Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism

Colonialism and Dependence

In "Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism", Lenin warned, in

refuting Kautsky, that the domination of finance capital not only

does not lessen the inequalities and contradictions present in the

world economy, but on the contrary accentuates them.

Time has passed and proven him right. The inequalities have become

sharper. Historical research has shown that the distance that separated

the standard of living in the wealthy countries from that of the poor

countries toward the middle of the nineteenth century was much smaller

than the distance that separates them today.

The gap has widened. In 1850 the per capita income in the industrialized

countries was 50 per cent higher than in the underdeveloped countries.

To have an idea of the progress that has been achieved in the

DEVELOPMENT OF INEQUALITY, we have only to listen to President Richard

Nixon:

"...and I think about what this hemisphere, the new world, will be like

at the end of this century. And I consider that if the present growth

rates of the United States and the rest of the hemisphere have not

changed, at the end of this century the per capita income in the United

States will be 15 times higher than the income per person of our

friends, our neighbors, the members of our family in the rest of the

Hemisphere."(1)

The oppressed nations will have to grow much more rapidly just to

MAINTAIN their relative backwardness. Their present low rates of

development feed the dynamic of inequality: the oppressor nations are

becoming increasingly rich in absolute terms, but they are richer still

in relative terms.

The overall strength of the imperialist system rests on the necessary

inequality of its component parts, and that inequality is achieving ever

greater proportions.

Capitalism is still capitalism, and unequal development and widespread

poverty are still its visible fruits.

"Centralized" capitalism can afford the luxury of creating and believing

its own myths of opulence, but myths cannot be eaten, and the poor

nations that constitute the vast capitalist "periphery" are well aware

of this fact. Imperialism has "modernized" itself in its methods and

characteristics, but it has not magically turned into a universal

philanthropic organisation. The system's greed grows with the system

itself.

Nowadays imperialism does not require the old-style colonial

administrations. The archaic Portuguese model of control over Angola

and Mozambique is no longer the most "convenient". Lenin described the

reality of his time, saying that "naturally...finance capital finds it

most 'convenient', and is able to extract the greatest profit from a

subordination which involves the loss of the political independence of

the subjected countries and peoples".

In his report to the Twenty-second Congress of the CPUSSR in 1961,

Nikita Khruschev reached the conclusion that "imperialism has

irrevocably lost its control over most of the peoples of the world."

According to his report, 40.7 percent of the population of the world,

without counting the socialist countries, had won their independence

after 1919, and the total number of people living in colonies, semi-

colonies, and dominions included, at the beginning of the 1960s, less

than 3 percent of the world's population. "The revolutions of national

liberation have dealt a demolishing blow to the colonial Bastille",

Khruschev said. "Forty-two sovereign states have emerged on the ruins

of the colonial empires."

In this connection, it can well be said that Latin America is a

prophetic zone within the Third World. The political independence of

almost all the Latin American countries dates back to the beginning of

the nineteenth century. IT WAS AS A RESULT OF THAT INDEPENDENCE,

HOWEVER, THAT LATIN AMERICA CONSOLIDATED ITS DEPENDENCE. Power passed

from the "foreign" viceroys to "national" merchants advocating free

trade, but it was precisely then that all obstacles were removed for the

total incorporation of the entire region into the international division

of labour that was centered in England.

The words "sovereignty" and "independence" were not then, and still are

not in most cases, more than the lip service that vice pays to virtue.

In