"Imperialism" Jörg Fisch, Dieter Groh & Rudolf Walther
In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, hsg. v. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982, 1992.
The following text is a machine-assisted translation of the “Imperialismus” entry, now published after my critical review. I’ve supressed its 262 footnotes, since all of them were mere references to where the quote was extracted from. I’ve added a few of my own, essentially to translate paragraphs written in non-German.
In a time where words like “imperialism” and “colonialism” continue to be thrown around without much rigour (whether by right-wingers or leftists), this entry, despite being written 42 years ago, illuminates the meaning of this historically recent concept. Section VII is undoubtedly my favourite, analysing both the marxist and the national-socialist (in this case, Lebensraum) framing of the concept.
Step by step, the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe is being translated into English and a larger public will recognise its much deserved value. Accompanying the efforts made by Carlsbad (wheter in his Wordpress or Substack) and other frogs (namely, Garak’s substack and Eletric Mule’s), this is my contribution to Conceptual History.
Imperialism
I. Introduction. II 'Empire' until the formation of 'imperialism'. 1 Rome. 2. Middle Ages. a) 'Imperium' and 'regnum'. b) 'Imperium' and 'sacerdotium'. c) Several empires. 3. Modern times. III. Uses of words in the run-up to the modern concept of imperialism. 1. From the traditional to the modern concept. 2. Beginnings of economic explanations of imperialism. 3. The term 'imperialism' as an analytical tool. IV. The national imperialisms. 1. Greater Britain: from apology to paradigm. 2. USA, Russia, France and Imperialism. a) USA. b) Russia. c) France. V. 'Imperialism' in Germany. 1. The birth of imperialism from nationalism. 2. 'Imperialism' as 'world politics'. a) 'World politics' as a fighting concept. b) Propaganda for the “greater Germany”. c) 'Imperialism', 'imperialist' and 'imperialistic' as self-designations. d) Lexicon level. e) 'Imperialism' in the domestic political debate. f) 'Imperialism' after the First World War. VI. Political economy of imperialism. 1. Theoretical approaches in Marx. 2. Discussion about imperialism in German social democracy up to explicit theoretical development. 3. Theories of imperialism. a) Hobson. b) Hilferding. c) Rosa Luxemburg. VII Outlook. 1. Communist theories of imperialism. 2. 'Imperialism', Spatial Ideology and National Socialism. 3. Discussion of Imperialism after the Second World War.
I. Introduction
'Imperialism' is derived from the Latin 'imperium'. 'Imperium' was always primarily a legally more or less precisely defined term, which also had various non-legal meanings. Of particular importance were the tendencies towards the expansion of power, right up to the aspiration of world domination, partly as a claim, partly as a reproach. With the concept of imperialism, these meanings became detached from the legally defined concept of empire — the formation of ism meant, as it were, the separation of the component of power from that of law, which in turn had to intensify the accusation of illegality or at least illegitimacy, making the term particularly susceptible to ideologisation and partisan use. Admittedly, the extent to which the concept of empire was fixed in legal terms has already diminished from the Roman Republic through the imperial period, the Middle Ages and the early modern period to the 19th century.
II 'Empire' until the formation of 'imperialism'
1. Rome
'Imperium' is derived from the verb 'imperare', "to command". Its original non-technical meaning is "command", "order". It has also been a constitutional terminus technicus since the early Republic. It denotes the official authority of the highest magistrates. Originally probably limited to military power, it later came to epitomise comprehensive, at least theoretically unrestricted official authority. Military rule can be seen in the title 'imperator', which was originally used for magistrates with military command and later became an honourary title for generals.
'Imperium' was also used, at least since the late Republic, for the power of the Roman people over other peoples, as 'imperium populi Romani'. This legally less precisely definable power of command over persons became the power of command over the territories concerned and finally the designation for the ruled territory itself: the area of command became the 'imperium Romanum' (demonstrable since Sallust). 'Imperator' was used more and more as the title of emperor.
In CICERO in particular, 'imperium' often has a pronounced expansive component, e.g.: maiores vestri primum universam Italiam devicerunt, deinde Karthaginem exciderunt, Numantiam everterunt, potentissimos reges, bellicosissimas gentes in dicionem huius imperii redegerunt1, all the way to world domination: Pompeius is said to have ruled omnibus bellis terra marique compressis imperium populi Romani orbis terrarum terminis definisset2.
'Imperium' was also always used non-technically in the sense of any authority. Since the Augustan period, it has also frequently referred to non-Roman rulers and empires, although Rome remains the empire par excellence.
'Imperium' retains a preferential position over 'regnum'. It is often defined as consisting of several 'regna'. Sometimes the difference is almost cancelled out, but 'regnum' is never given priority over 'imperium'.
2. Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, the original technical meaning of magisterial authority no longer applies. 'Imperium' is restricted to imperial and royal rule and to the realm associated with this rule. It retains its high prestige. The existence of a multitude of empires and powers leads to very extensive disputes on questions of superiority/subordination, on the one hand, and mutual independence, on the other. The concept of empire plays a central role here.
a) 'Imperium' and 'regnum'. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, 'imperium' regained great importance in the West with the imperial coronation of Charlemagne (800) and Otto the Great (962). It remained, with changing additions, the name of the empire until its dissolution in 1806. Alongside the empire stood the kingdoms, the 'regna'. The relationship between the two remained open. On the imperial side, attempts were made to emphasise the aspect of superiority, which ranged from the claim to world domination (which was admittedly only made by propagandists, not officially) to mere primacy in ceremonial. Accordingly, the 'regna' had more or less strong reservations about the empire. Claims to supremacy were always rejected, while the emperor was generally accorded a higher dignity and greater prestige. However, the empire never exercised real rule in areas that did not belong to it under constitutional law.
b) 'Imperium' and 'sacerdotium'. In contrast to antiquity, the Middle Ages saw the emergence of a second power with universal authority, the papacy. While in the relationship between 'imperium' and 'regnum' only the extent of the superiority of the former was disputed, the empire was confronted with an equally far-reaching claim in the sacerdotium, which also referred to the 'regna', but affected the empire more strongly as the protective power of Rome. The papacy was ultimately able to win the battle for priority and thus contributed to the extensive reduction of the 'imperium' to one empire among others. The Roman element of the empire became less and less important, while the German element became more and more important. But even papal priority never led to recognised rule beyond spiritual authority.
c) Several empires. The Byzantine Empire existed until 1453, claiming to still be the Imperium Romanum. The western empire had to come to terms with this claim. In the 9th and 10th centuries, it saw itself as the successor to the Roman Empire alongside Byzantium: the Western Empire had been created through "renovatio imperii" or "divisio imperii". From the 11th century onwards, this claim intensified. The Western Empire was now seen as the exclusive successor to the Imperium Romanum: this had come to the Franks in 800 through "Translatio imperii a Graecis ad Francos" and to the Germans in 962 through another translation. Until the 17th century, translation theories largely determined the view of empire. In their various forms, which arose from the interpretation of the role of the Pope in the coronation of Charlemagne, the dispute over prerogative between the Emperor and the Pope, and later between Catholics and Protestants, was also played out. As in antiquity, the term 'imperium' was never used exclusively for the Imperium Romanum in the Middle Ages. In addition to the defensive strategy of minimising the importance of the empire, the 'regna' had the opportunity to go on the offensive by stylising themselves as 'imperium'. Corresponding designations are already known for England and Spain from the 8th century, i.e., still without a point against the claims of another empire. They were later given such a function at least in these two countries and in France. The corresponding tendencies have been reflected since the 12th century in the formula 'rex est imperator in regno suo'.
3. Modern Era
In the Modern Era, the empire remained an empire (Reich) with a special consecration and dignity, whereby its great extent was increasingly emphasised. It was now also relativised by reference to other empires that existed at the same time. Nevertheless, the Roman-German Empire retained a certain privileged position, which was admittedly based only on age and prestige and no longer on power. The Encyclopédie of 1755, for example, initially defines it quite meagrely: Empire. C'est le nom qu'on donne aux états qui sont soumis à un souvérain qui a le titre d'empereur. Examples are Russia and the Mughal Empire. But: parmi nous, on donne le nom d'empire par excellence au corps Germanique, qui est une république composée de tous les princes et états qui forment les trois colléges de l'Allemagne, et soumise à un chef qui est l'empereur3.
"However, the term 'empire' also retained its expansive, even aggressive meaning, especially among its opponents: they associated it with the quest for world domination, which in the early modern period was also referred to as the quest for universal monarchy. Both elements, the higher prestige of 'imperium' for its bearers and the expansive tendency, also determine the conceptual history of 'empire' for the two Napoleonic empires of the 19th century.
Despite the stronger emphasis on the expansive tendencies of the concept of empire in the 19th century, the traditional legal-institutional elements did not disappear. This can be seen in 1882 in ALBRECHT JUST's article "Kaiserthum" in Ersch/ Gruber. For Just, the term Kaisertum has historically always been associated with the idea of a certain heightening of kingship, an extension of the same beyond the boundaries of the strict unitary state, a tendency towards world domination, towards a kind of hegemony under international law ... True imperialism is the result of an outward expansion of the abundance of power of a unitary state; it has the urge to enlarge itself outwardly through conquest. But it also has a special religious consecration; as a union of several states, the empire necessarily has a federalist character; overseas expansion is not specifically mentioned as a possibility of empire-building, and economic impulses are completely absent. The proximity of this concept of empire to the emerging concept of imperialism is just as clear as the difference: the institutional designation cannot catch up with the formation of the ism.
JÖRG FISCH
III. Usage of the word in the run-up to the modern concept of imperialism
1. From the Traditional to the Modern Term
CONSTANTIN FRANTZ was one of the political publicists who continuously used the term 'imperialism' in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s to characterise rule by sword, which he regarded Caesar's rule in the Roman Empire as a model for. Early on, however, Frantz also referred to new phenomena, albeit without explicitly using the concept of imperialism, the successive realisation of which freed the environment for the conception of the modern term from a tangle of associations and connotations. In 1857, he still wrote rather noncommittally: World-ruling ideas, on the other hand, have in recent times passed more to England, which, as a middle thing between Rome and Carthage, has much of this and perhaps even more of that. In Rule Britannia, therefore, he merely wanted to see a new edition of the tu regere imperio populos Romane memento, without going into the specifically modern foundations and methods of English expansionist policy. Twenty years later, again without speaking directly of 'imperialism', he declared the capitalist exploitation system of the stock exchange to be merely the flipside of military rule (for Frantz synonymous with 'imperialism'!) with its tendencies towards conquest. In this thesis, the conscious parallelisation of the expansionist moments in Roman military rule with the capitalist mode of production, which also aimed at unrestricted expansion, appears for the first time. Although Frantz does not address the economic and social conditions that drive capital to expand worldwide, his references nevertheless prepared the ground for understanding the expansive dynamics of the capitalist economy at the end of the 19th century. However, the fact that Frantz adhered to the traditional concept of imperialism throughout his life and did not want to use the same term to describe the modern phenomenon of capitalist expansion can be seen from the fact that he did not use the term in one of his latest essays, which deals explicitly with the modern problematic.
BRUNO BAUER's concept of imperialism also occupies a peculiar intermediate position. He uses it to describe what his contemporaries generally called 'Caesarism' or 'Bonapartism', i.e. the more or less divergent but essentially identical conceptions of Disraeli, Napoleon III and Bismarck, i.e., those strategic considerations that sought to develop the alliance with the working classes against the liberal bourgeoisie into the basis of political power in order to establish the democratic monarchy as a dictatorship over the parties and to be able to rule according to the model of the Roman military. Although this concept of 'imperialism' is almost exclusively determined by the image Bauer had of late Roman conditions and by his experiences with contemporary Bonapartist practices of rule, the term also already contains echoes of modern — English — usage. Thus Bauer sees the crisis in production and trade and American competition as economic phenomena that force the great powers to expand, to turn away from Europe and towards Constantinople, Egypt, Syria, Asia and North Africa. Although Bauer does not provide an explicit economic foundation for the term 'imperialism', economic elements emerge vaguely at the edges of the term and above all in the constellations into which he projects the term.
He registers Bismarck's National Economic Council and tobacco monopoly plans, for example, as the beginning of national economic dictatorship and the breaking of English hegemony on the world market as a decisive turning point in European history. Finally, Bauer recognised in the centralisation of state power only a symptom of the general tendency towards imperialist dictatorship, but without citing economic reasons for this. The French terminology, which defined the term as a political form of rule and government above social parties and interests, still dominated.
In a study by GEORG ADLER published in 1897, the term still appears in the same context. However, Adler now placed greater emphasis than Bauer on foreign policy, as it was this that first labelled him (Disraeli) a full imperialist: because under him, after decades, England finally took aggressive action again in all parts of the world. In contrast, he regarded Prussian Germany under Bismarck as the classic testing ground for imperialist social policy and Bismarck as the main representative of modern imperial socialism, which he understood as the policy of the Crown in alliance with its most powerful administrative organs against the social interest groups and parties.
These three examples show how slowly the naturalisation of the term to describe the modern phenomenon of imperialism took place in Germany. — In its modern meaning, the term 'imperialism' was initially — i.e. in the 1880s — used exclusively to characterise one of the parties in the English disputes over relations with the colonies. A laborious paraphrase of the origin and meaning of the term from 1881 is intended to demonstrate how new the term must still have been even to a public inundated with pamphlets and pamphlets on colonial policy around this time: Two sharply divided parties have recently emerged - one of which believes that a closer political union of the colonies with the mother country will promote the general welfare, while the other holds the view that a complete severance of all political ties is best for both parties; ...And in recent years it has become fashionable to describe as imperialism the policy which endeavours to preserve the colonies for the mother country. The imperialists are again divided into two factions, one of which propounds the theory of a "personal union", while the other maintains that the interests of England and her possessions must not be separated in any way. The author sees the two factions as an expression of the split between a purely mercantile small-state conception and a large-state or imperial conception. He defines the latter more pointedly as a fusion of Greater Britain and Great Britain, which means imperialism. It is not only the continuous English spelling of the term that indicates that 'imperialism' only meant English politics, or part of it. In addition, LOEHNIS distinguishes between the policies of other powers, whose activities he does not want to be understood as 'imperialism' but as national colonial policy. This terminological distinction persisted until the turn of the century and in many cases beyond, and not even the greatest enthusiasts of a forced German colonial policy seem to have been familiar with the term 'imperialism', as the following examples from an immense wealth of colonial literature show. HÜBBE-SCHLEIDEN speaks of England's extensive cultural policy, PETERS of pananglosaxonism, BRAUN of Britain's predatory colonial policy and JANNASCH of the ruinous trade policy ... at the expense of economically underdeveloped peoples. The term 'imperialism' was also not used in the major colonial policy debates of the German Reichstag between 1884 and 1889, although British dominance of the world market and economic problems in connection with the crisis cycles of the 'Great Depression' were frequently discussed and colonial channels of withdrawal to overcome the crisis were emphatically demanded. Obviously, the term 'imperialism' was initially regarded solely as a word from modern political phraseology to describe internal English interest and party groupings and not as a transferable general political and economic term and certainly not as an epochal term. For the 1880s and 1890s, it can be stated that the modern term 'imperialism' was used in German only - and even that rather rarely, given the mass of colonial writings - as a party term to characterise English conditions.
The preparation of a more generally applicable concept of imperialism goes back to the debates of the 19th century. In 1834, FRIEDRICH LIST wrote: From the character of progress, which is peculiar to European culture, arise three principal effects, which vouch for the fact that European culture must spread over the whole globe, namely 1) the continually increasing production of goods through new inventions of machines and processes and through new discoveries, 2) the increase in capital and 3) the continual increase in population. List thus described for the first time the historical fact that has generally been referred to by the modern term 'imperialism' since the turn of the century.
It was associated with the expansion and independence of state power within nation states. The criticism that manifested itself in the dissociation from Napoleon III used the term in a negative sense. In 1884, BROCKHAUS defined imperialism as the state of a state in which the arbitrary power of the ruler, based on the soldiers, prevails. In contrast, the competition between nation states and their drive for cultural and economic expansion was initially regarded as unreservedly positive and stimulating. A connecting link between the traditional and the modern concept was the plebiscitary element, which was constitutive both for 'imperialism' as 'Caesarism' and for 'imperialism' as 'world politics'. Thus, on 8 April 1876, the "Spectator" complained that the dangerous progress of democracy, which the present Premier has done more to hasten than any public man of his day, opens the way for any statesman who is so disposed, to alliances with the prejudices and ignorance of the masses, such as constitutes the very essence of the Imperialist policy of France. Despotic decrees, such as are likely to be ratified by plébiscites, are the favourite engines of French Imperialism. In the second half of the 19th century, the attitude of the masses and their influence became extremely important for every government. The democratic element in the term 'imperialism' was thus also transformed into a means of ideological influence. This became clear for the first time on a large scale in England when emotions were used as a political tool by both Gladstone and his opponent Disraeli in the dispute over the Russo-Turkish War. This situation gave rise to "jingoism" in 1878. It was during this major domestic political controversy between Gladstone and Disraeli that the modern term 'imperialism' was coined, initially against Disraeli. Based on the growing problems of the Empire and based on exemplary events (such as the acceptance of the title "Empress of India"), the term gained acceptance. Thus LORD CARNARVON in 1878: We have been of late much perplexed by a new word, 'Imperialism', which has crept in among us ... It is not free from perplexity. I have heard of Imperial policy, and Imperial interests, but Imperialism, as such, is a newly coined word to me. In the current debate of the time, however, 'Home Rule', the self-government of Ireland, played a more important role than the colonies. The latter were long regarded as ballast for the liberal development of the nation and society.
Liberalism, which on the one hand opposed the expansion and independence of state power, but on the other had been the ideology par excellence of capitalism of free competition and free trade, lost its strength to the extent that European expansion in the colonies and on the world market reached its limits. In 1887, BRUCE SMITH wrote in his programmatic essay, "Liberty and Liberalism": The aggressive function of Liberalism has been exhausted, and, with minor exceptions, it only remains for it to guard over the equal liberties of citizens generally, with a view to their preservation. This I regard as the proper function of Liberalism in the present day. It was only in the 1990s that liberalism, due to its internal divisions, once again approached imperialist currents that can rightly be labelled with the modern term.
In the German Empire, historical conditions, which were a result of the division and impotence of German liberalism, led to the uninhibited development of nationalist ideology and its linkage with specifically German "world politics".
Alongside the liberal criticism of traditional imperialism, such as that levelled at Napoleon III, the criticism of the bourgeois social system by the First Socialist International emerged under the direct influence of the Paris Commune. In 1871, MARX was still writing entirely in the sense of traditional terminology: Imperialism is the most prostituted and at the same time the final form of that state power which was brought into being by the emerging bourgeois society as the instrument of its own liberation from feudalism and which had transformed the fully developed bourgeois society into an instrument for the enslavement of labour by capital 46. The term 'imperialism' was not used in the development of socialist theories for the next quarter of a century, however. It was not until the end of the 1990s that it was taken up by German social democracy in order to summarise the comprehensive political and economic upheavals since the "Great Depression".
2. Beginnings of economic explanations of imperialism
The connection between the development of capitalist production, world trade and world politics was recognised early on. In 1803, A. H. L. HEEREN referred to the exemplary development of the British Empire: Alone, if such an island power is at the same time a trading state, then its political interest is also linked to a trading interest which does not permit the neglect of conditions on dry land. This commercial interest can be no other than to keep the market open for the sale of its goods and to expand it as far as possible. The political and economic interest was in the vehement development of the national economy, and this corresponded - despite temporary protective tariffs - to the theory of free competition: world trade was indisputably the most powerful lever of industry.
Contrary to BENTHAM's call of 1793: Emancipate your Colonies! and the corresponding theories of “laissez-faire”, SCHMIDT-PHISELDECK pointed out the dangers of growing competition in 1820: It therefore seems to be so little the case that the expansion of world trade and the existing colonial system could compensate Europe for the presumed cessation of its influence on America and its trade relations there, that it is rather to be feared that America will cause more and more disruption from this side. The full extent of this fear only became apparent when world trade reached the limits of the world market and shook the entire liberal economic theory. Competition, the struggle for a share of the world market, for spheres of influence and opportunities for expansion, for a "place in the sun", flared up at this moment and consistently called the military into action. The colonies moved to the centre of political discussions and actions. The Boer War was a major turning point here.
3. The term 'imperialism' as an analytical tool
The term captured the new phenomena of European expansion, with negative or positive weighting. However, it was not until the liberal and socialist critics of this development that it became a conceptual instrument of historical analysis. In 1902, J. A. HOBSON's book, "Imperialism", was published, beginning with the following words: This study of modern Imperialism is designed to give more precision to a term which is on everybody's lips and which is used to denote the most powerful movement in the current politics of the Western world. Since then, the specific contents, whether they are called 'nationalism', 'colonialism', 'militarism' or 'navalism', whether they concern the political economy or the hegemonic endeavours of the great powers, add up to the totality of the term, which is intended to describe an entire epoch.
The fact that content and usage were essentially developed critically applies both to England in the 1970s, where the positive content was associated with the terms 'empire' and to some extent 'imperium', and to the German-speaking world, where the positive content was associated with the term 'Weltpolitik', which was aimed at the balance of power. For the aspiring German Empire, however, balance meant breaking into England's sphere of power and influence: only in large states can a true national pride develop, which is a sign of a people's moral prowess; the citizens' sense of the world becomes freer and greater in larger circumstances. The mastery of the sea, in particular, works in this direction. A time may come when states without overseas possessions will no longer be counted among the great states. TREITSCHKE's view became practical in Bülow's policy. Like 'Empire', 'Weltpolitik' was also caught up in the maelstrom of the overarching definition of 'imperialism'.
The agreement in terms of content barely encompassed the superficial definition of the phenomena: opening up the world through the European mode of production and culture, world trade, world market, world politics. German Social Democracy used the term to intensify its criticism of the aggressive and militaristic development of capitalism. Rudolf Hilferding's “Finance Capital” appeared in 1910 and Rosa Luxemburg's “Accumulation of Capital” in 1913, both of which attempted to further develop Marx's critique of political economy. It was not so much the First World War itself as one of its most important consequences, the October Revolution in Russia, that deepened and consolidated the ideological front formation. Lenin's analysis of imperialism became the basis and benchmark for the communist movement right up to its split and the current conflicts. The complexity and ambiguity of the term has increased to this day. The history of the term can only provide a "preliminary" clarification - in both senses of the word. The decisive clarification must be provided by a historical and socio-economic analysis of the structural change itself, which has brought about the individual phenomena that are subsumed under the term. However, in conjunction with other methods, conceptual history can help to critically analyse the ideological content of the concept of imperialism - as a factor of political movement and thus of world politics. This is also not the place to give a history of the dogmas or theories of imperialism. The development of the modern concept will be traced up to the moment when all the elements of the Marxist theory of imperialism had been developed. In terms of scientific theory, the Marxist theories of imperialism are the only ones that can claim theoretical status. This is because their hypotheses are sufficiently explicable and thus also empirically and intersubjectively verifiable. This statement says nothing about the question of whether they do not primarily serve to exhaurate Marx's theory, or rather the theories of different observance derived from it, or to immunise them against falsifying empirical findings.
IV. National Imperialisms
1. Greater Britain: from apology to paradigm
Only for a short period in Britain's modern history could statesmen speak out so unchallenged in favour of the imperialist idea and England's mission as EARL RUSSEL did in 1869: There was a time when we might have stood alone as the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland. That time has passed. We conquered and peopled Canada, we took possession of the whole of Australia, Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. We have annexed India to the Crown. There is no going back. Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. For my part, I delight in observing the imitation of our free institutions, and even our habits and manners in Colonies, at a distance of 3,000 or 4,000 miles from the Palace of Westminster. However, this unclouded and self-confident period under the influence of Charles Dilke's “Greater Britain”, which had appeared a year earlier, only marked the change from liberal theory to political-administrative and military opening, distribution and protection of the world. The colonies and their position in relation to the "mother country" were the most important issues here. The term 'imperialism' was only used at this time in the traditional sense of 'Napoleonism'. The relationship between the mother country and the colonies did not initially appear to pose any problems: It is a law founded on the very nature of colonies, opined MALACHY POSTLETHWAYT in 1757, that they ought to have no other culture or arts wherein to rival the arts and culture of the parent country. Here, a necessary condition of colonialism is formulated as a "law of nature": the disparity between the modes of production and the cultures. It unfolded its effect naturally, as it were, and did not require the use of state power to enforce it. Moreover, the liberal free traders focussed on the development of national economies, and the contribution of the colonies to this seemed more than doubtful. Although trade profits flowed into the mother country without state intervention, the expansion of the administration emerged as a cost factor. Thus, even under the younger Pitt, an India Act (1784) was passed, which stated: "Plans for conquest and expansion of power in India are contrary to the desire, honour and policy of our nation. And as late as 1852, DISRAELI described the colonies as millstones on our neck. However, the millstones were constantly getting bigger and heavier, and with them grew the difficulties in the colonies, which were then articulated as the organisational problem of the British Empire, especially in the sixties of the 19th century.
In 1866/67, CHARLES DILKE travelled through the English-speaking countries. He processed his impressions of the changes in England's relations with its colonies together with racist and Darwinist ideas into an immensely popular book "Greater Britain": The idea which in all the length of my travels has been at once my fellow and my guide - a key wherewith to unlock the hidden things of strange new lands is a conception, however imperfect, of the grandeur of our race, already girdling the earth, which it is destined, perhaps, eventually to overspread. He saw the cohesion of "Greater Britain" as secured by the superiority of the English race, the liberal and progressive institutions and laws, and the English language, in which this superiority manifested itself. The principle of order was not the state ties of the Empire, but the "civilisation" of the Anglo-Saxon race. At the same time, this idea contains the missionary argument that was later given to the modern term 'imperialism'. However, Dilke only used the term itself as a term of struggle in the traditional sense in order to distinguish himself from French 'despotism' and 'democratism'.
Dilke's ideas were given considerable weight by the fact that they could be used to apologise for English expansion. Basically, the fact of English colonisation was sufficient justification, because this in turn was proof of the superiority of the English race. Both moments then only needed to be summarised as a universally valid law in order to present the striving for, indeed the necessity of, global hegemony as the greatest happiness for mankind. This circular context of justification refers early on to the connection between irrationality and imperialism.
In the period of England's turn to conscious imperialist policy, the traditional term 'imperialism' (like 'Caesarism' or 'Napoleonism') began to fade. It was replaced by 'Empire' and 'Imperium'. In July 1869, the Spectator proclaimed: 'The spirit of Imperialism having died out of Englishmen. The spirit of the new imperialism and the modern term were born in the 1970s in the domestic political front between Whigs and Tories. The two speeches by BENJAMIN DISRAELI on 3 April and 24 June 1872 marked the front lines. Personally, Disraeli was less interested in the overseas territories than in national honour and greatness. With sure instinct, he drew the conclusion from the preceding discussion that it was not the tendency towards the independence of individual parts of Greater Britain, but towards a stronger linking of the Empire that reflected the mood of the times - and, what was always decisive for him, the mood of the electorate. He defined the consolidation and strengthening of unity against liberal politics in terms of four "essential pillars of imperial strength": imperial tariff, imperial trusteeship, imperial defence, and a form of common imperial consultation on a representative basis. The idea of a great country — an Imperial country a country where your sons, when they rise, rise to paramount positions, and obtain not merely the esteem of their countrymen, but command the respect of the world, did not refer to administrative plans within the colonies themselves, for here too Disraeli's disinterest largely corresponded to the public mood. His sentences did, however, contain ideas of world power, world empire and greatness, to which the further development of the imperialist movement and terminology were orientated, as well as allusions to personal career opportunities, which were not without effect on the imperialist movement and its motivations.
However, the development mainly took place in the confrontation with growing criticism, which swelled even more when Disraeli wanted to exploit imperialist emotions politically with the "Royal Titles Bill". The opposition was outraged and reminded of Napoleonism, the old 'imperialism'. This assent was due to carelessness. People had not realised that sycophants would be likely to transform the customary titles into the phrases of imperialism, wrote the "Fortnightly Review" on 1 April 1876. The old expression was thus inextricably linked with the new problems of the Empire.
Queen Victoria thanked Disraeli by making him Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876. The practical effects of the imperialist orientation became clear when Beaconsfield ordered Indian troops to the Mediterranean in response to the Russian advance in the Russo-Turkish War. The cohesion of the Empire and the idea that held it together both reached a high point. The consciousness of strength found expression in "jingoism".
In his speech after returning from the Berlin Congress, Beaconsfield summarised the historical result that the consciousness of national greatness was now inextricably linked with expansion and colonisation: Her Majesty has fleets and armies which are second to none. England must have seen with pride the Mediterranean covered with her ships; she must have seen with pride... the discipline and devotion which have been shown to her and her Government by all her troops, drawn from every part of her Empire. I leave it to the illustrious duke, in whose presence I speak, to bear witness to the spirit of imperial patriotism which has been exhibited by the troops from India, which he recently reviewed at Malta. But it is not on our fleets and armies, however necessary they may be for the maintenance of our imperial strength, that I alone or mainly depend in that enterprise on which this country is about to enter. It is on what I must highly value the consciousness that in the Eastern nations there is confidence in this country, and that, while they know we can enforce our policy, at the same time they know that our Empire is an Empire of liberty, of truth, and of justice. 'Imperialism' became more and more the comprehensive labelling of this policy by its opponents, although some of the facts meant by it were also given a positive connotation by some politicians. Liberal criticism brought further clarification. ROBERT LOWE introduced two essential characteristics into the discussion. Firstly, that military force would become the supreme law: What does Imperialism mean? It means the assertion of absolute force over others. And secondly, that imperialist policy tends to eliminate parliamentary control: The people should be put on their guard against the flimsy but dangerous delusions to which they are exposed They should be guarded against those odious sophisms which, under the vulgar mask of Imperialism, conceal the substitution of might for right, and seek to establish the dominion of one set of human beings on the degradation and misery of another. And above all, the public ought to be warned against that abuse of the prerogative of making treaties, by which, in defiance of constitutional practice and theory, we have been entangled in the most tremendous liabilities without the previous consent of the Parliament that should have sanctioned, or the people who must bear them.
Once again, an attempt was made to shield the general law of expansion from side effects and excesses. In 1883, the historian JOHN ROBERT SEELEY published his lectures entitled "The Expansion of England", which quickly became popular. He preferred 'Greater Britain' as the name of the British Empire to all others, as it did not have the military and despotic flavour of 'Empire' and 'Imperialism'. Even if expansion was an economic and demographic necessity, Seeley did not necessarily associate it with violence. If one wanted to eliminate overpopulation, it was not necessary to invade the land of neighbouring states: It is only necessary to take possession of boundless territories in Canada, South Africa and Australia, where already our language is spoken, our religion professed, and our laws established. If there is pauperism in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, this is but complementary to unowned wealth in Australia; on the one side there are men without property, on the other there is property waiting for men. Seeley's thesis that only 'civilised' people and nations should have a say in expansion was still unchallenged common knowledge. What was new, however, was that he saw expansion in terms of international competition, especially from the USA and Russia, to whom he promised a great future. While Seeley was still referring to the as yet undivided world and relying on the speed and superiority of the British Empire, the international constellation was changing: the division of the world among the emerging superpowers was progressing rapidly.
By the early 1890s, the world had been opened up and England had brought in the lion's share of the spoils. The only threat now came from countries that had the strength and resources to compete with the British Empire.
At the same time, Greater Britain claimed unlimited responsibility. It is part of our responsibility to see that the world, so far as it can still be moulded, acquires an Anglo-Saxon character, said LORD ROSEBERY in 1893 in the Royal Colonial Institute. The extent to which it could still be moulded became more and more a question of power.
Two new aspects, namely the status-quo-preserving, manipulative variant of social imperialism and a purely economistic interpretation of imperialism, were introduced into the discussion in the last decade of the century. One was formulated by CECIL RHODES: My great idea is the solution of the social problem... If they do not want civil war, they must become imperialists. He thus elevated Seeley's thesis to the programme point of imperialism. GEORGE WYNDHAM summarised the other aspect as follows: an Imperialist is a man who realises ... that those places which were recondite, visited at great intervals by travellers, are now the markets, the open ports, the exchanges of the world to which every energetic Briton should tend his footsteps and where a great part of the capital of Great Britain is invested. This was the first time that the economic driving forces, which had always been dealt with in connection with colonisation, albeit rarely in political-economic terms, had been linked with 'imperialism'.
The liberals were faced with a major dilemma, which ultimately led to a split. Either their criticism remained stuck in the area of excesses and phenomena and thus accepted the result of the "Expansion of England", or they criticised the essence and the structural connections, as Hobson did, who for the first time stringently formulated the socio-economic aspects of a critique of imperialism. This gave the liberals theoretically supported arguments and, with regard to later developments, a better ability to make predictions. Arguments, however, could no longer prevent the imperialism of Greater Britain from becoming the paradigm of every aspiring nation in the 20th century that wanted to enter the competition for world trade, the world market and world politics, just as Britain's industrialism had become the paradigm of European industrialisation in the 19th century. They had to measure themselves against what CHAMBERLAIN said on 6 October 1903 about British world empire policy: "Our aim is, or should be: The realisation of the greatest ideal ever envisaged by statesmen in any country or at any time: the creation of an empire such as the world has never seen. We must build the unity of the States around the oceans; we must consolidate the British race; we must meet the whole rat-king of contests, which are at present commercial contests, which used to be something else, and may become so again in the future. Both these things happened, the great nations entered the contest, measured themselves against the British Empire, and the contests themselves became less and less confined to trade.
2. The USA, Russia, France and Imperialism
a) USA. CECIL RHODES formulated the maxim: There was not a single man who was not doing something with the world. The same thing applies to everything here. It must be brought home to you that — your trade is the world — and your life is the world — and not England. That is why you must deal with these questions of expansion and retention in the world. This meant that not only economic and trade competition, but also military confrontation was on the imperialists' programme. Britain was the first power to clearly recognise this connection, adapt it to modern conditions and implement it consistently. The old colonial powers, such as Spain and Portugal, pursued colonial policies that met the needs of feudal splendour but not those of modern competition.
Spain was replaced as a colonial power by the United States, which completed its development into a world power with the Spanish-American War in 1898 and embarked on its path to becoming the dominant wing power. While the war itself was entirely compatible with the political and moral principles of the Declaration of Independence, a broad wave of protest arose against its consequences, the occupation of Cuba and the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Once again, following the European model, it was fuelled by the despotic excesses of Napoleonism. SARAH E. V. EMERY had already warned in 1892: There is no feature of history more sad, no phase of human nature more dismal, than that innate desire in man's heart to rule over his fellow men… But the battle field is not its only place of carnage … The spirit of imperialism that has arisen in America has not sprung spontaneous from our soul, but has been nursed and fostered through the strategic ministrations of despotic Europe. CARL SCHURZ, under the impression of the war, took up this train of thought by comparing the American with the Spanish conquerors, who were equally driven away by events as Napoleon was when he started on his career of limitless conquest. This is imperialism as now advocated If we take those new regions, we shall be well entangled in that contest for territorial aggrandizement, which distract other nations and drives them far beyond their original design We shall want new conquests to protect that which we already possess. The greed of speculators working upon another government, will push us from the one point to another. Schurz was a member of the "Anti-Imperialist League", which was founded in Boston at the end of 1898 and at times had up to 150,000 members. In addition to the tendency towards unbridled expansion, the "League" also castigated the domestic side of imperialism, the militaristic attack on republican principles: We hold, that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends towards militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free.
On the other hand, however, a "civilisational mission consciousness" developed in the United States, based on the same feeling of political superiority. As early as 1853, German emigrants propagated the intervention of the USA in Europe for the establishment of a world republic, universal suffrage, the introduction of popular armament and the fight against all forms of tyranny in the programme pamphlet "The New Rome or the United States of the World". Even if the preconditions for such a policy were not given, the arguments could be taken up in a new situation and, detached from their original intention, applied to the colonisation of the Philippines and the occupation of Cuba. Here, literature led the way, especially Rudyard Kipling, whose "The White Man's Burden" (1899) quickly became popular and gave rise to countless imitations, rejoinders and travesties.
The high esteem in which the fleet was held and its significance within imperialist politics was strongly influenced by Captain ALFRED T. MAHAN's book “The Influence of Seapower on History” (1890). He took up the arguments of Seeley and concluded that all great historical decisions were ultimately determined by the strength or weakness of the fleets. As competition intensified, the maintenance and control of connections throughout the world became increasingly central to imperialist policy. Mahan attracted great attention and influenced, among other things, German naval policy under Tirpitz.
b) Russia. Russian expansion was driven even more by military reasons than that of the United States. This applied, among other things, to securing the troubled southern border of Siberia. Since the Tsarist Empire was largely excluded from colonial expansion by sea, the Russians were able to invoke nationalism in the specific form of Pan-Slavism in the power-political conflicts of the imperialist era. This is certainly not identical with imperialism. Nevertheless, it is precisely the Pan-Slavic movements that introduce moments into the era of imperialism that most sharply characterise the escalation and tendencies of European power politics and expansion, as they then also have an effect on Europe itself. Since the mere existence of colonial expansion could not be used to legitimise claims to power, the superiority of one's own people had to be emphasised all the more. Thus DOSTOYEVSKY: Every great people that wants to live long believes and must believe that in it and in it alone rests the salvation of the world, that it lives only to stand at the head of the other peoples, to absorb them all into itself and to lead them in a harmonious chorus to the final goal that is predestined for them alone. The idea of predestination thrived particularly well on religious ground, which equally encouraged the urge towards the irrational. Furthermore, a sense of mission and irrationality were reinforced by the relationship with the Tsar. For the people, the Tsar is not an external power, not the power of some victor (as was the case, for example, with the earlier royal dynasties in France), but an all-unifying, all-popular force, which the people themselves want, which they have nurtured in their hearts, which they love and for which they have borne all their sufferings, since it was only from it alone that they hoped for their exodus from Egypt. For the people, the Tsar is an embodiment of themselves, of their whole idea, of all their powers of persuasion, of all their hopes and convictions.
c) France. French colonial policy moved away from the programme of "assimilation" to that of "association". Unrest in the colonies on the part of both the European settlers and the natives quickly pointed to the natural peculiarities of the colonies, which could not be brought under control by the policy of "assimilation". From Napoleon III onwards, and finally towards the end of the century, the idea of transferring French civilisation and thus integrating the colonies receded more and more into the background. Although France pursued a more consistent colonial policy, developed a centralised administration and also spent considerable resources on the colonies, it never achieved a breakthrough to an imperialist orientation and corresponding ideology comparable to that of Great Britain. After the defeat of 1871 and the Paris Commune, political energies were primarily tied up in the division and contradictions of the nation itself. Both the phenomenon of "Boulangism" and the Dreyfus Affair demonstrated the political costs that had to be paid for a powerful, self-confident orientation within the European fields of tension. It was not until the First World War that the pent-up imperialist ideology was released in the face of a clear foreign policy enemy. On the other hand, France's specific situation favoured a view of the economic driving forces and the new content of imperialism. Here, the politically pronounced class conflicts that had first manifested themselves in the June Uprising of 1848 and the Commune continued to have an effect. Thus the socialist PAUL LOUIS wrote in 1904, anticipating essential elements of Lenin's theory of imperialism: L'impérialisme est un phénomène général à notre époque; il est même une des caractéristiques de ce début du XXe siècle Le monde traverse, ... à l'heure présente, l'ère de l'impérialisme, comme il a subi la crise du libéralisme, la crise du protectionnisme, la crise du colonialisme — comme il a éprouvé l'effort collectif des nationalités, comme il constate depuis dix ans la formation universelle et la poussée grandissante du socialisme. Au reste, tous ces éléments, tous ces aspects de la vie de l'humanité, se tiennent étroitement et, dans une très large mesure, l'impérialisme et le socialisme constituent l'opposition fondamentale du moment L'impérialisme, ... qui est la dernière carte du monde capitaliste, qui lui semble un suprême abri contre la banqueroute et la dislocation spontanée, qui s'impose à lui avec une invincible fatalité, est aussi un merveilleux, un incomparable artisan de révolution4. This position spans the arc from Hobson's liberal theory to the central discussion of German social democracy and must be taken up again there.
V. 'Imperialism' in Germany
1. The birth of imperialism from nationalism
Both the national enthusiasm of the Frankfurt Paulskirche and the founding of the Reich as well as the legitimisation of power and world politics required the historical example. In connection with this, new, irrational aspects such as race and predestination were also invoked. The idea of the emperor in particular was specifically changed. On the one hand in the direction of Caesarism, because what ultimately culminated in the person of Wilhelm II was inherent in Prussian-German "power politics" from the outset. The other specific feature was a consequence of "great power politics" - the legitimisation of the expansionist element from the empire itself. Thus JOSEPH EDMUND JÖRG, the editor of the "Historisch-Politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland", wrote about the legacy of the universal empire: In general, one must not ignore the fact that a German empire only ever acquires its value and its true significance through the fact that it is not confined to the narrowest four poles of the German tongue, but also wields the sceptre over foreign nations, even the most helpless ones. The formation of the nation state in Germany was thus characterised not only by the weakness of liberalism, but also by Caesarist elements of the constitution and by an irrational expansionist programme harking back to medieval imperial rule, which, however, could only unfold after 1890.
Thus, the German imperialists repeatedly fell back on older justifications of German nationalism. However, unlike in England, the ideological discussion was not based on over 200 years of experience of bourgeois revolution, but on the moral appeal of bourgeois philosophers for the formation of the nation state, which had reached its first climax in FICHTE's "Speeches to the German Nation". Although their direct political intention was to create a German nation state, the reasoning went beyond this and saw the German nation as the hope of the entire human race for salvation from the depths of its evils.
The classic English legitimisation scheme reappeared in the colonial question. Civilisation itself provides the justification for its imperialist expansion. By subsuming the "national economic enterprise" under culture, the connection between economics and politics is ignored. With the dismissal of Bismarck, German nationalism finally fell under the spell of imperialist expansion. The failed attempt to solve the "social question" by law and the expansion of capital and goods on the world market are two sides of the same problem, namely the limitless expansion of the capitalist economy and its political protection. RODBERTUS' formula from 1858: Every new foreign market therefore resembles a postponement of the social question became a guiding principle for the existence of the nation, the social-imperialist alternative of overthrow and coup d'état; but only since the 1890s. Miquel's rallying policy and Bülow's foreign policy corresponded in their overall structure, but not always in their conscious motives, not only to crisis and integration strategies, but also to imperialist competition and hegemonic endeavours. Accordingly, the greatness of the nation no longer appeared in the power limited to Prussia-Germany, no longer in the defensive determination of imperial power and no longer in Bismarck's alliance system. German nationalism became an integral part of the young and aggressive German imperialism, which described itself as "world politics". This was evident in the Emperor's new position, as he himself understood it and how it was utilised politically. He increasingly sanctioned and represented the "world political" tendency of the German big bourgeoisie.
Alongside those academics and ideologists who endeavoured to conceptualise and evaluate the development, i.e. who actually understood the German mission as a striving for global political balance, such as Delbrück, Hintze, Marcks and Meinecke, were those who transferred their conception of the state — a king who rules, a nobility that surrounds him, a people who obey (TREITSCHKE) — to "world politics". As the legitimisation of German world politics flattened, indoctrination and the socio-psychological mechanisms that necessarily accompanied it intensified. These included the Social Democratic scapegoat, which was not only denied national loyalty but was also portrayed as an attacker on the national power structure, as well as anti-Semitism and the foreign policy enemy images (envious England, revenge-hungry France, Russian lack of culture).
As early as 1890, HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE argued: In the distribution of this non-European world among the European powers, Germany has always come up short, and it is our existence as a large state that is at stake in the question of whether we can also become a power beyond the seas. Otherwise, the dreadful prospect of England and Russia dividing up the world opens up; and we really don't know which would be more immoral and horrible, the Russian lash or the English purse. As a consequence, the ideological relationship between ends and means also receded into the background. The goal was no longer the expansion of the "superior" European culture, not even a balancing political world order; the goal was now simply fleet or even simpler - power. Compared to the purely defensive stance of liberalism, the theories that sought to conceptualise expansion scientifically, but therefore avoided the term 'imperialism', had an advantage. The political geography of FRIEDRICH RATZEL should be mentioned here in particular, who established the law of the territorial growth of states, which stated that every state must expand under penalty of its demis. This hypothesised an inevitability without naming the motives of imperialism at the time. In Germany, General Haushofer was later joined by GEORG R. KJELLÉN, who coined the term 'geopolitics'.
The strongest political and ideological alternative to imperialist world politics in Germany was social democracy. German liberalism remained at most a warning voice that an overexcited nationalism... had become a very serious danger for all the peoples of Europe, who were in danger of losing their sense of human values. Such words evaporated in the power-political winds of merciless economic and hegemonic competition.
2. 'Imperialism' as 'World Politics'
Gentlemen, if the war, which has been hovering like a sword of Damocles over our heads for more than ten years now, - if this war breaks out, its duration and its end cannot be foreseen. It is the greatest powers of Europe which, armed as never before, are entering into battle against each other; none of them can be so completely defeated in one or two campaigns that it would declare itself overcome, that it would have to make peace on hard terms, that it should not rise again, even if only after a period of years, to renew the struggle ... it can become a seven-year, it can become a thirty-year war, — woe to him who sets Europe on fire, who first throws the fuse into the powder keg — ! So said the Prussian Chief of the General Staff, GRAF HELMUTH VON MOLTKE, in a speech to the Reichstag on 14 May 1890. This far-sighted and defensive line of thought only had an influence on German politics for a short time. Very soon, the peculiar consequence of imperialist expansion, namely the principle of unrestraint, prevailed, which was bound to lead to conflicts with other powers, even if the subjective will for war did not exist. In the nineties, the term 'world politics' (Weltpolitik) spread rapidly. It was synonymous with 'imperialism', largely replacing this term until well into the world war, and served specifically as an anti-English fighting term.
a) 'World politics' as a fighting concept. ‘World politics’ was introduced into German usage as early as 1846 by FRIEDRICH LIST. JULIUS FRÖBEL adopted the term in 1855, which later became a central concept in CONSTANTIN FRANTZ's political theory. Like 'imperialism', it initially described nothing more than the factual dimension of politics; its ideological content depended on the political position. ‘World politics’ became the fighting term of the young German imperialism in its striving for economic and political hegemony, especially against the established claim of "Greater Britain". A contemporary controversy centred on whether the German claim or "mission" consisted in the transfer of the European system of equilibrium to the globe or in the fact that "the world was to be made healthy by the German character", as a popular expression by Geibel demanded. The closer we came to 1914, the more irrelevant it became, as it turned out that both points of view led to similar political practices.
After the division of the world, the boundlessness of imperialist competition had to turn into a struggle for redivision. Here HOHENLOHE's chancellorship marked a turning point: the German Empire was the youngest power to embark on a colonial policy. The new chancellor explained in his inaugural speech on 11 December 1894 that the reasons that led the empire to do so were economic, natural and religious in nature. He thus expressed the same idea of the reasons and goals of German 'world politics' as Wilhelm II and Hans Delbrück as critics of the Wilhelmine era.
b) Propaganda for the “greater Germany”. It is interesting to see how in Prussian Germany - unlike in England - the ideological and political orientation immediately and abruptly evaporated into irrational constructions and exhausted itself in an indefinite running after or being with. This is not to say that English imperialism did not also have irrational elements. It is just that for Prussian-Germany the difference between ambition and power was so great that typical compensation ideologies could develop precisely from this difference. Bülow declared in the Reichstag on 11 December 1899: There can be no doubt about one point, namely that things in the world are in a state of flux that no one could have foreseen two years ago. It has been said, gentlemen, that in every century a conflict, a great liquidation takes place in order to redistribute influence, power and property on earth..., in any case we cannot tolerate that any foreign power, that any foreign Jupiter says to us: What to do? the world is given away. We do not want to offend any foreign power, but we also do not want to be stepped on by any foreign power, and we do not want to be pushed aside by any foreign power, neither in political nor in economic terms... We cannot do this for the simple reason that we now have interests in all parts of the world... The rapid increase in our population, the unprecedented upswing in our industry, the efficiency of our merchants, in short, the enormous vitality of the German people have interwoven us into the world economy and drawn us into world politics. When the English talk of a Greater Britain, when the French speak of a Nouvelle France, when the Russians open up Asia, we too have a claim to a greater Germany ... In the coming century, the German people will be the hammer or the anvil.
However, a "greater Germany" could hardly be built peacefully around the turn of the century. The aggressive rhetoric of some German politicians and publicists, together with the aggressive German foreign policy after the turn of the century, led to the much-cited "encirclement". This development can certainly also be attributed to the strong weight of irrational moments in German politics.
At no other point is this as clear as in the discussion about the naval laws. On the official line, the aspiring German imperialism aimed at a global system of equilibrium — limited externally, unlimited internally. As things stood, world politics and naval construction were directed against British hegemony and, objectively speaking, took on an offensive character. MAX WEBER wrote the following about the first German naval proposal: Only complete political warpedness and naïve optimism can fail to recognise that the unavoidable efforts of all bourgeoisly organised cultural peoples to expand their trade policy, after an interim period of outwardly peaceful competition, are now approaching with complete certainty the time when only power will decide the extent of the share of the individual nations in the economic domination of the earth and thus also the scope for acquisition of their population, especially their workers.
c) 'Imperialism', 'imperialist' and 'imperialistic' as self-designations. Starting with social democracy (see VI. 2 below), the term 'imperialism' initially became established in linguistic usage in criticism of German imperialist policy - incidentally only after the First World War in general, including at dictionary level. As early as 1901, the Swiss philosopher F. W. FÖRSTER analysed astutely: This new war movement is imperialism, i.e. the political doctrine that seeks to secure new areas of exploitation for the accumulated economic and technical forces of large-scale industry through the military conquest of new territories and the rape of weaker races, and therefore drives nations to the utmost exertion of their military power so that they do not come up short in the distribution of the globe.
In Germany, too, the discussion about a positive justification and definition — from the point of view of the imperialists — then began. In 1903, ERICH MAROKS used it positively and as a self-designation. He began by distinguishing the newer imperialism from the old term used to define the imperial world empire: within the world, only Russia, Great Britain, North America, Germany, France, Japan and, at a considerable distance, Italy were counted. These, however, have striven beyond the old borders of their core countries, they are pushing out into the big world with their human resources or their power. They pursue "world politics". The media of world politics, which Marcks equates with 'imperialism', are colonies and spheres of influence, capital and transport routes, trade and surplus population and, as decisive organs, the fleets. Imperialism makes use of protective tariffs, it steers back … into the channels of mercantilism. Starting from the justification topos for German expansion, that one must not stand aside if one does not want to be crushed, he defines the concept: The imperialism of our present is old and new at the same time. It is new in that, in order to unfold in its present form, it required the clash of rival nations, which has only directly dominated the world again in the last 20 years. It is only since then that all these international relations have increased so enormously in size of numbers, of interests, of antagonisms, in the intense force and inner hostility of the contacts; it is only since then that England has again entered the direct struggle; it is only since then that the epoch of liberalism has given way to that of full imperialism, as we understand the word today. Marcks emphasised the national content of the term in its effect on the mass of the people and concluded: In the most politically mature and happiest nations, it is precisely for this reason that imperialism is in the most intimate alliance with the will and feeling of broad masses of the people. These words express the combination of two thrusts of imperialist ideology: firstly, the attempt to create a mass movement on a nationalist basis, and secondly, the attempt to link the welfare of the broad masses with imperialist expansion. These are the main reasons why German liberalism and the democratic-republican forces had no alternative of political weight to oppose Prussia-Germany's imperialist orientation. The ideal of free and peaceful competition was powerless against the imperialist course; what is more, it was functionalised in Germany in favour of this course: We do not see how even the most democratic regiment of a much-desired future could overcome it (i.e. the increased reality of intersecting opposites of nations) and fulfil its simplest state and social duty in any other way than by readiness to fight and, finally, by fighting; and at least the experience of all the past will repeat to us that in the world as it has been until today, the struggle of nations has meant life and energy.
Former Vice-Admiral HOFFMANN defined ‘imperialism’ as a tendency directed towards the amalgamation and rise of a few empires of enormous power, which alone are able to exert a decisive influence on world politics and the world economy and constrict and oppress the smaller states. While Marcks notes the coexistence of competing great powers, Hoffmann concludes from the tendency to the objective. His concept therefore not only includes the global political situation, but also the respective claim. In this way, the conceptual connection with German nationalism is established. The future of Central Europe is based on increasing the population in Germany, not reducing it, and thus on its supremacy in Central Europe, ultimately on an imperialism that strives to transform the German world into a global empire.
A review of the literature on Wilhelmine 'world politics' reveals a very colourful picture. First of all, it is noticeable that the term 'imperialism' was rarely used in non-social democratic literature and was initially not used at all to describe itself. One of the protagonists of German colonial expansion — CARL PETERS — warned in 1897 against the swelling of Englishness on earth and at the same time recommended taking English colonial and world politics as a model. Peters — an admirer and resentful critic of England at the same time — avoided the term 'imperialism' and used descriptive formulae: the imperialist or pan-Anglo-Saxon idea or the imperial idea. As late as 1903, he spoke of the modern world empire movement, and in 1908, after Japan's emergence as a major power in the East, he did not describe it as an imperialist power, but rather stated: Pan-Asianism is in the making. As will be shown later, this reticence in dealing with the term is consistent with the finding that the concept of imperialism was only included in the lexicons after the turn of the century, and even then only hesitantly, so that it could hardly be assumed to be generally understood and was therefore hardly suitable for inclusion in everyday political-publicistic vocabulary. An exception is the use of language by HANS WAGNER, the editor of the “Koloniale Zeitschrift”. In an essay from August 1900, he described the flag-raising ceremony in Lüderitz Bay (7 August 1884) as the beginning of the era of national imperialism, but at the same time stated that the dreadful name 'world politics' had initially been fearfully avoided at the government table. It was not until the Emperor delivered a speech on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Empire (18 January 1896) — at one of the great turning points in the history of the Empire -.. that this changed, when the Emperor stated, among other things: The German Empire has become a world empire. Thousands of our compatriots live in distant parts of the world. German goods, German knowledge, German activity cross the ocean. The value of the goods that Germany has transported by sea is measured in thousands of millions. You, gentlemen, have a serious duty to help me to link this larger Germany firmly to our own. Wagner commented on this passage with the following remark: What the Kaiser is expressing in these words is the connection between the national idea and the imperialist idea. This is what distinguishes modern imperialism, the national imperialism, from its predecessors, which had a purely commercial or dynamic character. In other words, for Wagner, national anchoring in the homeland was the decisive factor in the modern concept of imperialism, which he tried to differentiate from the old mixture of peoples, which carried the seeds of ruin, which he considered the empires of Alexander the Great and the Romans to be. In positive terms, he understood 'imperialism' to mean the unification of the larger Germany with the homeland and characterised this goal, which was to be pursued by all means, as a very real business in which, however, the homeland alone bore the expenses. Despite this last statement, which the author unfortunately does not specify, the concept of imperialism in Wagner's diction is clearly positive, although he rarely used it in his numerous articles. Wagner's use of language remained an intermezzo insofar as he had to leave the editorial office of the journal in the autumn of 1900 because he openly criticised dubious business and administrative practices in the German colonies and called those responsible by name.
Even after the turn of the century, the term 'imperialism' was still associated with an ambiguity that could not have been pleasant for the journalistic whipping up of Prussian-German 'world politics'. When asked by the journalist Walther Borgius what 'imperialism' meant, the renowned economist SARTORIUS FRH. VON WALTERSHAUSEN-STRASSBURG gave the characteristic answer: the sole world domination of Rome. I understand today's imperialism to be nothing other than the repetition of that idea. On the occasion of the same survey, the banker KARL HELFFERICH argued that in Germany the imperialist idea should be directed first and foremost towards creating a strong fleet as a means of power that would make it possible to protect global economic interests wherever they were threatened with violation. He distinguished between this positive imperialism and secondary currents such as jingoism, i.e. the sabre-rattling arrogance and vituperative spitefulness against other nations. Between the two, or more precisely: three concepts of imperialism, because Helfferich sees a positive and a negative one, there is a gap in which an almost unlimited number of variants could spread. The resulting range of misunderstandings, including the assumption that the modern concept of 'imperialism' implies a reconstruction of the Imperium Romanum, obviously made it advisable to avoid the term or to paraphrase it more or less happily. ARTHUR DIX responded to Borgius' question with a single, but large-calibre word: imperialism is the will to grow as a world power.
Despite the semantic ambiguity of the term 'imperialism', some authors besides Marcks went on to claim the term for themselves, in a positively accentuated sense. For the all-German professor ERNST HASSE, modern imperialism was nothing other than one of the forms of the expansionist endeavours of large nations and states or a system of foreign policy. He went on to specify that imperialism was not just about economic expansion in the narrower sense, but about a relationship of domination or the endeavour to establish such a relationship. For Hasse, the time was ripe for German imperialism to show its colours and take fundamental measures that would give the country, which had come too late in the colonial movement, the chance to establish a German world state. Intended or not, Hasse's terminological blurring continues. Is "modern" imperialism concerned with extending its rule to new territories or with a "world state" stricto sensu? His plea in favour of an enlarged Central Europe — the Berlin-Baghdad axis — seems to indicate that his talk of the "German world state" should not be taken literally. The national liberal ARTHUR DIX, who in 1907/08 published two brochures on Bülow's bloc policy after the Hottentot elections and on the Congress of the Second International in Stuttgart, did not initially use the term in either publication, which is all the more astonishing given that the German Social Democrats were intensifying their anti-imperialist propaganda against colonial scandals in those very years and the Stuttgart Congress of the International debated militarism and imperialism at length. It was not until four years later that Dix emerged with a work whose title programmatically emphasised its objective: "German Imperialism". For him, history was now ... under the spell of the imperialist idea.
He attempted to support his initial thesis with philosophy of history by describing imperialism as a new stage in the life of nations that went beyond nationalism, albeit without taking away its significance and value. With Dix, the concept of imperialism is given a historical-philosophical foundation of some significance and thus becomes an epochal concept within the framework of an expansionist, general capitalist growth ideology that transcends national political alternatives of free trade or protective tariffs: imperialism has as its prerequisite a world power that is inspired by the will to grow according to the needs of its people and its economy. For Dix, therefore, imperialism is no longer a local or regional movement, but a global one, joined successively by England, the United States, Japan, Russia, France, Austria and Italy. From this he deduced that German imperialism must also become active if we do not want to see ourselves pushed back more and more. According to him, the baptism of German imperialism took place on 18 January 1896 on the occasion of a speech by Wilhelm II on the 25th anniversary of the German Empire, but the German imperialist idea did not achieve a full parliamentary victory until May 1912, when the Reichstag approved extensive funds for the expansion of our military-maritime power.
And just as Dix recommended to the National Liberal Party that its national programme of the past be expanded into an imperialist programme, he expected the people to learn to think imperialistically and to produce those figures who were willing and able to lead the people towards certain positive goals of imperialism. Despite the vociferous attempts to give the term 'imperialism' a positive connotation and make it the trademark of the national right, it is not even possible to say that this linguistic arrangement has prevailed. The prospects for this were also extremely unfavourable, because in the last years before the war 'imperialism' became a central fighting concept of the German and international labour movement.
d) Lexicon level. The only hesitant and fragmentary reception of the modern concept of imperialism in national economy and political journalism has already been pointed out above. If at all, the term was used for a long time in the traditional political sense to describe the Napoleonic form of rule or as a party designation for the supporters of Napoleon I or Napoleon III. If we disregard early evidence, it can be stated that the term 'imperialism' only became established in Germany after the turn of the century and even then only slowly, although it had already been used sporadically to characterise British colonial policy and British party relations before then.
This double finding — the late reception of the term and the long survival of older terms ('Caesarism', 'Bonapartism') and connotations ('military rule', 'Imperium Romanum') — is also confirmed at the lexical level. However, the "delay" is even greater here. — From the third (1876) to the sixth edition (1905), MEYER's definition of 'imperialism' as the political state of states in which, as under the Roman emperors, not the law but the arbitrary power of the ruler, based on military might, prevails, although new keywords from the context of the modern concept of imperialism were included in the sixth edition; such as the articles "Jingo"/"Jingoism" and "Greater Britain", in which, however, the term 'imperialism' does not appear. Meyer also defined the term 'imperialist' for the first time in the 1905 edition: Term for the supporters of closer union and the expansion of the British Empire, whose endeavours became particularly prominent during the South African War of 1899-1900. Chauvinist excesses of imperialism are labelled with the word 'jingoism'. Two things appear remarkable here. Firstly, the obvious tension between the definition of the term 'imperialism' and that of 'imperialist', which for Meyer is above all a party term, is striking. While in the first definition, 'imperialism' is understood as a supra-temporal, arbitrary regime modelled on the Roman model, the author of the article, "Imperialist", attempts to limit this term historically, regionally and sociologically. Only this delimitation makes it possible to at least begin to decipher the term's bias and partiality. In Meyer's work, the general concept of a form of government, which could just as easily be labelled with any other term from classical political language ('tyranny', 'despotism'), and a historical party concept are still in direct opposition, which is all the more astonishing given that at the same time, in the socialist press, but also elsewhere (Hobson), great efforts were made to classify and understand the new phenomenon historically. Secondly, the definition of the term 'imperialist' also contains the term 'imperialism' in the sense of 'jingoism', which for the lexicon means something like the chauvinism of the Tory party. Furthermore, this definition implies a clear judgement, because it at least hypothetically assumes an imperialism without chauvinist excesses, which Meyer characteristically does not address, because this would require a socio-historically and economically founded mediation between the abstract general term and the party term exclusively related to England.
The meagre treatment of the concept of imperialism in the encyclopaedias is all the more surprising given that British colonial policy was viewed with scepticism from an early stage: With tenacious, ruthless energy, every European rival was eliminated and every opportunity for new land acquisition was utilised: expansion was temporarily suspended, only to be resumed with all the greater vigour, as new sales territories had to be constantly opened up for the huge growth in industry. This criticism, formulated before the inauguration of German 'Weltpolitik', did not use the term imperialism, although it captured the phenomenon quite accurately. The explanation for this lies not only in the ambiguity of the term and the longevity of the older concept of imperialism, but also in the fact that the consequences of the Latin root and the allusion to the Imperium Romanum were obviously shunned: the positive reception of colonial and naval policy by large sections of the public was one thing, the - even unintentional - claim to world domination was quite another. As late as 1905, HERDER was still reflecting on these contexts when he defined imperialism as the striving for influence over the direction of the destiny of the entire cultural world, for world domination (empire). It is therefore understandable that the three-volume "German Colonial Encyclopaedia", published in 1920 but completed before the First World War, does not use the term 'imperialism' to describe either foreign or its own colonial policy endeavours and only speaks of the Greater Britain movement ... under Disraeli's ministry.
How late the term entered the consciousness of a broad public can be shown by the example of a specialised lexicon. For the first edition of the "Wörterbuch der Volkswirtschaft" (Dictionary of Economics) the finding is negative, and in the second edition (1907) the author writes that multiple endeavours towards a closer union of mother country and colonies have recently been observed again and this tendency has been labelled 'imperialism'. The fourth edition of the "Staatslexikon" (1911) is one of the few works to contain a major article entitled "Imperialism" before the First World War. This article discusses various forms of imperialism. It ranges from racial imperialism to the general definition of the term as the will to rule, the striving for power. The "Staatslexikon" also lists German imperialism, which it describes as follows: Since the last decade of the 19th century, imperialism has also made a strong appearance in the German Empire. The opinion is quite frequently expressed that Germany is no longer an agrarian state but an industrialised state, that a world economy must now take the place of a national economy, that nationalism must now be replaced by imperialism. Here, too, the term comes close to the concept of an epoch, in which above all the experience of the relatively rapid economic and social transformation of the German Empire from an agrarian state to an industrialised state is condensed. The author's understanding of the transitional phase from a historical-philosophical perspective is weaker than Arthur Dix's, although, unlike Dix, he does not consider the connection between nationalism and imperialism insofar as he places the two concepts within the framework of an abstract, purely temporally structured succession without discussing the factual reasons for their simultaneous occurrence. Finally, the key point in the definition of the 'Staatslexikon' should not be overlooked, for there is no doubt that German 'Weltpolitik' was only understood as 'imperialism' by very few of its proponents. This is certainly due to the fact that 'Weltpolitik' sounded in a certain sense more neutral and less ambitious than 'imperialism', although the numerous compounds formed with the term 'Welt' sometimes appeared in penetrating density. World railways and world channels open up new connections, give world trade and world politics new tools and help to reshape the world map.
e) 'Imperialism' in the domestic political debate. Even then, a fierce controversy arose over the value of colonial possessions, which PAUL DEHN believed he could easily decide: Despite all their calculations, the colonial opponents, apart from the social-democratic nihilists, nevertheless avoided drawing the final conclusion they shied away from declaring a property worthless that demanded such high subsidies, they refrained from demanding that this property be given up, and they were very wise when they refrained from doing so, for this final conclusion shows the incorrectness of their entire exposition. Dehn did not even need to attempt an argumentative refutation of the colonial opponents' cost argument; he could simply rely on pure factuality, on the rousing current of imperialist enthusiasm. This was also fuelled by liberal bourgeois parties, whose criticism did not imply any political alternative to colonial policy and world politics.
The only exceptions were the left-liberal social imperialists, a group that can be contrasted with the proponents of conservative 'social imperialism' analysed by Hans-Ulrich Wehler. The latter favoured and pursued imperialist expansion in order to maintain the domestic status quo in economic, social and political terms, whatever the cost. For them, the primacy of domestic policy largely applies. The left-liberal social imperialists, on the other hand, including Max Weber, Friedrich Naumann and large sections of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, recognised quite early on that the domestic political foundation for imperialist expansion in the name of power politics was too weak. They therefore called for parliamentarisation and democratisation as a means of strengthening the domestic political basis for foreign policy tasks. In contrast to the conservative elites, they focussed on foreign policy considerations, albeit always in conjunction with an understanding of the dimensions of the problems to be solved by the political and technical-economic upheavals.
The antinomy of mass mobilisation on the one hand and maintaining the status quo on the other, which was inherent to German imperialism, proved to be a precursor to fascism in the long term. Early indicators of this development are the pre-fascist attitudes and ideologies that have been spreading rapidly since the 1990s. Imperialist politics was increasingly dependent on the attitude of the masses and increased the influence and importance of the parties, without, however, being able to utilise the largely irresponsible parliament in its integrating function. The Prussian-German state was not on a path of continuous democratisation and parliamentarisation, but after the electoral shocks of 1903 and 1912, the growing repression and imperialist orientation was secured by corresponding ideological mass indoctrination against the background of intensifying class antagonisms. The domestic political situation and imperialist expansion reinforced each other, whereby ultimately the dominant role of 'world politics' was the result of the domestic political crisis situation, which gave German imperialism its specific national character. One indicator of the crisis situation is the growing importance of social democracy, which was to be counteracted by further economic expansion and thus also political integration. OTTO HINTZE pointed out in 1907 that this interaction, which he described as an increase in power through internal concentration and external expansion, was not entirely new, which put him in agreement with those contemporaries who spoke of 'neo-mercantilism' when they meant 'imperialism'. It was the content of that great power policy through which, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, the formation of the state system, the mutual demarcation of spheres of power... among the European states. This involved both economic and military endeavours. In contrast to the older imperialism, which gives political expression to the overall interests of a large, separate area of civilisation based mainly on itself, it is now the result of long-lasting, fierce rivalry struggles, the impulse of which, however, still contains something of the old imperialist spirit insofar as it emanates from the striving for supremacy. This applied to England, among others, which wanted to unite its colonial empire into an independent special existence and a tight order. According to Hintze, the term 'imperialism' was coined specifically for this endeavour. He therefore also considers the term 'world politics' to be more suitable to express the endeavour for a coexistence, for a balance of several great powers. Similar to Marcks, Hintze says: the struggle for such a position of great power is the real meaning of the imperialist movement in the modern world. By which it is implicitly said that English imperialism occupies a special position within this imperialist movement thus characterised, which tends towards coexistence, towards equilibrium, because it combines elements of the old imperialist spirit with those of modern world politics. In contrast to English imperialism, he clearly distinguishes German world politics, the purpose of which ... was in any case not to strive for world domination, but to strive to maintain the balance of power in a world state system of the future.
The fact that Hintze accepted this development, but by no means emphatically welcomed it, is echoed later in his Hohenzollernbuch: The European system of states, within the framework of which our entire history to date has taken place, is in the process of transforming itself into a world system of states in which completely different standards and power relations apply than before. All around us, giant empires have emerged or are in the process of forming that far exceed the size and population of the previous large states; everything on the periphery is expanding, while we in our enclosed central position, in the heart of the European mainland, are in danger of being left behind by the new world powers that are rising up all around us. It took an increased effort to assert ourselves in the front rank. No sooner had we gained the normal nation-state form of existence that countries like France and England had enjoyed for centuries than we found ourselves forced by fate to undergo a new transformation in order to maintain our position as one of the leading powers, as a "world power", in the emerging system of world states. That is the meaning of "world politics", which characterised the age of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The agitation of the Pan-German League, which was directed towards the goals of German imperialism and thus potentially also towards war, consisted mainly in the negation of concerns about international law, in the tearing down of liberal barriers and political values. Thus, it was left to the liberal imperialists to fill the empty objective with a minimum of content. KURT RIEZLER, Bethmann Hollweg's political intimate, described the difficult situation of the German Empire, which, included on both sides, had come too late in its colonial policy and had no possibility of expansion. This was evident in the comparison with England: England's world domination ... has two other pillars besides naval supremacy: the British cultural context and the London Stock Exchange. It was also evident in the Morocco question [Marokkofrage], in the concession to France. Riezler recognised Germany's weakness at sea and concluded: The decision on German world politics was made on the continent. He also noted the decisive influence of the economy, which was attributed to this interweaving of the material interests of the civilised world, the emergence of a single world economy.
Riezler developed a concept that was only to prevail after the failure of the Schlieffen Plan: the concentration on Central Europe as a decisive prerequisite for further imperialist policy. The part of the German foreign policy concept that had been directed against England thus clearly collapsed. The defeat of this concept had already become apparent with the failure of Tirpitz's naval programme after 1905. The basis of German policy was obviously too narrow to replace British supremacy, which is why the consolidation of power in Central Europe now clearly came to the fore. This concept was reflected for the first time in a letter from WALTHER RATHENAUS to Bethmann Hollweg dated 7 September 1914: The ultimate goal would be the state that alone can bring about a future balance in Europe: Central Europe united under German leadership, politically and economically consolidated against England and America on the one hand, and against Russia on the other.
The initial euphoria culminated in chauvinist and racist tendencies as well as the expansionist tendencies of German imperialism. During the war, however, the term itself was again primarily used to characterise the hegemonic aspirations of the enemy, above all England, which were contrasted with Germany's efforts to maintain balance. However, this legitimisation was objectively untenable in political and economic terms. Despite its obvious domestic weaknesses, the German Empire was already a world power, and every step that decisively changed the status quo in favour of the Empire could not only be interpreted by its enemies as a quest for hegemony, but was also objectively so, at least in economic terms. It was not just an exaggerated sense of self-importance when the "Deutsche Arbeitgeberzeitung" wrote on 7 February 1915: The war is being waged to decide who should play the leading role on the world market.
f) 'Imperialism' after the First World War. Both the political and the economic aspects of the term 'imperialism' became established during the First World War to such an extent that a new, broad discussion began immediately after the end of the war. In 1919, JUSTUS HASHAGEN distinguished an older definition, which was linked to the term 'empire' and meant the striving for world domination. However, this old term is often distinguished from the more modest endeavour not for world domination, but only for a share in world domination, i.e. for world power. This more modest endeavour is also referred to as imperialism, which can hardly be avoided. Hashagen thus subsumes 'world politics' in its specifically German delimitation under the term. HEINRICH FRIEDJUNG defined the entire epoch since 1884 as 'imperialism', although he used the term in an idealistic manner insofar as he constructed a historical sequence of liberal, national and imperialist ideas. The nation state would not have filled the restless spirit. A new passion gripped the peoples: they strove from their homeland into the world and invented the resounding name of imperialism for this old but never equally powerful desire.
What is new about the situation is the strength of the "desire" on the one hand and the conscious moment on the other: “Imperialism” is understood to mean the urge of peoples and rulers for a growing share in world domination, initially through overseas possessions. However, this definition must be supplemented by the characteristic that the drive has developed into a clear consciousness and has been elevated to the guiding principle of action. After this idealistic definition, Friedjung no longer needed to concern himself with the material background of this "passion", while Hashagen dealt with an essential attempt at a sociological definition of the term, which was undertaken by JOSEPH A. SCHUMPETER.
Schumpeter assumed from the outset that the aggressive behaviour of states or pre-state entities towards each other ... can only partly be explained beyond doubt and directly by people's real and concrete interests. Since he recognised no driving force and only aggressiveness per se, he consistently concluded that imperialism is the objectless disposition of a state to violent expansion without any apparent limit. Schumpeter referred to the imperialist tendencies in the absolute princely state, from which they derived in terms of social structure and psychological habit: Imperialism is an atavism. It falls into the large group of remnants of earlier epochs that play a major role in every concrete social state. Since Schumpeter had to prove this thesis against the economic explanation of imperialism, he claimed that the essential economic phenomena of imperialism did not follow from the immanent development of capitalism. Competition would contradict concentration to the point of monopolisation, which is why the interests of the capitalist economy by no means point in the direction of imperialism. Because capitalism is by its very nature anti-imperialist, ... we cannot readily derive from it the imperialist tendencies that actually exist, but can obviously only understand them as elements foreign to it, brought into its world from outside and supported by non-capitalist factors of modern life. Schumpeter used a special feature of imperialism in Prussian Germany, namely its representation by the Junkertum and the Kaiser as well as its particularly aggressive character, to support his global thesis of the feudal remnant. Of course, the epochal and overarching phenomena cannot be explained in this way. This brings us to the historical and sociological sources of modern imperialism, which does not coincide with nationalism and militarism, but merges with them by supporting them just as much as it is supported by them. It too is - not only historically, but also sociologically - one of the heirs of the princely state, its structural elements, its forms of organisation, its interests and the dispositions of its people: pre-capitalist powers that the princely state has reorganised, in part with the means of early capitalism. The same applies to export monopolism, which itself is not yet 'imperialism' and never develops into imperialism in the hands of the unwarlike bourgeoisie. This only happened because the war machine, its socio-psychological atmosphere and the warlike will were also inherited, and because a class with a warlike orientation was maintained in a ruling position. The warlike interests of the bourgeoisie could combine with this orientation, but both would fall victim to the further development of the modern world. Imperialism is thus only a temporary accident of world history, caused by atavisms. In relation to the German background, Schumpeter's concept is a concept of struggle against the classes that ruled until the revolution in Prussian Germany or, to put it another way, against the class symbiosis of junkertum and bourgeoisie. The utopian moment in Schumpeter's argumentation undoubtedly places his concept of imperialism close to the Marxist theory of imperialism, which speaks of the final stage of capitalism.
HASHAGEN recognised the weakness of this definition and supplemented it in two directions. On the one hand, he added the drive for autarchy, thereby modifying the objectless disposition, especially with regard to finance capital. Secondly, he placed imperialism in a broader life-philosophical context, which is concretised in biologistic terms. This avoids the problem of having to justify with Schumpeter the dominance of an atavistic militarism on the narrowest sociological basis; but on the other hand, Hashagen's definition becomes an empty formula that legitimises everything without any explanatory value: what initially appears to be a blind, atavistic offensive is in reality just the outside of a defensive that is rooted in the deepest laws of life: the urge to expand is not explained by objectless fanaticism, but by the instinct for self-preservation.
These two approaches after the First World War are interesting in that they attempted to immunise the new political system against the forces that caused the war. Schumpeter simply blamed it on the overcome moments of the Prussian-German semi-absolutist military monarchy, while Hashagen wanted to preserve the "deepest laws of life" for the Weimar Republic as well. Both had to distance themselves from materialistic, political-economic theories by resorting to idealistic and psychological lines of argument, which, however, were not able to explain the real historical development consistently and on an empirical basis. As a result, the term was increasingly appropriated by the systematic critics of imperialism and was initially highly suspect for bourgeois social science.
VI. Political economy of imperialism
1. Theoretical approaches in Marx
In the words of ADOLF LÖWE, the problem raised by Schumpeter, which has pervaded the entire discussion of 'imperialism' since the turn of the century at the latest, can be formulated as follows: The tremendous expansionism of Western states in modern times is an undisputed fact. It is also a general conviction that this power-political behaviour of states is reflected in economic policy and has had the strongest influence on the structure of national economies and global trade since the beginning of the 19th century. This makes the dispute over the problem of whether the economy and its driving forces are themselves the decisive cause of this political expansionism, which is meant by the term 'imperialism', or whether these aggressive tendencies assert themselves regardless of, and possibly even in opposition to, the economic interests of the subjects of such a policy, all the more heated.
In the discussion on the political economy of imperialism, recourse to the first, pre-classical theories and measures of mercantilism played an outstanding role, insofar as parallels with regard to financial and protective tariff policies were obvious. RUDOLF HILFERDING's export monopolistic theory, first outlined in 1902/03, was fully elaborated by him and OTTO BAUER by 1906. Hobson also published the first comprehensive analysis of imperialism using political economy categories in 1902. The later discussion is still based on Hobson and Hilferding today.
However, both are inconceivable without KARL MARX's critical reappraisal of classical bourgeois economics and without the approaches to a theory of imperialism that he had already developed within the framework of this critique and which can be derived from his theory of crisis.
If Marx believes that the world as a crisis context is "economically founded" and that historical development implies "the practical dissolution of the existing crisis context",it follows from the embedding of this historical process in the relationship between capital and labour that the crises, in which their hostile mutual opposition periodically comes to a head, are fed by two sources. This is why Marx constantly combines and expands the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall with the theorem of underconsumption in his description of the crises. Since overproduction can arise from two independent causes, namely, either immanently to capital from the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, or externally from the discrepancy between production and consumption, Marx's analysis of imperialism theory must always be based on this double structure. The following approaches can be found in Marx:
1) The constant expansion of the export of goods, which results in sales markets necessarily expanding or being newly created in uncapitalised areas.
2) The modification of the law of value by foreign trade, especially in exchange with underdeveloped areas, and the resulting influence of expansion endeavours on the movement of the rate of profit.
3) The increasing pressure to permanently secure sources of raw materials.
4) The increasing importance of the export of capital due to the intensified tendency to over-accumulation of capital.
5) The developing conflict of interests between industrial and finance capital, which leads to the indirect control of the production process by the money capital organised in the banks.
2. Discussion about imperialism in German social democracy up to explicit theoretical development
a) The term 'imperialism' is initially used in historical comparison and in the debate with England. In 1897 MAX BEER sees three imperialist periods: the Macedonian, the Roman and the Napoleonic, whose common characteristic is that they were led by outstanding personalities, by men of violence, whose deeds overshadowed and obscured all the objective driving forces of these historical phenomena. In contrast, the objective motives of modern English imperialism stand out clearly. These are: the well-founded assumption that England's industrial and commercial supremacy is being shaken; the growth of the political power, socio-political aspirations and class-consciousness of the workers; the rise of the German Empire, its colonial zeal and vigorous penetration of the world market; the revived colonial activity of France; the rejuvenation of the Tories and their ideals by Disraeli, or, more correctly, by their absorption into the bourgeoisie. Underlying all these motives is the bourgeoisie's convulsive endeavour to retain its economic and political power, which amounts to the preservation of the capitalist mode of production. In the annexation of the colonies and in domestic policy, imperialism would appear reactionary, but in foreign policy it would lead to increasing political and economic centralisation (United States of Europe!), which would represent nothing other than the last phase of the bourgeois world. Remarkably, with the appearance of the term among Marxist authors, imperialism immediately appears on the horizon as the last stage of capitalism. This is a sign that Marxist theories of imperialism also have the function of compensating for a specific deficit of Marx's theory, namely the lack of a theory of revolution. The extent to which the analytical approaches of the time lacked materialist substance is demonstrated by the discussion within the SPD about Kiautschou. For the party only had formal, humanitarian and economic arguments to counter imperialist aspirations, which recognised imperialist expansion as unalterable and only wanted to mitigate its consequences. 'Imperialism' was thus understood as a specific form of rule in which the terms 'Bonapartism' and 'Caesarism' developed in the Bismarck era were absorbed. This was the case with FRANZ MEHRING and KARL KAUTSKY at the turn of the century. Clinging to the surface of phenomena instead of penetrating the "anatomy" (Marx) of capitalism led to an astonishing affinity with bourgeois positions (Schumpeter).
b) In 1897, GEORG ADLER analysed the domestic aspects of imperialist policy and coined the term imperial-socialist social policy. From the social policy of Prussia in particular, he drew the conclusion that the opposition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would diminish. Since imperial socialism, in its duration, objectively represented a powerful step towards the integration of the proletariat into modern society and its positive co-operation in its cultural tasks, it was only a world-historically significant illusion, but useful in its result, even if the proletariat had not been reconciled with its enemies such as Disraeli, Napoleon III and Bismarck.
EDUARD BERNSTEIN used the same argument of common cultural and civilisational tasks for the future in 1898 to justify his positive attitude towards colonial policy. Social democracy will fight against the rape and fraudulent plundering of savage or barbarian peoples, but it will refrain from any resistance to their inclusion in the sphere of civilising institutions as contrary to its purpose and will also refrain from any fundamental opposition to the expansion of markets as utopian 162. Bernstein opposed the idea that colonial policy would postpone the collapse, arguing that it dated back to the infancy of the socialist movement and thus took over its ideological legitimisation with the new conditions of imperialist development.
c) ROSA LUXEMBURG resolutely opposed Bernstein's position. She analysed German world politics in 1900 from the point of view that it increased tensions and contradictions: Thus, at this moment, the world political urge in all major states is obviously to drive them indiscriminately to the highest tension of militarism both on land and at sea, regardless of their different geographical, political and economic situations, with all the consequences this has for the internal development of these states. It is not the weakening and mitigation of social struggles, but the increase of antagonisms, the intensification of struggles both outside and inside modern societies that we must now expect. The defeat of England will undoubtedly be first and foremost a strong damper on English imperialism, which is hostile to the people. Subsequently, however, we must not deceive ourselves that it can only lead to a renewed increase in militarism and world politics with redoubled vehemence. R. Luxemburg's analysis remains on a formal level, on which 'militarism', 'world politics' and 'imperialism' are interchangeable terms, although they are assigned to specific countries. The fact that at this level the definition of the political line and the practical steps were more the product of political conviction than materialist analysis was demonstrated at the International Socialist Congress in Paris in 1900.
d) Around the turn of the century, these unclear positions in social democracy led to a more intensive preoccupation with the political economy of imperialism, which was promoted by Alexander Parvus-Helphand, Heinrich Cunow and later Hilferding, among others. At the end of May 1900, CUNOW attributed the conquering tendencies of imperialism to the need for exploitation and expansion of money capital: whereas at the beginning of colonisation the focus was on the sales market, England's position was not to be explained by the size of its colonial possessions, but conversely by the associated monopoly on world trade and industry. While the laws of the market apply to the exchange of goods with the colonies, the situation is different with money capital in search of profitable investment, which is actually the real driving force behind imperialist expansion endeavours. For capital, which in its overflowing desire for activity seeks higher profits in foreign ventures than the domestic investment offers, it is by no means indifferent to whom this or that territory belongs, because political rule is of decisive importance for the possibility and security of the investment. Cunow analyses the emergence of money capital and its function as follows: From the profit accumulations of industrial capital, a still continually swelling money and finance capital has risen rampantly, seeking profitable utilisation. In addition to the export of goods, the export of capital has emerged; the colonies have developed from sales markets for large-scale industry into investment markets for the surplus capital of the industrialised countries that have become rich. And it is this, if one may say so, need for the valorisation and expansion of money capital that is expressed in modern expansion and world politics, partly unconsciously to its own advocates. The political consequence of this article, which foreshadowed Hilferding and already clearly advocated the capital export theory, was: For the socialist party, this character of imperialist world policy only results in the need to fight it all the more ruthlessly .
3. Theories of Imperialism
It was only with major foreign policy disputes, the Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellion and, above all, the Boer War that led to theoretically formulated criticism of a comprehensively understood imperialist development. The Boer War not only generalised the internal and external criticism of the English approach, it also led to a theoretical reappraisal by means of the central concept of 'imperialism'.
a) Hobson. In England, it was HOBSON who combined his own experiences in South Africa with criticism of the social structure of the mother country and, in 1902, offered the first systematic analysis of what was perceived as a new historical situation in his book "Imperialism". Hobson assumes a genuine nationalism that overcomes its national barriers and colonises uninhabited, barren territories. This nationalism degenerates into a spurious colonialism on the one hand, imperialism on the other in the competition of several empires, which in turn leads to the subjugation of other peoples, which Hobson describes as the novelty of the recent imperialism: Nationalism is a plain highway to internationalism, and if it manifests divergence we may well suspect a perversion of its nature and its purpose. Such a perversion is Imperialism, in which nations trespassing beyond the limits of facile assimilation transform the wholesome stimulative rivalry of varied national types into the cut-throat struggle of competing empires. Not only does aggressive Imperialism defeat the movement towards internationalism by fostering animosities among competing empires: its attack upon the liberties and the existence of weaker or lower races stimulates in them a corresponding excess of national self-consciousness.
Based on this distinction, Hobson analyses the trade and expansion of the major European powers and comes to the conclusion that imperialist expansion is not worthwhile for the economy and the nation as a whole. He finds the explanation for imperialist expansion, despite this indisputable fact, that the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain … The new Imperialism … has been good business for certain classes and certain trades within the nation.
As irrational as expansion is from the point of view of the nation as a whole, it is rational from the point of view of certain groups. He demonstrates this with the increase in investment in the form of bonds, transport, etc. While imperialism costs the taxpayer dearly, it is the source of great profits for investors and speculators. They also shook off the "old set" of politicians, with them the free trade doctrine, found themselves in the Republican Party in the USA, in the Conservative Party in England and imposed imperialism as a political principle and political practice.
From an economic point of view, this policy is necessary because competition leads to overproduction and further concentration of industry in trusts. With protective tariffs and monopolisation as well as the power-political instruments of governments, these organisations attempt to create investment opportunities for goods and capital on foreign markets and in underdeveloped countries through conquest and colonisation. According to Hobson, imperialism is a kind of channelling system through which the great rulers of industry invest their surplus wealth for profit. Hobson advocates a specific capital export theory.
However, since the export of capital is only the flip side of the fact that consumers are prevented from increasing their consumption in line with the growth of production, his theoretical approach can be traced back to the underconsumption theory. He does not consider the capitalist mode of production itself to be antagonistic, but only the interests of the competing cliques. The ruling parasitic class also uses its wealth to buy the submissiveness of the lower classes through bribery. (This is an approach to the labour aristocracy hypothesis formulated by Lenin). Imperialist politics uses all the means at its disposal, including parliamentarism, the press, the school and, where necessary, the church, to sell imperialism to the masses under the attractive guise of sensational patriotism.
Hobson's book was a turning point. It was the first analysis that attempted to get to grips with the totality of imperialist development. He related exploitation and oppression in the underdeveloped countries to social injustices and contradictions in the capitalist countries and combined economic and political aspects. Hobson believed in the reformability of the capitalist mode of production and made demands for redistribution on its basis. Nevertheless, he had a fundamental influence on Marxist theories of imperialism, especially via Hilferding and Lenin.
b) Hilferding. In 1902, RUDOLF HILFERDING also analysed the new stage of capitalism. He saw its specific feature in the fact that customs duties were no longer intended to temporarily help overcome the initial difficulties of accumulation, as the old protective tariff had done, but were intended to make the cartels and monopolies all the more competitive on the external markets by securing high domestic prices. Hilferding drew the conclusion from the associated organising state interventions and from the aggressive colonial and world policy that the modern protective tariff system, and this is therefore its historical significance ... ushers in the final phase of capitalism.
Working on Hobson's theory of capital export and the second volume of "Capital", Hilferding attempted in 1906 to analyse this last phase comprehensively in "finance capital": in an effort to reduce the money capital lying idle in circulation to a minimum, this money is concentrated in the banks, which lend it to other capitalists. The tighter the ties between industrial companies and the banks, the better they can control and dominate the situation. The expansion of capitalist enterprises is now increasingly taking place without the shackles and contingencies of individual ownership. The link to bank capital also creates the same interest in maximising profit and thus eliminating competition.
The means to achieve this are, firstly, the combination, the unification of the basic industries with the processing industries, whereby the trade profit can also be absorbed; secondly, the cartel and the trust. Both are aimed not only at concentration, but also at making trade superfluous.
From the character of cartelisation, from its tendency towards constant expansion up to a general cartel, which determines the extent of production in all spheres, and the concentration of capital associated with it, its own negation appears in the totality of finance capital: thus the special character of capital disappears in finance capital. Capital appears as a unified power that sovereignly dominates the life process of society, as a power that springs directly from the ownership of the means of production, the natural resources and the entire accumulated past labour, and the disposal of living labour as springing directly from the property relations. At the same time, property, concentrated and centralised in the hands of a few large associations of capital, appears to be directly opposed to the great mass of those without capital. The question of property relations is thus given its clearest, most unambiguous, most acute expression, while the question of the organisation of the social economy is increasingly better resolved by the development of finance capital itself. This conclusion, which is not congruent with Marx's approaches to the theory of imperialism, points ahead to Hilferding's later position on the theory of the state, to organised capitalism. It is also difficult to reconcile with the subsequent accounts of the possibility and reality of the crisis. He opposes the under-consumption theory, insofar as consumption is now determined by the extent of production and cannot itself be expanded at will, because this would mean a reduction in the rate of profit. He also denies the question of whether the monopolistic organisation of industry can cause changes in the business cycle. For the cause of the crisis does not simply lie in an overproduction of goods resulting from the confusion of the market, but in the character of capitalist production itself, especially in the overproduction of capital. It should be noted here that Hilferding restricts the underconsumption theory, in contrast to Marx again, to the commodity sector. Otherwise he could logically deduce underconsumption from the overproduction of capital.
At the level of the world market, this development leads to changes in trade policy: from mercantilist policy, centralised and privileged state power, to the autonomy and superiority of the capitalist economy over state regulation, and further to its reversal in the customs policy of developed capitalism.
The industrial sector concerned breaks through the restriction of the economic area associated with the protective tariff and thus also the possibilities of accumulation by exploiting the protective tariff of the foreign country by relocating production abroad and participating in the extra profit there. We understand capital export to mean the export of value that is destined to generate surplus value abroad. It is essential that the surplus value remains at the disposal of domestic capital. The export of capital also accelerates the development of new markets and countries in order to increase domestic production and mitigate crises.
From these phenomena, Hilferding then vividly describes the political conflict mechanism. The export of capital demands an imperialist policy because it feels most comfortable with complete domination of the new territory. And so finance capital becomes the bearer of the idea of strengthening state power by all means, whose policy pursues three goals: Firstly, production of the largest possible economic territory, which secondly is sealed off from foreign competition by protective tariff walls and thus thirdly becomes the area of exploitation for the national monopolistic associations. Hilferding explains the political and ideological attitude of the imperialists on the basis of these economic laws: The desire for expansionist policies, however, also revolutionises the entire world view of the bourgeoisie. It ceases to be peaceful and humanitarian ... The ideal now appears to be to secure domination of the world for one's own nation, an endeavour just as unlimited as the profit motive of capitalism from which it sprang. On the other hand, the working class recognises in the generalisation of capitalist politics through imperialism the necessary social — not economic — collapse of capitalism and thus its historical task: finance capital, in its tendency, means the establishment of social control over production. But it is socialisation in an antagonistic form; the rule over social production remains in the hands of an oligarchy. The struggle for the depossession of this oligarchy forms the final phase of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
c) Rosa Luxemburg. While Hilferding took up the sphere of money and circulation, ROSA LUXEMBURG focussed on the conditions of reproduction of capital. Capitalist accumulation appears to her to be driven by the overarching conditions of reproduction. An interpretation of the reproduction schemata in the second volume of "Capital" comes to the conclusion that a realisation of the entire surplus value produced is not possible, and that with the assumption of a growing organic composition (of capital) it cannot be possible at all to maintain the necessary quantitative proportions, i.e. that the impossibility of continuous accumulation can be proven schematically in purely quantitative terms.
It argues against Marx that the economic collapse of the capitalist system is predictable because the entire surplus value cannot be realised within the area dominated by capitalism. For, in order to survive, capitalism must necessarily open up ever larger parts of the world, bringing it ever closer to collapse.
R. Luxemburg compares modern colonial policy with the peasantry of the Middle Ages. She adopts Marx's considerations only with regard to the tendency and the theoretical end result. She also believes that the exclusive domination of the capitalist mode of production in all countries and branches of production remains only a theoretical construction. At the same time, however, it accepts this theoretical construct as the real contradiction underlying imperialist development: At the moment when Marx's schema of expanded reproduction corresponds to reality, it indicates the exit, the historical limit of the accumulation movement, i.e. the end of capitalist production. The impossibility of accumulation means the capitalist impossibility of the further development of the productive forces and thus the objective historical necessity of the downfall of capitalism. This gives rise to the contradictory movement of the last, imperialist phase as the final period in the historical trajectory of capital. Contrary to the actual actions of the European imperialists, R. Luxemburg sees this imperialist phase primarily from the point of view of the industrialisation of the former hinterlands of capital, where capitalist independence is asserting itself. She consistently defines: "Imperialism is the political expression of the process of capital accumulation in its competitive struggle for the remnants of the non-capitalist world environment that has not yet been seized. And: imperialism is just as much a historical method of prolonging the existence of capital as it is the sure means of objectively setting a goal for its existence in the shortest possible way.
The predominant economic view in the "accumulation of capital", which only recognises historical development as the development of the productive forces and not also as the result of class struggles, stands in direct opposition to Rosa Luxemburg's activist political strategy of accumulating mass actions. The expression of this antinomy is the purely decisionist procedure with the help of which she tried to avoid the attentivist consequences of her analysis of imperialism. From the point of view of its theory, it was just as expectantly passive towards imperialist development as was characteristic of the other factions of social democracy: at a certain level of development, this contradiction cannot be resolved in any other way than by applying the principles of socialism to that form of economy which is both inherently world-form and in itself a harmonious system, because it will be directed not towards accumulation but towards the satisfaction of the vital needs of labouring humanity itself through the development of all the productive forces of the globe.
With the outbreak of the First World War, the first phase of the history of the concept of 'imperialism' was completed insofar as all the elements that were explicitly developed in later theories of imperialism were already present.
DIETER GROH
VII. Outlook
After the First World War, the concept of imperialism was so hopelessly discredited that it was no longer suitable as a self-designation. For some, the imperialist era became an object of research, but for nationalist historiography in Germany — together with the war guilt clause of the Versailles Peace Treaty — it became more of a source for fuelling resentment. For the socialist and above all the communist movement, on the other hand, 'imperialism' remained a central slogan, directed against the policies of the Allies and soon also against the foreign policy of the Weimar Republic. The division of the national and international labour movement after 1914 was essentially based on the different positions of the social democratic, left-wing socialist and communist groups on 'imperialism' and the character of the war, which was understood as a war of national defence or a war of imperialist conquest. Of equal importance in terms of conceptual and factual history is the fact that in the debates during and after the World War, it was no longer individual aspects of the concept of imperialism that were discussed, but relatively comprehensive and closed overall concepts; in other words, the focus was no longer on the concept, but on entire theories of imperialism. This development reflects the transformation of the concept of imperialism into a historical-philosophical concept of the epoch, which was more than a catchword, political objective, economically conditioned fact or theoretical approach, and strived for a higher degree of generality. For the study of the history of concepts, this means that it must approach the history of dogma, because the substance of Lenin's concept of imperialism, for example, can only be understood within the framework of his doctrinal structure. This expansion of the analysis in terms of the history of dogma or theory has a twofold background: the diversity and complexity of imperialist phenomena would have to be taken into account in terms of the history of facts, and in terms of the history of theory the acid test would be whether the respective theory does justice to the complexity of the phenomena. The fate of Lenin's theory of imperialism in particular has shown that the updating of "theoretical formulae" does nothing for the realisation of social reality, but at best for the satisfaction of ideological needs.
1. Communist theories of imperialism
Although Marx's preoccupation with British colonial policy and the integration of the economy of the whole world into the world trading system gave him the insight that exported capital that appears anywhere in the world without a birth certificate ... is only yesterday in England capitalised child's blood, his Eurocentric perspective and the expectations he placed in the proletariat in the most advanced industrialised countries did not allow a theoretical penetration of the problem of the Western European — and later also American — conquest of markets throughout the world. It was not until more than thirty years after Marx's death that LENIN, who himself came from an underdeveloped peripheral zone, took on the task of dealing with the question of imperialism from the perspective of those affected. The immediate occasions for his pamphlet arose from the outbreak of the First World War, which for him was an imperialist war on both sides (i.e. a war of conquest, a war of plunder and pillage), a war for the division of the world, and from the social democratic reaction at the outbreak of the war, which he castigated as the renegacy of the heroes of the Second International. It is not only the subtitle of Lenin's writing that indicates its primarily practical-political intention; Lenin himself cites Hobson's book as his main source, which he (had) utilised with the attention that this work, in my opinion, deserved. In other words, he was less interested in developing an independent theory of imperialism than in compiling the existing material with a clearly political-practical intention. Lenin compiled almost all the available specialised literature and formed an ideal type of 'imperialism' from the very different features of the various imperialisms, which only existed in the abstraction of his theory.
The shortest definition of 'imperialism' states that it is the monopolistic stage of capitalism,but Lenin himself considered this version inadequate. His endeavour to cast the manifold forms of industrial monopolisation and the transformation of competition-based capitalism into monopolistic capitalism into catchy formulae, of course, often led him to neglect the specific national and regional forms of economic and social phenomena. More important to him than an empirically substantiated theory was the deciphering of imperialism as a relationship of domination (Herrschaftsverhältnis) and the historical-philosophically orientated search for the place of imperialism in history 189. From this perspective, imperialism appeared to him as an epoch of finance capital and monopolies or as an epoch of mature and overripe capitalism on the verge of collapse, ripe to make way for socialism.
The transformation of the concept of imperialism into an epochal concept with eschatological features was based not only on the experience of war with tens of millions of corpses and cripples but also on an equally morally inspired criticism of the parasitism and rottenness of capitalism. Lenin wanted to prove parasitism and rottenness on two levels: firstly, he believed that monopolisation had created the economic possibility of halting technical progress because there was no longer any competition, which meant that capitalism had gambled away the last remnant of its legitimacy — namely to promote technical progress. At least as important as this artificially induced stagnation of technical development, which Lenin also considered to be only a temporary and by no means permanent tendency, was the indicator that he summarised under the title of the rentier state: Imperialism means an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries ... From this results the extraordinary growth of the class or, more correctly, stratum of pensioners, i.e. persons who live by "clipping coupons" ... whose occupation is idleness.
Two other considerations have become more significant for Lenin's theory of imperialism than these polemically exaggerated theses on the historical situation of Western European and American capitalism, which, after all, had yet to undergo a second technical revolution. Lenin placed great emphasis on the fact of the unevenness of economic and political development within the economic sectors of individual countries, but also in an international comparison of entire countries. He not only saw the main reason for the emergence and intensification of the conflicts that ultimately culminated in the world war in this unevenness or asynchronicity of the development of capitalism in different regions of the world, but he also drew the conclusion, which proved fruitful for the October Revolution, that socialism could therefore not win simultaneously in all countries. Methodologically refined, the thesis of the unevenness and asynchronicity of economic development as a source of national and international tensions and conflicts has had an immensely stimulating effect in modern social science. In his own works, Lenin used the thesis in an overly brash manner, and his hopes for an early victory of socialism in the entire Western world derived from it remained, as is well known, unfulfilled.
Lenin's second consideration is also connected with his emphasis on the importance of uneven development: his plea in favour of nations without a history, against national oppression and the violation of the self-determination of nations. With the seemingly simple statement that the oppressed nations made up no less than 70 per cent of the world's total population, he not only blew up the limited perspective of many socialist and communist theorists, who all too easily allowed questions of nationality to be absorbed into verbal internationalism, but also drew the world's attention to a question that had hardly ever been raised before: the relationship between internationally posturing, advanced Western European industrialised states and the awakening national consciousness of oppressed peoples pressing for liberation from tutelage. Like no other socialist theorist before him, Lenin recognised the dynamics of national movements in those countries of the world that until 1914 had only played a role as objects of the great powers, and he attempted to incorporate this insight into his political strategy. — Both considerations not only form the centre of his theory of imperialism, but also belong to the core of Lenin's understanding of Marxism, which he saw as a theory of revolution; in this respect, Lenin's theory of imperialism — alongside approaches to empirical research into imperialism — should be seen primarily as part of a theory of revolution.
The study on "Imperialism and World Economy" by NIKOLAI BUCHARIN, which was written almost simultaneously, is more empirically orientated than Lenin's theory.
By analysing trade and production statistics, the economist wanted to uncover the structural connections of the world economic system before 1914. He distinguished between the process of internationalisation of economic life, i.e. the worldwide interdependence of production and the exchange of goods, and the opposing tendencies, the national capitalist interests, which he considered to be antagonistic, irreconcilable in principle and thus the causes of the world war. In the opposing processes of internationalisation and nationalisation, imperialism has the steering function in Bukharin's conception; following Hilferding, he defined the concept of imperialism as the policy of finance capitalism. Bukharin attached importance to the statement that this policy was not a policy of conquest per se, but a certain historical quantity, which expressed itself in the close, historically new interaction of monopolistic groups, finance capital and state power. His analysis of the forms and tendencies of this interaction, which was by no means assumed to be harmonious, remained simplistic, incomplete and of course strongly influenced by the events of the war, but nevertheless pointed in the direction of a substantive theory of communist imperialism that did not simply ignore empirical conditions. This path was later taken by EUGEN VARGA, who can be considered one of the few theorists of the Stalin era whose economic analyses consisted of more than the repetition of Leninist formulae.
Building on the revolutionary theoretical moments in Lenin's theory of imperialism, MAO TSE-TUNG conceived an independent theory in which he analysed imperialism more concretely than Lenin from the perspective of those affected. The starting point for his theory is the thesis that any talk of Marxism that is detached from the particularities of China is merely an abstract, hollow Marxism. For his theory of imperialism, this meant that it was characterised by a specifically Chinese view, or a situational analysis of the economic and political conditions in the 1930s. For Mao, the determinants of these conditions were Japanese aggression from outside and the feudal system within the country, which he generally understood to mean the country's political, social and economic backwardness. From this description of the situation, Mao drew the conclusion that China's independence could only be restored by mobilising the people for a war of national liberation. He paid little attention to the economic and social preconditions of imperialism, but all the more to the conditions for fighting it militarily. In Mao's language, 'imperialism' became a synonym for 'aggressor', i.e., for the 'enemy' that can only be fought militarily. The most essential components of his theory of imperialism therefore consisted of considerations on questions of military strategy and tactics in the revolutionary people's and guerrilla war, because the direct military intervention of Japan and the indirect support of Mao's domestic opponents by the USA and other Western powers made imperialism more of a military than a socio-economic or political problem for the Chinese communist. Mao's theory of imperialism culminated in a theory of just and unjust wars: All wars that serve progress are just, and all wars that hinder progress are unjust ... The war that Japan is waging is an unjust war that hinders progress. The peoples of the whole world, including the Japanese people, must fight it and are already doing so. As for China, we have all ... raised the banner of justice and are waging the revolutionary national war against aggression. Our war is a sacred, just and progressive war for peace. Military strategic and tactical analyses confirmed Mao's belief that China, supported by millet and rifles, the close ties between the people and the army, the numerical superiority of the Chinese people and Japan's international isolation, would certainly have to win the war in its favour in the long term, despite the Japanese army's supremacy in terms of weaponry. Mao's theory of imperialism thus took on the character of a doctrine of the strategy and tactics of a people's and guerrilla war. It is not surprising that after the Second World War this theory met with great interest outside China among many liberation movements in Third World countries. Of all the communist theorists of imperialism, Mao pushed the political-practical or military implications of Lenin's theory the most, giving it an activist thrust that was already present in Lenin's work but not developed in detail.
In contrast to this conception, which cannot be denied at least theoretical consistency and practical world political significance to this day, the continuation of the discussion of imperialism in the communist camp brought little worth mentioning. Essentially, they contented themselves with repeating a few of Lenin's core statements. As early as the 1920s, Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy was faced with a problem that could not be solved with its means and habitus: Inflation was undeniably followed by a temporary stabilisation of the capitalist economy. This fact was incompatible with the prognosis of parasitic, rotting and dying capitalism. STALIN himself provided the knitting pattern for orthodox apologetics: Lenin said ... Is Lenin's thesis correct? And if it is correct, is it not clear that capitalist stabilisation can only be a rotten stabilisation? There is no question that Lenin's thesis was correct. In this way, any serious discussion of the problem of imperialism — the continuity and breaks in its history as well as its change of form — was transformed into a scholastic gimmick with ideologically highly charged but empty concepts.
Thus, major structural changes in the economy in the last decade were conceded or programmatic remarks on post-war imperialism were issued - albeit without even the slightest theoretical or empirical justification or evidence. The theory of imperialism froze completely, and the term 'imperialism' became a platitudinous catchword for political hand-to-hand combat. Without specifying the content, ERNST THÄLMANN was able to claim in the same breath that the Young Plan meant Germany's integration into the system of world imperialism and at the same time its transformation into a formal vassal state of French imperialism. Neither the theoretical explanatory claims, nor the empirical basis, nor the practical-political thrust became clear in this use of the term; it became an arbitrarily interchangeable template and thus shared the fate of the concept of fascism in the linguistic usage of communist orthodoxy.
The almost complete emptying and de-historicisation of the concept of imperialism made it available to describe numerous social phenomena and events. It was probably for this very reason — in both East and West — that the term temporarily achieved a high market value in political propaganda even after the war. For them, imperialism is the worst enemy of progress and peace, and its supporters are land-grabbers, colonisers and warmongers. And this side's propaganda once said: We are quite right to speak of Soviet colonial rule and Soviet imperialism. They are all the more reprehensible and pernicious because, unlike the classic colonial rule of the naval powers, they did not bring about many a blessing. Soviet imperialism in Europe could never set itself the task of resisting primitive cannibalism, fighting epidemics or building schools.
After the Second World War, there was a change in communist theorising in that it was now particularly emphasised that Lenin's theory of imperialism was still comprehensively valid.
However, the justification was not provided by a confrontation of Lenin's theses with the historical material or newer research approaches, but solely through diligent interpretations immanent in the work, scholastic introductions and orthodox catechisms. This doctrinaire adherence to dogma automatically excluded the author from the international discussion on theories of imperialism that was now beginning. What is less theoretically than politically revealing about today's use of language in the GDR is the unbroken basic historical-philosophical gesture in the treatment of state-monopoly capitalism, which a collective of authors simply defines as the highest stage of the material preparation of socialism and the last stage of imperialism. The rigorous objectivism of this definition — as if material development alone were a guarantee of something — does little to disguise the fact that communist orthodoxy obviously no longer shares the belief in the revolutionary power and determination of the people that characterised Lenin's and Mao's theories.
2. 'Imperialism', Spatial Ideology and National Socialism5
The history of political-social language since the Enlightenment will be examined below under the partial aspect of the spatialisation tendency of political vocabulary. In broad outline, it emerges that abstract concepts initially played a central role as motors of the intellectual emancipation movement of the bourgeoisie — 'freedom', 'equality', 'fraternity'. In the course of the 19th century and the shaping and reorganisation of nation states, an initial change took place in which 'national unity' was placed alongside, and in some cases before, the concept of 'freedom'. Finally, the concept of 'nation' increasingly became the pivotal point and centre of gravity of the entire political vocabulary, especially in Germany. The process of the spatialisation of political language, which reflected and mirrored the experience of competition between nation states and national economies, took on a considerable momentum of its own from the second half of the 19th century onwards, shaping the consciousness of several generations. In Kaiser Wilhelm II. 'Weltpolitik' and Bülow's 'Platz an der Sonne', right down to the propaganda jargon of the All-Germans. It reached a new level with the establishment of geopolitics by Ratzel. Among the national right and the National Socialists, the process of spatialisation of political language culminated in the metaphor of space and large areas, which spread across all areas.
ALFRED ROSENBERG's programme paper, first published in 1922, described the securing of space in what is now the Polish-Czech East as the most important goal of German foreign policy. The term ‘Lebensraum’, which RATZEL introduced in 1897,was only used once by HITLER in "Mein Kampf", although he was familiar with geopolitical ideologies. The popularisation of the concept of space in political discourse was mainly due to the successful novel "Volk ohne Raum" (1926) and the lively activities of a large number of theorists of geopolitics and geoeconomics. ARTHUR DIX, for example, formulated the basic geopolitical law in 1925 as follows: the most comprehensive possible control of closed river basins under one state power. This "schématisme géographique" found relatively rapid resonance in German journalism, national economics and jurisprudence, as the following examples show. HAUSHOFER proclaimed the right to living space as the first-hand geopolitical natural law. BÖHMER believed that a people only had the choice between fighting for space and absolute enslavement, since a people that had to import food would inevitably be disinherited in favour of foreign landowners. BAUER stated that there was a terrible shortage of space and declared the urge for more space to be a vital necessity. The Reichsbank director RUDOLF EICKE varied the motto "People without space” to a more concrete land without raw materials and added: Today, economic aspects are in the foreground.
It was only relatively late that jurists adopted the concept of space into their vocabulary, and CARL SCHMITT played a key role in this. The concept of space does not appear either in his treatise "Völkerrechtliche Formen des modernen Imperialismus" (1932) or in his essay "Völkerrechtliche Neutralität und völkische Totalität" (1938). Then, in 1939, he made the concept of space, which had long been familiar in journalism, available to jurisprudence. In 1932, Schmitt still spoke of American imperialism based on the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, but seven years later he interpreted the same doctrine as a concretely defined large area ... in which non-spatial powers must not interfere. The genuine doctrine of space now formed the antithesis to the universalist world principle, to the space-denying transformation of the earth into an abstract world and capital market and to the imperialist world trade principle. Schmitt now declared himself in favour of adopting the healthy core of a principle of international law based on Monroe's model for the purpose of constructing a greater European area. These considerations were concretised in Schmitt's essay, "Greater Space Order under International Law with a Ban on Intervention by Powers Foreign to Space", in which he defined the term 'Greater Space' as follows: Greater space is an area of human planning, organisation and activity arising from a comprehensive present trend of development. For us, Großraum is above all a coherent performance space. A significant example of the spatialisation of political language is Schmitt's translation of a passage from a MUSSOLINI speech of 1 January 1936. Mussolini said: Se per gli altri il Mediterraneo è una strada, per noi Italiani è la vita; Schmitt simply translated 'vita' as living space (Lebensraum), just as he reinterprets the concept of 'territorial sovereignty' (Raumhoheit) under international law as spatial sovereignty, in which state borders are then only conditionally recognised by the space-dominating great power: the principle of the Greater Space is intended to clear up the situation of the mixed peoples (Völkergemengelage) in Europe.
The radical nature of Schmitt's approach did not eliminate the vagueness of his concept of space and his spatial metaphors, and it is therefore impossible to distinguish the "new" principle from the common imperialist slogans of the 19th and 20th centuries, because his references to Central and Eastern Europe do not provide a sufficient criterion for separating his concept from the old, generally overseas-oriented imperialism, since this "limitation" was on the one hand only ideological and on the other hand objective — due to the lack of shipping capacity. ERNST RUDOLF HUBER's review of Schmitt's work shows this dilemma quite clearly. Huber endeavours to portray the old imperialism as merely a factual system of power, whereas the new Greater Space Order is a genuine legal system. But even he does not succeed in rationally justifying the difference, because his remark that the moment of order transforms and elevates the power system of imperialism into the legal system of the Greater Space Idea remains an ideology that is only too transparent, even if he diffusely describes the "elevation" as a dialectical transformation. Contrary to Schmitt, Huber does not want to allow the state's territorial sovereignty and the concept of the state to simply merge into an undefined "spatial sovereignty" and a "greater spatial order", but rightly suspects that the "greater spatial order" is merely a code name for the expansion of the state's borders and the establishment of a “Super-State”.
The spatial ideology of the national right and the National Socialists is ultimately a cipher for a radical expansionism, for which the term imperialism could not be used, because this term had two negative connotations for these theorists: the communists and socialists used it in their theories and, above all, as a catchword in everyday politics. Furthermore, the policies of the Western powers were generally regarded by the German right as imperialism. For its part, the spatial ideology fulfilled two functions. Firstly, its vagueness and vagueness did not allow any concrete conclusions to be drawn about the real aims of the expansion, and furthermore it did not allow the crude propaganda of the colonial enthusiasts to be remembered. The fact that such linguistic manipulation was not uncommon in this area can be demonstrated by an obvious example. As early as February 1938, the Reich training course of the Gau clerks in the National Socialist Teachers' Association decided to no longer speak of East German colonisation, but of East German land development, East German reclamation, resettlement or time for cleansing (Rodezeit), and as a preventive measure it was declared that the annexation of Austria, which was desired by some, would be declared a reunification.
Beyond the political and ideological function of the day, however, the Greater Austria ideology also contained elements that pointed to the future. The policy of the victorious powers after 1945 essentially consisted of dividing the world into two large areas, or mutually respected spheres of influence, in which the respective great power acquired quasi-sovereign powers at least on a case-by-case basis. Finally, Schmitt's concept of the Leistungsraum - leaving aside the ideological glorification - can be recognised as an embryonic prefiguration of European unification efforts after 1945, if one focuses on the undoubtedly economic substrate of the concept and the economic policy necessities in war-damaged Europe.
3. Discussion of imperialism after the Second World War
The discussion of imperialism after 1945 focussed on two main areas. On the one hand, a large number of historians and social scientists from other disciplines were concerned with gaining a sufficiently precise concept of 'imperialism' for the period up to 1918 on the basis of concrete analyses of the historical material. Naturally, the numerous theories and models of imperialism, which empirically oriented research worked on and criticised, confirmed or rejected, formed the background to these efforts. The second line of discussion, on the other hand, developed around the question of the extent to which it is still meaningful to speak of 'imperialism' after the beginning of decolonisation and in the present day. Imperialism theories played a considerably greater role here than in the first line of research; not always to the benefit of the discussion, which occasionally proves to be theory-heavy and hostile to empirical research.
It has become customary to refer to the classical era of imperialism from its foothills to the present day as high imperialism in order to differentiate it terminologically. The distinction between formal and informal empire, introduced by the English historian FAY, became of fundamental importance for the study of this period, because it opened up the view for a whole series of new problems, such as for example, that imperialist expansion need not be tied to the existence of formal state rule over colonies, but is realised below institutionalised statehood in the establishment of informal financial-imperialist subsidiary governments, which lend capital to the native governments at extremely unfavourable, even predatory interest and repayment conditions and thereby informally and indirectly take over rule or at least participate in it. Following the groundbreaking essay by JOHN GALLAGHER and RONALD ROBINSON, "The Imperialism of Free Trade", in which the distinction between formal and informal empire was first set out in detail and tested on empirical material, this approach also attracted attention in German historical and social studies.
Despite the fruitfulness of the approach, attention has also recently been drawn to the inherent danger of an overly generalised concept of 'informal imperialism'. If it is defined too broadly or not at all, every expansion of the share of world trade appears to be imperialism. In order to avoid this, ZIEBURA considers the following clarification of the term necessary: in order to speak of 'informal imperialism', there must be "exploitation" or at least dependence in such a way that the economic penetration by the capitalist metropolises takes place at the expense of indigenous wealth and thus of autochthonous development.
In the still swelling literature on the era of high imperialism, three main tendencies are essentially recognisable. However, this generalisation, which is justifiable in this context, should not obscure the fact that there are a large number of different positions in imperialism research.
The three main tendencies arise from the subject matter itself in that different aspects of the phenomenon to be understood are placed at the centre of the discussion: 1) the theories of social imperialism; 2) the political theories of imperialism; 3) the periphery-oriented theories of imperialism.
While ERICH PREISER stated that for research in the 1920s ... the age of imperialism was still a fascinating subject for economics, this can no longer be said for the post-war period. Instead, it is now primarily historians and political scientists who deal with the era, and one of the exponents of the theory of social imperialism regards imperialism research as the paradigm of an integrative science in which economic, sociological and political science theories would have to be united in order to do justice to the complex phenomenon.
HANS-ULRICH WEHLER defines 'imperialism' as that direct-formal and indirect-informal rule ... which the occidental industrial states have spread over the less developed regions of the world under the pressure of industrialisation with its specific economic, social and political problems and thanks to their versatile superiority. The social-imperialist component consists in the fact that the expansion was not only caused by the crisis-ridden course of the national economy, but also functioned as an ideology of integration in a state system that lacked stabilising historical traditions, but which could not conceal harsh class antagonisms under the cover of the authoritarian state. As a kind of hinge between the objective-economic and political science-historical explanatory patterns, Wehler also incorporated socio-psychological mediations into his theory, with which the mass effectiveness of the imperialist ideology, which was protected from above and at times imposed, was to be made plausible. In general, Wehler's theory of social imperialism is based on the primacy of domestic politics, from which the expansive economic, political and ideological phenomena, plans and strategies are explained. In his own words, Wehler's approach is eclectic, i.e. he combines various academic approaches that he considers suitable and thus never arrives at a unified theory of imperialism, but he does arrive at extremely informative insights and interpretations. This procedure thus offers a safeguard against the one-sidedness of earlier approaches, and on the other hand it paves the way for a multifaceted concept of imperialism. Wehler's concept of imperialism attempts to capture all the defining moments of the social reality of an epoch and thus becomes a concept of an epoch in the strict sense of the word.
More in his earlier than in his more recent works, WOLFGANG J. MOMMSEN — as a representative of the second main tendency in the discussion of imperialism — tends towards a political theory of imperialism. In contrast to the overemphasis on economic explanations, he insists on the essential importance of political expectations and aspirations of a nationalist colouring and states: Modern capitalism only developed imperialist traits in the context of national rivalries. In his conception, economic, national, traditional power-political and sociological factors therefore form a parallelogram of autonomous forces acting side by side on an equal footing and not a one-sided hierarchy constructed from the economy, as is probably only found in orthodox communist textbooks. The explanation of 'imperialism' from 'nationalism' - with very few exceptions, there is agreement on this in research - can of course only succeed if the sources and causes of nationalist movements are made sufficiently comprehensible. Mommsen therefore draws on a whole range of sociological and economic explanations and identifies, for example, those classes as the social basis of nationalism and imperialism that were carried upwards in the course of the development of industrial society.
The third line of research, the periphery-oriented theory of imperialism, takes a completely new approach. It explains imperialism not in terms of economic crises, internal political tensions in the metropolises or the profit interests of financial capitalist groups, but conversely in terms of the crises that affected indigenous societies — partly as a result of European informal economic, cultural and political penetration. This research approach has attracted particular attention from English historians and has only played a subordinate role in the German debate to date. According to this theory, the behaviour of the elites in the countries of the periphery determined whether and when an imperialist conquest could take place with any prospect of success. Since the behaviour of this group is indeed of strategic importance, but the specific forms of this behaviour are still largely in the dark, Mommsen can certainly be agreed with when he says that every modern theory of imperialism has to face up to this approach, despite the markedly apologetic tendency at first glance. However, attempts to abandon the traditional Europe-centric view of history in the study of imperialism are only found sporadically. IMMANUEL GEISS, for example, argues for the inclusion of early modern colonisation in the study of imperialism, taking into account the processes it brought about in the conquered countries, but at the same time wants to maintain the link between imperialism and modern capitalism. Whether this is the case could only be clarified following material studies on the problem.
Leaving aside the last-mentioned approach, the most general common denominator of all contributions to research on imperialism after 1945 would be that they have attempted and continue to attempt to reclaim the concept of imperialism as a terminus technicus for historical scholarship, after it had long functioned solely as a political buzzword. The individual forms of the reclaimed term are extremely diverse and today cover a spectrum in the Federal Republic of Germany ranging from 'imperialism' as an epochal term to 'imperialism' as the last capitalist form of society.
The second level on which the term 'imperialism' continues to be discussed deals less with concrete research problems than with the categorisation of the phenomenon in history and the question of the continuity of imperialism up to the present day. Naturally, political and ideological factors come into play much more quickly and on a much larger scale in this discussion, and the literature on the subject is as immense as the positions taken are diverse. To name just two extremes: HANNAH ARENDT saw the imperialist character as the result of imperialism: the only authentic political character formation of modernity, to which Rudyard Kipling had lent the intellectual imprint; on the opposite side one finds an apologetic, formally dialectically dressed up and morally falsely intoned objectivism in which the bloody history of colonisation is diluted underhand to a history of civilisation.
From a historical perspective, THEODOR SCHIEDER believes that imperialism has become reactionary in the true sense of the word, because empires, which he sees as purely domineering entities, stand in stark contrast to the tendencies towards democratisation within and between states. With regard to both superpowers, he considers the concept of imperialism to be applicable in different ways, because in the case of the Soviet Union, it is merely a new form of indirect rule in the service of imperialist politics, which, in addition to economic and military means, also utilises — and this, according to Schieder, is what is new — the ideological interlocking of different countries through the party power of the communist parties, whose direction by Moscow eludes formal criteria. In the policy of the USA, on the other hand, Schieder sees only a defensive, conservative imperialism, which is realised in the establishment of a strategic support ring around the Soviet sphere of influence and not in economic and/or political subjugation. — In general terms, however, it has recently been noted that the concept of imperialism, after a period in which it led an underground and outsider existence as a Marxist-demagogic buzzword, has experienced a true renaissance in recent years in various social science disciplines from history to peace research as a key concept for understanding the international system of the present and the foreign policy of the leading protagonists of this system. This renaissance is probably also linked to the fact that the resource-poor countries of the Third World have experienced dramatic supply difficulties in recent years and have blamed the industrialised countries, or rather the unfavourable terms of trade dominated by them, for this in the eyes of the world public.
RUDOLF WALTHER
Translator’s note: By it your ancestors first subdued the whole of Italy; then destroyed Carthage, overthrew Numantia, and reduced the most mighty kings and most warlike nations under the dominion of this empire.
T.N.: [who], after he had put an end to all wars both on land and sea, had set the boundary of the Empire of the Roman People at the limits of the world.
T.N.: Empire. This is the name given to states which are subject to a sovereign who has the title of emperor. (…) among us, we give the name of empire par excellence to the Germanic body, which is a republic composed of all the princes and states which form the three colleges of Germany, and subject to a leader who is the emperor.
T.N.: Imperialism is a general phenomenon of our time; it is even one of the characteristics of the beginning of the twentieth century. The world is now passing through the era of imperialism, just as it has undergone the crisis of liberalism, the crisis of protectionism, the crisis of colonialism — just as it has experienced the collective effort of nationalities, just as it has witnessed for ten years the universal formation and growing thrust of socialism. Moreover, all these elements, all these aspects of the life of humanity, are closely linked and, to a very large extent, imperialism and socialism constitute the fundamental opposition of the moment. Imperialism, ... which is the last card in the capitalist world, which seems to it a supreme shelter against bankruptcy and spontaneous dislocation, which imposes itself on it with an invincible fatality, is also a marvellous, incomparable architect of revolution.
Section VII. 2. goes directly against a certain June 29, 2022 tweet by Carlsbad, in which he wrote the following: “The conceptual vocabulary of National Socialism saw “imperialism” a bygone relic. This topos occurs too frequently to be dismissed as rhetoric. For instance, “the old ideas of hegemony and imperialism” are dismissed in a 1943 memorandum by Hans Frohwein, contrasted to Führung.” In light of other, much more relevant, texts, I believe that, yes, it can be dismissed as “rhetoric”, especially when taken into account the Generalplan Ost and Wilhelm Stuckart’s plan.
Looks great. Glad some more GG entries are getting translations. Hoping and praying for the Kondylis "dignity" translation to drop eventually