capitalism & imperialism: working together to achieve world domination

marjorie says...

Thanks for bringing this up Mikaela! One of my fave topics. Here are my thoughts, briefly.

Power has always sought to expand through conquest - we can see this throughout history. This has been the case regardless of the economic system. Sometimes it’s been fueled by religion; but mostly through the impetus for more power and more riches.

I think capitalism serves as an engine to imperialism in an unprecedented fashion because it's inherently a growth machine. Without expansion and growth it stagnates. Therefore, it's inherently expansionist. That is why some view it as inherently imperialistic...because it isn’t an egalitarian system. For there to be winners there have to be losers. And those nations with more resources and more power are able to use the capitalist system to dominate others and enrich themselves. And it becomes a vicious cycle that never ends. The debt crisis is a perfect illustration of this.

We live in an overwhelmingly capitalist world. We don't know what works "better" (which is a quite value-laden word btw; who is to say that everything that came before was “worse”). I certainly hope we evolve towards something more humane. Capitalism evolved out of something else, it didn't happen overnight. And I bet no one could imagine what it would look like before it happened. To move on requires engagement in the world in which we live (as you suggest), agitation, struggle (a lot), and imagination.

For privileged U.S. citizens, particularly white folk, it can be profoundly difficult to stay on track with being anti-imperialist, and anti-racist. This is in large part due to the national discourse, which inculcates a sense of manifest destiny, of righteousness, into our psyche from very early years. A structural analysis of social, economic and political events and conditions can help us stay on track.