Tag Archives | John Smith on Imperialism

“Capitalism/imperialism is extremely proficient at externalizing the costs of its destructiveness, making other peoples and future generations suffer the consequences of its marauding nature but it is not immune from “blow-back” effects. For example, the climate crisis poses a major political challenge to imperialism because it strongly suggests that system change is necessary if we are to avert climate change.”

“The chief constraints confronting imperialism are those that arise from capitalism’s own internal contradictions, and these manifest themselves in the systemic crisis.”

With the notable exception of the Monthly Review school, recent studies of financialization by avowedly Marxist and left-Keynesian economists attempt to theorize it in isolation from the transformations that have taken place in the sphere of production, especially the globalization of production processes and their large-scale relocation to low-wage countries.

“The liberal/mainstream notion of imperialism that permeates…bourgeois political opinion proceeds from the elementary observation that the various empires that have existed during the past three millennia share one obvious characteristic, namely territorial conquest accomplished through military force.”