Final Video Documentation

I. Discourse

With the current political climate today, discussing Lenin’s imperialism is relevant. The Philippines is a
nation-state with a tragic colonial past that continues to haunt it to this day. Unequal military and
economic treaties and agreements, especially with the USA, still persist and domestically the Philippines’
class structure remains oppressive and very much unequal. Monopolization of land and peasant-farmers
are still the norm and national industry remains a dream. Historically, those in power, the big landlords
and compradors, were collaborators of the previous colonial regimes. In this context, Lenin’s imperialism
is a relevant topic to discuss. Imperialism after all is the higest stage of a capitalist economy wherein a
state’s industry has become monopolized through cartels and associations creating a surplus of capital
that is transferred and invested through banks on less developed economies with rich natural resources.
This creates a financial oligarchy. This setup allows bigger advanced industrial states to take huge chunks
of natural resources and labor for a cheap price. To ensure compliance of the lesser state, the imperialists
collaborate with an existing elite and they do their transactions at the expense of the people. This however
would lead to advanced states fighting over territories first economically and soon militarilly.

It is more apt to discuss it Now, however, considering that many states today have seen a rise in
strongman rightist politics that further the imperialist or “neoliberal” agenda(liberalization of markets and
deregulation and privatization) and consequently also a rise of leftist resistance across the globe. While
we have witnessed the rise of fascists like Trump and Duterte, Today we also see students and workers
strike in france against the neoliberal reforms of their government, in India we are witnessing thousands
of farmers marching for their right to land, and in our very own country we are witnessing an ever growing
movement asserting socio-political-economic national independence and an end to state violence(which
is the state’s response to progressive resistance since it cannot see eye to eye with the interest of the
people other than those in power; the result of ireconcilability of class). Often seen on the calls of these
movements around the globe is a term called imperialism. With the growing relevance of the anti-
imperialist movements then it is important to ask what is imperialism?

II. Design

The Script was made with the target audience being students in mind. I pursued writing the script aiming
not to undermine the academic content of the concept, but seeing that imperialism is too complicated to
discuss in three minutes, I dumbed it down to the essentials.

This was my first outline for the script:

1)Misconceptions on Imperialism

-Capitalist-imperialism as a concept

-Not a monarchic sense or as Lenin would say “imperialism of the old type”

2)Historical Materialsim
 -Development of class struggle

-Primitive Communal

-Slave Economy

-Feudal

-Capitalist

3)Imperialism as Beyond initial capitalism

-From free market to monopoly capitalism/imperialism

-Imperialism as in between free market/ competiton capitalism and socialism

4)Characteristics of Imperialism

-the concentration of production and monocap

-Finance capital

-Export of surplus capital

-the economic formation of international monopoly capitalist which share the world among
themselves

-the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.

5)Continuing relevance of Lenin’s Imperialism

-Colonial legacy

-Dependency

-Philippine situation

As you can see the outline was quite long and was more fitting for a thesis or a lecture than a short video
on the topic. So instead of discussing all this, I decided to focus on Imperialism’s characteristics and
condensed it as much as I could without sacrificing its academic and “intellectual” content, this resulted
into the present script which was this:

“Imperialism, a term you often see written on placards in mobs today, but what exactly is that all about?

Imperialism is a concept introduced by the revolutionary thinker Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was a staunch
advocate of Marxism and dedicated his life to expanding its theory and practice.

Lenin had argued that Capitalism in advanced industrial states had come to the point where a certain
company would monopolize the market having grown and eaten its competitions in all kinds of
production. Simply a rise of monopoly capitalists. This had led to a profit-losing crisis of, not just
overproduction and underconsumption of goods, but of capital as well. To make up for this, capitalists
would dump their surplus products and capital onto less developed countries, this would be done at a fast
pace with the advent of banks. The less developed countries were usually colonized nations which more
often than not were subjugated violently. By doing so, they would have access to cheap labor from the
subjugated locals and cheap raw materials as large tracts of land are bought and transformed into
plantations and as well as a market to sell their products. To maintain this setup, the monopoly capitalists
would also buy the loyalty of the existing elite of the lesser state which control government and public
policy. This local elite and the foreign monopoly capitalists would coordinate in ensuring the entry and
exit of goods and capital and crushing resistance of those who choose to rise up against exploitation.

However, this system, known as Imperialism, is not a stable system, as the different advanced industrial
states would fight over a territory of lesser states to economically dominate, meaning that more often
than not, this would lead to armed conflicts around the globe between big states that eventually lead to
the deaths of innocent civilians.

In today’s world, as national movements persist in their struggles to assert its identity and as the world
recovers from the legacy of colonialism, one cannot deny the remaining relevance of Lenin’s imperialism.
As long as inequality remains on an global level, and as proxy wars by bigger states persist at the expense
of the poor and vulnerable, Imperialism will remain to be attacked by the ever growing progressive
movements of the world.”