Library:Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism/The parasitism and decay of capitalism
We have to examine yet another very important aspect of imperialism to which, usually, too little importance is attached in most of the arguments on this subject. One of the shortcomings of the Marxist Hilferding is that he takes a step backward compared with the non-Marxist Hobson. We refer to parasitism, which is a feature of imperialism.
As we have seen, the most deep-rooted economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of capitalism and exists in the general environment of capitalism, commodity production and competition, and remains in permanent and insoluble contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly, this capitalist monopoly inevitably gives rise to a tendency to stagnation and decay. As monopoly prices become fixed, even temporarily, so the stimulus to technical and, consequently, to all progress, disappears to a certain extent, and to that extent, also, the economic possibility arises of deliberately retarding technical progress. For instance, in America, a certain Mr. Owens invented a machine which revolutionized the manufacture of bottles. The German bottle manufacturing cartel purchased Owens” patent, but pigeonholed it, refrained from utilizing it. Certainly, monopoly under capitalism can never completely, and for a long period of time, eliminate competition in the world market (and this, by the by, is one of the reasons why the theory of ultra-imperialism is so absurd). Certainly the possibility of reducing cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. Nevertheless, the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is the feature of monopoly, continues, and in certain branches of industry, in certain countries, for certain periods of time, it becomes predominant.
The monopoly of ownership of very extensive, rich or well-situated colonies, operates in the same direction.
Further, imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, which, as we have seen, amounts to 100–150 billion francs in various securities. Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather of a category, of bondholders (rentiers), i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons,” who take no part whatever in production, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by the exploitation of the labour of several overseas countries and colonies.
“In 1893,” writes Hobson, “the British capital invested abroad represented about 15 per cent of the total wealth of the United Kingdom.”
Let us remember that by 1915 this capital had increased about two and a half times.
“Aggressive imperialism,” says Hobson further on, “which costs the taxpayer so dear, which is of so little value to the manufacturer and trader … is a source of great gain to the investor. … The annual income Great Britain derives from commissions in her whole foreign and colonial trade, import and export, is estimated by Sir R. Giffen at £18,000,000 for 1899, taken at 2½ per cent, upon a turnover of £800,000,000.”
Great as this sum is, it does not explain the aggressive imperialism of Great Britain. This is explained by the 90 to 100 million pounds sterling income from “invested” capital, the income of the rentiers.
The income of the bondholders is five times greater than the income obtained from the foreign trade of the greatest “trading” country in the world. This is the essence of imperialism and imperialist parisitism.
For that reason the term, “rentier state” (Rentnerstaat), or usurer state, is passing into current use in the economic literature that deals with imperialism. The world has become divided into a handful of usurer states on the one side, and a vast majority of debtor states on the other.
“The premier place among foreign investments,” says Schulze-Gaevernitz, “is held by those placed in politically dependent or closely allied countries. Great Britain grants loans to Egypt, Japan, China and South America. Her navy plays here the part of bailiff in case of necessity. Great Britain”s political power protects her from the indignation of her debtors.”
Sartorius von Waltershausen in his book, The National Economic System of Foreign Investments, cites Holland as the model “rentier state” and points out that Great Britain and France have taken the same road. Schilder believes that five industrial nations have become “pronounced creditor nations”: Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. Holland does not appear on this list simply because she is “industrially less developed.” The United States is creditor only of the other American countries.
“Great Britain,” says Schulze-Gaevernitz, “is gradually becoming transformed from an industrial state into a creditor state. Notwithstanding the absolute increase in industrial output and the export of manufactured goods, the relative importance of income from interest and dividends, issues of securities, commissions and speculation is on the increase in the whole of the national economy. In my opinion it is precisely this that forms the economic basis of imperialist ascendancy. The creditor is more permanently attached to the debtor than the seller is to the buyer.”
In regard to Germany, A. Lansburgh, the editor of Die Bank, in 1911, in an article entitled “Germany – a Rentier State,” wrote the following:
“People in Germany are ready to sneer at the yearning to become rentiers that is observed among the people in France. But they forget that as far as the middle class is concerned the situation in Germany is becoming more and more like that in France.”
The rentier state is a state of parasitic, decaying capitalism, and this circumstance cannot fail to influence all the social-political conditions of the countries affected generally, and the two fundamental trends in the working class movement, in particular. To demonstrate this in the clearest possible manner we will quote Hobson, who will be regarded as a more “reliable” witness, since he cannot be suspected of leanings towards “orthodox Marxism”; moreover, he is an Englishman who is very well acquainted with the situation in the country which is richest in colonies, in finance capital, and in imperialist experience. With the Boer War fresh in his mind, Hobson describes the connection between imperialism and the interests of the “financiers,” the growing profits from contracts, etc., and writes:
“While the directors of this definitely parasitic policy are capitalists, the same motives appeal to special classes of the workers. In many towns, most important trades are dependent upon government employment or contracts; the imperialism of the metal and shipbuilding centers is attributable in no small degree to this fact.”
In this writer”s opinion there are two causes which weakened the older empires:
- “economic parasitism,” and
- the formation of armies composed of subject races.
“There is first the habit of economic parasitism, by which the ruling state has used its provinces, colonies, and dependencies in order to enrich its ruling class and to bribe its lower classes into acquiescence.”
And we would add that the economic possibility of such corruption, whatever its form may be, requires high monopolist profits. As for the second cause, Hobson writes:
“One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of imperialism is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighting by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great standing armies are placed under British commanders; almost all the fighting associated with our African dominions, except in the southern part, has been done for us by natives.”
Hobson gives the following economic appraisal of the prospect of the partition of China:
“The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a large body of personal servants and workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods; all the main arterial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa.” “We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western States, a European federation of great powers which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilization, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great, tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory as undeserving of consideration examine the economic and social condition of districts in Southern England today which are already reduced to this condition, and reflect upon the vast extension of such a system which might be rendered feasible by the subjection of China to the economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors, and political and business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume it in Europe. The situation is far too complex, the play of world forces far too incalculable, to render this or any other single interpretation of the future very probable: but the influences which govern the imperialism of Western Europe today are moving in this direction, and, unless counteracted or diverted, make towards some such consummation.”
Hobson is quite right. Unless the forces of imperialism are counteracted they will lead precisely to what he has described. He correctly appraises the significance of a “United States of Europe” in the present conditions of imperialism. He should have added, however, that, even within the working class movement, the opportunists, who are for the moment predominant in most countries, are “working” systematically and undeviatingly in this very direction. Imperialism, which means the partition of the world, and the exploitation of other countries besides China, which means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries, creates the economic possibility of corrupting the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives form to, and strengthens opportunism. However, we must not lose sight of the forces which counteract imperialism in general, and opportunism in particular, which, naturally, the social-liberal Hobson is unable to perceive.
The German opportunist, Gerhard Hildebrand, who was expelled from the Party for defending imperialism, and who would today make a leader of the so-called “Social-Democratic” Party of Germany, serves as a good supplement to Hobson by his advocacy of a “United States of Western Europe” (without Russia) for the purpose of “joint” action … against the African Negroes, against the “great Islamic movement,” for the upkeep of a “powerful army and navy,” against a “Sino-Japanese coalition,” etc.
The description of “British imperialism” in Schulze-Gaevernitz”s book reveals the same parasitical traits. The national income of Great Britain approximately doubled from 1865 to 1898, while the income “from abroad” increased ninefold in the same period. While the “merit” of imperialism is that it “trains the Negro to habits of industry” (not without coercion of course …), the “danger” of imperialism is that:
“Europe … will shift the burden of physical toil – first agricultural and mining, then the more arduous toil in industry – on to the coloured races, and itself be content with the role of rentier, and in this way, perhaps, pave the way for the economic, and later, the political emancipation of the coloured races.”
An increasing proportion of land in Great Britain is being taken out of cultivation and used for sport, for the diversion of the rich.
“Scotland,” says Schulze-Gaevernitz, “is the most aristocratic playground in the world – it lives … on its past and on Mr. Carnegie.”
On horse-racing and fox-hunting alone Britain annually spends £14,000,000. The number of rentiers in England is about one million. The percentage of the productively employed population to the total population is becoming smaller.
| Year | Population | No. of workers in
basic industries |
Per cent of total
population |
|---|---|---|---|
| (millions) | |||
| 1851 | 17.9 | 4.1 | 23 |
| 1901 | 32.5 | 4.9 | 15 |
And in speaking of the British working class the bourgeois student of “British imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century” is obliged to distinguish systematically between the “upper stratum” of the workers and the “lower stratum of the proletariat proper.” The upper stratum furnishes the main body of members of co-operatives, of trade unions, of sporting clubs and of numerous religious sects. The electoral system, which in Great Britain is still “sufficiently restricted to exclude the lower stratum of the proletariat proper,” is adapted to their level!! In order to present the condition of the British working class in the best possible light, only this upper stratum – which constitutes only a minority of the proletariat – is generally spoken of. For instance, “the problem of unemployment is mainly a London problem and that of the lower proletarian stratum, which is of little political moment for politicians.” It would be better to say: which is of little political moment for the bourgeois politicians and the “socialist” opportunists.
Another special feature of imperialism, which is connected with the facts we are describing, is the decline in emigration from imperialist countries, and the increase in immigration into these countries from the backward countries where lower wages are paid. As Hobson observes, emigration from Great Britain has been declining since 1884. In that year the number of emigrants was 242,000, while in 1900, the number was only 169,000. German emigration reached the highest point between 1880 and 1890, with a total of 1,453,000 emigrants. In the course of the following two decades, it fell to 544,000 and even to 341,000. On the other hand, there was an increase in the number of workers entering Germany from Austria, Italy, Russia and other countries. According to the 1907 census, there were 1,342,294 foreigners in Germany, of whom 440,800 were industrial workers and 257,329 were agricultural workers. In France, the workers employed in the mining industry are, “in great part,” foreigners: Polish, Italian and Spanish. In the United States, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe are engaged in the most poorly paid occupations, while American workers provide the highest percentage of overseers or of the better paid workers. Imperialism has the tendency to create privileged sections even among the workers, and to detach them from the main proletarian masses.
It must be observed that in Great Britain the tendency of imperialism to divide the workers, to encourage opportunism among them and to cause temporary decay in the working class movement, revealed itself much earlier than the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; for two important distinguishing features of imperialism were observed in Great Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, viz., vast colonial possessions and a monopolist position in the world market. Marx and Engels systematically traced this relation between opportunism in the labour movement and the imperialist features of British capitalism for several decades. For example, on October 7, 1858, Engels wrote to Marx:
“The English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy, and a bourgeois proletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is, of course, to a certain extent justifiable.”
Almost a quarter of a century later, in a letter dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks of “… the worst type of English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least, paid by the bourgeoisie.” In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote:
“You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy? Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers” party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers merrily share the feast of England”s monopoly of the colonies and the world market. …” (Engels expressed similar ideas in the press in his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, which appeared in 1892.)
We thus see clearly the causes and effects. The causes are:
- Exploitation of the whole world by this country.
- Its monopolistic position in the world market.
- Its colonial monopoly.
The effects are:
- A section of the British proletariat becomes bourgeois.
- A section of the proletariat permits itself to be led by men sold to, or at least, paid by the bourgeoisie.
The imperialism of the beginning of the twentieth century completed the division of the world among a handful of states, each of which today exploits (i.e., draws super-profits from) a part of the world only a little smaller than that which England exploited in 1858. Each of them, by means of trusts, cartels, finance capital, and debtor and creditor relations, occupies a monopoly position in the world market. Each of them enjoys to some degree a colonial monopoly. (We have seen that out of the total of 75,000,000 sq. km. which comprise the whole colonial world, 65,000,000 sq. km., or 86 per cent, belong to six great powers; 61,000,000 sq. km., or 81 per cent, belong to three powers.)
The distinctive feature of the present situation is the prevalence of economic and political conditions which could not but increase the irreconcilability between opportunism and the general and vital interests of the working class movement. Embryonic imperialism has grown into a dominant system; capitalist monopolies occupy first place in economics and politics; the division of the world has been completed. On the other hand, instead of an undisputed monopoly by Great Britain, we see a few imperialist powers contending for the right to share in this monopoly, and this struggle is characteristic of the whole period of the beginning of the twentieth century. Opportunism, therefore, cannot now triumph in the working class movement of any country for decades as it did in England in the second half of the nineteenth century. But, in a number of countries it has grown ripe, over-ripe, and rotten, and has become completely merged with bourgeois policy in the form of “social-chauvinism.”