THE PARASITISM AND DECAY OF CAPITALISM
We now have to examine yet another very important aspect of imperialism to which, usually, insufficient importance is attached in most of the discussions on this subject. One of the shortcomings of the Marxist Hilferding is that he takes a step backward compared with the non-Marxist Hobson. We refer to parasitism, which is characteristic of imperiallsm.
As we have seen, the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of capitalism and exists in the general environment of capitalism, commodity production and competition, in permanent and insoluble contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly, it inevitably engenders a tendency to stagnation and decay. Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all progress, disappears to a certain extent, and, further, the economic possibility arises of deliberately retarding technical progress. For instance, in America, a certain Owens invented a machine which revolutionized the manufacture of bottles. The German bottle-manufacturing cartel purchased Owens' patent, but pigeonholed it, refrained from utilizing it. Certainly, monopoly under capitalism can never completely, and for a very long period of time, eliminate competition in the world market (and this, by the by, is one of the reasons why the theory of ultraimperialism is so absurd). Certainly, the possibility of reducing cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in certain branches of industry, in certain countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand.
The monopoly ownership of very extensive, rich or well-situated colonies, operates in the same direction.
Further, imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, amounting, as we have seen, to 100-150 billion francs in securities. Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a social stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by "clipping coupons," who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies.
"In 1893," writes Hobson, "the British capital invested abroad represented about 15 per cent of the total wealth of the United Kingdom."[*] We will remind the reader that by 1915 this capital had increased about two and a half times. "Aggressive imperialism," says Hobson further on, "which costs the taxpayer so dear, which is of so little value to the manufacturer and trader . . . is a source of great gain to the investor. . . . The annual income Great Britain derives from commissions in her whole foreign and colonial trade, import and export, is estimated by Sir R. Giffen at £18,000,000 for 1899, taken at 2 1/2 per cent, upon a turnover of £800,000,000." Great as this sum is, it cannot explain the aggressive imperialism of Great Britain. It is explained by the income of go to 100 million pounds sterling from "invested" capital, the income of the rentiers.
The income of the rentiers is five times greater than the income obtained from the foreign trade of the biggest "trading" country in the world. This is the essence of imperialism and imperialist parasitism.
For that reason the term, "rentier state" (Rentnerstaat) or usurer state, is coming into common use in the economic literature that deals with imperialism. The world has, become divided into a handful of usurer states and a vast majority or debtor states. "At the top of the list of foreign investments," says Schulze-Gaevernitz, "are those placed in politically dependent or allied countries: Great Britain grants loans to Egypt, Japan, China and South America. Her navy plays here the part of bailiff in case of necessity. Great Britain's political power protects her from the indignation of her debtors."[*] Sartorius von Walters hausen in his book, The National Economic System of Foreign Investments, cites Holland as the model "rentier state" and points out that Great Britain and France are now becoming such.** Schilder is of the opinion that five industrial states have become "definitely pronounced creditor countries": Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. He does not include Holland in this list simply because she is "industrially little developed."*** The United States is a creditor only of the American countries.
"Great Britain," says Schulze-Gaevernitz, "is gradually becoming transformed from an industrial into a creditor state. Notwithstanding the absolute increase in industrial output and the export of manufactured goods, the relative importance of income from interest and dividends, issues of securities, commissions and speculation is on the increase in the whole of the national economy. In my opinion it is precisely this that forms the economic basis of imperialist ascendancy. The creditor is more firmly attached to the debtor than the seller is to the buyer."[*] In regard to Germany, A. Lansburgh, the publisher of the Berlin Die Bank, in 1911, in an article entitled "Germany -- a Rentier State," wrote the following: "People in Germany are ready to sneer at the yearning to become rentiers that is observed among the people in France. But they forget that as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned the situation in Germany is becoming more and more like that in France."**
The rentier state is a state of parasitic, decaying capitalism, and this circumstance cannot fail to influence all the social-political conditions of the countries affected in general, and the two fundamental trends in the working-class movement, in particular. To demonstrate this in the clearest possible manner we will quote Hobson, who is the most "reliable" witness, since he cannot be suspected of leanings towards "Marxist orthodoxy"; on the other hand, he is an Englishman who is very well acquainted with the situation in the country which is richest in colonies, in finance capital, and in imperialist experience.
With the Anglo-Boer War fresh in his mind, Hobson describes the connection between imperialism and the interests of the "financiers," the growing profits from contracts, etc., and writes: "While the directors of this definitely parasitic policy are capitalists, the same motives appeal to special classes of the workers. In many towns, most important trades are dependent upon government employment or contracts; the imperialism of the metal and ship-building centres is attributed in no small degree to this fact." In this writer's opinion there are two causes which have weakened the old empires: 1) "economic parasitism," and 2) the formation of armies composed of subject peoples. "There is first the habit of economic parasitism by which the ruling state has used its provinces, colonies, and dependencies in order to enrich its ruling class and to bribe its lower classes into acquiescence." And we would add that the economic possibility of such bribery, whatever its form may be, requires high monopolist profits.
As for the second cause, Hobson writes: "One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of imperialism is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighing by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great standing armies are placed under British commanders; almost all the fighting associated with our African dominions, except in the southern part, has been done for us by natives."
Hobson gives the following economic appraisal of the prospect of the partition of China: "The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a large body of personal servants and workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods; all the main arterial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa." "We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western States, a European federation of great powers which, 60 far from forwarding the cause of world civilization, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory" (it would be better to say: prospect) "as undesetving of consideration examine the economic and social condition of districts in Southern England today which are already reduced to this condition, and reflect upon the vast extension of such a system which might be rendered feasible by the subjection of China to the economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors, and political and business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume it in Europe. The situation is far too complex, the play of world-forces far too incalculable, to render this or any other single interpretation of the future very probable; but the influences which govern the Imperialism of Western Europe today are moving in this direction, and, unless counteracted or diverted, make towards some such consummation."*
The author is quite right: if the forces of imperialism had not been counteracted they would have led precisely to what he has described. The significance of a "United States of Europe" in the present imperialist situation is correctly appraised. He should have added, however, that, also within the working-class movement, the opportunists, who are for the moment victorious in most countries, are "working" systematically and undeviatingly in this very direction. Imperialism, which means the partition of the world, and the exploitation of other countries besides China, which means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries, creates the economic possibility of bribing the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives form to, and strengthens opportunism. We must not, however, lose sight of the forces which counteract imperialism in general, and opportunism in particular, and which, naturally, the social-liberal Hobson is unable to perceive.
The German opportunist, Gerhard Hildebrand, who was expelled from the Party for defending imperialism, and who could today be a leader of the so-called "Social-Democratic" Party of Germany, supplements Hobson well by his advocacy of a "United States of Western Europe" (without Russia) for the purpose of "joint" action . . . against the African Negroes, against the "great Islamic movement," for the maintenance of a "powerful army and navy," against a "Sino-Japanese coalition,"* etc.
The description of "British imperialism" in Schulze Gaevernitz's book reveals the same parasitical traits. The national income of Great Britain approximately doubled from 1865 to 1898, while the income "from abroad" increased ninefold in the same period. While the "merit" of imperialism is that it "trains the Negro to habits of industry" (not without coercion, of course . . .), the "danger" of imperialism lies in that "Europe will shift the burden of physical toil -- first agricultural and mining, then the rougher work in industry -- on to the coloured races, and itself be content with the role of rentier, and in this way, perhaps, pave the way for the economic, and later, the political emancipation of the coloured races."
An increasing proportion of land in Great Britain is being taken out of cultivation and used for sport, for the diversion of the rich. About Scotland -- the most aristocratic playground in the world -- it is said that "it lives on its past and on Mr. Carnegie." On horse racing and fox hunting alone Britain annually spends £14,000,000. The number of rentiers in England is about one million. The percentage of the productively-employed population to the total population is declining:
- 23%15%
Population
| No. of workers in basic industries |
Per cent
of total population | |
(millions) | |||
1851 . . . .1901 . . . . | 17.932.5 | 4.14.9 | |
He should have said: to which the bourgeois politicians and the "Socialist" opportunists attach little importance.
One of the special features of imperialism connected with the facts we are describing, is the decline in emigration from imperialist countries and the increase in immigration into these countries from the more backward countries where lower wages are paid. As Hobson observes, emigration from Great Britain has been declining since 1884. In that year the number of emigrants was 242,000, while in 1900, the number was 169,000. Emigration from Germany reached the highest point between 1881 and 1890, with a total of 1,453,000 emigrants. In the course of the following two decades, it fell to 544,000 and to 341,000. On the other hand, there was an increase in the number of workers entering Germany from Austria, Italy, Russia and other countries According to the 1907 census, there were 1,342,294 foreigners in Germany, of whom 440,800 were industrial workers and 257,329 agricultural workers.[*] In France, the workers employed in the mining industry are, "in great part," foreigners: Poles, Italians and Spaniards.** In the United States, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe are engaged in the most poorly paid occupations, while American workers provide the highest percentage of overseers or of the better-paid workers.*** Imperialism has the tendency to create privileged workers, and to detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat.
It must be observed that in Great Britain the tendency of imperialism to divide the workers, to strengthen opportunism among them and to cause temporary decay in the working-class movement, revealed itself much earlier than the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; for two important distinguishing features of imperialism were already observed in Great Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, viz., vast colonial possessions and a monopolist position in the world market. Marx and Engels traced this connection between opportunism in the working-class movement and the imperialist features of British capitalism systematically, during the course of several decades. For example, on October 7, 1858, Engels wrote to Marx: "The English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy, and a bourgeois proletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is, of course, to a certain extent justifiable.''[15] Almost a quarter of a century later, in a letter dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks of ". . . the worst type of English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men bought by, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.''[16] In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: "You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy? Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers' party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal Radicals, and the workers merrily share the feast of England's monopoly of the colonies and the world market"* (Engels expressed similar ideas in the press in his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, which appeared in 1892).
This clearly shows the causes and effects. The causes are: 1) exploitation of the whole world by this country; 2) its monopolistic position in the world market; 3) its colonial monopoly. The effects are: 1) a section of the British proletariat becomes bourgeois; 2) a section of the proletariat permits itself to be led by men bought by, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie. The imperialism of the beginning of the twentieth century completed the division of the world among a handful of states, each of which today exploits (i.e., draws superprofits from) a part of the "whole world" only a little smaller than that which England exploited in 1858; each of them occupies a monopoly position in the world market thanks to trusts, cartels, finance capital and creditor and debtor relations; each of them enjoys to some degree a colonial monopoly (we have seen that out of the total of 75,000,000 sq. km., which comprise the whole colonial world, 65,000,000 sq. km., or 86 per cent, belong to six powers; 61,000,000 sq. km., or 81 per cent, belong to three powers).
The distinctive feature of the present situation is the prevalence of such economic and political conditions as could not but increase the irreconcilability between opportunism and the general and vital interests of the working-class movement: imperialism has grown from the embryo into the predominant system; capitalist monopolies occupy first place in economics and politics; the division of the world has been completed; on the other hand, instead of the undivided monopoly of Great Britain, we see a few imperialist powers contending for the right to share in this monopoly, and this struggle is characteristic of the whole period of the beginning of the twentieth century. Opportunism cannot now be completely triumphant in the working-class movement of one country for decades as it was in England in the second half of the nineteenth century; but in a number of countries it has grow ripe, overripe, and rotten, and has become completely merged with bourgeois policy in the form of "social chauvinism."
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