Communist Party of Britain
Contribution to International Communist Conference Athens
May 1999
"Developing Marxist theory to better understand our world"
Our party would first of all, like to congratulate our
hosts, the comrades of KKE, for their initiative on this
subject and their hospitality for ensuring its success.
Theoretical Background
Ideologists of capitalism, have spent the past 150 years
arguing the irrelevance or obsolescence of Marxism as a
critique of capitalism. One of the latest arguments, often
dressed up in the fancy clothes of globalisation� is that
Marxism is outdated because it failed to foresee the great
internationalisation of world commerce, and that the
working class is now powerless in the face of the colossal
might of the transnationals.
THE INTERNATIONAL CHARACTER OF CAPITALISM WAS ASSURED FROM
THE START
One of the factors which propelled the development of
capitalism in its early stages was the rapacious plunder of
overseas colonies and their resources, both material and
human, providing primitive accumulation of capital.
Yet Marx and Engels writing in the Communist Manifesto of
1848, noted that:
"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products
chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the
globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has,
through its exploitation of the world market, given a
cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
every country." This of course refers to the emergence of
capitalism in its pre-monopoly phase. It is important to
emphasise this, otherwise, there is a danger of confusing
this stage of capitalist development, characterised by free
competition, with the later emergence of the special stage
of capitalism, imperialism, characterised not merely by
international trade in finished goods or raw materials, but
crucially by the emergence of monopolies and the export of
capital.
LENIN�S CONTRIBUTION
Lenin�s analysis of imperialism identified five essential
features:
"[1] The concentration of production and capital developed
to such a stage that it creates monopolies which play a
decisive role in economic life.
[2] The merging of bank capital with industrial capital,
and the creation, on the basis of finance capital�, of a
financial oligarchy�
[3] The export of capital, which has become extremely
important, as distinguished from the export of commodities.
[4] The formation of international capitalist monopolies
which share the world among themselves.
[5] The territorial division of the whole world among the
greatest imperialist powers is completed."
However, it would be a mistake to understand imperialism as
a system by which rich advanced capitalist societies
exploit poor, backward underdeveloped ones.
As Lenin noted:
"The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely
that it strives to annex not only agricultural regions, but
even highly industrialised"
This would in turn inevitably exacerbate national
oppression:
"Imperialism is the epoch of finance capitalism and the
monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for
domination, not for freedom. The result is reaction all
along the line, whatever the political system, and an
extreme intensification of existing antagonisms in this
domain also. Particularly acute becomes the yoke of
national oppression and the striving for annexations, ie
the violation of national independence".
GLOBALISATION� AND MODERN IMPERIALISM
The fashionable term "globalisation" is presented as a
process driven by the overwhelming power of market forces
and neutral but irresistible technological advances,
particularly in information and communications networks.
Since the world market is now transparent, the argument
goes, all workers and all companies are competing against
each other. Companies must strive to be world-class� in
(high) quality of products and (low) costs. This drive to
productivity is accompanied by familiar exhortations to
work harder for less reward. This process is presented as
inevitable, and irreversible. We must accept this new world
order'H, since the old alternatives to international
capitalism have either failed or no longer correspond to
the globalised character of the modern economy.
Behind the 'globalisation' myth British imperialism retains
one of highest levels of capital exports as a proportion of
GDP. Yet with Britain, as with USA, Franceand Italy, there
is an overall decline over time, compared especially with
the initial phase of imperialism in the period up to 1914.
The major economies in this sense are actually less
globalised). It is in the area of finance capital, and the
most parasitic elements of finance capital at that, that we
see a substantial growth in international transfers. The
lifting of restrictions on capital export controls by the
Thatcher government in the 1980s saw in excess of �500bn
siphoned off from the British domestic economy to overseas
investment. All figures show that Foreign Direct Investment
of the major imperialist economies is less and less
related to the expansion of manufacturing (expanding the
productive forces) and involve instead the simple takeover
of existing assets through mergers and acquisitions. The
transnational corporations (TNCs) are, however, primarily
headquartered in single nation-states with their key
shareholders and board-level personnel drawn from the home
state. The successes, and failures, of class struggle
conducted at a domestic level, ie within the confines of
particular states, remain the key, while in no way
contradicting efforts by the left to unite workers of
differing countries or regions in joint struggles. The
struggle for state power in each individual country is
still the key to advance internationally, due to the
inevitably uneven process of class struggle in different
countries.
Imperialism's New World Order
At the core of the New World Order is the drive for
privatisation. World Trade Organisation rules, the proposed
Multilateral Agreement on Investment, IMF bail-outs,
Structural Adjustment Programmes all promote so-called
"Globalisation" using terms such as the need for
"international competitiveness" and claiming the end of
nation state as a means to ending government involvement in
the economy and promoting the concept that government is
inherently corrupt while the private sector is inherently
efficient.
Monopoly capital is pushing to dismantle trade barriers and
end protection of local economies to allow TNC access to
accelerate the merger process and the absorption of smaller
national companies particularly in the energy field in name
of "integration." Within the European Union this process of
privatisation and growth of monopolies is enshrined within
the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht) which is
blueprint for an end to controls on capital. Under the
plans national banks will be privatised and become branches
of European Central Bank and national industries must be
privatised.
The basis of the war of aggression against Yugoslavia is
also a drive for markets and privatisation. The pretext for
the start of the war, Belgrade's refusal to sign the
Rambouillet Accords, contained demands for the wholesale
privatisation of parts of the Yugoslav economy. Chapter
4a,1 if the accord insists "the economy of Kosovo shall
function in accordance with free market principles" and
chapter 4b, 6 gives the European Commission the mandate to
ensure this is carried out. The German NATO commander
overseeing military operations in the Balkans General Klaus
Naumann wrote in Der Speigel in May 1995 "German troops
will be engaged for the maintenance of the free market and
access, without hinderance to the raw materials of the
entire world." Currently German troops are among the
thousands of Eurocorps troops massed on the Yugoslav border
awaiting orders to invade. The Eurocorps are the core of
the European army proposed within the Common Foreign and
Security Policy(CFSP) in the Amsterdam Treaty. Former
commission president Jaques Delors claimed that the EU
needed a European army to "fight the resource wars of the
21st Century." The EU summit in Cologne on June 3 and 4
will concentrate on the development the so-called European
Security and Defence Identity and appoint a "High
Representative" for the CFSP- effectively a foreign policy
supremo. On 10-11 May EU defence ministers agreed to work
for a common defence capability within 18 months. The
Western European Union military alliance is the initial
vehicle for the creation for such a force but Germany, as
current EU and WEU president, has made clear it wants to
merge the WEU into the EU creating an armed wing for
Brussels. German Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
said "we want to bring the building of a single European
Defence and Security Policy under one roof, namely the EU."
The new EU commission President Romano Prodi has said that
the creation of such an armed wing for the European
superstate is a priority for him but not without
difficulties "This is more complicated than what we did
with the money" he said.
The US supports a single European military and foreign
policy not least because narrows the consensus necessary
within NATO as 12 European NATO members will be silenced
into one voice dominated by the Germans. EU leaders in
Cologne will also be presented with a statement issued at
the NATO summit in Washington last month which sets out the
new US strategicconcept for the alliance which will allow
it to operate out of area- effectively a blueprint to
abolish national sovereignty throughout the world using
military might to enforce the new world economic order.
INTER-IMPERIALIST RIVIALRY WITHIN THE EU
The British Road to Socialism argues that the world is
witnessing the crystallisation of three major imperialist
blocs, the North American Free Trade Area dominated by US
imperialism, an east Asian bloc dominated by Japan and a
European bloc comprising the states of the European Union.
However, unlike its North American or Asian rivals, the EU
comprises not one but several major imperialist powers.
Currently, the dominant power is that of Germany, But the
EU exists not only as a bloc of inter-imperialist rivalry
but it also has rivalry within the bloc. France and Britain
are major, although historically declining powers in their
own right. Both, for example, possess nuclear weapons,
retain colonial ties and, especially in the case of
Britain, possess substantial investments outside the EU
member states.
The schizophrenic attitude taken by successive British
governments reflects the real hesitations of British
monopolies. Many would like to take advantage of a United
Europe and to work in partnership with German monopolies or
perhaps even supplant them, while others hand large
sections of British monopoly capitalism look elsewhere,
where there investments are and fear that a united Europe
under German hegemony weakens their positions. (In 1997, US
monopolies invested twice as much in the UK as the rest of
the EU member states while 65% of European investment in
the US was of British origin). Without a analysis of this
two-way imperialist rivalry, between integration of EU
monopoly groups against outside rivals on the one hand, and
among these monopoly groups to determine the basis for that
integration, there can be no understanding of the EU. In
short, there does not exist a single European� imperialist
power with a single collective interest but on the contrary
there is inter-imperialist rivalry within the bloc. This
accounts for the incessant friction and jostling for
position which seems to sharpen at precisely the moment of
market, currency or political harmonisation�.
CONCLUSION
Our party believes that Marxist-Leninist ideas have
enormous validity in understanding the process of
capitalist restructuring worldwide. As Marxists we do not
champion national differences for their own sake. We are
internationalists seeking to break down all national and
ethnic barriers to the fullest development of humanity.
However, the interests of monopoly capitalism increasingly
collide with the interests of the mass of people and
undermine popular democratic rights, further weakening
representative democratic institutions and preventing
effective national self-determination, which in the final
analysis is sovereignty in the form of a state. While the
big business EU plans the stripping away of the inadequate
democratic powers which existing national parliaments have,
we on the contrary favour their extension to the maximum.
Effective opposition to the EU, the various military
alliances such as NATO, the WEU etc, and the threat they
pose to all the peoples of Europe must be channelled into
developing effective nationally based counter-strategies.
Far from ruling out international co-operation, this would
provide the best means for ensuring international
collaboration on a democratic, peaceful and progressive
basis.
Kenny Coyle
International Secretary
Communist Party of Britain
