I agree with most of the "non-economic" aspects of imperialism raised in recent posts. We can obviously find many such examples. The trouble with them is that they do *not* lead to a theory of imperialism, but only to a collection of more or less infuriating anecdotes. In order to avoid the latter, we need a theory of international power structures. And such a theory - with apologies to political scientists, anthropologists and other social scientists - can *only* be an economic theory. Unfortunately, we do not have such a theory. This is what I find alarming. It is not surprising though - since there is no developed marxian theory of the state or of trade, and marxian contributions to the theory of finance are only in their infancy, we would have obvious difficulties synthesizing them into a theory of imperialism. alfredo.
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