Global imperialism and the great crisis : the uncertain future of capitalism

257 Pages·2014·1.41 MB·English

by  Screpanti

GLOBAL IMPERIALISM AND THE GREAT CRISIS
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Global Imperialism
and the
Great Crisis
The Uncertain Future of Capitalism
by ERNESTO SCREPANTI
MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS
New York
Copyright © 2014 by Ernesto Screpanti
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Screpanti, Ernesto, 1948–
[Imperialismo globale e la grande crisi. English]
Global imperialism and the great crisis : the uncertain future of
capitalism / by Ernesto Screpanti.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-58367-447-5 (paperback) — ISBN 978-1-58367-448-2 (cloth)
1. Capitalism—Political aspects. 2. Imperialism. I. Title.
HB501.S47613 2014
337—dc23
2014011018
Monthly Review Press
146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W
New York, New York 10001
www.monthlyreview.org
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Mythologies in the New Millennium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Globalization and Its Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Comparative Advantages and Disadvantages. . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Financial Globalization and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Poverty and Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2. A New Form of Imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Historical Forms of Capitalist Imperialism. . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Ultra-imperialism and “Imperialism”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Global Imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
What Global Imperialism Is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
What Is Global Imperialism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
An Imperium Maius without a Sovereign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3. Governing the Global Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
The “Law of Value” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Commercial Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Financial Discipline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Discipline through Terror. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Ideological Discipline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4. Multinational Corporations and Nation-States . . . . . . . . 97
The Heads of the Hydra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
The Role of International Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Firms, States, Markets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Can Local Politics Resist Global “Markets”? . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5. The Great Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Financialization and Deregulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
The Millennium Bubble. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Act I: The Subprime Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Act II: The Euro Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
6. The Basic Causes of the Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
The Evolution of the Wage Share in Advanced Countries . . . . 149
Policy Models: China and the United States . . . . . . . . . . . 154
The German Policy Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
The “Markets” Thwart Political Scheming . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7. A Crisis of Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
The Ups and Downs of U.S. Hegemony . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
The United States and China: An Armed Friendship . . . . . . 182
The Difficulties of Europe and Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
A Currency World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Inter-imperial Contradictions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Conclusion: Whither Global Imperialism?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Acknowledgments
Some parts of a previous version of this book have been read by Ash
Amin, Gianni Betti, Sam Bowles, Emiliano Brancaccio, Alex Callinicos,
Sergio Cesaratto, Geoff Hodgson, Jerry Levy, Massimo Livi Bacci,
Mario Morroni, Edward Nell, Ugo Pagano, Anna Soci, Andrew
Tylecote, Michael Yates, and Maurizio Zenezini. I warmly thank them
all for their valuable comments and suggestions, and of course assume
responsibility for any errors or oversights. Special thanks go to Emma
Thorley, who helped me not only to translate the book into English,
but also helped in the more challenging task of writing it in a language
accessible to the lay reader, that retains analytical rigor.
THE BOURGEOISIE HAS THROUGH its exploitation of the world
market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption
in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from
under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-
established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being
destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction
becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries
that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn
from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not
only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. . . . In place of the old local
and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every
direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. . . . The bourgeoisie,
by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the
immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most
barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities
are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with
which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners
to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the
bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls
civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one
word, it creates a world after its own image.
—Marx and Engels, 1848
Introduction
The main thesis of this book is that contemporary globalization is
bringing about a type of imperialism that differs fundamentally from
those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The most significant difference is that the great capitalist firms, by
becoming multinationals, have broken out of the confines within which
they operated and that they exploited in the era of colonial empires.
Nowadays capital accumulates in a global market. One of its dominant
interests is therefore to dismantle all the barriers, obstacles, and polit-
ical pressures that states can place in its way. Whereas in the past every
nation’s monopoly capital took advantage of its state’s drive to imperial-
ist expansion, because it could use this as a way to enlarge the domestic
market, today the boundaries of national empires are seen as obstacles
to commercial expansion and accumulation. And whereas monopoly
capital previously had an interest in raising trade barriers and imple-
menting mercantilist policies, which it saw as defenses against the
competition of foreign firms, nowadays multinational capital votes for
free trade and financial globalization. I call this new form of capitalist
domination of the world global imperialism.
A second difference involves the relationship between state and cap-
ital. Their long-established symbiotic bond, based on the convergence
of the state’s interest in building political power and the interest of cap-
ital in creating a protected imperial market, is weakening. Big capital
now places itself above the nation-state, toward which it tends to take an
instrumental and conflicting attitude—“instrumental” because it seeks
to bend the state to its own interests, both through the direct action of