THE other point which continues to bother many an observer of imperialism is the so-called muted nature of inter-imperialist rivalry. This has in fact led several analysts to some sort of a Kautskian thesis of ultra-imperialism. In the midst of the First World War, Kautsky had wondered,”... Cannot the present imperialist policy be supplanted by a new, ultra-imperialist policy, which will introduce the joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital in place of the mutual rivalries of national finance capitals? Such a new phase of capitalism is at any rate conceivable. Can it be achieved? Sufficient premises are still lacking to enable us to answer this question.” “From the purely economic point of view”, wrote Kautsky, “it is not impossible that capitalism will yet go through a new phase, that of the extension of the policy of the cartels to foreign policy, the phase of ultra-imperialism.” Interestingly, Kautsky had reduced the question of imperialist annexations to a matter of mere ‘preferred policy’, thus detaching the politics of imperialism from its economics, or refusing to treat imperialism as a definite stage of imperialism, but he was quite prepared to treat ultra-imperialism, “the joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital” as a possible future phase of capitalism.

Lenin had vehemently condemned and discarded this Kautskian notion, not because he thought finance capital could never forge international unity, but because he considered it reactionary to treat any temporary international unity of finance capital as a separate phase, detached from the very basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world politics. Let us follow carefully Lenin’s argument from the following extensive excerpt from his classic “Imperialism”.

“Let us consider India, Indo-China and China. It is known that these three colonial and semi-colonial countries, with a population of six to seven hundred million, are subjected to the exploitation of the finance capital of several imperialist powers : Great Britain, France, Japan, the U.S.A., etc. Let us assume that these imperialist countries form alliances against one another in order to protect or enlarge their possessions, their interests and their “spheres of influence” in these Asiatic states; these alliances will be “inter-imperialist,” or “ultra-imperialist” alliances. Let us assume that all the imperialist countries conclude an alliance for the “peaceful” division of these parts of Asia; this alliance would be an alliance of "internationally united finance capital.” There are actual examples of alliances of this kind in the history of the twentieth century, for instance, the attitude of the powers to China. We ask, is it “conceivable,” assuming that the capitalist system remains intact — and this is precisely the assumption that Kautsky does make — that such alliances would be more than temporary, that they would eliminate friction, conflicts and struggle in every possible form?

“It is sufficient to state this question clearly to make it impossible for any reply to be given other than in the negative, for any other basis under capitalism for the division of spheres of influence, of interests, of colonies, etc., than a calculation of the strength of the participants in the division, their general economic, financial, military strength, etc., is inconceivable. And the strength of these participants in the division does not change to an equal degree, for the even development of different undertakings, trusts, branches of industry, or countries is impossible under capitalism. Half a century ago Germany was a miserable, insignificant country, as far as her capitalist strength was concerned, compared with the strength of England at that time; Japan was the same compared with Russia. Is it “conceivable” that in ten or twenty years' time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained unchanged? Absolutely inconceivable.

“Therefore, in the realities of the capitalist system, and not in the banal philistine fantasies of English parsons, or of the German “Marxist,” Kautsky, “inter-imperialist” or “ultra-imperialist” alliances, no matter what form they may assume, whether of one imperialist coalition against another, or of a general alliance embracing all the imperialist powers, are inevitably than a “truce” in periods between wars. Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the other, giving rise to alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle out of one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world politics. But in order to pacify the workers and to reconcile them with the social-chauvinists who have deserted to the side of the bourgeoisie, wise Kautsky separates one link of a single chain from the other, separates the present peaceful (and ultra-imperialist, nay, ultra-ultra-imperialist) alliance of all the powers for the pacification of China (remember the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion) from the non-peaceful conflict of tomorrow, which will prepare the ground for another “peaceful” general alliance for the partition, say, of Turkey, on the day after tomorrow, etc., etc. Instead of showing the living connection between periods of imperialist peace and periods of imperialist war, Kautsky presents the workers with a lifeless abstraction in order to reconcile them to their lifeless leaders.”

A world war or direct military conflicts cannot be the sole yardstick for measuring inter-imperialist rivalry. Local wars and civil wars too provide ample scope for imperialist intervention and there is no dearth of such wars in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The process of redivision of the world for securing greater control over economic resources continues unabated, and so does the strategic contention for enlarging spheres of imperialist influence. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc has re-opened huge territory and resources for the major imperialist powers. Witness the clamour for Eastward expansion of NATO and the major acts of imperialist intervention in former Yugoslavia. Look at the intense economic competition within the Triad – the US, Europe and Japan – and the shrill cries of trade war. And not the least, the fierce warfare raging on the battlefields of speculative finance. Imperialist countries will always have a common agenda against the third world, but that does not preclude their own uneven development and the resulting contention.

Indeed, American commentators are increasingly admitting that for all its military superiority, the US cannot really treat the world as a unipolar system. We quoted Huntington in the PB Statement on War where he has described the world as a uni-multipolar arrangement. “Global politics”, he says, “has now moved from a brief unipolar moment at the end of the Cold War into one or perhaps more uni-multipolar decades on its way towards a multipolar twenty-first century.... In this uni-multipolar world the central relationship is that between the superpower and the major regional powers.... The superpower would prefer a unipolar world and is continually tempted to act as if it were a unipolar world. The major powers would prefer a multipolar world and believe global politics is moving in that direction. A uni-multipolar world is stable only to the extent that these conflicting pulls can be balanced. In the longer term, they probably cannot be balanced, and, if as seems probable, the superpower cannot create a unipolar world, global politics will gradually evolve in the direction of a multipolar system.”