Late Imperialism—Fifty Years After Harry Magdoff's The Age of Imperialism — John Bellamy Foster

Important. This is a view of neoliberal globalization in terms of the history of imperialism and its financial and economic analysis. It emerges as a natural extension of liberal capitalism in the Western liberal ideology that came to dominate the world scene after the colonial period. Ironically, the practical application of this world view took place in the transition of America from a British colony to the first Western liberal democracy constructed in terms of Enlightenment philosophy and political theory.

Ironically, American became the inheritor of the British imperial mantle post WWII, continuing the global dominance of sea power (thassalocracy) over land power (tellurocracy). Now land powers Russia and China are rising to challenge Anglo-American sea power. Also emerging is the importance of air power, cyber power, and space power that reduces the land-sea dichotomy, although it is still crucial strategically.

Monthly Review
Late Imperialism—Fifty Years After Harry Magdoff's The Age of Imperialism

John Bellamy Foster

Imperialism and profitability at Lille — Michael Roberts

G Carchedi and I are working on a paper on the economics of imperialism that covers measuring unequal exchange in trade, factor income flows on the current account; and foreign investment on the capital account. We reach similar conclusions to Ricci in that imperialism is alive and well and inequality between the imperialist economies and the rest is just as wide as it was 100 years go. Value produced in the dominated countries get appropriated and transferred to the imperialist economies in ever-increasing amounts...

Michael Roberts Blog
Imperialism and profitability at Lille
Michael Roberts

Thomas Fazi — French Colonialism Is Alive and Kicking in Africa, Has the Continent in an Iron Grip

Thomas Fazi is an Italian journalist and collaborator with Bill Mitchell on several books.

The US is not the only neo-imperialist. It is joined by France and Great Britain.

spiked
French Colonialism Is Alive and Kicking in Africa, Has the Continent in an Iron Grip

Thomas Fazi

See also

Disproportionate focus on corruption of national leaders distracts from the systemic theft of Ghana's wealth

Slate
98.3 percent of Ghana’s gold remains in the hands of multinational corporations

Celina Della Croce

Jason Hickel — How Britain stole $45 trillion from India: And lied about it.

Colonialism and "the white man's burden." The story of the East India Company and how transnational corporate totalitarianism began. The rest is history that is still unfolding in accordance with this paradigm that has been adapted to neoliberal globalization and how capitalism is uplifting the masses, in particular those who are not of European descent.

There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long - the story goes - was a gesture of Britain's benevolence.
New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik - just published by Columbia University Press - deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.

It's a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today.

How did this come about?….

Enter the East India Company.

Here's how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, "buying" from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.

It was a scam - theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person, they surely would have smelled a rat.
Some of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were re-exported elsewhere. The re-export system allowed Britain to finance a flow of imports from Europe, including strategic materials like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to Britain's industrialisation. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft from India.... 

Al Jazeera
How Britain stole $45 trillion from India: And lied about it.

Jason Hickel

See also

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China’s markets with opium. The Company’s practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.
The Corporation That Changed the World is the first book to reveal the Company’s enduring legacy as a corporation. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall. For decades, the Company was simply too big to fail, and stock market bubbles, famines, drug-running and even duels between rival executives are to be found in this new account.
For Robins, the Company’s story provides vital lessons on both the role of corporations in world history and the steps required to make global business accountable today.

University of Chicago Press

The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational by Nick Robins, distributed for Pluto Press

See also

The East India Company was the first multinational corporation - until its abuse of power caused a public backlash. Nick Robins examines its legacy to reveal how it set the corporate blueprint for today's firms to operate unchecked.…

Founded on a cold New Year’s Eve in 1600, the Governor and Company of Merchants in London Trading into the East Indies – its original full name – was the mother of the modern corporation. From its headquarters in the City of London, it managed a commercial empire that stretched across the Atlantic, around the Cape, past the Gulf and on to India and China. Starting as a marginal importer of Asian spices, the Company became the agent that changed the course of economic history, combining financial strength with military muscle to conquer India and break open China’s closed economy. Always with an eye to the share price and their own executive perks, its executives in India combined economic muscle with a small, but effective private army to establish a corporate state across large parts of the sub-continent.

Under neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization, corporations no longer have private armies but rather are under the wing of the military, political and economic might of the Anglo-American Empire.

Ecologist

East India Company: the first multinational corporation

Nick Robbins | Professor in Practice for Sustainable Finance at Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment

Tony Norfield — Indian Boots on the Ground

British policy was to depend upon alliances with others, rather than to maintain a large standing army itself. So it was important to be able to draw upon a force of colonial troops when needed, including for the policing of the British Raj.

Important though they were for British power, Indian troops commonly faced racial discrimination, were looked down upon by white officers and were often used as cannon fodder, while also being given worse grade arms and equipment than regular British troops. Attractive as a cheap military resource for the Brits, these men could nevertheless see enlistment in the army as a reasonable option. There was regular pay and regular food, something not always available in the Indian economy dominated by British Empire interests….

Still going on in a modified form. Now they are mostly proxies and mercenaries rather than subjects.

Of course, the same goes for the "cannon fodder" recruited from domestic resources on the same basis, given the alternatives at the low end of the socio-economic scale.

Economics of Imperialism

Indian Boots on the Ground

Tony Norfield

Charles Pierson — The Day the US Became an Empire

One could argue that the US has always been an empire. Thomas Jefferson called the US an empire, but an “empire of liberty” dedicated to spreading freedom around the globe. Tell that to the Native Americans killed and dispossessed by White Settlers. Tell that to the Mexicans. The US seized a third of their country through war. Still, it wasn’t until 1898 that the US acquired its first overseas colony.

Hawaii had been an independent nation. In 1887, American planters in the islands had forced a change to the Hawaiian constitution which largely disenfranchised ethnic Hawaiians to the benefit of wealthy Whites. By 1893, with US support, American and European businessmen on the islands had staged a coup d’êtat, overthrowing the monarchy,[1] and establishing a Republic of Hawai’i; from there, they maneuvered for Hawaii’s annexation in 1898. That same year, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam would be gathered into the fledgling American Empire, fruits of the US victory in the Spanish-American War....

"Thomas Jefferson called the US an empire, but an 'empire of liberty' dedicated to spreading freedom around the globe." This is the basis of liberal internationalism, liberal interventionism, and neoliberal globalization under American "leadership."

Counterpunch
The Day the US Became an Empire

Charles Pierson

Branko Milanovic — Schumpeter’s two theories of imperialism

Schumpeter’s theory is interesting for several reasons. It was formulated at the same time as Lenin’s and Luxemburg’s and clearly with the knowledge of the two. It reacts to the exactly the same events as theirs. It is different though and it was held by Schumpeter throughout his life. The key text for Schumpeter’s theory is “The sociology of imperialisms” (note the plural) published in 1918-19. It is a very long essay of some tightly printed 80 pages in its English translation. Schumpeter did not change anything (of substance at least) to the theory as can be seen from its brief reappearance in his “Capitalism, socialism and democracy” (CSD), published in 1942 (and republished many times since).

What Schumpeter says is the following....

Global Inequality
Schumpeter’s two theories of imperialism
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Branko Milanovic — Inequality, Imperialism, and the First World War

Branko Milanovic on his new paper with Thomas Hauner and Suresh Naidu exploring inequality prior to World War I and providing empirical support for the classical theory of imperialism.

ProMarket — The blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Inequality, Imperialism, and the First World WarBranko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Branko Milanovic — Is “neo-imperialism” the only path to development?

As is well-known (or should be well-known) Marxism has gradually developed two approaches to imperialism....

Global Inequality
Is “neo-imperialism” the only path to development?
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Marcelo Gullo — The Structure Of Hegemony

Short summary of world history since 1492 and the rise of the West to prominence and dominance.

Katehon
The Structure Of Hegemony

Marcelo Gullo

The Opium Wars: The Bloody Conflicts That Destroyed Imperial China – And drives its anger over the South China Sea today.

Backgrounder.

In 1839, England went to war with China because it was upset that Chinese officials had shut down its drug trafficking racket and confiscated its dope.

Stating the historical record so plainly is shocking — but it’s true, and the consequences of that act are still being felt today.

The National Interest
The Opium Wars: The Bloody Conflicts That Destroyed Imperial China – And drives its anger over the South China Sea today

Sebastien Roblin

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh — Evolution of Capitalism, Escalation of Imperialism

The purpose of this essay is to show that as capitalism has evolved from the early stages of small-scale manufacturing to the current stage of the dominance of finance capital, its arena of expropriation has, accordingly, expanded from the early colonial/imperial conquests abroad to today’s universal dispossession worldwide, both at home and abroad. Specifically, it aims to expose the class nature of imperialism independent of nationality and/or geography, and to indicate how this profit-driven characteristic of capitalism is at the root of today’s global austerity economics; an ominous development that dispossesses not only defenseless peoples abroad, but also the overwhelming majority of the people at home—a socio-economic plague that can be called the “new imperialism,” or “imperialism by dispossession” [1].

The new imperialism differs from the old, classical imperialism in at least four major ways.…

Counterpunch

Evolution of Capitalism, Escalation of Imperialism

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh | Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University

Helena Norberg-Hodge and Steven Gorelick — Globalization and the American Dream

In reality, however, globalization is a continuation of a broad process that started with the age of conquest and colonialism in the South and the enclosures and the Industrial Revolution in the North. From then on a single economic system has relentlessly expanded, taking over other cultures, other peoples’ resources and labor. Far from elevating those people from poverty, the globalizing economic system has systematically impoverished them.…

"Progress" on the backs of others.

Counterpunch
Globalization and the American Dream
Helena Norberg-Hodge and Steven Gorelick

Richard Falk — ISIS's challenge to the statist world order

One of the seemingly permanent contributions of Europe to the manner of organising international society was to create a strong consensus in support of the idea that only a territorially delimited sovereign state was entitled to the full privileges of membership.
The United Nations, the institutional embodiment of international society, recognises this principle by limiting membership in the organisation to "states".
Of course, there is an enormous variation in the size, population, military capabilities, resource endowments and de facto autonomy as between the various states. At one extreme are states such as China and India with populations of over 1 billion, while at the other are such tiny countries such as Liechtenstein or Vanuatu, but all four have the same one vote when it comes to action in the UN General Assembly or votes at the global conferences on climate change.
From the point of view of international law and organisational theory, we continue to live in a state-centric world order early in the 21st century.
This is somewhat surprising, especially in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa where the "states" were often arbitrarily imposed a century or more ago to satisfy colonial ambitions and took no account of the wishes and identities of the people living in a particular geographic space.
Yet without exception nationalist movements and their leaders throughout the world, although aware that the colonial demarcations of boundaries were not rooted in ethnic, religious and historic experience, nevertheless refrained from challenging the idea that a politically independent state should be delimited by the same boundaries as the prior colonial state.…

It is against this statist background that some recent Islamic practice with regard to political community and world order is innovative and challenging. When explaining the revolutionary process in Iran that unfolded in 1978-79, Ayatollah Khomeini insisted that what was happening in Iran should be treated as an "Islamic Revolution" rather than an "Iranian Revolution".

What was being asserted was that the relevant community was the Muslim umma, which has not been actualised in recent times but deserves the loyalty and adherence of believers whatever their location in national space happens to be. Such a view was more aggressively articulated in the declarations of Osama Bin Laden, whose worldview was Islamic, which transcended the secular realities of statehood and nationalism, and expressed what might be called an Islamic cosmopolitan worldview.

The most concerted challenge of all directed toward state-centricism has been mounted by ISIS, and especially by announcing the establishment of a new caliphate in the Middle East, whose contours were based on governance patterns in Syria and Iraq rather than on the boundaries of existing sovereign states.

ISIS leaders also boasted of "the end of Sykes-Picot," the Anglo-French originally secret agreement in 1916 that led to the formation of the modern statist Middle East in the territories formerly administered by the Ottoman Empire. So far, ISIS has made good on its claim to govern the area it controls by sharia law strictly applied, and thus defy the sovereign territorial authority of both Syria and Iraq.

There are at least three elements of this non-state pattern of control that are worth noticing. First, ISIS seems to have no interest in being accepted as a state or to be treated as a vehicle of self-determination for Syrians and Iraqis living under its authority. ISIS rests its authority to govern exclusively on a sectarian claim to be applying Islam.

Secondly, by discrediting those states that were imposed on the region after World War I, ISIS is claiming a superior political legitimacy to that conferred by international diplomatic procedures or through admission to the United Nations.

Thirdly, significant portions of the Sunni population that is dominant presence in the caliphate welcomed ISIS, at least at first, as a liberating force freeing the population from Shia oppression and discrimination and more effectively offering social services at a grassroots level.

In effect, ISIS has successfully raised questions about the political legitimacy of states imposed by colonial authority and accepted by indigenous nationalist movements.

The takeaway. Defeating ISIS may not resolve the issue now that it has been  raised.

This questioning of statism in the Middle East is likely to be more durable than ISIS itself. 

Middle East Eye

ISIS's challenge to the statist world order
Richard Falk

East Asian Forum — China Regards Harmony as a Strategic Concept

One of the discipline’s greatest theorists, Kenneth Waltz, argues that the international system has a consistent set of features that transcends time. Most important is the anarchical structure (the lack of a central authority to govern the relations between states). For Waltz, the anarchy of the international system drives competition between states and is the permissive cause of conflict.

Therefore, it may appear that China is shaping up for a new era of global imperial competition. Yet appearances can be deceiving.

Shiping Tang, professor of international relations at Fudan University, argues that the international system is evolving to the point where war is no longer something states inevitably choose to engage in under anarchy. Tang argues that as a part of human society, the international system has been evolutionary from the beginning. The evolutionary changes are endogenous — that is, they are caused from within the system. The co-evolution of agent, agents’ behaviour, and system is key for understanding this transformation of the international system.

The evolution of the international system from an offensive to a defensive system was complete after World War II. The offensive system was the one the European imperialists inhabited. It was aggressive and war-prone. The gradual reduction in number of states and increase in the average size of states lead to the spreading of certain social ideas, such as that conquest was becoming more and more difficult. This learning process changed state ideas and practice, in time bringing about a defensive system.

The current defensive international system is evolving into a more institutionally rule-based system. Some offensive states still exist. Tang says proof that we live in a defensive system can be found in the decline of successful conquest and the existence of small states that would not have survived in the war-prone world inhabited by the imperial powers. States have learned that successful conquest is unlikely, that attempts will be punished, probably severely. Xi’s foreign policy can only be properly understood in light of this evolution of international politics.…

Economy Watch
China Regards Harmony as a Strategic Concept
East Asian Forum

David F. Ruccio — Ayn Rand, Native Americans, and property rights

The twisted logic "primitive accumulation" (Marx & Engels), summarized by Ayn Rand to justify the massive rip-offs of colonialism. And the neo-colonialists are still at it. It is still taking place in undeveloped and underdeveloped areas on the same pretext, mostly tribal with no formal land titles even through the peoples living in those places have been using the land for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Economic liberalism is based on enclosure of the commons ordinarily through violence or the threat of violence, and property rights are maintained by the force of law with the power of the state to enforce it. There is nothing liberal about this at all. It is the height of illiberal based on the use and threat of violence based on specious reasoning to justify it.

Historically, economic liberalism required imperialism and colonialism to develop in the way it did into modern capitalism, and it still need it, so the neo-imperialistic and neo-colonial wars continue to increase spheres of influence, add territory controlled and resources available for exploitation.

See Gen. Smedely Butler, War is a racket

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

And war is the most profitable racket in the world! [source] 

Occasional Links & Commentary
Ayn Rand, Native Americans, and property rights
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics ,University of Notre Dame

See also

West Point appeared to express no concern with Rand’s extreme, white supremacist views, nevertheless. A West Point official offered final remarks after her speech, quipping: “Ms. Rand, you have certainly given us a delighted example of a major engagement in philosophy, in the wake of which you have left a long list of casualties” — to which the audience laughed and applauded. “And have tossed and gored several sacred cows,” he added. “I hope so,” Rand replied.

More than just seemingly condoning Rand’s comments, the U.S. Military Academy also admirably echoed Ayn Rand’s views. “Ms. Rand, in writing Atlas Shrugged,” the West Point official continued at the graduation ceremony, “made one remark that I thought was important to us when she said that the only proper purpose of a government is to protect Man’s rights, and the only proper functions of the government are the police, to protect our property at home; the law, to protect our rights and contracts; and the army, to protect us from foreign threats. And we appreciate your coming to the home of the Army tonight to address us.” More thunderous applause followed.

The U.S. Military Academy later republished the lecture — but not the Q&A — in a philosophy textbook, giving it the government’s seal of approval.

White supremacy because "American exceptionalism."

Salon
Libertarian superstar Ayn Rand defended Native American genocide: “Racism didn’t exist in this country until the liberals brought it up”

Ben Norton

Branko Milanovic — Imperialism and World War I

A review of Dominic Lieven’s new book “The end of Tsarist Russia: The march toward World War I and Revolution” (Viking, 2015, 430 pages). It is about the intersection of politics (power) and economics (possession) in imperialism and colonialism — and how it can lead to stumbling into war.

Global Inequality
Imperialism and World War I
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Tim Reuter — American Hawks Should Stop Flattering Themselves: They're Not Playing A Great Game With Putin

Summary history of the confrontation of the Russian and British empires.

Forbes
American Hawks Should Stop Flattering Themselves: They're Not Playing A Great Game With Putin
Tim Reuter

George Friedman — Limits of the American Empire

"Empire" is a dirty word. Considering the behavior of many empires, that is not unreasonable. But empire is also simply a description of a condition, many times unplanned and rarely intended. It is a condition that arises from a massive imbalance of power. Indeed, the empires created on purpose, such as Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, have rarely lasted. Most empires do not plan to become one. They become one and then realize what they are. Sometimes they do not realize what they are for a long time, and that failure to see reality can have massive consequences.…

The reluctant empire, or being in denial.

EconMatters
Limits of the American Empire

George Friedman, Stratfor Global Intelligence

Unlearning Economics — The Many Straw Men Surrounding Marx

Debunking some of the persistent myths about Marx and Marxism.

Every school of thought likes to claim that the other schools of thought misunderstand or misinterpret them, and hence that their criticisms miss the mark by attacking a 'straw man'. Sadly, it is often true that this is the case, and I am guilty of misinterpreting my opponents on many occasions. However, in my opinion, there is little contest for the most frequently misrepresented figure around: it has to be Karl Marx.

For many, Marxist theories should be laid to rest. His labour theory of value is often referred to as "discredited", superseded by the subjective theory of value, while historical materialism and its lofty ideals about changing human nature are held to be equally fallacious. His purported views on colonialism (and their Leninist children), while not entirely wrong, are held to be incomplete as they fail to include non-capitalist instances of these phenomena. Finally, his historical ideas about the 'inevitable' overthrow of class war and victory of socialism are seen as naive and deterministic, and, to a degree, ethnocentric.

However, as I will show, such crude caricatures have been around for over a century, and were often repudiated by Marx (and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels) themselves. In actuality, Marx's theories are generally coherent and illuminating, even if you disagree with them.

Peiria
The Many Straw Men Surrounding Marx
Unlearning Economics