From: "cercle social" <cerclesocial-AT-altern.org>
Subject: Re: AUT: Kautsky's UltraImperialism? (complete text)
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 10:00:50 +0100


Hello, as I asked the same question last year, Neil sent me a copy of th NLR
article. Note that is seems not to be the article upon wich Lenin based his
ironical notes about U-I : this should be another titled "Zwei Schritte zum
Umlernen" (Two Steps to Unlearn), published 1915 in Der Neue Zeit. It can be
interesting to fin it also, because a very, very few leninists really know
exactly what is U-I (and ignore that Kautsky's views have been more or less
realized since). So here's the complete texte published by NLR.

Nico

-------------
Karl Kautsky - Ultra-imperialism

'The article below was complete several weeks before the outbreak of the War
It was intended for out number which was to have greeted the planned
Congress of the International. Like so much else this Congress has been
brought to nothing by the events of the last days. Yet although purely
theoretical in nature, tlic article has not lost its relevance to the
practice which it sought to help explain. We publish the article, with the
omission of passages which related to the International Congress and the
addition of some considerations on the war.'
Editorial Note Die Neue Zeit, September 11th, 1914.

We have seen that the undisturbed advance of the process of production
presupposes that the different branches of production all produce in the
correct proportion. Yet it is also evident that within the capitalist mode
of production there is a constant drive towards the violation of this
proportion, because within a specific zone the capitalist mode of production
tends to develop much more quickly in the industrial than in the
agricultural sector. On the one hand, this is an important reason for the
periodic crises which constantly grip the industrial sector, and which
thereby restore the correct proportion between the different branches of
production. On the other hand, the growing ability of capitalist industry to
expand constantly increases the pressure to extend the agricultural zone
that provides industry not only with foodstuffs and raw materials, but also
with customers. Since the importance of the agrarian zones to industry is a
dual one, the disproportion between industry and agriculture may also be
expressed in two ways. Firstly, the outlets for industrial products in the
agrarian zones may not grow so fast as industrial production; this appears
as overproduction. Secondly, agriculture may not provide the quantities of
foodstuffs and raw materials needed for the rapid growth of industrial
production; this takes the form of dearth.
These two phenomena may seem mutually exclusive, but in fact they are
closely inter-related insofar as they derive from the disproportion between
industrial and agricultural production, and not from other causes such as
fluctuations in gold output or changes in the power situation of producers
vis-à-vis consumers through cartels, commercial policies or fiscal policies.
One of the two phenomena, dearth or overproduction, may easily pass over
into the other, because they both derive from the disproportion in question.
An increase in prices always forshadows the beginning of a crisis, although
this emerges as over-production and brings with it a price collapse.
On the other hand, the constant drive of the industrialized capitalist
countries to extend the agricultural zones involved in trade relations with
them, takes the most varied forms. Given that this drive is one of the very
conditions of the existence of capitalism, it is still far from proven that
any one of these forms is an indispensable necessity for the capitalist mode
of production.

* From Free Trade to Imperialism

One particular form of this tendency is imperialism Another form preceded
it: free trade. Half a century ago, free trade was seen as the last word of
capitalism, just as imperialism is today. Free trade came to dominate
because of the superiority of England's capitalist industry. Great Britain's
aim was that she should become the workshop of the world, and hence that the
world should become an agrarian zone which would buy England's industrial
products and provide her with foodstuffs and raw materials in exchange. Free
trade was the most important means whereby this agricultural zone could be
expanded continuously in accordance with the needs of English industry, and
all sides were supposed to profit therefrom. In fact, the landowners of the
countries which exported their products to England were as inveterate
free-traders as England's industrialists.
But this sweet dream of international harmony quickly came to an end. As a
rule, industrial zones overmaster and dominate agrarian zones. This was true
earlier of the city vis-a-vis the countryside, and it is now true of the
industrial State vis-à-vis an agrarian State. A State which remains agrarian
decays politically and usually economically, too, and loses its autonomy in
both respects. Hence efforts to maintain or win national independence or
autonomy necessarily generate within the overall cycle of international
capitalist circulation the struggle for an autonomous heavy industry, which
must under present conditions be a capitalist one. The development of
outlets for foreign industrial pro-ducts in the agrarian State itself
creates a series of preconditions for this. It destroys the internal
pre-capitalist industry, thereby releasing a large quantity of labour power
which is at the disposal of capital as wage labour. These workers emigrate
to other States with growing industry if they can find no employment in
their home country, but would prefer to remain at home if the construction
of a capitalist industry allowed them to. Foreign capital itself flows into
the agrarian country, first to open it by building railways, and then in
order to develop its raw-materials production, which includes not only
agriculture, but also extractive industries-mining. The possibility of
adding other capitalist enterprises to these grows. It then depends
primarily on the political power of the State whether an autonomous
capitalist industry develops.
At first it was the areas of Western Europe and the Eastern USA which
developed from agrarian States into industrial States, in opposition to
English industry. They imposed protective tariffs against English free
trade; and instead of the world division of labour between the English
industrial workshop and the agricultural production of all other zones which
was England's aim, they proposed that the great industrial States divide
those zones of the world that still remained free, as long as the latter
could not resist them. England reacted to this. This was the beginning of
imperialism.
Imperialism was particularly encouraged by the system of capital export to
the agrarian zones which emerged at the same time. The growth of industry in
the capitalist States today is so fast that a sufficient expansion of the
market can no longer be achieved by the methods that had been employed up to
the 1870's. Till then, the primitive means of transport which existed in the
agrarian zones sufficed, particularly the waterways which had hitherto been
the only possible form of large-scale transport of foodstuffs and raw
materials. For railways had been constructed almost exclusively in highly
industrialized and heavily populated zones. Now, however, they became the
way to open up thinly populated agrarian zones, making it possible to take
their products to the market, but also to increase their population and
production.
But these zones did not possess the means to plan railways themselves. The
capital necessary for this and the directing labour force were provided by
the industrial nations. They advanced the capital, thereby raising their
exports of railway materials and increasing the ability of the newly opened
areas to buy the industrial products of the capitalist nations with
foodstuffs and raw materials. Thus the material interchange between
agriculture and industry greatly increased.
But if a railway in the wilderness is to be a profitable business, if it is
even to be possible, if it is to obtain the labour power necessary for its
construction and the security necessary for its operational demands, there
must be a State authority strong and ruthless enough to defend the interests
of the foreign capitalists and even to yield blindly to their interests.
Naturally, this is best supplied by the State power of these capitalists
themselves. The same is true of bids for the possibility of mining richer
ores or raising the production of commercial crops such as cotton by the
construction of vast irrigation works-undertakings which are also made
possible only by the export of capital from the capitalist countries. Hence
as the drive for increasing capital export from the industrial States to the
agrarian zones of the world grows, so too does the tendency to subjugate
these zones under their State power.
There was another significant moment to this: the effects of capital exports
on the agrarian zones to which they are directed may be very different. We
have already pointed out how badly off the agrarian countries are in this
respect, and how they must aspire to become industrial countries, in the
interests of their own prosperity or even autonomy. In an agrarian State
with the strength to protect its autonomy, the capital it imports will be
used not only for the construction of railways, but also for the development
of its own industries-as in the USA or Russia. In such circumstances capital
exports from the old capitalist States only further the latter's own
industrial exports temporarily. Ultimately they cripple them, simply by
fostering strong economic competition in the agrarian zone. The desire to
hinder this is another motive for the capitalist states to subject the
agrarian zones, directly-as colonies-or indirectly-as spheres of influence,
in order to prevent them from developing their own industry and to force
them to restrict themselves entirely to agricultural production.

* The Colonial Danger and the Arms Burden

These are the principal roots of imperialism, which has replaced free trade.
Does it represent the last possible phenomenal form of capitalist world
policy, or is another still possible? Jn other words, does imperialism offer
the only remaining possible form in which to expand the exchange between
industry and agriculture within capitalism? This is the basic question.
There can be no doubt that the construction of railways, the exploitation of
mines, the increased production of raw materials and foodstuffs in the
agrarian countries has become a life-necessity for capitalism. The
capitalist class is as little likely to commit suicide as to renounce it,
and the same is true of all the bourgeois parties Rule over the agrarian
zones and the reduction of their populations to slaves with no rights is too
closely bound up with this tendency for any of the bourgeois parties to
sincerely oppose these things. The subjugation of these zones will only come
to an end when either their populations or the proletariat of the
industrialized capitalist countries have grown strong enough to throw off
the capitalist yoke. This side of imperialism can only be overcome by
socialism.
But imperialism has another side. The tendency towards the occupation and
subjugation of the agrarian zones has produced sharp contradictions between
the industrialized capitalist States, with the result that the arms race
which was previously only a race for land armaments has now also become
naval arms race, and that the long prophesied World War has now become a
fact. Is this side of imperialism, too, a necessity for the continued
existence of capitalism, one that can only be overcome with capitalism
itself?
There is no economic necessity for continuing the arms race after the World
War, even from the standpoint of the capitalist class itself, with the
exception of at most certain armaments interests. On the contrary, the
capitalist economy is seriously threatened precisely by the contradictions
between its States. Every far-sighted capitalist today must call on his
fellows: capitalists of all countries, unite ! For, fir of all, there is the
growing opposition of the more developed of the agrarian zones, which
threatens not just one or other of the imperialist States, but all of them
together. This is true of the awakening of Eastern Asia and India as well as
of the Pan-Islamic movement in the Near East and North Africa.
This upsurge is accompanied by the growing opposition of the proletariat of
the industrial countries against every new increase of their tax burden.
Even before the War, it was clear that since the Balkan War the arms race
and the costs of colonial expansion had reached a level that threatened the
rapid increases of capital accumulation and thereby capital export, i.e.,
the basis of imperialism itself. Industrial accumulation at home still
advances continuously, thanks to technical progress. But capital no longer
rushes into export. This is visible in the fact that even in peacetime the
European States had difficulties in covering their own loans. The rates of
interest they were forced to grant rose. This is revealed) for example, by
the average market prices of:

        3 % German National Loans (Reichsanleihe) / 3 % French Annuities

1905             89 /  99
1910             85 / 97
1912             80 / 92
Mid 1914     77 : 83

After the War, this trend will not get better, but worse, if the arms race
and its demands on the capital market continue to grow.
Imperialism is thus digging its own grave. From a means to develop
capitalism, it is becoming a hindrance to it. Nevertheless, capitalism need
not yet be at the end of the line. From the purely economic standpoint, it
can continue to develop so long as the growing industries of the capitalist
countries can induce a corresponding expansion of agricultural production.
This gets more and more difficult, of course, as the annual growth of world
industry increases and still unopened agrarian zones become fewer and fewer.
So long as this limit has not been reached, capitalism may be wrecked on the
reef of the rising political opposition of the proletariat, but it need not
come to an end in economic collapse.
On the other hand, just such an economic bankruptcy would occur prematurely
as a result of continuing the present policy of imperialism. This policy of
imperialism therefore cannot be continued much longer. Of course, if the
present policy of imperialism were indispensable to the maintenance of the
capitalist mode of production, then the factors I have referred to might
make no lasting impression on the ruling class, and would not induce them to
lend a different direction to their imperialist tendencies. But this change
will be possible if imperialism, the striving of every great capitalist
State to extend its own colonial empire in opposition to all the other
empires of the same kind, represents only one among various modes of
expansion of capitalism

* The Next Phase: Ultra-Imperialism

What Marx said of capitalism can also be applied to imperialism: monopoly
creates competition and competition monopoly. The frantic competition of
giant firms, giant banks and multi-millionaires obliged the great financial
groups, who were absorbing the small ones, to think up the notion of the
cartel. In the same way, the result of the World War between the great
imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who renounce their
arms race.
Hence from the purely economic standpoint it is not impossible that
capitalism may still Jive through another phase, the translation of
cartellization into foreign policy: a phase of ultra-imperialism, which of
course we must struggle against as energetically as we do against
imperialism, but whose perils lie in another direction, not in that of the
arms race and the threat to world peace.
The above exposition was completed before Austria surprised us with her
ultimatum to Serbia. Austria's conflict with Serbia did not arise purely
from imperialist tendencies. In Eastern Europe, nationalism is still a
revolutionary motive force, and the present conflict between Austria and
Serbia has nationalist as well as imperialist roots. Austria tried to
implement an imperialist policy by annexing Bosnia and threatening to
include Albania in its sphere of influence. This aroused the nationalist
opposition of Serbia, which feels threatened by Austria and is now a danger
to the existence of Austria on its own account.
The World War did not come about because imperialism was a necessity for
Austria, but because by its own structure it endangered itself with its own
imperialism. Imperialism could only have powered an internally homogeneous
State which attaches to itself agrarian zones far beneath it culturally. But
here, a nationally divided, half-slavic State wished to pursue imperialism
at the expense of a slavic neighbour whose culture is of the same origins as
the culture of the neighbouring regions of its opponent.
Of course, this policy could only have such unexpected and vast consequences
because of the contradictions and discord which imperialism has created
between the other great Powers. All the consequences ripening in the womb of
the present World War have not yet seen the light. Its outcome may still be
that the imperialist tendencies and the arms race accelerate at first-in
which case, the subsequent peace will be no more than a short armistice.
>From the purely economic standpoint, however, there is nothing further to
prevent this violent explosion finally replacing imperialism by a holy
alliance of the imperialists. The longer the War lasts, the more it exhausts
all tile participants and makes them recoil from an early repetition of
armed conflict, the nearer we come to this last solution, however unlikely
it may seem at the moment.



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