When Britishers ruled India directly every Indian understood the meaning and relevancy of imperialism and everybody including the Indian capitalists opposed it in various ways and various degrees, some participated in the struggle against it, some supported the struggle etc.
Immediately after independence the relevance of imperialism continued to be there. The Indian Government took the lead in non-aligned movement, mobilised the countries that got independence newly and utilised that forum for the benefit of the ruling classes i.e capitalist and landlords, and to some extent the people of these countries. This non-aligned forum was used to create pressure and get concessions from the advanced capitalist countries.
But now in India the Capitalist class had grown by utilizing the new opportunities arisen after independence and reached a stage where some of them have joined the billionaire club i.e top among the rich people in the world. This prosperity was shared by a section of the intelligentia in India. With this, a propaganda is going on that now there is no imperialism and the Left parties and certain trade unions and some intellectuals are foolishly talking against imperialism which is non-existent. The Government of India also not interested in non-aligned movement now. Therefore we have to examine and find out whether imperialism is still relevant in our country and if so how it effects us.
The wealth in capitalist economy is held in the form of physical capital like industries etc, or bonds and equities and money or claims on the banks. Since all wealth is not in the form of physical capital and mostly in the form of money, shares and bonds etc, there has to be a system maintaining the stability of this non-physical wealth. The value of money should be stable in terms of the commodities it can acquire. Otherwise it loses its value.
But the holding of this wealth in money form is an international phenomena, although each country is having its own currency. When so many currencies are there, the currency of the leading nation becomes the world money. Today American dollar is playing the role of world money. The wealth of capitalists in other countries can be stable as long as the dollar of America is stable. Therefore it is essential that the value of the US dollar should not decline compared to the value of the commodities.
A whole set of arrangements are there to ensure this. One arrangement is to prevent any significant raise in domestic commodity values in the leading capitalist system. This is done by preventing any significant raise in the money wages of the wokers in the leading capitalist economy i.e in America and other developed countries. Money wages will not raise only when there is unemployment, i.e when the supply of labour power is more and demand for it is less. The other arrangement is that the cost of the imported material inputs in the leading economies like petroleum etc should not raise significantly. If oil price increases it will result in increase in the prices of all other commodities. Same applies to the agricultural products, minerals etc imported by these advanced economies from other countries. They should be imported cheaply to keep the value of the dollar stable. To prevent the rise in the price of these imported commodities, the money wages in the countries producing these commodities should be stable. They should not rise as far as possible. For this purpose there should be unemployment in the countries producing these commodities. There should be more unemployment in these countries producing commodities for exporting to advanced economies.
Even this prevention of money wage raise every where is not sufficient to keep up the value of the dollar stable. There should be no shortage of the critical commodities in the advanced economies. These critical commodities are (a) of exhaustible resources like petroleum and other sources of energy and (b) the agricultural products from the tropical countries like India, other Asian and African countries. In case the prices of these commodities rise highly it will effect the stability of the dollar since its value will fall. It is therefore essential for the leading economy in the capitalist world to have control over these commodities of other countries so that their value can be prevented from raising critically. That is why the USA is occupying Iraq directly and controlling the middle east countries indirectly to have control on oil. In case the people of the agriculture dependent countries are able to have higher incomes enabling them to purchase adequate agricultural products, or in case the farmers of these countries get higher price for their products, the value of the agricultural products that will be imported by the advanced economy will raise and it will effect the stability of the dollar. That is why the wages of the workers, the prices of the agricultural products are kept low and unemployment kept at higher levels in countries like India etc.
This imposition of unemployment and sacrifices on the people of India and the people of countries in Asia and Africa in order to keep the value of the dollar stabale is the imperialism now. Therefore imperialism is still relevant and it is still exploiting our people and we have to still continue our fight against imperialism and the left parties are correct in their efforts for mobilizing people against imperialism. The political independence has given scope for development, and there is actual development after independence and the fruits of this development is mostly being eaten by the Indian big capitalists in collaboration with the foreign big capitalists. Since the Indian Capitalists are increasingly collaborating with foreign capitalists they are forgetting about imperialism. But we the woking class and the people of India on whom the unemployment, lower wages, lower prices for agricultural products are imposed should not forget about imperialism, whatever may be the campaign of the media in the hands of the big capitalists. Capitalism in its highest stage, is imperialism. You cannot have capitalism without imperialism. Therefore we have to recognize the existence of imperialism and we have to fight against it.
(This is as per my understanding of the article of Prabhat Patnaik with the title “Capitalism and Imperialism” as published in “People’s Democrcy” 19-6-2011 issue)
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