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Heldira Larashati - EAC Kyoto University (Geopolitical Economy of Development Term Assignment)
Heldira Larashati - EAC Kyoto University (Geopolitical Economy of Development Term Assignment)
Heldira Larashati - EAC Kyoto University (Geopolitical Economy of Development Term Assignment)
1
Harvey, David. The enigma of capital: and the crises of capitalism. Profile Books, 2011
2
Birla, Aditya. Heritage Aditya Birla Group, unknown. Web. 21 Jun. 2017.
In the second chapter, Lenin presents how banks (particularly German Banks)
transformed from their modest role as facilitator for capital saving or treasury
activities to capital-generating activities during 20th century. At that point, bank
became very influential to industrial capitalists by supporting data of firms' economic
position as well as generating relationship with government (page 53). Thereupon, it
marks the transformation of old capitalism into the new one. It is very interesting to
see how the phenomena sporadically spread and still happening until present time -
thanks to Adam Smith's division of labor that successfully helped to revolutionize
banks into nowadays-modern commercial banks.
However, one of the facts that are presented is contradictory to Lenin's own premise
that at that time banks became a 'best friend' of industrial capitalists. A case of The
Union Mining Company (TUMC) that comes in Chapter Three about how banks got
big chunks of profit through "reconstruction" of the books in order to prevent bigger
lose of TUMC's shareholder. This somehow left critical gap between legitimizations
of his arguments on the book.
Series of export capital activities and figures are comprehensively covered in Chapter
Four with the main idea is to show the typical later stage when monopolies rule,
which he pointed as export of capital. He put much attention to example of British
colony that transferred their surplus capital (as well as population and production) to
America or France imperialism toward part of Russia (page 70). It may be relatable if
he also put example of the so-called first multinational company in the world,
Dutch's Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC). The existence of VOC far before
20th century and their aggressive trading and investment activities are undeniably
fact of imperialism as well as capitalism (or probably better to write as
mercantilism)3 had been conducted that far.
Capitalist associations, or as in the book tend to be referred as cartels is heavily
criticized in Chapter Five. Lenin shows how cartels formed at that time and were
backed by strong banks due to 1900s crisis (page 75). Cartelization later developed
into higher stage at state level, or written as "trust"; when German and US divide the
world electric market between themselves (page 77). Similar kind of story also
happened to oil industry. Lenin reveal how fragile is that system since they did not
preclude re-division if uneven development, war, or bankruptcy happens. This later
happened to German Deutsche Bank with American Trust and that he called as
"comedy of oil".
Lenin also frequently pointed out the bourgeois scholars or writers who preferred to
polish those capitalists bad deeds instead of criticizing them. Frankly I could not find
relation of this point to the whole story of the book, yet that kind of exposure is
worth to consider. Particularly, in conjunction with one of main purposes of this
book: which would like to challenge Karl Kautsky's idea of imperialism and theory of
3
Irwin, Douglas A. "Mercantilism as strategic trade policy: the Anglo-Dutch rivalry for the
East India trade." Journal of Political economy 99.6 (1991): 1296-1314.
Heldira Larashati | EAC Kyoto University [Geopolitical Economy Of Development Term Assignment] 3
ultra-imperialism. Kautsky argued in 1914 as follows: "Imperialism is a product of
highly developed industrial capitalism. It consists in the striving of every industrial
capitalist nation to bring under its control or to annex all large areas of agrarian
territory, irrespective of what nations inhabit it" I would agree to Lenin's strong
opposition towards this idea, as it clearly supports annexation that is imposed by
imperialists. In addition, Lenin regarded Kautsky as "defenders of opportunism
leader" that will surely leave the reader certain kind of impression.
Summary of the chapters are importantly showed in Chapter Seven. Lenin concludes
the chapter by emphasizing that imperialism emerged when capitalist activities are
continuously conducted. However, it will only become imperialist at very high stage
of development and being monopolist (page 91 and 92). Following that, he provided
future recommendation to see imperialism aside from economic conception, such as
from historical point of view of how it connected to capitalism or its relation to
working-class movement.
In conjunction with present time, Vladimir Lenin, was surely ahead of his time.
Proved by numerous explanations that are still closely accountable to present
condition and draw a big picture of how past imperialism contributed to present's
globalization; that the employment of the word itself began only decades after.
However, taking about present condition, I would prefer exploring the connection of
capitalism with liberalism or neoliberalism (which are actually also outdated) rather
than imperialism, even though the presence of imperialism can still be felt in the
existing systems.
Overall, this book provides new alternatives in seeing phenomena of capitalism
through the wider perspective that surely can be taken into consideration for the
development of future economic system or reconstruction of existing structure in
delightful way.