RE: [OPE] Britain--parasitic and decaying capitalism: A comment

" But if you look at Hobson's and Lenin's books they investigate and analyse the whole internal structure of capital, society and the state: rise of monopolies, merge of industrial and bank capital and domination of financial capital, the end of democracy and accomplishment of the division of the world and so on."

But look at these points: the tendancy towards centralisation of capital is general not specifically imperialist, and such centralisation as is now occuring via multi-national companies fits in better with Kautskys ultra imperialism than Hobsons model, albeit that the criticism of Kautsky in 1916 was valid then.

Merger of industrial and bank capital was a specfically german phenomenon, not characteristic of the UK or USA.

What end of democracy ?

If you are talking about the 1920s ok, but now? In the EU or USA or Japan?
________________________________________
From: ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu [ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu] On Behalf Of D. Göçmen [dogangoecmen@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 11:10 PM
To: ope@lists.csuchico.edu
Subject: Re: [OPE] Britain--parasitic and decaying capitalism: A comment

Dave,
export of capital is of course not only criterion to classify imperialism. If you take the term "stage" then you may see more clearly what it means. It is used to differentiate and define stages with their apparent differences in the development of capitalism. But if you look at Hobson's and Lenin's books they investigate and analyse the whole internal structure of capital, society and the state: rise of monopolies, merge of industrial and bank capital and domination of financial capital, the end of democracy and accomplishment of the division of the world and so on.
It is always the same way you choose to communicate: to say always what is not is but never what is: what is the imperialism according to your approach? does it make any sense to you to differ between stages in the development of capitalism?
D.Göçmen
http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/
http://www.dogangocmen.blogspot.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Zachariah <davez@kth.se>
To: Outline on Political Economy mailing list <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Cc: GERALD LEVY <gerald_a_levy@msn.com>
Sent: Wed, Dec 30, 2009 12:17 am
Subject: Re: [OPE] Britain--parasitic and decaying capitalism: A comment

On 2009-12-29 21:45, Jerry wrote:
> If you think of the export of capital as an export and expansion of a > social relation (most especially, the class relation between > capitalists and wage-workers) then it's quite real (but not without > its contradictory aspects).
No one would deny that investment across regions, 'capital export', expands the social relations of capitalism.

But that is the point I'm making, that this (and similar) features cannot reasonably be the defining element of imperialism for it occurs significantly in countries that are not considered to be 'imperialist'. E.g. Japan or China. In other words, imperialism is inadequately theorized in this framework.

//Dave Z
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Received on Tue Dec 29 18:51:30 2009