The Old and New Economics of Imperialism

Recent theorisations of the world economic order have at least cleared away the fog created by the 'globalization debate', with its talk of an equalizing world market and nascent cosmopolitan democracy. Attention has been refocused on material interests and the economic processes underlying the hierarchical arrangements of the world market. But they have left unresolved the opposition between these alternative interpretations of the trajectory of US power and the juxtaposition of rivalry and unity that characterises the new imperialism. As a result the persistent underlying contradictions of the world capitalist economy, and the US role in these contradictions, continue to be taken as signs of either the terminal decline of US power, or its opposite. In reality, however, economic internationalisation during this period of neoliberalism has been marked both by continuing competitive rivalry among the leading capitalist powers, and by growing economic interpenetration among capitalist firms and political interdependence between capitalist states. Contemporary imperialism, then, is an expression of the expansionist tendencies of capital to internationalize and constitute a world market for its valorization, while simultaneously differentiating itself into units located in states where class power and the production of value are materialized. There can be neither capital accumulation nor imperialism without states, or without the uneven development and relations of domination between states within the world market. Capitalist imperialism, on this reading, inherently involves contradictions between conflict and co-operation --what Harry Magdoff referred to in the 1990s as the 'centrifugal and centripetal forces--at the very core of the capitalist process'--and between competitive economic rivalry and interdependency in the world market