Empire (40 page)

the boundaries ofthe inside and the outside. Indeed, capital does

not function within the confines of a fixed territory and population,

but always overflows its borders and internalizes new spaces: ‘‘The

tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept

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ofcapital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome.’’2

This restive character ofcapital constitutes an ever-present point of

crisis that pertains to the essence ofcapital itself: constant expansion is its always inadequate but nonetheless necessary attempt to quench

an insatiable thirst. We do not mean to suggest that this crisis and

these barriers will necessarily lead capital to collapse. On the con-

trary, as it is for modernity as a whole, crisis is for capital a normal

condition that indicates not its end but its tendency and mode of

operation. Capital’s construction ofimperialism and its move be-

yond it are both given in the complex play between limits and bar-

riers.

The Need for an Outside

Marx analyzes capital’s constant need for expansion first by focusing

on the process of
realization
and thus on the unequal quantitative relationship between the worker as producer and the worker as

consumer ofcommodities.3 The problem ofrealization is one of

the factors that drives capital beyond its boundaries and poses the

tendency toward the world market. In order to understand the

problem we have to start out from exploitation. ‘‘To begin with,’’

we read in the
Grundrisse,
‘‘capital forces the workers beyond necessary labour to surplus labour. Only in this way does it realize

itself, and create surplus value’’ (p. 421). The wage of the worker

(corresponding to necessary labor) must be less than the total value

produced by the worker. This surplus value, however, must find

an adequate market in order to be realized. Since each worker must

produce more value than he or she consumes, the demand ofthe

worker as consumer can never be an adequate demand for the

surplus value. In a closed system, the capitalist production and

exchange process is thus defined by a series ofbarriers: ‘‘Capital,

then, posits necessary labour time as the barrier to the exchange

value ofliving labour capacity; surplus labour time as the barrier

to necessary labour time; and surplus value as the barrier to surplus

labour time’’ (p. 422). All these barriers flow from a single barrier

defined by the unequal relationship between the worker as producer

and the worker as consumer.

T H E L I M I T S O F I M P E R I A L I S M

223

Certainly, the capitalist class (along with the other classes that

share in its profits) will consume some ofthis excess value, but it

cannot consume all ofit, because ifit did there would be no surplus

value left to reinvest. Instead of consuming all the surplus value,

capitalists must practice abstinence, which is to say, they must

accumulate.4 Capital itselfdemands that capitalists renounce plea-

sures and abstain as much as possible from ‘‘wasting’’ the surplus

value on their own consumption.

This cultural explanation ofcapitalist morality and abstinence,

however, is just a symptom ofthe real economic barriers posed

within capitalist production. On the one hand, ifthere is to be profit,

then the workers must produce more value than they consume. On

the other hand, ifthere is to be accumulation, the capitalist class

and its dependents cannot consume all ofthat surplus value. Ifthe

working class together with the capitalist class and its dependents

cannot form an adequate market and buy all the commodities

produced, then even though exploitation has taken place and surplus

value has been extracted, that value cannot be realized.5

Marx points out further that this barrier is continually exacer-

bated as labor becomes ever more productive. With the increase

ofproductivity and the consequent rise in the composition ofcapital,

variable capital (that is, the wage paid the workers) constitutes an

increasingly small part ofthe total value ofthe commodities. This

means that the workers’ power ofconsumption is increasingly small

with respect to the commodities produced: ‘‘The more productivity

develops, the more it comes into conflict with the narrow basis on

which the relations ofconsumption rest.’’6 The realization ofcapital

is thus blocked by the problem ofthe ‘‘narrow basis’’ ofthe powers

ofconsumption. We should note that this barrier has nothing to

do with the absolute power ofproduction ofa population or its

absolute power ofconsumption (undoubtedly the proletariat could

and wants to consume more), but rather it refers to
the relative

power of consumption
ofa population within the capitalist relations ofproduction and reproduction.

In order to realize the surplus value generated in the production

process and avoid the devaluation resulting from overproduction,

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Marx argues that capital must expand its realm: ‘ A precondition

ofproduction based on capital is therefore the production ofa

constantly widening sphere ofcirculation, whether the sphere itself

is directly expanded or whether more points within it are created

as points ofproduction’’ (p. 407). Expanding the sphere ofcircula-

tion can be accomplished by intensifying existing markets within

the capitalist sphere through new needs and wants; but the quantity

ofthe wage available to workers for spending and the capitalists’ need

to accumulate pose a rigid barrier to this expansion. Alternatively,

additional consumers can be created by drafting new populations

into the capitalist relationship, but this cannot stabilize the basically

unequal relationship between supply and demand, between the

value created and the value that can be consumed by the population

ofproletarians and capitalists involved.7 On the contrary, new prole-

tarians will themselves always be an inadequate market for the value

ofwhat they produce, and thus they will always only reproduce

the problem on a larger scale.8 The only effective solution is for

capital to look outside itselfand discover noncapitalist markets in

which to exchange the commodities and realize their value. Expan-

sion ofthe sphere ofcirculation outside the capitalist realm displaces

the destabilizing inequality.

Rosa Luxemburg developed Marx’s analysis ofthe problem

ofrealization, but she changed the inflection ofthat analysis. Luxem-

burg casts the fact that ‘‘outside consumers qua other-than-capitalist

are really essential’’ (pp. 365–66) in order for capital to realize its

surplus value as an indication ofcapital’s dependence on its outside.

Capitalism is ‘‘the first mode ofeconomy which is unable to exist

by itself, which needs other economic systems as a medium and a

soil.’’9 Capital is an organism that cannot sustain itselfwithout

constantly looking beyond its boundaries, feeding off its external

environment. Its outside is essential.

Perhaps this need constantly to expand its sphere ofcontrol

is the sickness ofEuropean capital, but perhaps it is also the motor

that drove Europe to the position ofworld dominance in the

modern era. ‘‘Perhaps then the merit ofthe West, confined as it

T H E L I M I T S O F I M P E R I A L I S M

225

was on its narrow ‘Cape ofAsia,’ ’ Fernand Braudel supposes, ‘‘was

to have needed the world, to have needed to venture outside its

own front door.’’10 Capital from its inception tends toward being

a world power, or really
the
world power.

Internalizing the Outside

Capital expands not only to meet the needs ofrealization and find

new markets but also to satisfy the requirements of the subsequent

moment in the cycle ofaccumulation, that is, the process of
capital-

ization.
After surplus value has been realized in the form of money (through intensified markets in the capitalist domain and through

reliance on noncapitalist markets), that realized surplus value must

be reinvested in production, that is, turned back into capital. The

capitalization ofrealized surplus value requires that for the subse-

quent cycle ofproduction the capitalist will have to secure f

or

purchase additional supplies ofconstant capital (raw materials, ma-

chinery, and so forth) and additional variable capital (that is, labor

power)—and eventually in turn this will require an even greater

extension of the market for further realization.

The search for additional constant capital (in particular, more

and newer materials) drives capital toward a kind ofimperialism

characterized by pillage and theft. Capital, Rosa Luxemburg asserts,

‘‘ransacks the whole world, it procures its means ofproduction

from all corners ofthe earth, seizing them, ifnecessary by force,

from all levels of civilisation and from all forms of society . . . It

becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more

fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means

ofproduction, with regard to both quality and quantity, so as to

find productive employment for the surplus value it has realised.’’11

In the acquisition ofadditional means ofproduction, capital does

relate to and rely on its noncapitalist environment, but it does not

internalize that environment—or rather, it does not necessarily

make that environment capitalist. The outside remains outside. For

example, gold and diamonds can be extracted from Peru and South

Africa or sugarcane from Jamaica and Java perfectly well while

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those societies and that production continue to function through

noncapitalist relations.

The acquisition ofadditional variable capital, the engagement

ofnew labor power and creation ofproletarians, by contrast, implies

a capitalist imperialism. Extending the working day ofexisting

workers in the capitalist domain can, ofcourse, create additional

labor power, but there is a limit to this increase. For the remainder

ofthis new labor power, capital must continually create and engage

new proletarians among noncapitalist groups and countries. The

progressive proletarianization ofthe noncapitalist environment is

the continual reopening ofthe processes ofprimitive accumula-

tion—and thus the
capitalization
ofthe noncapitalist environment

itself. Luxemburg sees this as the real historical novelty of capitalist

conquest: ‘‘All conquerors pursued the aim ofdominating and

exploiting the country, but none was interested in robbing the

people oftheir productive f

orces and in destroying their social

organisation.’’12 In the process ofcapitalization
the outside is inter-

nalized.

Capital must therefore not only have open exchange with

noncapitalist societies or only appropriate their wealth; it must also

actually transform them into capitalist societies themselves. This is

what is central in RudolfHilferding’s definition ofthe export of

capital: ‘‘By ‘export ofcapital’ I mean the export ofvalue which

is intended to breed surplus value abroad.’’13 What is exported is a

relation, a social form that will breed or replicate itself. Like a

missionary or vampire, capital touches what is foreign and makes

it proper. ‘‘The bourgeoisie,’’ Marx and Engels write, ‘‘compels all

nations, on pain ofextinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of

production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation

into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word,

it creates the world after its own image.’’14 In economic terms, this

civilization and modernization mean capitalization, that is, incorpo-

ration within the expanding cycle ofcapitalist production and accu-

mulation. In this way the noncapitalist environment (territory, social

forms, cultures, productive processes, labor power, and so forth) is

subsumed formally under capital.

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227

We should note here that European capital does not really

remake noncapitalist territories ‘‘after its own image,’’ as if all were

becoming homogeneous. Indeed, when the Marxist critics ofimpe-

rialism have recognized the processes ofthe internalization ofcapi-

tal’s outside, they have generally underestimated the significance

of the uneven development and geographical difference implicit in

them.15 Each segment ofthe noncapitalist environment is trans-

formed
differently,
and all are integrated
organically
into the expanding body of capital. In other words, the different segments of the outside

are internalized not on a model of similitude but as different organs

that function together in one coherent body.

At this point we can recognize the fundamental contradiction

ofcapitalist expansion: capital’s reliance on its outside, on the non-

capitalist environment, which satisfies the need to realize surplus