Contemporary Imperialism

SAMIR AMIN

L es s o n s f r o m t h e Tw e n t i e t h C e n t u r y

Lenin, Bukharin, Stalin, and Trotsky in Russia, as well as Mao,

Zhou Enlai, and Den Xiaoping in China, shaped the history of the two
great revolutions of the twentieth century.1 As leaders of revolutionary
communist parties and then later as leaders of revolutionary states,
they were confronted with the problems faced by a triumphant revo-
lution in countries of peripheral capitalism and forced to “revise” (I
deliberately use this term, considered sacrilegious by many) the the-
ses inherited from the historical Marxism of the Second International.
Lenin and Bukharin went much further than Hobson and Hilferding in
their analyses of monopoly capitalism and imperialism and drew this
major political conclusion: the imperialist war of 1914–1918 (they were
among the few, if not the only ones, to anticipate it) made necessary
and possible a revolution led by the proletariat.
With the benefit of hindsight, I will indicate here the limitations
of their analyses. Lenin and Bukharin considered imperialism to be a
new stage (“the highest”) of capitalism associated with the develop-
ment of monopolies. I question this thesis and contend that historical
capitalism has always been imperialist, in the sense that it has led to
a polarization between centers and peripheries since its origin (the
sixteenth century), which has only increased over the course of its
later globalized development. The nineteenth century pre-monopolist
system was not less imperialist. Great Britain maintained its hege-
mony precisely because of its colonial domination of India. Lenin and
Bukharin thought that the revolution, begun in Russia (“the weak
link”), would continue in the centers (Germany in particular). Their
hope was based on an underestimate of the effects of imperialist polar-
ization, which destroyed revolutionary prospects in the centers.
Nevertheless, Lenin, and even more Bukharin, quickly learned the
necessary historical lesson. The revolution, made in the name of social-
ism (and communism), was, in fact, something else: mainly a peasant
Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His books pub-
lished by Monthly Review Press include The Liberal Virus, The World We Wish to See, The Law of
Worldwide Value, The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism, and Three Essays on Marx’s Value Theory.
4
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revolution. So what to do? How can the peasantry be linked with the
construction of socialism? By making concessions to the market and
by respecting newly acquired peasant property; hence by progressing
slowly towards socialism? The NEP implemented this strategy.
Yes, but…. Lenin, Bukharin, and Stalin also understood that the
imperialist powers would never accept the Revolution or even the
NEP. After the hot wars of intervention, the cold war was to become
permanent, from 1920 to 1990.2 Soviet Russia, even though it was far
from being able to construct socialism, was able to free itself from the
straightjacket that imperialism always strives to impose on all periph-
eries of the world system that it dominates. In effect, Soviet Russia
delinked. So what to do now? Attempt to push for peaceful coexistence,
by making concessions if necessary and refraining from intervening
too actively on the international stage? But at the same time, it was
necessary to be armed to face new and unavoidable attacks. And that
implied rapid industrialization, which, in turn, came into conflict with
the interests of the peasantry and thus threatened to break the worker-
peasant alliance, the foundation of the revolutionary state.
It is possible, then, to understand the equivocations of Lenin,
Bukharin, and Stalin. In theoretical terms, there were U-turns from
one extreme to the other. Sometimes a determinist attitude inspired
by the phased approach inherited from earlier Marxism (first the bour-
geois democratic revolution, then the socialist one) predominated,
sometimes a voluntarist approach (political action would make it pos-
sible to leap over stages). Finally, from 1930–1933, Stalin chose rapid
industrialization and armament (and this choice was not without some
connection to the rise of fascism). Collectivization was the price of that
choice. Here again we must beware of judging too quickly: all social-
ists of that period (and even more the capitalists) shared Kautsky’s
analyses on this point and were persuaded that the future belonged
to large-scale agriculture.3 The break in the worker-peasant alliance
that this choice implied lay behind the abandonment of revolutionary
democracy and the autocratic turn.
In my opinion, Trotsky would certainly not have done better. His
attitude towards the rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors and his later
equivocations demonstrate that he was no different than the other
Bolshevik leaders in government. But, after 1927, living in exile and no
longer having responsibility for managing the Soviet state, he could
delight in endlessly repeating the sacred principles of socialism. He
became like many academic Marxists who have the luxury of asserting
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their attachment to principles without having to be concerned about

effectiveness in transforming reality.4
The Chinese communists appeared later on the revolutionary stage.
Mao was able to learn from Bolshevik equivocations. China was con-
fronted with the same problems as Soviet Russia: revolution in a
backward country, the necessity of including the peasantry in revolu-
tionary transformation, and the hostility of the imperialist powers. But
Mao was able to see more clearly than Lenin, Bukharin, and Stalin. Yes,
the Chinese revolution was anti-imperialist and peasant (anti-feudal).
But it was not bourgeois democratic; it was popular democratic. The dif-
ference is important: the latter type of revolution requires maintaining
the worker-peasant alliance over a long period. China was thus able to
avoid the fatal error of forced collectivization and invent another way:
make all agricultural land state property, give the peasantry equal access
to use of this land, and renovate family agriculture.5
The two revolutions had difficulty in achieving stability because they
were forced to reconcile support for a socialist outlook and concessions to
capitalism. Which of these two tendencies would prevail? These revolu-
tions only achieved stability after their “Thermidor,” to use Trotsky’s term.
But when was the Thermidor in Russia? Was it in 1930, as Trotsky said?
Or was it in the 1920s, with the NEP? Or was it the ice age of the Brezhnev
period? And in China, did Mao choose Thermidor beginning in 1950? Or
do we have to wait until Deng Xiaoping to speak of the Thermidor of 1980?
It is not by chance that reference is made to lessons of the French
Revolution. The three great revolutions of modern times (the French,
Russian, and Chinese) are great precisely because they looked forward
beyond the immediate requirements of the moment. With the rise of
the Mountain, led by Robespierre, in the National Convention, the
French Revolution was consolidated as both popular and bourgeois
and, just like the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, which strove to
go all the way to communism even if it were not on the agenda due to
the necessity of averting defeat, retained the prospect of going much
further later. Thermidor is not the Restoration. The latter occurred in
France, not with Napoleon, but only beginning in 1815. Still it should be
remembered that the Restoration could not completely do away with
the gigantic social transformation caused by the Revolution. In Russia,
the restoration occurred even later in its revolutionary history, with
Gorbachev and Yeltsin. It should be noted that this restoration remains
fragile, as can be seen in the challenges Putin must still confront. In
China, there has not been (or not yet!) a restoration.6
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A N e w S t a g e o f M o n o po l y C ap it a l
The contemporary world is still confronted with the same challenges
encountered by the revolutions of the twentieth century. The contin-
ued deepening of the center/periphery contrast, characteristic of the
spread of globalized capitalism, still leads to the same major political
consequence: transformation of the world begins with anti-imperialist,
national, popular—and potentially anti-capitalist—revolutions, which
are the only ones on the agenda for the foreseeable future. But this trans-
formation will only be able to go beyond the first steps and proceed on
the path to socialism later if and when the peoples of the centers, in turn,
begin the struggle for communism, viewed as a higher stage of universal
human civilization. The systemic crisis of capitalism in the centers gives
a chance for this possibility to be translated into reality.
In the meantime, there is a two-fold challenge confronting the
peoples and states of the South: (1) the lumpen development that
contemporary capitalism forces on all peripheries of the system has
nothing to offer to three-quarters of humanity; in particular, it leads
to the rapid destruction of peasant societies in Asia and Africa, and
consequently the response given to the peasant question will largely
govern the nature of future changes;7 (2) the aggressive geostrategy of
the imperialist powers, which is opposed to any attempt by the peoples
and states of the periphery to get out of the impasse, forces the peoples
concerned to defeat the military control of the world by the United
States and its subaltern European and Japanese allies.
The first long systemic crisis of capitalism got underway in
the 1870s. The version of historic capitalism’s extension over the
long span that I have put forward suggests a succession of three
epochs: ten centuries of incubation from the year 1000 in China to
the eighteenth-century revolutions in England and France, a short
century of triumphal flourishing (the nineteenth century), probably
a long decline comprising in itself the first long crisis (1875–1945) and
then the second (begun in 1975 and still ongoing). In each of those
two long crises, capital responds to the challenge by the same triple
formula: concentration of capital’s control, deepening of uneven
globalization, financialization of the system’s management.8 Two major
thinkers (Hobson and Hilferding) immediately grasped the enormous
importance of capitalism’s transformation into monopoly capitalism.
But it was Lenin and Bukharin who drew the political conclusion from
this transformation, a transformation that initiated the decline of
capitalism and thus moved the socialist revolution onto the agenda.9
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The primary formation of monopoly capitalism thus goes back to the

end of the nineteenth century, but in the United States it really estab-
lished itself as a system only from the 1920s, to conquer next the Western
Europe and Japan of the “thirty glorious years” following the Second
World War. The concept of surplus, put forth by Baran and Sweezy in the
1950–1960 decade, allows a grasp of what is essential in the transformation
of capitalism. Convinced at the moment of its publication by that work of
enrichment to the Marxist critique of capitalism, I undertook as soon as the
1970s its reformulation which required, in my opinion, the transformation
of the “first” (1920–1970) monopoly capitalism into generalized-monopoly
capitalism, analyzed as a qualitatively new phase of the system.
In the previous forms of competition among firms producing the same
use value—numerous then, and independent of each other—decisions
were made by the capitalist owners of those firms on the basis of a
recognized market price which imposed itself as an external datum.
Baran and Sweezy observe that the new monopolies act differently:
they set their prices simultaneously with the nature and volume of their
outputs. So it is an end to “fair and open competition,” which remains,
quite contrary to reality, at the heart of conventional economics’
rhetoric! The abolition of competition—the radical transformation of
that term’s meaning, of its functioning and of its results—detaches
the price system from its basis, the system of values, and in that
very way hides from sight the referential framework which used to
define capitalism’s rationality. Although use values used to constitute
to a great extent autonomous realities, they become, in monopoly
capitalism, the object of actual fabrications produced systematically
through aggressive and particularized sales strategies (advertising,
brands, etc.). In monopoly capitalism a coherent reproduction of the
productive system is no longer possible merely by mutual adjustment of
the two departments discussed in vol. II of Capital: it is thenceforward
necessary to take into account a Department III, conceived by Baran
and Sweezy, conceived of as added surplus absorption promoted by
the state—beyond Department I private investment) and beyond the
portion of Department II (private consumption) devoted to capitalist
consumption. The classic example of Department III spending is military
expenditure. However, the notion of Department III can be expanded
to cover the wider array of socially unreproductive expenditures
promoted by generalized-monopoly capitalism.10
The excrescence of Department III, in turn, favors in fact the erasure
of the distinction made by Marx between productive (of surplus-value)
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labor and unproductive labor. All forms of wage labor can—and do—
become sources of possible profits. A hairdresser sells his services to
a customer who pays him out of his income. But if that hairdresser
becomes the employee of a beauty parlor, the business must realize
a profit for its owner. If the country at issue puts ten million wage
workers to work in Departments I, II, and III, providing the equivalent
of twelve million years of abstract labor, and if the wages received
by those workers allow them to buy goods and services requiring
merely six million years of abstract labor, the rate of exploitation for
all of them, productive and unproductive confounded, is the same 100
percent. But the six million years of abstract labor that the workers do
not receive cannot all be invested in the purchase of producer goods
destined to the expansion of Departments I and II; part of them will
have to be put toward the expansion of Department III.
g e n e r al i zed -M o n o p o l y C ap i t al i s m (Sin c e 1 9 7 5 )

Passage from the initial monopoly capitalism to its current form

(generalized-monopoly capitalism) is accomplished in a short time
(between 1975 and 2000) in response to the second long crisis of
declining capitalism. In fifteen years, monopoly power’s centralization
and its capacity for control over the entire productive system reach
summits incomparable with what had until then been the case.
My first formulation of generalized-monopoly capitalism dates from
1978, when I put forward an interpretation of capital’s responses to the
challenge of its long systemic crisis, which opened starting from 1971–
1975. In that interpretation I accentuated the three directions of this
expected reply, then barely under way: strengthened centralization
of control over the economy by the monopolies, deepening of
globalization (and the outsourcing of manufacturing industry toward
the peripheries), and financialization. The work that André Gunder
Frank and I published together in 1978 drew no notice probably because
our theses were ahead of their time. But today the three characteristics
at issue have become blindingly obvious to everybody.11
A name had to be given to this new phase of monopoly capitalism.
The adjective “generalized” specifies what is new: the monopolies are
thenceforward in a position that gives them the capability of reducing all
(or nearly all) economic activities to subcontractor status. The example
of family farming in the capitalist centers provides the finest example
of this. These farmers are controlled upstream by the monopolies that
provide their inputs and financing, and downstream by the marketing
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chains, to the point that the price structures forced on them wipe out
the income from their labor. Farmers survive only thanks to public
subsidies paid for by the taxpayers. This extraction is thus at the origin
of the monopolies’ profits! As likewise has been observed with bank
failures, the new principal of economic management is summed up in
a phrase: privatization of the monopolies’ profits, socialization of their
losses! To go on talking of “fair and open competition” and of “truth of
the prices revealed by the markets”—that belongs in a farce.
The fragmented, and by that fact concrete, economic power of propri-
etary bourgeois families gives way to a centralized power exercised by the
directors of the monopolies and their cohort of salaried servitors. For gen-
eralized-monopoly capitalism involves not the concentration of property,
which on the contrary is more dispersed than ever, but of the power to
manage it. That is why it is deceptive to attach the adjective “patrimonial”
to contemporary capitalism. It is only in appearance that “shareholders”
rule. Absolute monarchs, the top executives of the monopolies, decide
everything in their name. Moreover, the deepening globalization of the
system wipes out the holistic (i.e., simultaneously economic, political, and
social) logic of national systems without putting in its place any global
logic whatsoever. This is the empire of chaos—title of one of my works,
published in 1991 and subsequently taken up by others: in fact interna-
tional political violence takes the place of economic competition.12
F i n an c i a li z a t i o n o f Ac c u mu l a t i o n

The new financialization of economic life crowns this transformation

in capital’s power. Instead of strategies set out by real owners of
fragmented capital are those of the managers of ownership titles
over capital. What is vulgarly called fictitious capital (the estimated
value of ownership certificates) is nothing but the expression of this
displacement, this disconnect between the virtual and real worlds.
By its very nature capitalist accumulation has always been synony-
mous with disorder, in the sense that Marx gave to that term: a system
moving from disequilibrium to disequilibrium (driven by class strug-
gles and conflicts among the Powers) without ever tending toward an
equilibrium. But this disorder resulting from competition among frag-
mented capitals was kept within reasonable limits through management
of the credit system carried out under the control of the national State.
With contemporary financialized and globalized capitalism those fron-
tiers disappear; the violence of the movements from disequilibrium to
disequilibrium is reinforced. The successor of disorder is chaos.
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Domination by the capital of the generalized monopolies is exercised

on the world scale through global integration of the monetary and
financial market, based henceforward on the principle of flexible
exchange rates, and giving up national controls over the flow of capital.
Nevertheless, this domination is called into question, to varying
degrees, by State policies of the emerging countries. The conflict
between these latter policies and the strategic objectives of the triad’s
collective imperialism becomes by that fact one of the central axes for
possibly putting generalized-monopoly capitalism once more on trial.13
T h e d e cl i n e o f d e mo c r a cy

In the system’s centers generalized-monopoly capitalism has brought

with it generalization of the wage-form. Upper managers are thencefor-
ward employees who do not participate in the formation of surplus-value,
of which they have become consumers. At the other social pole the gen-
eralized proletarianization that the wage-form suggests is accompanied
by multiplication in forms of segmentation of the labor force. In other
words, the “proletariat” (in its forms as known in the past) disappears
at the very moment when proletarianization becomes generalized. In the
peripheries the effects of domination by generalized-monopoly capital
are no less visible. Above the diversity both of local ruling classes and of
statuses of subordinate classes is placed the power of a dominant super-
class emerging in the wake of globalization. This superclass is sometimes
that of “comprador insiders,” sometimes that of the governing political
class (or class-State-party), or a mixture of the two.
Far from being synonyms, “market” and “democracy” are, on the con-
trary, antonyms. In the centers a new political consensus-culture (only
seeming, perhaps, but nevertheless active) synonymous with depoliti-
zation, has taken the place of the former political culture based on
the right-left confrontation that used to give significance to bourgeois
democracy and the contradictory inscription of class struggles within its
framework. In the peripheries the monopoly of power captured by the
dominant local superclass likewise involves the negation of democracy.
The rise of political Islam provides an example of such a regression.
T h e Ag g r es s i v e g e o s t r a te g y o f C o n te mp o r a ry I m p e r i a li s m

T h e C o l l ect i v e I mp e r i a l is m o f t h e Tri a d ; t h e S t a t e in
C o n te mp o r a ry C ap i t al i s m
In the 1970s, Sweezy, Magdoff, and I had already advanced this
thesis, formulated by André Gunder Frank and me in a work published
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in 1978. We said that monopoly capitalism was entering a new age,

characterized by the gradual—but rapid—dismantling of national
production systems. The production of a growing number of market
goods can no longer be defined by the label “made in France” (or the
Soviet Union or the United States), but becomes “made in the world,”
because its manufacture is now broken into segments, located here and
there throughout the whole world.
Recognizing this fact, now a commonplace, does not imply that
there is only one explanation of the major cause for the transformation
in question. For my part, I explain it by the leap forward in the degree
of centralization in the control of capital by the monopolies, which
I have described as the move from the capitalism of monopolies to
the capitalism of generalized monopolies. The information revolution,
among other factors, provides the means that make possible the
management of this globally dispersed production system. But for me,
these means are only implemented in response to a new objective need
created by the leap forward in the centralized control of capital.
The emergence of this globalized production system eliminates
coherent “national development” policies (diverse and unequally effec-
tive), but it does not substitute a new coherence, which would be that
of the globalized system. The reason for that is the absence of a glo-
balized bourgeoisie and globalized state, which I will examine later.
Consequently, the globalized production system is incoherent by nature.
Another important consequence of this qualitative transformation of
contemporary capitalism is the emergence of the collective imperialism
of the triad, which takes the place of the historical national imperialisms
(of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Germany, France, and a few
others). Collective imperialism finds its raison d’être in the awareness
by the bourgeoisies in the triad nations of the necessity for their joint
management of the world and particularly of the subjected, and yet to
be subjected, societies of the peripheries.
Some draw two correlates from the thesis of the emergence of a glo-
balized production system: the emergence of a globalized bourgeoisie
and the emergence of a globalized state, both of which would find their
objective foundation in this new production system. My interpretation
of the current changes and crises leads me to reject these two correlates.
There is no globalized bourgeoisie (or dominant class) in the pro-
cess of being formed, neither on the world scale nor in the countries of
the imperialist triad. I am led to emphasize the fact that the centraliza-
tion of control over the capital of the monopolies takes place within the
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nation-states of the triad (United States, each member of the European

Union, Japan) much more than it does in the relations between the part-
ners of the triad, or even between members of the European Union. The
bourgeoisies (or oligopolistic groups) are in competition within nations
(and the national state manages this competition, in part at least) and
between nations. Thus the German oligopolies (and the German state)
took on the leadership of European affairs, not for the equal benefit of
everyone, but first of all for their own benefit. At the level of the triad, it
is obviously the bourgeoisie of the United States that leads the alliance,
once again with an unequal distribution of the benefits. The idea that the
objective cause—the emergence of the globalized production system—
entails ipso facto the emergence of a globalized dominant class is based
on the underlying hypothesis that the system must be coherent. In real-
ity, it is possible for it not to be coherent. In fact, it is not coherent and
hence this chaotic system is not viable.
In the peripheries, the globalization of the production system
occurs in conjunction with the replacement of the hegemonic blocs
of earlier eras by a new hegemonic bloc dominated by the new
comprador bourgeoisies, which are not constitutive elements of a
globalized bourgeoisie, but only subaltern allies of the bourgeoisies of
the dominant triad. Just like there is no globalized bourgeoisie in the
process of formation, there is also no globalized state on the horizon.
The major reason for that is that the current globalized system does not
attenuate, but actually accentuates conflict (already visible or potential)
between the societies of the triad and those of the rest of the world. I
do indeed mean conflict between societies and, consequently, potentially
conflict between states. The advantage derived from the triad’s
dominant position (imperialist rent) allows the hegemonic bloc formed
around the generalized monopolies to benefit from a legitimacy that is
expressed, in turn, by the convergence of all major electoral parties,
right and left, and their equal commitment to neoliberal economic
policies and continual intervention in the affairs of the peripheries. On
the other hand, the neo-comprador bourgeoisies of the peripheries are
neither legitimate nor credible in the eyes of their own people (because
the policies they serve do not make it possible to “catch up,” and most
often lead to the impasse of lumpen-development). Instability of the
current governments is thus the rule in this context.
Just as there is no globalized bourgeoisie even at the level of the triad
or that of the European Union, there is also no globalized state at these
levels. Instead, there is only an alliance of states. These states, in turn,
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willingly accept the hierarchy that allows that alliance to function: gen-
eral leadership is taken on by Washington, and leadership in Europe by
Berlin. The national state remains in place to serve globalization as it is.
There is an idea circulating in postmodernist currents that contempo-
rary capitalism no longer needs the state to manage the world economy
and thus that the state system is in the process of withering away to
the benefit of the emergence of civil society. I will not go back over the
arguments that I have developed elsewhere against this naive thesis, one
moreover that is propagated by the dominant governments and the media
clergy in their service. There is no capitalism without the state. Capitalist
globalization could not be pursued without the interventions of the
United States armed forces and the management of the dollar. Clearly, the
armed forces and money are instruments of the state, not of the market.
But since there is no world state, the United States intends to fulfill
this function. The societies of the triad consider this function to be
legitimate; other societies do not. But what does that matter? The self-
proclaimed “international community,” i.e., the G7 plus Saudi Arabia,
which has surely become a democratic republic, does not recognize the
legitimacy of the opinion of 85 percent of the world’s population!
There is thus an asymmetry between the functions of the state in
the dominant imperialist centers and those of the state in the subject,
or yet to be subjected, peripheries. The state in the compradorized
peripheries is inherently unstable and, consequently, a potential
enemy, when it is not already one.
There are enemies with which the dominant imperialist powers have
been forced to coexist—at least up until now. This is the case with China
because it has rejected (up until now) the neo-comprador option and is
pursuing its sovereign project of integrated and coherent national develop-
ment. Russia became an enemy as soon as Putin refused to align politically
with the triad and wanted to block the expansionist ambitions of the lat-
ter in Ukraine, even if he does not envision (or not yet?) leaving the rut of
economic liberalism. The great majority of comprador states in the South
(that is, states in the service of their comprador bourgeoisies) are allies,
not enemies—as long as each of these comprador states gives the appear-
ance of being in charge of its country. But leaders in Washington, London,
Berlin, and Paris know that these states are fragile. As soon as a popular
movement of revolt—with or without a viable alternative strategy—threat-
ens one of these states, the triad arrogates to itself the right to intervene.
Intervention can even lead to contemplating the destruction of these states
and, beyond them, of the societies concerned. This strategy is currently
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at work in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. The raison d’être of the strategy for
military control of the world by the triad led by Washington is located
entirely in this “realist” vision, which is in direct counterpoint to the naive
view—à la Negri—of a globalized state in the process of formation.14
R e s p o n s e s o f t h e pe o p le s a n d S t a t e s o f t h e S o u t h

The ongoing offensive of United States/Europe/Japan collective

imperialism against all the peoples of the South walks on two legs: the
economic leg—globalized neoliberalism forced as the exclusive possible
economic policy; and the political leg—continuous interventions
including preemptive wars against those who reject imperialist
interventions. In response, some countries of the South, such as the
BRICS, at best walk on only one leg: they reject the geopolitics of
imperialism but accept economic neoliberalism. They remain, for that
reason, vulnerable, as the current case of Russia shows.15 Yes, they have
to understand that “trade is war,” as Yash Tandon wrote.16
All countries of the world out of the Triad are enemies or potential
enemies, except those who accept complete submission to its economic
and political strategy. In that frame Russia is “an enemy.”17 Whatever
might be our assessment of what the Soviet Union was the Triad
fought it simply because it was an attempt to develop independently
of dominant capitalism/imperialism. After the breakdown of the Soviet
system, some people (in Russia in particular) thought that the “West”
would not antagonize a “capitalist Russia”—just as Germany and Japan
had “lost the war but won the peace.” They forgot that the Western
powers supported the reconstruction of the former fascist countries
precisely to face the challenge of the independent policies of the Soviet
Union. Now, this challenge having disappeared, the target of the Triad
is complete submission, to destroy the capacity of Russia to resist. The
current development of the Ukraine tragedy illustrates the reality of the
strategic target of the Triad. The Triad organized in Kiev what ought
to be called a “Euro/Nazi putsch.” The rhetoric of the Western medias,
claiming that the policies of the Triad aim at promoting democracy, is
simply a lie. Eastern Europe has been “integrated” in the European Union
not as equal partners, but as “semi-colonies” of major Western and
Central European capitalist/imperialist powers. The relation between
West and East in the European system is in some degree similar to that
which rules the relations between the United States and Latin America!
Therefore the policy of Russia to resist the project of colonization
of Ukraine must be supported. But this positive Russian “international
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policy” is bound to fail if it is not supported by the Russian people. And this
support cannot be won on the exclusive basis of “nationalism.” The sup-
port can be won only if the internal economic and social policy pursued
promotes the interests of the majority of the working people. A people-
oriented policy implies therefore moving away, as much as possible,
from the “liberal” recipe and the electoral masquerade associated with
it, which claims to give legitimacy to regressive social policies. I would
suggest setting up in its place a brand of new state capitalism with a
social dimension (I say social, not socialist). That system would open the
road to eventual advances toward a socialization of the management of
the economy and therefore authentic new advances toward an invention
of democracy responding to the challenges of a modern economy.
Russian state power remaining within the strict limits of the
neoliberal recipe annihilates the chances of success of an independent
foreign policy and the chances of Russia becoming a really emerging
country acting as an important international actor. Neoliberalism can
produce for Russia only a tragic economic and social regression, a
pattern of “lumpen development” and a growing subordinate status
in the global imperialist order. Russia would provide to the Triad
oil, gas, and some other natural resources; its industries would be
reduced to the status of sub-contracting for the benefit of Western
financial monopolies. In such a position, which is not very far from that
of Russia today in the global system, attempts to act independently
in the international area will remain extremely fragile, threatened by
“sanctions” which will strengthen the disastrous alignment of the
ruling economic oligarchy to the demands of dominant monopolies of
the Triad. The current outflow of “Russian capital” associated with the
Ukraine crisis illustrates the danger. Reestablishing state control over
the movements of capital is the only effective response to that danger.
Outside of China, which is implementing a national project of
modern industrial development in connection with the renovation
of family agriculture, the other so-called emergent countries of the
South (the BRICS) still walk only on one leg: they are opposed to the
depredations of militarized globalization, but remain imprisoned in
the straightjacket of neoliberalism.18
N o t es
1. In this article, I am limiting myself to 2. Before the Second World War, Stalin Cold War, while Stalin sought to extend
examining the experiences of Russia and had desperately, and unsuccessfully, friendship with the Western powers,
China, with no intention of ignoring the sought an alliance with the Western again without success. See Geoffrey
other twentieth-century socialist democracies against Nazism. After the Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to
revolutions (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba). war, Washington chose to pursue the Cold War, 1939–1953 (New Haven, CT:
17 I M p e R I A LMI S
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Yale University Press, 2007). See the 8. I discuss here only some of the major Bandung 2015, (Paris, 2014). NEED
important preface by Annie Lacroix Riz to consequences of the move to generalized ACTUAL DAYS?
the French edition: Les guerres de monopolies (financialization, decline of 14. “Contra Hardt and Negri,” Monthly Re-
Staline: De la guerre mondiale à la guerre democracy). As for ecological questions, I view 66, no. 6 (November 2014): 25–36.
froide (Paris: Éditions Delga, 2014). refer to the remarkable works of John
Bellamy Foster. 15. The choice to delink is inevitable. The
3. I am alluding here to Kautsky’s theses extreme centralization of the surplus at
in The Agrarian Question, 2 vols. (London: 9. Nicolai Bukharin, Imperialism and the the world level in the form of imperialist
Pluto Press, 1988; first edition, 1899). World Economy (New York: Monthly Re- rent for the monopolies of the imperialist
4. There are pleasant exceptions among view Press, 1973; written in 1915); V. I. powers is unsupportable by all societies
Marxist intellectuals who, without having Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of in the periphery. It is necessary to
had responsibilities in the leadership of Capitalism (New York: International Pub- deconstruct this system with the prospect
revolutionary parties or, still less, of lishers, 1969; written in 1916). of reconstructing it later in another form
revolutionary states, have nonetheless 10. For further discussions of the Depart- of globalization compatible with
remained attentive to the challenges ment III analysis and its relation to Baran communism understood as a more
confronted by state socialisms (I am and Sweezy’s theory of surplus absorp- advanced stage of universal civilization. I
thinking here of Baran, Sweezy, tion see Samir Amin, Three Essays on have suggested, in this context, a
Hobsbawn, and others). Marx’s Value Theory (New York: Monthly comparison with the necessary
5. See Samir Amin, “China 2013,” Month- Review Press, 2013), 67–76; and John destruction of the centralization of the
ly Review 64, no. 10 (March 2013): 14– Bellamy Foster, “Marxian Crisis Theory Roman Empire, which opened the way to
33, in particular for analyses concerning and the State,” in John Bellamy Foster feudal decentralization.
Maoism’s treatment of the agrarian ques- and Henryk Szlajfer, eds., The Faltering 16. Yash Tandon, Trade is War (OR Books,
tion. Economy (New York: Monthly Review forthcoming).
Press, 1984), 325–49.
6. See Eric J. Hobsbawn, Echoes of the 17. Samir Amin, “Russia in the World Sys-
Marseillaise: Two Centuries Look Back on 11. Andre Gunder Frank and Samir Amin, tem,” chapter 7 in Global History: A View
the French Revolution (London: Verso, “Let’s Not Wait for 1984,” in Frank, from the South (London: Pambazuka
1990); also see the works of Florence Reflections on the World Economic Crisis Press, 2010, “The Return of Fascism in
Gauthier. These authors do not assimilate (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981). Contemporary Capitalism,” Monthly Re-
Thermidor to restoration, as the Trotskyist 12. Samir Amin, Empire of Chaos (New view 66, no. 4 (September 2014): 1–12.
simplification suggests. York: Monthly Review Press, 1992). 18. Concerning the inadequate respons-
7. Concerning the destruction of the 13. Concerning the challenge to financial es of India and Brazil, see “Emergence
Asian and African peasantry currently un- globalizaton, see Samir Amin, “The and Lumpen Development,” chapter 2 in
derway, see Samir Amin, “Contemporary Chinese Yuan” (published in Chinese, my The Implosion of Capitalism (New
Imperialism and the Agrarian Question,” 2013); Samir Amin, “From Bandung York: Monthly Review Press, 2013), as
Agrarian South: Journal of Political Econo- (1955) to 2015: New and Old Challenges well as “Latin America Confronts the
my 1, no. 1 (April 2012): 11–26, http:// for the Peoples and States of the South,” Challenge of Globalization,” Monthly Re-
ags.sagepub.com. paper presented at the conference view 66, no. 7 (December 2014): 1–6.