Welcome to the second week of the Imperialism Reading Group! Last week’s thread is here.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I’m generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.

The first book we are covering is the foundation, the one and only, Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. We will read two chapters per week, meaning that we will finish reading in mid-to-late February. Unless a better suggestion is made, we will then cover Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism, and continue with various books from there.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don’t wish to reread, can’t follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 3: Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy, and Chapter 4: Export of Capital.

Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

  • IceWallowCum [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    6·
    22 days ago

    Can I still ask questions about ch. 2 in this thread?

    spoilering in case no

    When he quotes Marx on “the form of a general distribution of the means of production”, what exactly does form mean here? He talks about the content right after it, but I can’t figure out exactly what this distinction is referring to in this context.

    He correlates it with another dichotomy, general and private (the latter might be different in English, I’m reading in another language)

    • devils_dust [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      21 days ago

      My version has that quote as “[The banking system] presents indeed the form of common bookkeeping and distribution of the means of production on a social scale, but only the form”.

      From what I could understand it is about how that information could be used in a socialized (“general”) economy for the benefit of all, but in practice conforms to the whims of Big Capital (the “private”).

      • IceWallowCum [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        21 days ago

        Makes sense, thank you 😸

        On this note, is there a specific source to study this kind of jargon Marx and Lenin use regarding phenomena, like form/appearance or general/private? Is it all from Hegel?

        • devils_dust [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          5·
          21 days ago

          Hey comrade! On this specific passage, the last quote from this review sums up what Lenin means here:

          When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of primary raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three-fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when the raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated hundreds or thousands of miles from each other; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the material right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when these products are distributed according to a single plan among tens and hundreds of millions of consumers (the marketing of oil in America and Germany by the American oil trust)—then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere “interlocking”, that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period (if, at the worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is protracted), but which will inevitably be removed

          That review has some extra literature if you are interested - mostly on the economic aspects of Lenin’s thought and how most of it applies today.

          Unfortunately I am not expert enough in Marxist thought to answer if this particular verbiage has some sort of cultural lineage that goes back to Hegel or some other thinker, but I think you could find some of that in The German Ideology, basically a critique of the philosophers of his time and their idealism. Since this is a heavy text, you may be better served by asking other comrades around here on this particular question.

        • Sebrof [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          18 days ago

          I wish I had a more succinct response, and something more definite to share, but I’ve found that Red Sails has a lot of articles about Hegel, Lenin’s and Marx’s interpretations of Hegel, as well as articles on dialectics as well. You can do a search for any of the above and find some good hits.

          I haven’t given all of them a read, so I can’t back them up, but the following articles are ones that I have on my reading list and I thought I’d share. Perhaps if others are already familiar they can chime in to support or reject the below articles:

          Dialectics

          Critique of Hegel’s Dialectic and General Philosophy

          From Hegel to Lenin

          On Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks

          Some are long reads though, so I’m also still on the lookout for any shorter overview of the ideas, or even an encyclopedia of the basic terms would be nice. So far it just feels like one reads a lot of the above and overtime the conception gets less and less vague. My understanding is still in this vague territory, I feel like I can sorta get what is meant by the terms, but couldn’t define them well (so not much of an understanding I guess).

          On the topic of dialectics (apart from Hegel specifically), I found this article, Dialectics - Maoist and Daoist to be the articled where dialectics started to ‘click’ for me. It compares and contrasts dialectics as understood and applied by Mao to Taoism. This article also discusses Lenin’s ideas on dialectics as well.