twentieth century bring?

Frederich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism” ... A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses towards its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Frederich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration-- a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism… The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves… to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales.

I can’t imagine a more apt description of life in the era of imperialism: unthinkable global wars, countless, interminable regional and local wars, economic instability, vast inequalities, cultural vulgarity, and crude individualism-- a wounded, bleeding civilization. Luxemburg exhibits an uncanny foresight: “[an Anglo-French victory in World War I] would lead to a new feverish armaments race among all the states-- with defeated Germany obviously in the forefront. An unalloyed militarism and reaction would dominate all Europe with a new world war as its ultimate goal.”

How right she was. Two decades later, Germany was rearming at a furious pace, with war in Spain-- a precursor to the coming European war-- raging, Italy invading Ethiopia, and Japanese expansion fully moving ahead. Luxemburg fully grasped the intimate relationship of imperialism and war.

And she unequivocally and explicitly identified that relationship:

All demands for complete or partial “disarmament,” for the dismantling of secret diplomacy, for the partition of all multinational great states into small national ones, and so forth are part and parcel utopian as long as capitalist class domination holds the reins. [Capitalism] cannot, under its current imperialist course, dispense with present-day militarism, secret diplomacy, or the centralized multinational state.

Of course, anyone familiar with the works of Lenin and Luxemburg recognizes that revolutionaries should, nonetheless, encourage the masses to press for these reforms as essential for their deeper appreciation of the need for socialism and the final settlement with capitalism.

The thinking of Lenin and of Luxemburg congeal completely and satisfactorily in one long passage that should be read by every activist and applied to our struggles today:

The events that bore the present war did not begin in July 1914 but reach back for decades. Thread by thread they have been woven together on the loom of an inexorable natural development until the firm net of imperialist world politics has encircled five continents. It is a huge historical complex of events; whose roots reach deep down into the Plutonic deeps of economic creation…

Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognizable only in its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will. From this point of view only is it possible to understand correctly the question of “national defense!” in the present war.

The national phase, to be sure, has been preserved, but its real content, its function, has been perverted into its very opposite. Today the nation is but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for imperialist rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in imperialistic war. [my emphasis]

In this passage, Luxemburg could as well be offering a popular paraphrase, a distilled summary of Lenin’s thesis in his essential work, Imperialism. Like Lenin, she characterizes imperialism as a stage and not a constellation of great powers, a stage that no capitalist state can avoid or from which it can withdraw. Imperialism is a nexus of relations-- a system-- associated with capitalism in its most rapacious and unstable form, a form that systematically generates war, ever more devastating war.

It is for these reasons that “In a discussion of the general causes of the war, and its significance, the question of the ‘guilty party’ is completely beside the issue.” The roots of imperialist war-- to be found in the capitalist predatory mechanism of competition-- make the ‘guilty party’ strictly contingent. As Luxemburg recounts, there were at least five distinct occasions in which World War I could have easily begun. What does it matter which occasion sparked the war?

What does the thinking of Luxemburg and Lenin, shaped in the midst of imperialism’s first great, global war, have to offer us today, over a century later?

Ideas born from Luxemburg’s imprisonment and Lenin’s exile surely deserve more than scholarly interest. Both stood firmly, and with demonstrated integrity, against policies that served up working people to a fate of death and destruction. If working people were to sacrifice, let it be for liberation from the tyranny of capital. Or, for Lenin, let it be to drive out the rule of a colonial oppressor.

Both were appalled that the left of the time abandoned its partisanship for working people, its working-class internationalism, to endorse-- even participate in-- imperialist war, war to advance interests of national bourgeoisies.

Neither bothered to distinguish between the antagonists in imperialist war. It did not matter to Luxemburg that Czarist Russia fought for “the political interests of the nation” and “not for the economic expansion of capital.” Russia participated in the imperialist system and did not deserve the support of workers.

Nor did it matter to Luxemburg that many in Germany believed that “German guns” would liberate Russia from Czardom. Instead, she reminds us, “never in the history of the world has an oppressed class received political rights as a reward for service rendered to the ruling classes.”

Imperialist war is not one in which workers weigh the issues (as expressed by their respective bourgeoisies), pick a side, and go off to die.

The last three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union-- similar to the forty years prior to World War I mentioned by Lenin above-- have been witness to the rise of left opportunism-- the abandonment of the socialist project and the elevation of a muddled, meta-class, identity-driven liberalism.

Like its twentieth century antecedent, twenty-first century opportunism has spawned its own version of “social-chauvinism” -- let’s call it “imperial exceptionalism.”

These are the practitioners of so-called “American exceptionalism” or its European equivalent. They are “leftists” who have dutifully endorsed and apologized for US and NATO intervention and aggression in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, and, most recently, Ukraine. With differing degrees of understanding, they have supported the so-called Orange Revolution, the 2014 coup, and resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all in the supposed interest of human rights. This group defends imperialism as humanitarian intervention.

These modern-day “social-chauvinists” have long abandoned the idea of class and are, thus, totally invested in forcing bourgeois values on the rest of the world. They find no contradiction in forcefully imposing Western-style “democracy” on others, while denying those same people their right of self-determination. They justify imperialist intervention as the duty of the guardians of civilization. Their arrogance knows no bounds.

As Lenin maintains, a “break” must eventually come with these class traitors.

Still others resolutely resist US and European meddling and aggression, but cling to the model that imperialism is strictly US imperialism and every other country is either a loyal satrapy, a client, or a neo-colony of US imperialism. This idea has more in common with the imperialism of ancient Rome than with the imperialism understood by Lenin and Luxemburg. Such a perspective poses the US as the system’s architect, ruler, and enforcer, with Europe, and other advanced capitalist states loyal enablers, legitimized and protected by US economic and military might. All other countries either tolerate, comply, or resist this arrangement.

This is an “empire” theory of imperialism that sees the structure of imperialism held together-- not with monopoly capital, spheres of influence, and class interests-- but with the brute power of the US. It is a state version of the great-man theory of history.

On this view, imperialism is not a system evolved from nineteenth-century capitalism to protect and capture markets, put accumulated capital to work, and exploit every nook and cranny in the world; it is not a system of rivalries; it is, instead, a hierarchical system with the benefits flowing up to a monolith and subjugation flowing down to those countries that are dominated to one degree or another. It simply exists. And from this myopic perspective, imperialism, as we have known it, will end when US imperialism is throttled.

While this may be a snapshot of how things look at a quick and superficial glance, there are two elements that separate it from a Marxist deeper dive.

On the one hand, it leaves out the basic contradiction between capital and labor. The countries within the imperialist system-- participating by virtue of their capitalist economic system-- are all class societies. Their position in the imperial hierarchy does not change the class alignment of capital and labor. Improving their relative position or dissolving the hierarchy does not necessarily or fundamentally change that relationship. From the perspective of Lenin and Luxemburg’s theory, changing the hierarchical position is not worth the life-and-death sacrifices of the working class (with the exception of colonial subjection, in Lenin’s view, where struggle may change a country’s status and end class super-exploitation).

Secondly, and as a corollary to the first element, it is capitalism that is at the root of the modern imperialist system. Hierarchies have existed throughout history and at every level-- from the family to the nation-state to the global economy. In every hierarchy, there are fundamental social relations that dictate, that determine the hierarchy. In Roman times, Rome was at the top of the hierarchy, but it was not necessary that Rome was at the top of the hierarchy; under those same social conditions, other states could have and did strive to be in that position.

In feudal times, hierarchies were structured by a different, unique set of social conditions. Similarly, the lords enjoying the most dominant positions were challenged by others. Hierarchies are contested; they must be maintained; but they remain unless the conditions-- the social relations-- allowing and maintaining the hierarchy are eliminated.

In Lenin and Luxemburg’s time, Great Britain stood at the top of the imperialist hierarchy, yet World War I proved that the existing pyramid of global dominance was neither stable, nor capable of being reformed. Its instability results in war, as it did when other great powers challenged Great Britain. As Luxemburg stated, the war could have begun on many occasions from different sparks and different challenges. It was the competition of capital that drove great-power rivalries; it will be the elimination of capitalism that will ultimately end imperialism and stifle the lust for war.

Karl Kautsky-- a leading social democratic theorist in Lenin and Luxemburg’s era-- gave life to the idea that the imperialist hierarchy could be replaced with a balance of great powers, an equilibrium that would maintain a peaceful, stable imperialism without violent conflict. In our time, proponents of globalization anticipated the same capitalist harmony in inter-state relations. These ideas infect today’s left through the concept of multipolarity, the notion that eliminating the US’s overwhelming dominance of the imperialist playing field will somehow result in a fair, civil, and polite era of capitalist harmony, with established rules and collegial sportsmanship. This is the same pipedream that petty-bourgeois reformers have that eliminating the giant monopolies or cartels will establish a kind and gentle capitalism composed of earnest small-scale entrepreneurs. Both notions ignore conflicting class interests and sanitize capitalism. Capitalist countries, like capitalist corporations, are in brutal competition with each other. On the scale of countries that leads not to harmony and prosperity, but to war.

Of course, the left in the US and Europe should spare no effort in attempting to stop US and NATO military spending, interference, intervention, and war-making; but the left should have no illusion that-- should that goal be achieved-- it exhausts the anti-imperialist project. That will come only when we eliminate capitalism. Whether it is unipolar or multipolar monopoly capitalism, it is still imperialism.




Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

The War in Ukraine: A Year On

February 24th marked one year since Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine and began its overt military intervention in what was a de facto civil war. From 2014 and the Western intervention resulting in that year’s coup against President Yanukovych, Ukraine has been a divided country engaged in a bitter, violent struggle over its future alignment. Indeed, that struggle had been simmering since Ukraine left the Soviet Union, with roots going back even further. Ukrainian nationalism has almost always sought to link independence with the protection of one powerful sponsor or another.

Like other civil wars, this war is the continuation of simmering, expanding political, economic, and social issues-- politics by other, more violent, brutal, and dangerous means. Except for the Soviet period, there has never been a stable, viable, enduring Ukrainian state. Nor has there been a Western-style “democracy” with sufficient popular support and legitimacy.

But the war is something more than a civil war. It is also an imperialist war contested between great powers claiming to defend the interests of factions engaged in the civil war. As with other imperialist wars, the great powers are contesting over direct and indirect economic interests while seeking to maintain or establish spheres of interest.

Russia, for its part, as a relatively new, emergent capitalist power, has an unbalanced economy, relying heavily on the export of its abundant natural resources, principally gas and oil. As a result of Cold War aggression, Russia also has a highly developed military-weapons industry as a legacy of the Soviet Union. Its role in the imperialist conflict revolves around defending its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the economic links established during the Soviet era, maintaining and expanding its share of the Western European energy market, and burnishing its position in supplying weaponry in the ever-expanding global armament frenzy. 

The US, on the other hand, as the self-styled leader and police of the capitalist world order, opposes Russia’s independent foreign policy and economic and political influence in Eastern Europe. Support for Syria, a country at odds with US and Israeli interests in the Middle East, undoubtedly brought Russia into even sharper conflict with the US. The dream of unchallenged US global hegemony was, no doubt, interrupted by Russia’s failure to pay obeisance. 

But the battle over natural gas markets-- seen as the transitional “clean” carbon-based energy source-- played an oversized role in motivating the conflict. With US potential natural gas production nearly limitless thanks to new technologies, the US urgently needed new markets. Most recently, investors were backing away from the industry because of low prices and shrinking profits.

As I wrote on February 2, 2022, more than three weeks before the Russian military invasion started:

…Biden’s administration harps on Trump-like sanctions aimed at the Russian economy and, not least of all, its energy sector.

If oil was a motivating factor in US foreign policy activism in the 1980s and 1990s, then natural gas is a decisive motivating factor today. Where the US was determined to secure oil resources in the past, energy independence and the fracking revolution motivate US policy makers to secure natural gas markets today.

In essence, the US is baiting the Russians into actions that will encourage the Europeans to reject their dependence upon cheap Russian natural gas. Instead, they want Europe to rely on expensive US liquified natural gas, a change that Europeans have, so far, resisted. War hysteria is meant to frighten the Europeans into rejecting the nearly completed Nord Stream pipeline and, instead, build costly liquified natural gas terminals to accept US gas. Thus, the underlying strategy is economic-- a not-so-subtle bullying of Europe into aligning with US economic interests.

The goal is to restart the botched, overinvested, badly managed fracking revolution that would now ride the tide of high energy prices.

The criminal destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by the US and its allies only underscores the above analysis.

Today, the US is the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG). Also, oil purchases from the US by the UK, Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany have increased by 344,000 barrels a day since last February, according to The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article quotes Daniel Yergin, an oil energy historian and vice chairman of S&P Global: “America is back in the most predominant position it has been in world energy since the 1950s… U.S. energy now is becoming one of the foundations of European energy security.” Those who see US imperialism as in a stage of irreversible decline might find this statement sobering.

The stakes of inter-imperialist conflict were established well before the intervention of February 24. To anyone paying attention, the worsening conflict was about much more than Ukrainian self-determination, democracy, or sovereignty. The encroachment of NATO was motivated by far more than protecting Eastern Europe from Russian aggression. And the Russian interests were less idealistic than simply liberating Ukrainians from themselves or neo-Nazis.

In response to the many who found noble motives on one side or the other, I wrote on February 14, ten days before the operation:

Those who remain skeptical of the economic motives behind the US warmongering must explain why Biden placed natural gas politics ahead of any other matter before him and his German ally [Scholtz] in this first significant policy exchange. Biden’s glee-- not shared by his German counterpart-- reveals the importance the US government places on seizing the natural gas market from the Russians, their rival in the energy business.

The Ukraine crisis presents other economic advantages as well. In less than two weeks, the US has sent eight cargo planes to the Ukraine with military supplies, part of the $200 million Biden authorized in new military aid. The xenophobic, ultra-nationalist Baltic states and Poland have sent massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine as well, much of which is sourced from US corporations and will be replaced by aid or purchases from the US.

Whether Ukraine joins NATO or not, Ukraine is being militarized and will continue to be a destination for US arms. On this front, the US military-industrial establishment will win, regardless of the crisis outcome.

Adversaries on both sides of the Cold War-like divide will be armed to the teeth and the possibility of war raised accordingly.

US “aid” to Ukraine since last February is rapidly approaching 100 billion dollars-- far more than US aid to any other country or any other country’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort.

With the Russian military invading on several fronts on February 24 of last year, the civil war reached a qualitatively greater intensity, with NATO sharply increasing its participation. Weapons poured into Ukraine, guaranteeing a conflict of a dimension unseen in Europe since World War II. Predictably, the Western propaganda machine spoke with one voice, portraying Ukraine as a hapless victim of unprovoked Russian invasion. 

Sadly, the social democratic and liberal left in Europe and the US-- blinded by the missionary zeal of the twisted doctrine of “humanitarian interventionism” and intoxicated by a media smear of everything Russian-- quickly fell in line with NATO’s militarization of Ukraine, going so far as calling for a military victory over Russia and regime change in Moscow. 

Western ruling classes proved adept at winning the broad center-left to the bizarre notion that a moral defense of Ukraine constructed around the principle of self-determination could be applicable to a regime that itself violated the democratic principle of self-determination by staging a violent coup d’état eight years earlier. 

As in 1914 in the early stages of World War I, the liberals and social democrats betrayed any anti-war principles to the fever of war. No anti-war movement was forthcoming from this camp.

In the US, this left-center opportunism is firmly held in place by fealty to the Democratic Party, whose imperial adventures are only softly challenged by liberals or social democrats.

Others on the left-- whether from a nostalgic conflation of Russia with the Soviet Union or a failure to understand Russia’s role in the imperialist system-- portrayed the Russian government as a liberator or as a paragon of anti-imperialism. This naive view turned reality on its head and imagined a corralling of imperialism-- a step towards a multipolar utopia-- as an anticipated result of Russia’s defeat of NATO’s surrogates on the battlefield of Ukraine. 

How Russia prevailing or any other alternative military outcome could benefit the working classes of Ukraine, Russia, or the West is beyond credulity. Illusions of a Russian version of humanitarian intervention unfortunately infect some elements of the left. Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up, homes are destroyed, and families are forced to flee.

Too few of us on the left rejected the two misguided choices, recognizing the essence of the war as imperialist conflict.

As the war ground on, I wrote on May 9, 2022:

The great tragedy is that the broad left-- the historical foil to war and imperialism-- remains divided, confused, and inactive while a bloody, destructive war rages, threatening to expand and escalate. As the war continues with no resolution, the only winner is US imperialism.

Trade union militants in Italy and Greece took to the streets to oppose the war, along with Greek Communists. Thousands marched in Prague in September against rising energy and other costs as a result of the war in Ukraine. Yet no national action against the war occurred in the US, and little in the rest of Europe. 

The fact that the Zelensky regime outlawed political parties, stripped labor regulations, and criminalized the opposition found most of the liberal and social democratic left unmoved (The AFL-CIO-- a strong supporter of Zelensky-- was eventually forced to object on behalf of its favored anti-Communist unions). 

Efforts for a peaceful settlement were persistently undermined by the Western powers-- the US, UK, and their NATO partners. 

In the face of intransigent Western governments and a lame, disputatious left guilty of misguided partisanship, the cause of peace was left to others. The populist right has attempted to take on the role of peacekeeper, at least to the extent of questioning the unconditional support for the further escalation of the war. As the war stalemated, right-wing politicians in opposition found mismanagement of the war to be a fertile field for political advantages. For a vivid example of right-populist war skepticism, see Representative Matt Gaetz’s scathing rebuke of US Defense Department officials, concluding that US money spent on guaranteeing Ukrainian pensions would be better spent in the US on bolstering pension reserves here.

Democratic Party elected officials, on the other hand, have been unmoved, staying solidly behind Biden’s instigation and expansion of the war.

The notorious corruption of successive Ukrainian regimes, the mobilizing of more troops and the introduction of more lethal and longer-range weapons, and weariness over the dwindling prospect of early victories are spawning questions and doubts. As the conflict is prolonged, support in the opinion polls is now sagging. This is reflected in less cheerleading and more nuance in coverage by leading newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post. 

A recent feature article in The Wall Street Journal, Domestic Political Troubles Return for Ukraine’s Zelensky, recounts both the checkered trajectory of Zelensky’s career and his immersion in a sea of corruption. Recently, a large number of his colleagues were ousted or forced to resign for serious corruption.

The article cites opposition politicians who portray the leader as “authoritarian” over his total dominance of the Ukrainian media. In addition, The WSJ reminds us that Ukrainian trust in Zelensky was down to 28% before the war. In short, the lengthy article tarnishes the image of the celebrity figure formerly viewed by the media as whistle-clean and selfless, perhaps a telling sign of some cracks in ruling class consensus.

Also, the sunny prospects of Ukrainian victory with advanced Western technologies are beginning to turn a little gloomy; in late February Zelensky  fired a top general serving as the commander of the joint forces of Ukraine. Apparently, Russia has seized the military initiative in Eastern Ukraine to rhe chagrin of Ukraine's leaders.

Most countries are refusing to be bullied by US efforts to steer them into condemning or sanctioning Russia. Both Peoples’ China and Lula’s Brazil have proposed plans for all parties to cease fighting and negotiate.

These and other changes and initiatives offer hope that resistance to the war will grow. This year, two encouraging national actions in opposition to the war were planned to rally in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the organizers of the events engaged in bitter Internet battles where some questions of substance were poisoned by egos, turf wars, and pettiness. Historically, rival peace organizations settle their differences and validate their approach in practice. We have seen factional and sectarian conflict in the peace movement before. At least, there is now motion to halt the war and negotiate, with another rally scheduled for March 18.

Recent actions in Europe are encouraging, as well. Thousands have marched in Berlin, London, and other cities.

Maybe we are seeing the first shoots of a soon-to-blossom movement to end the war and reject militarism.

As I wrote last September 7:

The war in Ukraine is the logical outcome of the unwinding of globalization, a process that began with the 2007-2009 world economic crisis… 

Competition intensified and rivalries became more virulent. Inevitably, economic competition leads to confrontation and confrontation leads to war.

The circumstances of war become less important and the deadly outcomes and possible escalations take center stage. Today, the likelihood of a long, bloody war and its potential expansion beyond borders demand action.

As this tragedy unfolds, the only answer-- the working-class answer-- is to pull out all stops to end it. We desperately need a militant movement to stop this war.

The need is even more urgent today.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com