Theorists
and revolutionaries from the Global South found Lenin’s theory of imperialism
to be a compelling explanation of the historical development of capitalism as a
world system and its connections to war, violence, colonialism, and
neo-colonialism. However, they argued that Lenin’s narrative was incomplete in
its description of imperialism’s impact on the countries and peoples of the
Global South. Several revolutionary writers and activists from the Global South
added a “bottom up” narrative about imperialism. Theorists such as Andre Gunter
Frank, Samir Amin, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Fernando Cardoso, Theotonio Dos
Santos, and Jose Carlos Mariategui added an understanding of “dependency” to
the discussion of imperialism.
Dependency
theorists suggested that the imperialist stage of capitalism was not enforced
in the Global South only at the point of a gun. Dependency required the
institutionalization of class structures in the Global South. Ruling classes in
the Global South, local owners of factories, fields, and natural resources, and
their armies, collaborated with the ruling classes of the global centers of
power in the Global North. In fact, the imperial system required collaboration
between ruling classes in the global centers with ruling classes in the
periphery of the international system. And ultimately, imperialism, the highest
stage of capitalism, was a political and economic system in which the ruling
classes in the centers of power worked in collaboration with the ruling classes
in the Global South to exploit and repress the vast majority of human beings in
the world.
Dependency
theory, therefore, added insights to the Leninist analysis. First, the imperial
system required collaboration from the rich and powerful classes in the centers
of global power, the Global North, developing and recruiting the rich and
powerful classes in the countries of the Global South. It also meant that there
was a need to understand that the imperial system required smooth flows of
profits from the Global South to the Global North. Therefore, there was a
mutuality of interests among ruling classes everywhere. The addition of
dependency theory also argued that people in the periphery, workers and
peasants in poor countries, had objective interests not only opposed to the
imperial countries from the north but to the interests of their own national
ruling classes. And, if this imperial system exploited workers in the centers
of power and also in the peripheral areas of the world, then there
ultimately was a commonality of interests in the poor, oppressed, and exploited
all across the face of the globe.
Relevance for the Twenty-First Century
Although
the world of the twenty-first century is different from that of the twentieth
century, commonalities exist. These include the expansion of finance capital,
rising resistance to it everywhere, and conflicts in the Global North and the
Global South between powerful ruling classes and masses of people seeking
democracy and economic well-being. In the recent past, the resurgence of
protest by workers, students, farmers and peasants, the popular classes, has
been reflected in mass movements against neoliberal globalization and
international financial institutions. These include Arab Spring, the Fight for
Fifteen, and a number of campaigns that challenge racism, sexism, joblessness,
the destruction of the environment, land grabs, and removal of indigenous
peoples from their land.
In
Latin America, movements emerged that have been labeled “the Pink Tide” or the
“Bolivarian Revolution.” These are movements driven by struggles between the
Global North and the Global South and class struggles within
countries of the Global South. Workers and peasants from the Global South have
been motivated to create, albeit within powerful historical constraints,
alternative economic and political institutions in their own countries. The
awakening of the masses of people in the Global South constitute one of the two main threats to Imperialism, the Highest
Stage of Capitalism. The first threat is the movements that are struggling to
break the link between their own ruling classes and those of the North. That
includes working with leaders who are standing up against the imperial system
(leaders such as in Venezuela, until the coup in Bolivia, and, of course Cuba).
The other threat to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, is, as Lenin
observed in 1916, war between imperial powers.
In sum,
as activists mobilize to oppose US war against the peoples of Latin America,
the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, it is critical to be aware of the imperial
system of finance capital, class systems in the Global North and Global South,
and to realize that solidarity involves understanding the common material
interests of popular classes in both the Global North and South. In 2020,
solidarity includes opposing United States militarism in Latin America,
economic blockades against peoples seeking their own liberation, and covert
operations to support current and former ruling classes in their countries that
collaborate with imperialism.
Concretely,
this means supporting the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and throughout the
Western Hemisphere, protests in Haiti, and, of course, the Cuban Revolution.
