Bilgrami Akeel - A Theory of Imperialism

A THEORY OF IMPERIALISM

A THEORY OF IMPERIALISM

Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik

WITH A COMMENTARY FROM

David Harvey

AND A FOREWORD BY

Akeel Bilgrami

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2017 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-54226-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Patnaik, Utsa, author. | Patnaik, Prabhat, author.

Title: A theory of imperialism / Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik ; with a commentary by David Harvey.

Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016014641 | ISBN 9780231179782 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231179799 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: ImperialismEconomic aspects. | CapitalismDeveloped countriesHistory. | Developed countriesCommerce. | ColoniesCommerce.

Classification: LCC JC359 .P37 2017 | DDC 325/.3201dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014641

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

Cover design: Diane Lugar

Cover image: AmyIv/Adobe Stock

Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik dedicate their contribution to this book to Malini and Mihir Bhattacharya.

Contents

I

The concept of imperialism has been wielded and studied by a wide range of disciplines over the last two centuries or more (History, Political Studies, Political Economy, Cultural Studies) as well as by diverse theoretical traditions (Liberalism, Marxism, Post-Colonialism). For all this varied deployment and a distinguished intellectual history in the writings of Burke, Marx, Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg, Gandhi, Fanon, Guha, and Said, there remains disagreement about its meaning and relevance; and there is still much confusion about its relationship to colonialism.

On a standard understanding of the distinction between colonialism and imperialism, the latterderiving in its etymology from the Latin term imperium connoting commandhas to do with the domination of one region by another through some form of control whether direct or indirect; whereas the former refers to such a control by a direct and relatively abiding, if not always permanent, settlement of a population or, at the very least, a governing class, by some form of conquest of one region by another. The treatment of the subject in the pages that follow is a variant on the standard view and its focus is entirely on the modern period. A clear claim is made: Imperialism is said to be the more general term and it is defined by a form of economic domination of one region by another. Colonialism is then treated as an historically special case of imperialism. Historically, imperialism first took a colonialist form. But it frequently survived the passing of colonialism, that is to say survived the withdrawal of a governing class from the conquered region after the latter gained its independence from colonial rule. It shares with colonialism certain properties of economic domination of one geographical region over another, properties that get modified after decolonization, yet at a more general and more fundamental level of description these properties are invariant in colonial as well as post-colonial contexts.

Presenting these invariant properties is the large theoretical preoccupation of the book. A specification of these invariant properties may properly be said to be the theory of imperialism on offer in it. Presenting the different mechanisms by which these invariant properties are instantiated first during and then after the colonial period respectively, is only one of the several illuminating details it presents.

The analysis, though it has some affinities with the Marxist tradition, derives a good bit of its argument by revealing some of the limitations of that tradition. It is a highly original argument made with both a conscientious focus on empirical detail as well as a deep theoretical foundation, building up its case by coming to its main claims from a variety of different angles, fair-minded against the views it opposes, and throughout raising hard questions and objections to its own convictions and responding to them with attentive care. For all these reasons, despite its modest use of the indefinite article in the title of the book, the analysis is as close to a definitive scholarly treatment of imperialism as one can hope for in a book of relatively short length. It takes the concept of imperialism beyond its popular usage today, which only speaks of episodic forms of domination via invasions and wars waged by stronger nations on weaker ones, to a chronic condition of history over centuries down to the present day.

The most general of the books claims regarding the economic basis of imperialism, is that there is no understanding the nature of capitalism as an economic formation of modernity without understanding imperialism as being, not a mere last stage to use Lenins phrase, but essential to capitalism pretty much from the outset. This means that it is not sufficient to see capitalism merely in terms of the privatization of land and property and the recruitment of wage-labour by its proprietors to work on it with the purpose of obtaining surpluses. If that were sufficient to define the economic formation that we call capitalism, then imperialism would be a merely contingent further accrual to it, an expansionist extra , as it were, but not built into its essential workings. This would be to view the nature of capital in purely static terms, missing its intrinsically dynamic nature whereby, as a result of the demands forced by the incessantly competitive nature of capital, new and external stimuli are indispensable to the reproduction of capitaland one vital such external stimulus is provided by the relations that capital constantly seeks from outside of its initial territorial anchors in more distant regions of the world. These relations are inevitably relations of domination and the features of the relations that specify the exact nature of the domination is what is called imperialism. As I said, these features were first instantiated historically by the mechanisms which colonialism put into place by conquest and direct control, and recurred in a different form after decolonization.

II

What, then, are these features according to the Patnaiks?

They are presented in a theory and, like all theories of this sort, it contains an analytical component and an empirical component.

The analytical component contains a sustained argument which, at the most schematic and general level, exploits three central concepts, with a number of further auxiliary concepts brought in to elaborate the details of the theory and to defend it against possible objections. The three chief concepts are increasing supply price, the value of money, and income deflation. The general line of argument, taking capitalism to be the prevailing economic formation, is this: Capital accumulation causes increased demand for certain goods, leading to more production, leading in turn to increasing supply price . When this happens, there will be a threat to the value of money . The actualization of such a threat, given the nature of capitalism, is intolerable. The actualization of this threat to the value of money can only be avoided by enforcing an income deflation that imposes hardship on the petty producers and working population.