Abstract
Sam King offers an important intervention to critical/radical/Marxist literature on the political economy of (under)development in the Third World/Global South in the neoliberal era by critically and comprehensively engaging with the notion of imperialism. In Imperialism and the Development Myth, King fundamentally argues that imperialism lies at the heart of continuous and changing dynamics of the world capitalist system bringing about a persistent polarisation between the developed core and the underdeveloped periphery. King builds this argument by mainly drawing upon Lenin’s conception of imperialism, which denotes the division of the world and the subjugation of peripheries under the domination of advanced capitalist countries harbouring monopolist finance capital (pp. 85–216). King focuses on the role of China in the global political economy to illustrate how the Third World has been subjected to exploitation and domination by advanced Western countries, particularly the United States, through the global (re)structuring of relations of production and division of labour (pp. 219–257). King’s contribution is remarkable on three grounds: first, the emphasis on the actuality of imperialism, especially as conceptualised by Lenin; second, the understanding of the Third World, including the emerging market economies with a particular focus on China, as the periphery of the world capitalist economy; and third, empirical data that confirm the divergence between imperialist core and peripheries. Nevertheless, King’s conception of ‘intermediary’ role of the Third World, especially that of China (p. 5), arguably requires further nuanced discussion borrowing from Marini (1972), whom King only briefly mentions (pp. 171–172).
To begin with, King correctly establishes and surveys the decline in Marxists’ engagement with the notion of imperialism, particularly following the relatively stable growth of Third World economies during the transition to neoliberalism in the 1980s. In Prabhat Patnaik’s words, ‘“hardly anybody talks of imperialism anymore” [. . .] in 1990’ (p. 61). The recognition of such decline if not complete silence regarding imperialism is an important intervention that one can further relate to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the disorientation of a great number of Marxists and their deviation from anti-capitalist and hence anti-imperialist struggles. This point, arguably, already corresponds to King’s critique of several Marxists’ lack of engagement with and misinterpretation and rejection of Lenin regarding the conceptualisation of imperialism. In response, King reclaims pivotal elements regarding Lenin’s understanding of imperialism. Significantly, finance capital that dominates social formations it expands to refers to the monopolist unification between industrial capital and financial capital (pp. 104–106), and thus, finance capital cannot be identified with financialisation (pp. 106–109). Moreover, the understanding of monopolisation and hence imperialism as an aspect of capitalist competition refutes the lack of competition in the age of monopolies (p. 70). In addition, massive scientific research and development (R&D) funded by the American, German and British state apparatuses demonstrate the ‘growing and indispensable importance of state support’ for monopolist finance capital in imperialist core (p. 202).
Furthermore, King’s emphasis on capitalist competition essentially problematises the portrayal of ‘emerging’ or ‘rising’ economies, particularly China, as potential rivals of advanced Western countries, especially the United States. Most significantly, King underlines that competition merged with global division of labour bring about a polarisation in specialisation, where high-tech sectors and high-skilled labour characterise imperialist core, and low- and medium-tech sectors and low-skill labour characterise the Third World (pp. 159–162). Western imperialist capital ‘monopolises’ through higher labour productivity (pp. 138–140), and it does not only monopolise R&D but also low-end industries, such as textile and automotive, since all industries and products require ‘highly sophisticated and simple labour processes’ (p. 152). While technology-intensive sectors of the Third World rather represent assembling industries that depend on the import of complex components, the Third World capital begins to function as the subcontractor of imperialist capital significantly through global value chains. This subcontracting relationship is in accordance with capitalist competition and constitutes the basis of the transfer of surplus value from peripheries to imperialist cores since ‘the nature of outsourcing is not to abolish the Third World capitalist but to contract them’ (p. 70).
In addition, King acknowledges the formation of ‘non-monopolistic monopolies’ in the Third World that are ‘monopolist domestically but not internationally’ (p. 169). The cases of Samsung’s continued use of Android in response to Google’s purchase of Motorola (pp. 140–142), and Huawei’s dependence on the import of microchips from the United States illustrate this point (pp. 247–253). King considers such non-monopolistic monopolies as the ‘producer and usurper of value’ at home country as well as the ‘conveyer belt’ and ‘lucrative source’ that maintains large-scale value transfers to imperialist countries as they are subordinate to imperialist capital (p. 183). To illustrate, the Chinese ‘so-called high-tech’ exports of electronics, computers and telecommunications equipment take place in ‘foreign-owned “export-processing operations”’ leaving China with only marginal profit shares (p. 222).
Nevertheless, one should approach to King’s conception of non-monopolistic monopolies with caution. On one hand, King acknowledges non-monopolistic monopolies’ attempt at ‘control of land and natural resources, local political or cultural connections, and access to finance, markets, and contracts’ and use of cheap and skilled labour (p. 171). On the other hand, King does not engage well with the notion of sub-imperialism that indicates ‘the form which dependent capitalism assumes upon reaching the stage of monopolies and finance capital’ (Marini, 1972: 15). When finance capital is conceptualised as a power bloc unifying money capital, productive capital and commodity capital under the conditions of monopolisation and internationalisation, the hierarchical and asymmetrical nature of the expansion of finance capital of a late-developing country in peripheries can be examined more critically and consistently. This understanding improves Lenin’s tendency to associate the export of capital with the internationalisation of financial capital concerning the expansion of capitalist relations in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. It further develops King’s analysis on China–Africa trade, investments and loans (pp. 238–240), in a way to demonstrate that the expansion of Chinese capital favours the subordination of Africa to China but cannot overturn the primacy of Western imperialist countries in the region vis-à-vis China.