“New” Imperialism: Moribund Competitive Capitalism

This essay starts with an observation that new theories of imperialism mostly focus on its political manifestations (such as wars and military invasions) or on the economic consequences of capitalistically imperialistic relations (such as inequality and poverty). Without denying the political significance and urgency of developing analyses of the political dominance of the advanced capitalist countries over the less advanced ones, the focus here is on the role played by uneven economic relations between North and South in constituting the basis of political domination. It is recognized that the sources of domestic and international unevenness are built-in characteristics of capitalist development for which the profit motive is fundamental. On the basis of the latter premise, the mechanisms of value transfer must be viewed as the means of reproducing unevenness among capitalist economies sustained by the global processes of capital accumulation.