(The following article was published as an educational supplement to issue No. 2, 1971, of the Swedish revolutionary socialist monthly Mullvaden (Mole), from which we have translated it.]
American imperialism began to show its face in Latin America early in the nineteenth century and later in the Pacific area (expansion into the Japanese sphere and the conquest of the Philippines). Since the opening of the first world war, American imperialism has spread out to encircle the entire world. In the competition among the imperialist powers, American imperialism emerged as the victor in the two imperialist world conflicts.
In fact, American imperialism was the only victor that was strengthened militarily and economically by these wars. All its most important competitors were weakened by one or both of these contlicts.
There is no need to go into detail on the causes of American imperialism's superiority over its competitors. The primary reasons are well known -enormous natural resources, a better balance between industry and agriculture, and a larger territorial and demographic base, which made it possible to take advantage of industrial mass production, wipe out all semifeudal vestiges, and permit the development of a purer form of capitalism than in the other imperialist states, and so forth.
It must be stressed, however, that American imperialism's rise to the place of leading power on the planet has been a dialectical process involving sharpening contradictions throughout the rest of the world as well as in American society itself. The American imperialist bourgeoisie has been unable to take part in the race for world domination without assuring its leadership of the capitalist world. In this it has been confronted with ever more powerful anticapitalist forces.
As a result, the decisions of American imperialism are often guided by the political necessity to defend the capitalist system on a worldwide scale. This need may conflict with its own particular interests. It is in this light that the Marshall Plan must be seen. Far from being an attempt to bring the European economy under Washington's control, it was, in historical perspective, the first phase in rebuilding West European imperialism as an independent force, more precisely a force with the capacity 450
to compete with the USA. This decision, however, was not an irrational one.
Washington was faced with a choice between two evils after the second world war. It had either to help bring about the collapse of West European capitalism or permit a powerful competitor to recover. American imperialism chose the lesser evil, from its standpoint.
These introductory remarks are essential to avoid falling into economism or making an oversimplified analysis of the economic roots of American imperialism.
American imperialism is still rooted primarily in the economic phenomenon which Lenin defined and which continues in force for the entire imperialist epoch -the existence of surplus capital in the imperialist countries spreading out over the globe in search of superprofits.
The only modification that need be made in Lenin's definition is that, since the second world war, this surplus capital is no longer solely, or even primarily, lowing toward the colonial or semicolonial "underdeveloped" countries, but also, to an increasing extent, toward other industrially developed imperialist countries.
This important difference with respect to the imperialism of Lenin's day can be explained by the following factors:
1. The important differentials in technology and labor productivity between American imperialism and the other imperialist powers.
2. The difference in military and political power between the USA and the other imperialist states, a difference more pronounced than that in the economic sphere.
3. The increasing insecurity of investments in the colonial and semicolonial countries, where the revolutionary liberation movements have been on the advance.
4. The reduced geographical area in which invested surplus capital can still produce profits, owing to the overthrow of capitalism in large sections of the world. 1
The end result of these uneven tendencies is that the differences between the rate of profit in the USA and what American capital can get in other countries (by exploiting its technological advantages and thereby assuring important surplus profits) is sufficiently large to make exporting capital to other imperialist countries considerably more enticing than investing in underdeveloped countries, where the greater risks detract from the lure of higher rates of profit.
At the same time that American capital is gradually finding new outlets in the world, 2 the differences in labor productivity and technical development between the USA and the other imperialist countries are evening out. This process is reducing the profit-rate differentials between these countries and once again making the underdeveloped nations the only area that can absorb large surplus profits. A relaxation in the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union may open up possibilities (however modest) for investment of American capital in countries with a socialist economic base, in the same way as FIAT and Renault have already done in the automotive indus-
But all the possibilities for investment cannot alter the basic fact that, for the past twenty-five years, the major part of American capital exports has been invested in other imperialist countries rather than in the rest of the world.
It must be remembered that these exports of capital correspond to an economic need inherent in the monopoly capitalist system. They are a response to a two-sided threat of a decline in the average rate of profit in the main fortresses of imperialism and a massive accumulation of capital that cannot be invested in these centers without threatening to bring about a grave new decline in the average rate of profit.
The accumulation of an increasing capital surplus that can no longer be invested profitably in any of the usual economic sectors promotes not only exports but also a rush for new areas of investment in sectors where the average rate of profit is comparable to that in monopolized sectors but where investment does not threaten the profit rate throughout the entire system. Arms production (and its carry-over into the space sector) offers an area for "substitute investment," to use Rosa Luxemburg's expression.
The advantages that flow from investments in the arms industry are obvious. They do not reduce the volume of capital already invested in other sectors of industry. To the contrary, they stimulate heavy industrial production and the supply of certain raw materials. Nor do they compete with existing commodity production but create products whose only buyer is the state and whose only "consumption" value is to strengthen U.S. imperialism internationally. Such investments also offer other marginal advantages which cannot be overlooked. They make it possible to put a damper on cyclical fluctuations by stabilizing an important part of investment volume. In this way, the American economy is protected against a crisis like that of 1929 (although the development of periodic recessions cannot be prevented,. which in the last analysis are no less serious than the crises capitalism has experienced throughout its entire history). These investments guarantee automatic profits for the monopolies in an increasing number of sectors, all linked to defense.
The increasing importance of the war industry in the American economy can be seen first of all in its growing influence in sectors like the electronic, airplane, and chemical industries. This results in a twofold interrelationship that stimulates the expansion of American imperialist capital.
1. The linking up of certain monopolies with war matériel production makes military industry and its extension into other fields a vital matter.
2. The link between certain high posts in the armed forces and the government apparatus creates a vital interest in maintaining the defense budget at an astronomical level and raising it still higher.
This twofold symbiosis is all the more dangerous in that it has a tendency to reproduce itself in foreign countries as a result of the construction of American bases abroad and the sending of military "aid" and advisers to "friendly" governments threatened by "subversion from within" or "Communist aggression from without."
Even former President Eisenhower, conservative as he was, expressed concern at the end of his term over the enormous growth of the industrial, military, and political establishment. This establishment lives and flourishes essentially from increasing defense expenditures, and needs international conflicts to justify this growth to the American taxpayers.
It would be no less stupid to see the important role that the arms industry plays in the American economy as the sole result of maneuvers by this Mafia within the American bourgeoisie. The entire capitalist class is compelled to carry on a permanent arms policy, since it is confronted by the permanent revolution on a world scale and by the industrial and military development of countries that have already abolished capitalism. The aim of the arms reduction conference is not disarmament but an attempt to rationalize the arms race so that it can be supported by the U.S. and Soviet defense budgets, which, despite everything, are not unlimited.
In a world divided into two hostile camps, real disarmament is completely utopian. Still more utopian is the idea that monopoly capitalism can reallocate the sixteen to seventeen billion dollars. it spends annually on arms to the public sectors of education, health, and aid to the underdeveloped countries. Such a reallocation would require that the bourgeoisie change from a class driven by the profit motive to a class working for the good of humanity. Any great spread of capital outside the arms sector would quickly threaten "civilian" capital investments and thus the rate of profit. No such thing will ever happen.
In contrast to most of its competitors, American imperialism was characterized by the fact that it had access within its borders to the basic raw materials that are necessary for modern industry. Even in the years immediately following the first world war, raw material imports were of secondary importance and could easily be replaced with synthetics.
The enormous expansion of American industrial production at the end of the second world war changed this situation, however. Today the USA must import ever increasing quantities of raw materials, including such basic items as oil, iron ore, bauxite, copper, magnesium, and nickel. What is more, the available sources of such materials in the U.S.'s own borders are rapidly decreasing. With regard to oil, reserves will be exhausted at the end of the century. The USA depends entirely on imports for chromium, cobalt, and columbium, which are essential to steel production.
In other words, now, seventy-five years later than its most important competitors, the USA must go out into the world to look for new sources of raw materials — oil in Latin America, the Near East, and West Africa; other minerals in Canada, Australia, Africa, and elsewhere. In this search it is colliding not only with the liberation movements in various colonial and semicolonial countries, but must also compete with other imperialist nations such as England, Japan, France, West Germany, and in fact even Spain.
To seize and control these resources has often involved political conflicts, with resulting coups d'etat and local wars (especially in West Africa over the last five years). This can lead to sending military advisers and to de facto development of American bases. The need for new sources of raw materials explains the vigor with which American imperialism clings to countries like Venezuela and Brazil. They have been indispensable suppliers of raw materials for the big American financial interests. 3
Despite the fact that American capital exports to the underdeveloped countries have been less extensive than its exports to other imperialist countries, they have not been insignificant. In the cases of important countries like Indonesia and Brazil or other countries with great, almost untouched resources like the Congo, American capital exports have resulted in increasing interference by American imperialism in the affairs of these semicolonial countries. Conflicts have arisen with other imperialist powers, especially the old colonial powers that American imperialism is gradually displacing.
The most typical examples of the way American capital has taken over in the past twenty years from earlier colonial capital are to be seen in Indonesia (where it took the place of Dutch capital), Morocco (French capital), and Iran (English capital).
In the Congo we can clearly see the beginning of a similar change, in this case involving Belgian capital, even if for the moment this is better reflected in the reorientation of foreign trade than in capital investments.
This whole imperialist changing of the guard has not been achieved simply by behind-the-scenes maneuvers but has led to acute national and international conflicts, most often accompanied by bloodbaths. From the overthrow of Mossadegh up to the murder of Ben Barka and the imposition of Mobutu by a coup d'etat, the roadway has been lined with murders, conspiracies, and repression costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
To climax everything, American imperialism has not achieved world domination. The dream of an "American century" lasted only five years-from 1945 to 1950. It
% in
% in 1937
Iron Ore
3 43 -13
Copper
Lead
0 131
Zinc
7 140
Bauxite
113 638
Oil 452
was shattered not only by the increasing strength of the anticapitalist forces on the international scale, but also by the law of uneven development which the capitalist world center has inexorably had to bow to, since that permits no new position to be held forever. In comparison with the period 1945-50, the positions of American imperialism's most important competitors (with the exception of England) have grown stronger, not weaker, vis-à-vis the USA.
The competition among the imperialist countries is more acute than previously. We have not seen any superimperialism develop, but rather a continuing struggle among the imperialist countries, each trying to shift the balance of power in its favor. This competition among the imperialist powers is taking place, however, within the framework of the new worldwide relationship of forces. Capital has lost a third of the world, and the continual expansion of new revolutionary movements threatens to release new countries from its grip.
Under these conditions, interimperialist competition has come to be replaced by interimperialist solidarity in confronting the mortal threat that hangs over the entire system. Stalin's hope for a new interimperialist war has come to nought, if you disregard local conflicts between imperialist puppets in Africa, Cyprus, and elsewhere.
One of the economic bases of American imperialism is defense of the conditions for the reproduction of invested U.S. capital when these seem to deteriorate or be threatened. This precisely was the meaning of the coup d'etat in Guatemala, which defended United Fruit's investments. It was Creole Petroleum's investments that were protected by military men sent to Venezuela; and the CIA was involved in the military coup in Brazil to safeguard the United States Steel Corporation's investments. The same sort of intervention in Greece enabled America's Litton Industries to make big capital investments under extremely favorable conditions.
It is wrong, however, to look at the imperialist interventions in too narrow a focus, that is, only as defending invested capital.
It is also a question of safeguarding future possibilities and averting the danger of a chain reaction, with an "unstable situation" in one country spreading to the surrounding states. Thus, for example, direct American capital investment in South Vietnam is very modest. The investments in Thailand are, however, more significant; and those in Malaysia, Indonesia, and India are considerably greater.
By intervening with a counterrevolutionary aggression in the civil war in Vietnam, American imperialism is protecting the capitalist strongholds in the neighboring countries and trying to safeguard its future possibilities in Southeast Asia. Today the American strategy must inevitably be a global one. The fight in defense of capital is not necessarily waged where this capital is invested. The battle may be fought in other countries where the loss of imperialism's advanced positions could represent a dangerous threat to the areas further back.
An analysis of the economic forces that have determined the development of American imperialism can lead only to a conclusion that, in order to be effective, the anticapitalist forces must meet the international counterrevolutionary strategy of big capital with a corresponding worldwide strategy.
Notes
1. A study by a Chicago consultants' firm in 1960 revealed that the thirty-five biggest American trusts had a net profit c 9.2 percent in the USA and 14.2 percent abroad (corporata profits after taxes). The January 1, 1962, issue of the U.S. News and World Report and the March 8, 1965, issue of News. week came to similar conclusions.
2. Direct American corporate investments rose from $7.2 billion in 1946 to $40.6 billion in 1963 and $54.4 billion in 1966. May 17,1971
3. According to Harry Magdoff, American imports of certain raw materials have been increasing to the following extent, calculated as a percentage of U.S. production.