Imperialism: historical contexts and global impacts

Lenin on Imperialism: Carrying the White Capitalist's Burden

Because the Soviet Union eventually enforced one of the most all-encompassing policies of imperialism of the 20th century, it is easy to forget that Lenin initially styled himself as an anti-imperialist. Lenin said that capitalist economies depended upon the labor of exploited workers. Colonial endeavors provided capitalist economies with new subjugated bodies to exploit as well as new markets. Workers could be enslaved and feed the demand for cheaper or exotic material goods at home, while the colonies themselves could become sources of demand. This is the fourth law of capitalism: "As capitalist economies mature, as capital accumulates, and as profit rates fall, the capitalist economies are compelled to seize colonies and create dependencies to serve as markets, investment outlets, and sources of food and raw materials. In competition with one another, they divide up the colonial world in accordance with their relative strengths."

Capitalism creates an increasingly wide chasm between the haves and the have-nots. Eventually the 'have-nots' do not have enough monetary resources to purchase the goods and services they are forced to produce as part of the capitalist system of wage slavery. This was one of the reasons for the failure of the markets in the 1920s: production had expanded far more rapidly than wages had risen, and eventually few workers could afford the surplus of goods being produced. Even in America today, the gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans has widened considerably, reflecting the tendency of an unregulated free enterprise system to result in concentrations of wealth.

In Lenin's view, colonialism was capitalism's band-aid solution. The presence of the colonies gave the capitalist European powers new societies to feed upon. Today, Lenin might see the use of Third World, inexpensive labor as a new kind of colonialist safety valve: because poor workers in America can purchase cheap commodities that are manufactured abroad by workers paid even lower wages, workers in America do not unionize, demand more social justice, and express anger at their low salaries and absence of benefits.

In Lenin's view, 19th century industrialized colonialism was different than previous colonial endeavors in that it was far more economically driven: nations had once used colonies as political and military buffers against their enemies. Now they needed colonies to ensure that the system that enabled the capitalist elites to prosper would survive. Without colonies, the capitalist system would topple. Lenin was prescient in seeing that colonialism made the world inherently unstable -- secret alliances and colonial conflicts were two of the major causes of World War I. Ironically, the Cold War would also be spawned by a kind of colonialist conflict -- not only did the Soviet Union strive to use Eastern Europe as a political buffer, it also economically exploited many of the Eastern European nations in its sphere of influence and forced members of the Warsaw Pact to adopt the Soviet economic system. (Lenin pointed out that colonies were forced to become capitalistic, not for their benefit, but for the benefit of the colonizer).