The network of empire and universal capitalism: imperialism and the laws of capitalist competition

Ramaa Vasudevan

Review of Social Economy, 2021, vol. 79, issue 1, 76-102

Abstract: Imperialism in the context of capitalism has been explained either in terms of the suspension of the laws of capitalist competition, or by focusing on the relationship of capitalism with pre-capitalist regions. This paper puts forward a theory of imperialism that is specific and internal to capitalism. The argument put forward in this paper is that the critical element of the empire of capital is the manner in which imperial power is exercised to bring the workers across the globe under the dominion of the network of capitalist relations. The distinctive logic of imperialism is understood to arise from the use of imperial power to expand the pool of available surplus value available for capital as a whole to exploit. It can be interpreted as the network externality of expanding the web of control of capital.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00346764.2019.1664759 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:79:y:2021:i:1:p:76-102

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRSE20

DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2019.1664759

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis

More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().