Sociology Index

Books, E-Books

IMPERIALISM

Cultural Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Colonialism, Cultural Colonialism

Imperialism is the domination by one or more countries over others for political and economic objectives. It can be effected by force of arms or through the economic and political power exercised by state and corporate agencies.

Imperialism is sometimes organized in a formal empire, with a ruling nation and colonized territories, but it can also exist where one nation or region exercises dominant influence over international trade and investment, patterns of economic development and mass communication.

Imperialism is the object-less disposition of a state to expansion by force without assigned limits. Imperialism refers to a political domain such as the Ottoman, the French, the Russian or the British Empire.

In Liberal Theory, Imperialism is a policy choice, not an inevitable consequence of capitalism. 

Imperialism also arises because increased concentration of wealth leads to underconsumption. 

In Political Theory, Imperialism is simply a manifestation of the balance of power and is the process by which nations try to achieve a favorable change in the status quo. The purpose of imperialism is to decrease the strategic and political vulnerability of a nation. 

Social-Psychological Theories
Imperialism is objectless expansion, a pattern simply learned from the behavior of other nations and institutionalized into the domestic political processes of a state by a "warrior" class. This warrior class is created because of the need for defense, but, over time, the class will manufacture reasons to perpetuate its existence, usually through manipulation of crises.

The concept of "imperialism" has to be fundamentally revised in order to be applicable to the modern world, especially to the economic globalism today. Imperialism for colonies and bloc economy ended with the World War II, and a fanatic or expansionist nationalism of an advanced capitalist state is exceptional today. At the same time, we can favorably apply Lenin's concept "the domestic regime of an imperialist country" to the drastic change of advanced societies since the end of 1970s. The second stage of the modern imperialism has been formed since then which reduced and is even now reducing "class compromise" and "the mass society type of integration". Imperialism should be defined as actions and impulses of strong states which aim at settlement, prevention and suppression of problems caused by gaps between the international behavior of enterprises and the nation-state-system. Imperialism in the past two centuries includes the British free trade imperialism, the imperialism of the Powers, the first and the second stages of the modern imperialism. The integrated mass society started in the last quarter of the 19th century when "the era of imperialism of the Powers" began. The welfare state is a typical example of integrated mass society, to which Japan with her company-based integration system belongs. For these twenty years, both types of the integration have been contracted or fundamentally changed. I argue in this paper that those changes are due to the emerging second stage of the modern imperialism, which is based on the multinational enterprises. Multinational corporations depend on their national economies, but at the same time they weaken the energy and the controllability of their national economies with their mass integration regimes. Neo-conservatism is a ruling ideology in the second stage of the modern imperialism.
Goto Michio, A New Stage of Modern Imperialism and the Recontraction of Integrated Mass Society(Session 7 Globalization as Historical Stage,The Twentieth Century Capitalism : Reexamination of its History and Review of Methodologies,Special Issue of Commemoration : Papers Read at the Fiftieth Anniversary Conference of the Political Economy and Economic History Society of November 1998)

The Sociology of Imperialism, 1918. For it is always a question, when one speaks of imperialism, of the assertion of an aggressiveness whose real basis does not lie in the aims followed at the moment but an aggressiveness in itself. And actually history shows us people and classes who desire expansion for the sake of expanding, war for the sake of fighting, domination for the sake of dominating. It values conquest not so much because of the advantages it brings, which are often more than doubtful, as because it is conquest, success, activity. Although expansion as self-purpose always needs concrete objects to activate it and support it, its meaning is not included therein. Hence its tendency toward the infinite unto the exhaustion of its forces, and its motto: plus ultra. Thus we define: Imperialism is the object-less disposition of a state to expansion by force without assigned limits. - fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1918schumpeter1.html

The New Imperialism and the War in Iraq - Gill, Stephen.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association
Abstract: A major feature of world order today is the intensified effort to unify global political, social and economic space under a particular form of Western supremacy (Gill 2003). This effort has been spearheaded by, what theorists across the political spectrum including neo-Marxists, neoconservatives and Liberals alike have seen as the new imperialism of the United States. However it is a moot point as to whether the forms of imperialism are indeed that new. Rather it may be better to characterise as the new moment as combining are the both old and the radically new. Its lineages stretch back to earlier moments when the “empire of civil society” was created and internationalized along Lockean lines through English colonial policies and at the birth and subsequent expansion of the modern United States.
Despite the proliferation of US military bases in a global archipelago of extended coercive power, “empire” in this sense does not necessarily involve the need for permanent occupation of territories – it more centrally involves mechanisms of control over territories and populations to make them permeable to the movement of enterprise and capital, or private power, and subject to the disciplines of capital. Nonetheless a central characteristic of US imperialism in the early 21st century is how it has been exercised along with the claim of an absolute prerogative to act as a sovereign power that stands above all others. Thus whilst on the one hand, US leaders are the representatives of powers that inhere in the empire of civil society on the other hand they are also the heirs of the thinking of Karl Schmitt: they retain the power to decree the exception, thus reserving ‘exceptional power’ for themselves. This schizophrenic political logic is manifest in the war in Iraq, which reflects some of the aims, contradictions and limitations of the “new” imperialism.

Ambivalent Imperialism: The Missionary Rhetoric of Robert Boyd - Justin Livingstone
Department of English Literature, University of Edinburgh, Literature and Theology 2009 23(2)
Abstract: Postcolonial Studies has directed much of its critique of British Imperialism at those informal agents responsible for the cultural crimes of colonial exploitation. Missionaries have routinely been charged with cultural annihilation and for conjuring up images of different and distant peoples and places. In keeping with a growing trend in historical studies, this article revisits the complexity of missionary involvement in colonialism, and its rhetorical construction of otherness. But I do this in quite a different way by examining as literature writings produced by missionaries themselves. Specifically, I analyse the works of Robert Boyd, a missionary in India in the early 20th century and later convener of Foreign Mission for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. By bringing the tools of rhetorical analysis to bear upon such ‘non-literary’ texts, I hope to intervene in a debate dominated by historians and theologians. I argue that the relationship between mission and imperialism is one of ambivalence, an ever complex dynamic, which refuses the cliché of the bible and the gun as the dual tools of empire.

The Principle of Liberal Imperialism: Human Rights and Human Freedom in the Age of Evangelical Capitalism - Jeff Noonan
Socialist Studies: The Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies, Vol 2, No 1 (2006)
Abstract: The paper argues that the principle that underlies liberal imperialism is conceptually incoherent. The Principle of Liberal Imperialism claims that liberal nations have a duty to intervene in non-liberal nations in response to persistent human rights violations for the sake of creating the conditions in which the agency of the population can be realized. The legitimacy of such interventions, however, is rooted in a presupposition that denies the very agency of the oppressed in whose name the intervention is justified. In response to this incoherence the paper concludes with the outline of a materialist conception of agency that prioritises the capability of oppressed populations to find internal resources of critique and social transformation.

Media Imperialism - Media imperialism revisited: some findings from the Asian case
Kalyani Chadha, Anandam Kavoori - Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 22, No. 4, 415-432 (2000)
The media imperialism thesis has long argued that the expansion of Western media production into developing countries has resulted in the domination of their national media environments and the consequent destruction of their indigenous media production. This article examines the empirical tenability of this claim with regard to Asia. Delineating the region's media developments, it identifies forces such as national gate-keeping policies, the dynamics of audience preference and local competition, all of which inhibit and restrict the proliferation of Western cultural production. On the basis of this empirical evidence, the article argues that the claims made by proponents of the media imperialism thesis seem overstated in the Asian context. In conclusion, the article suggests that although media imperialism is perceived as a very real danger by governments, there are in fact several other problematic trends such as the rampant growth of commercialization and the decline of public broadcasting, the dominance of entertainment programming and a lack of genuine diversity in program genres and formats that collectively represent a more significant threat to media systems in Asia.

Eco-Imperialism
Beyond Eco-Imperialism: An Environmental Justice Critique of Free Trade - Carmen G. Gonzalez, Seattle University - School of Law - Denver University Law Review, Vol. 78, p. 981, 2001
Abstract: The article contributes to the trade and environment literature by assessing the claim that industrialized country proposals to integrate environmental protection into the WTO trade regime constitute environmental imperialism - the imposition of industrialized country values and preferences on less powerful nations. This claim is usually based on two distinct premises. The first is that environmental protection is a luxury that poor countries can ill afford. The second is that wealthy countries have played a leadership role in the protection of the global environment. The article questions these assumptions. It argues that environmental protection is essential to well-being of the poor, and that wealthy countries have achieved economic prosperity by shifting environmental degradation to the global commons and to the developing world. The article re-defines environmental imperialism as the over-utilization of the world's limited pool of natural resources and waste sinks. It concludes that the industrialized world has indeed engaged in environmental imperialism and that trade liberalization threatens to accelerate this process. Developing countries are therefore justified in asserting that environmental trade restrictions are hypocritical in light of developed countries' failure to address their own far more ecologically damaging behavior. The article proposes several legal strategies designed to scale back industrialized countries' over-consumption of the world's resources and to support grassroots resistance to environmental degradation. The article calls for close scrutiny of proposals to reconcile trade and environment to make sure that they promote environmental justice and do not merely reinforce industrialized countries' economic and political dominance.

Environmental Imperialism: Theories of Governance and Resistance
Dyer, H. C. - Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association
Abstract: The global environmental agenda, alongside the broad neoliberal agenda, may be viewed by developing states and societies as a neo-imperialist adventure to be resisted. This paper considers the theoretical parameters of resistance to global environmental governance and argues that the idea of 'eco-imperialism' reflects the uncertain location of politics, the ambivalent role of states, and challenges assumptions in the mainstream study of world politics

Environmental protection or imperialism?
Macmillan Publishing Ltd. Publication Name: Nature
Abstract: Efforts of industrialized nations to impose the same environmental standards they have established for themselves on developing nations have been viewed as imperialist in nature. Poorer countries cannot afford to sustain the environmental standards adopted by developed countries because they do not have adequate resources to undertake the same environmental protection strategies. Some environmental regulations imposed by the US have been considered illegal under GATT rules.

Moral Imperialism - In defence of moral imperialism: four equal and universal prima facie principles - A Dawson, E Garrard - Journal of Medical Ethics 2006;32:200-204;
Abstract: Raanan Gillon is a noted defender of the four principles approach to healthcare ethics. His general position has always been that these principles are to be considered to be both universal and prima facie in nature. In recent work, however, he has made two claims that seem to present difficulties for this view. His first claim is that one of these four principles, respect for autonomy, has a special position in relation to the others: he holds that it is first among equals. We argue that this claim makes little sense if the principles are to retain their prima facie nature. His second claim is that cultural variation can play an independent normative role in the construction of our moral judgments. This, he argues, enables us to occupy a middle ground between what he sees as the twin pitfalls of moral relativism and (what he calls) moral imperialism. We argue that there is no such middle ground, and while Gillon ultimately seems committed to relativism, it is some form of moral imperialism (in the form of moral objectivism) that will provide the only satisfactory construal of the four principles as prima facie universal moral principles.

Universalism and Imperialism: The True-False Paradox of International Law?
Emmanuelle Jouannet, Professor of International Law, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
European Journal of International Law 2007 18(3):379-407; doi:10.1093/ejil/chm029
Abstract: This article examines one of the central recurrent questions in international law: the relation between the universalism of certain of its principles and the possibility that they are imperialist in nature. The author illustrates how, in this regard, international law has, from its very origins, been the bearer of a paradox; a paradox that is, moreover, constitutive of the discipline, and from which international law cannot escape without itself ceasing to exist as such.

"Economic imperialism": a view from the periphery
Ben Fine - Department of Economics, University of London
Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 34, No. 2, 187-201 (2002)
Edward P. Lazear, a leading neoclassical economist specializing in labor economics, has recently argued that economic imperialism is successfully colonizing other social sciences as a result of its own scientific status. His account, however, leaves several lacunae, including an explanation for the depth, variety, and timing of economic imperialism. These issues are addressed by emphasizing the importance of recent developments in micro-foundations in rendering economics more palatable to other social sciences that are themselves retreating from the extremes of influence of postmodernism and, like economics, neoliberalism. Further, once questioning the claims of economics as the only rigorous science, and recognizing the understandable antipathies to it by other disciplines, then the latter's interest in renewing contact with the economic is liable to see debate emerge over how to analyze the economy. In this, radical political economy and heterodox economics can play a part, even though they have been dismissed by mainstream economics itself.

Globalization, Imperialism and Regulation - Deepak Lal
University of California, Los Angeles - Department of Economics; University College London
Abstract: This paper challenges the idea that globalization should be viewed as a damaging western ideology. Rather than being an expression of US imperialism, the benign process of globalization is threatened by the unwillingess of the US to maintain its Pax, whilst simultaneously attempting to legislate the affairs of the world through a form of 'ethical imperialism'. The argument is developed through an examination of the debate over global public goods, in particular the maintenance of peace, and the role of international financial institutions in dealing with recurrent financial crises.

Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits, and Problems
Syed Hussein Alatas - Asian Journal of Social Science, Volume 28, Number 1, 2000
Abstract: Imperialism is not confined to the political or economic aspects of the historical process. Rather, it is to be considered as a cluster. A phenomenon such as imperialism is a cluster of different aspects of human undertakings. What is usually discussed is economic and political imperialism. In this paper, however, we turn to intellectual imperialism, first describing what it is, and second enumerating the problems connected with it. Intellectual imperialism has, among other things, resulted in a displacement of attention from issues that should be of vital concern to Asian and African societies. The emancipation of the mind from the shackles of intellectual imperialism is the major condition for the development of a creative and autonomous social science tradition in developing societies.

The Pillars of American Imperialism:Rationalizing U.S. Cold War Involvement in the Republic of Korea.
William J. Moon - Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal. 2007. Volume 2 Number 1.
Abstract: Developmental economists refer to South Korea's economic "miracle" - contrary to North Korea's economic disaster - as a shining example that glorifies the ultimate victory of American capitalism. It is precisely that logic in which many people hasten to call direct U.S. interventions in third world nations during the Cold War a function of imperialism. After all, unlike the European model of imperialism, American involvement in Korea ultimately benefited both sides. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the truth, often covered under decades of Cold War rhetoric. For example, while Americans did not "colonize" Korea, Americans fundamentally altered the historical fate of Korea. It was precisely the State Department's paranoia of "Red Expansion" that triggered the division of Korea, which created a breeding ground for friction that would develop into one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in human history - The Korean War. In the end, it was the Koreans, among other citizens of the "hot" regions around the globe, who disproportionately paid the price for the Cold War.

After Imperialism? - Ernest Mandel - Internet Archive - ernestmandel.org/en/works/txt/1964/imperialism.htm
New Left Review, #25, May-June 1964, pp. 17-25
Michael Barratt Brown’s After Imperialism is undoubtedly one of the most important economic works recently published in English -- indeed probably the most important for socialist theory and practice. The author’s purpose is ambitious: to test Lenin’s definition of imperialism against the realities of the British Empire, from the eve of the industrial revolution up to the present day. In doing so, he provides a fascinating history of the British Empire’s rise and decline, and describes the economic and social transformations both in Britain and in the colonial countries from which it sprang, and the economic and social changes it has in turn wrought in all the countries it has touched.

NEOLIBERAL IMPERIALISM AND PAN-AFRICAN RESISTANCE Niels S. C. Hahn
Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,
Abstract: Neoliberalism has in the past three decades had a tremendous impact on both thought and practice throughout most of the world, and has dominated international development since the early 1980s. Although neoliberalism presents itself as modern and progressive, it is argued that the underlying ideologies and power agendas have their origins in the political debates of the eighteenth century and earlier. Through an analysis of neoliberalism from a world-historical and global perspective, indications are seen that the international development agenda has more to do with political and economic interests than with benevolent pro-poor development. This leads to the debate about redistribution of resources and State-led Development versus Free-market Development, which is inextricable from the discussion of Liberal Democratic Peace Theory versus Realism.
From this perspective it is argued that the notion of democratic peace is used as a popular seductive rhetoric, to legitimize western military interventions and the imposition of economic policies in the name of democracy, human rights and free market economy. In this context, it is argued that neoliberalism cannot be analysed without also considering inherent links to imperialism and neo-colonialism, which is being resisted by pan-African movements.

Tabloid Imperialism: American Geopolitical Anxieties and the War on Terror
By François Debrix, Florida International University (May 2007)
Abstract: Over the past decade, influential American intellectuals of statecraft have adopted a style of presentation of global political, social, and economic realities that can be described as tabloid geopolitics. Using a discursive style directly borrowed from popular television talk-shows, news reporting, and punditry, tabloid geopolitics is designed to be highly entertaining, sensational, shocking, and overtly simplistic. Tabloid geopolitics combines commonsensical textual explanations and spectacular maps to produce a sense of fear and inevitable danger that can lead American audiences to accept certain ‘truths’ that geopolitical experts seek to impose. This article traces the path of these discourses of popular geopolitics from ‘tabloid realism’ to ‘tabloid imperialism’. After offering an overview of the tabloid geopolitical genre that takes the reader through the tabloid productions of Robert D. Kaplan, Samuel Huntington, and Thomas Barnett, this essay explores the place of tabloid imperialism today, some 6 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Introducing a recent text by media pundit Tony Blankley, this article shows how previous tabloid realist and tabloid imperialist concerns have given way to a mode of panic tabloid imperialism. Mixing prior tabloid realist and imperialist themes and techniques at a time when uncertainties about the protracted military occupation of Iraq is starting to turn the American public away from the war on terror, Blankley's panic tabloid imperialist text is a somewhat desperate yet, like most tabloid geopolitical discourses, typically hateful, violent and, in the end, self-defeating attempt at making sense of the place of the West and the United States in the war on terror.

Cultural Imperialism on the Internet by Seongcheol Kim
interculturalrelations.com/v1i4Fall1998/f98kim.htm
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to review the cultural imperialism argument in terms of the developments of the Internet through some case studies. In trying to explain problems of global unequal flow of media including the Internet, the cultural imperialism argument seems to be uniquely helpful. However, because of the structural differences between the Internet and traditional forms of mass media, it may not be appropriate to apply the argument to the Internet. Furthermore, it can be said that the cultural imperialism argument has some limitations in the research of not only the Internet but the other new interactive electronic media.

Beyond cultural imperialism: Cultural theory, christian missions, and global modernity = Au-delà de l'impérialisme culturel: la théorie de la culture, les missions chrétiennes et la modernité mondiale
DUNCH Ryan; University of Alberta, CANADA - History and theory ISSN 0018-2656
Abstract: Cultural imperialism has been an influential concept in the representation of the modern Christian missionary movement. This essay calls its usefulness into question and draws on recent work on the cultural dynamics of globalization to propose alternative ways of looking at the role of missions in modern history. The first section of the essay surveys the ways in which the term cultural imperialism has been employed in different disciplines, and some of the criticisms made of the term within those disciplines. The second section discusses the application of the cultural imperialism framework to the missionary enterprise, and the related term colonization of consciousness used by Jean and John Comaroff in their influential work on British missionaries and the Tswana of southern Africa. The third section looks at the historiography of missions in modern China, showing how deeply the teleological narratives of nationalism and development have marked that historiography. The concluding section argues that the missionary movement must be seen as one element in a globalizing modernity that has altered Western societies as well as non-Western ones in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that a comparative global approach to the missionary movement can help to illuminate the process of modern cultural globalization.

Cultural Imperialism : the United States in Latin America or "The Velvet Boot of the Shameless Hussy" Hixson, Carol G., 1955-; Casto, Jane; Halloran, Jude
Abstract: Cultural imperialism is a vague, undefined term that has recently come into vogue, primarily in revolutionary circles. Despite the ambiguous, cliche quality of the phrase, it is of the upmost importance for understanding relations between developed and underdeveloped countries. One may take any aspect of this relationship, from the economic to the political, and correctly call it an example of cultural imperialism. All depend on the importation of foreign ideas, technology, and institutions from developed countries, with no thought for their appropriateness to the underdeveloped countries. This paper examines instances of cultural imperialism in Latin America.

German Culture, Imperialism and Planetary Responsibility in the 18th Century
John K. Noyes (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto)
Abstract: This section is built on the premise that European expansionism forced German intellectuals to re-think virtually all aspects of intellectual and cultural life in the 18th century. The result was a radically new way of thinking about humanity’s place in the world, and it gave rise to the modern awareness that the world is best viewed as a unity of diverse cultures, a planetary whole in which all peoples co-exist. German writers found themselves attempting to re-imagine the planet in terms of the geographical interconnectedness and shared fate of humanity. They found themselves experimenting with alternative models of thought to those that promote rampant globalization, dehumanization, and uneven development for the sake of profit. After the discovery of the world as a global field for the expansion of capital in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this has been the single most important geo-political discovery in the west. This realization brings with it an entirely new set of responsibilities and obligations, which are readily identifiable as the most pressing challenges facing the modern world right up to the present day. They include issues such as the need to respect and foster ecological and cultural diversity, the harmful effects of imperialism and uneven development, the ethical challenges of global commerce, and others. In an intellectual arc from Blumenbach and Herder to Goethe and the Romantics, writers continually found themselves negotiating these issues, while at the same time re-thinking the most fundamental aspects of their own culture in relationship to imperialism and colonialism. Contributions to this section will examine the contradictions and tensions that resulted from an awareness of planetary culture. Papers will discuss not only the thematic sedimentation of European expansionism in German letters, but also the aesthetic strategies which writers developed in order to resolve the contradictions and tensions they saw arising from European activity overseas. Questions to be addressed might include, for example: how was the concept of Bildung affected by knowledge of other cultures? In what ways did the perception of uneven development in other parts of the world impact on the representation of Europe’s underdeveloped regions? How did writers move from the concept of humanist Bildung to global Bildung (Guthke)? What aesthetic strategies did writers develop to come to terms with contradictions in their concepts of culture, humanity and social responsibility? Etc.

Corporate Imperialism and Globalisation - A panel planned for the confernce of the International Studies Association, Chicago, February 20-24, 2001 - Fred W. Riggs
Abstract: Globalisation means many things. However, the activities of transnational and multinational corporations have been central to globalisation and in some sense globalisation may be 'for' corporations. This panel explores the notion that the new advance of private corporate interests in the world economy can best be understood through the concept of imperialism. How is corporate power deployed in the world? How is it related to 'hegemonic' power interests? What are the spatial and sectoral characteristics of the new corporate imperialism?

Linguistic Imperialism, linguistic democracy and English language teaching
Mohammad Aliakbari - Ilam University - Iran, maliakbari@hotmail.com
Abstract: In response to the assumptions of linguistic imperialism and cultural homogeneity, especially explained and reacted to in Phillipson (1992), the present article raises ten contradictory arguments, which put the native speakers’ hegemony in international uses of English under question. Advocating cultural awareness, and intercultural competence, this article calls for the interlocutors’ mutual appreciation and cooperation of cultures to strengthen international relationships. Finally through an attempt to specify the problems with the 'native speakers’ dependency view, the article proposes linguistic democracy as the alternative paradigm and elaborates on recognition of cultural diversity in ELT.

Remarx: Imperialism and the Rhetoric of Democracy in the Age of Wall Street
Antonio Callari - Rethinking Marxism, Routledge, part of the Taylor \& Francis Group, Volume 20, Issue 4, Number 4, p.700 (2008)
Abstract: This essay argues that the territorial fluidity of the process of surplus production has been accompanied by a new form of imperialism, resting on a structural separation of the processes of surplus appropriation and distribution from the processes of surplus production and a strengthening of the moment of appropriation and distribution under the control of the U.S. ruling class/es. The essay also argues that this new form can and should be understood as a form of imperialism sui generis. Contrary to a widely held view, most notably promulgated by Giovanni Arrighi's The Long Twentieth Century (namely, that the shift of the axis of power to the sphere of finance heralds a period of decline of U.S. hegemony), and contrary to the view promulgated by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire (namely, that a territorially centered imperialism is no longer possible), the essay argues that the new arrangement for the global slurping of surplus value constitutes a new project of U.S. imperialism with sufficient long-term possibilities. The essay links this new form of imperialism to the rise of a novel global crusade for bourgeois democracy on the part of the U.S. and argues that the resistance to this imperialism requires the Left, and Marxist discourse, to engage on the terrain of the idea of democracy.

Evaluating the Leninist Theory of Imperialism - Willoughby, John - Science and Society; 59(3), Fall 1995, pages 320-38.
The Leninist theory of imperialism leaves us a problematic legacy. On the one hand, the theory's emphasis on the evolving forms of capital accumulation remains centrally important. On the other hand, the Leninist theory attempts to explain a political process at the wrong level of abstraction. Political domination cannot be reduced to economic tendencies. Historical contingency is crucially important and the Leninist theory has consequently become less and less useful since the conclusion of World War II. A materialist theory of imperial domination in the capitalist era needs to include an analysis of evolving state structures and the motivations of key personnel within the state apparatus. Such a methodology cannot yield a simple prediction concerning the future of imperial conflict. This approach can, however, identify those political responses which can limit or even defeat the imperial pretensions of a capitalist society's ruling class.

Lenin, Imperialism, and the Stages of Capitalist Development
McDonough, Terrence - Science and Society; 59(3), Fall 1995, pages 339-67.
In addition to its importance in analyzing imperialism, Lenin's "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism" is also a key contribution to the Marxian theory of stages of capitalism. Lenin's "Imperialism" proposes the concept of a new stage of capitalism as the solution to the theoretical crisis within Marxism that emerged with capitalist recovery at the turn of the 20th century. In Lenin's argument, the emergence of monopoly capital resolved the great depression at the end of the 19th century. This conception of imperialism influenced the American monopoly capital school and through it the contemporary social structure of accumulation description of capitalist stages. Lenin's work is also the direct ancestor of Ernest Mandel's concept of the late capitalist stage and of the Japanese Uno School's stage theory.

Lenin's Revolution in Time, Space and Economics and Its Implications: An Analysis of Imperialism
Birken, Lawrence - History of Political Economy; 23(4), Winter 1991, pages 613-23.
The turning point in the history of Marxism was certainly the life and work of V. I. Lenin. Despite the legitimizing term "Marxism-Leninism," Lenin accomplished a veritable revolution in Marxist thought in his seminal work on imperialism. This work helped transform the premises of Marxist thought to such an extent that it can fairly be asked whether it remained Marxist at all. At the very least, this article argues, Lenin was part of a revolt against classical Marxism as dramatic as, and in some ways analogous to, the marginalist revolt against classical bourgeois economics that was taking place around the same time.

Marxist theories of imperialism: A critical survey
Brewer, Anthony - Second edition, London and New York: Routledge, 1990, pages xi, 300.
Surveys the various accounts of the development of the capitalist world economy that have been put forward in the Marxist tradition. Revised edition describes the rise and fall of dependency theory and includes new material on J. A. Hobson. Briefly outlines the historical record of the emergence and development of the capitalist world economy and summarizes the elements of historical materialism. Examines the work of a succession of major theorists in (approximate) chronological order, covering Karl Marx; Rosa Luxemburg; J. A. Hobson (not a Marxist, but influential to later Marxist writers); Rudolf Hilferding; Nicolai Bukharin and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin; Paul Baran; Andre Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Samir Amin; and Arghiri Emmanuel. Discusses debates about the appropriate way to analyze social and economic structures in underdeveloped countries. Examines the recent trends in the development of capitalism and their analysis by Marxists. Considers, in this context, the multinational corporation, the future of central capital, and the future of capitalism in the periphery. Brewer is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Bristol. Bibliography; index.

Postimperialism Revisited: The Venezuelan Wheat Import Controversy of 1986
Stander, Henricus J., III; Becker, David G. - World Development; 18(2), February 1990
Postimperialism is a class-analytical conception of international capitalism with implications for the behavior of transnational corporations (TNCs) in newly industrializing countries. It holds, inter alia, that TNCs will tend to act in accordance with an ideological "doctrine of domicile": corporate managers are disposed to have each TNC subsidiary behave like a "good corporate citizen" of the host country where it is domiciled. This prediction runs directly counter to "imperialism" and "dependency" views of TNCs but has heretofore been examined only in the resource industries. In contrast, the present study involves the manufacture in a less developed country of food products from a raw material produced in the developed world. The study results in a strong confirmation of the "doctrine of domicile" idea and a refutation of the "imperialist" perspective. In addition, the observations of political bargaining modalities and outcomes reveal the nature and limits of TNC political influence over host-government decision-making.

Postimperialism: International capitalism and development in the late twentieth century
Becker, David G. et al., Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1987, pages x, 252.
Ten articles, four previously published, discuss the concept of postimperialism. Articles present a class analysis of multinational corporate expansion; development, democracy, and dependency in Latin America; Peru under military rule; assertive pragmatism and the multinational enterprise; international finance and state capitalism in Mexico, Brazil, Algeria, and South Korea; socializing adaptation; international capital and national development; and postimperialism and the great competition. Concludes with an overall report on postimperialism, commenting on various theories. Coauthors are Jeff Frieden, Sayre P. Schatz, and Richard L. Sklar. Becker is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. Bibliography; index.

Imperialism and the anti-imperialist mind
Feuer, Lewis S. - Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1986, pages vi, 265.
Reopens the question of the basic character of imperialism, asking whether imperialism is a universal theme of history and whether V. I. Lenin and John A. Hobson were mistaken in thinking it probably was the last stage of a "predatory order." Regards imperialism as a natural political process and one that is characteristic of all nations under all political and social systems. Argues that neo-Marxists err when they point to the relative backwardness of colonial people and blame imperialism on the advanced Western nations. Cites British imperialism in India, for example, as an era of development and promotion of democracy. Notes different degrees of emphasis such as "participatory imperialism" of the United States and England and the authoritarian type of Russia. Describes progressive imperialism, emphasizing neo-Marxian dependency, consumers' imperialism, and progressive imperialism. Presents a case study of the Jewish people under differing varieties of imperialism. Analyzes the imperialist spirit and the anti-imperial mind. Concludes with a discussion of the end of progressive imperialism, reviewing both American and Russian models. Feuer is Emeritus University Professor at the University of Virginia. Name index.

Toward a Neo-Institutionalist Theory of Imperialism, Willoughby, John, Review of Radical Political Economics; 25(3), September 1993, pages 60-67.

John Hobson, Thorstein Veblen and the Phenomenon of Imperialism: Finance Capital, Patriotism and War, Edgell, Stephen; Townshend, Jules, American Journal of Economics and Sociology; 51(4), October 1992, pages 401-20.

Marx's Theory of Imperialism and the Irish National Question, Lim, Jie Hyun, Science and Society; 56(2), Summer 1992, pages 163-78.

The Modern Theory of Imperialism, Marz, Eduard, Marz, Eduard. Joseph Schumpeter: Scholar, teacher and politician. Translation, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991, pages 62-84. Previously published: [1983].

Imperialism and Uneven Development: U.S. Policy in Taiwan and Nicaragua, Medley, Joseph E., Review of Radical Political Economics; 21(3), 1989, pages 112-17

Imperialism and Social Class (Apologies to Marx and Schumpeter): Imperial Investors in the Age of High Imperialism, Davis, Lance E.; Huttenback, Robert A., Wagener, H. J., ed.; Drukker, J. W., ed. The economic law of motion of modern society: A Marx Keynes Schumpeter centennial. Cambridge; New York and Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pages 156-85.

A Methodological Analysis of Dependency Theory: Explanation in Andre Gunder Frank, Ruccio, David F.; Simon, Lawrence H., World Development; 14(2), 1986, pages 195-209

War, Imperialism and the State System: A Critique of Orthodox Marxism for the 1980s, Shaw, Martin, Shaw, Martin, ed. War, State and Society. New York: St. Martin's Press: London: Macmillan Press, 1984, pages 47-70.

Hobson's Theory of Imperialism and the Leninist Critique Thereof, Fitzgerald, Frank T., Economic Forum; 13(3), Winter 1982-83, pages 1-24.

Kalecki, Luxemburg, and Imperialism, Darity, William A., Jr., Journal of Post Keynesian Economics; 2(2), Winter 1979 80, pages 223-30.

Rosa Luxemburg and the Impact of Imperialism, Lee, George, Economic Journal; 81(324), Dec. 1971, pages 847-62.

 

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