Report of Sixth Arvind Memorial Seminar on Imperialism
A five-day long sixth Arvind Memorial Seminar on the topic of ‘Imperialism Today: Understanding Origins, Dynamisms and Mechanisms’ was held in the auditorium of International Institute of Buddhist Studies, Gomtinagar, Lucknow between 24 to 28 November by Arvind Memorial Trust. Many scholars, writers and social activists from different states of the country as well as some researchers and activist from abroad participated in this seminar which saw an intense discussion on the various aspects of imperialism, globalization and global economic crisis. The topic covered during the Seminar included Critical Reappraisal of Classical Marxist Theories of Imperialism, Critical Evaluation of the Neo-Marxist Theories of Imperialism, Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism and Imperialism Today, Post-Marxist Theories of ‘Empire’ and Imperialism, Implications of Present Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Revisionist, Reformist and Social-Democratic Theories of Imperialism, Present Economic Crisis and Imperialism in the Era of Globalization and the basic contradictions of the contemporary imperialist world and cultural aspects of imperialism.
First Day of Seminar
Meenakshi, Chief Trustee of ‘Arvind Memorial Trust’ said in her opening statement that today the imperialist exploitation has spread throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America and the toiling masses in these regions have been devastated and burdened by debt. The countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America are politically-independent; however, the bourgeoisie of these countries plays the role of the ‘junior partner’ of Imperialism and plunders the toiling masses of these countries. Especially, the Middle-East region has become the center of US imperialist aggression and an arena of rivalry amongst various imperialist powers. The people of these countries are experiencing the horrors of war for the past several decades. Imperialist interference and pressure in many other countries of the world has ruined the economy there. The ongoing global economic crisis has made this problem even more severe. She expressed hoped that an intense discussion would take place in the coming five days to which would deepen our understanding of the various aspects of imperialism so as to prepare the strategies of resistance.
The first paper of the Seminar was presented by Prashant Banerjee from Visva Bharti University, Shantiniketan, West Bengal. His Paper was titled as “Imperialism and the Expansion of Capitalist Exploitation: A Classical Marxist Appraisal”. While providing a brief analysis of the theories of imperialism Prashant talked about the views of Lenin, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg etc. He said that imperialism is not a political or ideological phenomenon; rather it is the imperative necessity of advanced capitalism. Therefore, the Marxist explanation of imperialism as a power struggle and colonial expansion has to be sought in material condition of existence. The very nature of capitalism is such that there is an inbuilt drive by the capitalist class to enrich itself by the domination, plunder, exploitation of working people. The state or country where capitalist concentration is stronger, the greater will be its scope to pursue domination. The revolution against imperialism is a part of revolution against capitalist exploitation, not superseding and overriding it.
The second paper on the first day was presented by Mohammed Nazmul Hassan, also from Vishva Bharati. The title of this paper was “Populist Challenge to Imperialism – A Post-Marxist Critical Appraisal.” While discussing various anti-imperialist populist movements of Asia, Africa, Latin America, he considered various ongoing movements in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the principles of populist resistance of imperialism. He said that populism itself an extensive coalition of farmers, wage earners and middle-class people working with self-confidence to challenge the elite. It may promise widely-demanded food, housing, employment, basic social services and income redistribution. Once in political power, they may not always be financially or politically able to fulfil these promises. Populism usually includes contrasting components such as a claim for equality of political rights and universal participation for the common people, but fused with some sort of authoritarianism often under charismatic leadership.
The third paper was presented by Lata of Jawaharlal Nehru University. She began with a brief overview of the imperialist exploitation of Latin America. She said that Apart from drudgery in the gold and silver mines, slaves from Africa and indigenous population toiled in sugar, coffee and rubber plantations of Latin America, making confectionary sweet and morning fresh in Europe. In the era of neo-colonization and finally neo-liberalization Latin America remained at the worst receiving end of the world capitalist system. Latin America became the guinea pig for the experiments of Neo-liberal policies. She critically analyzed the theories of imperialism that originated from Latin America, e.g. the theories of Raul Prebisch, Andre Gunder Frank, Marini and Samir Amin and particularly the entire ‘dependency theory’ school. She criticized these theories for focusing on exchange relations and not on production relations. She also criticized these theories for their underconsumptionist approach and lack of historicity. Lata argued that the historical experience of imperialism throughout the world has disproved the ‘dependency theory’, which is not a Marxist theory, despite claims of some of its proponents. In contrast, to ‘dependency perspective’, the paper attempted to analyze imperialism in Latin America from the perspective of Leninist theory of imperialism.
After the presentation of papers, a lively debate took place on the issues raised in the papers. Those who participated in the discussion included Sunny Singh, Abhinav Sinha, Shivani, Mukesh Aseem and Sukhwinder. All the videos of debates will be soon uploaded on the youtube channel of Arvind Memorial Trust.
The sessions of the first day were presided over by Eric Schmidt, an indpendent Marxist researcher from New York, political activist Debashish Barat, from Jagrook Nagrik Manch, Patna and poetess and social activist Katyayani while Satyam compered the sessions.
Second Day of Seminar
On the second day of the Seminar, three papers were presented. The first paper was presented by Tapish Maindola, a trade union activist from Ghaziabad and a member of Bigul Mazdoor Dasta. His paper was titled as “The Basic Contradictions of the Contemporary Imperialist World: Some Observations”. In this paper Tapish provided a detailed description of the changes in the strategy and general tactics of the proletarian revolution from the time of Marx till the current time. Further, he provided a detailed description of the disintegration of the colonial and neo-colonial regimes in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. After this, Tapish while presenting a brief sketch of the process of the development of capitalism said that the capitalist development which took place in the countries Asia, Africa and Latin America in the post-colonial era has remained extremely complex, uneven and full of ups and downs. Tapish stated that contradiction between labour and capital and the rivalry between the international monopolies and between the imperialist countries are two basic contradictions of contemporary world. Besides, the contradiction between some relatively backward capitalist countries and capitalist class with imperialism is also growing in a radical manner on account of some specific historical and geopolitical reasons. Consequently, the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat has become the principal contradiction. There is a need to depart from the General Line of 1963 as proposed by the Communist Party of China.
The second paper of the second day of the Seminar was presented by the writer and activist Anand Singh whose paper was titled as “Imperialism in the age of Globalization: Aspects of Change and Continuity”. This paper critically analyzed the schema presented by Christian Palloix in 1977 which was based upon the concept of ‘circuits of capital’ which Marx had used in the second volume of capital. He said that though this schema of Palloix is useful to understand the specificity of globalization, it has its limitations as well. After this, Anand proceeded with providing a brief overview of the major developments in world capitalism after Second World War. Further, he talked about the main characteristics of neoliberal globalization Such as internationalization of production, unprecedented financialization of global capitalism, continuation of the crisis of profitability, the rapid growth of trans-national corporations (TNCs) and yet continued and changed role and significance of nation states. He also talked about the nature of inter-imperialist rivalry in the context of the emergence of Russia-China imperialist axis. Talking about the relationship between the imperialist countries and the third world countries in the age of globalization, Anand said that the bourgeoisie of these countries are not the comprador of imperialist bourgeoisie; rather it acts as their ‘junior partner.’
The third paper of the second day was presented by Vijay Kumar from CPI (ML) Red Star which was titled as “Imperialism in today’s time”. After discussing the five basic characteristics of imperialism as mentioned by Lenin Vijay went ahead to explain how the process of decolonization was initiated in 1940s. Under these new circumstances the US imperialism gave a new form and content to colonialism. Explaining this neo-colonial phase of imperialism, Vijay said that while the law of the motion of imperialism fundamentally remains the same in the entire imperialist era, some qualitative changes have occurred in the neo-colonial era which needs to be identified. One of these important changes is the fact that agrarian relations in the neocolonies is no more feudal. However, Vijay emphasized, the character of bourgeoisie is still comprador. Further, Vijay spoke about the revisionist approach towards the new phase of imperialism that was adopted by the Communist Party of Soviet Union under Khrushchev. After this, Vijay explained the transition from Keynesian era to neoliberal era. He stated that neoliberal phase is characterized by the unrestrained international flow of speculative capital. He stressed upon the tragedy of environmental disaster causing food crisis, displacement, water scarcity etc. which are further exacerbating the economic disparity. He highlighted that in this context the CPI (ML) Red Star has included the contradiction between capital and nature as the main contradiction of the imperialist system.
After the presentation of papers, a long lively debate took place in which Ashwin Tyagi from Dehradun, Baldeo Singh from Ludhiana, Manav Sidhu from Chandigarh, Awadhesh Singh from Ballia, Sarita Tiwari from Nepal, Anand Singh, Abhinav Sinha and Tapish Maindola participated. The vidoes of these debates will soon be uploaded on the website of Arvind Trust. The second day was presided by Meenaxi, Sukhvinder and Dr. Sukhdev Hundal. The sessions were compered by Shivani.
Third Day of Seminar
On 26 November, the third day of the Seminar, Abhinav Sinha, editor of workers’ Hindi monthly ‘Mazdoor Bigul’ presented his paper on “Marxist Theories of Imperialism from Marx to Present Times: A Contemporary Critical Reassessment”. The paper was a comprehensive critical and contemporary survey of Marxist thinking on Imperialism right since Marx till present day theorists like Harvey, Wood, etc. The paper began with Marx’s fragmentary observations about expansion of capitalism on global scale, causes of this expansion, its influence on the advanced capitalist countries as well as on the backward countries that became colonies. It was emphasized that the cause of this expansion of capitalism and consequently the rise of imperialism was the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, rather than the problem of realization. Abhinav stated that the capitalist system was still undergoing the transition to the monopoly stage when Marx died and phenomenal manifestations of this process were still unfolding. Yet some valuable insights could be found in Marx’s writing regarding imperialism. Abhinav then proceeded to critically analyze Hilferding’s theory of imperialism as presented in his magnum opus, ‘Finance Capital’ which provided many valuable insights in the workings of capitalism in the age of imperialism, but also had harmonist and social-democratic illusions. The next major work that dealt with the question of imperialism was Rosa Luxemburg’s ‘The Accumulation of Capital.’ Luxemburg’s theory of imperialism is not basically a Marxist theory, but an underconsumptionist theory. Abhinav then went ahead with Nikolai Bukharin’s work ‘Imperialism and World Economy’ which could be regarded as the first systematic Marxist work on the question of imperialism. The errors of Bukharin’s work too were criticized, for instance, his erroneous conception that competition is eliminated at the national level to be reproduced on the world level. He then proceeded to explain Lenin’s theory of imperialism and analyzed it critically. He stated that Lenin’s theory still remains the most complete theory of imperialism with high level of generalization and excellent use of dialectical method. Abhinav also presented a critical analysis of the neo-Marxist theories which were developed in the period between 1940s and 1970s such as Sweezy-Baran’s ‘Monopoly Capital’ school, Andre Gunder Frank’s ‘Dependency Theory’, Immanuel Wallerstein’s ‘World Systems Theory’, Samir Amin’s theory of ‘Underdevelopment’ and the ‘Unequal Exchange’ theory of Arghiri Emmanuel. Finally, he also presented a critique of the new theorists of the so-called ‘new imperialism’ such as Ellen Meiksins Wood, David Harvey and Alex Callinicos.
After the presentation of Abhinav’s paper, a lively discussion took place in which Lakhwinder, Prem Prakash, Shirish Medhi, Harjinder singh, Abhinav Sinha and Vijay Kumar participated.
The sessions on the third day were presided over by senior left leader and writer from Nepal Mr. Ninu Chapagain, activist from Punjab Sukhdeo Singh and trade union activist and member of Bigul Mazdoor Dasta from Delhi, Ms. Shivani. Anand Singh moderated the sessions.
Fourth Day of Seminar
On the fourth day of Seminar, two important papers were presented by Sukhwinder, the editor of Punjabi’s magazine Pratibadh and Marxist researcher Eric Schmidt from New York (USA) and an important presentation was made by Bipin Balaram from Kerala. Sukhwinder’s paper was titled as “Inter-imperialist rivalry, Changing Power Balance and the Future Prospects”. In his paper Sukhwinder said that after the collapse of social-imperialist Soviet Union, some new theories claiming the unipolar world, end of imperialism, irrelevance of Leninist theory of imperialism and various new incarnations of Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism started gaining popularity. Sukhvinder drawing upon Lenin’s critique of Kautskyite theory, presented a brief critique of contemporary neo-Kautskyite theories, as proposed by Prabhat Patnaik, Aijaz Ahmad, etc. Further, Sukhwinder explained the new imperialist axes that are emerging for the global hegemony in the wake of the degenerating US imperialism. He then went ahead to explain how European Union could be one of the sources challenging the hegemony of US imperialism. He also explained how Russia’s resurrection as an imperialist power remains the main challenge to the global hegemony of US imperialism. The rise of China as a potentially imperialist power and its alignment with Russia has led to the creation of a Sino-Russian imperialist axis. Further he explained some of the conflicts going on in different parts of the world such as Latin America and Middle-East and also dwelt upon the unfolding imperialist conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, etc. Finally, he said that all the signals suggest that the inter-imperialist rivalry is going to increase in future leading to greater instability.
After this, Bipin Balaram from Kerala gave a presentation in which he began with a critical commentary on the views of prominent left academicians such Aijaz Ahmad, C. P. Chandrasekhar, Irfan Habib, Jayati Ghosh etc. and then proceeded to presentation of a detailed critique of Prabhat and Utsa Patnaik’s latest book “A Theory of Imperialism”. He termed the theory presented by Patnaiks in this book as “A Requiem for (of) the Petty Bourgeois”. The core of Patnaiks’ theory is the geographical asymmetry which exists in the world in which certain basic and essential commodities such as tea, coffee, cane sugar and raw cotton etc. are produced by the tropical countries only. Various means adopted by the metropolitan capital to enforce the income deflation constitutes imperialism as per Patnaiks’ theory. Bipin said that this theory has been rightly criticized by David Harvey for its inconsistencies, looseness of definitions of terms like tropic and also for its geographical determinism, though Harvey himself presents his own social-democratic and Kautskyite theory. He said that this theory can lead to such ridiculous conclusion that a tropical country can never be imperialist and such a conclusion fails to explain many developments of the present imperialist world.
After Bipin’s presentation Eric Schmidt, a scholar and left activist from New York, presented his paper. His paper was titled as “The World Situation and the World Revolution”. Eric’s paper began with a note that the world revolution must be submitted to internal causes, historically determined according to diverse class situations. At the same time, the International Communist Movement must elaborate a general line in relation to which each proletariat can determine the tasks it needs to fulfill in order to advance the world revolution. He then proceeded with a descriptive overview of the world situation. While explaining contemporary world situation he listed some features such as the economic crisis, political fragmentation of the bourgeoisie, and the crisis of bourgeois ideology and the weakness of the revolutionary camp, itself due to the weakness of the proletariat as a class in the political sense. Indeed, the weakness of the imperialist camp is today exceeded by the weakness of the International Communist Movement. He then presented the periodization of the current political conjuncture. He said that the imperialism/oppressed nation contradiction is the principal contradiction of the world situation today, in relation to the current step of the world revolution, which demands we grow our subjective forces in constructing an autonomous organization and program. Today, the revolutionary proletariat must form united fronts with national movements in order to forge class alliances and cement its mass base.
During the interactive session, Sukhvinder, the editor of ‘Pratibaddha’, N. Devaravar from Karnataka, Lakhwinder from Ludhiana, Harjinder Singh, Vijay Kumar from CPI (ML) Red Star made interventions. Subsequently, a long and lively debate on Eric’s paper took place in which, Abhinav and Eric made interventions. Some of the issues of debates from previous days were also discussed further.
The sessions were presided over by activist and poet Kavita Krishnapallavi, editor of ‘Mazdoor Bigul’, Abhinav Sinha and political activist and writer Anand Singh and was compered by Namita.
Fifth and concluding day of Seminar
On the fifth and concluding day of the Seminar, three papers were presented and a paper by Ajay Kumar Sinha of PRC, CPI (ML) from Bihar on the critique of Prabhat Patnaik’s position on imperialism was distributed among the participants. The first paper was presented by Dr. MP Terence Samuel from Vishwa Bharti, Shanti Niketan which was titled as “Culture and Imperialism”. In this paper he mentioned that in the classical Marxist understanding, culture is understood as the superstructure of the existing socio-economic structure and condition. Hence, the expansion of capitalism from European territories to non-European locations through the imperialist ventures affected the cultural aspects of the people of the colonized countries, though such capitalist expansion is primarily economical in its venture. Though Marx understood how the socio-economic base affects the superstructural cultural elements dialectically, he did not elaborate much on the issue of the dialectics between culture and imperialism/capitalism and how imperialism sustains itself through operating on cultural categories. This dialectics between socio-economic base and the superstructure is not a one-sided dialectics. While discussing the works of Horkheimer and Adorno he said that according to them, the technological advancements used by the ‘culture industry’ in the modern period provide the technological rationale for the rationale of domination, as “the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest.”
After this, Ninu Chapagain, senior communist leader of the Maoist movement in Nepal and eminent literary critic from Nepal talked about imperialist intervention and pressure in Nepal and big-brotherly imperialistic policies of India. He said that the parliamentary politics in his country now suffers from various distortions and there is a great sense of frustration among the activists. In the hunger for power the party in Nepal has given up the principles for which it had waged a long struggle. Harsh Thakor from Mumbai discussed the ways of resistance to imperialism.
The second paper of the last day was presented by Shivani Kaul, a labour activist from Delhi and who belongs to Bigul Mazdoor Dasta. Her paper was titled as “The Post-Marxist Theory of Empire and the Leninist Theory of Imperialism”. In this paper she mainly presented a critique of Michael Heart and Antonio Negri’s famous book ‘Empire’. Tracing the philosophical roots of the theory of ‘Empire” she said that Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt belong to the theoretical tradition which has come to be known as Post-Marxism. She contended that the Italian edition of Workerism (Operaismo) holds a very special place in the theorizations of Hardt and Negri. What Negri-Hardt refer to as Empire is nothing else but what has now come to be known as Globalization. However, what strikes as an oddity is the fact that a book announcing the ‘demise of Imperialism’ does little to engage with the classical Marxist theories of Imperialism, and most importantly the Leninist theory of Imperialism. This theory fails to capture present reality of Imperialism. All the concrete analytical categories of Marxism are replaced by vague speculative categories and the result is a muddled theorization. Shivani argued that in this theorization of Negri-Hardt, everything becomes impersonal: power as well as resistance. Empire replaces Imperialism; multitude replaces class. She highlighted some of the inherent problems in the theorization of “Empire” and contrasted it with Lenin’s theory of imperialism, arguing that an updated version of Lenin’s theory is still the best-suited paradigm to understand present imperialism.
The third paper was presented by Abhinav Sinha which was titled as: “The Present Imperialist Crisis: A New Great Depression”. Talking about the current crisis of capitalism he said that in some senses, this crisis is also different from the Great Depression. It is much more protracted and structural, though it is not cataclysmic like the Great Depression. That is the reason, why it is also being called ‘the Long Depression’. Abhinav presented a critique of Michael Heinrich’s reading of Marx’s Capital and the controversial issues that it raises, particularly its rejection of Marx’s basic law, namely, the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. He referred to the views of Andrew Kliman, Michael Roberts, Guglielmo Carchedi, Alan Freeman, Fred Moseley, etc in this regard. Then he proceeded to present a critique of Dumenil and Levy’s views of crisis by referring to the works of Andrew Kliman and Michael Roberts. Subsequently, Abhinav presented a critique of the views of Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, David Harvey, Alex Callinicos and others on crisis. He also presented Anwar Shaikh’s view on crisis. He argued that Marx did have a theory of crisis contrary to what Harvey and Heinrich claim and this theory is law of tendential fall in the rate of profit. It can empirically be proven and remains to be the most scienfitic and logical explanation of recurrent crises of imperialism and exposes its basic contradiction, i.e., between the socialization of production and private appropriation. Then he briefly discussed about the rates of profit of the leading economies of the world especially since the end of the Second World War and showed that the rate of profit has a clearly visible secular tendency to fall. Also through various graphs he demonstrated the rates of profit of world capitalist economy for last century or so and how there is a secular tendency of the rate of profit to fall. In the end he said that the reason is that the Law of Tendential Fall in Rate of Profit is the fundamental law of capitalism. It is not the question of showing that it must fall, but the question of interpreting why it falls and that is what Marx did.
In the discussions on the last day of the Seminar, Satyaveer Singh, Sukhwinder and Abhinav took part. The sessions were presided over by Tapish Maindola from Ghaziabad, Prem Prakash from Delhi and Lakhwinder from Ludhiana. Lata compered the sessions.
On the evening of the concluding day, a newly formed revolutionary rock band ‘Anushtup’ presented an anti-imperialist music concert in which anti-imperialist and revolutionary songs from around the world were presented. Anhad, Srijan, Abhinav, and Shipra are the members of this band.
The Arvind Memorial Trust organizes a national seminar each year on some important aspect of the movement for social change in memory of Com. Arvind Singh, editor of the magazine ‘Dayitvabodh’, a brilliant Marxist intellectual and activist. The first two seminars held in Delhi and Gorakhpur focused on different aspects of the labour movement while the third seminar was held in Lucknow on the democratic rights movement in India. The fourth seminar was centered on Caste Question and Marxism while the fifth seminar in Allahabad was on problems of socialism.
- Published in Anvil-2, Jan-Mar 2018
