“Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the goal of the dominant mode of production (Guy Debord).”
In the last couple months, I have witnessed Lenin’s foundational text Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism being constantly invoked in progressive circles in light of the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, kidnapping of Maduro and the US-Israeli attack on Iran. Trump and Netanyahu, of course, have been the primary symbolic referents in many such discussions.
What’s important to remember is that Lenin’s text has a subtle yet important difference in terms of exactly where he focuses. He is not concerned with presidents, ministers, or foreign policy makers. His focus is almost entirely on corporations, cartels, and their nexus with finance capital.
He mentions them every time by name.
On the other hand, mainstream discourse often reduces imperialism to the spectacle of government personalities, their theatrical/pompous/ “masalaydaar” rhetoric, and executive decisions (which are shaped by capital interests), rather than the material logic of capital that propels politics in this direction.
What is that material logic of capital?
It is no secret that both Venezuela and Iran have been one of the leading suppliers of discounted oil to Chinese corporations, yet it is the detail which is often overlooked. In terms of productive capacity, Chinese corporations have already surpassed their American counterparts to such an extent that, in sectors like consumer electronics, machinery, textiles, toys, furniture, and plastic goods, it is no longer close competition. Yet this asymmetry coexists with another that is inversed: while China produces the bulk of the world’s consumer goods, the United States continues to exercise overwhelming dominance in the global war-armament industry, with its military technologies and weapons systems forming the backbone of defence infrastructures across much of the world.
Now, a simple thought experiment based on product and phenomena can help ensure one’s logical coherence: in terms of profits, air purifier companies benefit when smog increases. Big Pharma benefits when diseases spread and patients become dependent on prolonged medication and treatments. By the same logic, what does it imply about the war–armament industry? What sustains and profits them?
It is not a coincidence that many of the leading parent companies have subsidiaries also invested in pharma and war technology. In terms of production, the lifeblood of these corporations is fossil-fuel (the leading contributor to global pollution). Contrary to popular belief, its usage at present is the highest it’s ever been. As Andreas Malm argues in The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth (a book I would highly recommend) “imperial violence cannot be disentangled from the underlying colonial logic of fossil-fuel accumulation“.
Extraction, militarization, and ecological devastation form an interdependent and continuous process. Imperial violence is therefore not pushed by some political rivalry of select few “mad and hot-headed” presidents; it is infrastructural, ecological, and deeply embedded in the material circuits of capital that sustain global production itself. Therefore, any analysis of “resurgent imperialism” that does not ground itself in the Chevron’s, ExxonMobil’s, Lockheed Martin’s, HP’s, Meta’s, and Nestle’s etc. of the world, remains surface-level at best.
Fossil fuel, Big-Tech, armament, minerals and finance-capital cartels, along with their local subsidiaries, must be named and materially linked to genocide and imperial violence, rather than fixating on the spectacle of the particular presidents they provide patronage to. As Lenin made clear, the collaborative-competing interests of global corporate cartels, and their geopolitical fallout, must remain central to understanding imperialism. The same logic can be extended to the external-internal colonial statecraft of Pakistan.
Let us not get distracted.
