Sam Gindin is the co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy Of American Empire (with Leo Panitch). Green Left’s Federico Fuentes spoke to Gindin about the rise of the United States empire and its role in creating a truly global capitalism.
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Does the concept of imperialism remain valid and, if so, how do you define it?
The first half of the 20th century, with two world wars and the Great Depression interrupting trade and capital, had undermined the notion that a global capitalism was inevitable. It even seemed that a global capitalism might in fact be impossible.
However, backed by its unique economic standing at the end of World War II, the United States set out to carry through the making and consolidation of an integrated global capitalism.
This replaced the old imperialism that [Vladimir] Lenin addressed — the direct extension of power over other states through colonisation, a capitalism fragmented into competing empires, the Global South frozen in its development to providing resources to the developed world — with an imperialism of a new kind.
This new imperialism was a specifically capitalist imperialism. Elements of capitalist economic relations were present in the British empire (for example wage labour, freer trade) but they were incomplete. It fell to the US empire to complete the making of a truly global capitalism.
Just as the modal form of capitalism is couched in terms of workers selling their labour power through voluntary exchanges, and employers and corporations competing under the market rules of capitalism rather than military or administrative power, the new imperialism looked to replace force with the cloak of state sovereignty and economic freedoms.
Colonies were replaced with generalised state sovereignty. This, however, came with a crucial qualification: sovereignty was only legitimate if it supported the economic freedoms of capitalism; namely, the sanctity of private property rights, free trade and free capital flows.
With this came an “internationalisation” of states. States evolved, whether organically or through imposition, to take on responsibility within their territory for both domestic and global accumulation, including equal treatment for foreign domestic-based capital.
Rather than globalisation weakening states or replacing them with international institutions (such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation), domestic states became more important than ever.
If the new imperialism was predominantly capitalist in form, then what distinguishes “imperialism” from “capitalism”? Defining imperialism in terms of unequal exchange, uneven development and inequalities between the Global North and Global South does not clarify this, especially since the North and South have become more deeply and mutually integrated economically.
Rather, modern imperialism must be seen as a political phenomenon — a process defined on the terrain of states and directed to the imposition of capitalism as the only permissible way to organise economies and societies.
Modern imperialism is best understood as the US-led drive to establish the conditions for universalising capitalism across all states.
The centrality of the US state is what leads to this imperialism being referenced as a “US empire”. The US is not just the latest big kid on the block, but plays a qualitatively distinct role in overseeing the making of a global capitalism on behalf of capital in general.
The US has a special sovereignty in this system of formally sovereign states integrated economically. Its currency has the status of a global currency and the Federal Reserve acts as the world’s central bank.
The US state alone essentially decides which states are not complying with the capitalist rules and are therefore vulnerable to sanctions and military intervention.
And the US state reserves for itself the flexibility to break the rules as needed in the name of preserving this system and the indispensable role of the US state within it.
How do you define the relationship between the US empire and what are commonly referred to as Western imperialist powers, such as Germany and Britain, but also Japan and Australia?
Imperialism is today a global system, and these states are part of that system.
These states compete for exports, jobs and investment, and this leads to hierarchies within this system.
They may have periodic tensions or conflicts with the US, but these states are not independent imperial powers. None have the degree of agency that the US state has.
The other states, for example, are not going to initiate interventions abroad without US blessing. And they certainly have no notion of themselves replacing the US’ role. In this sense, the US is hegemonic.
How does the rise of transnational enterprises fit into globalisation? More specifically, can they operate successfully without institutional anchorage in an imperialist power, and political backing from it, in light of what we have seen recently?
It is interesting that many analysts, including some Marxists, have reversed this question and argued that global corporations are now so powerful that they do not need states and can in fact circumvent them.
But as you note, capital and states are not oppositions; capital needs states and, as emphasised earlier, globalisation does not marginalise states but makes them more important than ever. States create the local conditions for accumulation, manage labour, deal with conflicts across territories, address crises, etc.
And as you note, all this must be anchored somehow over and above the integration of capital. Some authoritative body must still superintend the complexities of managing a world of sovereign states, uneven development and popular pressures within states.
Currently, there are a variety of forums and institutions that play a role in this regard, but what emerged historically (as opposed to what was “needed” in a deductive way) was that the US state, for contingent reasons, emerged as the indispensable catalyst for making, sustaining and expanding this world order.
In this new imperialism, what relative weight do the mechanisms of imperialist exploitation have today compared to the past?
If “imperialist exploitation” references conditions in the Global South, the main differences between the era of competing empires and the present revolve around sovereignty (none then, formal sovereignty today) and the Global South’s place in the global division of labour (resource extraction then, prominent roles in manufacturing and supply chains today).
In the new circumstances, the Global South has grown faster on average than the Global North. Nevertheless, global hierarchies persist on a North-South basis, as do inequalities among the countries of the Global South, for example between the countries of Asia and those of Africa and Latin America.
Military interventions still occur but unlike before, these are not aimed at capturing and holding territories, but defending or expanding the conditions for capitalist development (which, of course, is not the same as improvements in popular conditions).
And in contrast to the anti-colonial struggles of the old imperialism, though the legitimacy of the US empire is increasingly attacked rhetorically, the universalisation of capitalism staggers on and virtually no state speaks of leaving the US-led global economy.
[Read the full interview at links.org.au.]