Class, State and Nation in the Theory of Capitalist Imperialism

Abstract

A systematic attempt to understand the connections between domestic social change, state structures and foreign policy, and the uneven development of the world economy was presented in the theory of capitalist imperialism. This analysis was prompted by the failure of the European working classes to respond to the call for international revolution at the beginning of the First World War. At the theoretical level, Marxist theories of imperialism broke with earlier accounts of the transition between capitalism and socialism in two main respects. In the first place, they attached far greater importance to the way in which the symbols of national power and prestige had contributed to the reproduction of capitalist societies; and secondly, they stressed the inadequacy of any discussion of the transition between capitalism and socialism which failed to take account of the fact of war. These shifts of emphases embodied a recognition that the power of nation-states had been greatly enhanced by the process of industrialisation. In this context these approaches raised serious problems for earlier Marxist attempts to construct a critical sociology of world politics.