Welcome to the third week of the Imperialism Reading Group! Last week’s thread is here.
This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I’m generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.
The first book we are covering is the foundation, the one and only, Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. We will read two chapters per week, meaning that we will finish reading in mid-to-late February. Unless a better suggestion is made, we will then cover Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism, and continue with various books from there.
Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don’t wish to reread, can’t follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too.
This week, we will be reading Chapter 5: Division Of The World Among Capital Associations and Chapter 6: Division Of The World Among The Great Powers.
Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.
My understanding of his argument (and I would love for somebody to correct me if you don’t think I get the full picture!) is as follows, and is basically two-pronged:
First prong: The lower the minimum denomination of shares, the more total investors there can be (as most of society is impoverished and would like to, if possible, put some of their savings into banks and shares and such in order to grow their savings). The more total investors, the less united the control over a company can be, as many tiny shareholders will probably not show up to meetings. The less united the control, the more likely that a single corporation can take full control over it with relatively few shares. So, as you say, “More scattered investors holding small shares increases the power of the remaining finance capitalists that control ~40% shares?”
Second prong: The more people put their money into these shares, the more invested they are in the success of the corporation, so as to grow their savings. Therefore, the proletariat becomes kinda bourgeois-ified (most notable in Britain in Lenin’s day, and in the US in the current day) because they know that imperialist international relationships - colonies and such - must be maintained. Therefore, naive “democratization” by making each worker a shareholder is actually counterproductive to socialism.