Capitalist expansion and the imperialism–globalization debate: contemporary Marxist explanations

Abstract

This article examines contemporary Marxist debates concerning the expansion of international capitalism. Marx's legacy concerning the progressiveness of capitalism but the specificity of the ‘English transition’ and the inequalities of the international division of labour are briefly outlined, before moving on to an examination of how these two contrasting legacies have been developed. The first development related to theories of imperialism, which have recently enjoyed a resurgence in the context of the unilateralist policies of the Bush administration in the United States (US). These views are then contrasted to theories of capitalist globalization, associated in different ways with theories of transnational capitalism, post-imperialism and Empire. The article criticizes both approaches — theories of imperialism neglect the significance of independence for post-colonial states and the interdependence of ‘free trade’, while theories of globalization neglect the continued significance of nation-states and the US in particular, and exaggerate the ‘transnationality’ of capital. An alternative approach is then outlined which attempts to provide a historically grounded theory of uneven development, based on the global concentration of capital and current dominance of financial capital, and the local specificity of capitalist development, as well as the continued importance of the nation-state, and one state in particular.