Introduction

In recent years, a great deal has been written and said about globalisation. The imperialist powers even derived an ideology which is expressed with this concept, and which corresponds to their worldwide interests. To such an extent that, everything is being explained via this concept: Global economy, global interests, global terror, global assault, global defence, global hazards etc. Under conditions that the socialist movement is at the bottom and the bourgeois ideology has gained strength, the concept of globalisation has been almost declared as the motto of the twenty-first century. The liberal and reformist left circles that tailed after the bourgeois ideology theorised the fact of globalisation in accordance with the interests of the bourgeoisie. Globalisation has been and is being presented decorated with pompous labels like “post-capitalist society” or “information society” as if it were a magic potion that would eternalize the capitalist mode of production. Certainly, some real and qualitative alterations caused by the development tendency of the capitalist system beyond national boundaries in its operation and organization have become, especially after 1980, quite apparent. However, it is completely wrong to treat and interpret the facts expressed with the concept of globalisation as if they were brand-new events which would alter the basic laws of capitalism. Let us state an important point from the outset, in order to avoid a mental confusion. Had not the bourgeoisie used the term globalisation to name the international expansion of capitalism during the stormy period that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and transformed the world balance of forces, it would be unnecessary to put such a term into circulation. For the concept of imperialism already covers the facts and tendencies in question. Nevertheless the concept of globalisation permeated into our daily life, whether we like it or not. As a matter of fact, insofar as it points to the basic tendencies of development already formulated by the term imperialism, it is nonsense to protest against the concept of globalisation. The question is not the concept in and of itself. Whatever we call the universalising tendency of the capitalist mode of production, imperialism or globalisation, the real point is to wage a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system. We should bear in mind that those who lack a consistent revolutionary attitude against this system, and confine their opposition with proving that there is no such thing as globalisation are standing on a completely fragile surface. Some arguments put forward by the economists within the context of globalisation debates do reflect current tendencies of the capitalist development. For instance, the interdependence of national economies has increased and the integration of various countries into the capitalist system has deepened. However, inequality between countries still exists in all these respects. It would be incorrect to perceive globalisation as a consummated integration, since there are still many countries and regions exceedingly backward in capitalist development and not yet integrated into the capitalist system. But after all, it is crystal clear that globalisation has gone a long way in the sense that the capitalist economy has become more universalised in comparison with the past. After 1980 the process of removing the legal obstacles to the circulation of goods, services and capital has gained momentum. For instance transnational investments have grown more than twenty times from 1980’s to 2000’s. Likewise, the globalisation of financial markets during the same process has developed by leaps and bounds, and hot money flows in the world stock markets accelerated and grew in an incredible manner. The sum total of international exchange of foreign currencies increased from approximately 500 billion USD per day in 1990 to well above 1.5 trillion USD in a span of not more than ten years. The comparison method of certain left circles which, for the sake of opposing the ideology of globalisation, ignore the actual economic developments is not a sound approach. For instance, it is argued that the analysis of globalisation is a fabrication since world trade was much brighter before the First World War. However, looking back to the past we observe that in the course of time items of trade have changed in nature and, more importantly, commodity export has partially been replaced by direct investments. It is a striking example that by 1990’s multinational Japan companies was selling 95% of their outputs produced in the US and EU countries in these same markets. Thus, world trade volume has not contracted, but grown. The qualitative and quantitative significance of multinational companies which are composed of monopolies from different nations –and thereof also called transnational companies by some– in world economy has greatly increased. To such an extent that the world economy is now dominated by a few hundred multinational companies. It is reported that the biggest 200 multinational companies control half of the global goods trade. The companies of this scale are increasingly attaining huge proportions; the annual revenues of some surpass even the GDP of many countries. Objective conditions makes necessary that globalising big monopolies handle their plans of investment, production and distribution in a global scale. Thus the nation-state, loses its weight in the direction of the process of capitalist production compared to the past, paving the way for multinational supreme institutions and regional economic unions. The macro economic and social policies required and carried out by capitalist governments have become global, losing their national character. And most importantly, markets are becoming global in terms of capital flows, production and commercial activities. If it is a correct approach to try to comprehend economical, social and political facts in their concrete developments, we should also be aware of the falsifications and memory cleansing carried out by the bourgeoisie. Today the bourgeois ideology endeavours to make forgotten the essential realities long-known in almost every crucial problem of concern to broad toiling masses. The most striking example within our context is the irony that Marxism which sheds light on the very issue of globalisation has been proclaimed outdated!

Reality and ideology

Marxism has been constantly explaining that capitalism cannot but expand all over the globe and universalise. Clearly capitalism’s desire for global expansion is not a new one. However, the level of globalisation did not remain the same, but progressed in the course of time. This activity has brought about new dimensions and new problems of capitalist reality. Thus in 1980’s the bourgeois ideology launched attacks this time under the name of globalisation. The concept of globalization is derived from the word “glob” meaning round. Thus it is desired to define a tendency that embraces the globe. Using it as a pretext, the bourgeoisie retouches its old ideological materials and presents them as brand new under the label of globalism. Yet there is in a sense nothing new under the sun. Our world has always been a global planet. The rising of a global economic system, however, has been put on the agenda of humanity with the introduction of capitalism. The ruling ideology of the ruling class survives throughout metamorphoses to be able to express the colonial, imperial and today the global interests of capitalism. Long before the bourgeois ideology presented it as a new trend of development through modifications according to its own class interests, Marxism strikingly pointed out to the reality of globalisation in its many aspects: “In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.”[1] The ideology of globalism is nothing but the expression of the adapted form of the reality of globalisation to the current interests of the imperialist powers. It is crucial to make a distinction between the reality and the bourgeois ideology derived from this reality. Capital on its own account, viciously knows what is real and what is “ideological.” For instance, the imperialists are well aware of the fact that the regional wars they launch one after another are far from being the “clash of civilizations” etc., but evidently new quests for profit over human blood, wars of re-division of power and money. Their aim on the ideological plane is to prevent the masses from grasping these realities. The bourgeois ideologues are trying to foist their conception of history –distorted in line with the interests of the ruling powers– and the ideological expression of the dirty desires of the latter to the masses. The reason behind the often-resorted lie campaigns of the imperialist oligarchy in mass pacification is self-evident. The oligarchs of today want to wither the hope, conviction and determination of the masses, particularly the young generations, for a future other than capitalism. In fact the imperialist powers who drive criers into the market shouting “the end of history has come”, “ideologies are dead” etc., has never so ideological. This position of the bourgeoisie is ideological in the negative sense of the word as once Marx stated, that is distorting the truth according to their own interest. The projections of the bourgeois ideology in various sides mirror a degeneration and decay which runs parallel to the historical corruption of the capitalist order. The enlightenment age of thought reason and knowledge which once accompanied the revolutionary bourgeois dynamism that transformed the economic, social and political life from top to bottom has long been over. It has been quite a long time since the bourgeois ideology passed from the realm of expectations and truths to the world of spurious imaginations, slyly constructed virtual reality and various “post-”s. The capitalist globalisation, which is presented as the information age, space age or age of technological miracles, is on the contrary accompanied by an ideological atmosphere wherein the people are stupefied and dragged to the abyss of ignorance and indifference en masse. Desperately trying to hinder the working and toiling masses and the youth from defending the ideology that will guide them to emancipation, Marxism, the bourgeois world confuses minds about what is real and what is ideology using the latest technology. Opposing the ideology of globalism is depicted as the idiocy of those failing to grasp the reality of globalisation in our time. In all capitalist countries the entire bourgeois army of writers, institutions producing “ideas”, the most refined and top level ideologues of capitalism have long been playing the game of inverting reality. The aim is to impose the ideological expression of hegemony and despotism upon the masses as reality. One of the tasks of Marxists is, thus, to adopt a clear class attitude against this kind of bourgeois manipulations and tear the bourgeois curtain of lies that makes the comprehension of reality difficult into pieces. It is quite evident that disregarding the actual details of reality would be a mistake as it is absolutely necessary to oppose the ideological expressions of the developments distorted towards the bourgeoisie. Right, globalisation is a fact of today’s world in the sense of further universalisation of capitalism. And it would be a vain attempt to base the struggle against the ideology of globalisation on the refutation of the reality of globalisation. But on the other hand, those who analyse globalisation not as a tendency that would unfold in time but as an absolute situation are also quite mistaken. Accepting the alterations taking place under capitalism does not necessarily mean attributing positive senses to it. This mode of production has never in its history created a possibility of supra-class welfare. Nevertheless, the globalisation of capitalism is presented as a course that will eradicate the differences between countries on different levels of development and in turn make possible a more egalitarian distribution. However globalisation on the basis of capitalism, in contradistinction to the assertions, means a further growing and sharpening of the problems suffered by millions of people in the world. In today’s global capitalist system where the world population has reached 6 billion, the number of people trying to survive on less than $1 per day is about 1.3 billion. 3 billion are compelled to live on less than $2. The global capitalism means a world wherein the imperialist wars have become widespread and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened to the utmost. As long as capitalism exists, globalisation will remain a reality tormenting and ruining the lives of millions. Globalism is nothing but defending this reality. In this context, we can enumerate several definitions of globalism. Globalism is the redivision of the world by the imperialist powers on the basis of bloodthirsty wars. Globalism is the name of turning the lives of the oppressed peoples into a disaster by bombs which are the products of the latest technological innovations. Globalism is the name of the aggressive bourgeois ideology that aims to invalidate all the acquired rights of the world proletariat. We can extend the list indefinitely. Under capitalism globalism, i.e., uneven and combined capitalist development does not promise a more prosperous life to our earth and the millions of people on it, but on the contrary drives us to barbarism and to a total destruction. Against such a system it is hardly a solution to try to seize the day; far from it, we must do away with capitalism. In a historical period that the idea of social revolution has to the highest degree fallen into disfavour and been trampled underfoot, the realities that the capitalist system dragged humanity and the world into in effect necessitates this revolution more than ever. The so-called oppositionists that fail to or don’t want to grasp this striking necessity are in essence out and out reformists though they seem to be radical in action. The fundamental weakness of the current broad network of opposition ranging from environmentalists to the women’s movement and from anti-war demonstrations to seemingly radical youth movements is the lack of revolutionary consciousness and organisation. Right, there needs to be a global resistance against global capitalism. However, in order for that resistance to have a truly striking force, to become widespread preserving its content and finally to gain victory, we need, more than any other time, the organized power of the proletariat and the organized revolutionary thought that will lead this power. All political tendencies that don’t direct their opposition towards the very capitalism, but rather defend “national”, that is, bourgeois interests or a “reformed” capitalism against imperialism or globalisation are after all beating the air. Our world has seen too many “revolutionaries” who stood for equality, liberty and even socialism in words, but couldn’t go one step further than supporting their own bourgeoisies in deeds. The working class has suffered a lot from these “revolutionaries”. As a matter of fact one important reason of the fact that the working class could not score a leap for long years is the existence of the short-sighted left political understandings that hinder it from comprehending the world that it lives within and thus basing the struggle on solid grounds. However the bare truth is this: by creating an enormous world market and by universalising the social division of labour and the productive forces breaking the old local and national ground that it stood on, capitalism has in fact prepared the world as a whole for socialist transformation. The only possibility that will be able to lead humanity, repressed under global capitalism, to a world without national narrow-mindedness, conflict of interests, bloody wars of division, poverty and unemployment is no other than the global revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in the light of Marxism. Those who argue that the objective basis of revolutionary feelings has long disappeared since the toiling masses are no longer living in old rags or running after a slice of bread are quite mistaken. The reason is that transition from the struggle for satisfying the most basic and compulsory needs - which unites the beings on a common basis - to the struggle of higher moral requirements is a sign of the progress achieved in human evolution. Those who are searching the elements that can satisfy human beings at the primitive levels are malevolent, if not ignorant. The moral dimension of the necessity of a revolutionary organization has gained more importance today in terms of triumphing in the struggle for a humanely life than the past. A working class unable to oppose the capitalist system which reduces everything to tradable commodities in the jungle of market and supplants humane solidarity with the atrocity of market is in a dangerous sleep. Today’s worker or toiler failing to grasp the necessity of a revolutionary organisation is in fact in a much poorer position than the beggar of old times who took it as his or her “destiny” to beg in rags.

Capitalism is a global economic system

In the long historical period preceding the capitalist mode of production human communities survived in various geographies and on the basis of various relations of production. The world witnessed in the old ages expansionist adventures of the Asiatic oriental despotism or the Roman slave society with the purpose of expanding their spheres of hegemony. Our planet had been again and again stained in blood with the wars which were waged by the ruling classes of the past for the sake of conquering new territories and building great empires. However, none of the modes of production prior to capitalism had been able to break locality and establish a worldwide economic system. It was only after the introduction of capitalism which destroyed the old relations of production and developed along this line that our world has taken a road to become an integral globe, not only in geographic but also in economic sense of the word. Until the twentieth century, the tendency of capitalism to expand across the world manifested itself in the encroachment of virgin lands by economically and militarily powerful nations and division of those lands that had not been divided on the basis of colonial wars. Advancing on this basis, several countries created huge colonial empires on the territories that they held under sway. Thus, the colonialist period of capitalist expansionism was accompanied by military conquests and land acquisitions. But still capitalism hardly resembled the empires of old times, for it was not a mode of production based on conquering relations of production. The essential prerequisite of capitalist development is to provoke a process of turmoil and transformation that would eventually integrate the territories under dominance into the capitalist system. Hence capitalist expansionism did not come to a halt in the colonialist phase and passed into the imperialism phase with the twentieth century. The countries able to fit in the inner dynamics of capitalist development have set out to reproduce their strong positions on the basis of imperialist relations, as seen in the example of Britain. Or they experienced an economic leap during the very imperialist phase of capitalism like the United States. Thanks to capitalism the traditional methods of production has been surpassed and scientific discoveries has found application in the process of production. Hence the developments in the productive forces by leaps and bounds. As modern industrial production diversified and became widespread and thanks to the colossal progress in mass communication and transportation, the commercial relations across the world reached levels incomparable to the past. The capitalist development which made possible the constitution of a single world market and an integrated world economy also laid the basis for the growth of the circulation of labour-power, commodities, services and capital onto a world scale. The cumulative development in the emergence and spread of new technologies reduced the costs of communication and transformed the commodity and service production into a worldly process by making it possible to transfer production to various countries. While it was possible to make only up to ninety phone calls concurrently in the midst of the 1950’s thanks to the telephone cables connecting Europe to North America, millions of people can communicate by means of satellite systems of communication today. Capitalist globalisation also universalized the capitalist division of labour which was formerly characterized by national features. Today various commodities from cigarettes to computers and automobiles are produced on the basis of a global production system or assembly line comprising of numerous countries. The history of various levels of development reached throughout the human history is in a sense the history of the evolution of the division of labour. The division of labour which constitutes the basis for different modes of production has changed in time and this reality continues to exist in the progress of capitalism. Marx pointed out the change in the division of labour under capitalism, and its repercussions in the sphere of international relations. Thus he criticizes the mentality that disregards the changing nature of the division of labour and the connection of this change to the development of the world market. Marx raises this question: “Good. Yet must not the division of labour in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when there were as yet no colonies, when America was still non-existent for Europe, and when Eastern Asia existed only through the mediation of Constantinople, have been fundamentally different from what it was in the seventeenth century when colonies were already developed?”[2] He goes on to state that the whole internal organisations of nations and international relations are anything but the expression of a given division of labour, and thus they would necessarily change as the division of labour changes. The imperialist phase of capitalism means the extension and deepening of the global movement of capital despite the organisation of capitalism in the form of nation-states. Increasing integration of various national economies into the world capitalist system, facilitates the circulation of capital on the one hand while the crises of capitalism effects much wider areas compared to the past. The history of twentieth-century capitalism openly reveals that capitalist crises can be overcome only at the expense of creating greater and more destructive crises. Globalizing day by day, capitalism increasingly affirms the analyses of Marxism concerning the mechanism and destiny of this system. The condition of the world capitalist system, which entered the twenty first century with a deepening crisis and widening imperialist wars, is quite self-evident. Yet the bourgeois ideologues insisted on asserting that Marxists were scaremongers who talked nonsense about the capitalist crises, relying upon the period of economic revival after 1940’s. One of the factors that played to the hands of the bourgeois thinkers in a certain period of time was the protracted upswing in the capitalist economy. However, the wrong ideas put forward in the name of Marxism also served the bourgeois ideology. Today it is vital to settle accounts with the wrong ideas that have been spread and distinguish between true and false in order to have a clear comprehension of the course of events all over the world. It was inevitable that capitalism would leave behind its youth and period of rapid growth, and historically start moving downwards. Marx touched upon this point. The historical mission of capitalism is to develop the productivity of human labour geometrically without any limitations. But when capital - in pursuit of maximum profit - fails to increase the productivity of labour to the extent it should, it will have betrayed this mission. “It thereby …”, says Marx, “simply shows once more that it is becoming senile and has further and further outlived its epoch”.[3] In this context the imperialist phase is truly the age of capitalism’s decadence and fall. Lenin and Trotsky emphasised this aspect of the age of imperialism in many instances. However, this correct statement can be meaningful only within the general course of capitalism. It would be utterly false to perceive the economic tendencies which would realise only in the historical process as if they would come into force in an instant. This kind of approach would unavoidably distort the Marxist comprehension as well. Unfortunately, it is far from being uncommon in the so-called Marxist figures or circles. A most original example of this distortion was that capitalism after the First World War entered a general depression which it could never come out of. This thesis was based on the interpretation of a certain period of capitalist system characterized by huge depressions and shocks as the real collapse of the system. This distorted interpretation of reality was not only prevalent in the Stalinist ranks but also contaminated to the Trotskyist circles. It was true that the stormy period that capitalism was dragged into in the wake of twentieth century was a reflection of an enormous crisis, and this situation led to a frenzied war of redivision. Likewise, the Great October Revolution evinced the doomed-to-collapse nature of capitalism, and snatched a certain part of the world from its hands. Nevertheless the capitalist system had not lost its potential of development and extension onto a world scale despite this heavy blow. In order that the influence of this blow to become lasting and capitalism be dragged into a genuine insurmountable crisis there was another necessary condition besides economic factors. It was necessary that the workers’ power established by the October Revolution survive and the proletarian revolution attain a worldwide permanency. The liquidation of the historical achievements of the October Revolution, and resurgence of the capitalist system in the wake of the Second World War refuted the exaggerated generalizations about the collapse or general crisis of capitalism. But unfortunately proper conclusions weren’t derived from these experiences. The limitation posed on the sphere of movement of capitalism by the so-called socialist countries for a temporary historical period was identified with the genuine acquisitions of a proletarian revolution which would progress under a real workers’ power. It was actually quite obvious that this was a serious mistake. But for many years these wrong ideas were not questioned. Though the workers’ power established by the October Revolution was liquidated by the Stalinist counter-revolution, the idea that geographical boundaries of the capitalist mode of production were irreversibly narrowed survived many years. So many writers, recognised as Marxist, wrote this sort of wrong ideas. These writers, not conceding the fact that the Soviet Union transformed into a modern despotic-bureaucratic dictatorship under the rule of Stalinism, harmed the superior position of Marxism with their analyses of the capitalist system which increasingly contradicted with the world realities. It was even argued that the national liberation movements which adopted the nationalist–statist way of development (publicised as the “non-capitalist way”) were each a historical blow that would undermine the progress of world capitalism in an absolute way. Thus, Marxists who are supposed to analyse the developments most truly and comprehensively were reduced to petit-bourgeois content with decrying capitalism on the basis of factitious criticisms. This was one of the main reasons why the bourgeoisie could convert the developments in the new period after the collapse of the so-called socialist bloc into such a tremendous ideological achievement. With the collapse of the despotic-bureaucratic regimes that restricted its global area of expansion for a certain period of time, capitalism launched an ideological leap forward as if ridiculing the pseudo-Marxism which underestimated this system. This reminds us an important reality: Capitalism cannot spontaneously and easily succeed in the economic front before it wins a victory in the political and ideological front and overcomes the organized forces of the working class. The world bourgeoisie in this respect attached too much importance to ideological propaganda, far beyond the real degree of the new prospect of expansion that loomed in the horizon. The aim is to paralyse the world front of workers and toilers by achieving the superiority against them in the ideological and psychological level and thus, turning this opportunity of progress into reality. The reader would remember that the hegemonic power of the capitalist system, the US, launched its attacks along with the propaganda of the new world order way before the new ideological attack called globalism. The debates on the “new world order” were put on the agenda within the framework of the strategic plan made by the US in consequence of the important economic and political developments during and after the 1970’s. The wave of growing nationalism in its sphere of influence, spread of the moral effect of its defeat in Vietnam and the inability to control the raising of the oil prices by the OPEC countries were harrowing developments for the United States. Furthermore, the progresses made by the rival powers like Japan and the EEC increased the uneasiness of the hegemonic power of the system under the conditions that profit margins have fallen, that is, the cake being shared out became small. The risk of losing its superior position in the near future incited the US imperialism to develop and implement new strategic plans. Though the expansion of capitalism into the world, that is its globalisation, was hardly a new phenomenon, the subject matter of globalism was introduced by the US as an offshoot of these strategic moves. The purpose of the bourgeoisie was to impose the ideology of globalism onto the masses and introduce several new measures rather than discussing the reality of globalisation. The new period, thus, manifested itself in the lives of the working and toiling masses as the global assault of capital. This assault the world bourgeoisie globally tried to enforce after the 1980’s meant the rise of a right-wing wave called neo-liberalism. Henceforth, what marked imprint upon the following years was reaction in the political area, the stirring up egotism in the social area, and a fall in the living standards of the working and toiling masses in the economic area. The new period the capitalist system found itself in indicates that new plans of the bourgeoisie can be accomplished not on the basis of positive but negative developments regarding the interests of broad masses. Like every social formation which historically exhausted its progressive potential, capitalism lost to a greater extent its power to keep the masses under control on the basis of positive expectations. What it needs now is to turn the environment of poor people into “modern” arenas of bloody gladiator wars, to blunt the expectations of working and toiling masses for changing the social order, and to foster new generations that do not know how to organise and fight against the tyrants of the age. In all capitalist countries the bourgeois media, under forms unprecedented in the former periods, is in quest for new inventions to paralyse the minds of masses in every second of their lives. The world of bourgeois ideology has been mobilised for the establishment of the hegemony of this “new culture” which accompanies the propaganda of globalism. Before it paints the world with blood through its “latest fashion” wars, capitalism embarks on creating masses that have become accustomed to the images of massacre through the television serials or have been stupefied and paralysed by the “modern” nonsense and confusing the real with the virtual. In the case of the USA, the hegemonic power of the capitalist system, the great dimension of the mass pacification conducted for years is self-evident. Is not it evident that global expansion of a social order that tries to deprive the masses of positive human traits, to transform them into obedient slaves by blunting their senses of fraternity and solidarity will certainly trouble future generations? It is not hard to conjecture where a global system whose hegemonic power gives fascist signals is heading towards. As a matter of fact, the brutal and devastating character of capitalist development in the lands of the former bureaucratic regimes, and the intensification of the conflicts and tension between the imperialist powers in redivision have almost dragged our world into a global war. Capitalism, having by its very nature an insatiable hunger for profit, has set its eyes on new foreign markets and new areas of influence in an unprecedented frenzied ambition.

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[1]   Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto (SW, Progress, v.1, p.112) [2]   Marx-Engels, Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov in Paris, December 28, 1846 [3]   Marx, Capital, v.3 Penguin Books, 1991, p.371

The need to expand into foreign markets

Although capitalist development gradually created a single world market, this mode of production initially emerged only in a region with certain conditions, the West, where feudalism flourished. It is well known that human history does not have a uniform line of progress. While the feudal mode of production prevailed in the West, the Asian mode of production prevailed in the East. This mode of production, in which there was no private ownership of land, created vast and powerful despotic empires. Unlike the development in the West, these empires lacked the ability to undergo a capitalist transformation through their own internal dynamics. Capitalist relations began to develop in the West, where the feudal mode of production was dominant, and from there spread throughout the world. The spread of capitalism across the world took place in a process based on inequality in terms of time and speed. The expropriation and expulsion of a significant part of the agricultural population not only freed laborers, their means of subsistence and labour materials for industrial capital, but also created an internal market. While capitalist development continued its progress by abolishing pre-capitalist relations of production and the political and legal forms deriving from this basis, it put an end to the local and closed economic life of earlier periods. By weaving a network of national market, it made possible the formation of national unions and nation-states. Lenin pointed out that capitalist development brings together small local markets, unites them into a large national market and then into a world market. Thus capitalism, by destroying primitive forms of slavery and personal dependence, by developing in depth and breadth the seeds of contradictions among the community peasantry, was also paving the way for their resolution.[1] This process of transformation, which the petty-bourgeois left regarded as an absolute destruction, actually served a constructive historical function in a sense, by developing and growing the proletariat, which would create a classless and exploitation-free future for human life. Capitalism cannot be satisfied with progress within the borders of a single sector, region or nation-state, nor with the creation and development of a single internal market. In order to survive, it must have a fluidity that constantly expands its bed. For this reason, the capitalist mode of production has needed to expand beyond its borders from the very beginning of its domination and has raised the question of foreign markets. As a matter of fact, Marx states that capital, trying to protect itself against the tendency of the average rate of profit to fall, would see foreign trade as an outlet for itself. In his words, “…whereas the expansion of foreign trade was the basis of capitalist production in its infancy, it becomes the specific product of the capitalist mode of production as this progresses, through the inner necessity of this mode of production and its need for an ever extended market.” [2] Capitalism is not a process of simple reproduction based solely on the reproduction of capital itself, but a process of expanded reproduction in which a significant part of the surplus-value created in each cycle of the production process is added to capital. Part of the total value of commodities produced goes to pay for the necessary or luxury consumption of various classes, while another part has to be allocated to new investments. Capitalism proceeds with a tendency towards accumulation that dictates the constant expansion of production. Therefore, the expansion of both domestic and foreign markets is imperative. Capitalism exists in the need to globalize its sphere of domination and to bring non-capitalist countries into the wheel of the world economy. The problems that arise from such needs have been the subject of various debates among Marxists since earlier periods. For example, it was argued that the domestic market in developed capitalist countries was not sufficient to realize surplus-value. Rosa Luxemburg argued that the part of surplus-value that could not be realized in capitalist countries was absorbed by lands that had not yet been capitalist and that capitalist accumulation could continue on its way. Rosa Luxemburg’s starting point is that Marx’s models of expanded reproduction are flawed. According to her, the two-class system (bourgeoisie and proletariat) assumed in these models would not work because there would be no demand for the part of production that contains surplus-value, neither from capitalists nor from workers. Luxemburg argues that accumulation is impossible in a purely capitalist environment and that “Capital accumulation progresses and expands at the expense of non-capitalist strata and countries, squeezing them out at an ever faster rate.” [3] According to Rosa’s assessment, the capitalist system, driven by the search for new markets and the tendency to expand, will eventually absorb non-capitalist countries and regions, and this will bring about the end of the capitalist mode of production. When capitalism dominates the entire world, Marx’s two-class model will become valid, but this moment will actually signify the extinction of capitalism. Once this moment is reached, “accumulation, i.e. the further expansion of capital, becomes impossible”. In sum, in this analysis, thus “capitalism comes to a dead end” and “reaches its objective economic limit.”[4] It is correct to point out that the capitalist mode of production is historically transient and will lose its potential for vigorous development as it ages. But surely capitalism will not collapse spontaneously in the way Rosa’s statement implies. The exhaustion of non-capitalist spheres, in other words everywhere becoming capitalist, will not simply end the possibility of capitalist accumulation. For despite all the threats and degeneration it poses to humanity and nature, despite the crises of ever-increasing destructive dimensions, capitalism can maintain its cyclical growth. On the basis of the new “needs” it imposes on the masses, it can create new markets, if not geographically, then socially; it can utilize existing markets more deeply. The big capitalist countries have been practicing this for years, both in their domestic markets and in the spheres of influence and foreign markets they control, and they can do so. It is important to underline that when analysing the bottlenecks of capitalist functioning, one should not establish a one-to-one and mechanical relationship between the problem of foreign markets and the problem of realization. The problem of realization is embodied in the growth of unsaleable commodity stocks, and this problem concerns not only the part of production that supposedly contains surplus-value, but the commodity produced in general. Even if all the possibilities of foreign markets are taken into account, it is known that not all the commodities produced can be sold on a regular basis and that some of them will remain stuck in the circulation process. The problem of realization, which periodically manifests itself in crises of overproduction, is a problem arising from capitalist functioning, regardless of the distinction between domestic and foreign markets. Involving foreign trade in the analysis of annual reproduction values does not add a new dimension to the problem or contribute to its solution, but only complicates it.[5] This is why Marx says that factors such as foreign markets and foreign trade should be excluded altogether when analysing the problem of realization. Moreover, the boundaries of markets are not determined geographically but by the development of the social division of labour. And technical progress constantly expands markets. The impasse of capitalism is not lack of development, but “excessive”, “unbalanced”, “disproportionate” development. Indeed, Engels addresses this problem and explains that the expansion of markets cannot go hand in hand with the expansion of production.[6] Lenin also criticized bourgeois economists who explained the cause of capitalist crises on the basis that it was not possible to sell and consume products in the domestic market, and stated that such approaches would lead to completely wrong conclusions. To consider capitalist crises in this way leads to the idea that capitalism can avoid crises if it gains wider foreign markets. Lenin said: “The need for a capitalist country to have a foreign market is not determined at all by the laws of the realisation of the social product (and of surplus-value in particular), but, firstly, by the fact that capitalism makes its appearance only as a result of a widely developed commodity circulation, which transcends the limits of the state. It is therefore impossible to conceive a capitalist nation without foreign trade, nor is there any such nation.”[7] The basic motive of capital is to find more profitable investment areas wherever it is. The factor that forces capitalism to resort more and more to foreign markets is its struggle with its internal contradictions. The existence of foreign markets, however, does not eliminate these contradictions. Due to the unplanned and anarchic nature of the capitalist mode of production, disconnection between the production process and the circulation process, imbalance and unevenness between production and consumption exist at all levels and at all times. Capitalism carries its own obstacles in its own internal structure. In Marx’s words, “the true barrier to capitalist production is capital itself”.[8] It is not possible for capitalism to escape the crises resulting from the cycle of overproduction. If we go a little deeper into the question, we find that the need for foreign markets is closely linked to the law of uneven development. As Lenin emphasized, the various branches of industry that serve as markets for each other do not develop evenly, but outstrips one another and the more advanced industries seek foreign markets.[9] The problem of foreign markets, which becomes more acute with time, is a general problem of capitalism. In other words, this problem did not arise specifically with the stage of imperialism. In fact, imperialism is the product of a dialectical process of development, which implies the maturation and crystallisation with seven-league boots of the main features inherent in capitalism. The law of uneven development of capitalism has a dual function. On the one hand, it ignites new crises; on the other hand, it creates the ground for capital that is blocked in one place to find a new opportunity elsewhere. Capital is always in search of areas where the rate of profit will be higher, and when it finds them, it wants to, and can, flow into these areas. All in all, the capitalist mode of production moves along with a variety of factors and opposing tendencies that have both positive and negative effects. Although the imperialist stage of capitalism exacerbated the problem of foreign markets, the absorption of new regions and countries into capitalist functioning meant a relative relief in terms of the expansion of the system. Undoubtedly, this relief can only be realized on the basis of uneven development in the various capitalist countries, but it is realized. The fact that such developments bring about new upheavals in the new regions opened to capitalism does not eliminate the tendency to integrate into the capitalist system. This feature has been proved by many developments since the 60s. Thus, the views that overestimated the significance of national liberation struggles and the claims that the so-called “third world” countries could not be transformed into vast markets for the imperialist powers have also been proved wrong. Despite all the new problems, twists and imbalances it has created, imperialist capitalism has continued and can continue its advance in countries and regions that were not previously integrated into capitalism.

Growing problems

In the “normal” course of capitalism, capitalists seek and find new foreign markets. However, in times of great crises like 1929, the problems created by overproduction grow exponentially and affect the entire capitalist system. Thus, the existing foreign markets also shrink and become inadequate under the impact of the shocking crises. Such convulsive periods are historical episodes that expose the weaknesses of the capitalist mode of production. As more commodities are produced than the masses can buy, millions of people on the planet are sucked into the vortex of poverty and unemployment. The integration of new regions opening up to capitalism into the system does not mean the simple exhaustion of market opportunities. Capitalism can and must keep markets alive by creating new consumption needs. Thus, capitalism has the chance to create and exploit new opportunities over a certain historical period. However, it is also an inevitable reality that it will eventually lose its former vitality. Above all, the older capitalism gets, the more socialized the productive forces become and the more they come into conflict with the private ownership of the means of production. As a result, the system is gradually losing its former feverish pace in terms of creating new possibilities. This historical trend does not mean the spontaneous collapse of capitalism or its absolute limits. But as we are experiencing today, it is manifesting itself in crises of such seriousness that even the bourgeoisie is deeply concerned. Global capitalism is being dragged into a situation in which the rivalry between the various imperialist powers is becoming much sharper. As a matter of fact, today’s escalating tension on a world scale and the spread of new wars of division are the realization of all these tendencies. The widespread layoffs, the fall in workers’ wages and the cuts in investment expenditures, coupled with the successive crises that have erupted today, have a negative impact on aggregate demand and fuel the tendency towards stagnation. Monopoly capitalism tries to intervene in such problems through the widespread credit mechanism. However, the skyrocketing amount of unpaid debts is creating new bottlenecks in capitalist functioning. Total consumption expenditure is, of course, not limited to the commodities which are the subject of individual consumption and which come to mind first. All commodities that enter the production process as raw materials, auxiliary materials, tools of labour, etc., constitute another important part of general consumption, which we call productive consumption. These productive consumption expenditures, which amount to huge sums, are also the subject of a gigantic credit mechanism and the problem of debts. The problem of debts, which is multiplying and becoming insurmountable, has become the hallmark of global capitalism today. Capitalism needs to constantly increase productivity in order to increase the surplus-value to be milked from the working class. This means an increase in the amount of dead labour relative to the amount of living labour used in the production process, i.e. an ever-increasing rate of mechanization. It also means a rise in the organic composition of capital and therefore a fall in the average rate of profit in various sectors.  In an effort to counter this tendency, big capital may flee from advanced capitalist countries to developing regions and countries. This movement may create the possibility of a slight increase in the average rate of profit in certain areas, and may encourage industrialization and the employment of workers in the countries to which capital moves. Such economic mobility has the potential to expand the capitalist market in general and to produce more favourable results in terms of profit realization. But the realization of this potential ultimately depends on foreign capital’s ability to bear new expenditures and additional risk factors. However, capital is not motivated by a long-term, planned and hard-working course of action, but rather by the desire to make the highest profit in the shortest time and in the most effortless way. Despite all the rosy pictures that are being created about globalisation, it is obvious that capitalism cannot completely get rid of its inherent inhibiting tendencies. Given the problems inherent in the internal laws of this system, there is no reason to believe that globalisation under capitalism will lead humanity to a trouble-free and prosperous future. Moreover, events point in the opposite direction and amply confirm that the true barrier to capitalist production is capitalism itself. The most striking proof of this situation is the fact that practices that seem to solve problems in one period create new problems in the next. For example, Keynesianism was once put on the agenda in order for the capitalist system to develop an alternative to the statist social security policies implemented in the USSR. In this way, the aim was to revive class-compromising policies, especially in advanced capitalist countries, and to pacify the revolutionary processes developing in Europe. Keynesian practices, marketed under the labels of “welfare state” or “social state”, had the characteristics of relieving the pressure that the unemployment problem put on the capitalist order and stimulating aggregate demand. Moreover, these practices were compatible with the conditions of capitalism’s post-war boom period. As such, in the eighteen countries listed in the list of advanced capitalist countries, the ratio of total public expenditure to GDP was 11.9 percent in 1913 and 22.4 percent in 1937, while this ratio later climbed to 40 percent. However, the “welfare state”, which had for a while been seen as a positive solution, was to be discredited as the system was plunged into a serious crisis. The expression of the imperatives of the new era was economic doctrines like Friedmanism, which advocated the abandonment of economic and social life to the jungle laws of the market. It was no coincidence that in 1976 the Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to Milton Friedman, a fervent advocate of anti-Keynesianism. And in fact it was a harbinger of a new era to come. Capitalist statism came to be seen as the creator of problems such as growing debts and budget deficits that were gripping even rich capitalist countries. In the 80s, the “welfare state” was made the target of attack by the new wave of the right wing, promoted by bourgeois leaders such as Thatcher, Reagan, Özal and others. These economic doctrines, called neoliberalism because of their reassertion of the so-called invisible hand of the market, were accompanied not by liberalism in the political sphere, but on the contrary by reactionary and aggressive practices of capital. What were once seen as solutions to unemployment and lauded as positive measures to increase the purchasing power of the masses were to be rolled back one by one through cuts in social funds and privatization. However, doing so has not helped capital. This time too, capitalism is facing a serious recessionary trend and growing mass unemployment, which it cannot cope with. As a result, capitalism is unable to free itself from the enormous imbalances and inequalities that are ripe for catastrophic crises. Capitalist globalisation is producing all the contradictions and dilemmas of the system at the global level and adding shocking dimensions to the crises at the global level. Underneath all these developments, in fact, there are some aspects that are of paramount importance for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. The progress made in the universalization of capitalist relations has made the fact that the proletarian revolution is a world revolution much more striking than in the past. Global development is making capitalism more and more fragile by making it a much more organic whole and by globalizing crises. The irony of history on the side of the working class is that globalisation, which the bourgeois front presents as capitalism’s elixir of immortality, has strengthened the possibility of the spread of revolutionary situations many times over.

Tendency to stagnation and accumulation

The transition from the so-called free competition period of capitalism to the period of imperialism dominated by monopolization brought with it a rapid pace of development and increasing contradictions. While monopolization leads to enormous economic growth in absolute terms, in relative terms it involves a tendency to stagnation. This is why Lenin described the epoch of imperialism as decay and parasitism. This observation is confirmed by the development tendencies that are making themselves felt in many areas. The big monopolies that control the world’s investment fields have completely subordinated technological development to their own profit motives. That is why they put the brakes on possible and positive technical transformations, such as the use of solar energy instead of fossil fuels. Since monopolization makes it possible to reach the targeted mass of profits through investments in some limited but highly profitable areas, investments in some areas can be curtailed. Monopoly capitalism expands the rentier class and increases the number of parasitic elements living on coupon incomes. All these factors are tendencies to limit the enormous vigour that capitalism once had. At the same time, monopolization increases the intensity of competition to such an extent that only powerful and large capital groups that operate more efficiently than others can keep pace. As a result of the tendencies of competition and mergers between different groups of capital, capital is concentrated and centralized in certain hands. Thus, capitalist development acquires a truly monopolistic character not only in the big imperialist countries but throughout the system. But the benefits of this monopolistic development cannot be the same for the economy of each capitalist country. A significant part of the surplus-value created by the working class in developing capitalist countries is transferred to the imperialist countries, which are the major partners of the multinational monopolies. Therefore, the consequences of monopolization are also unevenly distributed. The capitalist system is a tangle of contradictions. Many economic phenomena are shaped on the basis of the dialectical unity of opposing movements. For example, the tendency to stagnation provoked by monopolization and the tendency of capital to accumulate form a contradictory unity. Therefore, the parasitism and decay caused by monopolization is a historical tendency and does not mean that economic growth will be curbed in absolute terms. Identifying capitalism as parasitic and decaying implies that the obstacles of private property and the nation-state, which impede the development of the productive forces, are becoming increasingly intolerable. The productive forces are still developing, but this development is destined to fall far short of the material and moral level that can be achieved under a community of free producers (communism). It is known that under capitalism every period of feverish economic development is also a period of overproduction. For this reason, it is obvious that the capitalist economy cannot always grow at the same pace, that it will face bottlenecks, and that sometimes severe crises occur. Indeed, in the period between the First and Second World Wars, capitalism was plunged into a serious stagnation and a great depression that threatened the very existence of the system. The economic superiority of the USA, which survived the Second World War without suffering destruction, was instrumental in capitalism’s recovery from the great depression and its transition to a new period of ascendancy. The period of economic investment undertaken by American imperialism in the capitalist countries that were defeated in the war and in the former colonial and semi-colonial countries that gained political independence gave the capitalist system a new leap forward. The capital poured into the war-torn European countries by the US under the Marshall Plan and the establishment of the dollar as a stable international currency by the Bretton Woods agreement enabled Europe to recover in a short time. After the war, policies were put in place to increase aggregate demand and reduce unemployment. On the basis of the increasing intervention of the capitalist state in the economy, there was a significant revival in which social spending and consumption expenditures of the population increased. The credit mechanism, which plays a crucial role in the functioning of the capitalist economy, became the engine of the long post-war boom. Germany and France, recovering from the wounds of the war and once again on the track of vigorous economic development, set about paving the road to the EEC/EU, this time in order to gain competitiveness against the USA. In fact, the objective ground that would confront the capitalist system with another major crisis had not changed, the vortex of overproduction-stagnation had not disappeared. The inherited diseases of the capitalist system were still the same. But for a relatively long period of time, capitalism was once again able to achieve significant economic growth. Let us underline an important point here again. Capitalism is a system of imbalances. Economic policies that, for example, increase social spending and pump resources into the economy through state loans, put new burdens on state budgets and ferment future devastating crises. But they can also enable dramatic growth until new crises break out. This course of action of capitalism may seem illogical from the point of view of an abstract rationalism, and the tendency to unbalanced growth may be confused with the reality of depression. Yet it is precisely on these “irrational” grounds that economic growth under capitalism can take place. One should not look for a rationality in capitalist functioning that it does not and cannot possess. Capitalist development is embodied in the midst of a series of inequalities and disproportions by the very nature of capitalism. The petty-bourgeois left, unable to grasp this, is fond of interpreting the crises of capitalism as its inability to develop. Lenin criticized the widespread petty-bourgeois incomprehension of his time: “A large number of errors made by Narodnik writers springs from their efforts to prove that this disproportionate, spasmodic, feverish development is not development.”[10] In the aftermath of the Second World War, there was a period of disproportionate, tumultuous and feverish growth, just as Lenin’s lines remind us. The factors that made growth possible then created its dialectical opposite, and the system was again shaken by serious ills. Growing budget deficits plagued capitalist states. Likewise, the credit mechanism was the source of an enormous increase in public and private debt. Thus, following a period of feverish growth, the capitalist economy was completely unable to cope with the monster of overproduction that it had created. The volume of world trade contracted, the average rate of profit fell, unemployment rates soared. It should not be forgotten that during the period of economic boom following the Second World War, the strong hegemonic position of the US in all respects was reflected in the dollar’s status as a sound international currency. At the same time, this situation points to a relatively trouble-free period of the capitalist system. The new and problematic period that began in the 70s finds its expression in the loss of the former dynamism of the US economy and the destabilization of the dollar. As a matter of fact, the convertibility of the dollar into gold was ended in 1971 and the fixed exchange rate system in 1973. But the US is still the engine of the system. It maintains its positions in terms of the political and military pillars of its hegemonic position. However, the problems accumulating on the economic front raise doubts about the future of the US. What is generally striking is that the structural problems that often shake the weaker links of the system are increasingly gripping the advanced capitalist countries as well. The illnesses of the system had actually started to signal themselves as early as the 70s. Nevertheless, economic vitality and growth were tried to be maintained for a long time at the expense of raising the fever of the sick body. The real state of the capitalist economy, whose sickness deepened the more it struggled, first manifested itself in Europe and Japan with an undisguisable tendency to stagnation. When the crisis broke out in Mexico in 1982, it threatened world capitalism by jeopardizing the payment of foreign debts. Towards the end of the 90s, it brought down one Asian Tiger after another. Finally, the capitalist globe’s hegemonic country, the United States, has also begun to stumble. This shows that capitalism did not make a very bright entry into the 21st century. Let it not be misunderstood, the process of capital accumulation continues to function under intensified monopoly; otherwise, capitalism cannot survive. However, capital accumulation now proceeds at the expense of system crises, which are making themselves felt more and more violently and for longer periods of time. If it is not overthrown by a massive struggle of the working masses, the history of capitalism in the 21st century will be a history of extraordinarily destructive and protracted system crises that threaten human life. Today, the capitalist system is unable to cope with the tendency to stagnation. The stagnation brings new debates and polarizations in the capitalist world. The current situation inevitably escalates the rivalry between the imperialist powers and fuels military expenditures. According to 2004 year-end figures, the world spent 900 billion dollars on armaments, equal to the GDP of Turkey (300 billion dollars) and Brazil (600 billion dollars) combined. Bourgeois circles themselves have begun to complain that this increase in military expenditures will exacerbate the problems of poverty in the world, while social expenditures are constantly being cut. Some far-sighted bourgeois ideologues are once again suggesting that increasing social spending could be the answer to the recession. It is clear how wrong it is to assert that capitalism will never again risk the great wars of division of the past, or that Keynesian practices will never again be resorted to. The bourgeois state’s intervention in the economy in one direction or another is always motivated by the needs of big capital. As long as the political conditions are in its favour, capital can create an economic outlet for itself. Let us never forget that unless it is overthrown by the revolutionary struggle of the working class, capitalism can continue on its way despite its deepening problems and contradictions and the suffering it inflicts on humanity.

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The law of uneven and combined development

Capitalism, which proceeds on the basis of the struggle of opposing tendencies, exhibits an uneven and combined development. This mode of production proceeds at different rates of development in enterprises, sectors and countries, and this unevenness is the motive force for the expansion and spread of capitalist markets. Every “national” capitalism sooner or later has to turn to the world market, and the tendency towards integration brings countries into relations of economic interdependence. Despite the distorted processes of development and the problems it creates, the law of uneven and combined development has functioned as a stimulating factor for the progress of the productive forces under capitalism. Over time, economic development has taken place in many capitalist countries and the interdependence between countries has deepened. But it is clear that the global development of capitalism has not eliminated inequality between various countries or regions. Despite the fact that this and similar points have been sufficiently proven in today’s world, there is still no shortage of erroneous views about the global development of capitalism. One of the main fallacies about globalisation is the one-sided emphasis on unequal relations, ignoring the feature of combined development. Another is to go to the opposite extreme and exaggerate the combined development. The law of uneven development is in fact a law that has dominated all of human history to one degree or another. Thus, capitalism, in its point of departure, found different human communities experiencing different stages of historical development and therefore different contradictions, that is, a situation of extreme unevenness. Although relations of inequality have prevailed throughout history in various spheres of life, none of the modes of production that preceded capitalism had the ability to create a process of combined development on a world scale. In short, the law of uneven and combined development is unique to capitalism. In this respect, unequal development must also be analysed in its specific aspects under capitalism and with the characteristic of combined development. Marx and Engels saw capitalist development as a process of combined as well as uneven development. Marxism explained most clearly that capitalism is a mode of production that will transcend localism and national isolation and create a world economy. Based on the different historical backgrounds of various countries, Marx referred to the different forms and tempos of capitalist transformation. He pointed out that the main problem in this process was the forms of articulation within modern bourgeois society. Lenin, in his analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia, addressed the same issue, pointing out the characteristic of combined development, combining old and new forms, from which many contradictions arise. Explanations of the law of uneven development are clearly contained in Lenin’s studies. He emphasized the inevitability of the uneven and spasmodic development of individual countries and branches of industry in the capitalist system. Capitalism is constantly moving in the direction of economic expansion, infiltration into new territories, overcoming economic differences to some extent. Thus, self-sustaining local and national economies have been replaced by a universal network of financial relations, and capitalism has brought various countries closer to each other. Imperialism has linked various economic units at the national and continental level much faster and more deeply than in the past. As Trotsky once pointed out, the global development of capitalism, imperialism, makes the economic methods, social forms and degrees of development of different nations more similar than in the past. “At the same time, it attains this ‘goal’ by such antagonistic methods, such tiger-leaps, and such raids upon backward countries and areas that the unification and levelling of world economy which it has effected, is upset by it even more violently and convulsively than in the preceding epochs.”[1] It is clear that capitalism unites the destinies of the countries of the world in its completely unique, i.e., anarchic way. That is why the imperialist stage has exacerbated the opposite tendencies inherent in the system. Imperialism, as Lenin emphasized, has made the uneven development characteristic of capitalism much more pronounced. The Marxist analysis of the law of uneven development is crucial not only for understanding the characteristics of the economic development of capitalism, but also for the correct interpretation of the political consequences that derive from it. However, the Stalinist understanding of the law of uneven development, as in many other areas, has led to significant distortions in the Marxist understanding. The absurd claim that the feature of uneven development emerged with the imperialist stage of capitalism embodies the distortion created by Stalinism on this point. According to Stalin, Marx and Engels did not know about the law of uneven development because they lived before the monopolistic development of capitalism; the law of uneven development had not yet been discovered at that time, nor could it have been! Thus, with a sleight of hand typical of the masters of the school of ideological and political falsification, Stalin not only distorted the meaning of the law of uneven development but also fabricated the lie that Lenin was its discoverer. Stalin’s fraud was not in vain. His aim was to convince the world communist movement that Marx and Engels had concluded that socialism in one country could not triumph because they did not know the law of uneven development. Stalin theorized that the law of uneven development had begun to operate in the epoch of imperialism and that socialism in one country was therefore quite possible. With these and similar distortions he created a complete ambiguity on the understanding of many political and economic realities. The truth of the matter, however, is this: due to the political turmoil generated by the workings of capitalism and the uneven distribution of crises across different countries, the proletarian revolution could very well break out in relatively underdeveloped countries before advanced capitalist countries. The October 1917 proletarian revolution in Russia confirms this prediction. The contradictions piling up in Tsarist Russia, which was experiencing a delayed capitalist development, made it an extremely weak link in the system at that time, and the imperialist chain was broken from this weak link. The weak links of the imperialist system have a more fragile structure than the economically strong capitalist countries, as embodied in the situation of some Latin American countries today. Therefore, there is a high probability of the outbreak of depressions and revolutionary situations that upset the whole political and social life in these countries. But these revolutionary situations can only be crowned with a victorious workers’ revolution and workers’ power if the proletariat has a revolutionary leadership. This infallible rule aside, the building of socialism is another matter entirely. Uneven leaps in the political sphere can never automatically remove the obstacles erected by economic realities. The proletarian socialist revolutions that will bring the working class to power and begin to some extent the construction of socialism may break out asynchronously in various countries. But the preservation of workers’ power and the march towards socialist construction absolutely depend on the continuation of the revolution. In this respect, the workers’ revolution, no matter in which country it comes up, is in fact an unbreakable link in the chain of the world revolution. Thus, the uneven and sporadic character of the political revolution and the combined character of the social revolution form a dialectical whole that determines the forward movement. In Trotsky’s words, “From the uneven sporadic development of capitalism flows the non-simultaneous, uneven, and sporadic character of the socialist revolution; from the extreme tensity of the interdependence of the various countries upon each other flows not only the political but also the economic impossibility of building socialism in one country.”[2] As he puts it, “Uneven or sporadic development of various countries acts constantly to upset but in no case to eliminate the growing economic bonds and interdependence between those countries.” [3] The law of uneven and combined development is at work both on the international level and on the national level. This feature can be clearly observed when the history of capitalism is analysed. In addition to unequal relations between countries, there is also inequality within the same nation in terms of different areas and different sectors. While capitalism creates a globally combined economic system, unequal relations are reproduced at various levels. In order to catch up with the advanced countries, backward countries try to import science and technology from them and to make moves in certain fields. For this reason, within the same nation-state, the traditional peasant economy and modern industrial production, large and advanced industrial enterprises capable of exporting to the world market, and scattered, relatively backward and conservative manufacturing sectors structured on the basis of production for the traditional domestic market coexist. In sum, capitalism can produce highly contradictory structures within the borders of a country by combining the most backward forms with the most advanced techniques. The globalisation of the capitalist mode of production is embodied in the universalization of monopoly capitalist relations, in the way in which large capitalist monopolies bring various countries into a complex chain of mutual relations. The movement of capital from the advanced capitalist countries to the underdeveloped ones carries monopoly development from the former to the latter, so that capitalism spreads to the periphery with the peculiarities of the latest stage reached. In cases of delayed capitalist development, leaps and bounds of progress can be made, but this does not eliminate the inequality between different capitalist countries. As can be seen, the global movement of capitalism is characterized by a truly uneven and combined development. It is incompatible with the facts to arbitrarily dismantle this dialectical unity and claim that the economic movement is characterized by a simple and one-sided uneven development. However, such theses have been put forward for years by writers who tend to reduce Marxism to a kind of petty-bourgeois socialism. Reformist and petty-bourgeois socialist approaches have an opportunist character, although they appear to support the peoples of the underdeveloped countries against the imperialist countries. It must be remembered that sound policies can only be based on sound analyses. The political disposition of those who persistently ignore the combined aspect of the capitalist movement and speak only of uneven development is obvious/evident. They have never been able to transcend the limited oppositional stance known as third worldism. One can recall, for example, the views of Samir Amin and others who made a name for themselves in this political lane.

Inequality within inequality

Capitalism has created a hierarchical structure based on the law of uneven and combined development. The leading imperialist countries of the top layer, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy, headed by the hegemonic power USA, have a say over the world economy through various organizations[4] they have formed. The capitalist countries, which are not as developed and powerful as these, are classified as the middle and lower layers respectively. In some classifications, this structure is roughly divided into two groups: “centre” and “periphery” countries. It should not be forgotten that the countries in the so-called periphery group are not homogeneous and that there are significant developmental differences between them. In fact, for the sake of political and economic analysis, it is necessary to distinguish between the moderately developed capitalist countries and the underdeveloped ones. There can be shifts in this economic structure over time, but the hierarchy persists. Climbing up from the lower levels of the hierarchical system to the higher levels is characterized by a noticeable leap in capitalist development. For example, countries such as India, Brazil and Turkey, which were once referred to as underdeveloped countries, have joined the ranks of the moderately developed capitalist countries as a result of their leapfrogging development. The change has not stopped there either, and these countries have gradually risen to the level of regional powers that should be taken into account on the world scale. Turkey today ranks twenty-first on the list of developed countries and is struggling to become a sub-imperialist power in its region. Trotsky makes an important point about uneven development and explains that the unevenness in the historical development of different countries and continents is itself uneven. For example, it is well known that European countries develop unevenly in relation to each other. Moreover, none of the European countries has been able to run ahead of the others in the way that America has run ahead of Europe. In short, the scale of unevenness that is effective in different regions is also uneven. “For America there is one scale of unevenness, for Europe there is another.”[5] Depending on the difference in geographical and historical conditions, the combined development of different countries and regions is also at different levels. It is obvious that the development of a backward country will lead to a unique combination of different phases of the historical process. Economically backward countries can benefit from the material and ideological achievements of advanced countries. Capitalism has brought human development to a universal level, albeit on the basis of its own anarchic laws. Therefore, a backward country can move up by the gravitational pull of advanced countries. And, in the course of its historical leaps, it is not obliged to follow exactly the same sequence that has been gone through before. Trotsky writes that “The privilege of historic backwardness – and such a privilege exists – permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages.”[6] But the possibility of skipping over the intermediate stages is only a possibility, it may or may not materialize; the outcome depends on the economic and cultural capacity of the country concerned. Even if we group them under the common heading of underdeveloped or developing countries, there are great inequalities in the pace of development of such countries. Whether a “national developmentalist” or “dependent on imperialism” line is pursued, the pace of capitalist development in a country is closely related to its structural characteristics and historical background. For example, the low rate of capitalist development in some African countries that have emerged from colonial status to the level of nation-states is not only an external feature imposed by the imperialist countries. These countries had to suffer for a long time the pains of suddenly rising from tribalism to nation-state status in a capitalist world. The acquisition of nation-state status alone in the absence of a national market and a favourable infrastructure for the development of industry did not provide any country of this nature with the opportunity for an economic leap. Recent history shows that in order for there to be a significant movement of capital from advanced capitalist countries to underdeveloped ones, and for there to be an economic revival on this basis, there must be certain conditions favourable to capitalist development. For example, in capitalist countries like Turkey or some Latin American or South Asian countries, which have the potential for significant development, economic progress has been achieved despite the factor of imperialism. But in some underdeveloped regions and countries, such as in continental Africa or the Indian subcontinent, no such development has been achieved. Underdeveloped countries, which for many years have been held as mere reservoirs of cheap raw materials, or which have been less fortunate in terms of natural resources, have yet to benefit from global capitalist development. It is an important fact that global capitalism has not eliminated the differences in development that exist between countries, which in some cases amount to gulfs. The inequalities created by capitalism continue to be produced at unequal rates at all levels today. All these developments in concrete life reveal what a bourgeois lie it is to present capitalist globalisation as a phenomenon that will eliminate inequalities in the world. The claim that globalisation will finally make every country prosper, that it will provide almost everywhere with the opportunity for satisfactory economic development, and especially that it will gradually close the gap in inequality between classes, is an enormous lie. Today’s world points in the opposite direction. Moreover, even some bourgeois ideologues who are worried about the widening social and economic gaps on our planet can no longer help but point to some burning realities. It is openly stated that there is no ray of hope for many African countries in the spontaneous course of globalisation. Some experts of the World Bank, one of the top institutions of the imperialist system, speak of the gigantic problems that will arise if these countries are not given a helping hand. They point out that easing the debt burden of the underdeveloped countries and cancelling at least some of the accumulated debts could save the system from dangerous explosive possibilities. While on the one hand the capitalist system is exhibiting signs of doom for the future of humanity, on the other hand, the far-sighted representatives of the system seem to be in a hurry to find solutions to certain problems that they hope can be solved within the capitalist system. The bourgeois media themselves are now voicing the view that civilization is threatened by global poverty and that poverty must be fought. With utter hypocrisy, the leading representatives of the capitalist system state that achieving economic and social development, establishing democracy in backward countries or protecting the environment are the most fundamental problems of our planet. The inevitability of global cooperation in tackling these problems is emphasized at every opportunity. It has even been announced that the World Bank, under the presidency of Paul Wolfowitz (Wolfowitz, former US Deputy Secretary of Defence and a leading member of the hawkish team), will give priority to the fight against global poverty. We are also witnessing the reflections of this situation in Turkey. In his speech at the Forum Istanbul 2005 meeting of the world’s leading economic and political experts, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan said that globalisation ignores human beings and that nothing can be done against globalized terrorism with this approach. It is also noteworthy that such statements are linked to the appointment of Kemal Derviş, a former vice president of the World Bank, as the head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). On the one hand, the imperialist supreme organizations keep the stick on the backs of the poor masses, while on the other hand they assign some of their employees to the role of “benevolent priests” dangling carrots. At first glance, it may seem that there is nothing wrong in demanding more “aid” to African countries where millions of poor people are starving and thirsty, or in carrying out “charitable” campaigns for the cancellation of the debts of poor countries (which they obviously cannot pay anyway!). However, the fact that demands such as “aid to the poor” or “cancellation of debts” are “owned” by the bourgeois summit itself should be meaningful and thought-provoking enough to expose the real political content of appeasement demands and campaigns that do not actually disturb the capitalist order. In order to prevent revolutionary upsurges, the bourgeoisie resorts to various political tactics, keeping both the stick and the carrot at hand. On the one hand, fascist practices are being spread. On the other hand, reformist approaches that will not shake the bourgeois order are imposed in order to dilute the working class’ perspective of struggle and revolution.

Inequality in the distribution of surplus-value

It is well known that the ambition of the big monopolies to make larger and larger profits in the face of falling rates of profit is a factor that intensifies competition. But how profit is formed cannot be explained by competition. Competition in itself does not create profit, it only influences the formation of the average rate of profit. The source of profit lies in the exploitation of surplus-value in the production process. The fact that some capitalists are able to make more profit than others is a question of the distribution of surplus-value extracted from the working class. As Marx said, such problems of distribution do not change the nature of surplus-value, nor the fact that it is the source of capitalist accumulation. The imperialist stage of capitalism and the monopoly development that has come to dominate it have not changed the fundamental laws of capitalist mechanism. It has only given them much more pronounced and sharp characteristics. Monopoly and competition are not mutually exclusive phenomena. They rule together in accordance with the nature of dialectical movement. “In present-day economic life you will find, not only competition and monopoly, but also their synthesis, which is not a formula but a movement” Marx says, and continues: “Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. That equation, however, far from alleviating the difficulties of the present situation, as bourgeois economists suppose, gives rise to a situation even more difficult and involved.”[7] It is clear that the emergence of large monopolies has affected the conditions of competition that existed between large and small capitalist enterprises in earlier periods of capitalism. This has also brought new issues of debate to the agenda. An example is the debate on whether an extra monopoly profit arises due to monopolistic power relations. Under monopolized capitalism, there is certainly no equality in the distribution of profits among capitalists. Moreover, monopolistic conditions may weaken the bargaining power of labour against capital and thus lead to an increase in the rate of surplus-value. But in the final analysis a certain total mass of surplus-value is obtained, including all these factors, and the monopolies do not create an extra or super-profit out of it. While the productivity of social labour employed by total capital makes the amount of surplus-value or profit for the capitalist class as a whole a given, the value of the capital invested in this or that field and the specific level of productivity of labour in that field will determine the rate of profit corresponding to that capital. In Marx’s words, “We thus have a mathematically exact demonstration of why the capitalists, no matter how little love is lost among them in their mutual competition, are nevertheless united by a real freemasonry vis-a-vis the working class as a whole”.[8] Under the domination of monopoly capitalism, the mechanism of competition continues to be a factor in the formation of the average rate of profit. Competition in the market creates a general tendency to equalize inequalities. Nevertheless, total profits are distributed unequally according to the balance of power between capital groups. Those who are stronger receive a higher rate of profit in proportion to the capital invested. It is in this sense that we can speak of a monopoly profit that is transferred from the weak to the strong and thus rises above the average. Marx says the following about monopoly profits: “Finally, if the equalization of surplus-value to average profit in the various spheres of production comes upon obstacles in the form of artificial or natural monopolies, and particularly the monopoly of landed property, so that a monopoly price becomes possible, above both the price of production and value of the commodities this monopoly affects, this does not mean that the limits fixed by commodity value are abolished. A monopoly price for certain commodities simply transfers a portion of the profit made by the other commodity producers to the commodities with the monopoly price. Indirectly, there is a local disturbance in the distribution of surplus-value among the various spheres of production, but this leaves unaffected the limit of the surplus-value itself.” [9] Imperialist capitalism has given the circulation of capital a global character. Indeed, from the Bretton Woods agreement to today’s IMF Articles of Agreement, the lords of capital have sought regulations that would eliminate the obstacles that nation-states might put in the way of the free movement of capital. The owners of capital in developed countries have created ways to freely penetrate countries with cheap labour and make more profits. But when it comes to the free movement of labour, the situation is completely different. Both the fragmentation into nation-states and national borders that prohibit or restrict the free movement of migrant workers are living realities. Even within the EU, let alone the negative situation worldwide, the right to free movement of labour is recognized in parallel with the level of development of the member states and is ultimately restricted in one way or another. While capitalism gives capital great freedom of movement, it erects numerous obstacles to the free movement of labour. Some of the benefits of globalisation under capitalism are not evenly distributed between labour and capital. While capitalist development inevitably gives an international character to the movement of capital and the process of production, and develops multilateral relations between countries, it never promises spontaneous progress for the working-class movement and its organizations. Capital, which does not hesitate to stop the influx of migrant workers with ruthless methods when it does not suit it, wants to make use of the benefits of cheap labour as well. The big monopolies have turned the whole world into their “backyard”, shifting their production to regions where wages are as low as possible. The capitalist production process in many countries loses its national character and becomes part of the universal, and the exploitation of labour is thus globalized. For the working class, the nationality of the boss is of no importance. The capitalist production process has acquired the character of a process in which the bourgeoisies of various countries share in proportion to their power from the total surplus-value created by the workers of the world on a global scale. However, the globalisation of capitalism has not eliminated the fragmentation, national rivalries and contradictions deriving from the existence of nation-states. The globalisation of large capital flows has made the production processes in different nation-states increasingly interrelated, but this does not mean, say, the US economy and the German economy have become one economic formation without conflict. As an even more striking example, one can recall the recent crisis that the EU has been plunged into and the rivalries and frictions that have not disappeared between the EU countries themselves. Moreover, despite globalizing capitalism, the exchange relations between the imperialist countries in the centre and the less powerful capitalist countries in the periphery continue to be based on inequality. The law governing the exchange between capitalist countries with different degrees of development is the exchange of unequal values. In this exchange, the better-off country will get more labour for less labour. Marx says that the excess will be pocketed by a particular class, just as in the exchange between labour and capital in general.[10] So what is at stake here is not “national exploitation” but class exploitation. Due to unequal exchange relations, the working class of developed capitalist countries does not exploit the working class of underdeveloped countries. The transfer of value is essentially for the account of the bourgeoisie, wherever it is in the world. The relations of inequality between the large monopolistic capital groups, which have great power and control over the world market, and the less powerful are reproduced not only on a global scale but also on a national scale. Thus, there is a transfer of surplus-value from relatively small enterprises to the big monopolies, both at the national and global level. The appropriation of the extra monopoly profits arising from the inequalities in the distribution of surplus-value is one of the main activities not only of big capital in the imperialist countries, but of all big monopolies, from the most nationalist to the most cosmopolitan. As a result of this situation, powerful monopolies have a much higher bargaining power vis-à-vis the working class than others and can also pursue a relatively good wage policy if it suits them. Monopoly profits, which are the subject of various levels of debate and, as Lenin once explained, the source of the workers’ aristocracy, are not a phenomenon unique to imperialist countries. In all capitalist countries, this situation leads to income differences within the working class and creates privileged sections. But these and similar inequalities are inevitable economic consequences of the capitalist mode of production. The trick for communists is to build a revolutionary organization at the international level that will unite the class, not divide it, despite the objective differences that exist between workers. The relations of inequality in the distribution of surplus-value are an internal problem of the bourgeoisie. Just as the unequal sharing of surplus-value between monopoly bourgeois sections and other bourgeois sections within the borders of a country does not change the fact that the working class is under their joint exploitation, this is also the case on a global scale. In underdeveloped or developing countries, the surplus-value created by the working class is not only appropriated by foreign bosses, but also by local bosses, and they are happy to do so! Capitalist exploitation is a class problem, not a national one. The working class is exploited, not the countries. In order for the proletariat not to hold back from defending its own independent line of struggle in the name of “defending national interests” or “patriotism”, these facts must first be made clear to the class. At this point, the nationalist petty-bourgeois politics, which persist in the wrong, continue to perform the sinister function of building “revolutionism” on the internal contradictions of the bourgeoisie. However, capitalism has already taken away the land, the places, the homelands that people claim as their homeland and turned them into the cheque books and coffers of the bourgeoisie. As it has been emphasized since the Communist Manifesto, you cannot take away from the workers what does not exist, “workers have no country”! Only through workers’ revolution and workers’ democracy will every inch of the earth be transformed into a place of peace and happiness shared by all the humanity that produces its life through labour.

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Is it holding back?

One of the issues that needs to be carefully examined today is the view that imperialism, or globalisation as it is now called, is holding back underdeveloped countries and regions. Does the dominant position of capitalist countries, which are much more economically developed and powerful, really have a restraining and retarding effect on the economic development of backward countries? In fact, it would be completely wrong to attempt to answer these and similar questions with one-sided and mechanistic generalizations that ignore the differences in the historical development of countries and the diversity that derives from it. In its historical progress, capitalism has produced a variety of results in different parts of the world and in different geographical regions, which may sometimes appear quite different from each other. Not only in the context of the underdeveloped countries, but also in the world economy in general, this mode of production can develop some areas of the economy and inhibit the development of others. But such effects are, in the final analysis, relative rather than absolute. For capitalism does not only produce inequality; it is also characterized by a combined development. Capitalism, as a factor that dissolves old structures in all areas it enters, triggers complex and uneven processes of capitalist development in which old and new forms intertwine. In fact, in various regions and countries where this mode of production was not previously dominant, the relations of production have gradually dissolved in favour of capitalism. The overturning of old structures under the influence of capitalist relations is a process that changes the traditional living conditions of human communities in the form of shock waves. In the case of Turkey, there is no need to go far, such a process took place from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire to the founding of the Turkish Republic and even more recently. For a long time in Turkey, the tradition of imece, an extension of the Asiatic village commune life of the past, and the habits of life that began to change as a result of wave after wave of migration from the village to the city, existed almost side by side. The fact that meaningful leaps in capitalism began to take place in this country only in the 60s, with a considerable delay, gave the capitalization process an even more problematic and painful character. So much so that despite the underlying capitalist development process in this country, the debate on whether Turkey was a capitalist or a semi-capitalist/semi-feudal country dominated the left throughout the 60s and 70s. Even if this may seem a bit ridiculous today, it is a reality that it was only after the ‘80s that capitalist development in Turkey took flesh and bones with its striking images. The era of Özal which is famous for society getting out of joint, is characterized as a period in which capitalism made an enormous leap in this land and buried many old debates in the pages of history. The dismantling of old economic structures and habits and the construction of the new have taken place on the basis of the unplanned and anarchic nature of capitalist progress throughout the world. Such historical processes can only proceed at the cost of much suffering for the generations that experience them. The processes of introducing capitalist relations in the economically backward parts of the world have created much more unequal and disproportionate relations, and the suffering has been much greater, than in Western countries that have experienced this development in its natural evolution. This is why capitalism in regions and countries with a rather stagnant or Asiatic historical past has manifested itself as a distorted development process compared to the Western societies from which it emerged. As in other countries, such a process was also experienced in Tsarist Russia and was the subject of many debates in the revolutionary movement. For example, Narodniks argued that capitalist development was impossible in Russia, which had a different historical background and different relations of production from European countries. According to them, the domestic market in Russia was shrinking due to the destruction of the peasantry. On the other hand, they argued that surplus-value could not be realized without a foreign market and that a country like Russia, which had entered the path of capitalist development late, could not benefit from the possibility of a foreign market anyway. This approach was contrary to the Marxist conception of capitalist development and was criticized by Lenin. For capitalist development was possible in Russia, even on the basis of a process fraught with serious contradictions and with the impetus of foreign capital. The characteristics of capitalist development in countries like Russia were also extensively discussed by Trotsky. While the relations that Tsarist Russia developed with foreign countries seemed to strengthen the hand of this political regime, they were inevitably encouraging capitalist development at the same time. Failure to grasp the contradictory features exhibited by processes of introducing capitalist relations in a dialectical manner, and the one-sided exaggeration or absolutizing of this or that tendency, leads to shifts in the left movement and the invention of theories incompatible with Marxism. The distortions of Trotsky’s sound assessments by various Trotskyist circles over time are deviations of the same scope. For example, the assertion that imperialism necessarily holds back underdeveloped countries has been widely accepted in some Trotskyist circles. However, Trotsky’s own exposition is a response to such claims. Trotsky points out that capitalist development has proceeded in the direction of relatively equalizing the economic and cultural levels of various countries. “Without this main process,” he says, “it would be impossible to conceive of the relative leveling out, first, of Europe with Great Britain, and then, of America with Europe; the industrialization of the colonies, the diminishing gap between India and Great Britain...”[1] These and similar passages are clear proof that the views that economic progress cannot be achieved under capitalism in countries like, say, India, and that industrialization cannot take place in the former colonies, are incompatible with Trotsky’s analyses. Of course, the economic developments referred to here never take place in a straight line; various contradictions and distortions try to find their way through the reproduced relations of inequality. But contradiction and distortion are already inherent in capitalism. Indeed, Trotsky also draws attention to this important point. He points out that while capitalism brings countries closer to each other economically and relatively equalizes their stages of development, it does so by means of methods that are entirely peculiar to itself, that is, anarchic. So much so that it constantly undermines its own work, pitting one country or branch of industry against another, developing some parts of the world economy while hindering the development of others and throwing them backwards. It is true that in the past, as long as colonial and semi-colonial countries were viewed by colonial and semi-colonial countries as a source of cheap raw materials, no meaningful industrialization breakthrough was recorded in these countries. As a result of this situation, the colonialist countries were able to obtain cheap raw materials, cheap energy, cheap labour and enjoyed the benefits of uneven development to the fullest. But this is not the only reality. Unlike the colonialist ways, imperialist capitalism tends to gradually absorb into its capitalist functioning even those countries and regions which were not once the scene of capitalist development. Compared to the early industrialised countries, this kind of passage to capitalism gives the economic and social process a highly contradictory and painful character, but nevertheless functions to advance the productive forces. Views that claim that imperialism will lead to economic stagnation and regression in former colonial and semi-colonial countries without carefully analysing the effects of capitalist expansionism that has evolved from colonialism to imperialism should be met with caution. First of all, it is necessary to consider the basis on which the analyses of economic progress or regression are made. The assumption that there would have been a more rapid development of productive forces in these countries if it were not for the dissolving effect of imperialist capitalism on the old structures is an absurd and unfounded approach which is incompatible with the laws of historical development. For the imperialist countries to hold the regions that fall within their sphere of influence in a permanently economically backward position would be a factor that in the long run would come back to bite them and lead to stagnation. The imperialist powers need to open up previously untouched areas of the whole world to capitalism, to advance the process of industrialisation there at one pace or another, and in time to incorporate all regions more thoroughly into the workings of capitalism. To what extent and at what pace this need can be fulfilled, or how economic imperatives, due to a thousand and one contradictions of life, can lead to inequalities, do not in the final analysis change the rule. Indeed, as a result of capitalism drawing various nations into its network of relations, many large and small countries, once dominated by pre-capitalist modes of production, have become capitalist. Thus, the capitalist production process has gradually acquired a truly international or, in the current parlance, global character.

Deterioration in income distribution

Another claim that needs to be taken with caution is that income distribution will deteriorate in countries that fall within the imperialist sphere of expansion. Behind such approaches, which seem logical at first glance, lies a distorted understanding of anti-imperialism that seeks to portray the source of capitalist evil as a mere external threat. However, regardless of the country in question, capitalist functioning itself tends over time to distort the distribution of income to the detriment of the working class and toiling masses. In short, this evil is not a phenomenon limited to imperialism’s appropriation of underdeveloped countries. With the globalisation of capitalism and especially with the neoliberal policies pursued after 1980, the gap between rich and poor has widened enormously across the world. For example, in 1960, the average income of the richest 20 percent of the world population was about 30 times that of the poorest 20 percent. In the 2000s, however, this ratio has exceeded 80 times. It is also clear that in addition to inequality between capitalist countries, inequality within these countries is also being reproduced at an increasing rate. The social gaps created by globalising capitalism around the world have reached unbelievable proportions. While the total wealth of the richest 225 people in the world exceeds 1 trillion dollars, this figure is said to be equal to the total annual income of the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people. Another striking example is that the total value of production in the 48 poorest countries is less than the total wealth of the three richest persons in the world. In short, this is what capitalism is, with or without the adjective global. On the one hand, it may bring about an improvement in the income and living standards of the productive masses compared to the past, but on the other hand, it increases the inequality between different income groups in all capitalist countries. The masses, even in the richest capitalist countries, cannot escape the relative impoverishment brought about by capitalism. Even when there is an apparent improvement in their incomes, the ability of workers to meet their growing needs in relation to the development of the productive forces regresses. To argue that globalisation is a phenomenon that only distorts the distribution of income in poor countries is compatible neither with reality nor with Marxism. It is one of the most important findings of Marxism that capitalist development generally deepens the gap between the world of wealth and the world of poverty. In order to avoid some misunderstandings about the problem under discussion, let us draw attention to an important point. Comparisons of the impact of capitalism on income distribution in underdeveloped countries should be made in the context of the social conditions that have been shaped under capitalism itself, and not in comparison with the period of dissolution of the old society. This is because an important feature of the pre-capitalist period in traditional agrarian countries was that vast masses shared conditions of relative equality in poverty. With capitalist development, this is replaced by a new class structure. The village communities that existed in the old society dissolve and the relations of production of class society are reproduced on the basis of capitalism. Due to capitalist development, the old structure of society is disrupted, while a significant part of the small property owners of the past become proletarianized. While the general level of production and income of the nation increases as a result of industrialization, the distribution of this income under capitalism is of course based on inequality. However, this is an inevitable consequence of the capitalist process in general, and not only of the process of becoming capitalist specific to the underdeveloped countries under the domination of imperialism. In short, all views that imply that without the intervention of imperialism there would have been a more equitable industrialization and becoming capitalist at the national level that would have prevented the deterioration in the distribution of income are false. Such views serve bourgeois nationalism in the final analysis.

The impasse of petty-bourgeois criticism

Lenin, one of the main milestones in the transmission of Marxism to future generations without distortion, drew attention to the progressive historical mission of capitalism compared to the past. Production for a growing national and international market obviously plays an economically developmental role. Trade relations both within and between countries intensify over time. As a result of technical progress and the spread of large-scale production, the old population structure and class composition change rapidly. Capitalist development destroys the outdated traditions of patriarchal life and at the same time creates the modern working class. With the diversification of needs and the modernization of lifestyles, the production process and those involved in production are socialized. This change under capitalism is in fact a historical progression that moves human life from the past towards the classless society of the future. As Lenin noted, the progressive historical role of capitalism can be summarized in two short propositions: “increase in the productive forces of social labour and the socialisation of that labour”.[2] Marxism has shed light on the contradictory nature of capitalism, as it has on many other questions that need clarification. The capitalist mode of production is a historical instrument for the development of the material forces of production and the creation of a viable world market, but it can only fulfil this task in the midst of various contradictions. For example, the economic progress achieved by capitalism in comparison to previous modes of production and the reactionary tendency in political life created by imperialist capitalism can very well go hand in hand. To think that these two ideas contradict each other is to fail to understand capitalism. Lenin has generally clarified this issue. Recognizing the importance of the progressive role played by capitalism economically does not contradict being fully aware of the negative and dark aspects of capitalism. The progressive historical role of capitalism has never eliminated, nor can it eliminate, the deep and multifaceted social contradictions inherent in the structure of this economic regime and that reveal its historically temporary character. Another important aspect of the problem is the objections raised by petty-bourgeois tendencies, which fail to grasp deep contradictions of capitalism. The views of the Narodniks and Lenin’s criticism of them constitute a significant historical example. The Narodniks, who claimed that accepting the progressive role of capitalism would mean defending capitalism, made every effort to spread this false view. The debates on the historical mission of capitalism should have been long over for Marxists. But unfortunately, there has never been and never will be a lack of political tendencies that preach in the name of Marxism and make it lifeless in petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness. Even though there are many differences in terms of political style and organizational tactics, the Narodnik petty-bourgeois that Lenin criticized is, in a way, still at work today. This petty-bourgeois never comes to grips with the fact that capitalist development is in fact developing the conditions that will make its overthrow possible. From the past debates to the current debates on globalisation, the idea that opponents of capitalism, infected with petty-bourgeois parochialism, cling to is the preservation of the old. Petty-bourgeois socialism, the most typical example of which in modern times is the Third Worldist tendencies, like the Narodniks of the old days, keeps looking for masses of people who have not been “corrupted” by capitalism and are “waiting to be saved”. It must be clearly stated that the petty-bourgeois criticism of capitalism has never in any period of history served to strengthen the revolutionary struggle of the working class. The problems have diversified and changed over the years, but the petty-bourgeois mindset has always remained in place. Because of the influence of the political ideas of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois left, socialist circles around the world have been dominated by many erroneous views on many issues. A lightminded and unrealistic interpretation of the general consequences of certain important developments for the world capitalist system has caused the socialist movement to lose credibility in general. One can recall, for example, those analyses that downplayed the possibility of underdeveloped countries and regions or collapsing bureaucratic regimes becoming increasingly integrated into capitalist system. Such views are also one of the main reasons why the world labour movement has been generally unprepared since the 60s for the new period of upheaval. And it is possible to find many examples of these misjudgements in both Stalinist and Trotskyist circles. For example, developments with possibilities of enormous significance on a world level were dismissed with the fallacies that either “real socialism” would easily defeat capitalism or that the success of national liberation struggles would set capitalism back. On the other hand, the interpretation of the developments in the process that followed the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes in the Soviet Union and the like was again turned into a petty criticism of capitalism. The possibility of the integration of these countries into the capitalist system has been greatly underestimated. There have been shortsighted approaches that the political crises created by the process of collapse would never let capitalism in. The collapse of the bureaucratic regimes in the Soviet Union and the like has revealed that there is no fundamental obstacle to the integration of these countries into the world capitalist system. This has been proven by today’s capitalist Russia. Or, as in the case of China, it is proved once again by the process of feverish capitalist development taking place under the top-down control of ruling bureaucracy rapidly becoming bourgeois. It must be remembered that the question was not whether such processes of capitalist integration were economically feasible. For Marxists, the historical problem was how the world working class could benefit from the political storms that such processes would create and how this could be made possible.

Is colonialism coming back?

By the turn of the 20th century capitalism jumped from colonialism to the stage of imperialism at a time when division of the world territorially among colonial capitalist powers has already been completed. During the First World War, the great capitalist powers drove humanity into a hell of war in order to redivide the world. The masses of workers and laborers of various countries were pitted against each other for the exchange of colonial territories and spheres of influence, which were seen as sources of cheap raw materials or a simple market for the manufactured goods of the advanced capitalist countries. Capitalism also moved forward by putting an end to the empires of the past and incorporating these geographies into the system of capitalist relations, as seen in the examples of Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire. New regions would no longer have to be reduced to colonial or semi-colonial status in order to be included in the capitalist system. The fact that imperialism was a different stage from colonialism would become much more clearly grasped over time as the former colonial countries gained their political independence. Developments in the capitalist system and the nature of economic relations between countries at different levels of development have nevertheless been subject to contradictory interpretations for many years. The differences in the interpretation of the inequality that dominates the relations between various nation-states and the erroneous or opportunist theses put forward in the name of Marxism are concrete examples of this. Completely erroneous political views and conclusions have been derived from the inevitable dependence of countries that have gained political independence and established their own nation-states on economically developed capitalist countries. Those views that for years have dealt with the imperialist expansionism of capitalism from the angle of colonialism are now being reproduced in the globalisation debate which served as a pretext. For some reason, false ideas that seek to explain globalisation as a resurgence of colonialism are very popular. The US, the most aggressive country of global capitalism, is portrayed as the colonial emperor. This so-called anti-globalism, which has no trace of Marxism, is incapable of erecting an alternative to capitalist globalisation that transcends it. Insisting on the defence of national and local interests in the face of globalisation means not really opposing capitalism and wanting to preserve it in some form. Even if political theses that mean this wrap themselves in sharp-sounding “revolutionary” rhetoric, the essence remains the same: this is bourgeois politics. Statist politics, which lays the foundation for capitalism, or nationalist politics, which defends the interests of the domestic bourgeoisie, or reformist politics, which tries to fix capitalism in one way or another, can never lead the masses of workers and laborers to liberation. None of such politics can lead the poor and exploited masses to a better social order. Those who want emancipation must set their sights on the future, that is, on the workers’ revolution that will overthrow capitalism and the workers’ power that will make possible the transition to socialism. The efforts of the imperialist powers to create new spheres of influence in the world and redivide the existing ones do not mean a return to colonialism or a revival of colonialism. The desire of the great capitalist powers to dominate the world and control other countries politically and economically is not unique to the period of colonial empires. Capitalism, by its very nature, always wants to reach wider markets, to spread across the world. And in terms of its potential for deep expansion across the world, the period of imperialism is a more advanced stage of capitalism than the period of colonialism. The capitalist mode of production has achieved the possibility of real expansion on a world scale by monopolizing, by becoming imperialist. Famous British politicians, who were aware of this law of development, used to preach “become imperialist”. Today, in countries like Turkey, the financial oligarchy expresses its ambition to gain a stronger position in the world economy with the command “globalize”. The difference of imperialism from the colonial phase has become clear with the developments in the 20th century. Today, the imperialist powers, especially the USA, with its post-September 11 aggression, have not returned from imperialist expansionism to colonialism. The aim of the wars of repartition and the accompanying occupations, which started recently in the Balkans and then spread to other regions and countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, is not to annex territories, as was the case during the colonial period. The imperialist powers are not waging wars of repartition with the aim of putting an end to the nation-states in these territories and reducing them to the status of colonies. In our time, the ambition of the big capitalist countries is not colonialism but imperialist expansionism. That is why these countries are seeking to create new political forms in order to expand and consolidate their spheres of influence, precisely in the manner characteristic of the imperialist phase. Rival imperialist powers can create new nation-states in geographies that can be divided into multiple parts on the basis of ethnic, religious, sectarian and national divisions. In unstable regions like the Middle East, the number of nation-states whose borders were once drawn with a ruler on a map may change. But such developments do not change the nature of imperialist expansionism. For the imperialist powers, the goal is to establish governments loyal to them in the spheres of influence that are subject to repartition, and to bring capitalism to the politically controlled regions compatible with their own interests. On the other hand, to emphasize the reality that explains the general trend, we should underline that capitalism spreading on a world scale has actually created the possibility of transcending localism and nationalism. Globalisation, which connects capitalist countries large and small on the basis of uneven relations, also causes a structural change by freeing underdeveloped countries from isolation and integrating them into the world economy. The expansion of capitalism’s sphere of dominance means the geographical expansion of world markets and the transformation of existing ones compatible with new needs. Capitalism is not a static economic system that is content with what it finds. And most importantly, the dissolution of backward economic structures under the influence of globalizing capitalism and their articulation into the world system is not at all a development that obstructs the path of the working class in historical terms. Because the emancipation of humanity does not require halting of global development, but transcending capitalist globalisation by socialist globalisation.

Beware of distortions!

Capitalism’s need for expansion stems from inherent economic laws, but these laws are not self-executing. The politics pursued by nation-states and the conflicts and wars between powers are decisive in the actualization of the impositions rising from the economic base. Today, the shaking at the bottom caused by these economic laws is felt primarily in the countries that have the decisive power in the system. In these countries, the imperatives arising from the economic basis dictate the formulation of general and long-term political strategies that do not depend much on changes of government. As we have witnessed most strikingly in Britain under Blair’s Labour Party, the right/left distinction between the bourgeois parties of the past has lost much of its significance. The political line taken by bourgeois “workers’ parties” such as the social-democratic, socialist parties or British Labour Party, as well as bourgeois parties called liberal or conservative, is shaped much more clearly and strikingly than in the past by the current needs of big capital. The repartition plan that the US is trying to impose on the Eurasian scale today is not limited to the calculations of Bush’s team of “neo-cons”, the so-called neoconservatives. The Greater Middle East Project generally reflects the desires of American finance capital. The extent to which these strategies can or cannot be realized will undoubtedly be determined by the economic, political and military position of the conflicting parties in the world balance of power. Regional powers occupy an uneven position vis-à-vis imperialist countries, which are mobilizing to expand their market space in economically underdeveloped geographies or to transform them to suit their own purposes. Nevertheless, it is obvious that various nation-states or different power centres such as Shiite/Sunni, Turkmen/Kurdish, etc. in the regions subject to repartition have taken and will take action in one direction or another to protect their own interests. Therefore, the influence of these different factors and forces on the course of events cannot be completely neglected. Nevertheless, we must never forget that as long as we remain within the capitalist system, the economically and militarily strong positions will prevail. In fact, the leaderships of various national movements in the globalizing capitalist world are well aware of the world balance. They make their calculations accordingly; they try to take advantage of the conflicts between rival imperialist powers. However, for years, in the name of Marxism, national resistance has been given such an overblown meaning that the enormous difference in scope between the goals of national liberation and social liberation has been obscured. Today it will not be possible to adequately illuminate the path of the revolutionary struggle of the working class without repeatedly confronting such distortions. Exaggerated and erroneous views on the consequences of national liberation struggles are based on the denial of the change in the functioning of the system brought about by the imperialist stage of capitalism. Even if revolutionary Marxism’s analysis of imperialism is accepted in words, in content it is generally treated just like colonialism. The class question is overshadowed and the national question is brought to the fore. From this point of view, the underdeveloped or moderately developed regions and countries of the capitalist system are declared as if they were a classless “land of the oppressed”. Economic dependence on the imperialist powers is equated with colonial status, and in countries that have gained political independence, the main problems are still considered within the scope of national liberation struggles. Thus, the bourgeoisie of such capitalist countries is promoted to the level of a kind of “oppressed” element that must be protected and supported against imperialist powers. Instead of mobilizing to strengthen the independent struggle of the proletariat, these “oppressed” bourgeois governments are supported on the occasion of every problem that erupts. Let us refresh memories. During the first Gulf War, under the pretext of supporting the oppressed nation against American imperialism, support was offered to the bourgeois Saddam government, which in fact oppressed the Iraqi working class, Kurds and other minorities. And unfortunately, such political attitudes have been maintained for years in the name of revolutionism, in the name of Marxism. We need to be careful! Because today, instead of building a revolutionary alternative to the strategies of imperialist powers against underdeveloped and developing regions, the masses of workers and laborers are being trapped in a vicious cycle that does not go beyond the framework of national liberationism. The claim that imperialism can be defeated through national liberation struggles is a sinister and unrealistic claim that can never be verified in real life. A national liberation struggle that does not turn into a struggle for social revolution does not transcend the bourgeois solution framework even when it achieves the right to political independence. It is very clear where the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation, which gains the right to establish its own nation-state and attempts to do so, will set its sights. The attitude of the leaderships of Barzani and Talabani, who lead the Kurdish independence movement in Northern Iraq, is obvious. Therefore, one must never be mistaken about an important issue. Capitalism, which rises on nation-state organization, has no fundamental problem with the establishment of nation-states in countries that were once colonies. Although, as exemplified in Turkey, the insistence of the state-building bureaucrat bourgeoisie of the oppressor nation on the red lines that have become the symbol of their raison d’être for years can and has led to various conflicts. But the dominant character of capitalist relations that will ultimately bring these bureaucrats into line cannot be underestimated. Indeed, over time, new nation-states were established in many former colonial countries. Some of the oppressed nations were able to gain their political independence as a result of their struggles. Therefore, to claim that the solution of the national question will never be possible under capitalism is incompatible with reality. But there is undoubtedly a difference from solution to solution. The Kurds’ exercise of their right to self-determination within the bourgeois framework, their becoming a constituent element in the new Iraqi structure, or the acceptance of their demands for federalism as a result of the events that have developed today on the basis of the US invasion of Iraq is also a solution. However, such solutions will always be doomed to become bargaining chips for rival capitalist powers. On the other hand, as long as the solution to a national question remains within the bourgeois scope, it is perfectly logical for the national movement representing it to receive support from this or that imperialist power. Thus, a nation’s right to self-determination can, and indeed has, resulted in the creation of a new nation-state under the leadership of bourgeois sections of that nation. But let us not forget that such a development will never be able to completely eliminate the problems arising from the national division created and fuelled by capitalism. No matter how we look at it, it is so obvious that a holistic and irreversible solution to this problem, as with all the problems discussed, will only be possible with the abolition of capitalism, that perhaps there is no need to say much at this point.

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Multidirectional movement of capital

The period of colonial expansionism of capitalism was accompanied by wars and territorial annexations driven by the ambition of the great powers to acquire ever larger colonies. The economic characteristic of this period was the increasing export of commodities to foreign markets, the import of cheap raw materials from the colonies and the desire to gain a dominant position in world trade. But with the rise of capitalism to the imperialist stage, the export of capital assumed great importance. However, commodity exports and world trade certainly continued to expand. Since, a capitalism without such elements is not possible. However, as the average rate of profit was falling in the advanced capitalist countries, capital began to flow into underdeveloped regions in search of more profitable investment areas, stimulating capitalist development in these regions. An important point should be highlighted here. There is no rule that the predominant direction ofcapital movement would always be from developed to underdeveloped countries. It is true that, in the past, developed capitalist countries invested significant amounts of capital in their own colonies or spheres of influence. But over time, relations of big capital acquired a multifaceted character involving various countries. When we analyse the capital movements in the twentieth century, we see that at the beginning of the century, capital predominantly flowed from the developed countries to the underdeveloped world. Moreover, certain countries, which would later develop by leaps and bounds, also imported capital on a large scale. For instance, prior to the First World War, the United States enjoyed remarkable capital imports. But in subsequent periods, American capitalism would experience a tremendous rise and, following the Second World War, become the undisputed hegemonic power of the imperialist system. The US was now the number one imperialist country, exporting huge amounts of capital to Europe and other countries. One of the most striking phenomena in the aftermath of the Second World War was the increase in economic relations and interdependence between advanced capitalist countries or regions such as the USA, Europe and Japan. Advanced capitalist countries expanded their share in world trade and capital movements. One of the main reasons for this was the desire of the capital to entrench itself by fleeing from places it considered too risky. National liberation struggles in colonies and semi-colonies had altered the risk factor in such regions in general. Moreover, the newly established nation-states were often putting into practice national developmentalist policies and nationalizations, which were considered a serious source of instability by imperialist capital. From the point of view of the imperialist powers, such countries were regarded as too unstable and precarious for large industrial investments.  Over time, the contrast between the two categories of the underdeveloped countries became sharper: relatively stagnant ones and those with great potential for development. As the latter ones began to make quantum leaps in economic development on the basis of capitalism, the bourgeoisie in these countries became eager to demand an ever-deeper integration into the world capitalist system. In addition to the ties between the leading imperialist countries, their economic relations with the emerging medium-level development countries also intensified. For example, significant amounts of capital flowed from the US into the developing Latin American countries such as Brazil. In the meantime, there was a massive industrialization drive in the so-called Asian Tigers that attracted a large slice of capital flows. With the US having consolidated its hegemonic position, American imperialism became the dominant force in many parts of the world. However, this situation has never completely ousted the other imperialist powers. The imperialist countries carved up the world into spheres of influence and dominated them in proportion to their power. For, workings of imperialism differ from those of colonialism. Unlike colonial powers, no imperialist country can establish an absolute dominance in any region that excludes others. For example, the flow of American capital into a South Asian country does not necessarily prohibit, say, France or Japan from exporting capital to that country. Moreover, the imperialist stage of capitalism inevitably brings the capital groups of various capitalist countries into enormously intricate relations. With the era of imperialism, the international functioning and relations of capitalism underwent a significant change. The capitalist groups of various countries have increasingly tended to work together on a global scale. But in the meantime, the competition never ceased to exist between them. As the powerful groups of finance capital and the great monopolies of the world established an extremely complex network of relations across the globe, the phenomenon ofunity in competition has acquired a much more profound and contradictory character. Various capitalist countries, which are interconnected with each other through a thousand and one relations, are at the same time acting in such a way as to maximize their own interests and satisfy their ambitions. This brought about a clash of tendencies that pull an organic whole in opposite directions.          As capitalism progressed on the basis of imperialism, globalisation began to mature exponentially and became more and more clearly comprehensible. In the course of this process, which gained momentum especially since the 1960s, another historical event occurred, which shook the balances in the world to the core. With the collapse of the “socialist” bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s, new and huge territories opened up on which the capitalist system cast its ambitious eyes for expansion. As we all know, capitalism seized this opportunity in such a way as to turn it into a shot of youth and embarked on a propaganda campaign to promote globalism. But in fact, the intensifying globalisation does not constitute a tendency of renewal and rejuvenation for the system. On the contrary, it corresponds to an intensification and sharpening of the contradictions of the senile and decaying capitalism. Having developed and improved the economic living conditions of human societies compared to the earlier modes of production, capitalism is now an obsolete system. Comparisons that involve economic, political, social and cultural dimensions must be made not in relation to the past, but in relation to the future. Under present conditions, one can by no means confine oneself to repeating the fact that capitalism has advanced the productive forces and the living conditions to a much greater extent than the preceding periods. For, the world as a whole has long been ripe for socialism. For the well-being of the world and the humankind, socialism has long become an indispensable necessity. Only by overthrowing capitalism and establishing a true workers’ power on earth, i.e. workers’ democracy, can we advance the productive forces in a quality and quantity that are compatible with the interests of the human race, and thus achieve socialism.

A new stage beyond imperialism?

Today, production process and economic relations have acquired an even more global character when compared to the early 20th century. But this does not mean that capitalism has entered a new stage. Marxist analysis has shown that the imperialist stage of capitalism is the last stage of this system. Underlying this assessment is the fact that at this stage capitalism, created an integrated economic system that has now encircled the entire globe and reached its ultimate limits. In this respect, imperialism is indeed the last stage of capitalism. But this characterization does not conflict with the fact that imperialism has developed on its own foundations in the course of time and has reached a level of maturity that can be grasped much more clearly today. When the question of globalisation is considered from this point of view, it will be easily understood that global capitalism is by no means a new stage that differs from and transcends imperialism. Under capitalism, which has spread around the world, creating a global market and a global system, a combined but uneven development continues in various nations. The level of globalisation of capitalism can be traced through the spread of capital movements to the remote regions of the world. While capital, in its drive to maximize profits, shifts to areas with lower costs, multinational monopolies emerge out of marriages between large monopolies. Capital becomes concentrated and centralized in certain hands. Thus, globalizing capitalism increasingly globalizes the exploitation of wage labour. Among capitalist countries with different levels of development, the gap of inequality does not close. However, the lagging countries may increase their level of economic development. They intensify and deepen the multifaceted relations with other capitalist countries. The bourgeoisies of various countries become competing shareholders of the total surplus-value created in the world. The total surplus-value is ultimately divided according to the size and power of capitals at a global level, just as it is within a nation-state. There are proponents of capitalist order who present and defend globalisation as a brand-new stage that will put an end to the crisis-ridden functioning of capitalism. One of the points on which the champions of globalism base this claim is the increasingly more universalized character of capitalist economic relations when compared to the past. Another aspect that serves their interests ideologically is that some important tenets of Marxism regarding imperialism have been deformed over time. Certain characterizations of the imperialist stage such as “moribund capitalism”, “decaying capitalism” or “capitalism on the verge of collapse”, which were often repeated by Lenin, have also been subjected to deformation. On the basis of such distorted interpretations of various Marxist tenets, the proponents of the establishment claim that, contrary to the estimation of Marxists, capitalism has in fact not collapsed at all, but it has rather become a more vigorous and almost an eternal system. Apart from the baselessness of such claims, the idea that capitalism will collapse spontaneously has nothing to do with Marxism. As opposed to distortions, “moribund capitalism” and similar characterizations refer only to the historical tendency, not to absolute conclusions that would come true in the imminent future. Lenin and other revolutionary Marxists have pointed out that capitalism, which has reached its final stage with imperialism, will exhibit a downward trend in accordance with the dialectical law of development. This Marxist assessment is by no means a theory of “collapse” in the sense that world capitalism will suddenly collapse due to this or that system crisis or that it will no longer be able to further expand or develop. In Lenin’s time, this issue was addressed in Comintern discussions.In his report to the Third Congress in 1921, Trotsky emphasized that if conditions changed in favour of capitalism, a new upsurge in productive forces could occur despite the tendency to collapse. Recent and current developments prove that the imperialist powers desire to go on the offensive in the new areas opened to capitalism by the collapse of bureaucratic regimes or in regions such as the Middle East and Africa that lag behind in terms of capitalist development. In theory, it is quite possible for capitalism to make a significant economic breakthrough in the regions on which it casts its eyes as new investment areas. Moreover, the recent Russian and Chinese examples show that this is not only a theoretical possibility, but also a practical reality. However, it is also obviously clear that this situation changes the existing balances, increases the tension between imperialist powers and provokes new conflicts. And last but not least, it will sooner or later escalate the class war. It must also be remembered that the capitalist organism, ambitious for a new breakthrough, is no longer in its youth. Through an intense ideological propaganda, the bourgeoisie is trying to portray the expansion of the senile capitalism as an era of refreshment. Capitalism’s attempt to reach out to new areas on the basis of more intricate and intensive relations is being presented as a new stage beyond imperialism. However, capitalist life is advancing with developments that are far from alleviating, halting or reversing the trend of decay indicated by imperialism, the last stage of this mode of production. Rather, decay is further intensifying in all spheres of life. In addition to the openly pro-establishment writers, there are also various views on the left that consider globalisation a new stage of capitalism. For example, some regard globalisation as a process where capitalism moves from the stage of the international system to the stage of transnationalization. If the concept of transnationalization is used in the sense of a capitalist stage that transcends the nation-state, this approach is wrong. If this is not the intention, one should know that it is impossible to grasp reality by playing with words and building eclectic structures at the intellectual level. Likewise, theses claiming that, unlike the imperialist stage, globalisation corresponds to the division of the capitalist system into subsystems are equally unfounded. According to these theses, the capitalist system is divided into three subsystems: the European subsystem (EU) led by Germany, the American subsystem (NAFTA) led by the US and the East-Pacific subsystem (ASEAN) led by Japan. The proponents of such theses claim that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we now live in a tripolar world. The problem here is the attempt to define a permanent new world order by drawing conclusions from a conjuncture in which the entire balances in the world have been turned upside down, plunging the system into deep instability and making the future of various imperialist unions uncertain. One should never forget the fact that capitalism proceeds on the basis of opposing tendencies. When one forgets this fact and swings to extremes, it becomes inevitable to absolutize this or that tendency or to build theories in a purely speculative manner. Just as it borders on irrationality to argue that capitalism will unify into a single world trust, so too does the idea that it will disintegrate into isolated subsystems. The great imperialist powers penetrate not only this or that area, but various areas to varying degrees and carry out their plans accordingly. The US has built APEC to keep the dynamic countries of Southeast Asia and the Far East within its sphere of hegemony in order to prevent ASEAN, led by Japan, from turning into an independent leading force.[1] Despite its recently eroded position, the US still holds the first position among the leading imperialist power centres. This reality is also admitted by some leading EU officials. It is said that the US economy is extremely strong, that it will remain as the world’s number one economy in the near future and that the US holds the world leadership in every field. During the Cold War, the US kept the capitalist bloc under its hegemony through organisations such as the NATO. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has retained its hegemony despite the changing world conditions. It still has control over the EU and other regional blocs ranging from Latin America to Canada, from Japan to various Far East and Southeast Asian countries. Despite its problems, which have intensified in recent years, the US is ahead of its rival, the EU, in terms of economic growth. It is clear that the level of development of productive forces is incompatible with the reality of a world fragmented into nation-states. It is equally clear that capital is trying to overcome the barriers on its path by founding various umbrella organisations. It is also obvious that the policies pursued by capitalist nation-states in various fields cannot be permanently shaped in opposition to the needs of big capital. We live in a world where countries that cannot stand up to the competitive pressure of a large and united nation-state like the USA are trying to express themselves in supranational unions that transcend the nation-state. Let us remember that it was on such a basis that the road to the EU was paved by various European countries. Today the imperialist powers intend to take measures not only against familiar rivals but also against potential rivals. French President Chirac says that the EU needs to advance in order to stand up against the US and India. Likewise, the US is anxious to gain ground against the rising powers Russia and China, even if it is not yet openly confronting them, and to prevent the EU countries from embarking upon independent engagements. Subsystems, overrated by some authors, are no more than economic unions of capitalist countries that need to come together against competitors. Although the idea that these subsystems could create permanent superstructures that would put an end to existing nation-state structures seems theoretically possible, it has proven to be unfounded in practice. The idea of a capitalist United States of Europe, which is supposedly the most credible one among such ideas, was shown to be a utopia as early as Lenin’s time. Moreover, today even the European bourgeoisie itself does not find this idea convincing. The future of the EU, even as an economic union, is uncertain. As the history of capitalism proves, periods of turmoil can dissolve the existing economic pacts or modify their components while creating new unions and structures. Some countries that have long been the frontrunners may begin to lag behind, while newcomers may leap forward. Indeed, the rise of Russia and China, two countries that were not even mentioned in the capitalism’s great game of hegemony a decade ago, is evident today. With a GDP of 1.7 trillion dollars in 2004, China ranks seventh in the list of the world’s 21 largest economies and has climbed to fourth place in terms of purchasing power parity. Under the oppressive political stability provided by the top-down control of the ruling state bureaucracy, Chinese capitalism is indeed taking giant steps forward in many fields. China, which will profoundly affect the balances in the world with its rising position, is a candidate to become the main imperialist power to stand against the US, pushing the US-EU rivalry, which seems to be in the forefront today, to the background. By forming an alliance with Japan and Russia, the strengthening China can establish a rival bloc that will challenge the US. These and similar developments are quite possible. However, based on such points, it would be an inaccurate approach to claim that the structure of the capitalist system, which is shaped under a single hegemonic power, will definitely change and that it will continue on its way by dividing into subsystems, each of which will be headed by a different hegemonic power. For, the possibilities that are interpreted in this or that way do not actually point to a new world balance, but rather to a great imbalance. The survival of the capitalist system over a certain period of history depends, in the end, on its ability to achieve a relative equilibrium and stability. The state of equilibrium achieved under certain conditions can, of course, be disturbed when conditions change. But unless the capitalist system is overthrown, the search for a new balance and stability, even at the cost of major conflicts, imposes itself strongly and this need determines the process. The epoch of imperialism shows that relative stability in the capitalist world can ultimately be achieved through the formation of the system under a single hegemonic power. Of course, this reality does not mean that only the absolute will of the hegemon country will prevail in the whole system. Despite the long-standing unquestionable supremacy of US imperialism, other imperialist countries undoubtedly had a say and influence to one degree or another. But in critical situations, in the final analysis, a consensus can be reached through the decisive role of the hegemonic power. The structural features of the imperialist-capitalist system require the continuation of this kind of functioning for the survival of the system. The division of capitalism into subsystems on the basis of multiple hegemonic powers would drive competition completely out of control and raise conflicts between rival blocs to a level that would put the system in mortal danger. Such a situation would not lead capitalism to a new state of equilibrium, which would have to be defined differently from today, but rather to a chaotic situation with no end in sight. The views that consider globalisation as a new phase of capitalism actually lead in opposite directions. Nevertheless, they generally share a common feature. For, many of these views are based on old theses that are modified and presented in new packaging. A prominent example in this context is the book Empire, co-authored by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The book theorizes that the age of imperialism has ended and the age of empire has begun. According to the authors, the great capitalist powers will unite in a single world trust and nation-states will dissolve into this empire. Obviously, these views remind one of the ultra-imperialism theories of the past, put forward by the likes of Kautsky. Such approaches were refuted years ago by revolutionary Marxist writers. However, on various occasions they are rehashed and recirculated. And it is interesting that they continue to find acceptance among the so-called Marxist circles.

Is the nation-state being transcended?

As capitalism is driven by the concentration and centralisation of capital, the world economy is increasingly controlled by fewer but larger multinational monopolies. The combined turnover of the twenty leading multinational monopolies is greater than the gross national product of more than eighty countries. Monopoly capital has acquired a transnational structure and status through a mobility that transcends the borders of nation-states. This development undoubtedly trivialises the existence of national borders in economic terms. However, the political and social sphere has never submitted and will never submit to economic developments in a conflict-free and spontaneous manner, smoothly and simultaneously. This reality, on the one hand, exacerbates the contradictions of capitalism and, on the other hand, raises many issues of debate. One important topic of discussion concerns the tendency towards centralisation. Despite the rivalry between them, the imperialist countries are forming supra-national unions in various fields. Thus, the capitalist system is able to achieve a certain level of centralised functioning it needs despite the obstacle of the nation-state. Of course, the centralisation under capitalism brings many additional problems to the peoples of the world and the working class. But the tendency towards centralisation has also laid the objective ground for the world proletarian revolution which will put an end to the fragmentation of humanity on the basis of nation-states. Capitalism's centralisation of the use of productive forces has made it possible to overcome this exploitative and oppressive order and to achieve the construction of socialism. This is why, as Marx pointed out, the development that centralises the bourgeoisie is in a way also in the interest of the workers.[2] While analysing these and similar statements, it is absolutely necessary to look at the facts on the other side of the coin. Under capitalism, there can never be a one-to-one correspondence between the tendency of development in the economic sphere and its projections in the political and cultural sphere. For example, the destruction of pre-capitalist structures resulting in a progress which will ultimately benefit the working class can arise in history with methods that should never be approved politically, with the most reactionary practices and the most murderous imperialist wars. Thus, while capitalism moves forward in a way entirely of its own, the task of the working class is not to stand and salute capitalism, but to continue the struggle against it in its own revolutionary way. It must not be forgotten that economic development tendencies, which are historically in favour of the working class, do not mean a spontaneous and easy improvement in living and working conditions. The magic key to transform historically progressive tendencies into real historical gains is the revolutionary struggle of the working class and the working class alone. Otherwise, living under a fully centralised or globalised capitalism has nothing to offer the working class for nothing. Therefore, the political attitude to be adopted in the face of such problems also offers the opportunity to distinguish between reformism and the revolutionary line. The reformist line imposes that the working class should be content with what is achieved under capitalism. The revolutionary line, on the other hand, evaluates the objective change that prepares the future in terms of the political tasks of the working class that will overthrow capitalism and establish its own power. We can also recall the indecisive petty-bourgeois tendencies that oscillate between reformism and revolution. Even if some of them give the impression of adopting an ostensibly revolutionary attitude, in the final analysis this “revolutionism” cannot completely free itself from the conservative petty-bourgeois outlook. That is why such politics cannot accept that in the face of, say, capitalist globalisation, there can be a revolutionary workers’ struggle that can overthrow it and embark on the construction of socialism, and that this is what needs to be defended. Their whole logic is dominated by the fear that the working class will no longer be capable of struggle under a globalising capitalism. In a nutshell, what they are saying is this: The proletariat cannot cope with global capitalism, so down with globalisation! Instead of developing a revolutionary strategy that will keep up with the course of history, petty-bourgeois leftism characteristically desires to stop or reverse the wheel of history. Likewise, the weakness of such politics is also observed in the EU example. For they are of the opinion that the working class in the countries joining the EU will have missed the opportunity of revolution. It is clear that the petty-bourgeois leftism, which, from its own narrow point of view, attempts to frame the progress of human history under capitalism, cannot save itself from being stuck in the “yes or no” dilemma of the bourgeois front on the EU and all similar issues. What is even more striking is that while opposing the perspective of opening up to the world defended by the liberal bourgeoisie in the name of so-called revolutionism, the hand of the most reactionary and chauvinist section of the bourgeoisie is strengthened (whether knowingly or unknowingly!). In short, in the end, nationalism, that is, oppressive and isolationist bourgeois policies are lent credence. Let us return to the realities of capitalism. The need for unity stems from capital's ambition to become stronger against its rivals, but just because this is so, nation-states do not automatically disappear. No matter how incompatible the nation-state form may appear to be with the global movement of capital, the conflicts of interest between capitalist countries do not disappear, even when they are in the same supra-national union. Therefore, capital's need for the nation-state does not cease to exist. Today, the borders separating some of the European countries in the EU seem to have disappeared, but the nation-states of these countries are still in place. It remains to be seen what kind of frictions may arise tomorrow between the current components of the EU or what the fate of the EU in general will be. The global development of capitalism is indeed challenging the capitalist functioning organised within the framework of the nation-state. There is a strong pressure exerted by this tendency. As is strikingly evident today, the desire of capital to have freedom of movement around the world and the need to take refuge in the protection of the nation-state in the face of competition are in conflict. Both tendencies are part of reality and they function on the basis of the unity of opposites. When Marx said that "capital has no nation", he meant that it does not care about distinctions such as homeland or nation, but pursues the highest profit. On the other hand, the same capital would never shy away from the hypocrisy of sanctifying its own nation-state when it wanted to challenge rival powers. Globalisation has not, as the exaggerated interpretations of liberal bourgeois writers would have it, completely eradicated the national belonging of different capitals and the national harbours in which they have sought refuge. Despite the marriages between different capitals, conflicts of interest or struggles for hegemony between, say, American, European or Japanese capitals persist. When we analyse economic structures not cursorily, but in detail, we see their contradictory features. For example, some of the large monopolies acting on a transnational scale may well be single-national rather than multinational. Most importantly, globalisation has so far not reduced the number of nation-states. In fact, this number has increased over time. From 56 at the time of the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the number of states exceeded 200 by the end of the 1990s as a result of the disintegration of colonial empires and creation of new nation-states or splitting of some countries. It is incompatible with today's realities to claim that the globalisation of capital will find its reflection in the field of nation-states in a short period of time or that nation-states will easily merge with each other and melt into a single empire, as in the case of monopolies from different nations marrying economic interests. It is conceivable that nation-states with historically, culturally and geographically very close points of contact, for example some European countries, could unite and create a common nation-state. However, even if such a thing were to happen, this cannot be extended to the whole world, nor does it mean the disappearance of the nation-state. Moreover, even the United States of Europe, which some bourgeois writers have been voicing as a long-standing aspiration for many years, is still an unrealisable dream, let alone the world in general. In fact, scepticism about whether the EU can realise the goal of a more limited political union predominates today. Even when we analyse the problem from a purely economic point of view, we see that the conflicts of interest and rivalries between members of the European Union have not come to an end. It is well known that monopolies with different national identities compete fiercely with each other in strategic areas such as military investments. For example, the story of the fierce rivalry between EU member Britain and Germany in the jet aircraft industry is damning for those who claim that nation-states have disappeared. The nation-state and private property are the main barriers to the free socialisation of the means of production. Under capitalism, the productive forces make progress by struggling with these barriers. Nevertheless, neither globalisation can abolish nation-states nor, say, the spread of joint stock companies can socialise property. On the other hand, it is entirely true that capitalism has developed the productive forces to such an extent that the nation-state and private property must be transcended. But this correct observation does not prove that there can be a capitalism without the nation-state and private property, it proves how it has become necessary to transcend capitalism in the direction of socialism. According to those who derive from the reality of globalisation the myth that the nation-state is disappearing, today is the era of the "shrinking state-growing market". It is true that the market is of indisputable importance for capitalism, but to what extent does the claim that the state is shrinking correspond to reality? This issue needs to be questioned carefully. Yes, it can be said that the state has regressed and shrunk in terms of some of the tasks it previously undertook. But this fact does not describe the general position of the bourgeois state, but a special case, the reduction of the functions of the so-called "social state". Apart from this, it can also be considered that the influence of individual nation-states in economic decision-making has diminished and regional or supra-national unions have more say. However, despite all these tendencies, the bourgeoisie's need for its own nation-state persists and even today, compared to the relatively calm periods of the class war, nation-states are equipped with new tasks and powers. Today, due to the escalating tensions on a world scale, the state in all capitalist countries is being reinforced militarily. Rising militarism, repressive measures against the working-class struggle, intensifying fascist practices are expressions of the increasing effectiveness of nation-states. To summarise and emphasise, global development under capitalism has not at all weakened the conflict of interests between nation-states, as one might think. It has not led to the emergence of a new transnational political and legal organisation without conflicts. On the contrary, the great imperialist powers, which are in competition with each other, have fuelled nationalist conflicts by fuelling problems arising from national and ethnic or religious and sectarian differences in the regions subject to the redivision struggle. Without disregarding the legitimacy of the current national liberation struggles, it should be noted that the imperialist powers can at any time inciting national problems that seem to have been overcome and scratch old wounds in order to prepare the ground for new wars of division. As it happened yesterday in the Balkans, today in the Middle East or in Russia, the rulers can, when their own interests dictate, fuel national and ethnic divisions, break up a previously formed multinational state and pave the way for the establishment of new nation-states. The level of the productive forces today necessitates a production process organised in the interests of society and humanity in a world not divided into nation-states. But in our opinion, this is impossible under capitalism. However, there are those who think that this historical necessity can be fulfilled under capitalism. Otherwise, they say, capital itself would be cutting off the very branch on which it is riding, and this would be an absurdity. They seek in capitalism reason and rationality that it does not contain. But capitalism is a mode of production which creates its own irrationality with its own hands, even at the cost of inconceivable stupidity and madness. Therefore, the very idea that the necessities imposed by the economic course or the needs of humanity can be fulfilled under capitalism is itself problematic. Those who hold this view underestimate the contradictions of capitalism. They imagine that these contradictions, which now clearly make human life difficult, can be eliminated not by overcoming capitalism in a revolutionary way, but through evolutionary development. In doing so, they only deceive themselves and others. As we have seen in history with different examples, the maturation of conditions within a mode of production which impose its overcoming begins to strain the old superstructure, its institutions and formations. Obstacles to development, which become more and more serious, cannot be overcome within the form of organisation of the given mode of production. Radical social transformations cannot take place spontaneously, but only through revolutions. In the past, the development of capitalism within feudalism put bourgeois revolutions on the agenda of history, not a leap to a new type of feudal mode of production that transcended localism, but bourgeois revolutions that would overcome feudalism. Today, the deepening and sharpening of the contradiction between the productive forces and the nation-state and private property will not bring about a capitalism that has put an end to nation-state organisation or private property and the conflicts that derive from it. We are living in a historical period in which all the developments on our globe make the world workers' revolution more and more imperative every day; hear ye!

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Is the tendency to conflict decreasing?

Capitalism’s law of uneven and combined development accelerates the globalisation of capital and formation of large economic unions, while at the same time producing even greater inequality and fierce competition. It is clear that the tendency towards unity, which is rooted in economic base, is doomed to be in conflict with the tendency towards competition, which is also rooted in the same source. As a matter of fact, today’s developments find their expression in the efforts of the great capitalist powers to expand their economic dominance, in their ambition to secure a superior position in the spheres of influence of rival powers and to create new spheres of influence. Imperialism has never brought a period of peace to the world, nor will it ever do so. The aggressive face of global capitalism is revealed in historical episodes when the given balances in the world are upset and serious crises of hegemony are experienced. Capitalism cannot move forward without resorting to imperialist wars of various types in order to redivide spheres of influence in the world, prevent the rise of rival powers or weaken their power. However, globalisation under capitalism has been promoted by some bourgeois ideologues and some renegade socialists who are dragged in their wake as a new era of capitalism, an era of peace in which wars will end. Let it not be forgotten that some so-called Marxist thinkers once interpreted capitalism’s leap from colonialism to imperialism as the rise to a peaceful capitalist phase that would close the era of forcible expansionism. Kautsky, once the “pope” of Marxism, caused a lot of confusion with this theory of ultra-imperialism. What is remarkable about such theories is that they paint a picture of a peaceful world at a historical juncture when the world is being ravaged by the imperialist powers and the capitalist system is being dragged from crisis to crisis. Indeed, Lenin underlined this extremely important point when criticizing Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism. In theory, it is quite possible to envision a capitalism that would ensure the complete economic integration of all countries in the world and eliminate the possibility of conflicts arising from national divisions. In practice, however, it is inevitable that this integration tendency will provoke new and gigantic conflicts. The political and social reality that will emerge from this, then, cannot be anything other than a world pregnant with imperialist wars and the possibility of revolution. Time proved the correctness of Lenin’s approach. The inconsistency and, more importantly, the pro-capitalist character of views like “ultra-imperialism” put forward in the name of Marxism were proved by the events of that period. However, at historical turning points when capitalism again plunged the world into major crises and wars, such views were always reheated and put on the agenda. For example, the bubble of globalism inflated by the bourgeoisie in the period following the fall of the Berlin Wall would again lead some to the hoax of a peaceful capitalism. However, just like in the past, this time the hoax did not last long. The much-advertised global system was turning the world into a fire with unjust wars starting from the Balkans and extending to Africa, the Middle East and Asia! As it is known, the reason for the wars waged by the armies of expansionist countries in the past was to conquer new territories and countries and annex them to their empires. However, with the advance of capitalism, the empires of the past, based on territorial annexations, have been replaced by great imperialist powers that have annexed economically even politically independent countries into their sphere of influence. The nature of wars has changed over time, but the unjust wars in which the ruling classes pit various peoples against each other for their own interests have not disappeared. Today’s developments have once again proved that the imperialist powers can bathe the world in blood in order to carve up spheres of influence. Moreover, today’s imperialist wars have taken on a much more complex character in terms of the field of war, the techniques and means of warfare, as seen most strikingly in the case of the hegemonic power of the system, the USA. At the beginning of the 20th century, the imperialist powers were in direct confrontation with each other in order to redivide some colonial territories and expand their spheres of influence. Today, the conflicts between rival imperialist powers are characterized by wars for hegemony in areas subject to redivision. Today the imperialist powers have no intention of completely wiping out the nation-states in the regions where they wage war and annexing their territories to turn them into their colonies. Of course, due to conflicts of interest between different powers, it is quite possible that some nation-states will be dismembered and new ones will be formed. But the main goal is the creation of controlled political structures. The US calls this “bringing democracy and civilization”. The primary aim of American imperialism is to re-establish the hegemony it had achieved in the past under the changed conditions. Relying on its military superiority, the US is trying to reduce other countries to a part of its war games. It plans to contain rising powers such as Russia and China[1] at the very beginning of their rise and thus not to lose hegemony to anyone else. Redivision of the old and new spheres of influence by various imperialist powers, and big financial capital groups and monopolies, which play on an international scale, will fuel the rivalry between these powers and will bring up new imperialist wars. Attempting to solve problems that cannot be solved in the realm of diplomacy with weapons is a constant feature of imperialist capitalism. Bourgeois writers like to talk about the problems concerning the fate of humanity in a globalizing world with the refrain “we are all in the same boat”. It is entirely true that capitalism, which is much more globalized than in the past, has brought the destinies of all countries of the world into a close relationship with each other. However, some have much more say and power in determining this fate than others. In short, it is clear that this boat is characterized by highly unequal relations and that the hegemonic power in the wheelhouse is not steering the boat in a favourable direction. Nor should one look at current developments and draw the wrong conclusion that global capitalism will turn the conflicts of interest between different power centres into a permanent state of war. In fact, the tension between rival imperialist powers will never disappear. But the ways in which this tension manifests itself (hot war, cold war, diplomatic confrontation or relative peace) and its consequences change from period to period. It must be remembered that capitalism is not a system of production relying on conquest, surviving by starting wars ex nihilo and seizing new spoils of war. The rise of militarism with imperialism, increasing military expenditures and the profits made by war barons in times of hot wars are of course the realities of global capitalism. But the ordinary workings of the capitalist system cannot be reduced to these aspects alone. Generally, in ordinary times, capitalist business needs political stability and relative peace to sustain its profitable pattern of investment in a wide variety of fields. The so-called ordinary periods are those in which the capitalist system does not experience a fundamental crisis of hegemony. Whether the hierarchical structure of the capitalist system works fine depends on the stability and strong position of the hegemon country. Therefore, as long as a new crisis of hegemony does not brew, the capitalist system can move forward on the basis of the “compromise” achieved as a result of the division of spoils in the previous period. These periods of “compromise” may well bring up new conflicts and hot wars in some regions where problems have not yet been resolved (or new problems have emerged). Nevertheless, for a significant part of the world, these are periods of relative “peace” compared to the period of widespread wars. As a matter of fact, some regional wars continued to exist during the “peace” period after the second imperialist war of division. The war in Vietnam can be recalled as a prime example. The supremacy of French imperialism, which had previously held a dominant position in Vietnam, came to an end in 1954 and was replaced by the interventions of American imperialism. The success of the Vietnamese national liberation struggle from the 60s to 1973, when the war ended, dealt a blow to the interests of US imperialism in this region. And America, which for a long time managed to present itself as the champion of democracy, lost prestige on a world scale. But such situations are still different from periods of general unbalance and instability, when the balance in the world is so clearly and completely shaken that a new crisis of hegemony is well and truly broken out. When the conflicts between the imperialist powers move from the diplomatic table to the battlefield, it is clear that military superiority becomes of utmost importance. The recent imperialist war offensive launched by the US, relying on its enormous military might, proves this fact once again. In fact, American imperialism had been preparing for the realization of a long-term war strategy in Eurasia for a long time, and taking the September 11 attack as an opportunity to do so, it invaded Iraq. Caught unprepared for this war and unable to match the US militarily, some of the bourgeois powers of Europe initially tried to buy time with a completely hypocritical anti-war and, above all, anti-Bush stance. The card played by France and Germany was to try to sell the European Union as a project of democracy and peace in the face of the warlike US. Even if there are differences in the political themes that characterize the US and the EU today, it must never be forgotten that the EU is ultimately an imperialist union. This union, which pretends to be pro-peace when it suits it, can join the imperialist war front with greater force when conditions change. As we saw in the run-up to the last US elections, one can never trust the “anti-war” fronts led by the European imperialists or by capitalist barons like Soros who oppose Bush. Only if the working class mobilizes on the basis of its own organized power and independent politics and mobilize the masses, can a meaningful front of struggle against imperialist wars be formed. World history proves this truth. As a matter of fact, the accuracy of this historical lesson has been tested once again with the recent developments. Opposition to war in the tail of the bourgeois opposition is doomed to retreat at any moment, just as it has risen.

The struggle for hegemony

It is known that in the history of capitalism, even before the imperialist stage, there have been countries that have made a leap forward and countries that have regressed. For example, in the early stages of capitalism, countries like Italy and the Netherlands rose to prominence on the basis of large overseas trade. Then Britain, which had a huge colonial empire and made a breakthrough in industrial capitalism, came to the fore and emerged as the hegemonic power of the world. But in the course of the 20th century, America would make a tremendous breakthrough on the basis of imperialist set-up and Britain would lose its former supremacy. Alongside the rise of America, Germany and Japan also made gigantic leaps and bounds during the period of imperialism. The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of imperialism. Capitalism, advancing by eliminating old relations of production and dissolving closed and local economies, began to build the network of a global economic system. From then on, capitalist progress was embodied in the rise to prominence of imperialist countries that had the capacity to run the business on a global scale. Although the economic relations that spread across the globe increasingly linked the fate of various capitalist countries, economic integration did not at all mean the establishment of fraternal relations between them. The capitalist system was structured in the form of a hierarchical pyramid, with the hegemonic power at the top and laden with contradictions. The history of the struggle for hegemony between capitalist countries that have gained power in imperialist system also goes back to the past. In the 20th century, the struggle for hegemony twice ravaged the world with the fire of a great war of division. The process following the First World War, following a brief period of armistice, resulted in a sharpening of the contradictions of the capitalist system and a new clash of powers claiming hegemony. In fact, the First World War was not enough to determine the hegemonic power of the capitalist system that had risen to the imperialist stage. Therefore, the cards were re-distributed in a second world war and Hitler’s Germany, which had bloodied the world with its claim to hegemony, got a harsh defeat. When American imperialism imposed its hegemony on the other capitalist powers, a period of great turbulent struggle came to an end. Thus, the capitalist system entered the long post-war period of economic ascendancy led by the US. The conditions that allowed for a relatively steady pace of capital accumulation during this period made possible the growth of the world market and positively affected the realization of surplus-value. At the same time, the living standards of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries rose. All the while, the intervention of the imperialist powers in their spheres of influence and the unjust wars fought on this basis continued to exist. But the period of great wars covering the territory of the developed capitalist countries seemed to be over. For a certain historical period, the Cold War period dominated the world on the basis of the balance of power established between the USA and the Soviet Union. During this period, which was shaped under the influence of the two superpowers, the world was divided into the “socialist” bloc on the one hand and the capitalist bloc on the other. For a long time, the world thus witnessed a constant tension between the two systems. For the capitalist powers, the undisputed hegemon of this period was the United States. This situation continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union upset the world balance and the outbreak of wars for hegemony provoked by the need for a new balance. The history of class societies has always been accompanied by wars between rival powers. Periods of relative peace between great wars have been marked by the sovereignty of the kingdoms or empires that asserted their power through these wars. Our world once experienced a period of pax Romana (Roman peace) when the Roman Empire, which had risen on a slave mode of production, imposed its power on other countries as a result of many bloody wars and successful conquests. Many years later, there was a period of pax Britannica, this time based on colonial capitalism and dominated by Britain. After the Second World War, for the capitalist world, the period of pax Americana was characterized by the hegemonic American imperialism. However, the collapse of the USSR and similar regimes put an end to the capitalist alliance around the US against the “common enemy”. Now the conditions had changed and new areas of division had opened up for the imperialist powers. The imperialist war that tore Yugoslavia apart had made it clear that the European imperialist powers wanted to have some say over the new spheres of influence. Germany and France, at the head of the EU were signalling to the US hegemony in the course of international crises that broke out one after another that it had lost its old meaning. In the face of this situation, the US was going to take the offensive, needing to reassert its hegemonic position in the changing world conditions, and with more violent methods. The rise of huge countries such as Russia and China on the capitalist path was also diversifying the power composition of the world capitalist system. This brought about enormous changes in the hierarchical order and thus a deepening of the system’s crisis of hegemony. A hierarchical system without a hegemon is unthinkable. The displacement of hegemon power is an extremely complex and extraordinary event that shakes all the existing balances to the core. Such shifts cannot be explained by periodic economic crises that occur within the ordinary operation of the system. The conditions that drive the system into a new crisis of hegemony manifest themselves in major upheavals and a period of chaos. While such periods of history offer revolutionary opportunities for the world working class to break free from this system, for the bourgeoisie they necessitate establishment of a new equilibrium. A system that fails to reach equilibrium over a long period of time cannot survive, it falls apart in unending conflicts. A new equilibrium within the operation of the world capitalist system can be established under the leadership of an imperialist country that proves its superiority on the basis of economic, political and military power relations. Among the factors listed, it is undoubtedly the level of economic power that is decisive in the final analysis, and this in essence determines who will be the hegemonic power of the system. The criterion of economic power here cannot be relative criteria such as national income per capita. Because from this point of view, for example, it is quite possible for a small and rich European country to be at the forefront. As a matter of fact, according to 2004 data, Luxembourg ranks first in per capita national income with 69,929 dollars, while the USA ranks seventh with 39,934 dollars. However, what is decisive is the absolute superiority that influences the course of events on a global scale. As in the case of the United States, hegemony can be gifted to the country or group of countries that owns a large capitalist territory and holds the largest absolute share in the world economy.[2] The American hegemony, which marked the era from the end of the Second World War to the present day, derived its power from its absolute superiority. Because of its single unified nation-state structure, it was based on a solid and coherent political-legal source of power, completely different from, for example, the European Union model. But everything wears out over time and loses its former strength. After the economic factors that gave US imperialism its undisputed supremacy brought it to the top, a relative decline began. This capitalist giant, which drove other countries into debt at high interest rates, is now struggling with a deep debt burden in its own bed. The roar of the US on the world stage is accompanied by problems triggered by budget deficits and the current account deficit. The depth of the crisis that the hegemonic power of the system has fallen into is a picture of how fragile the entire system has become. Many years ago Trotsky pointed out that in a period of crisis the hegemony of the United States would operate more openly and more ruthlessly than in a period of ascendancy. He pointed to important developments. For example, the international power of the United States and its resulting irresistible expansion were transforming North American capitalism into the primary counter-revolutionary force of the modern era. The United States would seek to overcome its own ills at the expense of Europe, whether through peace or war. Thus, the general line of American policy, especially during its economic troubles and crisis, would lead to profound upheavals in Europe as in the rest of the world. Trotsky thus predicted that there would be no shortage of revolutionary situations in the future and that the interrelations between Europe and America would trigger many revolutionary upheavals. “A major crisis in the United States would sound the alarm bells for new wars and revolutions”[3] These and similarly important observations need to be recalled again and again in today’s conditions. Today, the US’s efforts to reassert itself as the undisputed hegemonic power in the face of the changing balance of power in the world are driven in the first place by its own interests. However, this also has a dimension that concerns the survival of the capitalist system. For it is clear that if the operation of the system is jeopardized, the interests of American imperialism alone will no longer matter. When rival imperialist powers see that protracted wars for hegemony make world capitalism vulnerable to the working class, they are forced to reconsider their calculations. As a matter of fact, the current vacillating and compromising attitude of the European countries, which initially opposed the US with the Greater Middle East project, is related to this reality.

An era of protracted crisis

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the like, the capitalist system entered a new era in which the unknowns of a complex equation changed completely. Capitalism, which had become the sole dominant system in the world, was intoxicated by the temporary moral euphoria of this new situation when it suddenly found itself on the brink of a frightening abyss of instability and unbalance. Capitalism entered the new millennium of human history with a shocking system crisis, the depth, severity and consequences of which could not be predicted in advance. This crisis is far beyond the periodic crises of imperialist capitalism. It is a structural crisis on a scale that deepens and almost perpetuates the stagnation tendency known to accompany monopoly relations. Thus, the period we are passing through is characterised as a historical episode in which the great powers are driven into a fierce competition in order to share their trump cards once again. In some respects, this episode is reminiscent of the conjuncture of the First World War. But in fact, there is an even deeper system crisis than that period. At the same time, this situation is embodied as a crisis of hegemony. For the time being, it seems extremely difficult for the USA to completely lose its hegemonic position and for a new hegemonic power to impose itself. This feature gives an idea about the protracted character of the current system crisis. The bourgeoisie of the leading European countries, such as Germany and France, had long since realised the impossibility of single-handedly resisting the competition of a united community of states with enormous territories. That is why, as early as the beginning of the 20th century, they had developed the utopia of a United States of Europe. Although the idea of transforming capitalist Europe, organised in the form of separate nation-states, into a united community of states like the USA was ultimately a dream, the idea of a united Europe did bear fruit at the level of forming an economic community. First the EEC and then an enlarged EU with new accessions. Had it not been for the developments that upset the old world balance at the close of the 20th century, there might have been no reason for the unusual escalation of tensions between the EU and the USA. However, with the collapse of the ‘socialist’ bloc, an objective environment has emerged in which old calculations have become obsolete and new strategies have become necessary. This change, which at first glance seemed to be entirely in favour of the capitalist system, would soon begin to reveal its weaknesses. As soon as it became clear that the capitalist system had closed the period of relatively smooth rise after the Second World War, the tension between the US and the EU began to escalate. Despite the struggle for hegemony that today seems to be taking place between these two centres of power, Europe does not have the same economic and military power as the US in terms of world domination. Even the future of the EU pact, formed by the European powers rivalling the US, is uncertain. Japan, once worshipped as the last miracle of capitalism, has long been absorbed in its own troubles. Russia, one of the new contenders for world hegemony, needs to consolidate its power for some time and therefore does not yet feel comfortable openly challenging the USA. China, on the other hand, is slyly preparing for future attacks behind high walls symbolising Asiatic traditions. For these reasons, for the time being, the EU and the US are more likely to clash. However, each power centre takes into account not only the conditions of today but also the possible conditions of tomorrow. The real fight is over who will be the hegemonic power of the imperialist system tomorrow as a result of the capitalist construction process that started with the collapse of the old regime in two gigantic countries like Russia and China. In addition, a very important factor is how the capitalist development in big countries like Brazil and India will affect the restructuring of the system. The reason for the conflicts of the imperialist powers, which have turned into hot wars in various regions, is to secure favourable positions in the new balance of power that will emerge as a result of these developments. It is not for nothing that the US ideologues characterise the period we are passing through as a period ofprolonged war. Our world has entered a period of great turmoil in which new imperialist powers are preparing to appear on the scene to take part in a fierce struggle for hegemony. The USA, which continues to be the hegemonic power of the capitalist system in accordance with the balance of powers of the past period, is aware that new powers, which were not taken into account before, will emerge against it. And it is actually worried about this new situation. The main reason for the increasing tension between the EU and the USA is not only the economic crisis conditions or the fight over the Middle East oil, but also this new situation that is developing. The rivalry between the US and the EU is not new, but the nature of this rivalry has changed with the new world conditions of the 21st century. Under the propaganda motifs of the "clash of civilisations" or the "fight against international terrorism", the USA has put into effect a new international strategy. This new strategy is not limited to ordinary objectives such as not losing the struggle for hegemony to the known imperialist power centres of the past such as the EU or Japan. What is more important than the imperialist rivals of the past period is to prevent new rivals such as Russia and China that will confront the USA in the future. For, if these new imperialist powers, which are beginning to emerge, become stronger, and if they form new economic blocs with old rivals such as the EU or Japan, this would not only shake the hegemony of the USA. Such development possibilities are a real source of danger for the USA, which has the potential to end its hegemonic position. Therefore, the conundrum of where the EU will evolve, whether it will accept a partner like Turkey and extend its borders to the Middle East, can never be confined to religious and cultural issues, or to the economic problems of the day. It is a massive problem linked to the great battles of tomorrow. In the race to hold important positions today for tomorrow's great battles, the USA has been in a hurry to take the lead. It was under these conditions that the US went on the offensive with the attack of 11 September 2001. After the collapse of the USSR-dominated bloc, while the flames of the war of partition in the Balkans had not been properly extinguished, this time a whole region from Central Asia to the Middle East and Africa was set on fire. In this vast geography called Eurasia, a chain of imperialist wars has been brought to the agenda, one of which is intended to be started before the other ends. The USA is trying to get closer to its potential rivals of tomorrow, Russia and China, to reach into them if possible, and to deploy military bases and troops in the regions it intends to control. The military plans that erupted with Turkey's famous question of the 1 March parliamentary resolution and were subsequently embodied in the US demands for the Incirlik base are an extension of this situation. By putting these plans into practice, American imperialism aims to directly control the possible developments of tomorrow from today. The imperialist wars in the Middle East and other regions are the links of a great war of division that goes beyond the usual and almost ordinary aims of enriching a few war barons or controlling the oil reserves in those regions. Let us not be misled by the temporary phases of détente and periodic ceasefires that may emerge in the process we are going through. The problems of the capitalist system that are accumulating and will accumulate even more are very serious. In this respect, it is not right to tend to downplay the war in Iraq with arguments such as Bush's stupidity or that the US is stuck in a new Vietnam quagmire there. Undoubtedly, as it has happened in similar cases before, a considerable opposition to an unjust war may well develop in the world and within the USA. Or, in order to present itself to the world public opinion under a different mask, American imperialism may scapegoat and discard Bush or similar politicians who have completed their mission. However, despite all these possibilities, the US has plans to expand the imperialist war zone by putting countries like Syria and Iran in the pipeline, and to consider such plans as a mere bluff is to underestimate the reality of imperialist war. US imperialism did not hesitate to blast life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs at the end of the Second World War in order to curb the inevitable rise of Japan in the future. It is obvious that capitalist powers, desperate with the ambition of rivalry, are capable of doing the same thing today. Under the pretext of the Iranian political regime's threats against Israel, it is quite possible that a nuclear war in the region could be launched. Moreover, the US's so-called friendly relations with future rival powers such as Russia and China should not mislead anyone. This hypocrisy is the character of capital. On the one hand, it wears the sheep's clothing today and develops commercial relations, while on the other hand, it carries out insidious war plans in which it will easily show its wolf teeth tomorrow. The troubles into which the peoples of various countries have been led due to the conflicts between rival imperialist powers show what more awaits the world under globalising capitalism.

End the empire of lies!

It was claimed that globalisation, due to the increasing integration of economic relations, would stimulate healthy growth everywhere and thus put an end to the crisis of capitalism. But what has happened is a tendency towards stagnation and a series of economic crises that have spread all over the world and caused deep concern even among pro-capitalist writers. It was said that globalisation would improve the living conditions of the masses. But the post-1980 period was characterised by the bursting of the bubble of the "welfare state" or "social state" that was once so much advertised in advanced capitalist countries. It was said that globalisation would reduce unemployment, but chronic unemployment has acquired a structural character that can no longer be solved. The false balloons of the supporters of globalism, who painted a charming picture of the capitalist world with the fantasies that technological development would reduce working hours and robotisation would free people from the heavy burden of work, quickly deflated. The developments under capitalism have been reflected in the lives of the working masses in the form of longer working hours, a heavier workload and increasing unemployment. Since the rise in the organic composition of capital with capitalist development has reduced the average rate of profit, the bourgeois all over the world have set their sights on workers' wages and the social gains the working class has achieved through historical struggles. The reduction of wages has been adopted as a general policy. The bourgeois governments, relieved of the additional burden that social expenditures would bring to the budget, allocate more and more of the funds obtained on the backs of the working masses to military expenditures. Thus, in reality, it is clear what the growing crises of globalising capitalism bring to the working masses. The days go by with decreases in workers' wages, plots to weaken the trade union movement, cuts in social expenditures, increasing militarisation, escalating tensions and preparations for new imperialist wars. All these developments confirm the predictions of Marxism and refute the sophistry spread by bourgeois ideology. The facts are exactly the opposite of the claims that bourgeois ideologues have been reiterating for years. What they call the "new world order" has turned out to be a period of unjust wars, state terrorism and fascist tendencies across the world, plunging various countries into a maelstrom of uncertainty and chaos. Globalisation has brought not global prosperity to humanity, but the global attack of capital on workers' rights and the global impoverishment of the world working class. It is clear that the global expansion of capitalism has not and will not fundamentally change the capitalist system. This system continues to exist as before thanks to the exploitation of surplus-value derived from the labour sweat of the working class and this reality is not going to change. The nature of the claims that technological progress has gradually eliminated the working class or that low labour wages are no longer important because of intensive mechanisation is self-evident. All this has been proved to be bluster that fails to pass the test of the actual realities that are taking place. At the end of the 20th century capitalism had raised hopes that in the advanced capitalist countries the weekly working hours could be reduced to 30 hours without loss of wages. But as the new millennium dawned, it became clear that the "lucky" part of the working class that could find work was doubling its working hours with overtime and additional jobs in order to survive. The unemployed part of the class, on the other hand, has turned into "the people of the abyss" in the maelstrom of hunger, poverty and despair. There is no need to say much in this context. The voices rising from the elite ideologues of the imperialist power centres, from the top organisations such as the World Bank, and the optimism that is being lost day by day among these circles reflect their growing fear of a possible social crisis. Life is indeed characterised by contradictions. On the one hand, global capitalist development has laid the objective foundation for socialism on a world scale, while on the other hand it has made capitalism an even more dangerous and intolerable system for the human race. For this reason, global capitalism must be destroyed, not defended. On the other hand, today's conditions are loaded with serious problems that cannot afford the light-heartedness of opportunist attitudes. For example, an opponent perspective that appears to oppose globalisation but does not fundamentally oppose capitalism has no credibility, nor does it have a real capacity for struggle. In fact, to the extent that such perspectives emphasise nationalism and defence of the nation-state in the face of globalisation, they will only serve to strengthen bourgeois nationalism. The presentation of capitalist globalisation by the world bourgeoisie as a new era in the interests of humanity is a big lie. On the contrary, the capitalist system has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Under capitalism the productive forces have long been hindered by private property and the nation-state; these obstacles must now be removed. The existing productive forces can make it possible to eradicate hunger, poverty, disease and unhappiness from the face of the earth in a very short time under a workers' power that will bring peace to the world. However, modern technology, in the grip of capitalist competition and greed for profit, is pouring more and more death upon millions of poor and innocent people on our earth. It is not for nothing that the bourgeois media maintains an intense barrage to erase the historical memory of the masses. It would be a mortal danger for the bourgeois rule if the working masses could for a moment escape from the influence of this ideological bombardment and remember what capitalism has inflicted on the human world. Capitalism is a system that survives its great depressions through unjust wars that claim the lives of many people. In order for this system to "build" again, it must first destroy. The first imperialist war of division destroyed more than fifteen million people, the second one killed more than fifty million. What about today? Capitalism, which is said to have turned the world into a land of abundance with bright lights flashing, has in fact turned the world into a harmful jungle of consumption that does not fulfil the material and spiritual needs of human beings. This system now proceeds like a terminator, destroying man, earth, sky and all of nature at an exponential rate. Time is running out to save all life from the hands of this terminator. The salvation of humanity depends on all the working masses of the world rising up and organising themselves to put an end to this order of savagery. This is how it will be possible to liberate present and future generations from the brutality of capitalism, to open their wings to freedom and to transform our planet into a habitable paradise, freeing it from the toxic waste of this order of exploitation, oppression and war.