Imperialism and Self Determination

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Apri l 1 3, 2013 vol xlv Ii I n o 15 EPW Economic & Political Weekly60

Imperialism and Self-determinationRevisiting the Nexus in Lenin

Radha DSouza

This paper presented at the conference on Lenins Thought in the

21st Century, School of Philosophy, Wuhan University, China, 20-22

October 2012.

Radha DSouza ([email protected]) is with the School of

Law, University of Westminster.

This essay examines the nexus between

self-determination, imperialism and the importance

of Marxist theory in Lenins writings. It argues that the

three strands were inseparably connected in Lenins

thinking. The breakdown of the unity of the three

strands of thought has impeded our understanding of

contemporary imperialism.

Rereading Lenin a Century Later

At the turn of the 19th century critical intellectuals in

Europe noted that the character of capitalism was

changing before their eyes. The hallmarks of indus-

trial capitalism characterised by class conflicts, competition,

factory production, the gold standard, domestic markets, the

nation state as the umbrella institution for protecting home

markets and domestic industries and the Empire system was

undergoing radical structural transformation. Marx acknow-ledged that the inevitable logic of competition was monopolies

(Marx 1974 [1894]: Ch 15). However, monopolistic tendencies

became visible much later.

In the economy, the period from 1873-96 in western Europe

was one of economic depression, instability of currency backed

by the gold standard, political pessimism and repression

(McDonough 1995). Policy responses to the crisis had the ef-

fect of restructuring the relations between banks and manu-

facturing. In turn these interventions transformed the struc-

ture of capitalist production and entailed comprehensive

changes in the economic regime.1 The separation of finance

from manufacturing enabled firms to survive through mergers

and acquisitions, and by forming cartels and syndicates tomaintain prices. The emergence of cartels and syndicates, the

backward and forward integration of production, and other

means of achieving economies of scale gave successful entre-

preneurs the ability to stall the falling currencies. Closely re-

lated to these issues was the behaviour of competition and its

implications for prices. In turn these changes in the structure

of capitalism implied corresponding changes in the relations

between currency and value (the labour-time) as well as the

circuits of production and consumption and money and price

in commodity production that Marx wrote about.2 These

changes led socialists to revisit Marxs analysis of capital. Did

Marxs analysis need revision and could capital self-correct the

inner contradictions that Marx described in Capital and Theo-

ries of Surplus Value?

In politics, after the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 in

western Europe, the home of capitalism, socialist movements

became mired in factional politics and enamoured by bour-

geois democracy and parliamentary politics (Engels 1968 [1874];

Lenin 1972 [1908]; Lenin 1971 [1919]: 150-54). Germany was

late amongst the European states to consolidate the nation state

project which was accomplished under Bismarcks unification

as late as 1871. By that stage the third world had been effec-

tively divided between Britain, France, Spain and Portugal.


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Economic & Political Weekly EPW April 13, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 15 61

Germany was forced to fight for redivision rather than discovery

of colonies. Russia inherited colonies from the pre-capitalist

feudal era. However, as a latecomer to capitalist development

her industrialisation was overshadowed by European expan-

sion, and internal class relations were slow to develop. In the

colonies, including the colonies of the Russian Empire, popular

movements demanded independence from colonial rule. These

historical developments posed new questions for socialist move-

ments. While Marx referred to the Jewish, Polish and Irish

questions in his writings and the unity of workers of all nations

in the struggle for socialism, these questions had not assumed

the programmatic urgency they did at the beginning of the

20th century. When rereading Lenins writings it is important

to locate the arguments of different actors within the context

and the polemics generated by it.

In revisiting the legacy of Lenin it is important to ask:

(i) why do we wish to engage in the exercise of reassessing

Lenins legacy; (ii) what are the problems in the present that

invites us to remember Lenin; and (iii) how does the legacy of

Lenin help us to address our futures if at all? Methodologically,the present mediates the past and the future. When the past is

read without regard for the future, the analysis becomes dis-

engaged from praxis and theory becomes something for its

own sake. Marx wrote that the role of philosophy is to change

the world (Marx and Engels 1969 [1888]).If philosophy is to

help us change the world, the questions for theory must be

posed from the standpoint of political praxis. The type of an-

swers we get depends on how theoretical questions are posed.

Equally when the future becomes disengaged from the past,

political praxis remains unconscious, spontaneous and in-

stinctive (Lenin 1970 [1902]).

This essay revisits Lenins writings on self-determination,

imperialism and Marxism from the standpoint of the people ofthe third world. In most third world countries socialist move-

ments of the early 20th century had a profound influence on

the national liberation struggles for independence from colonial

rule. Since the end of second world war and the emergence of

the United Nations (UN) system as the so-called New World

Order, people in these countries have faced increased milita-

risation, ethnic and sectarian conflicts, economic dependency,

expropriation of their natural resources, exploitation of cheap

labour, and the burden of successive economic crises of capi-

talism. 1989 was a turning point for third world states. It saw

the rise of the Washington Consensus, the end of the cold war,

and the formation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the

last round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

(GATT) negotiations. Together, these developments undermined

any gains the people of the third world had made from the

struggles against colonialism for a just and free world. In

recent times the third world has seen a return of the politics of

the Mandate years in new forms. The majority of the worlds

population face unemployment, wars, displacement and po-

larisation of wealth and poverty on scales that is unprecedent-

ed in human history.

All this comes together with what scholars have described as

capitalist triumphalism. Triumphalism as ideology proclaims

that all past struggles for freedom from class and national

oppression by people everywhere have failed and therefore

there is no alternative to bourgeois liberalism (Fukuyama 1992).

Lenins writings remained, at all times, focused on how

oppressed people should intervene in politics so as to bring

about structural transformations in their conditions of life. In

addressing these problems Lenin on his part drew from the

legacy of Marx and Engels to address the theoretical problems

of revolutionary transformation. How should scholars under-

stand Lenins legacy in todays global context where bour-

geois triumphalism has displaced the legacies of internation-

alism, socialism and third world solidarities born from the

anti-colonial struggles? How should people understand iso-

lated struggles for survival of the revolutionary traditions in

small pockets of the third world today?

Lenin wrote that there are three fronts in the struggle for

socialism: the political front, the economic front and theoretical

front. Each front, he argued, must be challenged on its own

terms as a distinct arena (Lenin 1970 [1902]). Far too many

struggles in the third world today are intuitively against impe-rialism and for self-determination, but politically inspired by

identity politics that manifest as ethnic, religious and cultural

conflicts. Equally there are many struggles on the economic

front against the policies of international organisations like

the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and WTO

and G-8 states. These struggles propose liberal democracy and

constitutionalism as solutions even though historically these

solutions have proven to be limited. The point of departure for

this article is the understanding that whereas struggles for so-

cial justice by people of the third world on the economic and

political fronts have been relentless since the end of the world

wars, the struggle on the theoretical front in the third world

remains the weakest. These methodological observations andapproaches inform the analysis of the nexus between imperial-

ism, self-determination and the theoretical struggle for social-

ism within Marxism in this article.

We first summarise Lenins arguments on each one of these

questions in the historical context in which they arose. We

then provide a brief summary of the development of insti-

tutional infrastructures for imperialism after the end of the

second world war. Following this, we draw out the significance

of the rupture in the three strands of thought.

Lenin on Self-determination, Imperialism and Socialism

The period from 1898 until the end of the second world war in

1945, spanning over half a century, was fluid, a period of rapid

transformations and also a period of polemics and debate.

Lenin responded to early developments as they occurred in

the trajectory of developments during this fluid period. As

early as 1899 Lenin noted the emergence of cartels in the

United States (US) and wrote that they limited production for

home markets, sold their products overseas by undercutting

prices and charged domestic consumers monopoly prices

(Lenin 1974 [1899]).Lenins writings on imperialism and self-

determination were part of his overall strategy and tactics for

successful socialist revolutions in Russia and elsewhere. His


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writings cover over 25 of the 50 years it took for the New

World Order to emerge under the institutional umbrella of

the UN.

One of the key arguments in this paper is that Lenins writ-

ings must be read in their totality. Selective readings of Lenin

emphasising one text over others, or for that matter, emphasis-

ing his main pamphlets over observations in speeches, inner-

party debates and other sources could well lead to a one-sided,

reductive reading of imperialism, self-determination or social-

ism. As Bagchi points out imperialism and self-determination

are inseparably intertwined in Lenins writings.To this insight

we may add another. The struggle against imperialism and for

self-determination is contingent on the struggle for socialism

(1983). A reductive reading limits imperialism to the sphere of

economy, self-determination to the sphere of international

relations, and legal sovereignty or socialism to abstract ideas

about a normative social order hinders our understanding of

contemporary struggles in the third world. Subsequent writings

on Lenin have done just that. This paper argues that when re-

visiting Lenins writings in the contemporary context therelations between the three strands in Lenins thinking hold im-

portant clues to our understanding of contemporary problems.

It is useful to recall that Lenins purpose in investigating im-

perialism was prompted by the struggles for self-determina-

tion within the Russian Empire initially and later in other colo-

nies and protectorates in the world. Chronologically, the right

of nations to self-determination predated imperialism on the

agenda of socialist movements. In the early years from 1901 to

1910 Lenins energies were devoted to organisational questions.

As early as 1903 the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party

adopted support for the right of self-determination in its

organisational programme. Dissensions arose within the so-

cialist movement about the interpretation of the right especiallyamongst members from Russias colonies, protectorates and

minorities in particular the Poles, the Ukrainians and the

Jews who demanded special status within the party based on

ethnicity (Lenin 1974 [1913]; 1974 [1903]). These arguments

prompted Lenin to set out the Marxist premise for self-

determination in The Right of Nations to Self-Determination

published in early 1914 more than three years beforeImperial-

ism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which was published in

the middle of 1917 (Lenin: 1970 [1914]; 1970 [1917]; see Lenin

1974).3 It must also be noted that the Right of Nations con-

solidated observations, speeches, and other shorter writings

from 1899 onwards on the subject. What is important is that

Lenins writing on self-determination before 1914 as well as in

the 1914 pamphlet reveals the nexus between self-determina-

tion, imperialism and socialism. Lenins arguments unified

theory and practice by bringing together economic develop-

ments, political necessity as well as philosophical (theoreti-

cal) insights into debates on political programmes.

Lenins arguments on self-determination, imperialism and

socialism may be grouped and organised thematically as follows:

Is self-determination a legal right or a political right? Nation states and imperialism Imperialism, revisionism and the corruption of Marxism

Is Self-determination a Legal or a Political Right?4

This question is closely tied to the emergence of nation states

as the institutional umbrella for market relations in societies

founded on commodity production, i e, capitalism. When this

question arose within the socialist movements at the turn of the

century, the anti-feudal revolutions in western Europe were

more or else complete. The bourgeois revolutions were fought

on grounds of cultural, religious, and linguistic freedoms and for

recognition of secularism and nation states as the foundations of

international law. The Peace of Westphalia in 1638 recognised

secularism and nation states but as treaties between states, i e, as

contractual obligations of states and not a legal principle. It was

left to the new US to advance self-determination as a legal

principle in international law much later.

The US advocated self-determination as a legal principle

governing interstate relations. The Monroe doctrine5 argued

against forced colonisation and for the legal principle of mu-

tual recognition through bilateral treaties (contractual rela-

tions between states) as the basis for interstate relations. The

Monroe doctrine was premised on philosophical liberalismwith emphasis on formal legal equality between unequal social,

political and economic actors, in this case, states. Nations under

this doctrine were based on cultural, historical and linguistic ties.

The Monroe doctrine was invoked to expand the influence of

the US in Latin American countries struggling against Spanish

and Portuguese colonialism. Within the British Empire the

system of protectorates, known as indirect rule coexisted

alongside direct rule and settler colonialism (see Dsouza

2006; Mamdani 1996).6 The Monroe doctrine systematised it as

a universal principle in international law. The Monroe doctrine,

far from bringing freedom to Latin American states, merely

switched masters, and transferred Latin American states from

Spanish colonialism to indirect rule by the US as protectorateswith formal independence and economic subjugation. The US

had forcibly occupied North America denying the indigenous

people their self-determination. Equally, the settlement of Latin

America by slaves and indentured labour meant that the people

there were forcibly removed from their ties to their histories,

languages and cultures. American expansionism took the oc-

cupation of the American continent and denial of self-deter-

mination of indigenous people, slaves and indentured labour

as given and expanded its sights to the colonies of European

Empires including Russia.

During Lenins time the Monroe doctrine saw a revival under

Woodrow Wilsons presidency later formalised in the Fourteen

Points (see Lenin 1971 [1920]: 449-64 at pp 455-56; Cassese 1995

at pp 13-23).7 The US under Wilson used the legal right to self-

determination as a diplomatic tool in its engagement with

western European states, especially Britain, to gain access to

resources and markets in the colonies.8 Nevertheless the power

of formal liberal rights remained as attractive then as it is now

to socialists and nationalists.

Lenin noted that the Monroe doctrine had actually institu-

tionalised a system of protectorates.9 He argued that formal

equality in international relations is nothing more or less than

liberalisms formal legal equality between unequal actors in


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society; it fetishised and camouflaged real inequality and

oppression between states.10 Keeping in the Marxist traditions

Lenin argued that social relations are the basis for legal

relations and that principles of jurisprudence must not be

taken at face value but probed deeper. What law does in society

(sociological aspects of law) and not what law says (normative

aspects of law) must guide socialists.11

Continuing the legacy of Marx and Engels and their writings

on the Irish, Jewish and Polish questions, Lenin argued that

socialists must anchor understandings of nation states to the

nature of capitalism and on class relations and not derive it from

essentialist ideas of culture, language, religion or ethnic char-

acteristics. Lenin was the first to articulate the kernel of the idea

that nations have class content and nation states are not empty

institutional forms.12 The argument against self-determination as

a formal legal principle raised further questions about the nation

state as an institution. If the anti-feudal revolutions in western

Europe were progressive, as Marx argued, and they brought

forth new forms of knowledge and new freedoms for working

people under the institutional umbrella of the nation state,surely people in backward nations where anti-feudal revolutions

were slow and late in developing were also entitled to travel

the same historical road as western Europe? Should they not

therefore seek formal legal rights which socialists could use as

democratic spaces for real equality between states? This question

led Lenin to investigate the institutional form of nation states.

Nation States and Imperialism

The demands for self-determination came amidst a series of

annexations and wars. At the heart of demands for self-deter-

mination was the demand for statehood, in other words, for

states to be free of national oppression.13 Would independent

statehood alone be a sufficient condition for freedom fromnational oppression? The demand for self-determination pre-

supposed two classes of states: oppressor and oppressed states.

It also presupposed the existence of a collective social entity, a

society, formed by multiple interest groups with shared natures

and cultures, entities that were threatened by the developments

in capitalism (Dsouza 2012).Wars inflamed national enmity and

threats of subjugation brought out the worst in people.14 What

made some states oppressors and others oppressed?

Lenin analysed all the wars since 1870 between the Great

Powers to understand the impending first world war and the

demands for self-determination. What is interesting is that far

from taking a reductive view of wars from economic or political

standpoints he analysed them by taking into account a wide

range of factors including diplomatic relations, colonial policy,

economic policy including trusts, customs agreements, large-

scale concessions, workers movements and socialist parties in

the countries at war, non-proletarian revolutionary move-

ments, national movements and the national question, demo-

cratic reforms including electoral reforms, social reforms, in-

cluding reforms in colonial policies and other factors.15 The

comprehensive assessment of all aspects led Lenin to develop

his theory on the changing character of capitalism and nation

states and the relations between them.

Marx made an important distinction between capitalist and

pre-capitalist societies. He argued that pre-capitalist social

structures were founded on the unity of nature and people

(labour). Capital ruptured the unity and mediated the relations

in new ways. The key to understanding the formation of social

structures is to analyse the ways in which capital organises

and mediates the relations between nature and people (labour)

(Marx (1973 [1930]): 898 at p 276). By the same token capital

reorganises and restructures relations between people and

nature and the institutional formations for the relations. Lenin

extended Marxs analysis of the mediating role of capital to argue

that there were distinct stages to capitalism. Each stage is char-

acterised by the ways in which capital remediates and restruc-

tures social relations and institutions while keeping the basic

attributes and features.16 It does not follow therefore that re-

mediation and restructuring is a self-correcting mechanism capa-

ble of resolving the inner contradictions of commodity produc-

tion as many of his contemporaries argued.17 If anything the

restructuring expands the scale and intensity of the next crisis.

Taking a reductive economic standpoint several intellectuals,progressive and reactionary, highlighted the economic aspects

of imperialism, the emergence of monopolies and trusts and

other features; others taking a reductive view of politics wrote

about diplomacy, colonial policy and treaties; and on the Left

many took a normative view of socialism, seeing it as an ideal

standard which socialist movements must measure up to.

Lenin synthesised the three strands. The synthesis revealed

the transformations in capitalism as well as in the nation-state

as the institutional form.

InRights of Nations Lenin argued that nation states during

the early stages of capitalism arose from the collapse of feudal-

ism and absolutism. The nation state of the nascent capitalism

had metamorphosed into something qualitatively different inthe mature phase at the end of the 19th century. This is because

capitalism itself had changed and developed into a new stage.

Nation states that were well developed, i e, with established

constitutional regimes, class divisions, and institutions were

in a position to dominate nation states that were not so well

established, i e, where legal, institutional and class formations

were nascent or not firmly established. The unequal development

of capitalism historically and geographically meant that some

nation states could dominate others by mobilising a variety of

military, economic and ideological resources.18 He called the new

stage of capitalism imperialism following what other intel-

lectuals around him were calling it and with whom his writings

engaged. In the imperialist stage, dominant nation states incorpo-

rated weaker nation states as entities in their entirety as satel-

lite states in systemic ways into the political economy of capi-

talism (Chua 1995).19 Protectorates were the institutional

form for the domination, and formal self-determination the

legal principle. The incorporation of nation states as satellite

entities in their own right was made possible because of the

separation of finance/bank capital from manufacturing.

Dominant nation states20 could become rentier states by

being home to finance and banking capital and by remote

controlling appropriation of natural resources as well as


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contracting out manufacturing at cheaper rates to the protec-

torates Norfield (2011).21 The character of mature capitalist

nation states had changed from being home to manufacturing

and protecting home markets to becoming rentier states by

becoming home to financiers and bankers and living off the

return on capital from nation states that were formally inde-

pendent but economically subordinated to centres of finance

and banking. Annexations and wars were integral to national

oppression.22 Annexations and wars could be motivated by

competition between dominant states for spheres of influence

or collaboration between them to subjugate weaker nation

states (Lenin 1970 [1916]).

In the new stage of imperialism capital called forth two

types of formally independent nation states that were asym-

metrically related. On the one hand, capital in the imperialist

stage united all nation states by making them interdependent,

and on the other hand it created asymmetrical relations

between nation states. The unequal development of capitalism

made it possible to insert collective social units as states, com-

munities or social groups into capitalist relations.23

It was nolonger necessary under monopoly finance capitalism to have

old style empires with colonial settlements or settler colonies.

Protectorates could be drawn into asymmetrical relations with

rentier states in ways that will make them dependent nations.

In his notebooks Lenin notes:

+ Whydivision into nations when imperialism is the epoch of the un-

ion of nations?

Why national movements in the Ukraine, China, Persia, India, Egypt,

etc, if (when) the advanced countries have reached the stage of

imperialism, which unites nations, if capitalism (=imperialism) in the

advanced countries has outgrown the bounds of national states?24

To this he answers,

imperialism is the era of oppression of nations on a new historicalbasis. [...]25

However that is only half the problem, the other half being

the emergence of national movements:

Self-determination is the tattered slogan of a bygone era of bourgeois-

democratic revolution and movements. Imperialism gives new life to

this old slogan.[...] imperialism cannot be purged of national oppres-

sion [...] the struggle must be revolutionary and, under socialism, for

joint determinat ion, not self-determination.26

The most important distinction between liberal legal rights

of self-determination and socialist self-determination is the

right to secede. Secession was the safeguard against national

domination. Socialist movements would ensure that secession

was recognised internationally.27

Capital in the imperialist stage called forth another univer-

sal category of analysis in Marxisms conceptual repertoire:

the contradictions between nation states and global capital,

the unity of capital and diversities of nation state structures.

Unequal development created the asymmetrical relations

between them. Lenin was the first to argue that nation states

have class content depending on their internal composition and

their positions in imperialist relations. Socialist movements

cannot therefore accept a blanket principle of self-determination

as liberal legal rights did, but they must examine the class

content of each struggle and take an informed position on it

from the perspective of working people and not the nation

states. Also dominant nation states in the imperialist stage

wanted self-determination to be a legal principle precisely to

exploit every cultural, religious, ethnic difference between

people to foster wars and conflicts as a strategy to constantly

restructure their internal relations to suit imperialist agendas

(Manbekova and Khomenko 1974).28

The purpose of this section has been to revisit the nexus

between nation states and imperialism in Lenins writings. The

emphasis has been over the nexus rather than the economic

aspects of imperialism as such. There is a large body of literature

on the economic features of imperialism, or rather capitalism in

the imperialist stage, since the end of the world wars. Theories

of dependency, neocolonialism and world systems have em-

phasised the economic aspects of exploitation of the third

world. Imperialism has returned in recent writings especially

since the events of the so-called 9/11. What is missing in these

writings is the nexus between the changes in the structure of

capital and restructuring of nation states. What is missing toois the theoretical understanding of the analytical categories

of capital and nation states in the era of imperialism.

Imperialism, Revisionism and the Corruption of Marxism

On the theoretical front, Lenin argued that the emergence of

imperialism as a distinct stage of capitalism shifted the arena,

or the battleground for theoretical struggles. Throughout his

life Lenin riled over and over again relentlessly against corruption

and opportunism within the socialist movement. His interven-

tions on this question spanning 25 years are far too many to

summarise easily (Lenin 1974 [1916]: 61).29 Until the 1890s, in

the main, Marxism developed in opposition to liberal theories

that drew inspiration from different strands of philosophicalliberalism. Lenin argued that after the 1890s the arena for

theoretical struggles shifted to the domain of Marxism as

something internal to it. As early as 1908 Lenin observed that

in philosophy Marxists had returned to Kant and other thinkers

of the early stages of capitalism; in political economy, reliance

on narrow empirical analysis minus the philosophical founda-

tions of Marxism whittled down or undermined the essential

inner contradictions of Marxism.30 In the sphere of politics

Marxists used revisionist interpretations of Marxism to return

back to legalism, constitutionalism and parliamentary demo-

cracy as norms valuable in themselves. Theoretical liberalism

manifested as a tendency within Marxism. Bourgeois ideo-

logists used the vocabulary of Marxism precisely because the

Marxist critique of capitalism had been thorough and compre-

hensive. Theory, for Lenin, was an international phenomenon

that straddled a variety of national conditions.31 It could not be

limited to this or that nation.

The unstable class composition of nation states under

imperialism was the source of revisionism in the new stage of

capitalism.32 The nation state as a category in capitalist relations

which was called forth in the imperialist stage was based on a

coalition of classes that experienced national oppression under

imperialism.33 New nation states in the imperialist stage could


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no longer be stable establishments embedded in legal and

institutional histories as the dominant states were. During the

early stages feudalism and theocracy were unable to shore up

the institutions of economic, political and ideological power of

feudalism. The vacuum created by the collapse of the old order

provided the space for nascent capitalism to entrench institu-

tions and systems of knowledge to bring about structural

change in social relations. In the imperialist stage the entrenched

capitalist powers would only allow new nation states to remain

as such if they remained satellites. The fight against capitalism

in the imperialist stage necessitated a fight against national

oppression. The stance of the Marxists within socialist move-

ments in the dominant capitalist states towards their own capi-

talism and nation state was therefore central to fighting revi-

sionism and chauvinism.34 This is all the more so because

there is a bond between imperialism and opportunism in the

working class movement that is mediated by the nation state.

It allows the dominant states to win over the workers of their

own states to fight workers of other nation states.35

In the imperialist stage of capitalism old ideas about theprogressive role of capitalism were no longer valid. After the

defeat of the Paris Commune and the German revolution in

1905 capitalism had become incapable of leading the struggles

against feudalism or theocracy or bringing forth new forms of

knowledge, or agrarian reforms that would bring freedom to

people. In the imperialist stage capitalism compromised with

reaction and with social chauvinism. The idea of an independent

capitalist state in the era of imperialism was impossible. Only

socialism would guarantee freedom from national oppression.

The super-profits in the imperialist stage enabled dominant

states to bribe and buy out their own working-classes, the

labour aristocracy.36 Imperialism invokes crass national preju-

dices, social chauvinism in Lenins words to fight peopleagainst people, one nation state against another. In the imperi-

alist stage all social life is militarised.37 Capitalist militarism is

an economic, political and ideological phenomenon. Wars

include wars within states (civil wars) and between states, and

periods of truce/peace must be seen as an interregnum

between wars.38 If self-determination became a legal right,

imperialist powers would utilise it to fan ethnic conflicts to

subjugate nations. Real self-determination was not possible

without socialism; equally socialism is not possible without

freedom from national oppression. The two struggles were

two sides of the same coin.

It follows therefore that the theoretical developments sup-

portive of revolutionary social transformation must, in the im-

perialist stage, emerge from within Marxism. Lenin qualified

this by saying opportunism could not be fought by words but by

deeds, as the words would sound Marxist anyway! Lenin fore-

saw the possibility of another imperialist war if socialists failed

to unify the struggles against national and class oppression.39

Much of the work of the third international after the Second

Congress turned its attention to this task.

The brief overview above has drawn attention to the unity

of the three strands in Lenins thought between imperialism as

a distinct stage of capitalism, national oppression, nation states

and self-determination as issues arising from the development of

capitalism into a new stage and the interrelationships between

imperialism, revisionism and social chauvinism within Marxism.

The Third World, Imperialism and the Legacy of Lenin

Lenin never synthesised his thoughts, or rather, he never got

the time or the space to write a comprehensive work on Marxism

after Marx. Yet his writings in the form of pamphlets and

speeches covered in 45 volumes of collected works shows re-

markable consistency and incremental development of ideas.

The lasting international legacy of Lenins intervention was

the emergence of the three world architecture of the world

after the end of the world wars.40 The breakdown in the unity

of the three strands in Lenins thinking: economic imperial-

ism, political self-determination and Marxist theory within

socialist movements provide the cues to the trajectory of

developments of imperialism and its implications for people of

the third world. After the end of the world wars the unity of

the three strands in the analysis of imperialism broke down.

The breakdown of the unity of economics, politics and socialisttransformation manifested differently in the dominant capi-

talist states, the socialist states and the third world states. In

each of these three worlds different sets of internal and exter-

nal circumstances impelled the changes. Admittedly these

observations are based on broad generalisations.

Beginning with socialist transformation, the legacy of Lenin

survived longest in the Chinese revolution. Mao Zedong, in the

course of the Chinese revolution, systematised the incremental

evolution of Lenins analysis of imperialism, national liberation

and revisionism. Imperialism in China colluded with feudal

forces to subjugate China (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1965 [1939]).In

the imperialist stage no progressive social outcomes could be

expected from capitalism because capitalism could surviveonly by making compromises with feudalism and comprador

capitalists (ibid). In turn the compromise made third world

states protectorate and satellites of dominant nation states. Fol-

lowing on from Lenin on the class content of nation-states Mao

synthesised the idea more clearly with his thesis on the Four

Class Alliance (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1965 [1926]).As nation

states had class content the socialist movements should iden-

tify which classes were adversely affected by imperialism and

subjected to national oppression; they should develop a politi-

cal programme that unified those classes that stood against

imperialism to unite the many to defeat the few. In the Four

Class Alliance of workers, peasants, small landowners and na-

tional capitalists, the peasants and workers were the most reso-

lute opponents of imperialism because they bore the brunt of

national oppression (ibid). The national capitalists could vacil-

late or switch sides. As the class alliance in a nation state was

inherently unstable in the age of imperialism, communists

should learn how to handle the contradictions amongst class-

allies and class-enemies (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1977 [1957]a).

According to Mao, what Lenin called democratic revolutions

under the dictatorship of the proletariat was in fact not a

dictatorship at all. For Mao the Four Class Alliance was actually a

new kind of democracy that was based not on formal legalisms


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but rather on real relations between people in an oppressed

nation (Zedong (Tse-tung) 1961 [1949]).Again Mao argued

that the main ideological struggle was against bourgeois ideas

within the party, i e, within Marxism.41 For Mao, the struggle

against national oppression was tied to the struggle for socialism.

Either socialist revolutions would prevent a third world war or

a third world war would bring forth struggles for socialism.42

These formulations had profound effects on the national lib-

eration struggles throughout the third world. The legacy of

Lenin lasted until the Mao-era in China. It continues today in

isolated pockets outside China in various Maoist movements

that continue to be inspired by the revolutions of the early

20th century. Having acknowledged very briefly the survival

of the Leninist traditions in isolated pockets, what can we say

about the nexus between the three aspects of imperialism

more generally in the international arena?

Capitalism and Its Institutional Architecture

In the epoch of imperialism there are three moments in the

trajectories of developments of capitalism internationally. Theperiod from 1905-45 may be seen as the transitional moment.43

The second moment from 1945 to 1989 may be seen as the

reconstruction period.44 And, the period from 1989 to the

present may be viewed as the maturing of imperialist stage. Of

these phases, the reconstruction period from 1945-89 is the

least theorised by Marxists. Yet it is the most important period

for understanding contemporary imperialism. It may be worth

recapping the formative developments during that period be-

fore returning to the rupture in the three strands of Lenins

thinking about imperialism, self-determination and revision-

ism in the international arena.

Transnational monopoly-finance capital presupposes legal,

institutional, scientific, technological, social, cultural and ideo-logical preconditions for the new imperialist stage. The hall-

marks of the new stage were new systems of production, the

global outreach of finance capital, a permanent war machine,

a system of protectorates, institutions to sustain asymmetrical

relations between nation states being the more important

ones. The old institutional infrastructures of industrial capi-

talism, including the legal, organisational, scientific, techno-

logical, military, social, ideological infrastructures were inad-

equate and unsuited for the new stage. The breakdown of the

institutional infrastructures in the early 20th century gave

socialist movements and national liberation struggles an op-

portunity to intervene and influence the structural changes

underway. Their interventions were economic, political as well

as theoretical with profound impact on the architecture of the

world after the second world war. The three world architec-

ture that emerged was the result of three types of struggles

during the transitional years: the fight against fascism, the

fight for socialism and the fight for national liberation. The

three world architecture of the world produced structural

breaks on imperialisms effort to rebuild the institutional in-

frastructures appropriate for the new phase of capitalism.

The world wars caused extensive destruction of the physical,

social and institutional infrastructure of capitalism of the

industrial stage. Reconstruction was the slogan of domi-

nant capitalist states in the post-war era for building new

infrastructures for the imperialist stage of capitalism. Recon-

struction meant systemic reconstruction: i e, the reconstruc-

tion of institutions, ideologies, relations and mechanisms of

imperial governance. Broadly speaking, there were three types

of systemic reconstruction: reconstruction of the physical,

social and institutional infrastructure conducive to the imperi-

alist stage of capitalism; reconstruction of the colonial relations

ruptured or weakened during the world wars; and undermin-

ing the socialist experiment by encircling, containing and iso-

lating the socialist bloc states.

The conceptual resources for reconstructing the institutional

infrastructures for transnational monopoly finance capitalism

came from social democracy, the very trend in the socialist move-

ment that Lenin fought against all his life. European social de-

mocracy synthesised liberalism and socialism to rebuild the insti-

tutional preconditions for the imperialist stage. Key conceptual

resources included: (i) modifying the role of the state in tradi-

tional liberal theory; (ii) bringing about a truce between labourand capital in the tripartite structures of trade-unions, monopoly

corporations and capitalist states, known as the welfare state;

(iii) developing international organisations premised on western

liberal ideas of institutional separation of economic relations

from social, political and cultural ones on a global scale; and

(iv) developing a legalistic view of nation states and sovereignty.

The UN system for the first time provides and institutional

mechanism for transnational monopoly finance capitalism on

a global scale in the imperialist stage. Until then relationships

between states were primarily based on treaties. It must be

noted too that institutional nuts and bolts for the UN system

was conceptualised initially bilaterally between the United

Kingdom (UK) and the US in the Atlantic Charter as early as1941, two years after the second world war broke out. Presi-

dent Roosevelts Four Freedoms formed the normative basis

for the Charter.45 The Atlantic Charter formed the basis for ne-

gotiations with the former USSRand China which concluded in

the 1943 Moscow Declaration. Thereafter the Charter was put

to other states. Thus, most of the present member states had

very little say in the writing of the UN Charter.46

In the architecture of the UN system the distribution of pow-

er runs through its organs and provides important insights

into the institutional reconstruction of the post-world war

phase. Of the six organs: the Security Council, the General

Assembly, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the

Trusteeship Council, the International Law Commission and

the Secretariat, we may, for the purposes of this article, leave

out of consideration the Secretariat. Political power is exer-

cised through the Security Council and the General Assembly.

The Security Council alone has the power to take punitive

action including economic sanctions, military interventions

and arbitrations between states. The Security Council in the

final analysis is controlled by the victors in the world war of

whom the three western allies dominate.

The General Assembly is often seen as the assembly of all

nation states. It is important to remember that the General


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Assemblys powers are limited to making recommendations.

General Assembly recommendations are not binding on the

Security Council or the International Court of Justice. Most

third world states had little say in the drafting of the Charter as

they were not recognised as sovereign entities. The Trustee-

ship Council was seen largely as a transitional arrangement

to oversee the dissolution of old colonies under the Empire

system and the Mandate territories, regions acquired by the

Axis powers during the first world war. Except for a few out-

standing issues like Palestine most colonies are now restruc-

tured as nation states and admitted to membership of the

General Assembly. Their role in the General Assembly, besides

making recommendations to the Security Council on political

issues, is to develop international conventions, declarations and

make social and cultural policies. The General Assemblys role

secures the consent of states in developing the normative frame-

works for global governance without corresponding powers.

The UN charter gives the UN an economic role that the

League never had before. Two chapters in the charter are

devoted to the economic role of the organisation. The role ofthe ECOSOC, the least understood organ of the UN, is to coordi-

nate the mechanisms of governance and align the social and

cultural policies formulated by the General Assembly and the

economic policies of the specialised agencies. The specialised

agencies are international economic organisations set up out-

side the UN but brought under the institutional umbrella of the

UN through specialised agency agreements.

The international organisations may be classified into two

groups: the international economic organisations (IEOs) formed

under the Bretton Woods treaty and the international standard

setting organisations (ISSOs). Many of the ISSOs were formed un-

der the oversight of the League of Nations. Although the League

failed to hold the peace between warring states after the firstworld war, the League oversaw the development of economic in-

frastructures for post-world war capitalism. More than 400 ISSOs

ranging from the International Labour Organisation, Internation-

al Postal Union, World Meteorological Organisations, the scienti-

fic unions and other standard setting organisations were formed

under the League. These standard setting organisations laid the

foundations for standardisation of technical, scientific and labour

standards that provided the preconditions for transnational mo-

nopoly finance capitalism after the end of the second world war.47

The second world war broke out in 1939 and in the same

year UK and US opened negotiations for a global financial

system to be put in place after the world war ended. By 1943

the terms of the shape of the system to come was in place under

the Draft Bank Plan proposed by the US treasury. The IEOs

were formed outside the UN and modelled on shareholding

structures adopted by private corporations. Thus, the economic

interventions of the state were modelled along corporate lines.

The shareholding structures of the World Bank and the Interna-

tional Monetary Fund give the largest voting rights to five states

making the largest contributions to the capital base of the

IEOs. The Articles of Association of the two organisations make

any constitutional changes impossible without the consent of the

five largest capitalist states. The specialised agency agreements

exempt the IEOs and ISSOs from the oversight of the political

organs of the UN. The ECOSOC nevertheless mobilises the UN

system, sets up special organisations and regional interstate

organisations to coordinate the work of the economic organisa-

tions with the UNs work.48 The socialist bloc countries had very

little influence in the formation of the IEOs. The third world,

much of it under colonial rule, had even lesser influence.

Reconstruction of Colonial Ties

The socialist revolutions and national liberations struggles

created powerful political opposition to the advance of imperi-

alism but had very little influence over the economic and

standard setting institutions of capitalism during the imperialist

stage.49 The UN Charter adopts the Wilsonian conception of

self-determination as a legal right. The Charter has an open-

ended definition of self-determination which can be claimed

by peoples, nations, states or countries.50 The legal principle

of recognition in international law makes self-determination

contingent on the consent of the veto members of the Security

Council. By the time the last of the IEOs envisioned in the BrettonWoods agreement, the WTO, came to be formed in 1995, the

reconstruction phase was complete.

Turning to reconstruction of colonial ties ruptured by

the national liberation struggles the development agenda con-

ceptualised under the Truman doctrine and adopted by the

IEOs and capitalist states played a key role in breaking

the link between self-determination and economic oppression

of nations.51 Before long third world states complained about

dependency and neo-colonialism. Many Marxist writings

analysed various aspects of transnational monopoly finance

capitalism, neo-colonialism, unequal trade and dependency

but their analysis saw these issues reductively as economic

oppression. They drew from Lenins Imperialism but rarelymentionedRight of Nations and even less the nexus between

imperialism and the corruption of Marxism. The legal right of

self-determination in the charter created the belief that the

third world could use the right to assert economic independ-

ence. This position reverses the Marxist understanding that

economic relations cannot be separated from political, legal,

social and cultural questions. Indeed economic relations create

the conditions for particular forms of political and cultural re-

lations. Instead critical and radical theory took what scholars

have described as the cultural turn. The cultural turn shifted

the attention of theory from class, capitalism and structural

analysis to identity, culture and subjectivity. In turn the cultur-

al lens for understanding third world societies brought out the

crassest forms of religious and ethnic prejudices and conflicts

and created an environment for conflicts that imperialist pow-

ers could intervene in.

The UN resolution on the New International Economic Order

in the 1970s was the last concerted attempt by the third world

to change the UN system. Beleaguered by indebtedness, colo-

nial legacies, civil wars, cold wars and political interventions

by dominant states, the third world states were transformed,

by and large, into satellite states of imperialist powers by the

end of 1989. In 1989, the Washington Consensus initiated the


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neo-liberal reforms implemented by the IEOs. The reforms

restructured third world states rolling back the gains of the

national liberation movements.

Lastly, the socialist bloc created structural breaks in the ex-

pansion of capital after the end of the second world war. One-

sixth of the world was inaccessible to transnational monopoly

finance capital. In the UN the socialist states were the strongest

defenders of the principle of the political principle of self-

determination. However, they saw it as a legal right in inter-

national law, contrary to what Lenin had argued. As a legal

right it became anchored to abstract norms disconnected from

the materiality of imperialism.

The period from 1945-89 in the second world may be seen

as one where there was a contest to break the class alliances

on the basis of which the new nation states had succeeded in

the national liberation struggles. Here Lenins analysis of the

nation state as a category called forth by capital in the imperialist

stage holds the clues to understanding the present. The most

important difference between early capitalist states constitut-

ed through the struggle against feudalism and theocracy andlate nation states constituted by capitalist expansion lies in the

fact that the early capitalist states innovated institutions and

systems of knowledge that were necessary conditions for capi-

talism to exist in systemic ways. The later states adapted the

institutions and forms of knowledge from the dominant capi-

talist states. They remain alien social institutions without

roots in their own natures and cultures and unable to con-

stantly innovate and restructure (Dsouza 2012: 6-43).

The year 1989 was a crucial milestone in the trajectory of con-

temporary imperialism. It was a period when the structural

breaks on imperialist expansion by the socialist revolutions and

national liberation struggles were finally removed. The year

saw three significant developments: (i) the fall of the BerlinWall and the integration of the socialist bloc states into the po-

litical economy of imperialism, a project stalled by the revolu-

tions that Lenin was influential in promoting; (ii) the Washing-

ton Consensus that mandates the intensification of economic

exploitation of the third world and increases the scale and

scope of each crises; and (iii) the conclusion of the GATT nego-

tiations that set up the WTO with the mandate to restructure

international organisations along neo-liberal lines (Dsouza

2010: 491-522). Once again the dominant capitalist powers had

the upper hand in institutional innovation and scientific and

technological infrastructures for capitalism in the advanced

imperialist stage. As Lenin warned capitalist ideologies in the

garb of Marxism within the socialist movement were crucial in

reconstructing the institutional preconditions for capitalism in

the imperialist stage. Ironically the very bourgeois trium-

phalism has exacerbated the contradictions of capitalism and

threatens to shake its foundations on a scale far bigger than the

first half of the 20th century.

Conclusions

This article highlights the nexus between imperialism, self-

determination and socialism in Lenins thinking. There is the

wider question of the development and maturing of the impe-

rialist stage of capitalism, and where it is taking the world.

Lenin argued that imperialism wil l not simply disappear under

its own weight. If socialist struggles do not fight back, Lenin ar-

gued, imperialism will make it impossible for people to repro-

duce conditions for human life due to militarism, wars, and

impoverishment. Much of that is happening in the third world

today. The single-most important question on the agendas of

social movements is the search for alternate models of deve-

lopment that are self-sustaining and resilient. If capitalismgrew from the ashes of disintegrating feudalism by fighting

theocracy and developing new social institutions, socialism

can only grow from the ashes of imperialism by developing

new forms of knowledge and building new types of institutions

that can sustain and reproduce a different kind of society. The

challenges of development call for new forms of knowledge in

the natural and social sciences and capacities for institutional

innovation, not mere adaptations of capitalisms models. Marx-

ist theory has developed extensive political and economic as-

pects of the critique of capitalism. The critique of science and

technology and law and institutions remain the weakest as-

pects of Marxist theory. It is precisely in these areas that impe-

rialism pushed forward for new innovations that eventuallyreversed the revolutions of the early 20th century (Dsouza 2011).

Every revolution contributes something positive to the

human condition. The positive contributions of bourgeois revo-

lutions were limited to western European society and ended by

the late 19th century. It is ironic that bourgeois triumphalism

points to the failure of later revolutions but says little about the

failed promises of bourgeois revolutions. As an ideology, bour-

geois triumphalism seeks to erase the memory of the revolu-

tionary upheavals and the theories and practices that helped to

change the world. Remembering those efforts is an important

step to finding solutions for the present. If the past lives in the

present, the future too is conceived in the present.

Notes

1 For a theoretical understanding of regimechanges in his tory, see Lloyd (2002: 238-66).

2 The statement is necessarily an indicativestatement of the issues covered by Marx in hiseconomic writings in the three volumes ofCapital.

3 Lenin (1970 [1914]); Lenin 1970 [1917].Throughout this essay, key texts are read alongwith Lenins notebooks on imperialism to gleaninsights into his thinking on the subject. SeeLenin (1974).

4 Lenin , 1970 (1914).

5 James Monroe 1738-1831. See Lenins noting onMonroe in Notebooks 1974, p 752.

6 For indirect rule in India see Dsouza (2006);for indirect rule in Africa see Mamdani (1996).

7 Woodrow Wilson 1856-1924, president of theUnited States from 1913-21 and a contemporaryof Lenin. For Lenins critique of Wilson see Len-in (1971 [1920]: 449-64 at pp 455-56; for a lega laccount see Cassese (1995 at pp 13-23).

8 US opposed British colonial ism in India in 1919but never supported Indias freedom struggle.See DSouza 2006, p 290.

9 Lenin, Notebooks 1974, especially p 732.

10 Lenin, Right of Nations 1970 (1914). For atheoretical critique of formalism in liberal the-ory see Ci (1999). The free labour markets forexample guarantees formal legal freedoms toworkers but nevertheless transform their realstatus to wage slaves of capital. The reasoningabout formal legal rights to self-determinationand real national oppression is analogous hereand based on the philosophical critique ofliberalism in Marxist theory.

11 For a more in-depth Marxist approach to legalnorms and social relations see Pashukanis1989 [1929].


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12 By the Critique of Imperialism [...] we mean theAttitude of Different Classes of Society TowardsImperialist Policy in Connection with theirGeneral Ideology in Lenin Imperialism n 13 atp 752.

13 Lenin , Right of Nations 1970 (1914), p 598.

14 Lenin , Notebooks 1974, p 739.

15 Lenin , Notebooks 1970 (1914), pp 680-735.

16 Lenin, Imperialism n 13 supra at 680-83;

698; 736-37. In Notebooks Lenin qualifieshighest stage of capitalism as highest mod-ern capitalism. See Lenin, Notebooks 1970(1914), p 202.

17 Lenin, Imperialism 1970 (1917), pp 725-26;Ch IX, pp 752-63.

18 Lenin , Right of Nations 1970 (1914), p 602.

19 For co-relation between global economic policiesand impact on particular communities withinthird world nation states see Chua (1995).

20 It is important to note that Lenin refers torentier states as those states that come to relyon overseas investments of its corporate andindividual citizens for revenue. See Imperialism,1970 (1917), Ch V III at pp 745-52.

21 With regard to contemporary British statesreliance on revenues from overseas investmentsof banks see Norfield (2011).

22 Lenin , Notebooks 1974.

23 For e g, see Chua Nationalisation, etc, n 29,supra.



26 Lenin , Notebooks 1974, pp 736; 757.

27 Lenin , Right of Nations 1970 (1914), pp 608-13.

28 See generally articles and speeches Manbekovaand Khomenko (ed.) (1974); in particular articleon Events in the Balkans and Prussia at pp 32-43;also Notebooks 1974, pp 739-40.

29 The main texts referred to here all engage variousliberal bourgeois tendencies within Marxism. Inparticular see collection of speeches and arti-cles , Lenin (1974), and Lenin (1974 [1916]: 61).

30 Lenin 1970 [1908] #221@74-75.

31 Lenin , ibid at p 77.

32 Lenin , ibid at p 77.33 See in this connection {Lenin 1971 [1920] #218}.

34 See Lenin articles and speeches at 1974 on TheDefeat of Ones Own Government in t he Impe-rialist War at pp 116-18.

35 Lenin , Imperiali sm 1970 (1917), pp 765-77.

36 Lenin , Imperiali sm 1970 (1917), p 677.

37 Lenin , Notebooks 1974, pp 739-40.

38 Lenin, The Military Programme of the Prole-tarian Revolution at p 773.

39 Lenin , ibid at p 775.

40 First world the dominant capitalist states,second world states that underwent socialistrevolutions and third world states that attainedindependence from colonial rule and formalprotectorate systems.

41 Mao, Combat Bourgeois Ideas in the Party.

Several other articles in the same volume dealwith the question of bourgeois ideologies with-in the Community Party of China.

42 Mao, On the Correct Handling of Contradic-tions among the People.

43 1905 was the year when the social ist revolutionin Germany and the bourgeois democratic rev-olution in Russia were unsuccessful. The sec-ond world war ended in 1945 and the UN wasset up as the institutional framework for inter-national law and international relations for thefirst time.

44 From the formation of the UN and the BrettonWoods institutions and emergence of the ThreeWorld architecture to the end of the cold war,the Washington Consensus and the last round

of GATT treaty which concluded with the decisionto form the WTO.

45 Dsouza, Interstate Conflict s over KrishnaWaters: Law, Science and Imperialism at Ch 11p 294.

46 DSouza, ibid, Ch 11.

47 DSouza, ibid.

48 DSouza, ibid.

49 It may be noted here that Palestine remains an

unresolved question primarily due to US vetoin favour of Israel. It may also be noted that theInternational Trade Organisation was concep-tualised as a Bretton Woods Organisation in1944. Even though the UN had adopted a reso-lution soon after it was formed in February1946 to set up the ITO, an international tradeorganisation was formed only after the end ofthe cold war. It may also be noted that the twomost important socialist states China and Russiawere granted accession to the WTO only in2001 and 2012 respectively after both countrieshad restructured their states and their institu-tions in ways compatible with capitalism in theimperialist stage.

50 UN Charter Preamble Articles 2, 55, 73, 76.

51 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/tru-doc.asp, Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law

Library.

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Imperialism and Self Determination

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