Upstream - Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism w/ Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante

Starting point is 00:00:00 Imperialism is not something that capitalism does or does not do. It is capitalism at a certain stage of development. This is why we on the Marxist left will often use a phrase like capitalism imperialism, right? Capitalism hyphen imperialism in our analysis because we understand it as one process. And moreover, this helps distinguish imperialism in the Marxist or Leninist sense from the way it's often used in school or in common speech, where it just means something like a stronger country taking over a weaker country. We sometimes talk about the Roman Empire and Roman imperialism in this vein.

Starting point is 00:00:58 When it's used in this non-Marxist sense, it's used in a sort of trans-historical way that unties it from any particular mode of production. It's not to say that that isn't useful or there isn't a place for using imperialism in that way, but when we Marxists talk about imperialism, we mean something much more specific, and I think that's worth noting up front. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

Starting point is 00:01:21 Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. Capitalism. Imperialism. Monopoly.

Starting point is 00:01:37 Far from being separate concepts that just happen to take shape parallel to one another or to overlap from time to time. These terms all really refer to the exact same overall process. We call it capitalism because it's not always practical to call it monopoly capitalism in its imperialist stage or something like that. But really, capitalism is, as we'll see, inevitably monopolistic and imperialist. The process of capitalism's historical evolution, from its so-called and somewhat fabricated stage of free enterprise to monopoly capitalism, and then further into what we refer to as imperialism, was outlined both

Starting point is 00:02:26 theoretically and empirically by Vladimir Lenin well over a century ago in his classic text, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The connection between monopoly and imperialism might not seem quite straightforward to you at first, and an understanding of imperialism itself as a process grounded in political economy may seem somewhat counterintuitive, especially if you're used to thinking of imperialism and empire in the more popular sense of the words. But that's why we've brought on two guests to walk us through this crucial text and help us make sense of it all.

Starting point is 00:03:09 Alison Escalante and Brett O'Shea are the hosts of Red Menace, a podcast that explains and analyzes revolutionary theory and then applies its lessons to our contemporary conditions. And they're both return guests of the show. In fact, they've been on a number of times to talk about other texts by Lenin, but also to explore a wide variety of topics, from trans liberation to revolutionary Buddhism. Brett is also the host of the terrific podcasts Revolutionary Left Radio and Shoeless in South Dakota. In this episode, we unpack Lenin's imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. This episode is an excellent introduction to the text, but it also takes a deep dive

Starting point is 00:03:59 and gets granular at times, picking apart the nuances and various interpretations of the text. We explore the historical context in which Lenin wrote this book and then trace capitalism's history from its early stages into its monopoly form. We explore how finance capital emerged and became similarly concentrated, how this merging of concentrated finance and industrial capital began to spread out from the capitalist countries to the periphery and began to carve up the world, and how this process led to what we now understand to be capitalism's final and highest stage, imperialism. And of course, we also apply the text to a variety of

Starting point is 00:04:47 current events and explore how we can apply Lenin's ideas in ways that help us grow and strengthen our socialist movements globally. And before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener- funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bi-weekly bonus episodes, ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, along with stickers and

Starting point is 00:05:31 bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Sign up and find out more at patreon.com forward slash Upstream podcast. And if Patreon's not really your thing, you can also make a tax deductible recurring or one-time donation through our website, UpstreamPodcast.org forward slash support. Through this support, you'll be helping us keep upstream sustainable and helping us keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund. So thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Allison Escalante and Brett O'Shea of Red Menace. All right, Brett and Allison, it is such a pleasure to have you both back on the show. Yeah, the pleasure and honor is ours for sure.

Starting point is 00:06:39 Happy to be here. Yeah, absolutely. Love it every time we get the chance to come on. I feel like we always have such wonderful discussions. So thanks so much. Yeah, of course. I'm really excited to be having this particular discussion. And I know I say this every time, but you two have been such a huge influence for me, just in terms of like my growth and development as a Marxist and the work that you both do with Red Menace and Brett with Revolutionary Left Radio is really unparalleled and I love the Older episodes where you take deep dives into texts. I love the newer stuff where you're just sort of talking a little bit more about Contemporary events. It's all just really really great stuff. And if anybody listening has not yet checked out Red Menace or

Starting point is 00:07:29 Revolutionary Left Radio, which I would be surprised if you haven't but if you haven't it's definitely time to go check out both of those shows and Get lost in their deep catalog of incredible episodes But for anybody who you know may not know you already, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit, maybe introduce yourselves, and then I'm also really curious to just maybe get a sense of how Red Menace started. Sure. Yeah, I can start off and I'll just say first off, yeah, it's a pleasure to be on.

Starting point is 00:07:57 I really am impressed with what you've been able to do with Upstream. Your presence on social media is always, you know, refreshing and powerful and, you know, we've gotten actually a lot of listeners that have heard us on previous episodes from Upstream, so we really appreciate that and I genuinely love what you're doing with the show and we share a spirit for sure between our different endeavors. But yeah, I'm Brett. I'm the host of RevLeft Radio, co-host of Red Menace with my friend and comrade Allison. I also host a non-political show about mental health and addiction called Shoeless in South Dakota.

Starting point is 00:08:33 And yeah, very happy to be here. Red Menace, I mean Allison might be able to say a little bit more about it, but from my perspective back in like 2018, something like that, there was a big conference in Colorado, a socialist conference in Colorado. And we had known each other from online before that, and we obviously resonated. I think I had already had Alice and Ann Rev left for one of our first episodes. So we had done some work together, but in Colorado we got a chance to actually meet each other in person, hang out. I was running another show at the time called The Guillotine. After that conference, The Guillotine kind of fell apart and I was looking to do something

Starting point is 00:09:12 new in that vacuum that the lack of Guillotine created. I just remembered me and Allison had a wonderful episode and when we hung out in Colorado, it was so chill, so laid back. Allison and I are very, very similar in a lot of ways. It so it was the first person I thought of, like, I'm going to do something new. I'm going to start a new endeavor. I want it to be principled Marxism. And I couldn't think of a better person than Alison. I reached out, she thought about it for a little bit and agreed. And we've been hit the ground running ever since. So I'm very, very blessed to be able to do this with with Allison somebody of of her intellectual and moral caliber

Starting point is 00:09:47 Awesome. Yeah. Well, I'm Allison. Thank you so much for all of that Brett. And yeah, thank you, Robbie for having us on I think you get everything Brett said about upstream is true And I think our podcasts have collaborated together and it's been really awesome to have that opportunity I know one of the things that I really loved seeing You know over the last few months was everyone's like Spotify wrapped with their top podcasts and seeing upstream alongside the Red Left podcasts on there was really cool to see. I just think we have a shared audience in a lot of ways and I really love the stuff that you do. So thank you again for having us here. And yeah, you know, I

Starting point is 00:10:20 think Brett summarized it well. Red Menace, we in the early days pretty much just did focus on specific texts, doing kind of summary and analysis work. Since then, we've dipped into current events a little bit more. We've tried to do some texts still. Most recently, we did an episode on the German Revolution, so we're dabbling in kind of history as well. But yeah, sort of all over the place. But it's been a great experience.

Starting point is 00:10:42 Like Brett said, I think him and I hit it off pretty early on. He had me on RevLeft radio and we talked about, what was it, State and Revolution, I think. And from there just like really hit it off and it took off. And yeah, I could not ask for a better co-host. You know, we joke about this all the time, but I think Brett and I are just remarkably similar ideologically and also just like temperamentally in a lot of ways. And it's really wild. So I could not ask for someone better to work with.

Starting point is 00:11:08 We both have like a philosophy background that I think brings a lot to the show. And I just like always feel like I can bounce whatever kind of wild ideas about what we're engaging with off him and it will go somewhere productive. So yeah, go give it a listen if you're interested. I think we do some interesting stuff and most of that is because Brett. It's too kind. Not true. Incredible. and if you're interested, I think we do some interesting stuff and most of that is because Brett. It's too kind, not true. Incredible. Yeah, thank you so much. That's really amazing to hear. And again, thank you for the kind words. I agree. I think that we definitely share a spirit and the rapport that you, Alison and Brett

Starting point is 00:11:40 have in Red Menace is palpable and it's incredibly engaging. And yeah, I also couldn't think of two better people to be together on a podcast talking about Marxism. So I'm really glad that that exists. And so speaking of things that do already exist, there is an episode of Lenin's imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, which if you read the title of today's episode, you already know what we're talking about. There is an episode on that text that is already put out by Redmond, I think in like 2018 or so. And so I want to say upfront that definitely we're going to try to bring some new stuff and maybe bring in some more contemporary analysis in terms of applying the text to current events and stuff. But that episode is really good. It's what made me feel like I need to not only read the text, but I want to do an upstream episode on this because it's just so important. And we've been talking so much about imperialism for the last

Starting point is 00:12:45 year or so since October 7th of 2023. We've really been diving deep into this exploration of imperialism. And so, yeah, I couldn't think of two better guests to be having this conversation with and a more important text that we could be dissecting. And of course, while you're listening to the old Red Madness episode from 2018 on the same text, you might get lost in their back catalog and maybe binge a few dozen episodes or more, which is definitely what I tend to do. So go check that out after you listen to this as well, or maybe a couple weeks later, if you want to sort of refresh your mind with the material that we're talking about today from a slightly different set of angles. But for now, yeah, let's get into imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism written by V.I. Lennon. And yeah, I guess I think

Starting point is 00:13:39 the best place to start would be to give a little bit of context around the text itself, like when it was written, the context in which it was written before we actually get into the nuts and bolts of the theory and the analysis. So yeah, I guess if you could talk a little bit about that context and sort of lay out for us the context in which the book was written. For sure, yeah, absolutely. And I will say one thing upfront. You mentioned the episode on imperialism on Red Menace from 2018.

Starting point is 00:14:12 I haven't listened to that episode in years and I purposely didn't listen to it for this podcast because I wanted to come with a sort of fresh set of eyes, taking all the sort of knowledge that I've gained in the intervening years since we did that text on Red Menace and try to give more contemporary examples and just kind of re-approach it without the baggage of what I've already talked about on that episode. So hopefully the end result is that these two episodes, while they're about the exact same text, will still be noticeably significantly different and we'll be attacking the text from different angles to get, you know as Big and as wide of a perspective on it as we possibly can but yeah, let's get into the context of the book

Starting point is 00:14:51 So imperialism the highest stage of capitalism. It was written by Lenin in 1916 so right away we can see that this text emerges in the context of an imperialist war World War one and In the years leading up to the Russian Revolution. At this time, capitalism had evolved from where it was during Marx and Engels's time, from industrial capitalism to monopoly capitalism, which is to say, imperialism. And that's like an obvious, but I think important point, that imperialism is not something that capitalism does or does not do, it is capitalism at a certain stage of development. This is why we on the Marxist left will often use a

Starting point is 00:15:29 phrase like capitalism imperialism, right? Capitalism hyphen imperialism in our analysis because we understand it as one process. And moreover, this helps distinguish imperialism in the Marxist or Leninist sense from the way it's often used in, you know, school or in common speech where it just means something like a stronger country taking over a weaker country, right? We sometimes talk about the Roman Empire and Roman imperialism in this vein. And when it's used in this non-Marxist sense, it's used in a sort of trans-historical way that unties it from any particular mode of production.

Starting point is 00:16:03 It's not to say that that isn't useful or there isn't a place for using imperialism in that way, but when we Marxists talk about imperialism, we mean something much more specific and I think that's worth noting up front. But you know, getting back to the context of the work, Lenin was writing at a critical juncture in the development of capitalism wherein European powers were expanding their empires into Africa and Asia and the global economy of markets trade and finance was growing like increasingly Interconnected the expanding empires were in large part about Concentrated capital in what we now call the Imperial core attempting to secure new markets raw materials and cheap labor

Starting point is 00:16:44 We will come back to all of these points later on and throughout this discussion for sure, but that's the geopolitical context in which Lenin was writing, namely during World War I and in this new stage of capitalism called imperialism. Now from a Marxist theoretical perspective, Lenin was building on the works of Marx and Engels, of course, extending their analysis to address the material conditions of the early 20th century and updating Marxism using the tools of Marxism itself, namely historical and dialectical materialism. And this is a crucial aspect of Marxism that we can never lose sight of. It is a living, evolving process that develops alongside the development of the phenomena

Starting point is 00:17:24 it's attempting to comprehend and ultimately combat. So as capitalism itself evolves, as it manifests in different epochs and societies and conditions, so too does our analysis and our approach. And Lenin is like the perfect exemplar of precisely this, and we learn not just from his particular analysis, but from the way in which he engages with and wields scientific socialism in such a dynamic way. This highlights a kind of a core aspect of dialectical materialism and the evolution that it entails, and I kind of want to touch on that really quick. It's something that the Maoist philosopher JMP calls continuity and rupture, or what I increasingly kind of refer to as

Starting point is 00:18:06 transcendence and inclusion Lenin is continuing and including the core aspects of scientific socialism that Marx and Engels had discovered Well at the same exact time Operating in a context that demanded that they be skillfully updated to ever-evolving conditions You know history kind of works this way our own personal growth over our lifespans works this way. Evolution via natural selection works this way. And Marxism itself, when it's done properly, works this way. If it were not for this aspect of dialectical materialism, this ability to transcend and include, to simultaneously continue with and rupture from something prior, it would not

Starting point is 00:18:44 be scientific and materialist. It would be utopian and idealist. So understanding this work and the work of Lennon more broadly is to also to understand this essential aspect of Marxism and to get to see it in practice. And I think the importance and the beauty of that can't be overstated. So like kind of in a summary here, we can understand this text as being produced by someone with a profound grasp of historical and dialectical materialism theoretically, as well as someone actively engaged in class struggle and revolutionary politics, uniting

Starting point is 00:19:16 theory and practice masterfully, while at the same time updating Marxist analysis for a genuinely new stage of capitalism's evolutionary development. Lenin was also, I think it's worth noting, combating false and reformist strands of Marxism, who at that time were attempting to mystify imperialism's connection with capitalism, who were engaged in siding with their nations instead of their class during World War I, and who were attempting to downplay Marxism's revolutionary core at a critical juncture in Marxism's development. For Lenin, imperialism represented the final stage of capitalism and is quite literally capitalism at the global level, capitalism in its most generalized and developed form.

Starting point is 00:20:01 There is no separate stage beyond imperialism. We are stuck with imperialism until we overthrow and transcend capitalism itself. This puts the anti-imperialist struggle and the proletarian internationalism that it requires at the beating heart of the struggle for socialism globally, which is why Marxists focus so intently on imperialism, while almost every other major strain of left politics downplays, mystifies, adjusts itself to, or outright ignores imperialism, embracing idealism and utopianism necessarily in the process, and thus limiting their theoretical comprehension

Starting point is 00:20:37 and practical capacity to confront capitalism on the scale necessary for its defeat." So this, I think, is the historical and the theoretical context of this absolutely essential work of Marxist analysis. And anyone who fancies themselves a Marxist or wants to become more familiar with Marxism, I think, must engage with this text in particular and internalize its lessons. Allison, do you think I missed anything there? No, I think that's a pretty good summary. The one thing that I'll add, which you gestured at but I think provide a little bit more depth towards too, is that I think one of the central things is that this text emerges precisely in the moment of imperialist crisis itself,

Starting point is 00:21:12 right? Lenin is analyzing what is happening in World War I, as you pointed out, is analyzing these kind of fracture lines within the socialist movement, where at the beginning of World War I, most of the socialist parties across Europe and across the world had opposed the war. But over time, we saw this trend and this shift towards actual support for the war, national chauvinism, patriotism becoming the primary form that these socialist parties took. In our episode that we just released on the German Revolution, we looked at how this becomes the divide within the SDP that eventually splits it into revolutionary and reformist factions. And so I think that is throughout this text, right? You we looked at how this becomes the divide within the SDP that eventually splits it into Revolutionary and reformist factions. And so I think that is throughout this text, right? You hear Lenin just constantly insulting the SDP

Starting point is 00:21:59 and much of its leadership throughout this and there's this overwhelming kind of theory from within a moment of crisis itself where now that imperialism has really ruptured, Lenin has this very special vantage point to be able to see what caused that rupture and sort of its after effects. And so I think it is interesting how much of the moment it's written in, it's just kind of intertwined with the text really. So that's the only thing I'll add. I think you gestured quite well to that, but I feel like it's such an important part of this. And if you're reading this and you don't know that history, you're going to be like, why is he just insulting random Germans left and right? But that is kind of what is going on there. Yeah, that's, that's a lot of Lenin is there's a lot of digs in his work that you have to do a little work to figure out exactly who he's talking shit about. Thank you both so

Starting point is 00:22:40 much. And yeah, Brett, thank you for underscoring the importance of understanding imperialism and empire in a Marxist sense. And this text is being an important opportunity for us to move beyond the common understanding of those words, which doesn't really point to the significance of sort of the form of imperialism as a stage of capitalism and tied so deeply to the forces of capitalism itself. I remember a few months back I met Abby Martin and she was telling me that when she tells some people that she has a show called The Empire Files, they are very confused about what she means by empire and sometimes they think that she has a show on like Star Wars or something. I think it's important for us to sort of reclaim

Starting point is 00:23:25 in a sense those words and really imbue them with the Marxist meaning that they need to have if they're actually gonna be utilized in a skillful way that helps us analyze what's going on. What a superstructural victory to have the common American understanding of imperialism be like Star Wars, you know? It's like, I can't do it. Yeah. American understanding of imperialism be like Star Wars, you know?

Starting point is 00:23:47 And so, Brett, you definitely touched on this in your response, but Allison, I'd love to turn to you and ask if you could maybe build on some of what Brett just explained for us and maybe help us take a 20,000 foot look here before we get more granular into the text and just explain what Lennon was talking about into the text and just explain what Lenin was talking about in the text and what does monopoly have to do with imperialism? Totally, yeah. Building off of what Brett said, I think an important thing to recognize is that this notion of imperialism is already a concept that's pretty popular at the time that Lenin writes this text, right? And you can see that throughout, he's citing other

Starting point is 00:24:23 people's definitions of imperialism and really engaging with a discussion that already exists within the studies of politics and political economy. And I think in many ways if we want to understand the 20,000 foot view, this is a text that as I think Brett really alluded to is contesting some of those definitions, right? So at the beginning of the 20th century, we can think about other thinkers like William James, for example, who frame themselves as anti-imperialists, but for whom imperialism really is like a moral failure, right? Imperialism is liberalism failing to live up to its own values, you know, he refers to it as like a kind of brutishness that ends up becoming dominant in liberal societies that is at odds with what is the morally correct thing to do. But I think here Lenin is really trying to say,

Starting point is 00:25:08 no, actually, if we want to understand imperialism, unfortunately, we have to do political economy, right? We have to understand the conditions that produce imperialism. And so this text, compared to a lot of Lenin's other texts, really is a work of political economy. And I think the moment you open that, you see it because it is just full of economic charts and graphs

Starting point is 00:25:27 kind of depicting empirical economic data in order to develop this. So I think that is really like where the text is coming from. And Lenin is very interested, as Brett kind of alluded to already, in this development of monopoly, right? The idea that even though the predictions of capitalist

Starting point is 00:25:45 political economists had been that markets that were more or less uninhibited by interference would trend towards competition, in reality, globally, across the world, Lenin shows data indicating that we haven't seen competition be the form that markets have taken, but centralization has become the predominant form. And this kind of actually makes sense, right?

Starting point is 00:26:05 The profit drive within capitalism really creates this incredible incentive for the centralization. To just quote Lenin very briefly, right? He says, quote, cartels come to an agreement on the terms of sales, dates of payment, et cetera. They divide the market among themselves. They fix the quantity of goods to be produced,

Starting point is 00:26:22 and they fix the prices. They divide the profits among the various enterprises, etc. And it would make sense that this was where capitalism would go, right? This is actually kind of a rational economic development out of the way that markets function in the first place. And so the first thing that Lenin's interested in from this 20,000 foot view is this shift towards centralization. And the shift towards centralization for Lenin is important

Starting point is 00:26:46 because it is accompanied by one other emerging factor which is the rise of finance capital. So obviously, you know, I think it would be silly to pretend like this period of time is where banks first come into existence, but rather Lenin's pointing out that banks undergo this transformation at this time, right? He refers to banks originally as these middlemen for making payments that these cartels would have relied upon to manage their money for

Starting point is 00:27:10 them and have a place to put the money that they were extracting through the production of commodities and the other forms of productive capital that they're engaged in. But this transformation occurs here, right? Instead of banks just becoming these sort of storehouses for monies who facilitate transfers, they begin to actually profit, they begin to invest that money both domestically and abroad, and begin to actually exercise power themselves. And so for Lenin, this creates this very interesting situation actually, where the banks now have a power that the productive capitalists don't have. They have the power of investment, They have the power of all of this liquid capital on hand

Starting point is 00:27:47 that they're able to use as they please. And the banks themselves actually then do the same thing that the productive capitalists did. They trend towards monopoly. They start to acquire each other. They start to form into banking conglomerates, and they start to exercise power in these really centralizing ways.

Starting point is 00:28:02 And this ultimately gives them power both over productive capital and the state. They can control productive capital through what Lenin calls the share system, where they acquire shares in companies and are able to exercise control as they please, but they can also control the state through the economic power that they've gained in many ways, and so society for Lenin kind of becomes subservient to this finance capital during this period of time. So all of this eventually leads to a situation where finance capital is driving political and economic reality within these imperialist societies, and where the export of capital

Starting point is 00:28:37 by these finance institutions leads to a kind of dividing up of the world into various spheres of influence, and different states competing into various spheres of influence and different states competing for those spheres of influence. It's very notable that a lot of early imperialist conquest was about securing trade rights and exclusive trade rights to certain parts of the world where these financial institutions could then essentially be able to engage in investment of capital and then extraction of resources through the process of colonialism. And so what starts as the concentration of productive capital into monopolies as the move away from free competition suddenly turns into an entire structure of global domination, exploitation, extraction, movement of capital across lines, and eventually wars for control

Starting point is 00:29:21 over these various spheres of influence. And again, this makes sense, Lenin is writing as one of these great wars is taking place, as World War I explodes because of these ties and these conflicts that these empires have engaged in. And so for Lenin what's really important here is imperialism isn't a moral failure, it's not some aberration from within capitalism, but it's actually the inevitable result of the way that markets trend towards centralization overall. So that's kind of my stab at a 20,000 foot view. Obviously we will be getting into more details, but broadly that is what this text is arguing. I would just add to that that that's really well said and just kind of looking at the

Starting point is 00:29:58 way we're going through this in general. I just want to let people know that I think there will be times when Alison and I kind of go back over some of the same things, but I think it's particularly important when it comes and to help people really comprehend what it is we're talking about. Because admittedly, if you don't have any sort of familiarity with this text or with political economy more broadly, some of these things can be kind of difficult to grapple with. So hopefully by repeating these things, coming at them from different angles, fleshing them

Starting point is 00:30:43 out in different ways, it'll be helpful for listeners to really, really get a good grip on what we're talking about here. But yeah, Alison did an expert job, as always. Yeah, yeah, totally. That's a really important point, Brett. And Alison, yeah, thank you so much for the great encapsulation of, I guess you could call the thesis of the text there. And I think you underscored pretty well

Starting point is 00:31:06 how this process of imperialism sort of begins with monopoly or the concentration of productive capital, as you say. Yeah, and just definitely sort of going off of what Brett just said there, I think it would be helpful for us to maybe get more granular now and pick these pieces apart now that we have a little bit of a encapsulated idea of Lenin's

Starting point is 00:31:25 thesis. So let's get a little bit deeper into monopoly. And of course, we'll be talking about monopoly throughout here, but I'm going to read about a paragraph long quote from the book itself. There's a passage early in the text here. And I'll ask you then to reflect on it. So the quote goes, 50 years ago when Marx was writing capital, free competition appeared to most economists to be a quote natural law. The official scientists tried by conspiracy of silence to kill the works of Marx, which by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism, showed that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly.

Starting point is 00:32:16 Today, monopoly has become a fact. The economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly and continue to declare in chorus that Marxism is refuted, but facts are stubborn things as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g. in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance, and that the rise of monopolies as the result of a concentration of production is a general fundamental law in the present stage of development of capitalism."

Starting point is 00:33:12 So law in the present stage of development of capitalism." So, Lenin was writing this during a period in which he was maybe just about a decade or so past what his analysis shows to be this period of capitalism that sort of shifted from sort of mercantile capitalism from the like lots of small holders and more like free competition into this stage of monopoly, which is the predominant form of arrangement, which is sort of what we're all used to and what we have all experienced in our experiences of capitalism. So I'm wondering if you can walk us through what came before monopoly capitalism in a little bit more detail and then like guide us through this transition where monopoly became the dominant mechanism or form of capital accumulation. Yeah, definitely. And this is actually, I think, one of the more fun questions that

Starting point is 00:34:01 I get because it allows me to kind of completely dismantle so many of the fantasy ideological versions of capitalism that people have been taught and trained to think is capitalism. And even today you'll hear things like, you know, the freer the market, the freer the people, free market capitalism is essential for democracy, blah, blah blah blah. And what emerges from an actual analysis of capitalism is that, what you'll see in a second is that, you know, capitalism in this sense undermines itself over time. And so, I guess just like get into it and in that quote you just read at the end there, Lenin said, quote, the rise of monopolies as the result of the concentration of production is a general and fundamental law of theies as the result of the concentration of production is a general and

Starting point is 00:34:46 fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism, end quote. And this points to the core of the issue. Production has been concentrated. But let's go back to the beginning and start there and work our way to the present. So over capitalism's development, we start, if I'm being extra charitable, with an Capitalism's development we start if I'm being extra charitable with an idealized almost theoretical version of capitalism laid out by Adam Smith a Thinker incidentally who I'd wager would be horrified at how capitalism has actually played out in the real world But Adam Smith's capitalism

Starting point is 00:35:23 Was the capitalism of a small town the mom-and-pop capitalism of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker. The romantic vision of capitalism that completely ignores primitive accumulation, in which, if it exists at all, exists only at the very beginning of capitalism and now only on the margins as the exception to the rule. Unfortunately for us today, many people, as I said, have been trained to think that this is true capitalism, when in fact it is a fantasy version of capitalism that cannot actually exist as the predominant form of capitalism over time. And why can't it exist as the predominant form of capitalism? Precisely because the core logic of competitive capitalism, or so-called free market capitalism, leads inexorably and inevitably to the concentration of production,

Starting point is 00:36:07 of wealth, of capital itself, and over time it produces monopoly capitalism. So the idealized version of mom-and-pop capitalism by its very nature and internal logic leads to its own usurpation by monopoly capital. To break this down into its details, we can argue that capitalism started more or less as a bunch of small and medium-sized enterprises competing with one another in a relatively open and competitive market. This competition, however, produces winners and losers over time. And in that competitive context, the losing enterprises disappear and the successful enterprises grow, gobbling up more of the market share. In other words, larger firms over time end up absorbing or eliminating their competition

Starting point is 00:36:54 through victories in the market, mergers, acquisitions, economies of scale, etc. For a contemporary example of this process, we can look at something like Amazon. As Amazon won more and more of the market, its increasing size, scale, and wealth made such victories easier and easier. All real competition was obliterated by competition itself. Eventually, Amazon is so big, commands so much of the market, is so powerful, operates on such a large scale that it cannot be competed with at all.

Starting point is 00:37:29 So ironically enough, the competition intrinsic to the free market eventually results in the diminishment and even obliteration of competition itself. A free market gives birth to an unfree one, inexorably. A competitive market gives rise to an uncompetitive one, inexorably. A competitive market gives rise to an uncompetitive one inexorably. This is why no scrappy mom and pop shop could ever hope to compete with Amazon or Walmart or Pfizer. And this lack of competition gives Amazon and the others protection from the vicissitudes of a truly free competitive market. This monopolization of the market makes Amazon so big and powerful and important to the overall

Starting point is 00:38:07 economy that it can then, among many other things, intervene directly into the political process and influence it disproportionately towards its own interests, furthering its monopolistic control and protecting it even more from any forces that might threaten it. This process occurs everywhere capitalism takes root and is only a matter of time since again the logic that produces it is embedded in the core of the system itself. Once such monopolies or shared monopolies have formed in this way through capitalism's development, these monopolies seek to leverage what they can for more profit accumulation and maximization.

Starting point is 00:38:45 This takes the form of cartels, trusts, and syndicates. Basically, cooperation among these monopolistic firms to solidify their positions, control production, limit competition further, stabilize or fix prices, etc. The development of these monopolies represent the concentration of capital or the centralization in specific sectors of the economy. Again, think Walmart, Amazon, or Microsoft today. Any industry or sector you look at in the American economy today, you will see the presence of a handful of corporations who enjoy monopolistic control over that industry or sector.

Starting point is 00:39:22 It's not always one singular corporation, though it can be, but much more commonly I think it's a handful of huge corporations. These corporations cooperate around their shared interests, free from the pressures of any real competition, and they leverage their power and wealth to enter the political process and shape it in ways that protect them and their interests even more. The next step here is the merging of industrial capital with banking capital to create financial capital, but we'll save that for an upcoming question. For this question, however, we can now see how relatively competitive and free markets during capitalism's infancy inevitably and without exception lead to the formation of

Starting point is 00:40:03 monopolies and we can look at our own society among the most developed capitalist nations on earth for the clear and obvious proof that it is precisely what happened here. This is not abstract. The entire American economy is just like this, and over a hundred years since Lenin wrote this text, we need merely look around to see how correct he was. The American economy is dominated by large monopolies in virtually every sector and industry. Financial capital thus dominates the economic and political system, and U.S.-led imperialism

Starting point is 00:40:35 is what this system looks like at the global level. In other words, the proof is in the pudding. The thing I really want to stress here, though, is that, as I've said many times before, this is the inevitable result of the logic of capitalism itself. It's not anathema to capitalism. It is not merely one of many forms capitalism could take. Rather, it is how capitalism evolves, always and everywhere. Governments can intervene to more or less degrees.

Starting point is 00:41:01 They can trust bust. They can try to ban money in politics, and certainly that is preferable to not doing those things. But in the final analysis, capitalism moves unstoppable in this direction and it can't be any other way. Adam Smith's version of capitalism exists nowhere on earth as its predominant form, even in the most social democratic European states where government intervention is at its highest. So anyone who says that they support capitalism, but not monopolies,

Starting point is 00:41:29 is simply confused about the fundamental nature of the thing that they support. And I would also add this new era of right-wing politics that supports capitalism, but wants to get away from war, wants to get away from imperialism, American first ideology. That is a, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what capitalism is because all those goddamn wars is the natural and inexorable consequence of this stage of capitalism itself. So on the terrain of electoral politics and mainstream media punditry, there's so much

Starting point is 00:42:02 confusion that warps people's understanding of capitalism to the point where most people, I think, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, et cetera, truly believe that you can separate capitalism from monopolies and from imperialism. And as Lenin shows in great detail in this text, that's literally impossible. Yeah. Thank you so much, Brett. I think that was a really terrific and thorough explanation of both the text and also just I really appreciate you talking about like drawing back the veil here which we're so like

Starting point is 00:42:32 accustomed to being subjected to when we think about these forces and these processes and So Allison, I'm gonna ask you to unpack this even more in a second But I just I couldn't help but think of this image, right? Which I'm sure you're both familiar with. It's like a handful of corporations in the middle, and then there are these lines that extend out from each corporation to like hundreds of different brands. And it's really demonstrating like, you know, that all of these hundreds of brands that we're familiar with can be traced back to like one or two parent corporations. And I'm pretty sure there's like different images for different industries. But the one that I'm looking at now is for the food industry.

Starting point is 00:43:18 And it's like, OK, so there are hundreds of brands here, but they're all actually owned by like Nestle or Kellogg's or like a handful of other parent corporations. And yeah, I just think it's a really great representation of what you were talking about, Brett. And of course, Lenin goes through a lot of length in the text to make these connections during his time between specific in the text to make these connections during his time between specific corporations and subsidiaries and whatnot. And I think, of course, having all of these different brands

Starting point is 00:43:51 and different subsidiaries really is one of the reasons that people might not truly understand the extent to which we live under monopoly capitalism. And I think one of the most important points that Lenin made, and so long ago too, is to demonstrate how, and like you mentioned, Brett, like how capitalism sort of has the seeds of its own destruction embedded in it, and in so many different ways too, right? But this inevitability of the emergence of monopoly capitalism from quote free competition capitalism is a really big part of that. And this idea that monopoly is not an

Starting point is 00:44:33 aberration is really important. And I definitely want to drive that point home, because this is a process that happens inevitably and organically in capitalism. And like you mentioned, Brett, it's the logic of market competition itself that leads to monopoly. And like you also alluded to at the top and then at the end of your response as well, we really do hear a lot from, you know, let's say confused people that monopoly is an aberration and that what we live under now is not true capitalism, right? Like some will call it corporatism or whatever. And this idea that monopolies arose because of some factor external to capitalism and that it really is possible to have a form of capitalism that's not like dominated by monopoly and that that form can be long lasting. And so, yeah, Allison, I would love to throw it to you here and ask

Starting point is 00:45:32 you as well, like maybe you could build on anything that Brett said, or if you had any other angles that you wanted to approach this question from in terms of what you think of this argument that monopoly isn't actually inherent to capitalism? Yeah, so I think first I'll address this kind of like no true Scotsman fallacy, right, that people engage in, where whenever we point out the monopolistic tendency in capitalism, we hear as you said that this is not actual capitalism, right? It's corporatism. it's some sort of aberration that doesn't represent the actual thing.

Starting point is 00:46:07 And I think, you know, on face, you don't even need to be a Marxist to see that this is essentially semantic sophistry, right? The goal here is to make capitalism an ideal, which has never existed within reality. And if that's what we're talking about, then I guess fine. I just think we're not talking about economics anymore, right? We're talking about like economic spirituality or something like that. But I'm

Starting point is 00:46:29 personally interested in the world as it exists and as capitalism exists. And I think most people are too, like that's obviously a Marxist and materialist commitment that I have, but most people live in this world and experience the economic realities of this world. So I think we need to deal with those realities. And I think, you know, Lenin does a good job in this text of just saying, you know, aside from any theoretical explanation of why competition turns into concentration over time, the simple fact of the matter is you can't point to somewhere on the planet where that hasn't happened.

Starting point is 00:47:00 Right. So even if we couldn't give a perfect theoretical explanation of its inevitability, it just has played out inevitably. He says regardless of individual policies of free trade or anything like that meant to make the market function slightly differently. But on top of that, I think Lenin just does offer here a very good understanding of why it is inevitable on the theoretical level. You know, Brett, I think you do a good job about talking about this transition from, you know, this kind of idealized early capitalism to the capitalism that we see today. But I think, you know, to drill into that a little bit more, Lennon does this

Starting point is 00:47:33 really interesting analysis of how this really occurs at the site of production, right? So I'm going to do like some slight abstraction from the text and a little bit of like Marxism 101 here. But one of the key ideas in Marxism is that capitalism really is the beginning of the socialization of labor. So what do we mean by that? Well, if we think about before capitalism and feudal Europe, the way that production worked was it was largely an artisanal system, by which we mean if I needed a shovel, it was probably the village blacksmith who was going to create that shovel. And so one person might work on it, he might have an apprentice, the reproduction of that trade occurs through apprenticeship and sometimes the guild system as it begins to formalize.

Starting point is 00:48:15 But you have this very individualized, artisanal form of production. And as capitalism develops, a shift occurs. production becomes socialized. By the time that we reach the industrial era, if I want to shuffle, it's going to be produced in a factory and the handle will have been created by one person, maybe stained by another, the steel will have been shaped by one person, polished by another. There's a whole host of people working socially to produce this commodity

Starting point is 00:48:39 that was once produced artisanally. And Lenin, I think, does a good job in this text of actually saying this concentration of production, the socialization of production kind of forced the capitalists into monopoly, even somewhat against their will, right? He says that, quote, there's no longer the old type of free competition between manufacturers scattered out of touch with one another and producing for an unknown market. Concentration has reached the point at which it is possible to make approximate estimates of all sources of materials. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolistic combines.

Starting point is 00:49:15 Capitalism in its imperialist stage arrives at the threshold of the most complete socialization of production. In spite of themselves, the capitalists are dragged as it were into a new social order, a transitional social order from complete competition to complete socialization. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few." End quote. And so capitalism, through the necessary socialization of labor, here he imagines that that socialization is dragging the capitalists along towards the novel whether they like it or not. It's this really fascinating image that I think he draws here. But I think, you know, to tie this

Starting point is 00:49:56 back to your original question, what this indicates is that if we want large-scaled commodity production of the type that we are used to, of the type that we associate with capitalism as its defining feature, that necessarily requires a concentration of labor which in turn concentrates productive capital more generally, right? And so there's this fascinating focus there. And I think what's really interesting too, right, this is one of the things that I've always loved about Marxism, is we can see what's progressive in this, right? We can actually see a progressive tendency here. The socialization of labor is precisely what we want as socialists, right? That is kind of our core demand. And so capitalism begins that socialization already, but the contradiction that exists here is that the appropriation remains private, right? So the benefit of that socialized labor still only is transformed into profit for a few rather than all.

Starting point is 00:50:49 But Lenin here imagines this as like this transitionary era, right? So you talk, Robbie, about capitalism having the seeds of its own destruction in it. And in a sense, we see that here. The socialization represents that as well. So if you want capitalism, if you want mass commodity production, then yes, you need socialized labor, which trends towards monopoly in its own way. And also I'll add trends towards socialism in its own way, right? And this is why we as Marxists argue that socialism is not just a clean break, it's actually teasing out these progressive tendencies that already exist within capitalism and taking them to their fulfillment. And so I think that's the kind of

Starting point is 00:51:25 other thing that I would add to this aspect of the text. Thank you so much. And for anybody listening who heard our episode recently with Torkel Lawson from December, you'll definitely recognize Allison providing an analysis that uses historical materialism here in like an extremely skillful way. And so I really appreciate that the way that you describe how these forces work. And there's no like, intent, there's no like spirit, there's no will that sort of gets in the way and muddies how this stuff works, you're really describing it. And I don't mean this in a pejorative way, because sometimes you can use the word mechanical in a pejorative way, but in a very mechanical way, right? Like you're describing the forces that inevitably lead to other forces that create a system. And it's really helpful to think about it that way. And yeah, it's so fascinating to think of how capitalism has the seeds of its own destruction, and it also has so many different other seeds in it, right? It has the seeds for socialism in it as well. And so, yeah, I really love how you shared that.

Starting point is 00:52:29 And I really appreciate the skilled utilization of like historical materialist analysis in there. Can I add one thing? Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to say a two points really quick. Robbie, you mentioned in the lead up to that question, the chart of like, you know, all the ostensibly different businesses being traced back to a handful of monopolies.

Starting point is 00:52:49 And I think the way that you would talk about that is the illusion of competition. So if you're an average American just driving the streets, you see that business and that business McDonald's and Burger King and Arby's or whatever the fuck. And it gives you this feeling, this visceral sense that, yeah, all these businesses are in competition with one another, and this is what free market capitalism, of course, that's buttressed and expanded by an ideological, you know, sort of conditioning that you've been subject to that says this is how this stuff works. And so, you know, to demystify that, to peel back the facade of real competition and look at actually who controls

Starting point is 00:53:23 and where all that money eventually gets siphoned up to, I think is a really important thing for people to do. And then the second point is just, you know, you talk about people saying this is not true capitalism, this is corporatism, this libertarian and conservative cope, you know, and we also have that on the on the left when you have social democrats, democratic socialists, anarchists, they want to say, oh, China and Cuba and the Soviet Union, that's not real socialism. Real socialism is what I do in my head when I talk to myself and think about the perfect world. And that's all cope too.

Starting point is 00:53:55 So, you know, as Marxists, when you say, hey, look at the Soviet Union, look at Mao's China, look at the Cuban revolution, we say without a moment of hesitation, that is our tradition. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It's not a dogmatic embrace of it that says nothing ever was wrong ever. Everybody was perfect and everything was great. The wily capitalists and imperialists are the only negative things. If it weren't for them, we would have been fine. No.

Starting point is 00:54:20 We embrace our tradition, which also means accepting its warts, looking at its tragedies, learning from its failures, right? But we don't separate ourselves from that tradition. So if you're a libertarian, you're a conservative, you're somebody who says you're pro-capitalist, shut the fuck up about not true capitalism. Take ownership of your tradition. You can disagree with aspects of capitalism, but what you see on the American right in particular is this ideological conditioning where the failures of capitalism, but what you see on the American right in particular is this ideological

Starting point is 00:54:45 conditioning where the failures of capitalism are turned into communism. You know, like when a liberal is in office, all of a sudden America turns communist for four years and we got to fight against it. And then when a Republican comes in, they've restored capitalism. And that ideological fuckery is fascinating how well it works and how deeply entrenched it is in the minds of so many conservatives who don't want to take ownership of the thing that they support. And until you do, you're never going to be able to actually solve anything or actually even have a real stance on anything. Because if your position is, here's my tradition, but I disavow how it actually manifests in the real world,

Starting point is 00:55:23 then again, you're just doing sandcastles in the sky. You're just dreaming of a world that doesn't and can't possibly exist. And so, you know, there's a lesson for us on the Marxist left is like, we don't engage in that cope. And we call out those on the right who engage in it to try to get away and wiggle their way out of defending a system that they actually defend in this core to their ideology. This is how it actually works. I don't care how you wish it worked. This is what it looks like. Take ownership of that. And I think we have some ammunition in our arsenal when it comes to arguing with these sorts

Starting point is 00:55:53 of people if we understand the things that we've been talking about so far. 06 Absolutely. Yeah. These are not like laboratory experiments, right? They're happening in the real world and the way they manifest in the real world is what they are. One thing I really also like about, I know I just had mentioned Torekel Laus and our episode on historical materialism. So his book, it's really interesting for me because he sort of depicts all of these different experiments that have been socialist experiments over the last century or so, last century and a half maybe, as just that, like real world experiments in this long transition towards socialism, which when you think about the transition

Starting point is 00:56:34 from feudalism to capitalism, that didn't happen over a century, let alone overnight. And so that's another thing that I really appreciate about how we think about these things in the long term. And that, yeah, of course, we're going to own all of those, like you beautifully mentioned, Brett, like those parts of our tradition, where we're attempting to figure out within a concrete material condition, like Cuba or China, like those are all completely different examples that are working under different conditions and how a transition to socialism might work within that specific condition. And there are going to be things that pop up, you know, and maybe it won't go exactly as planned.

Starting point is 00:57:15 But nevertheless, I think that the spirit of those movements is really important for us to own and to celebrate as socialists, whether or not we agree with what Stalin did or whether or not we agree with the Dengist reforms or whatever the fuck, you know? Okay, so on that note, actually, I'd like to ask you, Brett, to maybe if you can talk a little bit because we've been talking about like corporations or businesses, and we've been talking about banks and finance a little bit, but we haven't actually talked about the role of the state when it comes to the concentration of capital. And that's another thing too, that it's a really interesting that people try to

Starting point is 00:57:54 separate out the state from capitalism. And sometimes people do say that, oh, you know, if you just remove the state from the equation, then we would have free competition. So yeah, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the relationship between capital and the state from the equation, then we would have free competition. So yeah, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the relationship between capital and the state, particularly when it comes to the concentration of capital. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you make a great point about, you know, I said earlier, trying to separate capitalism from monopoly and capitalism from endless war. Another thing they try to do is separate capitalism from the state impossible. So, you know, I already mentioned the obvious fact of huge corporations leveraging their wealth and economic might to intervene in the political process.

Starting point is 00:58:30 This is obvious. Anyone that looks at politics today can see it. It's wide open, you know, Citizens United, dark pack money, et cetera. One need look no further than the American government to see how this plays out at all levels of the state. But Lenin's analysis goes much deeper than that. As capitalism evolves into monopoly capitalism, Lenin argued that the state becomes increasingly intertwined with the interests of the capitalist class, particularly as the concentration of

Starting point is 00:59:00 capital increases over time. Now all Marxists understand that the state under capitalism operates not as a neutral arbiter between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie like liberals pretend it is, but as an instrument of one class over another. This understanding goes back to Marx and Engels themselves and Lenin certainly agrees. But whereas in a previous era of capitalist development, the state mostly functioned to protect private property, stabilize the economy, enforce laws and contracts, and lightly regulate commerce. In the era of monopoly capitalism, the state becomes even more active and bold in its defense of the capitalist class. The concentration of capital that is the hallmark of monopoly capitalism requires that the state not merely referee the capitalist playing field, but to intervene robustly to protect and expand

Starting point is 00:59:53 the interests of the monopolies in particular. So instead of a referee overseeing the game of free market competition, the state now becomes a weapon in the hands of the monopolies who have already won the game of free market competition and now seek to dominate the globe. So whereas a referee tries to be neutral between competing teams, and the teams in this analogy being competing firms, corporations, right? Not workers versus bosses to be clear. But whereas a referee tries to be neutral, a weapon is a tool in the hands of the financial

Starting point is 01:00:26 oligarchy. So in the era of monopoly capitalism, which is to say in the era of imperialism, the state becomes a mechanism for the financial oligarchy in its bid to dominate the planet. To bring this idea into the contemporary world, we can think once again of the United States. The American state is not merely mediating the competition between banks or between weapons manufacturers or between fossil fuel companies. That competition has long been eradicated. Instead, the American state uses its military and economic leverage to go around the world in service of the banks, the weapons manufacturers, the fossil fuel corporations, etc. American foreign policy has nothing to do with freedom or democracy or the rules-based international order.

Starting point is 01:01:12 These are fig leafs that only the fully indoctrinated believe are real. American foreign policy is about using both subtle and brute force around the world to open up new markets, eradicate challenges to its domestic monopolies, create separate pools of consumers and cheap laborers, rip open countries for its financial system to infiltrate, extract raw materials to be used by its monopolies back home, to maximize profit for those industries that benefit financially from war and its consequences, and more or less police the world in the interests of the financial oligarchy, primarily of the US, but secondarily of Western capital writ large.

Starting point is 01:01:55 In addition to being a weapon of the financial oligarchy and the pursuit of global domination, the state is also a tool in protecting monopoly capital from crises that it inevitably produces. One need look no further than how the state responded to the big banks in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. The big banks deregulated by Clinton and then Bush engaged in what I would call, anybody with a reasonable mind would call, criminal and reckless behavior in a bid for new ways to accumulate profit. And in that process, what did they do?

Starting point is 01:02:27 They collapsed the entire fucking economy, the global economy. Instead of being held accountable for their behavior, instead of criminal CEOs going to prison and instead of the nationalization of the banking industry, all reasonable steps a truly neutral state apparatus might take in such circumstances. The US state used every tool at its disposal to flood money back into the banks, to prop them up, to protect their leaders from any accountability, and to ensure the continuation of their profit accumulation at huge costs to the American people then and now. We are still living in the wake of those decisions.

Starting point is 01:03:05 While regular working Americans were being violently forced out of their homes, the banks were given their tax dollars, CEOs were given legal protection and golden parachutes, and imperialism abroad continued to intensify. This is what the relationship between concentrated capital in the form of monopoly capitalism in the state looks like in the era of imperialism. As capitalism develops into its monopolistic and thus imperialist stage, the state goes from a relatively passive enforcer of property rights and mediator of legal disputes between firms to an active and belligerent partisan of the financial oligarchy, facilitating its

Starting point is 01:03:43 expansion and protecting its stability. And a consequence of this reality for those interested in building socialism is the centrality of the state in the revolutionary process. It's not something to be ignored or dismissed or merely tinkered with. It is central to capitalism imperialism's function and it must be destroyed in its current state and replaced entirely with a new form of government, a proletarian state that serves the working class instead of the owning class and becomes a crucial weapon in our fight to transcend capitalism and build a better world for the

Starting point is 01:04:15 vast majority of this planet's inhabitants. So I think that gets at the core of this relationship between capitalism and the state and how that evolves over time. Because I think sometimes we can have a one-dimensional view where we just say something like under capitalism the state is a tool of class domination and that's true. But it's also worth noting the specific ways in which the state becomes even more at the service of the financial oligarchy and of monopoly capital as capitalism itself sort of evolves into its fullest form. And so I think that's really crucial and that's really an important aspect of this text in

Starting point is 01:04:53 particular. You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with Brett O'Shea and Allison Escalante of Red Menace. We'll be right back. my brain I hear talk of people I feel the falling rain I see a man crying cause the whole world has let him down The kids are letting me at funny places Of the clam My mind is like a spring in a clock

Starting point is 01:06:02 It won't unwind I can't see, I can't think, I can't feel I'm out of time I'm up and then I doubt, tell me where is it going to end You say start at the beginning, oh dear, my friend Oh I hear thunder and I can feel the wind I can see angry faces in the eyes of men And don't forget kids, they were kids lay bleeding on the ground And there's no place on this planet where peace can be found. So there'll be stabbings and shootings and young men dying all around. And it keeps going through my brain

Starting point is 01:08:01 and I can still hear the sound. And I can still hear the sound Are you talking off people? The whole world has gone insane And all there is left is the fall in rain. And all there is left is the fall in rain. All there is left is the fall in rain. All there is left... That was Fallen Rain by Link Wray. Now back to our conversation with Alison Escalante and Brett O'Shea of Red Menace.

Starting point is 01:09:00 So Lenin also talks a lot about finance capital, and we've definitely touched on that already, and the role of the banks in monopoly. So, Allison, I'm wondering if you could situate finance capital for us in this web of monopoly, and talk about sort of the merging of finance and industry during the period in which Lenin was writing, and what that meant for the evolution of capitalism. Sure, yeah. So you might remember earlier on when answering one of these other questions, I talked about how Lenin argues that originally in the earlier stages of capitalism, the function of banks is essentially as a middleman, right? So banks facilitate the transfer of funds, they also hold funds, their job really is as this kind of secondary position in relation to what I've been calling productive capital, right?

Starting point is 01:09:50 And there's a transformation that takes place here. So what's really interesting is that Lenin, when he's focusing on how productive capital becomes concentrated, he looks at the socialization of labor as a part of it. But there's also a concentration that happens in finance capital itself. So the banks stop acting as these just intermediaries and begin to acquire power. And one thing that this looks like is, again, because these banks have access to all of this money, they are able to make investments both into private enterprises within the productive sphere, but also into other banks, right? And this creates this system that Lenin refers to as the holding system. So I'll quote Lenin briefly here. He says

Starting point is 01:10:31 that quote, I have emphasized the reference to affiliated banks because it is one of the most important distinguishing features of modern capitalist concentration. The big enterprises and the banks in particular not only completely absorb the small ones, but also annex them, subordinate them, bring them into their own group or concern by acquiring holdings in their capital, by purchasing or exchanging shares by a system of credits, etc. etc." And this is where it's hard to talk about such a thoroughly economics-based book, because I would point you to some nice charts that Lennon has that show the extent to which the Deutsche Bank, as an example, in this period of time,

Starting point is 01:11:09 starts to acquire holdings in other banks and actually begin to become a controlling shareholder within other banks. And so through this process, a centralization of finance begins to occur as well, where even theoretically individual banks are often smaller subsidiaries of these larger banking groups. And we really see, you know, again, this concentration happen here. Now, what's fascinating is that while banking and finance had existed as this intermediary and kind of external factor to productive capitalism, we now see the merging of these two spheres, because the banks are able to acquire not only other banks but to acquire basically controlling shares within private companies as well. And so

Starting point is 01:11:52 Lenin points out that at the time that he's writing this, economists are arguing that you really only need a 40% share within a company to essentially direct it and run it. And since banks are able to do this, they have the capital available to make that investment and have these large holdings where they can mobilize people to be able to make those decisions, smaller shareholders and single private individuals actually get pushed out of this situation. And so suddenly, what was once these two separate spheres

Starting point is 01:12:20 starts to become a single sphere where finance is actually the dominating force within the relationship, where it is actually the banks that are exerting control over all other forms of capital. And this is the thing that London calls finance capital, this new merger that occurs from this. Finance becomes a monopoly in its own way and then dominates productive capital. And I think as Brett pointed out, the other big takeaway that London is going to point

Starting point is 01:12:44 us towards here and we'll be focusing on shortly is that this then exerts power over states as well and allows these large banks to direct, you know, in this case, foreign policy in order to allow them to acquire even more capital over time. So broadly, I would say that is the phenomenon that London is referring to as finance capital. Got it. That's really helpful. And yeah, like you just mentioned, so an important follow-up piece to this emergence of imperialism is the process of global domination of finance-dominated monopoly capital. And so we have, like you just mentioned, finance becoming dominant, and then you have this process

Starting point is 01:13:27 of sort of the world market being divided up. And so, Brett, I'd like to throw it to you and maybe ask us if you could explain a little bit about this process of like, why does capital need to go abroad and carve up the world? Why couldn't it just concentrate locally? What happens in this process of imperialism here that causes these forces to begin to spread their tentacles around the globe and begin to dominate markets and divide up countries and all of that? Yeah, it's a great question. And it's really central to this text and to this understanding

Starting point is 01:14:07 of imperialism. Obviously imperialism is like this idea of going out into the world, so we have to account for that. And in order to answer it, we have to talk about overproduction crisis, surplus capital, saturated markets, etc. It's also worth noting a more obvious aspect of the answer to this question, which I think I mentioned earlier, which is the need to have a pool of consumers who can afford to buy the commodities produced by corporations, as well as a cheap pool of labor from which to extract maximum surplus value. And these two things are actually often in contradiction with one another inside a single nation state. For example, companies in the US could drive down wages for their US workers, right?

Starting point is 01:14:49 But over time, this will create a situation in which those workers lack the disposable income to consume commodities. In this situation, the corporations could raise wages, but that would decrease profit margins, reduce the rate of profit, which is unacceptable. Therefore, corporations prefer to have countries in the imperial core whose living standards are high enough to create enough consumers who can afford their products, while also being able to exploit poor countries and peoples in other parts of the world as low-wage workers. In this way, they can kind of have their cake and eat it too, at least for a time.

Starting point is 01:15:25 This is the logic behind free trade agreements like NAFTA, for example, which allowed capital to operate across borders while keeping labor confined within borders. So for example, they can make products in Guatemala for pennies on the dollar and sell them at inflated prices in the US or Europe, which increases profit margins. If labor were able to travel as freely across borders as capital does, however, this would erode over time the segregation of human beings into pools of consumers and cheap labor. And this topic can get even more complex and nuanced, we could spend a lot longer talking about it, but I think that general point is intuitively understood and will suffice.

Starting point is 01:16:03 But related to this is the following. Lenin argues that one of the main reasons that capital needs to go abroad and carve up the world is the tendency of overproduction within countries. As monopoly capitalism emerges, the monopoly firms need to sell the goods they produce to maintain profitability. The merely domestic market, however, is insufficient to absorb the ever-growing output, which leads to overproduction. And overproduction is simply when commodities are produced in quantities that exceed what can be consumed within national borders. And this leads to economic stagnation and thus economic crisis. Imagine, for example, if US weapons manufacturers

Starting point is 01:16:43 could only sell their weapons to the US government and its citizens. Their capacity to produce weapons and therefore accumulate profit is much, much bigger than the need for weapons inside the US only. Therefore, these weapon manufacturing monopolies begin to look outside US borders for new markets. It's very convenient then that imperialism creates a context of constant conflict and war and drags the entire world into such conflict in one way or another. Not only do you have a global demand for weapons in the era of imperialism where conflict never

Starting point is 01:17:14 ever ends, indeed can't ever end, but you can now sell your weapons to countries on both sides of conflicts. You can sell your weapons to proxy forces that imperialism is using to overthrow obstinate governments. You can sell your weapons to other countries and forces who happen to be engaged in armed conflict with countries or forces that oppose capitalism or imperialism, etc. When it comes to financial capitalism, the same logic applies with banking and investments. You can use international bodies like the IMF to infiltrate countries that you've helped

Starting point is 01:17:46 undermine and destabilize by financing that country's economic recovery and growth, which promises new markets for domestic monopolies in the future. And you can tie that financial investment to certain forms of economic and political organization, ensuring that the country you're investing in remains open to your infiltration and exploitation. You can even make them hand over their raw materials in exchange for investments you helped make necessary. I mean, it's a truly rotten, evil system that simply cannot exist without death and

Starting point is 01:18:17 exploitation and constant human suffering, all in the service of profit accumulation for the already incredibly rich and powerful. This is what people are actually defending when they defend capitalism, when they rally around their flag for yet another war, and when they regurgitate the ideology of their rulers and tell their neighbors to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Everything in this system, both its base and its superstructure, is directed toward endless accumulation at any costs. It's an anti-human, deeply insane system that is profoundly unsustainable, but which will

Starting point is 01:18:51 not budge an inch unless, as Fanon once said, the knife is at its throat. It's our duty as socialist and anti-imperialist to get that knife as close to capitalism's jugular as possible before the system takes us all down with it. But I digress. The point is, under monopoly capitalism, staying confined within the borders of any country is simply unacceptable. The whole world must be attacked, ripped open, plundered, exploited, bombed, subordinated, and integrated into this death machine at any and all cost to human life and the health of the biosphere. Any country or people that refuse to be ripped open in this way become an enemy of the US state and are attacked ruthlessly by any and all means.

Starting point is 01:19:33 If there is even one country on this earth that refuses to allow itself to be infiltrated, it is an unacceptable affront to capitalism, imperialism, and must be attacked. In addition to all of this, but still still related is the shift under monopoly capitalism from exporting goods to exporting capital as mentioned above. The concentration of capital that is the hallmark of monopoly capitalism creates a surplus of capital at home which must be invested somewhere in order to generate a return on said investment. Strategic resources around the world need to be controlled by the imperialist state on behalf of monopoly capitalism. We can look at the Congo for a contemporary example of essential raw materials like cobalt being violently extracted through the use of what amounts to modern day slavery,

Starting point is 01:20:20 all to perpetuate the production of electronic devices and fuel capitalism's so-called green transition. I'm rolling my eyes if you can't tell. In these ways and more, we can see very clearly why it is simply impossible for monopoly capitalism to stay confined within its own borders. It must break the bounds of borders and stalk the globe in endless pursuit of cheaper labor, raw materials, new markets, new investment opportunities and anything and everything that facilitates the accumulation of more profit. And this is the dystopian world of capitalism, imperialism. And as I hope I've made clear, there is no way to reform your way out of such a system.

Starting point is 01:21:00 It must be violently confronted and overthrown. Smashed. Alison, I'm wondering if there's anything you'd like to add here to Brett's excellent analysis. There might be some examples of this process of capital dividing up the world and some of the other processes that Brett mentioned that might help bring some of this to eye level, maybe in a contemporary way,

Starting point is 01:21:24 or are there any historical examples that you'd like to share? Yeah, so a couple of things here. So just to add on the kind of theoretical level before the historical level first, I think Brett does a really good job with this idea of overproduction at Central. And then at the end there,

Starting point is 01:21:39 really the focus on raw resources as becoming this driving factor in contemporary capitalism. And so Lenin, he talks about how imperialism obviously proceeds in some sense, the time in which we're talking about, right? Again, he talks about the fact that Rome practiced a form of imperialism, for example. But there's this particular thing that we mean when we talk about imperialism here, which is slightly different, right? It's this highest stage. So I'm just going to frame things with this quote from Lenin before getting into some of the history. He says that quote, the principal feature of the latest stage of capitalism is the domination of

Starting point is 01:22:13 monopolist associations of big employers. These monopolies are more firmly established when all the sources of raw material are captured by one group. And we've seen with what zeal, the international capitalist associations exert every effort to deprive their rivals of all opportunity of competing, to buy up for example iron fields, oil fields, etc. The colonial possessions alone gives the monopolies complete guarantee against all contingencies in the struggle against competitors, including the case of the adversary wanting to be protected by a law establishing a state monopoly.

Starting point is 01:22:48 The more capitalism is developed, the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the world, the more desperate the struggle for the acquisition of colonies." And so if we want to look at this in practice, I think the era of colonialism is precisely what is called to mind for what that practice looks like. The European powers, the first

Starting point is 01:23:11 to really establish this imperialist form of capitalism, go out into the world and carve it up for their own good. You know, Brett refers to the Congo today, but we can think about the historical colonization of the Congo and the extractive labor that took place there. We can think about South Africa as another example, or for example, Spanish and then later American interference in the Philippines and Indonesia, where you have these groups that rush into an area in order to try to establish their right

Starting point is 01:23:39 to extract resources from it exclusively alongside exporting capital as a result of overproduction. And so you have this two-way relationship that goes on, and the whole world for a period of time really does seem like it is being cut up by these powers in this way. To give a shout out to another podcast that I'm quite fond of, Blowback Pod is talking about the colonization of what was once called Indochina in their current season, and they talk about the way that the French came in and bombarded cities over and over again with one really basic demand, which was exclusive trade access to that region, right? And on a certain level, exclusive trade

Starting point is 01:24:16 access doesn't sound that nefarious, right? It sounds like a very moderate demand in some ways, but over time, this exclusive trade access allowed the monopolies of France to engage with the region in such a way that they were able to then set up their own kind of sovereignty within the region, build these horrible labor colonies where they engaged in extractive practices of palm oil production and all these other issues to export cheap goods and raw resources back to the imperial core. And so we saw that there very clearly. And what we would see later on, obviously, in the 20th century, is that playing out in a whole host of conflicts, such as the Vietnam War

Starting point is 01:24:52 and the struggle for national liberation there. If we think about contemporary examples, we can think again about how much of the United States foreign policy is about access to foreign markets and access to raw materials. Much has been said about the motivation for trying to acquire oil at reasonable prices being behind most of 21st century US foreign policy. I think that's a concept that we're all familiar with.

Starting point is 01:25:15 And in addition to this, I would say in contemporary examples, we also see things like satellite states really being used by countries like the United States to establish these spheres of influence. So, for example, in the Middle East, which is a region where the US has traditionally struggled to hold a significant sphere of influence and where other countries have definitely engaged in competition for influence, the United States has a state like Israel, right, which exists essentially to serve as a satellite colony to extend our presence there, to extend our military presence, and also economically as a place for us to move capital investments to

Starting point is 01:25:49 for the development of a lot of startup technology that we then import back domestically into the United States. So we can see this continued process as it occurs today. The dividing up of the world very much still occurs, and these conflicts between large states that happen as a result of it is still there. In many ways, I would actually suggest that this source for raw resources has just become exaggerated over time as we started to hit declining reserves of certain resources, whether that be oil, whether that be resources like phosphorus, where are these concerns about how much of it is even actually left? This increases these tensions even more. And so we really do see this division lead to these forms of violence.

Starting point is 01:26:27 We see it today with things like the genocide happening in Gaza being conducted by Israel as this imperialist satellite state for the U S it really does just kind of continue to play out in these really horrific manners. And I would just add really quickly, um, that was excellent. Just adding like with the dawn of climate change and the melting of the sea ice in the Arctic, there's already going underway a competition amongst the major countries for the minerals and raw materials that might be unveiled as the ice itself melts and more or less doesn't come back. So it's incredibly scary, but again, you just see the voracious capitalist hunger for more and more and

Starting point is 01:27:05 more, even as the planet is destroying, the biosphere is being harmed and the climate system is being destabilized. All that represents for the capitalist is new opportunities for more plundering, more exploitation, more extraction. So yeah, it's brutal. Never let a good crisis go to waste. So we're about to transition to a section of the text that begins to explore some new concepts a little bit. But before we do, I think it might be helpful maybe to just summarize what we've been discussing here so far and actually Lenin himself provides a really helpful encapsulation in the text

Starting point is 01:27:44 that I'll just read from here, just kind of to summarize it, and then I'll jump in a little bit too, so it'll be a little bit more of like a paraphrase with some quotes from Lenin in there. So he writes, quote, we must give a definition of imperialism that will embrace the following five essential features. So I'm going to go through each five here. Number one, the concentration of production and capital developed to such a stage that it creates monopolies

Starting point is 01:28:13 which play a decisive role in economic life, end quote. And Brett, you provided a super helpful explanation of that process, the law really of how a monopoly is an inevitable result of quote free competition, and then back to Lenin quote, to the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation on the basis of finance capital of a financial oligarchy, end quote. And of course, we covered this as well, how banks stop being just sort of a repository and facilitator of money transactions, but begin to actually utilize their resources to enter into

Starting point is 01:28:53 positions of power. And also, you know, just as with industry, they begin a process of monopolization and concentration. And then we have three, quote, the export of capital, which has become extremely important as distinguished from the export of commodities, end quote. And this is, of course, where capital begins to do just that, right, to export capital to more underdeveloped countries where profits are higher, prices are lower, wages are lower, materials are cheaper, and so capital investments thus have a remarkable return on investment in those other countries. And that brings us to number four, quote, the formation of international capitalist monopolies which share the world amongst themselves, end quote.

Starting point is 01:29:42 And this is the process that begins with, like you mentioned, Alison, trading rights, and that we often associate with formal colonialism. But of course, that was just the political administration of this deeper process of imperialism. And it didn't end with the end of formal colonization, but of course continues on to this day through neocolonialism, the hard work of the IMF and the World Bank in creating dependency and uneven development, which we've covered at length actually on this show with guests like Jason Hickel, and a whole host of more complex but just as brutal mechanisms like economic sanctions regimes and such that have the outcome really of putting these countries, which used to be formal colonies, into economically equivalent but modern forms of subjugation. And so this is how imperialism works today as a process of economic domination. And like you mentioned at the top, Alison, we really have to understand imperialism as a process

Starting point is 01:30:46 of political economy. And then finally, you get to point number five, which is quote, the territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is thus completed. So that's Lenin's ultimate analysis in sofar as how imperialism arose and how it functions, and so I hope that's helpful. And now I'd like to switch directions here to get into the sections of the text that introduce this idea of the labor aristocracy. But before we get into the exact term and what it means specifically, there is a fascinating quote that Lennon includes in the book which is by Cecil Rhodes, who if you're not familiar

Starting point is 01:31:32 with him, he was an English mining magnate and politician in southern Africa. He was a giant piece of shit as you'll learn shortly. And I would love to share that quote here and ask you to both reflect on it because it's I think a really relevant quote to what we're about to get into. At least it might set the stage for some of the conversation we might have around labor aristocracy, internationalism, and capitalism as a global system. So the quote goes, quote, I was in the east end of London, the worker section, yesterday, and I attended a meeting of unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for Brad, Brad, Brad.

Starting point is 01:32:19 And on my way home, I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism. way home, I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism. My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e. in order to save the 40 million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil really, it's the capitalists

Starting point is 01:33:10 themselves here explaining the role that imperialism plays in the whole structure of the system of capitalism and particularly the role that it plays here in the core. And yeah, I'm wondering if there is anything that you would like to expand on or respond to here. Sure, yeah. Well, the first thing it makes me think of is Lebensraum, you know, which is used in Nazi Germany. Israel is obviously employing a very similar concept with greater Israel. And then you see the British Empire talking about it very directly and openly

Starting point is 01:33:46 in that quote right there. So that's another you could add that to the list of reasons why monopoly capital and imperialism goes out in the world to carve it up. So there's there's that aspect, which again plays into many of the other aspects, which I talked about earlier. But what it makes me think of here is the way in which class war, right, which we as Marxists we understand that class war is at the center of class society. It's at the center of socioeconomic political disputes.

Starting point is 01:34:15 It's often obscured. It's often mystified. But that is the driving force of unrest and political tumult and polarization. Whatever you want to talk about, is you can trace all those things back to class war. And there's a way in which that class war is subdued by imperialism, right? Subdued by the extraction of super profits, subdued by the siphoning of wealth and resources from the global south into the global north to kind of put a lid on that inevitable class

Starting point is 01:34:44 warfare which our rulers are always aware of. We as workers might be mystified and tricked and lack solidarity and not quite see our class interest as well as folks like us would wish that workers did see. But when it comes to the ruling class, they see very clearly how class war shapes society, what their interests are as distinct from the interests of the working class, etc. And so much of the two arms in America of the ruling class, the Democrats and Republicans, so much of what they do is to mystify that fundamental reality, to scapegoat, to divert attention away from it, to blame one or the other of the factions of the ruling class

Starting point is 01:35:24 instead of the ruling class as a whole. So you can see how that plays a really important part in subduing class war. And Cecil Rhodes here is just making that incredibly obvious that, well, we're not going to give them some of our shit, so we got to go out and get more shit so we can calm them down or else they're going to start doing a French-style revolution maybe, right? Which the ruling class is always, in the back of their mind, always scared of. That's why somebody like Luigi Mangione struck such fear and discomfort in them because it was like an acute moment of that possibility striking into their lives.

Starting point is 01:36:01 For many decades, they were able to take for granted that that wasn't a widespread sentiment amongst the American public. And now they're losing that ability to say that this is not a widespread sentiment. And it wasn't so much the act that bothered them, it was the response across the political spectrum no longer divided between left and right, just working people who understand how the healthcare system fucks them over and rich people who are so rich, they don't have to face the realities of that healthcare system. That is the division and that was made clear and that's why it bothered them so goddamn

Starting point is 01:36:32 much. But I also, you know, what it also makes me think of, of course, labor aristocracy is connected to this and Alison is really great when it comes to talking about that and we'll do that next, but it makes me think about how US imperialism, you know, I'm not saying it's coming to an end tomorrow. It still has a lot of juice left, I think. But it is on the decline with the rise of multipolarity, with the rise of formations like BRICS.

Starting point is 01:36:55 Not that they are in and of themselves a death blow to capitalism or US imperialism or anything, but they are indicative of this shift, this imperial decline. And we just need to be reminded of the fact that literally no empire in human history has stayed around. So that is a hundred percent chance based on thousands of years of human history that the U.S. empire will come to an end. And it seems as though it is on the long decline right now. And so that asks the question of us. What does it mean for that class war, that inequality, that is covered up, that is mystified by US imperialism, that is subdued in some ways by US imperialism,

Starting point is 01:37:37 if and when that comes to an end, what does that mean for us? The rulers in this society are not simply gonna say, hey, we can't do imperial plunder as well as we used to, so we're going to give you some of our shit so everybody can have another. They're not going to do that. And so it's going to be, I think, a really, a really rough time domestically. And so far Americans have been protected from the consequences of their government's actions, protected from the raw military and economic might of the US Empire also protected geographically with two huge oceans from the immediate cross border conflict that racks so much of the rest of the world. I think are ill-prepared for confrontation with real possible collapse, real economic

Starting point is 01:38:28 distress, a real crisis that impacts every single person in the U.S. And I think that is coming eventually. Will it come in five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20? I don't know, but I think the 21st century is going to be marked in large part by the declining U.S. empire and its implications. And that doesn't seem to be a trend that can really be reversed. So we'll see where that goes. And the very last point I would like to make based on that quote that you said is just

Starting point is 01:38:54 the ways in which nationalism obscures class identification and mystifies the class hierarchy. And America has been so good at convincing its working class to be patriots, to think of themselves not as working class against a ruling class, but to think of themselves as Americans against non-Americans, right? To have this nationalist fervor beat into them, conditioned into them. And of course, you know, they pick it up quite easily, waving that flag. And when they do that when they identify first and foremost with their nation with their country their imperialist power their state They don't identify with their class and so So much ideology is like hey, we're all one big family This is about American national interests right and that implies that it's in everybody that's in Americans interest It's not when America goes out and topples a government, kills a million people, spends trillions of

Starting point is 01:39:47 dollars destabilizing entire continents, that is not for the long-term good of anybody on the planet other than the people who are profiting and reaping the rewards of that plunder. So I think just to remind people, if you're listening to a show like this, you're probably already on this wagon, but just to be incredibly suspicious of how nationalism is an attempt to make you identify with the nation state and not with your class and and to confront that is to adopt through class consciousness and identity as a working class person and then that right there says that you have more in common with a working class person in any other country than you do with the elite in your own. And that is a crucial step, I think, for the development of class consciousness in any

Starting point is 01:40:32 individual and it's something we have to increasingly keep in mind, especially as US imperialism is on the decline, lashes out more violently and will need to superstructurally condition and prime the pump of ideology amongst the American populace to continue to justify this endless conflict and war and imperial plunder. So something to keep in mind for sure. Yeah, thank you so much for that Brett. And one thing I've been thinking about since I got a little bit of pushback from actually Torkel Lausen, who I've mentioned earlier when I was talking about this stuff is he really emphasized this idea that there actually is and you mentioned, and I think it's really important, Brett, you said long term interests for the American people

Starting point is 01:41:15 in this process. And I would agree that there is absolutely no long term interest for anybody or the planet. But there are some short term interests, right? And there is something that this system provides that makes people buy into it. And I think this is sort of, this is where we get into the idea of a labor aristocracy. And so in chapter eight, Lenin shifts the conversation to that of the labor aristocracy. And that is this idea that the plunder from the global south and the crumbs of it, right, because most of it is accumulated by the capitalist class. But the crumbs of that extraction and that hyper exploitation, and the capital accumulation that happens in the global south, those are tossed to us here in the west, some of us at least. And that's where we begin to see this analysis of the world being divided into two, which I think many of us understand, you know, the language of the core and the periphery, the

Starting point is 01:42:19 north and the south, what Domenico Lacerdo refers to as the West and the East, and this primary contradiction in the world. And so, Allison, I'm wondering if you can maybe touch on that stuff a little bit and talk a little bit about this labor aristocracy and this global division. Yeah, so this is a fun one because I think there's a ton of controversy around this question. There's an exceptional amount of disagreement about what the labor aristocracy means, and I think there's a lot of ambiguity in this text as well that I want to be attentive to. So briefly before getting into kind of textually what Lenin is saying here, I do want to again

Starting point is 01:42:58 address the historical context because I think it matters. At the time that Lenin is writing this, he's watched much of the global socialist movement succumb to national chauvinism, and that is primarily in the form of supporting their own nation in World War I. So one of the important things to remember is that at the time of the Russian Revolution, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Bolsheviks is that they were what were called revolutionary defeatists, right? So they argued that instead of defending the motherland during the Great War, they ought to fight for the end of the war and even the defeat of their own country during that war. Lenin famously said that the task of socialists is to turn imperialist war into civil war, right?

Starting point is 01:43:39 And we see this actually when the Bolsheviks take power, one of the first things that they do is get out of World War I. But this wasn't the trend globally or even the trend outside the Bolsheviks within Russia, right? Within Germany, the SDP had capitulated to being a pro-war party, and many of these formerly quite revolutionary thinkers became allies of the conservative factions within Germany, supporting the war and supporting German imperialism, essentially. And so that's obviously one thing that Lenin is kind of sickened by here as he enters this discussion. The other thing is that even within Russia we saw this. Many of the

Starting point is 01:44:13 Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionary Party, these groups that had been involved in these revolutionary struggles, saw themselves turning towards national chauvinism and a defense of Russian imperialism, kind of in the face of this moment. This is the context in which Lenin is writing here. And I think with the labor aristocracy as a concept, one of the things that's tough to tease out is whether or not Lenin is saying that all of kind of the working class within an imperialist nation is bought off as a form of labor aristocracy, or whether or not it's

Starting point is 01:44:43 partial, right? So in your presentation of the question, Robbie, I think you get at this. Imperialism has some crumbs that make it down to at least some of the workers, and that has an impact here. But it's an open question, I think, like, is that all of the workers? Is that the leaders of the workers? The text is a little unclear. So I'll go to a quote from this chapter briefly where Lennon says that, quote, within the working class movement, the opportunists who are for the moment victorious

Starting point is 01:45:08 in most countries are working systematically and undeviatingly in this very direction. Imperialism, which means the partitioning of the world and the exploitation of other countries besides China, which means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries makes it economically possible to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives shapes to, and strengthens opportunism." So it's clear that imperialism is being used here to bribe off some parts of the working class, right? But again, there's this kind of ambiguous language of the upper strata, and it's not always clear who this refers to.

Starting point is 01:45:50 I think certainly it absolutely refers to the leadership within these socialist movements that turn to national chauvinism. That's one thing that Lenin is looking at, this frustration with the willingness of not just socialists but also labor leaders to fall in line with war bonds and the imperialist efforts of their country more generally, but there is still this division that takes place here, and so I'll quote Lenin one more time here, where he says that quote, In speaking of the British working class, the bourgeois student of British imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century is obliged to distinguish systematically between the upper stratum of the workers and the lower stratum of the proletariat proper. The upper stratum furnishes the bulk of the memberships of cooperatives, of trade unions, of sporting clubs, and numerous religious sects.

Starting point is 01:46:30 To this level is adapted the electoral system, which in Great Britain is still sufficiently restricted to exclude the lower stratum of the British working class in a rosy light, only the upper stratum, which constitutes a minority of the population, is usually spoken of." So again, Lenin is making this distinction here where it's specifically these opportunist leaders within the labour movement who get framed as the labour aristocracy, and I think this raises this whole controversy around this part of the text. The kind of more third-worldist camp, which actually to be clear is the camp that I think I'm more sympathetic to here, understands imperialist super-profits as basically buying off the entirety of the working class. And I think that's work that many scholars have actually taken the time to try to establish the truth of. But it is worth noting that here, I don't know if that's quite what Lenin is actually saying, right? He's very much referring to the bribing of this upper strata in particular.

Starting point is 01:47:31 Now, I will say in defense of that kind of third world disposition, if you bribe the upper strata and they control the actual institutions through which the lower strata expresses its power, such as unions and socialist parties, then you've kind of bribed the lower strata as well, right? Like, there's the sort of transitive control there. But, you know, I do think it's worth acknowledging this kind of ambiguity in how labor aristocracy gets talked about. It's at least a part of the class that is bought off by imperialism and which then sides with national chauvinism. And again, in the historical context, this is probably the leaders of trade unions, the SDP, the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia, the Mensheviks, etc. But there's still a lot of work, I think, to extrapolate this out to what this means currently.

Starting point is 01:48:15 And so I don't want to pretend like the text itself gives us a clear, easy-to-work-with definition of this concept. There's actually quite a bit of ambiguity that I think us as contemporary Marxists have to take up in teasing out and really understanding how that functions in the world today. And Brett, I would like to throw it over to you here to talk a bit about also this idea of the labor aristocracy. And thank you so much for doing that, Alison, and presenting it and introducing it and giving us some of the sense of the ambiguity there. There's an example that's been on my mind, and maybe, Brett, if you want to build on or include in your response if you think it's helpful. I can't help but think of the example a couple of months ago when the International Long

Starting point is 01:49:01 Shoremen's Association of Dockworkers went on strike. And they actually agreed to cross their own picket lines in a sense to send arms to Israel. And I thought this was a really striking example and it made me think of this idea of the labor aristocracy and, you know, especially this idea to the, I think the ILA on the East Coast at least is known as being a little bit more of a conservative or at times even a reactionary labor union. And then also I want to bring this piece in as well too, because actually it was an episode of Red Menace I was listening to not too long ago. Allison, you've spoken about how, and I'm quoting you here, one of the ways that imperialism

Starting point is 01:49:41 functions is that there's a sort of social contract with the population of the United States, which is that we get to engage in these imperialist and aggressive wars and spend all of your tax money there, and then in exchange you get to have some sort of level of quality of life improvement on the basis of imperialist extraction that trickles down to the average citizen. And now you guys went on to talk about how that era might be ending. Yeah, it's this sort of also related to this idea, I think, Samir Amin called it imperialism rent, right? So I'm just gonna throw all of that at you, Brad, I know there's a lot there. So I'm curious if you want to build on anything that Allison or

Starting point is 01:50:22 I said, or if you want to share anything build on that example, or just anything else you'd like to share about this labor aristocracy concept. Yeah, that's really interesting that quote from Allison, because before you even said that you guys went on to talk about whether or not that's going to remain true, that was kind of what I was thinking about more and more. That was certainly true for a long time. But now with the average American, there's those ambiguities that Allison was talking about and I kind of want to reiterate that importance of that dispute

Starting point is 01:50:49 to think deeply and critically, no slogans, no dogmatism. Think deeply about the labor aristocracy, how far down the class ladder at home it extends and what the decline of U.S. imperialism might mean for that labor aristocracy? But one thing is for sure that the average quality of life for the average person in the US is on the decline and Not being able to access housing not being able to access education health care It seems like if there was a social contract and certainly there was Unsaid right an implicit social contract that we're gonna go out and we're gonna fuck up the entire world, but you're gonna be able to own your home and fucking go on vacation once or twice a year. And so far as that existed for a segment of the American population, of course always along racial lines,

Starting point is 01:51:35 there's a division there, but that might be less and less true. And I think one of the symptoms of that becoming less and less true is the emergence has always been on the left a sort of anti-war sentiment, but on the right, that America First sentiment that is increasing where there's more and more outright skepticism that 20 years ago was unheard of by conservatives and libertarians against all these wars. Now some of them want certain wars and not others, maybe stop the Ukraine war but intensify the Israel one or Move Ukraine away so that we can take on China, right? But the fact that that's becoming a major talking point on the American right I think says something about the decline of imperialism

Starting point is 01:52:15 Etc but again, these are hard questions that we should all thoughtfully and critically grapple with and keep an eye on the development of how these strains of thought play out. But I did also want to mention that. Allison mentioned Lenin's quote about turning imperialist war into civil war. And I just thought that was a pretty timely inversion of exactly what Cecil Rhodes said, right? That we've got to stop a civil war by turning to imperialism. So they're on opposite ends of the spectrum saying the same thing. So I think it really adds weight to that whole idea of that deep connection there. But, you

Starting point is 01:52:49 know, with regards to the Longshoremen's Association doing what they did with regards to sending weapons to Israel, I think what's more important there is to think about the superstructural conditioning to identify with national interests often expressed as patriotism. So there's that aspect there. And in fact, in this text, Lenin says, quote, the non-economic superstructure, which grows up on the basis of financial capital, its politics and its ideology, stimulates the striving for colonial conquest. So I think that's a piece of the puzzle. But then also the product of decades of conscious deradicalizing of the unions by the ruling

Starting point is 01:53:26 class, right? Going back to the Red Scares in the early 20th century through the Cold War and McCarthyism and all of that served in part to deradicalize unions, to strip them away from the workers movement, the international workers movement. And on top of that, you had the labor aristocracy, the siphoning of profits. Certainly we know that these really well-paid strata of workers in these unions, in these reactionary and conservative unions, if there is a labor aristocracy, it's right there, for sure.

Starting point is 01:53:59 So that has to be a part of it. And that process of de-radicalizing unions and de-unionizing the economy with the rise of Reagan I think is a multi-decades long process that results in things like this where unions are a real threat to the working class because they control choke points of the economy that could shut down this entire system in a fucking couple days if you did the right strikes in the right places at the right time and trying to deradicalize them of any leaders that would give them that class consciousness and that internationalist bent that could prevent such an action like sending weapons to fucking Israel to murder people and

Starting point is 01:54:34 integrating them into capitalism imperialism ideologically and materially and That is a long process that has been consciously undertaken by our rulers and has in a lot of ways succeeded. I think there are still murmurs of radicalism in the broader labor movement in the US. I think we're seeing more and more of it. Some recent events have been certainly heartening in that way, but it's still pretty minor. It hasn't taken off in a really widespread way, so that's something to focus on. But I also lastly wanted to touch on the question of internationalism and really and a torco Lawson actually makes this point a very strongly in that book that you mentioned the long transition

Starting point is 01:55:11 Towards socialism and the end of capitalism where he talks about this is a global system You know and that's the scale we have to operate on and so you have to have class solidarity across nation-states the world, which means class over country, and operating on the global scale. So internationalism is so essential for many reasons, but for one of the reasons, which is the thing we're combating, capitalism, imperialism, is a global phenomenon. And in order to combat that global phenomenon, we have to be an agent on the global stage. And the only way to do that is to transcend your mere national boundaries and unite with, as much as you possibly can,

Starting point is 01:55:52 the forces of proletarian resistance across the planet and anti-imperialist resistance across the planet. And so that's always going to be essential. And I think on the Marxist left, you see us emphasizing these struggles, particularly in the modern day example of the struggles of Palestine, as inexorably connected to the battle against imperialism, colonialism, and monopoly capitalism, since we understand those things to all be, you know, different aspects of the same process. So I think that's one of many reasons why internationalism is utterly, utterly

Starting point is 01:56:24 essential and we have to always foreground that in our analysis. So I think that's one of many reasons why internationalism is utterly, utterly essential. And we have to always foreground that in our analysis. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Brett. That was really incredible. And I know we're coming to time. And so I just kind of have, you know, sort of one wrap up question to ask you both. So what do you guys think of where we're at now in terms of capitalism's

Starting point is 01:56:51 evolution? I guess is sort of the nut of this question. Like, you know, we talked about imperialism being the last stage of capitalism, and we're kind of stuck with it, whether we like it or not. And Kwame Nkrumah has talked about neocolonialism as the last stage of imperialism, which is, you know, play on Lenin's idea. So where are we now? And what are some of the most significant questions that you guys are holding in terms of the developments of this system and the analysis that we've been talking about Lenin's analysis that we've been talking about, Lenin's analysis that we've been talking about. Yeah, so it's really interesting, right? I think 20 years ago, I might have felt that Lenin's ideas

Starting point is 01:57:32 need more of an update than I feel like they do today, which is because I think, you know, this text does not account very well for what imperialism might look like in a unipolar world, right? And to a certain degree, after the fall of the USSR and the ascendancy of the United States to something close to unipolar hegemony, that was an open question that maybe needed to be answered, right? You know, to the point where, you know, Fukuyama declares the end of history, right? Like, it is over. The United States in the neoliberal order is the global hegemon now, and what's done

Starting point is 01:58:03 is done. The funny thing is that to Lenin's credit that's not the state of the world anymore, right? Just 20 years later from really I think kind of the peak of that we have fallen back into a stage of multipolarity, we've fallen back into competing powers again in this really fascinating way and so I think to a large degree what Lenin talks about is still very applicable to a world that is being carved up all over again. There was a brief period where it felt like there was one actor who had won it all, and that is not the case at all anymore. And I recognize that's a controversial thing to say, because a subtle implication within that statement is that the other actors in this

Starting point is 01:58:39 multipolar world are engaging in imperialism as well, which is not necessarily a popular stance to take, but I'm going to go ahead and at least lightly hold it here. And so I think this idea of imperialism Lennon lays out here is still relevant. Now obviously, you know, you gesture towards neocolonialism, and I think this gets at one of the things that has changed in the world, which is the kind of interest into the post-colonial era, right? The 20th century sees decolonial struggle emerge and would seize successful declarations of independence by colonies across the world. And so the form that colonialism took when Lenin wrote this obviously is not necessarily the form it takes now. There are less outright instances of

Starting point is 01:59:22 colonization today, although obviously they still exist, like Israel is colonizing Gaza as we speak. It's not like that phenomena is gone, but it's not the predominant mode of imperialism. And now a kind of dependency structure in which these post-colonial states, often underdeveloped, often kind of excluded from the economies of the global system, are brought into the sphere of trade with specific imperialist states and made subservient to them through that trade and through cultural manipulation, has become a lot bigger, right? And this is one of these core ideas within neocolonialism as a concept. And so I do think it describes a change that has occurred there. But broadly, I don't think that that's a fundamental break with the ideas Lenin puts

Starting point is 02:00:03 forward here. It's, you know, again, it's the higher stage of imperialism, perhaps, but it still is imperialism nonetheless. So for me, and you know, it always feels somewhat doctrinaire to say this, but I think this text is as timely as ever, right? I think if we can do the hard work of understanding how obviously history didn't end when Lenin wrote this text in 1916, things change, but we can still understand how this text is applicable to our current situations. And I really think it is. The world is as marred and as torn apart by imperialism

Starting point is 02:00:33 as it ever has been. I think as we transition to an increasingly multipolar world that will be the case increasingly so, and it'll make the necessity of understanding how different monopolistic cartels compete with each other all the more important because I suspect that the rest of this century will once again be very defined by dynamics that are quite similar to what Lennon lays out here. Just add a little bit to that, which is absolutely correct and spot on is, you know, I think we are currently living through the end of an acute phase of capitalism, which is not as big. It's not like a stage of capitalism. It's just like, you know, these minor alterations within it as it continues on, which we have called for the last 40 years neoliberalism. You know, that neoliberal globalization era might be coming to an end in some profound ways. And I think we're entering a phase of much more robust nationalism, much more fascistic

Starting point is 02:01:24 responses by ostensibly liberal democratic governments that are going to increasingly try to get a hold on an increasingly chaotic situation globally and nationally. I think imperial war is almost guaranteed at this point. It feels baked in, whether that comes in five, 10, 15 years. I think we have been on the road and are continuing on the road of some horrific conflagration, something on par with another world war or something very close to it. But I think the contradictions of capitalism are going to continue to explode and I think

Starting point is 02:02:00 capitalism has fewer and fewer ways to manage things like it has in the past. That post-World War II era of relative equity, again along racial lines known as the New Deal here in the U.S., the system is unable to reproduce that right now. And then it goes into neoliberalism, which is in some ways a disintegration, a dismantling of that New Deal era, which was a threat to the rate of profit. And so we entered that period for a long time, which in a lot of ways is capitalism stripping the copper from the economy as the system itself becomes less and less sustainable, to say nothing of the ecological confines that capitalism is bumping up against.

Starting point is 02:02:42 So I think as capitalism continues to hit this wall, as it has less and less methods of retreat or or shifting, you know, shape shifting into something else as these contradictions come to a head in the form of global conflict, I think we're unfortunately entering a really dark and scary period, but it's also a transitional period, which means opportunities abound as well. So I think we're going to enter a period of tragedy, of widespread hardship, of horrors that we have never even experienced in our lives, our parents' lives, and perhaps our grandparents' lives. And I think that requires more than ever for us around the world, but specifically in the global core or the imperial core to up our

Starting point is 02:03:25 organizing up our political education up our anti-imperialism and to really fight as hard as we can to get as organized as we can for what's coming down the pike in the coming years because I think things are going to get worse before they get better and the only hope of them getting better I think is an international proletarian movement that is really trying to offer a vision that is something more than endless war and profit accumulation and bone chilling inequality and brutal austerity forever. Like we have a vision of the world rooted in cooperation and ecological sustainability where yeah some people you know what you don't get five houses, you where yeah, some people, you

Starting point is 02:04:05 know what, you don't get five houses, you don't get a yacht, you don't get a Bugatti. Everybody's going to have enough. We're going to live within our means as a species. We're going to cooperate internationally and in order to create that world, we have to be organized enough to defeat those who have all the money and power and all the interest in the world in maintaining this system which enriches them at the increasingly at the cost of everybody else and the planet's health itself. So I think that's what we're we're shifting into here and like I said it's gonna get it's gonna

Starting point is 02:04:37 get ugly but that's why community and solidarity and organization is probably more important in the coming years than it has been in our entire lifetimes and we really really got a rise to the challenge. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Brett O'Shea and Allison Escalante of Red Menace, a podcast that explains and analyzes revolutionary theory and that applies its lessons to our contemporary conditions. Alison and Brett are both return guests to the show. In fact, they've been on a number of times to talk about other texts by Lennon, but also

Starting point is 02:05:17 to explore a wide variety of topics, from trans liberation to revolutionary Buddhism. Brett is also the host of the terrific podcast Revolutionary Left Radio and Shoeless in South Dakota. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, and make sure to check out Red Menace's episode from 2018 on imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. It's an excellent complement to this episode and explores a wide variety of angles that we did not get a chance to touch on here. Thank you to Link Ray for the intermission music. The cover art for this episode is from Well Read Book's edition of Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism.

Starting point is 02:06:07 Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is almost entirely listener-funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber which will give you access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show and it will also give you access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Sign up and find out more at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. And if Patreon's not really your thing, you can also make a tax deductible recurring or

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Starting point is 02:07:50 into more ears. Thank you. Oh Ah Oh

Upstream - Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism w/ Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante

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