Panitch and Gindin reject the classical Marxist theory of imperialism pioneered by V. I. Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin. They argue that it also falls prey to the sins of economism and instrumentalism. Lenin and Bukharin contended that economic competition drives capitalist classes to use their home state to protect and enlarge their portion of the world system. Thus the capitalist system produces interimperial rivalry and war over the division and redivision of the world.
Capitalist competition, they insist, does not necessarily drive capitalist states into rivalry and war. They adopt a position remarkably similar to that of the German Social Democrat, Karl Kautsky, who held the possibility that the great powers could form a “golden international” and jointly exploit the world’s working classes in concert with one another—a theory he expressed just before the outbreak of World War I. For Panitch and Gindin, this outcome has now been achieved, not by an alliance of great powers, however, but through an informal empire established by the United States. full: http://isreview.org/issue/92/global-empire-or-imperialism _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
