{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":92,"pdf_page":92,"physical_index":92,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2caf055b34aa1efc8dac721ac55332f3afb2fb0edfbb5c58c519795656770fc1"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Kautsky stressed the role of arms firms in particular as having an interest in imperialism and war. But he maintained that the economic costs of rearmament, while they favoured the development of some sectors of industry, were detrimental to others. Capital in the industrial countries needed to dominate the \"agricultural\" countries in order to get raw materials. But there was no reason why capitalists should not be able to cooperate to do this through a \"sort of super-imperialism\" .20\n\nIn holding that the drive to war was something that happened despite the interests of most capitalists, Hilferding and Kautsky were articulating a view very similar to that of some liberals. One was the influential economist Hobson, who had produced his own theory of imperialism some eight years before Hilferding. He saw imperialism as the product of one interest group, those connected with certain financial institutions.21 These opted for guaranteed returns of interest on overseas loans rather than taking the risks involved in industrial investment at home, and welcomed colonial expansion as a way of making sure their state guaranteed the safety of their investments. So for Hobson the root of imperialism lay not with capitalism as such but with finance capital and those he saw as benefitting directly from it-the bond-holding rentiers who received their dividends regularly without ever having to worry themselves with productive or commercial activity of any sort.\n\nAnother British liberal, Norman Angell, argued a similar position, identifying an essentially peaceful dynamic in capitalism, although ascribing a more benign role to finance-no doubt influenced by the unhesitating way the central banks of France and Germany had sent gold to help Britain, and Russia had then sent gold to help Germany, during the major financial crisis of 1907.22 \"In no department of human activity\", he wrote, \"is internationalisation so complete as in finance. The capitalist has no country, and he knows, if he be of the modern type, that arms and conquests and jugglery with frontiers serve no ends of his . . . \"23\n\nSuch arguments have percolated down through the years to the present day. So the former revolutionary Marxist Nigel Harris argues that \"business has in general no more power over governments than populations\" and the threat to the world comes not from untrammelled capitalism but from the states which guard their own interests.24 Ellen Wood is still a militant Marxist, but her arguments are not that different. She has criticised what she calls \"classical-Marxist theories of imperialism\" of the First World War years for failing to see that the \"'political' form of imperialism, in which exploitation of colonial peoples and resources depends on political domination and control of territory\", is \"the essence of pre-capitalist empires\" .25 \"Capitalist class exploitation'', she insists, is a \"purely economic process which, like capitalist class relations, concerns the commodity market\" .26 From this it follows that, while capitalism needs a state to exert control over society, it does not need states that enter into conflict with each other. Much the same argument is put by Michael Hardt and Toni Negri in their book Empire. Hardt wrote shortly before the US invasion of Iraq that the \"elites\" behind the decision to go to war \"are incapable of understanding their own interests\" .27\n\n92\n\nUnderstanding the System: Marx and Beyond","previous_page":91,"next_page":93}