Last weekend marked commemorations for the centenary of the end of the Great European War of 1914-18, often referred to as just The Great War, or World War I, to take account of the fact that a series of conflicts across the globe, became intertwined by a range of labyrinthine threads connecting contending global powers. The events were also marked by a spat between US President Trump, who failed to turn up, supposedly due to bad weather, to mark the deaths of US troops during that war, and French President Macron, over a statement by Macron, that the EU needed to create a European Army to confront potential hostility not only from Russia and China, but also from the US. Trump's subsequent response rather proved Marcon's point, and also led to his call being backed by Angela Merkel.
Macron, rowed back somewhat from the comments, which were seized upon by Trump, and blown up out of proportion, as is his wont, in order both to appeal to his domestic core support, and also so as to attack the EU, whose dissolution he has sought to achieve, via his support for Brexit. Others have also tried to row back on Macron's behalf, in relation to his comments in relation to the US, but the reality is that there is a very real basis for the EU considering the need for its own Army, separate from NATO, and its dominance by the US. The roots of that basis go back not just to the causes of the 1914-18 war, but also to the century before that.
For the last century, the Leninist explanation for WWI and WWII, has been that it was the inevitable consequence of imperialism, which seeks to carve up the globe between imperialist states. Germany, which had few colonies, compared to Britain and France, could only acquire them, by taking some of those already controlled by these other imperialist states. That analysis is based upon Lenin's pamphlet “Imperialism – The Highest Stage of Capitalism”, written by Lenin in 1916. However, Lenin's pamphlet is really a polemic written in opposition to Kautsky, at the height of the war, as part of the struggle between a reformist strand within the Second International, and the growing revolutionary forces that were to separate from it, and form the Third Communist International. In fact, both factually, and theoretically, Lenin's thesis is deeply flawed.
Lenin based much of his analysis on work done by the English Liberal Hobson, and by Hilferding, in relation to the analysis of Finance-Capital. Lenin's argument is basically that, by the end of the 19th century, capitalism in its heartlands had become dominated by large monopolies. From the work of Hobson, Lenin takes the idea that these monopolies tend to hold back technological development, in order to protect their own profits. They also become increasingly tied to their own nation state, and that state too is tied to them, because the fate of the state, of the national economy, becomes dependent upon the success or failure of these huge monopolies. From the work of Hilferding, Lenin takes the idea that this link between the monopolies and the nation state, is established via the medium of the big banks and the stock exchange. The banks become the largest holders and controllers of the monopolies, by their shareholdings, and by placing their representatives on the Boards of Directors. Because, these huge corporations depend upon having large supplies of cheap materials, as well as cheap food for their workers, and also require huge captive markets into which to sell their finished products, at a profit, a necessary drive is established for these imperialist states to create colonial empires, whereby they can get the cheap primary products they require, and into which they can sell their finished products. The world gets divided up into these colonial empires, and as the world is a finite place, ultimately the imperialist powers must come to blows over who has control over what parts of it.
Lenin's thesis is factually wrong, because, in fact, the world was carved up into colonial empires long before the rise of industrial capitalism, let alone the domination of industrial capitalism, by huge monopolies. The age of such colonial empires, relates, in fact, not to the dominance of industrial capitalism, but to the age of feudalism, and its metamorphosis into mercantilism, with the rise of merchant capital, and financial capital. Its back in the 15th century and start of the 16th century, that Spain sent out Columbus to try to find a faster route to India and China, so as to speed up its trade with those countries in silks and spices, for example. Its at that time that Spain, and Portugal begin to establish their colonial empires in Latin America, and in Africa. It's in the 16th century that England sends out Raleigh to North America, and finances all of its privateers (state backed pirates and merchants) and that it establishes its colonies in North America, as did France and the Netherlands. The Netherlands, after they became independent from Spain, was itself the first major capitalist trading nation, and established its own colonies in North America, India and other parts of Asia.
The basis of these colonial empires was indeed the obtaining of cheap materials, and foodstuffs, and the selling into them of manufactured products. The profits obtained, as with all profits obtained by merchant and financial capital, came from unequal exchange, buying cheap and selling dear. Similarly, as with all feudal revenues, the feudal states that sent out these merchant explorers and colonists, flooded into the coffers of feudal kings and princes in the form of rents and taxes, on their newly established estates in these colonial empires. It is the basis upon which the first economic theories, of Mercantilism, drew their conclusions that profit is the result of unequal exchange, of commodities being sold above their exchange-value, and so of profit upon alienation.
But, all of this occurs long before industrial capital itself becomes dominant in the 19th. century, let alone before industrial capital becomes dominated by huge monopolies, at the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th century. For this industrial capital, the basis of profit is not unequal exchange, but the extraction of surplus value from productive labour. Increasingly, the main way of achieving that surplus value, is via relative surplus value, by increasing the productiveness of labour via the revolutionising of the productive process, through the introduction of new, ever more sophisticated machinery and technology. This is also the means of obtaining cheaper materials and foodstuffs too, as this machinery is introduced into agriculture and mining, and science is applied to the question of soil fertility, and animal husbandry.
Although this industrial capital also requires an ever growing market for its rapidly expanding output, as Marx describes in the Grundrisse, in relation to The Civilising Mission of Capital, this expansion of the market does not just come from expanding the market geographically, but from deepening it, i.e. by selling an ever expanding range of commodities to the existing consumers within domestic markets. For industrial capitalism the requirement is not profit from unequal exchange with colonial producers, but the ability to exploit, as industrial workers, labour in other parts of the world, and to do that capital itself has to be exported to those countries, which thereby become developed in the process, and whose workers thereby also obtain the wages to expand their own consumption. The requirement becomes not protected markets, in the form of colonies, but an opening up of former markets, so that industrial capital can invest in them, in the most efficient manner.
In fact, a look at some of the former countries that had the largest colonial empires, such as Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, shows that the obtaining of profits from unequal exchange and trading was inadequate, in the age of industrial capitalism. They all became declining powers. Britain, which did also have a large colonial empire, became a dominant economic power not from that colonialism, and unequal exchange, but because it was the first economy to industrialise, and to begin to be able to dominate the global economy with its industrially produced commodities, which undercut those of its competitors, whilst returning larger profits, even as the wages of its workers rose significantly.
The explanation for the division of the world into colonial empires, therefore resides with feudalism/mercantilism, whilst the dissolution of those empires resides with the rise of imperialism, of the domination of the economy by large-scale industrial capitalism. Lenin's thesis of the role within this of the role of finance-capital is also flawed, because the country with the largest colonial empire at the end of the 19th century, Britain, is the one whose economy least fits the description of Finance-Capital, described by Hilferding.
But, the ideas set out by Lenin in Imperialism, continued to dominate mainstream thinking amongst Marxists until the 1970's, and many, even today, cling to the notion that it somehow represents an adequate theoretical basis, when in fact, it clearly does not. Even for those that have discarded Lenin's thesis, as a description of imperialism, the idea that imperialist wars, such as that of 1914-1918, or 1939-45, are primarily driven by this imperialist necessity to carve up the world still has traction. That is largely because the Leninist and Trotskyist sects treat Marxism like a religion, and the writings of its prophets as dogma to be chanted as mantras, rather than used as tools for understanding the current world we live in.
The drive behind the 1914-18 and 1939-45 European Wars was not a drive to carve up the world into colonial empires, but was a drive to unify European states into one large European industrial capitalist economy and state. That same drive had been what had led, on a smaller scale to the creation of nation states in the 19th century. England, was initially divided into a series of regions dominated by different tribes, much like the division of North America amongst its tribes, and a similar pattern existed across Europe. In England, it developed into a series of kingdoms such as Mercia, Wessex and so on, that were part of the heptarchy, prior to them being united by Alfred The Great. However, a reading of Shakespeare's history plays indicates the nature of Britain even in the medieval period, where, still, a series of regional princes contended for power.
In order for capitalism to develop effectively in Britain, it required that a unified state be established, with a common currency, standards and so on. As Marx describes in Capital in relation to the development of the Factory Acts, even in the 19th century, in different locations, where factory owners were frequently also the local magistrates, it was impossible to effect common laws, until such time as the state itself, established the Factories Inspectorate, and imposed a level playing field on all capitalists. Faced with that in Britain, other European states were led into the same trajectory. The US, as a new industrialising economy, from the beginning, found the need to assert the power of the Federal State over the rights of the individual states within the union, and fought a Civil War to do so. Having done, so, and as the US itself began to grow rapidly, so as to begin even by the start of the twentieth century to challenge the economic power of Britain, the other European states, themselves were led to consider the need to go beyond the limits of the nation state, and in the case of its dominant powers, Germany and France, to establish a European State, under their domination.
In fact, that underlying trend to try to establish such a larger state, and thereby a larger unified marketplace, was what drove the Napoleonic Wars, as France attempted to unify Europe, and Britain attempted to prevent it. It is that drive to unify Europe, which was the cause of the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars, as in 1914, the long wave expansion of the previous 25 years came to a halt, and European capital needed to find ways of raising the rate of surplus value, and in 1939-45, still just emerging from the stagnation of the 1920's-30's, and now facing a rapidly growing US on the one side, and a rapidly growing and industrialising USSR, and Japan on the other side, Germany and France saw the need to create a European state of comparable size so as to compete, with each seeking to be the dominant power within that state, and with Britain, playing its usual role, of attempting to frustrate the creation of such a state, which might challenge its own, dominant, though rapidly declining position in the globe.
The fact of industrial capitalism that Lenin did not account for in his thesis, because he was fixated on the idea of exploitation on the basis of unequal exchange, was that industrial capitalism not only makes its profits from the exploitation of wage labour, but that, in the process it expands the market for its output by deepening as well as geographically extending it. A large part of the expansion of the market arises, simply because workers and other consumers within the national economy, enjoy rising living standards, and so consume more, and consume a wider range of commodities, and as capital expands, more of those workers are employed within that economy. And, because this industrial capital makes its profits from exploiting wage labour, it continually seeks to find more of that labour to exploit. The main basis for doing so, is not the export of capital to far flung places, but the export of capital to neighbouring locations. That is why contrary to Lenin's thesis, the major export of capital, from the “imperialist” states, was not to the third world, or less developed economies, but overwhelmingly to other “imperialist” or industrially advanced economies.
That is not surprising. The majority of capital accumulation within any national economy goes to the accumulation of capital within that economy, not to other economies. The majority of trade for any national economy takes place overwhelmingly within its own borders, not across its borders. And, so, when capital is exported to some other economy, the first places it is exported to, tends to be those economies on its own border, just as the majority of trade between countries takes place between countries that share borders. That is why, the large majority of UK trade with other countries is with the EU, and why these economies become ever more enmeshed, just as the economies of different tribal areas, and then of different kingdoms with England, became evermore enmeshed, and drove towards the need for the use of a common currency, for common rules, and measurements etc., which leads towards the need to create a British nation state, as the means to enforce all of these rules, regulations and so on.
This drive to establish an ever larger single market and economy, and to establish a larger state structure to preside over it, is as inevitable and inexorable as is the drive of capital itself to grow larger, and to do so, by a process of competition, and by concentration and centralisation. It is why the United States was formed, out of its separate states, forged in the blood of its Civil War; its why the EU was formed, having first undertaken its own blood-letting in 1914-18, and 1939-45; its why across the globe whether it is ASEAN, Mercosur, or the proposed African Economic Union, national economies are increasingly being surpassed by these regional economic blocs of national economies that already conduct the majority of their economic activity and investment between each other, and who seek the economic muscle that such union provides them in negotiating with other large economic blocs on the world stage.
Those who see trade only in terms of the export of finished commodities, fail to understand the nature of global trade. Of course, if you think that its only things like cars, or TV's, and other such finished products that get exported, there is no reason to see a problem in shipping large amounts of these things to the other side of the world for sale. But, that simply is not what happens with global trade. The crankshaft of a BMW Mini, for example, crosses the UK border four times, before it is complete, and is assembled in the car, and that is just one component. Its not on the need to be able to shift such components frictionlessly across borders that is significant here, but the cost of doing so, which is why such movements tend to be over short-distances, and within the confines of single markets, where uniform, regulations and standards are established.
Trotsky, writing near the start of WWII, and still basing himself on Lenin's thesis, wrote that if Hitler, offered to leave Britain's empire alone, Churchill would agree to give Hitler a free hand in Europe. He was completely wrong. Hitler, in fact, did make such an offer to Britain, via Lord Halifax, and Churchill rejected it. Churchill realised that if Hitler was given a free hand in Europe, just as if Napoleon had been able to unify Europe, the economic power of such a huge advanced industrial power, would quickly eclipse British capital, and probably, at that time, US capital too. At the very least, it would have left Britain isolated between these two huge states, and subordinated to one or the other of them. It was not access to colonial markets, so as to obtain profit on alienation from unequal exchange that was now crucial, in the age of imperialism, dominated by large-scale, industrial capital, but the power to develop that industrial capital on a sufficiently large scale, within a large unified domestic market.
So, it's no wonder, therefore, that the EU, having learned those lessons after WWII, faced with Brexit, has been led to make no concessions that could undermine its own single market and customs union. Instead, faced with that, and faced with the increasing nationalism of Trump's US regime, and increasing competition from a rising China, which could proceed to forming some kind of economic-political-strategic alliance with Russia, and Japan, is instead being led to double down on the logic that led to its creation in the first place.
It is only rational that Macron should propose the formation of an EU Army to defend EU interests, under those conditions. From a bourgeois perspective it is a perfectly rational and inevitable conclusion, as is the speeding up of the process of further integrating the EU, into a single federal state, and so on. In the 1920's, Trotsky wrote about the problems that would be faced by Britain if it were to carry through a socialist revolution. Its historical advantage of being an island nation, would quickly turn into a disadvantage in the modern world, as it would face being cut off from its necessary supplies, and trade with the rest of the world. His prediction was born out in World War II, as Hitler's U-boats, brought Britain to the brink of collapse. But, in the 1920's, Trotsky was discussing this not in the context of Germany undertaking such action, but the US. In the 1920's, the anticipation was that the next war would be between Britain and the US, as the two major contending economic powers of the time. The US, in the 1920's, engaged in a massive programme of shipbuilding to increase the size of its navy, so as to surpass that of Britain.
As a result of the history of the last 60 years, it has generally been assumed that the interests of the US, Britain and Europe are aligned, but that is increasingly not the case, as Trump, and Brexit demonstrate. As I wrote some time ago, the foundations of WWI, were established years before the outbreak of the main confrontation, and the current series of confrontations between global powers, in a series of alliances, particularly in the Middle-East, but also in Central Asia, Ukraine, and the South China Seas, suggest a similar process leading to war is being established.
Marxists obviously do not advocate the creation of an EU Army. That does not mean that it is not a rational conclusion for the European bourgeoisie to arrive at. We certainly should not see the choice as being between such an EU Army or NATO. We should continue to argue against membership of NATO, which is dominated by the US, and over which it is impossible to exercise any democratic control. Instead, we should argue for the creation of democratically controlled Citizen's Militia across the EU. Nor is that something that can be considered as a task for some point in the distant future. In 1918, the attacks on the newly created Soviet Russia, meant that the Red Army had to be rapidly formed under Trotsky's direction. All of the principles outlined in State and Revolution, for the establishment of militia as opposed to a standing army had to be swept aside, in order to deal with the reality. Ironically, it was Stalin who continued to argue against Trotsky, for the need to establish democratically controlled militia, rather than the hierarchically organised Red Army.
A progressive social-democracy in the EU, let alone a Socialist United States of Europe, would face hostile actions from the US, and almost certainly from Russia, which would see it as a dangerous example that might be adopted by its own population. We would not want to have to start to create such a democratically controlled militia to defend ourselves from such external threats from scratch. Macron, by raising the issue has done us a service. But, as with all questions relating to the EU, we should take the opening of the door to such debate, and walk confidently through it, with our own demands and solutions rather than accepting those presented by the bourgeoisie.
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