Is Lenin’s theory of imperialism still valid?

First published in Portuguese at Esquerda Online. Translation republished from Communis.

It is never as easy to get lost as when one thinks they know the way.
Popular Chinese proverb

1. From Lenin we inherited a theory concerning the nature of imperialism. It rested upon three distinct, divergent ideas, even as they were intertwined. The first was that imperialism marked a stage in capitalism’s unfolding, its pinnacle of development, signaling, in dialectical terms, both its zenith and the onset of its decline, or an age of revolution. In other words, a criterion of historical periodisation was stratified under the supremacy of the imperialist powers at the center, surrounded by a vast periphery of dominated nations, integrated to sharply unequal degrees, many colonies, some semi-colonies and very few independent countries, meaning a rigid and hierarchical international state system, that is a global order. The third was the constituing elements of an imperialist state as it existed in the twentieth century. In essence, a standard of measurement for determining the mode of incorporation into the world market and the position occupied within the international state system.

2. These three ideas, articulated across distinct levels of abstraction, retain their full political and theoretical power. The most radical proposition maintained that modern imperialism ushered in an era in which capitalism reached its height even as it entered a phase of decay. It remains unassailable, having withstood the test of historical experience. The imperialist system led humanity into two calamitous world wars. The twentieth century was one of revolutions that uprooted capitalist domination in societies encompassing some 30% of humanity. The preservation of an imperialist order threatens humankind’s continued survival for no less than four compelling reasons: (1) the menace of new destructive economic crises like those of 1929 and 2008; (2) the looming catastrophe of global warming and the systemic incapacity of capitalism to effect an emergency energy transition; (3) the global arms race and the military intimidation by the Triad, notably the U.S., aimed to assert imperialist control over the world; (4) the rise of a neo-fascist, nationalist far-right that fights for power, overturning the democratic advances of the past three generations.

3. Of course, Lenin was not a flawless prophet. His work established solid methodological foundations, yet his legacy fundamentally offered a conceptual framework for studying tendencies and counter-tendencies, not a millenarian doctrine. A good Marxist engages in prognostic assessment, but this should not be confused with mere fortune-telling. Nor one can escape the need to revise the other two theses. The world order is far from what it once was, having undergone qualitative transformations more than once and the standards for assessing what counts as an imperialist state have not remained intact. Over a hundred years later, both the world market and the state system have shifted. The structure of the imperialist order has evolved and become increasingly intricate. Since 1975 in Vietnam, half a century has gone by without the triumph of another socialist revolution. Thirty-five years have passed since the capitalist restoration in the former USSR and Eastern Europe. The global system of states is no longer structured merely as a division between competing central imperialist powers and a vast periphery. Intermediate positions are both varied and manifold. In 1916, the year when Lenin wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, neither the USSR nor the end of European colonial domination in Africa and Asia had yet come into being; nor did institutions such as Bretton Woods, the IMF, the World Bank, the dollar’s central role in global hoarding, or the mountain of fictitious capital created by the hegemony of neoliberal strategy exist, nor the United Nations with its system, including the WTO, WHO, UNCTAD, UNESCO, the Paris Agreement and the International Criminal Court. Neither Lenin’s framework çould account for the European Union, nor an imperialist Israel, nor a new Russian imperialism outside the G7, nor BRICS and much less China as the world’s second-largest power. To defend the “letter” of Lenin’s work instead of its analytical approach amounts to dogmatic inflexibility. A contemporary revision of the theory of imperialism contains far more of Lenin’s spirit than a dogmatic defense of the 1916 text.

4. From a historical perspective, at least three distinct political phases have unfolded within the imperialist epoch. The first and most turbulent stage, characterised by the predominance of great-power rivalries and the victory of the first socialist revolution, continued until the end of the Second World War. The second phase begins with the defeat of Nazifascism, distinguished by collaboration among the imperialist powers in confronting the revolutionary threat and by a policy of peaceful coexistence with Moscow: beginning with remarkable successes and ending with the demise of the USSR. The third phase commenced with the historic defeat of capitalist restoration, unfolded through the expansion of global capital culminating in the 2008 crisis, endured a decade of pandemic-exacerbated economic stagnation, and continues into the present with China’s rise and the offensive of the neo-fascist far-right.

5. Acknowledging the world’s long-standing imperialist order does not imply that a global government is in place. Capitalism has remained confined within the national boundaries of its imperialist states and hence conflicts among the bourgeoisies of the central nations endure. The notion of ultra-imperialism, flirted with in the era of the Second International, has been refuted by history: a unification of the material interests of the bourgeoisies of the central powers. Enduring disputes among the bourgeoisies of the imperialist powers, together with conflicts between fractions within each state, remain intact, evident, for instance, in the confrontation between Trump’s United States and the European Union. Even in the postwar political-historical stage, against the backdrop of the Cold War, from 1945 to 1991, capitalism was shaken by the shock of a mighty revolutionary upsurge that overturned the old colonial empires. But it would be foolish to deny that imperialist counterrevolution has drawn lessons from history. The United States, alongside the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, preserve a strategic alliance at the center of the Triad, in complementary ties with the European Union and Japan. At the heart of the world’s crisis lies the fact that this supremacy is imperiled owing to the threat of economic stagnation in the medium run. Faith placed in artificial intelligence and new technologies seems unlikely to prevent China’s ascent, which challenges the Triad on level ground. Consequently, the United States is compelled toward a national-imperialist strategy of fortifying its deterrent military hegemony.

6. For three-quarters of a century, the world has been under a clear U.S. political hegemony, though even this supremacy cannot dispense with negotiations. Clashes between the interests of the United States, Japan and Western Europe compelled Washington, for example, to partially abandon the Bretton Woods system in 1971, suspending the dollar’s fixed parity with gold and devaluing its currency to safeguard the internal market while making exports more competitive. Inter-corporate competition and rivalry between core states remain intact, albeit with oscillations in their intensity. Trump’s current global tariff offensive is an additional chapter in the broader arc of imperialist domination. Yet it would be short-sighted to deny that the ruling classes of the principal imperialist powers succeeded in establishing a core in the international state system following the almost complete destruction brought about by the Second World War. It continues to manifest institutionally decades after the USSR dissolved, via the UN and Bretton Woods institutions: specifically, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, the Bank for International Settlements in Basel and ultimately the G7. At the centre of the power is the Triad: the United States, the European Union and Japan. The EU and Japan have complementary relations with Washington, and they have accepted its superiority since the end of World War II. The international historical turning point of 1989–91 did not alter the role of the Triad, and in particular, the position of the United States. Although the United States’ dominance has been eroded, it persists. The commanding weight of its internal market, the dollar as the principal currency for global hoarding, unmatched military power and proactive geopolitical strategy have enabled it, despite tendencies toward structural weakening, to remain at the apex of the international state system.

7. The Left is divided by two dominant and erroneous understandings regarding the meaning of the current world order. The first is the one that equates China’s project with the strategy of the United States and assumes that the current “Cold War” is merely a prelude, at some future point, to a Third World War. Simplifying the twenty-first-century order using the model of a hundred years ago, when the inter-imperialist rivalry between England, France and Germany prevailed and attributing an equivalent significance to the conflict between the US and China is an error. Comparing China’s role to that of Germany or Japan in the twentieth century is an anachronism. China is not Germany marching in “slow-motion” towards world war. In China, one of the greatest peasant-based and anti-imperialist social revolutions in history triumphed, the bourgeoisie was expropriated and fled to Taiwan. A post-capitalist transition began, and despite a controlled capitalist restoration, creating a historical hybrid of market mechanisms and planned economy, neither the domestic bourgeoisie nor the Chinese bourgeoisie in the diaspora controls the state. It remains under the control of the Communist Party, which has survived despite tragic internal struggles. Unlike Russia, in China the social stratum that assumed power in 1949, a socialist bureaucracy, did not allow the strengthening of the domestic bourgeoisie to destroy the revolution’s achievements. The Chinese state is an emerging economic power and, increasingly, a military and an outer-space power as well, but it follows a defensive strategy of accumulating strength and preserving positions. The power that currently threatens the world is the United States.

8. On the other hand, reducing this complex reality to a simple struggle between the Triad and a generic Global South of semicolonial countries is absurd. China is not part of a romanticised Global South and, while it does not threaten with imperialist intervention, it exploits the advantages of unequal trade relations with Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East through commodity commerce. The existence of BRICS provides some support for peripheral countries but, for now, does not go beyond a defensive economic coordination in response to the Triad’s dominance. These two models cannot explain the current world order. Defining imperialist states solely or primarily by economic criteria seems obsolete. The Triad still dominates the system of states, but its hegemony over the global market has diminished. Russia relies on oil and gas extraction but remains the second nuclear power, a subordinate imperialism maintaining influence from Belarus to Kyrgyzstan. China is the world’s largest industrial economy and a rising global power. India possesses nuclear weapons, Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal, Iran exercises sub-imperialist influence in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, not to mention the roles of Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, the resilience of independent Venezuela with the largest oil reserves, and even Brazil’s strategic position within Mercosur.

9. What criteria determine whether a country is imperialist? How should we measure the position each State occupies within the international system? In the context of Marxist theory, this debate has focused on responding to the transformations preceding the First World War, which made a new understanding of capitalism possible. Hobson’s Imperialism (1902) was favourably received by Kautsky, the leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the most influential party of the Second International. Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910) also drew major attention. Luxemburg and Bukharin contributed pioneering work, but it was Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism that had the greatest impact. Lenin identified five key factors in capital’s metabolism that marked a new phase of capitalism: (1) concentration of capital and monopoly formation; (2) the fusion of industrial and banking capital into finance capital; (3) the role of capital exports in securing and maintaining dominance; (4) the creation of multinational corporations that divide the global market; (5) and the global partitioning of the world among imperialist States. According to Lenin, the five defining features of imperialism are: (1) the concentration of production and capital to such a high degree that monopolies emerge, playing a decisive role in economic life; (2) the fusion of bank capital with industrial capital, creating “finance capital” dominated by a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital, which becomes far more significant than the mere export of goods; (4) the formation of international monopolist associations of capitalists that divide global markets among themselves; (5) the final partition of the world among the most powerful capitalist states. These five, primarily economic, criteria remain relevant today. To dismiss them would be unwise. Yet they are not enough. Many former imperialist States of the previous historical stage, perhaps most, have lost their formal imperialist status. Although still central powers within the international hierarchy, many of these states now occupy positions of partial dependence on the current imperialist center.

10. While Lenin’s criteria remain relevant, they do not fully capture contemporary imperialism for three reasons: (1) today, capital accumulation depends on globalised financialisation and the massive creation of fictitious capital, requiring highly integrated production chains and international capital circulation, a privilege few states possess; (2) the global order has shifted. For over seven decades, world peace has been maintained by nuclear deterrence, meaning imperialist power expresses itself not only in economic and financial dominance but also, crucially, in military supremacy; (3) only states with full sovereignty in strategic areas, food, energy, education, science, economy, politics, military, and space, can occupy an imperialist position.

Translated from the original in Portuguese by Noam Sala Budgen.