growing penetration of the
periphery; and (3) “the priority of
the interests
of
military-
multinational industry on the affairs
of state.” This description, he
noted, applied first and foremost to
the United States itself, but
reflected
relations
also
materializing among rival imperial
powers. In essence, he was
pointing to a tendency within the
system toward the formation of a
more generalized monopoly
capitalism, beginning in the United
States, but lording itself over the
entire globe. A key element in
Magdoff’s Age of Imperialism was
his chapter on the growth of “The
Financial Network,” investigating
the whole phenomenon of
multinational banking and finance
in general—a treatment that he
was to carry forward in the early
1990s in Globalization: To What
End?, which included his analysis
of
“The
Globalization
of
Finance.”15
It will be argued here that the
globalization of production (and
finance)—which emerged along
with neoliberalism out of the
economic stagnation of the mid–
1970s and then accelerated with
the demise of Soviet-type societies
and China’s reintegration into the
capitalist world system—has
generated a more generalized
monopoly capitalism, theorized by
thinkers such as Magdoff, Baran,
Sweezy, and Amin. This ushered in
what can be called late imperialism.
Late imperialism refers to the
present period of monopoly-
finance capital and stagnation,
declining U.S. hegemony and rising
world conflict, accompanied by
growing threats to the ecological
bases of civilization and life itself.
It stands at its core for the extreme,
hierarchical relations governing
the capitalist world economy in the
twenty-first century, which is
increasingly dominated by mega-
multinational corporations and a
handful of states at the center of
the world system. Just as it is now
8
common to refer to late capitalism
in recognition of the end times
brought on by simultaneous
economic
and
ecological
dislocations, so it is necessary
today to speak of late imperialism,
reflecting the global dimensions
and contradictions of that system,
cutting across all other divisions,
and posing a “global rift” in human
historical development: an epochal
crisis posi1ng the question of “ruin
or revolution.”16
The persistent failure of many
on the left, particularly in the
advanced capitalist states, to
acknowledge these developments
is largely the result of a growing
abandonment of the theory of
imperialism, substituting more
reified conceptions related to
globalization, seen as dissolving
former imperial hierarchies. This is
so much the case that a host of
alternative frameworks are now
offered suggesting: (1) the
progressive and self-annihilating
role of imperialism; (2) shifting
hegem onies within the world
system conceived as a substitute
for the theory of imperialism; (3)
“deterritorialized” (stateless,
borderless) Empire; (4) abstract
political imperialism led by the
United States or rule by supra-
national organizations removed
from economic forces; (5) the rise
of transnationalism as an entity in
itself largely independent of states
and geography; and (6) the
supposed reversal of imperialist
dominance. Hence, before
examining the historical pheno-
menon of late imperialism it is
necessary to view some of these
prevalent misconceptions on the
left in the imperial countries
themselves, resulting from a refusal
to come to terms with the complex,
many-sided structural realities of
late imperialism in the twenty-first
century.
The Western Left and the Denial
of Imperialism
The issue of the abandon-
ment of the critique of imperialism
within much of the Western left was
dramatically raised by Prabhat
Patnaik in his November 1990
Monthly Review article entitled
“W hatever
Happened
to
Imperialism?” Writing two decades
after Magdoff ’s The Age of
Imperialism and a little more than
a decade after Imperialism: From
the Colonial Age to the Present,
Patnaik, an economist at
Jawaharlal Nehru University in New
Delhi, observed:
“An outsider cannot help
noticing a remarkable transfor-
mation that has taken place in the
Marxist discourse in the United
States over the last decade: hardly
anybody talks about imperialism
any more. In 1974, I left
Cambridge, England, where I was
teaching economics, and have now
returned to the West, this time to
the United States, after 15 years.
When I left, imperialism occupied
perhaps the most prominent place
in any Marxist discussion, and
nowhere was more being written
about and talked about on this
subject than in the United States—
so much so that many European
Marxists accused American
Marxism of being tainted with “third
worldism.”… Marxists everywhere
looked to the United States for
literature on imperialism.…
This is obviously not the case
today. Younger Marxists [in the
United States] look bemused when
the term is mentioned. Burning
issues of the day…are discussed,
but without any reference to
imperialism. Radical indignation
over the invasion of Panama or
military intervention in Nicaragua
and El Salvador does not jell into
theoretical propositions about
imperialism. And the topic has
virtually disappeared from the
pages of Marxist journals,
especially those of a later vintage.
Curiously, this is not because
any one has theorized against the
concept. The silence over
imperialism is not the aftermath of
Class Struggle