The Lenin-Kautsky Unity-Rivalry Debate

Abstract

This paper examines the contemporary significance of the World War I debate about the inevitability of nation-state rivalry during the era of fin ance capital. After outlining the historically specific theory of nation-state rivalry in Hilferding's Finanzkapital, accepted by both Lenin and Kautsky, the paper maintains that their fundamentally different predictions about the future of imperialism do not stem from opposing definitions of imperialism; nor does the rivalry position rest on the Leninist identification of finance capital export as the predominant method of capital's expansion. Instead, the crucial division between the World War I revolutionary socialists and social democrats is caused by their opposing analyses of the internationalization of capital's impact on: 1. class rela tions within the metropolitan countries; and 2. relations among national bour geoisies. The essay concludes by arguing that there is not a strict logical connec tion between contemporary and classical Leninist rivalry theories: they do not necessarily share similar conceptions of metropolitan class relations and the capitalist state. The World War I controversy is nevertheless significant because it helps elucidate the continuing importance of analyzing imperialism's impact on the responses of nation-states to evolving class contradictions within the center.