Imperialism results in forever wars, fought to elicit and maintain massive amounts of Capital. Financial conflict between Imperialist nations inevitably spills up into US-China conflict

Let us first take the case of wars. It is true that after the Second World War, there has not been any major armed conflict between the advanced capitalist countries. However, there have been very serious military interventions in countries like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya to name just a few. Wikipedia lists more than 40 armed conflicts in which the US army participated since the Second World War.30 In all these military aggressions, the entire advanced capitalist countries have acted as a single block under the leadership of the United States. In all these cases, the attack was against a developing country. This essentially shows that the muting of intra-imperialist rivalry of Lenin’s time has brought in an alliance of the imperialist bloc under the leadership of the United States. The alliance between the advanced capitalist countries does not end there. International multi-lateral bodies like the World Bank, IMF, WTO or the UNPCCC have witnessed how developed countries act as a block and try and out-manoeuvre developing countries to maintain their advantageous position in the world economy. These continuing wars waged against the third world countries and the economic bargaining against the developing countries in different forums, essentially show how, even today, there exists conflict in the world arena; but the geography of that conflict has changed from being intra-imperialist to being conflict between the advanced capitalist countries and the developing countries. Theorising global conflicts today In an earlier era, within the premise of Marxist theories, there was this idea that the bourgeoisie of the erstwhile colonies were nationalist in nature or compradors. By nationalist bourgeoisie, it was meant that the ruling classes of these countries were in conflict with imperialism and wanted capitalist development in the domestic economy which imperialism thwarted. The other idea was that in some countries the ruling classes were completely subservient to global metropolitan capital and acted as agents of imperialism. Therefore, the earlier theories predicted a conflict between nationalist bourgeoisie and imperialism and collaboration between comprador bourgeoisie and imperialism. Our point is that both these characterisations have become irrelevant and cannot explain the conflicts of the current era. There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie in the third world countries, particularly in BRIC, have become immensely powerful since the policies of globalisation have been adopted. All indicators in terms of the total assets, wealth, profits and so on of the big companies in these countries suggest their increasing strength. It is also the case that some of these companies have become global players in the world market. There exists a complex relationship between the bourgeoisie of these countries and imperialism. On the one hand, we have certain bourgeoisie coming into the ranks of the global players. This is happening through a process of enrichment of the ruling classes through the policies of reforms and globalisation itself, or through its alliance with global finance capital. However, as has been argued above, the vast masses of people remain detached from these capitalist processes and remain impoverished. This co-option of the bourgeoisie of the third world as junior partners of imperialism is a feature of today’s world conjuncture. But in fulfilling the global aspirations of these ruling classes, conflicts arise between metropolitan capital and these bourgeoisies. These conflicts are fundamentally different from the times of colonialism. During colonialism, the big bourgeoisie was essentially fighting to implement capitalism under its own leadership in countries like India. However, in order to mobilise the masses for independence, certain demands of the people, like land reforms, were incorporated into the demands of the freedom struggle and implemented to some degree after independence. Moreover, the bourgeoisie of the newly independent countries tried to pursue a developmental path autonomous to imperialism by following a planning process in the domestic economy. This anti-imperialist stance of the bourgeoisie was hailed as being nationalist, and indeed, the processes of decolonisation helped improve the lives of the people to some extent. But today’s conflicts with imperialism have got no such pro-people content. It is aimed simply at maintaining the global reach of the bourgeoisie. That global reach has not resulted in any improvement of the working people, as has been enumerated above. Hence, the bourgeoisie cannot be termed as nationalistic any more, in the sense that class interests are not aligned with the interests of workers, farmers or common people in its nation-state. This does not mean that the bourgeoisie of these countries have become compradors. Comprador bourgeoisie do not have any production base and essentially live off commissions from the sales of the metropolitan bourgeoisie. But as has been repeatedly argued, today’s third world bourgeoisie, particularly BRIC, are very powerful and have a global production base. In other words, in order to characterise the current conjuncture, we need to do away with these terms which were applicable for a conjuncture which is long past. Therefore, we come back to the earlier assertion that while it is true that the intra-imperialist rivalry of Lenin’s period has come to an end, contradictions in the realm of global political or geo-political economy has not become a thing of the past. Currently, the contradiction between BRIC and US-led advanced capitalist countries are coming to the fore. We have seen repeatedly how BRIC, as a block, has taken contrary positions to those of the United States or G7 in international forums like the UN or UNPCCC. Moreover, India and particularly China, because of its growth, is exerting a tremendous demand on the energy resources of the world. China’s forays into Latin America and Africa are manifestations of that. Here, conflict between the United States or advanced capitalist countries with China is bound to arise. The conflict in Syria and recently in Ukraine show that this conflict is moving into the domain of military or strategic conflicts, beyond purely economic contradictions between the upcoming bourgeoisie of BRIC and that of advanced capitalism.