Charles Brown wrote:
CB: Generally, Marxists see "globalization" as laying the groundwork for socialism, just as
capitalist monopoly lays the groundwork in another way. Marx conceived of Communism as a world system, a
"centralized" or holistic world economy and as retaining the One World, One Species aspects of
"capitalist globalization" .
Can I try this, instead?:
Generally, Marxists see "globalization" and "imperialism" as delaying
the groundwork for socialism, just as globalization delays the
establishment of a "One World, One Species" capitalism, thanks to uneven
and combined development, which immiserises by maintaining aspects of
the non-capitalist world that are profitable for superexploitation.
According to Marx,
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,
enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population,
the turning of Africa into a commercial warren for the hunting of
black skins signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist
production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of
primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of
the European nations, with the globe for a theatre.[1]
Generalising upon this insight, Luxemburg observed,
Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any
attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within
this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern
laws of the economic process. Bourgeois liberal theory takes into
account only the former aspect: ‘the realm of peaceful competition’,
the marvels of technology and pure commodity exchange; it separates
it strictly from the other aspect: the realm of capital’s blustering
violence which is regarded as more or less incidental to foreign
policy and quite independent of the economic sphere of capital. In
reality, political power is nothing but a vehicle for the economic
process. The conditions for the reproduction of capital provide the
organic link between these two aspects of the accumulation of
capital. The historical career of capitalism can only be appreciated
by taking them together. ‘Sweating blood and filth with every pore
from head to toe’ characterizes not only the birth of capital but
also its progress in the world at every step, arid thus capitalism
prepares its own downfall under ever more violent contortions and
convulsions… Militarism fulfils a quite definite function in the
history of capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase
of accumulation. It plays a decisive part in the first stages of
European capitalism, in the period of the so-called ‘primitive
accumulation’, as a means of conquering the New World and the
spice-producing countries of India. Later, it is employed to subject
the modern colonies, to destroy the social organizations of
primitive societies so that their means of production may be
appropriated, forcibly to introduce commodity trade in countries
where the social structure had been unfavourable to it, and to turn
the natives into a proletariat by compelling them to work for wages
in the colonies. It is responsible for the creation and expansion of
spheres of interest for European capital in non-European regions,
for extorting railway concessions in backward countries, and for
enforcing the claims of European capital as international lender.
Finally, militarism is a weapon in the competitive struggle between
capitalist countries for areas of non-capitalist civilization.[2]
[1]. Marx, K. (1867)[2005], Das Kapital, available at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm.
[2]. Luxemburg, R. (1968)[1923], The Accumulation of Capital, New York,
Monthly Review Press. See www.marxists.org/archive/
luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/, from which these citations are drawn.
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