beyond the theory of imperialism: global capitalism and the transnational state

8/4/2019 Beyond the Theory of Imperialism: Global Capitalism and the Transnational State

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Societies Without Borders 2 (2007) 526 www.brill.nl/swb

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Beyond the Theory o Imperialism:Global Capitalism and the Transnational State

William I. RobinsonUniersity o Caliornia, Santa Barbara, Caliornia, USA

Received 24 May 2006; accepted 17 June 2006

Abstract

heories o a new imperialism assume that world capitalism in the 21st century is still madeup o domestic capitals and that distinct national economies and world political dynamicsare driven by US eforts to ofset the decline in hegemony amidst heightened inter-imperialistrivalry. hese theories ignore empirical evidence on the transnationalization o capital and theincreasingly salient role o transnational state apparatuses in imposing capitalist dominationbeyond the logic o the inter-state system. I argue here that US interventionism is nota depar-ture rom capitalist globalization but a response to its crisis. he class relations o global capital-ism are now so deeply internalized within every nation-state that the classical image o

imperialism as a relation o external domination is outdated. he end o the extensive enlarge-ment o capitalism is the end o the imperialist era o world capitalism. he implacable logico global accumulation is now largely internal to the complex o ractious political institutionsthrough which ruling groups attempt to manage those relations. We need a theory o capitalistexpansion o the political processes and the institutions through which such expansion takes

place, the class relations and spatial dynamics it involves.

Mas all de la teora del imperialismo: capitalismo global y estado transnacional

Las teoras del nuevo imperialismo asumen que el capitalismo mundial del siglo 21 se com-pone an de capitales nacionales y economas nacionales distintas y que la dinmica polticainternacional estn dirigidas por el esuerzo de US para contrarrestar su declive hegemnicocomo consecuencia de la rivalidad internacional. Estas teoras ignoran la evidencia empricaacerca de la transnacionalizacin del capital y el papel crecientemente preponderante de losmecanismos del Estado transnacional para imponer una dominacin capitalista ms all de lalgica del sistema Interestatal. Aqu argumento que el intervencionismo americano no es unadesviacin de la globalizacin capitalista sino una respuesta a su crisis. Las relaciones de clasedel capitalismo global estn hoy tan proundamente internalizadas dentro de cada Estadonacin que la imagen clsica del imperialismo como una relacin de dominacin externa est

pasada de moda. El n de la ampliacin extensiva del capitalismo es el n de la era imperialista delcapitalismo mundial. La lgica implacable de la acumulacin global es ahora principalmente
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6 W. I. Robinson / Societies Without Borders 2 (2007) 526

interna al complejo de instituciones polticas ragmentadas a travs de las que los grupos depoder tratan de gestionar esas relaciones. Necesitamos una teora de la expansin capitalista-de los procesos polticos y las instituciones a cuyo travs se produce esa expansin, de las nue-

vas relaciones entre clase y dinmicas espaciales.

A travers la rontire de la thorie de limprialisme: le capitalisme global et ltat

transnational

Les thories dun nouvel imprialisme supposent que le capitalisme mondial au 21me sicle secompose toujours des capitaux domestiques et des conomies nationaux distinctes. Ils sup-

posent aussi que la dynamique politique mondiale est men par lefort amricain pour recon-stituer sa proper hgmonie dans la rivalit intensie interimprialiste. Ces thories ignorent

lvidence empirique sur la mondialisation du capital et le rle de plus en plus saillant desappareillages transnationaux dtat dimposer la domination capitaliste au-del de la logiquedu systme transnational. Je constate du ait ici que linterventionnisme des Etats-Unis nest

pas un dpart de la mondialisation capitaliste mais, contrairement, elle est une rponse sacrise. Les relations de classe du capitalisme mondial sont maintenant si proondment inter-nalises dans chaque tat-nation que limage classique de limprialisme comme relation de ladomination externe est dmode. La n de lagrandissement tendu du capitalisme est la n delre imprialiste du capitalisme du monde. La logique implacable de laccumulation globale

est maintenant en grande partie interne au complexe des corps politiques grincheux parlesquels les groupes puissants essaient de contrler ces relations. Nous avons besoin dunethorie dexpansion capitaliste des processus politiques et des institutions par lesquels unetelle expansion a lieu, des relations de classe et de la dynamique spatiale quelle implique.

Keywords

globalization, imperialism, capitalism, transnational state, David Harvey

Introduction

heories o a new imperialism that have prolierated in the years ollowingthe events o September 2001 assume that the United States has set about toextend global empire and ofset the decline in its hegemony amidst height-ened inter-imperialist rivalry. Some argue that unilateral US intervention-

ism belies earlier claims that we are moving towards a globalized world orderand reute misguided theories o globalization.1 hese theories rest on acrustaceous bed o assumptions that need to be peeled back i we are to get atthe root o 21st century global social and political dynamics. Grounded in theclassical statements o Lenin and Hilerding, they are based on the assump-tion o a world o rival national capitals and economies, conict among core

1) See, e.g., Pozo 2006; Henwood 2003.


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W. I. Robinson / Societies Without Borders 2 (2007) 526 7

capitalist powers, the exploitation by these powers o peripheral regions, anda nation-state centered ramework or analyzing global dynamics. Hilerd-ing, in his classic study on imperialism,Finance Capital, argued that national

capitalist monopolies turn to the state or assistance in acquiring interna-tional markets and that this state intervention inevitably leads to intense

political-economy rivalries among nation-states. 2 Lenin, in his 1917 pamphlet Imperialism: he Latest Stage o Capitalism, stressed the rise o nationalnancial-industrial combines that struggle to divide and redivide the worldamongst themselves through their respective nation-states. he rivalryamong these competing national capitals led to inter-state competition, mil-

itary conict and war among the main capitalist countries.Hilerding, Lenin, and others analyzing the world o the early 20th cen-

tury established this Marxist analytical ramework o rival national capitalsthat was carried by subsequent political economists into the latter 20th cen-tury via theories o dependency and the world system, radical internationalrelations theory, studies o US intervention, and so on. his outdated rame-

work o competing national capitals continues to inorm observers o worlddynamics in the early 21st century. he ollowing assertion by Klare is typi-cal: By geopolitics or geopolitical competition, I mean the contentionbetween great powers and aspiring great powers or control over territory,resources, and important geographical positions, such as ports and harbors,canals, river systems, oases, and other sources o wealth and inuence. oday

we are seeing a resurgence o unabashed geopolitical ideology among the

leadership cadres o the major powers . . . the best way to see whats happeningtoday in Iraq and elsewhere is through a geopolitical prism.3 Such thinkingprovides the scafolding or a torrent o new imperialism literature that hasappeared since 2001.4

But capitalism has changed undamentally since the days o Lenin, Hiler-ding, and Bukharin. We have entered a qualitatively new transnational stagein the ongoing evolution o world capitalism, which is marked by a number

o undamental shis in the capitalist system, among them: the rise o trulytransnational capital and the integration o every country into a new global production and nancial system; the appearance o a new transnational

2) Hilderding 1910, p. 322.3) Klare 2003, pp. 5152.4) See, inter-alia, Foster 2003, 2006; Wood 2003; Harvey 2005; Pozo 2006; Kiely 2006;

Henwood 2003; Brenner 2002; Arrighi 2005; Gowan 1999; Klare 2003; Bello 2005;Monthly Review 2003).


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capitalist class (CC), a class group grounded in new global markets andcircuits o accumulation, rather than national markets and circuits; the riseo transnational state (NS) apparatuses, and the appearance o novel rela-

tions o power and inequality in global society. he dynamics o this emerg-ing stage in world capitalism cannot be understood through the lens onation-state centric thinking. his is not to say that the nation-state is nolonger important but that the system o nation-states as discrete interactingunits the inter-state system is no longer the organizing principle o capi-talist development, or the primary institutional ramework that shapes socialand class orces and political dynamics.5

The Myth o National Economies and the Reality o TransnationalCapital

Te hallmark o new imperialism theories is the assumption that worldcapitalism in the 21st century is made up o domestic capitals and distinct

national economies that interact with one another, and a concomitant real-ist analysis o world politics as driven by the pursuit by governments o theirnational interest. Gowan, or instance, in his o-cited study he GlobalGamble: Washingtons Bid or World Dominance,6 reers incessantly to anAmerican capitalism, a German capitalism, an Italian capitalism, aFrench capitalism, and so on, each a discernible and discrete economic sys-tem eaturing distinctly organized national capitalist classes involved in sets

o national competitive relationships. In another leading treatise on the newimperialism, Empire o Capital, Ellen Meiksins Wood asserts that thenational organization o capitalist economies has remained stubbornly

persistent.7

Are we toassume, as Wood, Gowan, and others do, although they providenot a shred o empirical evidence, that capital remains organized, as it was inearlier moments o the world capitalist system, along national lines and that

the development o capital has stopped rozen in its nation-state orm? heinter-state/nation-state ramework obliges new imperialism scholars to

5) For elaborations on these propositions, see, inter-alia, Robinson 2006b, 2007, 2005a,2005b, 2004, 2003, 2002, 1996.6) Gowan 1999, and see also 2003.7) Wood 2003, p. 23.


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advance this unproblematized notion o national interests to explain globalpolitical dynamics. What does national interests mean? Marxists have his-torically rejected notions o national interests as an ideological subteruge

or class and social group interests. What is a national economy? Is it acountry with a closed market? Protected territorially-based production cir-cuits? he predominance o national capitals? An insulated national nan-cial system? No capitalist country in the world ts this description.

here is a mounting body o empirical evidence that demonstrates thetransnationalization o capital. his evidence strongly suggests that the giantconglomerates o the Fortune 500ceased to be US corporations in the

latter part o the 20th century and increasingly represented transnationalcapitalist groups.8 his reality o transnationalization can no longer bedisputed, nor can its signicance or macro-social theories and or analysis o

world political-economic dynamics. One need only glean daily headlinesrom the world media to discover endless reams o anecdotal evidence tocomplement the accumulation o systematic data on transnationalization.IBMs chair and CEO, Samuel Palmisano, a rms in a June 2006 article inthe Financial imes o London, or instance, that use o the very wordmultinational corporation suggests how antiquated our thinking about itis. He continues:

he emerging business model o the 21st century is not, in act multinational. his newkind o organization at IBM we call it the globally integrated enterprise is very di-erent in its structure and operations. . . . In the multinational model, companies built

local production capacity within key markets, while perorming other tasks on a globalbasis . . . American multinationals such as General Motors, Ford and IBM built plantsand established local workorce policies in Europe and Asia, but kept research and devel-opment and product design principally in the home country.9

he spread o multinationals in this way constituted internationalization, incontrast to more recent transnationalization:

he globally integrated enterprise, in contrast, ashions its strategy, management andoperations to integrate production and deliver value to clients worldwide. hat hasbeen made possible by shared technologies and shared business standards, built on top

8) For summaries and assessments o this evidence, see Robinson 2004; Sklair 2001, 2002;Kentor 2005; Kentor and Jang 2003; UNCAD various years; Carroll and Carson 2003;

Carroll and Fennema 2002; Dicken 2003.9) Palmisano 2006, p.19.


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o a global inormation technology and communications inrastructure. . . . oday, inno-vation is inherently global.10

In turn, IBM is one o the largest investors in India, which has become amajor platorm or transnational service provision to the global economy. Ithe decentralization and dispersal around the world o manuacturing pro-cesses represented the leading edge o an earlier wave o globalization, thecurrent wave involves the decentralization and global dispersal o such ser-

vices as data processing, insurance claims, phone operators, call centers,soware production, marketing, journalism and publishing, advertising,

and banking which are now undertaken through complex webs o out-sourcing, subcontracting and transnational alliances among rms. IBM wentrom 9,000 employees in India in 2004 to 43,000 (out o 329,000 world-

wide) in 2006, and this does not include thousands o workers in local rmsthat have been subcontracted by IBM or by Indian IBM partner rms.11Some o IBMs growth in India has come rom mergers between IBM andcompanies previously launched by Indian investors as outsourcing rms,

such as Dagsh eSErvices o New Delhi, which went rom 6,000 to 20,000back-o ce employees aer its merger with IBM. In this way, and in countlessother examples across the globe, national capitalist groups become swept upinto global circuits o accumulation and into CC ormation.

My global capitalism approach shares little or nothing with Karl Kautskysearlier ultraimperialism or superimperialism thesis. Kautsy, in his 1914essay Ultra-Imperialism,12 assumed capital would remain national in itsessence and suggested that national capitals would collude internationallyinstead o compete, whereas my theory on the CC emphasizes that conictamong capitals is endemic to the system but that such competition takes onnew orms in the age o globalization not necessarily expressed as nationalrivalry. he CC thesis does not suggest there are no longer national andregional capitals, or that the CC is internally unied, ree o conict, andconsistently acts as a coherent political actor. Nonetheless, the CC hasestablished itsel as a class group without a national identity and in competi-tion with nationally-based capitals. here is conict between national andtransnational ractions o capital. Moreover, rivalry and competition are

10) Palmisano 2006, p. 19.11) Rai 2006.12) Kautsy 1914.


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erce among transnational conglomerations that turn to numerous institu-tional channels, including multiple national states, to pursue their interests.For instance, IBM and its local Indian shareholders and partners compete or

service outsourcing contracts, explains Rai, with Cognizant echnologySolutions, a company based in eaneck, New Jersey and o IBMs chie rivalsin the Indian subcontinent. he rivalry between IBM and Cognizant cannotbe considered competition between national capitals o distinct countriesand both groups turn to the US and the Indian state to seek advantage overcompetitors.

Reifcation and Theoreticism in New Imperialism Theories:The Antinomies o David Harvey

Most new imperialism theorists acknowledge to varying degrees thatchanges have taken place, and particularly, that capital has become moreglobal. Yet capital in these accounts has not transnationalized; it has inter-

nationalized. hese accounts are concerned with explaining the inter-national order, which by denition places the ocus on inter-state dynamicsexclusive o the trans-national. his need to accommodate the reality otransnationalizing capital within a nation-state centric ramework or ana-lyzing world political dynamics leads new imperialism theories to a dual-ism o the economic and the political.

David Harvey, in perhaps the landmark treatise among this literature, he

New Imperialism, argues that capital is economic and globalizes but states arepolitical and pursue a sel-interested territorial logic.13 Harveys theory startswith the notion that

the undamental point is to see the territorial and the capitalist logic o power as distinctrom each other. . . . he relation between these two logics should be seen, thereore, as

problematic and oen contradictory . . . rather than as unctional or one-sided. his dia-

lectical relation sets the stage or an analysis o capitalist imperialism in terms o theintersection o these two distinctive but intertwined logics o power.14

Harveys is not, however, a dialectical but a mechanical approach. he difer-ent dimensions o social reality in the dialectical approach do not have anindependent status insoar as each aspect o reality is constituted by, and is

13) Harvey 2003.14) Harvey 2003, pp. 2930.


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constitutive o, a larger whole o which it is an internalelement. Distinctdimensions o social reality may be analytically distinctyet are internallyinterpenetratedand mutually constitutie o each other as internal elements o

a more encompassing process, so that, or example, the economic/capital andthe political/state are internalto capitalist relations.

It is remarkable that Harvey proposes such a separation since the historyo modern critical thought rom Polanyi to Poulantzas and Gramsci, amongothers, not to mention 50 years o historical materialist theorizing on thestate has demonstrated both theormal(apparent) separation o the eco-nomic and the political under the capitalist mode o production and the illu-

sion that such a separation is organic or real.15 his separation has itsgenealogy in the rise o the market and its apparently pure economic com-

pulsion. his separation appears in social thought with the breakup o polit-ical economy, the rise o classical economics and bourgeois social science,and disciplinary ragmentation.16 Such a separation o the economic romthe political was a hallmark o the structural unctionalism that dominatedmuch o mid-20th century social science. Structural unctionalism separateddistinct spheres o the social totality and conerred a unctional autonomy toeach subsphere which was seen as externally related to other subspheres in a

way similar to Harveys notion o separate state and capital logics that may ormay not coincide.

Harvey ofers no explicit conception o the state but he acknowledges thatstate behavior has depended on how the state has been constituted and by

whom.

17

Yet dual logics o state and capital ignore the real-world policy-making process in which the state extends backward, is grounded in theorces o civil society, and is used in a myriad o ways with capital itsel. It isincumbent to ask in what ways transnational social orces may inuence areconstitution o state institutions. o the extent that civil society socialorces and capital are transnationalizing our analysis o the state cannotremain rozen at a nation-state level. he essential problematic that should

concern us in attempting to explain phenomena associated with the newimperialism is the political management or rule o global capitalism.he theoretical gauntlet is how to understand the exercise o political domi-nation in relation to the institutions available to dominant groups and sets o

15) For a discussion, see Robinson 1996.16) See, inter-alia, Terborn 1985, 1999; Zeitlin 2000.17) Harvey 2003, p. 91.


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changing historical relations among social orces that is, how are the politi-cal and the economic articulated in the current era? his requires a concep-tion o agency and institutions.

But instead o ofering an ontology o agency and how it operates throughhistorically constituted institutions, much o the new imperialism litera-ture reies these institutions. Institutions are but institutionalized that is,codied patterns o interaction among social orces that structure diferentaspects o their material relations. When we explain global dynamics in termso institutions that have an existence or agency independent o social orces

we are reiying these institutions. Critical state theories and Gramscian IPE18

have taught us, despite their limitations, that the story starts and ends with historically situated social orces as collective agents. o critique anation-state ramework o analysis as I do, is not, as my critics claim19 to dis-miss the nation-state but to dereiy it. Reiying categories leads to realistanalyses o state power and the inter-state system. Realism presumes that the

world economy is divided up into distinct national economies that interactwith one another. Each national economy is a billiard ball banging back andorth on each other. his billiard image is then applied to explain global

political dynamics in terms o nation-states as discrete interacting units (theinter-state system).

he state, says Harvey, in reverting to the realist approach, strugglestoassert its interests and achieve its goals in the world at large.20 But Harveydoes not stop with this reication o the state. He introduces an additional

territorial reication, so that territorial relations become immanent to socialrelations. he wealth and well-being o particular territories are augmentedat the expense o others, writes Harvey.21 his is a remarkably reied image territories rather than social groups have wealth (accumulated values)and enjoy well being. Harvey gives space in this way an independent exis-tence as a social/political orce in the orm o territory in order to advancehis thesis o the new imperialism. It is not how social orces are organized

both in space and through institutions that is the ocus. Rather, or Harvey,territory acquires a social existence o its own, an agentic logic. We are toldthat territorial entities engage in practices o production, commerce, and

18) See inter-alia Cox 1987; Simon 1991.19) See inter-alia, Pozo 2006; Kiely 2006.20) Harvey 2003, p. 26.21) Harvey 2003, p. 32.


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so on. Do territorial entities really do these things? Or is it not that in thereal world, individuals and social groups engage in production, commerce,and so on? And they do so ia institutions through which they organize,

systematize, and demarcate their activities as agents. Social groups becameaggregated and organized in the modern era through the particularinstitutional orm o the territorial-based nation state. But this particularinstitutional orm does not acquire a lie o its own and neither is it immu-table. Nation-states continue to exist but their nature and meaning evolveas social relations and structures become transormed; particular, as theytransnationalize.

Drawing on insights rom Laebvre, Marx, Luxemburg, and others, Harveyearlier introduced the highly ertile notion o spatial (or spatial-temporal)xes to understand how capital momentarily resolves contradictions(particularly, crises o overaccumulation) in one place by displacing themto other places through geographic expansion and spatial reorganization.Following Marx amous observation that the expanded accumulation ocapital involves the progressive annihilation o space through time, he alsocoined the term time-space compression in reerence to globalization as a

process involving a new burst o time-space compression in the world capi-talist system.22

But places have no existence or meaning in and o themselves. It is peo-ple living in particular spaces that do this dis-placing (literally), these spatio-temporal xes. he asymmetric exchange relations that are at the heart o

Harveys emphasis on the territorial basis o the new imperialism must beor Harvey territorial exchange relations. But not only that: they must benation-state territorial exchanges. But exchange relations are social relations,exchanges among particular social groups. here is nothing in the concept oasymmetric exchanges that by at gives them a territorial expression; no rea-son toassume that uneen exchanges are necessarily exchanges that take placebetween distinct territories, much less specically between distinct nation-

states. hat they do or do not acquire such an expression is one o historical,empirical, and conjunctural analysis. Certainly spatial relations among socialorces have historically been mediated in large part by territory; spatial rela-tions have been territorially-dened relations. But this territorialization is inno way immanent to social relations and may well be ading in signicance asglobalization advances.

22) Harvey 1982, 1990.


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Any theory o globalization must address the matter o place and space,including changing spatial relations among social orces and how socialrelations are spatialized. his has not been satisactorily accomplished,

despite a spate o theoretical proposition, ranging rom Castells space oows replacing the space o place.23 and Giddens time-space distancia-tion as the liing o social relations rom territorial place and their stretch-ing around the globe in ways that may eliminate territorial riction.24 hisnotion o ongoing and novel recongurations o time and social space is cen-tral to a number o globalization theories. It in turn points to the larger theo-retical issue o the relationship o social structure to space, the notion o

space as the material basis or social practices, and the changing relationshipunder globalization between territoriality/geography, institutions, and socialstructures. he crucial question here is the ways in which globalization maybe transorming the spatial dynamics o accumulation and the institutionalarrangements through which it takes place. he subject literally, that is, theagents/makers o the social world is not global space but people in those spaces. What is central, thereore, is a spatial reconguration o social relationsbeyond a nation-state/inter-state ramework, i not indeed even beyondterritory.

States are institutionalized social relations and territorial actors to theextent that those social relations are territorialized. Nation-states are socialrelations that have historically been territorialized but those relations are notby denition territorial. o the extent that the US and other national states

promote deterritorializing social and economic processes they are notterri-torial actors. he US state can hardly be considered as acting territoriallywhen it promotes the global relocation o accumulation processes that were previously concentrated in US territory. Harveys approach is at odds toexplain such behavior since by his denition the US state must promote itsown territorial aggrandizement. Harvey observes that as local banking wassupplanted by national banking in the development o capitalism the ree

ow o money capital across the national space altered regional dynamics.25

In the same vein we can argue that the ree ow o capital across global spacealters these dynamics on a worldwide scale.

Let us return to the question: why would Harvey propose separate logicsor the economic and the political or capital and the state? By separating

23) Castells 1996.24) Giddens 1990.25) Harvey 2003, p. 106.


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the political and the economic he is able to claim that indeed globaliza-tion has transormed the spatial dynamics o accumulation hence capitalglobalizes but that the institutional arrangements o such global accumula-

tion remain territorial as nation-states. he state has its own independentlogic that brings it into an external relation to globalizing capital. Here wearrive at the pitall o theoreticism. I onestarts with the theoretical assump-tion that the world is made up o independent, territorial-based nation statesand that this particular institutional-political orm is something immanentto the modern world Wood makes the assumption explicit, a law o capital-ism; or Harvey it seems implicit then the changing world o the 21st century

mustbe explained by theoretical at in these terms. Reality must be made toconorm to the theoretical conception o an immutable nation-state based,inter-state political and institutional order. But since Harvey acknowledgesthe reality o globalizing capital he is thereore orced to separate the logic othat globalizing capital rom that o territorially-based states; he is orcedeither to abandon the theoretical construct altogether or to build it upon adualism o the economic and the political, o capital and the state.

heory needs to illuminate reality, not make reality conorm to it. hepitall o this theoreticism is to develop analyses and propositions to t theo-retical assumptions. Since received theories establish a rame o an inter-statesystem made up o competing national states, economies and capitals then21st century reality must be interpreted so that it ts this rame one way oranother. Such theoreticism orces theorists o the new imperialism into a

schizophrenic dualism o economic and political logics. In any event Harveyhas trapped himsel in a blind alley that underscores the pitall. Despite hisacknowledgement o capitals transnationalization he concludes that the USstates political/territorial logic is driven now by an efort to open up space

vis--vis competitor nation-states or unloading national capital surplus,hence the new US imperialism. his inconsistency in Harveys argumenta-tion reects a general contradiction in the new imperialism literature: the

dualism o the economic and political, o capital and the state, is negated bythe claim that the US state unctions to serve (US national) capital.

Global Capitalism and the TNS

New imperialism theories analyze US oreign policy in relation to the real-ist assumption o competition among national capitals and consequent polit-ical and military rivalry among core nation-states. he US orces opencapital markets around the world [to bring] specic advantages . . . to US


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nancial institutions, asserts Harvey. he United States engages in height-ened interventionism to ofset its hegemonic decline, says Arrighi26 Inter-capitalist rivalry remains the hub o the imperialist wheel, claims Foster. In

the present period o global hegemonic imperialism the United States isgeared above all to expanding its imperial power to whatever extent possibleand subordinating the rest o the capitalist world to its interests.27 Henwoodinsists that US oreign policy in recent years has been singularly aimed at therestoration o the relative strength o American capitalists;28 and heEuropean Union, writes Wood, is potentially a stronger economic powerthan the U.S.29

Yet, to interrogate Woods a rmation, empirical study o the global econ-omy reveals that transnational corporations operate both inside as well out-side o the territorial bounds o the EU, that transnational investors rom allcountries hold and trade in trillions o euros and dollars each day, that Euro-

pean investors are as deeply integrated into transnational circuits o accumu-lation that inextricably pass through the US economy as are US investorsinto such circuits that pass through the EU economy. hese transnationalcapitalists operate across USEU rontiers and have a material and politicalinterest in stabilizing the US and the EU economy and their nancialinstitutions. Once we belie the realist notion o a world o national economiesand national capitals then the logical sequence in new imperialism argu-mentation collapses like a house o cards since the whole edice is constructedon this notion. By coming to grips with the reality o transnational capital we

can grasp US oreign policy in its organic relation to the actual structure andcomposition o the dominant social orces in the global capitalist system.My claim that a NS apparatus is emerging does not imply that supra-

national institutions such as the IMF or the WO replace or in Woods words make irrelevant the national state. Rather, the national state isbeing transormed and increasingly absorbed unctionally into a larger trans-national institutional structure that involves complex new relations between

national states and supra or transnational institutions, on the one hand, anddiverse class and social orces, on the other. As national states are captured bytransnational capitalist orces they tend to serve the interests o global overlocal accumulation processes. he NS, or instance, has played a key role in

26) Arrighi 2005; see also Wallerstein 2006.27)

Foster 2003, p. 13.28) Henwood 2003.29) Wood 2003, p. 156.


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imposing the neo-liberal model on the old hird World and thereore inreinorcing the class relations o global capitalism.

Few commentators suggest that the nation-state is disappearing, or that

capital can now, or ever has been able to, exist without a state. he observa-tion by Wood and others that global capital needs (local) states is neitheroriginal nor particularly controversial. I, among others, have argued or many

years that a undamental contradiction o global capitalism is that or his-toric reasons economic globalization has unolded within the political/authority ramework o a nation-state system. he real issue is not whetherglobal capitalism can dispense with the state it cannot. Rather, it is that the

state may be in a process o transormation in consort with the restructuringand transormation o world capitalism. he question is, to what extent andin what ways may new state orms and institutional congurations be emerg-ing, and how may we theorize these new congurations?

here are vital unctions that the national state perorms or transnationalcapital, among them, sets o local economic policies aimed at achieving mac-roeconomic equilibrium, the provision o property laws, inrastructure, ando course, social control and ideological reproduction. However, nationalstates are ill equipped to organize a supranational unication o macroeco-nomic policies, create a unied eld or transnational capital to operate,impose transnational trade regimes, supranational transparency, and soorth. he construction o a supranational legal and regulator system or theglobal economy in recent years has been the task o sets o transnational insti-

tutions whose policy prescriptions and actions have been synchronized withthose o neo-liberal national state that have been captured by local transna-tionally-oriented orces.

A transnational institutional structure has played an increasingly salientrole in coordinating global capitalism and imposing capitalist dominationbeyond national borders. Clearly the IMF, by imposing a structural adjust-ment program that opens up a given country to the penetration o transna-

tional capital, the subordination o local labor, and the extraction o wealthby transnational capitalists, is operating as a state institution to acilitate theexploitation o local labor by global capital. New imperialism dogmareduces these IMF practices to instruments o US imperialism.30 Yet Iknow o no single IMF structural adjustment program that creates condi-tions in the intervened country that avors US capital in any special way,

30) For example, see Bello 2005; Gowan 1999; Wood 2003.


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rather than opening up the intervened country, its labor and resources, tocapitalists rom any corner o the world.

US oreign policy is exercised behind the backs o the public by state man-

agers as proximate policymakers and politicized corporate elites that consti-tute the ruling class in the ormal sense o the term. Nevertheless, state

policymaking is also a process in which diferent actions and institutionsthat make up the state apparatus have inuence over varied quotas o deci-sion-making at given moments. actical and strategic diferences as well as

personal and institutional rivalries are played out at the level o proximatepolicymaking in disputes or control over policy. his difusion o oreign

policy making power within an elite and levels o (relative) autonomy among proximate policymakers can make moments o transition and redenitionappear highly contradictory and can conuse observers, especially when theseobservers that take public discourse at ace value or assume that social actorsare not inuenced by ideologies that may be in contradiction with interestsand underlying intent.

The Crisis o Global Capitalism and the US State

US imperialism reers to the use by transnational elites o the US stateapparatus to continue to attempt to expand, deend and stabilize the globalcapitalist system. We ace an empire o global capital, as I have argued else-

where,31 headquartered, or evident historical reasons, in Washington. he

questions or global elites are: In what ways, under what particular condi-tions, arrangements, and strategies should US state power be wielded? Howcan particular sets o US state managers be responsive and held accountableto global elites who are ractious in their actions, dispersed around the world,and operating through numerous supranational institutional settings, each

with distinct histories and particular trajectories? We are witness to new orms o global capitalist domination, whereby

intervention is intended to create conditions avorable to the penetration otransnational capital and the renewed integration o the intervened regioninto the global system. US intervention acilitates a shi in power romlocally and regionally-oriented elites to new groups more avorable to thetransnational project. he result o US military conquest is not the creation

31) Robinson 2004, 2005b.


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o exclusive zones or US exploitation, as was the result o the Spanish con-quest o Latin America, the British o South Arica and India, the Dutch oIndonesia, and so orth, in earlier moments o the world capitalist system.

he enhanced class power o capital brought about by these changes is eltaround the world. We see nota reenactment o this old imperialism but thecolonization and recolonization o the vanquished or the new global capi-talism and its agents. he underlying class relation between the CC andthe US national state needs to be understood in these terms.

In sum, the US state has attempted to play a leadership role on behal otransnational capitalist interests. hat it is increasingly unable to do so points

not to heightened national rivalry but to the impossibility o the task at handgiven a spiraling crisis o global capitalism. his crisis involves three interre-lated dimensions. First is a crisis o social polarization. he system cannotmeet the needs o a majority o humanity, or even assure minimal socialreproduction. Second is a structural crisis o oeraccumulation. he systemcannot expand because the marginalization o a signicant portion o human-ity rom direct productive participation, the downward pressure on wagesand popular consumption worldwide, and the polarization o income, hasreduced the ability o the world market to absorb world output. he prob-lem o surplus absorption makes state-driven military spending and thegrowth o military-industrial complexes an outlet or surplus and gives thecurrent global order a built-in war drive. hird is a crisis o legitimacy andauthority. he legitimacy o the system has increasingly been called into

question by millions, perhaps even billions, o people around the world, andis acing expanded counter-hegemonic challenges.his multidimensional crisis o global capitalism has generated intense

discrepancies and disarray within the globalist ruling bloc. he oppositiono France, Germany and other countries to the Iraq invasion indicated sharptactical and strategic diferences over how to respond to crisis, shore up thesystem, and keep it expanding. he political coherence o ruling groups

always rays when aced with structural and/or legitimacy crises as diferentgroups push distinct strategies and tactics or turn to the more immediate pursuit o sectoral interests. Faced with the increasingly dim prospects oconstructing a viable transnational hegemony, in the Gramscian sense o astable system o consensual domination, the transnational bourgeoisie hasnot collapsed back into the nation-state. Global elites have, instead, musteredup ragmented and at times incoherent responses involving heightened mili-

tary coercion, the search or a post-Washington consensus, and acrimoniousinternal disputes. he more politically astute among global elites have clam-


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ored in recent years to promote a post-Washington consensus project oreorm a so-called globalization with a human ace in the interests osaving the system itsel.32 But there were other rom within and outside o the

bloc that called or more radical responses.Neo-liberalism peaceully orced open new areas or global capital in

the 1980s and the 1990s. his was oen accomplished through economiccoercion alone, made possible by the structural power o the global economyover individual countries. But this structural power became less efective inthe ace o the three-pronged crisis mentioned above. Opportunities or bothintensive and extensive expansion have been drying up as privatizations ran

their course, the socialist countries became integrated, the consumption ohigh-income sectors worldwide reached ceilings, spending through privatecredit expansion could not be sustained, and so on. he space or peaceulexpansion, both intensive and extensive, has become ever more restricted.Military aggression becomes an instrument or prying open new sectors andregions, or the orcible restructuring o space in order to urther accumula-tion. he train o neo-liberalism became latched on to military interventionand the threat o coercive sanctions as a locomotive or pulling the moribund

Washington consensus orward. he war on terrorism provides a seem-ingly endless military outlet or surplus capital, generates a colossal decitthat justies the ever-deeper dismantling o the Keynesian welare state andlocks neo-liberal austerity in place, and legitimates the creation o a policestate to repress political dissent in the name o security.

In the post 9/11 period the military dimension appears to exercise anover-determining inuence in the reconguration o global politics. heBush White House militarized social and economic contradictions, launch-ing a permanent war mobilization to try to stabilize the system throughdirect coercion. Is this evidence or a new US bid or empire? We need tomove beyond a conjunctural ocus on the Bush regime to grasp the currentmoment and the US role in it. In this sense, interventionism and militarized

globalization is less a campaign or US hegemony than a contradictory polit-ical response to the crisis o global capitalism to economic stagnation,legitimation problems, and the rise o counterhegemonic orces.

Despite the rhetoric o neo-liberalism, the US state is undertaking analmost unprecedented role in creating prot-making opportunities ortransnational capital and pushing orward an accumulation process that le

32) For example, see Stiglitz 2002.


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to its own devices (the ree market) would likely ground to a halt. A Penta-gon budget o nearly $500 billion in 2003, an invasion and occupation oIraq with a price tag o over $300 billion by 2006 and a proposed multi-

billion dollar space program that would rest on a marriage o NASA, themilitary, and an array o private corporate interests must be seen in thislight. Some have seen the $300 billion invested by the US state in therst three years o its Iraq invasion and occupation as evidence that the USintervention benets US capital to the detriment o other national e.g.,EU capitals. However, Bechtel, the Carlyle Group, and Halliburton arethemselves transnational capital conglomerates.33 It is true that military, oil,

and engineering/construction companies, many o them headquartered inthe United States, have managed to secure their particular sectoral intereststhrough brazen instrumentalization o the US state under the Bush presi-dency. However, these companies are themselves transnational and theirinterests are those not o US capital in rivalry with other countries but o

particular transnational clusters in the global economy.he creative destruction o war (and natural and humanitarian disas-

ters) generates new cycles o accumulation through reconstruction. Andthe military-energy-engineering-construction complex constitutes one othose sectors o global capital that most benets rom such creative destruc-tion. ransnational capitalists are themselves aware o the role o the USstate in opening up new possibilities or unloading o surplus and creatednew investment opportunities. Were looking or places to invest around

the world, explained one ormer executive o a Dutch-based oil explorationand engineering company, and then you know, along comes Iraq.34

he $300 billion invested by the US state in war and reconstruction inIraq between 2003 and 2006 went to a vast array o investors and sub-contractors that spanned the globe.35 Kuwaiti rading and Contracting,Alargan rading o Kuwait, Gul Catering and Saudi rading and Construc-tion Company were just some o the Middle East-based companies that

shared in the bonanza, along with companies and investor groups as ar awayas South Arica, Bosnia, the Philippines, and India. he picture that emergesis one in which the US state mobilizes the resources to eed a vast trans-national network o prot making that passes through countless layers o

33) See, e.g., Brody 2003.34) As cited inMonthly Reiew 2004, p. 64.35) Phinney 2005.


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outsourcing, subcontracting, alliances and collaborative relations, benetingtransnationally-oriented capitalists rom many parts o the globe. he USstate is the pivotal gear in a NS machinery dedicated to reproducing global

capitalism.

Concluding Comments: Imperialism and the Extensive and IntensiveEnlargement o Capitalism

I the world is not divided into rival national economies and national capi-

tals, do we still need a theory o imperialism? Is there any contemporary rel-evance to the concept? In the post-WWII period, and drawing on thetradition established by Rosa Luxembourg, Marxists and other critical polit-ical economists shied the main ocus in the study o imperialism to themechanisms o core capitalist penetration o hird World countries and theappropriation o their surpluses. Imperialism in this sense reerred to thisexploitation and also to the use o state apparatuses by capitals emanating

rom the centers o the world system to acilitate this economic relationthrough military, political, and cultural mechanisms. I we mean by imperial-ism the relentless pressures or outward expansion o capitalism and thedistinct political, military and cultural mechanisms that acilitate thatexpansion and the appropriation o surpluses it generates then it is a struc-tural imperative built into capitalism; not a policy o particular core statemanagers (to see it as such was Hobsons allacy) but a practice immanentto

the system itsel.We need tools to conceptualize, analyze, and theorize how this expansion-

ary pressure built into the capitalist system maniests itsel in the age oglobalization. We need these toolspolitically so as to help make efective ourconrontation with the system. I would agree to this extent with Kiely that atheory o imperialism remains indispensable or understanding both thecontemporary world order and the place o the South in that order.36 Yet,

even at that, capitalist imperialism is considerably more complex under glo-balization that the acile North-South/core-periphery ramework through

which it is typically viewed. he class relations o global capitalism are nowso deeply internalized within every nation-state that the classical imageo imperialism as a relation o external domination is outdated.37 Failure to

36) Kiely 2006.37) Robinson 2006a.


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comprehend this leads to such supercial and misleading conclusions as, orinstance, that the ailure o popular projects to materialize under the rule othe Workers Party in Brazil or the Arican National Congress in South Arica

is a result o a sell out by the leaders o those parties or simply becauseimperialism undercut their programs. Imperialism is not about nations butabout groups exercising the social power through institutions to control

value production, to appropriate surpluses, and to reproduce these arrange-ments. he challenge or such a theoretical enterprise is to ask: how andby whom in the world capitalist system are values produced (organizedthrough what institutions), how are they appropriated (through what insti-

tutions), and how are these processes changing through capitalist globaliza-tion? During the 500 years since the genesis o the world capitalist system,colonialism and imperialism coercively incorporated zones and peoples intoits old. his historical process o primitive accumulation is coming to aclose.

he end o the extensive enlargement o capitalism is the end o the impe-rialist era o world capitalism. he system still conquers space, nature, andhuman beings. It is dehumanizing, genocidal, suicidal, and maniacal. But

with the exception o a ew remaining spaces Iraq until recently, NorthKorea, etc. the world has been brought into the system over the past halmillennium. he implacable logic o accumulation is now largely internal to

worldwide social relations and to the complex o ractious political institu-tions through which ruling groups attempt to manage those relations. We

thereore need a theory o capitalist expansion o the political processes andthe institutions through which such expansion takes place, the class relationsand spatial dynamics it involves.

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beyond the theory of imperialism: global capitalism and the transnational state

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