Abstract
The rise of China has prompted US geostrategic thinkers over the past decade to talk about the degree to which another “world war” is inevitable, and has also contributed to growing accusations that China is “imperialist.” It will be argued that it is possible to accuse China of “imperialism” under the definitional outline Vladimir Lenin popularised, but only because, in his model of the world, he considered the export of capital to be a defining feature of imperialism; however, this is flawed because his model had no theoretical space for the mechanisms of national exploitation that prevailed at that time, most importantly the “drain” of wealth from India. This is because Lenin's model was borrowed from that of John A. Hobson, who outright denied the “drain.” At the time, the claim of the “drain” was pioneered by Indian economist Dadabhai Naoroji, who in turn greatly influenced contemporary pioneers about the topic, namely Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, whose framework offers useful insights. After reconstructing the term “imperialism,” it will be argued that Chinese capital exports are actually weakening national exploitation, which is weakening imperialism and raising tensions, not towards “inter-imperialist” conflict, but “hegemon–rival” conflict.
Highlights
The rising power and influence of China has prompted many US geostrategic thinkers within the “realist” tradition to discuss the extent to which another “world war” is inevitable, if not advocate the necessity of aggressively containing China, which has prompted references to the 5th century BC Athenian general Thucydides, whoWorld Review of Political Economy Vol 12 No 1 Spring 2021famously wrote, “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable” (Yicai Global 2017)
The rise of China and the fear this instils in the US has been accompanied by growing accusations that China is “imperialist.” This is important because regardless of the precise meaning of the term, which will be discussed in due course, there is no doubt that the term is pejorative, often taking the form of an accusation, and that is because it was originally popularised by Marxist-Leninist theory in that manner
Addressing the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920, according to Lenin, “the characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world . . . being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and insignificant number of oppressor nations”— what can be called “national exploitation,” and that “about 70% of the world’s population, belong to the oppressed nations”—a clear reference to those nations subjugated by multiple rival empires (Lenin 1920)
Summary
The rising power and influence of China has prompted many US geostrategic thinkers within the “realist” tradition to discuss the extent to which another “world war” is inevitable, if not advocate the necessity of aggressively containing China, which has prompted references to the 5th century BC Athenian general Thucydides, whoWorld Review of Political Economy Vol 12 No 1 Spring 2021famously wrote, “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable” (Yicai Global 2017). That period, when extended to the end of WWII (World War II) to include the Bengal famine (1943), coincided with the worst famines ever experienced in Indian history, killing up to 49–51 million people (Kumar and Desai 1983, 546–550; Grove 2006, 81–83), most of it directly attributable to British policy, according to the literature on the subject.1 From 1765 to 1938, this “drain” of wealth created the conditions for the first Industrial Revolution in Britain, and the subsequent export of capital, goods, and settlers.
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