Markus Lehner, Neue Internationale 274, June
In the left-wing debate about the positioning in the Ukraine war, the question of the imperialist character of the Russian Federation plays an important role. Long before this war, we had been analysing Russia as a newly established imperialist superpower, in contrast to such diverse currents as the “Fracción Trotskista” (RIO) and most post-Stalinist groups (1).
The various left-wing critics of our characterisation usually rely on an asserted “orthodox” reference to Lenin’s “definition of imperialism”. In this, most rely on the use of the famous “5 criteria” from Lenin’s pamphlet, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, A Popular Outline” (2). For example, it is often used as “proof” that Russia has a negative balance in terms of direct investment and that it depends much more on the export of raw materials than on the strength of its finance capitalist monopolies.
Lenin’s Concept of Imperialism
First of all, it is important to counter the abbreviation of Lenin’s concept of imperialism. The repeatedly cited “5 criteria” are actually introduced at the level of a general analysis of the current stage of development of capitalism – that is, with regard to the determination of the imperialist system as a whole, not the imperialist character of a particular part or individual state.
Moreover, Lenin speaks of “characteristics” that a correct definition of imperialism must contain, not of some kind of final, mechanically applicable, immutable definition. Elsewhere he also emphasises that the shortest definition is that imperialism represents the monopolist stage of capitalism as a world system.
This implies that, in this epoch, capitalism has become the totality of the world economy, i.e. there are no longer any pre- and non-capitalist niches that are not ultimately determined by the overarching laws of capital valorisation, and the extent of concentration/centralisation of capital has a modifying effect on the tendencies to equalise the rates of profit to the average rate of profit.
This also means that a certain combination of finance and industrial capital and state agencies is able to secure its own profitability or (economic and political) stability at the expense of other capitals and states, despite all crisis tendencies (at least temporarily, since there is no absolute monopoly and monopoly profit rates ultimately cannot be decoupled from the general valorisation problems of capital). This economic basis then leads to Lenin’s characteristics: the importance of the export of capital is also ultimately based on the aggravation of the problem of over-accumulation in the imperialist centres, which they overcome by investing surplus capital in other countries where the lack of equalisation of the international rate of profit creates more favourable investment opportunities (e.g. through cheaper access to labour and raw materials). The export of capital is therefore not a defining element “in itself”, but is inevitable for those imperialist capitals for which falling profit rates have already turned into increased over-accumulation (i.e. their own growth and export of goods no longer offer sufficient profit prospects for investment capital).
The decisive factor for Lenin’s conceptualisation, however, is above all that this monopolistic totality of imperialism has led to a division of the world economy among large capital associations, which allows new divisions or new players only within very narrow limits – or, if on a larger scale, then necessarily with violent shocks, analogous to an earthquake. This system of division of the world economy does not find a counterpart on the political level in the form of a bourgeois nation-state as in the individual economies, but can only be stabilised on the world level by a system of imperialist great powers due to this monopolistic basis.
Russia then and now
The division of the world among capital associations thus goes hand in hand – albeit not one-to-one – with their political division into spheres of influence of great powers. Here we also find the reason why Lenin analysed Tsarist Russia as an imperialist power, although in his time it did not meet the “5 criteria”, because it was, in terms of capital concentration, the importance of its industrial and finance capital, the preponderance of inflow of capital over its own direct investment, etc. far from the other imperialist powers. True, this was compensated by a dynamic development of certain industrial sectors and an incipient expansion of Russian capital, including outwards. The decisive factor, however, was Russia’s strong position as an expansive great power since the end of the 19th century, which was associated with this still subordinate economic dynamic. In Central Asia and parts of Europe, this led to a role comparable to the colonialism of the other major European powers in the overall imperialist system before the First World War.
Contemporary Russia is also marked by such contradictory tendencies. In the turbulence of the restoration of capitalism after the collapse of Stalinism in the “wild privatisation period” of the 1990s, many production facilities were destroyed, others were quickly built up – at least with the enormous enrichment of a small layer of managers and finance capitalists. In this phase, a sell-off of Russia to Western capital could well have happened, but this was avoided because of the high risks, especially after the economic collapse in 1998, the “Russian crisis”.
Commodities and industrial capital
Under Putin, in the 2000s, some renationalisation, at least the securing of the state’s blocking minority shareholdings, without fundamentally overcoming the system of oligarchs. As a result, the raw materials and energy sectors in particular became a stabilising factor in Russian capitalism, beyond the influence of Western capital. Since then, Russia’s trade balance has consistently shown not only positive surpluses, but exports systematically exceed imports by a third on average. This applies not only to oil, coal, gas and grain, but Russia has now become one of the largest exporters of strategically important raw materials. These include copper, nickel, uranium (with Kazakhstan dependent on Russia), palladium, aluminium, gold, diamonds, timber, … (3). Russia was not only able to accumulate considerable wealth through this abundance of raw materials under its control, that is, independent of any foreign monopolies, but also to gain a strong degree of economic self-sufficiency.
Given the state’s reserves and its shareholdings, it is not surprising that the Russian state is one of the least indebted in the world. For example, the proportion of public debt to GDP was 19% in 2020, compared to 133% for the US.
In the slipstream of this stabilisation, strategic industries in the IT sector, mechanical engineering and high technology were able to maintain strong and dynamic growth. This also has to do with the great importance of the military-industrial complex in Russia. Not only was more than 4% of GDP regularly spent on military spending, even before the Ukraine conflict, Russia is one of the world’s largest arms exporters, which has also had an impact on the overall growth rates of the Russian economy. The largest arms exporters in the world are, in order: USA, Russia, France, China, Germany. After the United States, the Russian Federation is the second largest military power in the world. Even if their performance in the Ukraine war raises doubts, it must be borne in mind that the Western weapons and information technology systems used by the Ukrainian side reflect the continuing qualitative superiority of US armaments technology.
Finance capital
Finance capital in the Russian Federation is also considerable. Banks such as Sberbank or VTB are sufficiently large for the needs of Russian capital for domestic and foreign business. In addition, there are fund companies that originally came from the energy and commodities sector and can now operate with huge sums of money, such as the “National Wealth Fund” or the “Russian Direct Investment Fund”. In the meantime, there are joint investment funds with China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and some other countries, which create ever greater scope for Russian finance capital (even after Western sanctions).
It should also be added that the Russian Federation has created a wide range of regions of the world into which its direct investments can flow. As already shown, the pressure on the Russian economy in terms of necessary foreign investment is not as great as that of other imperialist countries, since on the one hand it has its own cheap labour market for a growing economy, and on the other hand it is sufficiently compensated by energy/raw material/arms exports. On the other hand, the former Soviet republics in Central Asia represent a large area for secured investments as well as for easily exploitable “labour power resources”. Russia continues to be a post-colonial power, with a huge racially and nationally oppressed “non-Russian” population (made up of migrants or colonised ethnicities) forming a large portion of the lower echelons of employment. Thus, the brutal war in Chechnya was a major factor in the authoritarian fortification of the internal colonies in the Russian “Federation” – and played the preparatory role in the general turn to authoritarianism in Russia through the development of appropriate security structures in connection with this Russian variant of the “war on terror”.
In addition to direct investment in Central Asia and the Middle East, direct investment in Africa and Latin America from Russia (often in conjunction with the arms industry) has also risen sharply in recent years. Since 2016 (and the already sharply declining capital flows from “the West”), Russia has also shown a positive balance in terms of direct investment. An example of this trend was 2018, when foreign (new) direct investment fell to $8.9 billion, compared to an increase in Russian direct investment of $28 billion abroad. It must also be noted that until a few years ago, the largest Western direct investor in the Russian Federation was the Republic of Cyprus (2020: $147 billion in existing investments). However, closer investigations into how a bankrupt state could suddenly become a billion-dollar investor in Russia since 2008 show that the origin of this capital can mostly be traced back to Russia itself (2020: FDIs amounting to 193 billion US dollars from Russia). This is probably due to the fact that many Russian capitalists have limited trust in their own state and were thus more convinced of the tax advantages and banking policy in Cyprus – and from there made the rather riskier investments in Russia. At the same time, Cyprus has granted generous schemes for dual citizenship with appropriate investments. Counting the Cypriot billions, Russia was already a net exporter of capital rather than an importer of capital in the 2010s. The ability of Russian capital to compensate for the massive halt in capital inflows due to Western sanctions following the attack on Ukraine shows how little Russia resembles a semi-colony that would not survive economically even for a month after such sanctions.
Class structure
Russia, as the largest country with the second largest army in the world, as one of the largest global suppliers of raw materials and energy, with very large monopolies and finance capitals based on it, is certainly nobody’s “semi-colony”, although the relatively large role of the state in financial and monopoly capital, as well as the comparatively higher criminal streak of domestic big business, is certainly a sign of its weakness.
In the context of catch-up development and due to its origin in a former degenerated workers’ state, Russian capitalism still has characteristics of “original accumulation” in many areas, in which the state and mafia-like relations of exploitation play a relatively large role. This also leads to the fact that an independent middle class has not yet emerged on a large scale and that there is a relatively large gap between the super-rich and the mass of the population.
For a stable parliamentary regime, therefore, Russian imperialism lacks the social base with a correspondingly large labour aristocracy and wage-dependent middle classes (as in the West). It is therefore dependent on the Bonapartist Putin regime, which suppresses any form of consistent representation of the interests of workers and peasants or contains them through nationalist populism. Unlike Western imperialism, it cannot sell itself as a “stronghold of democracy and human rights”, but must repeatedly resort to direct military threats or violence in its global action instead of “soft power” and “credit cards”. Russian imperialism is therefore still struggling for recognition and global role. In many areas it remains in a weaker position vis-à-vis the established imperialist powers, which it has to overcome by military-political means.
Role as a great power
Thus, the crucial question for the imperialist character of Russia is the role it plays in the concert of the great powers and in the struggle for the current redivision of the world. During the consolidation of Russian capitalism in the 2000s, its return to the global stage was made possible mainly through a kind of deal with the leading European powers. As an essential supplier of energy and raw materials for European production chains (especially for Germany and France), its special role as a military-political superpower in competition with the USA was also accepted. The latter initially affected mainly Central Asia, but later also Africa and especially the Middle East (e.g. Syria).
There have been tendencies in the EU to work with Russia to counterbalance the looming confrontation between the US and China. Until about 2014, the stabilisation of Europe’s core economies in the globalisation period was closely linked to Russia’s economic and political resurgence. However, it soon became apparent that this “partnership” was bringing growing conflicts of interest.
While some Eastern European EU countries vehemently favoured an “Atlantic partnership” anyway, or propagated “NATO’s eastward expansion”, in Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and, above all, in Ukraine, the respective influences and interest groups met with more and more mutual contradiction. Ultimately, the US did everything in its power to win over the EU imperialisms unequivocally to its side in its main confrontation with China and to detach a manoeuvring EU from its ties with Russia. While Russia was still able to achieve military-political successes in Georgia and Syria and established itself as a “gendarme” there through minor interventions in Central Asian crises, within the framework of the CSTO “security alliance”, the EU could not simply let Russia and its local allies have their way in Belarus, Moldova and above all Ukraine without losing its credibility in Eastern Europe.
Importance of Ukraine
The Ukraine war once again shows the fundamentally rotten character of imperialism. Contrary to what is portrayed in this country, it is not about “democracy” against “unlawful annexation raids”, but about the struggle for spheres of influence of imperialist powers. Even if the Western narrative of “spheres of influence” is declared to be a concept from the last century, a long-term weakening of an imperialist rival in Eastern Europe and a safeguarding of their spheres of influence right up to their borders is of course a matter close to the hearts of the US and the EU.
Russian imperialism is trying to secure its “traditional sphere of influence” because Ukraine was, and could be again, an important part of Russian monopoly capital, industrially, agriculturally and in terms of raw materials. Russian-speaking minorities or historical connections have been or are being exploited to build up appropriate pressure and find pretexts. Since Russia lacks the economic and ideological means, (“democracy!”) the only thing left for it to do is to use its military strength to play in the concert of the great powers and secure its sphere of influence.
Since independence, the rulers in Ukraine have tried to manoeuvre between the two imperialist camps, now in the direction of the EU/NATO, then in the direction of Moscow. With the Maidan coup in 2014, this phase was over. While a majority of Ukrainians certainly have illusions in a democratic and independent Ukraine, those forces that ultimately objectively make the country a semi-colony of Western imperialism have prevailed in Ukrainian politics. This has become very clear economically, quite simply, through the IMF programmes since then and the resulting “liberalisations”, sell-out plans and “reform projects” (especially in the area of labour law). The complete dependence of Ukraine’s defence capability on Western arms and ammunition deliveries, as well as on training, reconnaissance and IT infrastructure services (especially from the USA) show the emerging character of a militarily highly armed semi-colony. The Ukrainians thus became pawns in the struggle for spheres of influence of the imperialist powers. Even if their struggle for self-determination and defence against Russian aggression is more than justified, their struggle for a truly independent Ukraine cannot end with the repulsion of the Russian invasion – for the mass of Ukrainians, the following invasion of the Western “friends of freedom”, disguised as “reconstruction aid”, will be the next stage in their struggle for survival (then on the economic level).
A new Russian revolution is needed!
By intervening in the Ukraine conflict, annexing Crimea, and ultimately the 2022 invasion, Russia has exposed its character as the weakest link in the chorus of major imperialist powers – any other explanation would only reinforce the Western narrative of the invasion as the work of “Putin gone mad”. The development of the war since then also confirms this. On the one hand, the Russian army was weak enough not to win a decisive victory against a Ukrainian army that was highly armed by the West and highly motivated in its justified will to defend itself. On the other hand, despite massive economic sanctions, Russia has been able to switch to a war economy and is likely to be able to sustain a war of attrition in the longer term, which will ultimately become too costly for Western economies as suppliers to Ukraine.
The further course of the Ukraine war will of course also be decisive for further developments in Russia. The economic and human consequences of the war are becoming increasingly difficult to bear. Even if the Russian economy has so far been able to prevent collapse, it is becoming more and more dependent on the support of “friendly” powers. So far, China, in particular, continues to rely on an outcome that guarantees Russia certain profits and in any case does not lead to the collapse of the current regime. A collapse could lead to a radicalisation of the prevailing nationalist policy to save the interests of Russian monopoly capitalism. Given the weakness of the liberal, but above all the left-wing, opposition, and the lack of militant organisations of the working class, this is quite likely. At the moment, because they misunderstand the real essence of fascism, many are already calling the current regime fascist, dissatisfaction with the course of the war could lead to a cruel form of real, revanchist Russian fascism, leading to a new stage of militarism and military aggression by this nuclear power!
In this respect, it is absolutely necessary for leftists in Russia and their supporters in the West both to clearly demonstrate the imperialist character of Russian politics and economics and to get to the root of this evil, namely by smashing Russian capitalism and its state apparatus – through a “new October Revolution”!
Endnotes
(1) See, for example: already in the FT resolutions on the Ukraine conflict since 2014 (https://www.leftvoice.org/ukraine-political-crisis-and-disputes-between-…) it was written that Russia is only a “regional power” that is a challenge to “imperialism”. While at that time there was still talk that US imperialism had not succeeded in degrading Russia to a semi-colony, a resolution published in February 2022 still speaks of the confrontation between “imperialism” and the authoritarian regional power Russia, but additionally claims that the purpose of the war for imperialism is precisely the “semi-colonisation of Russia” ( https://www.leftvoice.org/crisis-in-ukraine-between-the-threat-of-war-an…)
(2) LW 22, Berlin/GDR 1972, p. 270 f. The five criteria are concise: (1) the emergence of significant monopoly capital (large corporations), (2) the dominance of finance capital in conjunction with the monopolies, (3) the increased importance of capital flows over world trade (dominance of capital exports), (4) domination of the world by competing international capital associations, and (5) the division of the world by great powers linked to the monopolies.
(3) Exemplary figures for Russia’s world market share in commodity markets: oil (12%), cereals (17%), copper (4%), nickel (7%), uranium (48% with Kazakhstan), palladium (38%), aluminium (6%).