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Lenin’s Imperialism

You said you are already familiar with Lenin’s concept of imperialism, but I’ll sum it up, here, for others and to make this part of the comment clearer.

For Lenin, imperialism is not just another word for empire (see above). He argued that imperialism is a relationship that develops in capitalism. Imperialism, to him, meant ‘monopoly’ control of finance capital. This arises on a global scale when industry uses a bank’s capital to expand its business and control whole markets.

Capitalists must join together in cartels, trusts, and companies, etc, to beat the competition. Otherwise, a competitor will do this and run the other capitalist(s) out of business. A trust, for instance, allows lots of people to put their money into one pot, giving the trustees the power to use that collective pot for one purpose.

So instead of a series of independent shops, a trust can buy up lots of properties (as in a chain store) and use its greater, collective bargaining power to insist on low prices from wholesalers and manufacturers. This action consolidates the trust’s market power, and other independent shops cannot compete, go out of business, and their assets can be bought for cheap by the trust, further increasing its market power.

The problem with trusts is that trustees are personally liable for losses. A company director has very similar powers and duties but is unlikely to be liable for the company’s actions (such as human rights abuses of its workers).

Just as colonialism is a legal relation, imperialists tend to rely on a mixture of legal forms (trusts, companies, etc), to create monopolies. Vanguard and Blackrock are two trusts, for example, which own shares in almost every major multinational company, including Microsoft and Apple. (Yep, they’re owned by the same shareholders!)

Company / trust decisions may be made by majority vote at board meetings. If one owns 100% of a company, one controls the company’s decisions. But, to guarantee a vote, one only needs 51% of the shares. Lenin showed that as many people do not turn up to board meetings, it is often enough to own 40% of a companies shares to win every vote. This means that an imperialist can buy about 40% of the shares in a company and have absolute control over what that company does.

This process can apply domestically and internationally.

Domestic Imperialism

Take the mortgage-renting market as an example. The bank lends a person 50% of the value of a house. That person puts up the other 50% and rents out the building for a monthly fee. The rent must cover the mortgage repayments and whatever the landlord wants to make on top. Importantly, the bank gets its money first, or it will take the house and sell it. By this way, the imperialist banker controls the rental market because its interest rate and fees determine the absolute minimum price of the rent.

International Imperialism

Imperialists use a similar process around the world, by lending, e.g. an Egyptian factory owner the money for new equipment. This may be in the shape of a loan or a purchase of shares (purchasing shares is just one method of exchanging finance capital for economy power / control). Even if the imperialist does not take an active part in running the business to maximise profit, the factory owner must pay back the loan or lose the equipment or the land. If this means lowering wages and working conditions, so be it.

The process of lending finance capital (imperialism) gives the imperialist economic power over the infrastructure and development of a country without the need for political and legal control over the territory. In this sense, Lenin’s notion of imperialism is not about the political and legal control over territories, but economic control so it differs markedly from imperialism.

It is worth noting that a state that wants capital in order to develop its industries will have to enact laws that appease the imperialists. The difference with colonialism is that the subject state makes its own laws rather than having them imposed directly by a colonial power.

Domestic Colonialism

The argument has been made that imperialists can shape a country to such an extent, such as the US, France, or Britain, that they create domestic colonies of oppressed peoples. E.g. of the prison labour force in the US. In this way, imperialism can lead to new forms of colonialism that break from the traditional model of one state controlling a foreign territory.

Neo-Colonialism

To make things a little simpler and more complex, we can turn to Kwame Nkrumah. Briefly, he accepted Lenin’s concept of imperialism. He observed that once colonies gained their independence, the colonial powers were quick to flood the ex-colonies with finance capital. In this way, colonialism did not end, but it developed into a new form.

The colonial powers exerted just as much (if not more) power over the ex-colonies as they had over colonies proper. This is why Total (the French oil company), for example, can lay an oil pipeline that will displace over 100,000 African people today. If the states involved were truly independent and democratic, those displaced people would surely reject the pipeline. But as the imperialist has so much control, the project will go ahead.