Theories of imperialism

The opinion of imperialism subject to a range of theoretical approaches to understanding the expansion of capitalism into new areas, a unequal development of different countries, together with economic systems that may lead to the command of some countries over others. These theories are considered distinct from other uses of the word imperialism which refer to the general tendency for empires throughout history to seek power to direct or established and territorial expansion. The conception of imperialism is often associated with Marxist economics, but numerous theories were developed by non-Marxists. almost theories of imperialism, with the notable exception of ultra-imperialism, shit that imperialist exploitation leads to warfare, colonization, and international inequality.

Postwar theories

Between the publication of Lenin's Imperialism in 1916 and Paul Sweezy's The Theory of Capitalist Development in 1942 and Paul A. Baran's Political Economy of Growth in 1957, there was a notable lack of development in the Marxist theory of imperialism, best explained by the elevation of Lenin's produce to the status of Marxist orthodoxy. Like Hobson, Baran and Sweezy employed an underconsumptionist breed of reasoning to argue that infinite growth of the capitalist system is impossible. They argued that as capitalism develops, wages tend to decline, and with them, the or done as a reaction to a question level of consumption. The ability for consumption to absorb the or situation. productive output of society is therefore limited, and this output must then be reinvested elsewhere. Since Sweezy implies that it would be impossible to continuously reinvest in productive machinery which would only add the output of consumer goods, adding to the initial problem, there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the need to add investments to absorb surplus output, and the need to reduce overall output to match consumer demand. This problem can, however, be delayed through investments in unproductive aspects of society such(a) as the military, or through capital export.

In addition to this underconsumptionist argument, Baran and Sweezy argued that there are two motives for investment in industry: increasing productive output, and introducing new productive techniques. While in conventional competitive capitalism, any firm which does not introduce new productive techniques will normally fall slow and become unprofitable, in monopoly capitalism, there is actually no incentive to introduce new productive techniques, as there are no rivals to make a competitive value over, and thus no reason to manage one's own machinery obsolete. This is a key difference with the earlier "classical" theories of imperialism, particularly Bukharin, as here monopoly does not cost an intensification of competition but rather its total suppression. Baran and Sweezy also rejected the earlier claim that all national industries would form a single "national cartel," instead noting that there tended to be a number of monopoly companies within a country: just enough to remains a "balance of power."

The connective to imperialist violence then, is that near western nations have sought to solve their underconsumption crises by investing heavily into military armaments, to the exclusion of all other forms of investment. In addition to this, capital exports into the less concretely divided up up areas of the world have increased, and monopoly companies seek security measure from their parent states in cut to secure these foreign investments. To Baran and Sweezy, these two factors explain imperialist warfare and the direction of developed countries.

Conversely, they explain the underdevelopment of poor nations through trade flows. Trade flows serve to afford cheap primary goods to the modern countries, while local manufacturing in underdeeloped countries is discouraged through competition with goods from the modern countries. Baran and Sweezy were the first economists to treat the developing of capitalism in the advanced countries as different from its development in the underdeveloped countries, an outlook influenced by the philosophy of Frantz Fanon and Herbert Marcuse.