Reply To: Russian Tensions
Maupin is a member of the Workers World Party
The concept of imperialism had been around long before Lenin’s interpretation which is not the definitive analysis.
Here is one of our members Johnny Mercer giving our answer at 10 minutes
“We maintain that the working class, having only their labor power to sell to survive, have no country. War and imperialism for us are a natural and inevitable extension of the war of the marketplace. In other words, nation-states create wars in the pursuit of natural resources, trade routes, labor markets, and spheres of influence. At certain times, it is inevitable that some capitalist nations dominate others, but we don’t accept Lenin’s notion of imperialist and anti-imperialist nations as kind of fixed categories. The problem with Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, as far we can see, is three-fold. Firstly, we hold that it lacks internationalism. Rather than seeing the world as divided fundamentally by wage labor and capital, workers and the bourgeoisie, it seeks to replace this analysis with the notion of imperialist nations and anti-imperialist nations. The anti-imperialist nations engage in a national liberation struggle to free themselves from the domination of the imperialist nations. As far as we’re concerned, national liberation is the right of the domestic bourgeoisie to conduct their affairs without interference from foreign capitalists.
Secondly, we disagree on Marxist grounds with Lenin’s economic analysis, that goes behind the notion of imperialism that Lenin posits. Accordion to Lenin, there were these super-profits, which is the concept that workers in imperialist countries partake in the exploitation of workers in non-imperialist nations by taking some of the surplus value that is created in the third world or in the non-imperialist world and partaking in the exploitation of these countries. The idea is, basically, that it’s a bribe. There is a top section in the working class in the Western world or in the imperialist world that receives extra capital that is exploited from the third-world working class, that they get in exchange for supporting capitalism and imperialism and reforms. Therefore, Lenin thought that national liberation struggle would deprive the western capitalists and their ability to bribe the western working class. So, we disagree.
Firstly, Lenin’s analysis ignores the labor theory of value. As Marx taught us, labor power’s value is determined like all commodities by the amount of labor power that’s invested in it. So higher wages reflect higher training and skill. It almost requires a kind of conspiracy theory to suppose that capitalists give their workers more than their labor power in order to bribe them. It led to the support of the creation of new capitalist nations to benefit the local capitalist class. So instead of the international working-class struggle, it became about the creation of new capitalist nations. Finally, Lenin’s analysis assumes a form of economic determinism, it assumes quite wrongly that workers are less likely to support reformism the poorer they become; the poorer workers become, the more they’re going to become radicalized. Obviously, quite often the opposite is true. In any case we think that the working class will only support socialism if they understand the case for socialism. So, we posit an analysis that is based on revolutionary activity coming out of class consciousness rather than an economic determinist analysis.
I think it’s worth talking about the legacy of anti-imperialism and where it ended up. Everywhere you look, whether it be in Northern Ireland or South Africa, for workers, at best anti-imperialist struggle has led to the creation of new capitalist states to manage their exploitation.