Rasti Delizo is a global affairs analyst, veteran socialist activist and former vice-president of Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP, Solidarity of Filipino Workers).
In the second part of this interview with Green Left’s Federico Fuentes, Delizo accounts for the rise of new imperialist powers and outlines the faulty logic behind multipolarity.
Read part one here.
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Have new imperialist powers arisen in recent times?
The 20th century’s foremost imperialist states remain among the world’s top imperialist powers.
As the pre-eminent imperialist great power, the United States leads the so-called Western imperialist bloc, which includes Britain, France, Germany and Japan.
However, the imperialist core now contains a duo of imperialist states that strategically compete against the Western imperialist bloc. This rival anti-Western imperialist bloc is composed of China and Russia.
This Eurasian duo of great imperialist powers does not compete to overthrow the global capitalist system; rather, it seeks to secure maximal super-profits by remaining in the topmost ranks of the imperialist world system’s hierarchised order.
What are some specific characteristics that make China and Russia imperialist?
The present-day material development of China and Russia’s socio-economic formations, while varied in their particular configurations, show a substantively high degree of exploitatively oppressive capitalist growth.
Vladimir Lenin’s five basic features of imperialism, as outlined in his pamphlet on the subject, are manifested by the domestic and foreign economic dynamics and behaviours of these two countries.
Moreover, in his October 1916 article, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Lenin elucidated on his theory of imperialism in a non-economic way, through the following points (italics from the original text):
“...On the contrary, not only have the capitalists something to fight about now, but they cannot help fighting if they want to preserve capitalism, for without a forcible redivision of colonies the new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges enjoyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers…”
“The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital)...”
“The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun…”
This methodology clearly shows a theory of imperialism that is not limited to a purely economic question in general, nor to the issue of capital exports in particular.
Lenin’s approach is a logic in motion that keenly captures the essential nature of globalised capital’s continuous materialist development over time.
By extension, the real class character of any potentially developing imperialist state must be totally summed up by its overall economic, social, political, technological and military features.
What features does the Russian state exhibit that make it imperialist?
The Russian state reverted to its existing capitalist mode of production immediately following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in December 1991. Since then, its distinct path of economic development has pursued the rationale of capital accumulation via a mixed economic setup.
Presently the world’s 11th largest economy in nominal GDP rates (US$2.20 trillion), Russia’s variant of state capitalism displays public sector monopolies dominantly controlled by its capitalist state apparatus, operating side-by-side with monopolies dominated by private shares.
Its national economy is largely governed by domestic monopolies (state-owned enterprises, private corporations, banks, etc) and is not dependent on foreign ones.
While the amount of capital exports from Russian monopolies may not reflect the same level as those of US and Chinese outward foreign direct investments, they remain significant.
Russia’s outward capital investments primarily flow toward semi-colonial states within Moscow’s “near abroad” sphere of influence. Some of these countries formally belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — the ex-Soviet Union’s former constituent republics that now operate within Russia’s “post-Soviet space”.
Moscow maintains exploitative levels of unequal trade exchange with CIS states in Central Asia while providing a monopolised strategic security umbrella since the demise of the Soviet Union.
The imperialist Russian state also upholds a non-economic monopoly on military affairs.
Russia retains its international status as the second most powerful military force and oversees the world’s biggest nuclear weapon stockpile.
Russia — currently ranked third in the global arms trade behind the US and France — has seen a fresh surge in its national economic growth, due largely to rising shares from its military-industrial monopolies.
Russia is also steadily building its great power projection beyond its own national frontiers, with about 15 military bases and facilities abroad.
Russia’s ongoing imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine is merely Moscow’s latest belligerent act. Since 1991, Russian imperialism has been actively involved in at least nine other interventionist conflicts.
What about China?
The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) class character has developed into a highly advanced party-directed state capitalist formation, which is continually pushing to reshape its regional sphere(s) of influence beyond its contested frontier zones.
Largely powered by monopolies under the political control of its party-state nexus, Chinese imperialism aims to militarily monopolise its adjacent borders and maritime realms (for example, the Southeast Asian Sea) at the risk of sparking future conflicts.
Its overall transformative process, which began with a batch of national economic reforms in late 1978 (terminating centralised collective agriculture, initiating private enterprises on a limited scale, permitting foreign investment flows, establishing special economic zones, introducing a system of dual pricing, etc), only deepened after 1992 as Beijing effectively pursued a wide-ranging privatisation of its economic foundations.
By the start of the 2010s, China’s economic recasting allowed it to become the new centre of gravity for most of the world’s leading transnational monopolies, specifically for the latter’s offshore production activities.
China’s transitional shift — a genuine capitalist restoration — profoundly changed the nature of its state and society.
The convergence of the top echelons of the Communist Party of China and the PRC’s state apparatus have ultimately (created and) enabled the country’s party-state financial oligarchs to amass and concentrate immense wealth and political influence.
The unique social status of the Chinese oligarchic layer allows it to decide how best, and where, to invest China’s vastly accumulated surplus value — without much substantive policy input from its mammoth working-class masses.
Since at least 2013, Beijing’s foreign policy primarily aims to thwart US imperialist manoeuvres throughout the Eurasia-Indo-Pacific area.
China’s externally directed strategy, which also factors in its key geopolitical considerations, strives to redivide the Eastern Hemisphere to Beijing’s long-term strategic advantage.
The pursuit of this external policy track is being maximised through the export of China’s robust monopoly-finance capital to adjoining and neighbouring countries.
With this exploitative external relations approach, especially through mechanisms of unequal exchange, China is able to guarantee its net appropriation of surplus value from dominated non-monopoly countries in the global periphery.
As an imperialist power comprising the world’s third most powerful military force, China equally endeavours to build its necessary strategic depth.
Beijing is militarily securing its western frontier zone (bordering Central Asia) and southern border region (adjoining South Asia and into the Indian Ocean), while projecting far eastward past Taiwan, into the middle of the Pacific Ocean (beyond the First and Second Island chains).
It is in the area between the Second and Third Island chains that Chinese imperialism seeks to thwart US imperialism’s intensely aggressive power projection capabilities.
What is your position on multipolarity, advocated by some on the left?
It is not an apt concept to apply in analysing the present-day world situation from a consistently left standpoint. Neither is it helpful in guiding anti-imperialist struggles.
Multipolarity, as a term and an idea, should be avoided — if not discarded altogether.
This is chiefly because the various imperialist powers, together with autocratic, authoritarian and fascist regimes, are deliberately utilising and even popularising multipolarity. They selectively deploy this specific conceptual word, wrongly using and even substituting multipolarity for an “anti-imperialist” policy.
Imperialist powers often hide behind multipolarity to openly accuse their top rival(s) of being “imperialist”. All the while, these same imperialist states are actively upholding the imperialist world system.
Neither of the core rival blocs seek to smash and destroy international capital, replace global capitalism, dismantle the imperialist world system, or much less establish world socialism. This imperialist great power engagement is not like the 20th century’s Cold War “bipolar” conflict.
The modern day inter-imperialist conflict is being waged through a singular capitalist unipolar order. All competing imperialist powers belong to the same — and single — international pole of capitalism.
Jointly, they principally direct the global core’s anti-worker agenda of monopoly-finance capitalism, albeit in an adversarial manner toward each other.
[Abridged from a much longer interview published at links.org.au.]