Imperialism Today: Unequal Exchange and Globalized Production 

Wtf💀

It's what me and my community believes in because it fits our observations. Your intolerance is none of my concern. We are all humans too, maybe learn to talk to us, instead of attacking us with big ass words. Learn to talk to people different than you.

Well that's one way to deal with that feeling. Though all it does is set you on a really poor road which leaves basically everyone worse off. It's not exactly shiny, but it's probably the most effective system for overall wellbeing as well as ability to carry human populations. The biggest problem is inherent inequality. However even the floor rises under the system (especially since it's really the only reason industrialization started at all given how Russia had to import western industrialists to industrialize and how none of the centrally planned systems allowed it and in fact in China actively crushed it in the 11th century).

@@buddermonger2000 "you have to let your nation be exploited so i can live"

@@degamispoudegamis Imagine thinking you're being exploited because someone else is richer than you and then calling the only system which ever gave you the means to wealth unimaginable to your ancestors, capable of carrying over 2000 times more people than before, and for the first time in history twice as many people obese as there are starving with less than 12.5% of the world starving (and even then being largely for political reasons), terrible and something that should be torn down. And once again... all because your country was simply late to the game and only started recently.

your videos are based af, too =)

but please never sign up for a sponsor it's so annoying

How would we ever be able to tell, that an "equal exchange" had taken place?

Paul Moron

Hell yeah it is

@@karlmarx7511 Good empirical analysis, I guess.

@@phoneticalballsack what do you mean? Or rather what's it your trying to convey?

@@karlmarx7511 How could we ever determine that an "equal exchange" had taken place?

They summarize difficult topics by offering a simple, yet often wrong, way of looking at things. For example: "unequal exchange". How can we ever tell that an "equal exchange" has taken place?

Yes, I used Smith's book as one of my references for this video. It's really valuable!

I would say not only that. The workers from 1st world are generally more productive than workers from 3rd world. For example, 1 American steel worker produces much more steel than Indian one, because of the much greater concentration of capital. Of course this doesn't deny everything you listed.

@@themarxistproject hi, are there any plans to do a video on the history of the revolution in China or the reforms that followed? Just wondering.

@@mYnAME-ww9iv this is already included in the theory of unequal exchange -- the comparison is made between prices already accounting for the differences in productivity. but you are correct that productivity is partially responsible for the higher wages as such

@@arikotler4234 Thanks for the response.

@@priapulida what are you talking about ?

@@priapulida I gave you a chance to make an argument and you didn't make it, I am really disappointed

@@priapulida The flat earth equivalent to economics is Austrian economics

Check out Haz from Infrared, he makes great videos on Marxism

infrared/haz is patsoc trash--bad news. Stick with Marxism Today, Socialism4All, Prolekult, etc.

Nothing is timeless, everything is relative.

I did attempt to make that exact point in my closing statement, but maybe I should have sprinkled it in earlier 😅

Yes, I will upload the script to the Medium page soon. Currently digging my way out of a pile of work/academic stuff 😅

@@themarxistproject Awesome, cheers!

Inter-Imperialist conflict, nothing new

Surplus value follows from what we assume the rate of exploitation to be. If we assume this rate is, say, 1/2, then $100 spent on wages yields $50 in surplus value. In these examples I'm just giving different rates to illustrate a point. You can also get it, by definition, as: Surplus value = total revenue - (constant capital + wages). It's whatever additional value was created above the investment costs. Hope that helps!

There's no surplus value in a fully automated chain of production, since one cannot exploit a machine. In practical terms though, since there are no fully automated production chains on Earth yet, the surplus value of man-made robots is projected onto the product that these machines make afterwards. For example, the machines that make up a fully automatic car factory were still made with human labor to some degree, hence they have surplus value. The cars that this factory makes do not have surplus value of their own (since it's fully automated and no humans were underpaid to make those cars), however every produced car has a small part of the factory machinery surplus value carried over into its value. This is why the norm of profit keeps declining with automation and growth of productive power - it's simply becoming harder to extract unpaid labor from a system where humans make less and less work, delegating it to machines. Theoretically, if someday production becomes fully automated, from resource extraction to production of goods, plus production and maintenance of means of production (i.e. if robots make everything, including more robots), then surplus value vanishes and capitalism fundamentally breaks down. But that's far from current reality.

@@vadimk3484 I think I understand your position, however profits are not declining they are increasing, where is this coming from if not surplus labor?

@@kylewalker6737 Corporate profits are indeed increasing, and that's extracted unpaid surplus value, that much is true. However, profits are rising because capital is concentrating, so a fewer number of capitalists controls more and more capital, hence their increase in profit. The norm of profit is declining with automation and development of productive power, it's a fact. For example, 300 years ago a wheel had to be made by a human manually using hand tools, and its norm of profit was, say, 100% - invested 5 dollars, sold the wheel for 10, pocketed 100% of the investment. Then came mechanization - a worker with a hydraulic press and a lathe could produce 10 wheels in the same time for the same wage, except some of the increased value of the tools (lathe, press) was projected onto the end product, so the norm of profit effectively declined to, say, 50% - invested 2, sold for 3. Nowadays, modern automated tech can produce those same wheels without any human input in crazy quantities, with the value of each produced unit reduced to peanuts, especially compared to manual labor. In the end, the profit that every produced item yields is becoming smaller all the time. Have you noticed how much planned obsolescence we've been observing lately? It's crazy - electronic gadgets become programmatically obsolete in a matter of months, modern cars are made of foil and cardboard, barely get past the warranty period and go to the scrapyard, since they're engineered to not be repairable. It's all because of miniscule norm of profit - every individual unit (i.e. a car) has such a tiny amount of surplus value that can be extracted from it, that the capital is forced to stamp them by the millions and to invent crazy schemes to make people buy more and more, otherwise the whole system would break down. P.S. Sorry, I just noticed that this channel actually has a video on the matter, and I also got the term wrong - it's "rate of profit", not "norm of profit". The video is called "Falling profit rates"

@@vadimk3484 thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to explain this :)

@@kylewalker6737 no prob, besides, I did it (at least partly) at the expense of my obnoxious capitalist employer

De-industrialization was already on the agenda well before the one-two punch of Volker/Reagan.

@@BeyondFunction1 rapid deindustrialization was never part of the agenda. rather it was the consequence of the Volcker Shock. It only hurts the empire, not helps. It threatens the long term stability of the empire. no ruling class ever likes this

De-industrialization, period, "only hurts the empire". Fast or slow. So one must ask whether the empire had some purpose in mind. For example, the long-term (if not permanent) readjustment of power relations within the core, which already had been underway in the same slow-motion fashion as de-industrialization. More importantly, these things are not mutually exclusive. De-industrialization may "only hurt the empire", but capital isn't bothered by such considerations. Capital doesn't care whether the empire collapses. The elites don't necessarily care, either. They may have been/felt compelled to simultaneously pursue both accelerated financialization and accelerated de-industrialization. They may have done so believing they could maintain the integrity of the empire (e.g. deindustrialize; thoroughly subdue the masses through a series of wealth-extraction schemes + austerity + political/ideological capture; reindustrialize on the basis of completely redefined "social contract" terms), or they may have done so knowing all that really mattered at the end of the day wrt their own interests (survival, even) was to effectively manage the impending collapse.

@@BeyondFunction1 You are fundamentally wrong in assuming that the American capitalist class does not care whether their empire falls or not. For it is through the empire that they can exert dominance over the capitalist classes of Germany, Japan, the UK, etcetera. If you are implying that the period of financialization and deindustrialization that succeeded the Volcker Shock of 1979-1982 was premeditated by the american capitalist class and not simply a brutal mistake on their part, why didn't Volcker simply allow the run on the dollar to last longer so that interest rates would rise higher than they did historically? After all, they don't care about the empire, right? Simply put, Financialization and Deindustrialization wasn't deliberate on the part of the capitalist class. Rather, it was a natural consequence that arose from exceptionally high interest rates that resulted from Central Banks attempting to override the contradictions of capitalism by attempting to dethrone gold. In the final analysis, the shift away from the gold-exchange standard towards the paper dollar standard only intensifies the crises of capitalism in the long run because gold is the money commodity under the capitalist mode of production. It is within the class interests of the American bourgeoisie to maintain the hegemony of the US empire. Denying this is to deny the contradictions of bourgeois nation states. This is why Financialization and Deindustrialization wasn't the American capitalists' end goal. Rather, it *accelerated* their own demise.

You are misrepresenting my argument. But ok

I went through multiple drafts where I had North/South, developed/underdeveloped, core/periphery, etc. Each have some significant drawbacks in my opinion. And of course, there are evident limitations to categorizing dichotomously. But I appreciate your comment and will reconsider the terminology again in future videos.

In a sense, yes. It's called Breton Woods.

Latin America and nearly every single freshly independent country that has emerged from the Spanish, Portuguese and French Empires were more like the classical Empire of Rome.

So, does this lead to a third worldist worldview/praxis, as in third world nationalist revolutions are necessary for socialism to even be on the table globally?

@@ThePeanutButterCup13 I am not educated enough to completely take such stance. In fact I am from India, that issue largely concerns 1st world politics. Cuz it is clear that revolution is definitely needed in 3rd world as well. But I believe a third world revolution would need to ally itself with national bourgeoisie.

I'm not the most educated/well-read Marxist but it's my understanding that there isn't a way to just easily resolve imperialism. It would have to fall as more impoverished nations become radicalized & decide to either vote in/forcefully install socialism. Imperialism will break first at its weakest links in the chain, progressively getting weaker throughout as capitalism slowly loses control of the world. And yes, that is something a capitalist country could & would just do. That's why a lot of countries turn to market socialism (china & Vietnam utilizing markets for ex). It is not because they want markets necessarily, but rather it's easier to do things & to progress your goals when you aren't cut off from a global market you desperately need to access. and this won't always be the case. After a country transitions into a socialist state, they will often have new allies from other pre-existing socialist projects. Also, to my knowledge, it is common for a country to be a prime target, one that the imperialist power may not want to give up. (for a bad example: Ukraine, {despite not being socialist} is/was a massive economic power thanks to its grain production. Vladimir Putin wants this back. He could choose to go for some other nation, but Ukraine would be better for him personally, along with Russia's elites). So often, they don't just want to give up their access to one of these nations. They'll either try to maintain their current relationship or will intervene by means of election meddling or by staging a coup (or in Putin's case, just invading entirely)

Idk, my reply is definitely flawed throughout but hopefully some of that can be helpful

All political theory does that. Also this descriptive

"our goal is for the workers to own the means of production"- how would that actually work? And do you think that employers aren't workers too?

@@lochnessmunster1189 Worker cooperatives are a pretty obvious example of how it can actually work. I'm not sure why that's even a question. Do I think employers aren't workers? I'm not sure why you would ask that except to as the springboard into "you're wrong because X" arguments. It's that silly of a question that almost exclusively comes from people trying to change the meanings of pretty well understood terms so that they can say "see? Capitalism isn't the problem" or other nonsense. If that's what you're trying to do here, no matter how correct you may think you are, I'm not interested. If you're genuinely curious because you just don't know or understand things and honestly want to learn, then please make it clear exactly what it is you want to understand/know. For example, explain what you don't understand about employers, naming different situations that confuse you. But again, if you're just here to troll, I'm not interested.

@@samuelrosander1048 The reason why I'm asking if you think that employers aren't workers, is because it's an example (especially in small businesses) of workers owning the means of production. I'm not trolling. I appreciate you comment but you're missing out a lot of things. If a worker cooperative was to take on another worker, would they automatically "own" part of that business from the first minute they start work?

@@lochnessmunster1189 No, I'm really not missing out on a lot of things. I anticipated your use of small businesses because the way you were asking made it highly probable that you were going to point to them and say "but see? There's an exception" and go on to try and form an argument about X or Y. It's simply far too common a response. Which you're doing here. It's a false equivalency. You can rightfully make the argument that a small business owner is also a worker because their primary source of income is from their own labor, and not what the labor they buy from others earns them, but the difference is that they are merely "a worker" owns sets the conditions for all other workers by dictate. That is the opposite of "our goal is for the workers to own the means of production." Using that example is akin to saying "feudalism is structurally different from capitalism because instead of a feudal lord you have a business owner." Structurally they're the same, but the names of what position people hold within each system changes (yes, I realize that there are more differences, but I specified "structurally"). In the case of the small business owner it's comparable to an impoverished fuedal lord that also works their land because they can't afford not to. That is not "workers own the means of production," but instead "an owner/worker that has full control over the means of production who also employs workers that must abide by their dictatorial rule" (yes, dictatorial, because while their fellow workers may be able to influence the owner or quit, it is up to the owner and the owner alone to make decisions...and that owner is a single individual, not all of the workers that are employed by them) so again, it's a false equivalency. If a worker cooperative has 1 or 500 members it doesn't matter. They all collectively own the means of production, no one worker having any more right than any other, no greater influence than any other, in deciding how to dispense with the means of production. If they then bring on 500,000 more workers it won't change anything about the structure being one of common ownership among all of the workers. There will inevitably be divisions of labor within that cooperative, and layers of democracy likely based on those divisions, but in the end no individual or group will have any more or less say in anything relating to that cooperative. Even the managers do nothing more than uphold the decisions made by democracy. How the dynamics of ownership based on time work is a question that you can't really get an answer to simply because that's asking for a mandate for "how to socialism" that must be determined by the people at the time and place. Because it's democracy, not commandments that must be strictly followed with some allowance for minor democracy. It might be decided by the cooperative, or even the community in which the cooperative operates (ideally in cooperation with each other), that all workers must undergo a transition period to acclimate themselves to the cooperative's community (it's not just a lifeless business but a group of humans working together both in labor and in arriving at decisions, which means socialization and social dynamics are a consideration), brief or extended, or they might decide to accept all members as owners immediately. The former is most often the case because worker cooperatives are not as common as top-down businesses, but again, it's based on the decisions of the workers within the cooperative, not some state mandate. And this is just talking about worker cooperatives as they exist in capitalism. If you want to learn more about them you can find plenty of resources that will give you different approaches, statistics, etc. I'm almost hearing you ask about guarantees of worker behavior being beneficial and other stuff in response to this, because I've heard it all before. Again, I'm not missing out on much, I just don't want to deal with people trying to poke holes in "the workers themselves (hopefully in cooperation with their local communities) will democratically make decisions" by pointing to possibilities of what might or might not happen, or trying to find exceptions that re-define terms to basically say "but that can happen under capitalism." It gets old really fast and is basically the same as arguing with someone who desperately wants the Bible to be true and will try to find any sliver of evidence they can to "prove" it (and the inevitable "God works in mysterious ways" response). Worker cooperatives have been around for a long time. They function quite well even in capitalism and again, there are plenty of sources you can use to find out more about them, as well as why they're becoming more common around the world (but only very slowly in the United States). Worker cooperatives in a market system are not the goal of socialism, but can be a stepping-stone on the path in that direction. They are worker ownership/control, but the primary motivation is still profit rather than meeting needs, and that leaves a lot of room to just create a different variation of capitalism (called "market socialism") where new hierarchical dynamics can and probably will repeat the same misdeeds as the current hierarchical dynamics, namely the bigger cooperatives taking the place of corporations in dominating government for the benefit of the cooperative (or more likely the leaders of the cooperative if it adopts a format similar to a republic or a corporation). "Ownership of the means of production" is continued with "distribution and exchange." The means of production is merely the starting point. The means of distribution and exchange, not just within a single cooperative but the whole economy, completes the "means of production, distribution and exchange" phrase that socialists (particularly Marxists) use, which is to say that by accomplishing all three you should have a democratic economy. Not just a bunch of cooperatives that make and sell things, but a democratically controlled economy where production is decided by the working people through community and cooperative collaboration/democracy to meet their needs. There's more to it, but that'll give you a starting point for how to think about it. If you end up getting stuck on the "but democracy leads to mob rule" tropes, understand that people who push them either don't understand that they've been brainwashed to uncritically accept top-down rule as good and natural, or they are willing participants in the brainwashing scheme; democracy is not "one person one vote" or all that other nonsense, nor does it have to abide by a specific republican structure that you might expect of the U.S. Senate or various committees. It is only as bad as you want it to be, meaning that if you want a functional democracy you will figure out how to make it function well...which isn't hard to do if you put your mind to it.

@@samuelrosander1048 But the Bible IS completely true!! I'm just kidding. I appreciate your answer, but this doesn't answer my question: how does "ownership" of a business transfer to a new employee? Do they now part-own it from their first minute of employment?

I very much agree. As I note in the video, much of the conditions that allow for unequal exchange rely on political forces -- suppression of wages, financial liberalization, deregulation. These all require political agents and institutions that are dominated/constructed by the capitalist class. In this video I deliberately focused on economic factors because covering everything would have been unwieldy. But I fully agree with what you say here and I do think imperialism must be understood as a complex combination of forces.

I think you might be misinterpreting my statement there. I am not saying no states are imperialist or anti-imperialist (in fact, I specifically note that imperialism today is championed by the US), I am just pointing out that splitting hairs about Country X = imperialist, Country Y = anti-imperialist can be very counterproductive. Primarily, I am alluding to the folks who are trying to figure out whether countries like Russia or China fit neatly into either category. Often times, the result of this unnecessary exercise is that people say indefensible nonsense like Russia is against US hegemony and is therefore an anti-imperialist force, when in fact it participates in, and greatly benefits from, extraction of surplus value via global value chains.

@@themarxistproject what surplus value are you talking about? It is completely a resource exporter, meaning its products are being sold on the world market for cheap. Russia is inherently anti imperalist whether you like it or not. Not even China protects Syria, or Venezuela or Africa the way Russia does. There is a reason us Vietnamese remains buddies with Russia despite the fall of USSR.

This is a Marxist channel all of its claims r ridiculous lol

what would be an example?

@@melelconquistador I've seen a number of people try to work backward from the idea that capital export is a form of imperialism to saying things like "the reason why the US/UK/etc. are richer than the global south is FDI and repatriation of profits"

@@clayton9233 Well, I dont necessarily think it is the export but rather also the import. At the end of the day, the imperial core ends up with the commodities and the money largely in the hands of the few. There is definitely more to how this accomplished, like the basic specifics of how. As in the fostering of conditions that keeps labor cheap on the periphery while the people are also both quantitatively and qualitatively impoverished. Whether is be with the threat or usage of violence and possibly along with the methods of predatory financing.

@@melelconquistador How much does a person need to have, to become part of the "imperial core"? "while the people are also both quantitatively and qualitatively impoverished"- do you actually believe that there hasn't been a massive improvement in the quality of people's lives in the past 200 years?

the book is a must-read! Lenin describes all the mechanisms that lead to imperialism. Its also interesting to read, what the world looked like more than hundred years ago. For example: Western oil production was dominated by Rockefeller, Eastern oil production by Rothschild and Nobel. That was in 1905. When the Bolshevics took over, they nationalized the complete energy sector, of course, making themselves the biggest enemies of imperialism.

thx for the video tho fr

Monopoly capitalism was very much the paradigm throughout a large portion of the 20th century. Monopoly/oligopoly analyses were very important even for non-Marxist economists. I would suggest reading Joan Robinson or Michal Kalecki for more on oligopolies. Additionally, I dont think interpreting monopolies as a conspiracy is accurate -- monopolies occur as a result of the accumulation of capital, which is a central process in many schools of thought, including the Marxist one. In fact, I would argue that the notion of competitive markets is the less plausible one and that the interventions of thinkers like Kalecki brought much needed theory about market power to Marxism.

@@themarxistproject right, monopolies do occur, the question is if they are a dominant feature. This would imply negating the value analysis of Marx, since it´s based on the idea that competition is the force that regulates prices, driving them towards their value. Marxists like Shaikh have shown that wars of prices still exist between the enormous capitals of our era. A famous example is the competition of Japanese and German industries vs American ones in the post war period. It is often assumed that a larger size of capital and a reduced number of actors in the market imply the negation of competition, but that´s not the case, individual capitals still need to compete. I believe Semmler has shown this. But the clearest way of seeing this debate is to think about how the economy should work if monopoly had replaced competition. The drive to invest (which in Marx is largely driven by competition) would largely disappear (since you don´t need to surpass your competitors and workers have no other employment options that could give them enough negotiating power to make it necessary to replace them by machines, plus any wage gains can be negated by an arbitrary change in the prices of final goods by monopolies) and therefore the productive forces would have been stagnated from the times of Lenin. Contrary to that idea, the world today seems much closer to the abstract explanation contained in Capital, which makes sense, since we are at a moment in which capital dominates completely as a mode of production.

It's called differential rates of exploitation and it's pretty obvious when you think about it. Not everyone is exploited exactly the same for their hourly work.

I mean this shit could literally be statistically charted. Exactly how much your being exploited per hour.

You really need to read more Marx

Lol. No

Honestly, I agree. Imperialism is just one of those concepts that's too complex to be reduced to a single, ahistorical, "correct" usage. I see no reason why non-Marxist views on imperialism couldn't be of substantial analytical merit, provided they are rigorous and relevant (criteria that I fully expect to be applied to any Marxist idea as well). To your second point: I think it would depend on the situation but, generally speaking, yes, any concerted effort to break from the exploitation of unequal exchange should be considered an anti-imperialist maneuver.

I'm willing to let Marxists use a Marxist definition of imperialism. If you're going to build a theoretical construct of reality, you need to define your own terms. There's Marxists, and then there's Marxists, of course.

No one is saying that autarky is preferred to trade. Obviously there are ways to gain from trade, even for underdeveloped countries. The point scholars like Amin and Smith are making is that the structure of the global capitalist economy necessarily relies on the exploitation of certain nations/regions/territories. There are success stories, but the role of "free" trade there is frequently overstated. S Korea, for example, managed to develop as it did through extremely strict protectionism, particularly of key infant industries. It took significant state intervention to escape the poverty pit -- as it did in virtually every other country that has transitioned out of the low-income group. State subsidies, tariffs, and other protections from international markets is ironically what allowed such countries to improve productivity in competitive sectors and thus raise their terms of trade. Several decades have now passed since neoliberal reforms opened economies in the developing world. With only a few exceptions, most countries have not been able to successfully develop. The question remains: why does the development gap persist? Free trade is more ubiquitous than ever, and yet only a few countries have significantly improved their standing. Also, the whole point of this video was to encourage people to move beyond Lenin (which is explicitly stated in the beginning and the end of the discussion). His writings on this matter were accurate *for their time*, but are now not tractable in analyzing the global economy.

@@themarxistproject What are you talking about? Most developing countries who opened themselves up to foreign investment has improved their conditions.

@@TacticoolMobius are you thinking of a specific study or report that shows "most developing countries" having clear gains from trade? Because I think the results have been ambiguous at best. And the countries that have been able to substantially grow their GDP have not distributed that growth in a meaningful way.

@@themarxistproject GDP is a fake stat. Human Development Index is a better indicator. Also it is important to look at the number of university graduates because that is the intellectual base the country builds to push the economy further. Brain drain is real but the developing countries are able to keep a good amount still. Plus some come back or even invest in their home country. Sure there is corruption but material conditions improve. Education is improving and people are starting to ask more.

@@TacticoolMobius I'm with you on that, GDP is completely inadequate. Still, I don't see strong evidence for convergence -- at least not through FDI or gains from trade. Even if globalized production has improved the average global consumer (whatever that even means), it has done so at the expense of the most exploited labor. There is also reason to believe that such global exchange has exacerbated wage inequality in the developed world with the relocation of low wage jobs. In fact I recall reading a paper recently that showed inequality increasing in both the US and Mexico after the adoption of a free trade agreement.

More than happy to say it: I'm "anti White"

@@themarxistproject lmao pathetic

@@adame6425 define what it is to be "white" lol

@@StaticCollapse culturally, spiritually, and ethnically European

This is exactly like SJWs who don't like something and call it racist

You are simply pointing out the Neo-Liberal definition, the problem with it is that it's completely redundant, as by that definition every nation would be considered imperialistic, or were at some point imperialistic.

You are a perfect example of dunning Kruger. He's talking about different definition that are heavenly debated and you think oh let me just look in the dictionary lmao.

I did not, but most of these ideas are well known in imperialism studies so I'm sure other people have made similar presentations.

🥱

I don't know what imperialism is 🤡

Clown

Exactly. NATO expansion is voluntary and the countries of eastern Europe lined up to join. They remember russian and soviet aggression in their past. Same thing happened with Finland and Sweden, they petition to join as a result of russian aggression and attempts at expanding its influence, like an empire does. The thing to remember is that russia is extremely weakened.

@@monkeeseemonkeedoo3745 when did you vote to go to war in Iraq? Did you vote to increase the budget for the military industrial complex? I'm guessing you didn't for a number of reasons. Leaders vote for war because it's the poor who will die. So forgive me if I don't think the average Ukrainians top political issue was joining a defence just like ours isn't for invading Haiti.