Thoughts?
Don’t agree with his assessment at all pretty much, but still interested what yous think about that stance, because really I’ve not seen much theory based discussion on the topic since the early days of the conflict.
Thoughts?
Don’t agree with his assessment at all pretty much, but still interested what yous think about that stance, because really I’ve not seen much theory based discussion on the topic since the early days of the conflict.
Imperialism is not merely “when finance capital abroad”, it’s only when it’s used for squeezing countries for imperial gain that it becomes an issue, Russia simply lacks the actual power to do it on a global scale like the US.
Can there be a “finance capital abroad” without squeezing involved? It wouldn’t be named capital if it weren’t appropriating surplus value and converting it into itself, where surplus value here ofc would have to come from labor exploitation
China is a good example of benevolent capital export, since it is building roads, ports, railways etc, as a part of BRI because China is building up those countries to sell them stuff. Not to extract their mineral wealth, or whatever. Now, the difference between China and Russia is that China is socialist and Russia is obviously not so you can definitely argue that Russia’s capital export is more malicious but there is really no major example of Russia deliberately crippling other countries through global institutions that it controls in way the US does with the IMF.
I think lxvi here gives a pretty good explanation of the situation. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/252831/comment/211954
Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear. What I’m asking about is theory and not the current situation. Marx defines exploitation of workers as appropriation of surplus-value produced by them, and that it’s structurally embedded into the nature of capital as self-valorizing value. If there’s no appropriation of surplus value, the “capital” can’t grow, and thus it’s not valid to call it capital at all, in the Marxist sense. Hence, if capital is by definition a cycle that involves exploitation, capital export must involve exploitation export.
This is a different matter than more colloquially used piss-in-bottles exploitation of workers (that’s means to extract more surplus value from workers, but aren’t structurally embedded), or certain Western hegemon country learning their foreign policy from a spoiled elephant in a glassware store; nor am I trying to make any sort of moral judgment about good and evil capitals.
Indeed! Lenin writes about this in “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”. Upon maximization of profit within national borders, monopolies expand abroad and the proletariat of those countries have their surplus value stolen by foreign bourgeoisie rather than the local capitalists. I don’t think it’s accurate to call this process “exploitation export”, however. It’s merely switching the exploiters from local to foreign. It’s more like neo-colonialism because once resources and surplus value go abroad, it’s pretty much impossible to get it back, whereas the surplus value stolen by national bourgeoisie could be reclaimed through revolution.
Or at least that’s my understanding of it.
They’re not quite a hegemon yet, but still a decent amount resources come over to Russia.