Anti-Imperialism, War and
Peace, Part 2a
Lenin in disguise, 1917
Consequences of Imperialist War
The origin of the Age of
Imperialism, when it became dominant in the world, were the Imperial wars at
the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries, and most
typically, the Anglo-Boer War.
The Anglo-Boer War is the
most typical of the original wars, because it showed most clearly what the
nature of the new capitalist Imperialism was. Britain made war on the Boer
Republics, not so as to rule them directly, and certainly not to liberate the
black people living under those racist regimes; but only to possess the gold
mines and other such assets as they might wish to have.
The recent Imperialist war on
Libya is not different in overall nature.
The typical tactic of
Imperialism is not direct colonialism, but indirect, neo-colonialism. As the 20th
century went on, the obligations that went with direct rule were abandoned. As
a counter to the National Democratic Revolutions, neo-colonialism was
increasingly substituted for the older system of direct colonial rule.
This much was described by
Lenin in the text that went with the previous post in this series. Lenin paid
close attention to the question of Imperialism and wrote a lot about it.
It may be helpful for us to
look briefly at the general situation before 1916, and thereafter. The Great
Powers had gone to war in 1914, as a consequence of the tensions that
Imperialism had brought with it, in a finite, limited world that had been
divided between the major powers, but unevenly.
The Workers’ (Second)
International had, instead of opposing the war, collapsed. The socialist
parties of the contending powers had nearly all opted to support their
different bourgeois governments in the terrible mutual slaughter and destruction.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
refused to support the war. They formed the major force in the small
“Zimmerwald” International, together with other formations that wanted to
maintain the international working-class position of opposition to capitalist
war.
By that time Lenin had been
in exile for many years. He returned from Switzerland to Russia in April, 1917,
a few weeks after the February revolution of that year.
In “The Nascent Trend of
Imperialist Economism” (attached), Lenin attacks the “Imperialist Economism”
that is against the right to self-determination and against democracy.
Imperialist Economism has “the knack of persistently ‘sliding’ from
recognition of imperialism to apology for imperialism (just as the Economists
of blessed memory slid from recognition of capitalism to apology for
capitalism),” says Lenin.
“Economism” is Syndicalism,
or in South African parlance, “Workerism”. It is the belief that trade union
struggles alone can solve the problems of the working class. It is reformist,
and it relies upon the promises of development of the capitalist economy, with
no plans to overthrow it.
“Imperialist Economism” took
the reformist logic one step further, to say that Imperialism should be allowed
to develop to its fullest, in the belief that when the whole world had become
one big monopoly, it could simply be taken over and re-named socialism. The
Imperialist Economists promoted the idea that socialism was the end-destination
of the Imperialist bus-ride, and that all that was necessary was to get on the
bus and encourage Imperialism’s progress, in the name of socialism.
The German Social-Democrat
Karl Kautsky, who Lenin called a “renegade”, and “no better than a common
liberal”, became the prophet of Imperialist Economism.
In the face of this
particular brand of treacherous liquidationism, Lenin was obliged to re-state
the necessity for the right of nations to self-determination (see the second attached
item). This is a longer document. In it, early on, under the heading “Socialism
and the Self-Determination of Nations”, Lenin wrote: “We have affirmed that it would be a betrayal of socialism to refuse to
implement the self-determination of nations under socialism.”
So as not to make this introduction too long, let us sum up:
·
There is no final separation between socialism and
internationalism (“Workers of the World, Unite!”) but
·
Nations have the right of self-determination
Using the next item we will see the consequence of this struggle of
ideas, as it affected the world after the Russian Revolution, and after the
Imperialist world war of 1914 -1918 was over.
We will see that Lenin personally, and the Communist International in
particular, were able to map out the line of march for the National Democratic
Revolutions that subsequently liberated most of the planet, including,
eventually, South Africa, from direct colonialism.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-texts: The Nascent
Trend of Imperialist Economism, 1916, Lenin, and The Right of
Nations to Self-Determination, 1916, Lenin, and Discussion on Self-Determination
Summed Up, 1916, Lenin.
