What is the relation between imperialism and globalisation?

Globalisation is a euphemism for the global offensive — economic, political and, as it recently turned out, military offensive — of imperialism led by US imperialism. If we were to divide the historical stage of imperialism, which has completed a hundred years of existence, into a few distinct phases (i.e., sub-stages), we might call globalisation its latest phase.

But is not globalisation an old, inbuilt tendency of capital? Yes it is. We all remember the classic, ever bright and highly insightful portrayal of the globalising impulse of capital in the Communist Manifesto. In fact this impulse has manifested itself over the centuries in three distinct but overlapping “waves”:

(i)     the wave of mercantile capital on its trading and colonising spree starting from the fag end of the 15th century and continuing up to early 20tn century;

(ii)     the wave of industrial capital since the industrial revolution in late 18th century, aimed principally at controlling/capturing sources of raw materials and markets for industrial products:

(iii)     the wave of finance capital (which emerged at the juncture of the 19th and 20th centuries, as the monopolistic coalescence of industrial capital and bank capital) based on the electronics revolution in the latter half (especially the last quarter) of the 20th century.

The second wave did not end but merged into the third, which became particularly conspicuous since the early 1990s with the spread of information technology and came to be called globalisation. We must not lose sight of this thread of continuity running through the different stages and phases of capitalism, but perhaps we should pay even more attention to studying what is new in the present phase. For instance, in Lenin’s time export of capital from advanced to backward countries (as well as between advanced ones) was a growing feature of imperialism; in recent times we have also seen a reverse flow from underdeveloped to developed countries (from the peripheries to the metropolitan centres of capitalism). This led the noted speculator George Soros to comment, “The most urgent need is to arrest the reverse flow of capital. That would ensure the continued allegiance of the periphery to the global capitalist system ... (The Crisis of Global Capitalism, 1998)

Yes, many are the new features of imperialist globalisation; but here we have a very limited scope to deal with them at length. So we shall briefly mention the more important ones:

(i) Increasing integration of the global economy based on incredibly fast and massive movements of finance capital across the globe through stock and currency markets, made possible by (a) the amazing achievements in information technology (IT) and (b) dissolution of the Soviet bloc and opening up of China, which have cleared the ground for a single world capitalist economy.

(ii) Speculation in foreign currencies, shares, bonds etc. predominating over manufacturing sectors, which is plagued by overproduction (read under­consumption) and falling profit rates. By the late 1990s, the volume of transactions per day in foreign exchange markets alone came to over $ 1.2 trillion, which was equal to the value of all trade in goods and services in an entire quarter.

(iii) The central role of speculation leading to frequent and devastating stock market crashes and currency turmoils. To cite just one example, the great dotcom collapse of 2000-2001 wiped out $ 4.6 trillion in investor wealth on Wall Street — an amount that was half of the American GDP and four times the wealth wiped out in the 1987 crash.

(iv) The global stranglehold and ever-deepening intrusion of mega corporations into all domains of public and private life. The cult of the colossus being played out in the shape of mega-mergers (Exxon-Mobil, Daimler Benz-Chrystler-Mitsubishi), mega scams (Enron) and of course, mega bankruptcies (Worldcom, Daewoo).

(v) Emergence of the WTO as the flagship leading the imperialist economic offensive against underdeveloped countries, razing their tariff barriers to the ground while protecting the markets of rich countries from third world manufactures. After the IMF, the WTO is now imperialism’s most notorious arm in undermining the weaker nations’ economic sovereignty, which also results from the unrestricted cross-border flow of private (non-institutional) finance.

(vi) Concomitant attacks on the political sovereignty of these countries in so many ways, including the open rehabilitation of colonialism — in the “failed states” and “rogue states” to start with (the trial of Milosevich; the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq).

(vii) Rise of the anti-globalisation (and lately anti-war) movement and “new internationalism” as a powerful counterweight to the global offensive of capital.
In these features one easily notices the elements of both continuity and change. It is the dialectical unity of the two aspects that impels us to describe globalisation as the latest phase (and of course, the most reactionary phase) of imperialism.