problematic process of production,
investment, and growth in the
United States and other imperialist
nations. This then worsens the
overall problem of stagnation,
characterized by excess capacity,
underemployment, slow growth,
rising inequality, and periodic
financial bubbles and crises.
Amin argued that imperialist
rent had two distinct components.
The first was the rent derived from
the imperialist exploitation of
Southern labor. The second was
the draining of natural resources
from the South and violations of its
sovereignty in this respect by
multinational corporations and
imperialist states. Although the first
form of imperialist rent was, at least
in principle, measurable in value
terms, the second form of rent,
since it concerned use values (and
capital’s appropriation of free gifts
of nature), rather than exchange
values, was not. Nevertheless,
Marx, he insisted, had provided
ways of perceiving ecological
contradictions and ecological
imperialism.
Imperialism engages in an
enormous struggle for the control
of strategic resources. It has been
estimated that the U.S. military
spends approximately 16 percent
of its base budget on directly
safeguarding global oil supplies
alone. It is difficult to exaggerate,
as Magdoff emphasized, the extent
to which military and natural
resource interests are interrelated.
Military hegemony plays a key role
in all issues of securing economic
territory and strategic resources.
Multinational corporations are
inextricably tied to the financial and
political-military power of the
particular states in which they are
based, without which they could not
exist for a moment, and on which
their ability to engage effectively in
international competition depends.
In the case of the top hundred
nonfinancial corporations in the
world, three quarters have their
Aug,Sep - 2019
home in just six countries: United
States, United Kingdom, France,
Germany, Japan, and Switzerland.
According to Norfield, what distin-
guishes an imperialist company is
not its size or competitive success,
or even its global importance as a
major producer of goods or
services, although it will often be a
big company given the advantages
it enjoys. What distinguishes it is
the backing it receives from a
powerful nation-state in the world
economy, and any advantages it
gets because it is located in and
identified with that imperialist state.
Likewise, what in economic terms
distinguishes an imperialist state is
its ability to exert power in the world
economy on behalf of its “national”
capitalist companies.”
End Times
Imperialism today is more
aggressive and boundless in its
objectives than ever. In the present
period of declining U.S. hegemony,
as well as economic and ecological
decline, the dollar-oil-Pentagon
regime, backed by the entire triad
of the United States/Canada,
Europe, and Japan, is exerting all
of its military and financial power
to
gain
geopolitical
and
geoeconomic advantages. The
goal is to subordinate still further
those countries at the bottom of the
world hierarchy, while putting
obstacles in the way of emerging
economies, and overthrowing all
states that violate the rules of the
dominant order. Intercore conflicts
within the triad continue to exist but
are currently suppressed, not only
due to the overwhelming force of
U.S. power, but also as a result of
the perceived need in the core to
contain China and Russia, which
are seen as constituting grave
threats to the prevailing imperial
order. In China and in Russia, for
different but related historical
reasons, global monopoly-finance
capital lacks the dominant
combination with the national
capitalists within their political
economies that is present in the
other BRICS countries. Meanwhile,
the European Union is in disarray,
experiencing centrifugal, as
opposed to centripetal tendencies,
arising out of economic stagnation
and the instability generated by
imperial blowback emanating from
adjacent regions, particularly the
Middle East and North Africa.
Under these circumstances,
global value/supply chains, along
with energy, resources, and
finance, are more and more viewed
in military-strategic terms. At the
center of this interlocked,
globalized world order is the
unstable hegemony exercised by
Fortress America over both Europe
and Japan. The United States today
is pursuing a strategy of full-
spectrum dominance, aimed at not
only military, but also technological,
financial, and even global “energy
dominance”—against a backdrop
of impending planetary catast-
rophe and economic and political
disarray.
In
these
deteriorating
conditions, neofascist tendencies
have reemerged once again,
constituting monopoly-finance
capital’s final class-based recourse
—an alliance between big capital
and a newly mobilized reactionary
lower-middle class. More and more,
neoliberalism is merging into
neofascism, unleashing racism and
revanchist nationalism. Anti-
imperialist peace movements have
waned in most of the capitalist core,
even in the context of a revival of
the left, raising once again the
question of social imperialism.
There is a sense, of course,
in which much of this is familiar. As
Magdoff noted, centrifugal and
centripetal forces have always
coexisted at the core of the
capitalist process, with sometimes
one and sometimes the other
predominating. As a result, periods
of peace and harmony have
alternated with periods of discord
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