Sub-imperialism of BITS

In the 1990s, newly industrialized countries (NICs) were pointed out as role models for developing countries. For the last few years, Brazil, India, Turkey and South Africa (BITS) have emerged as important economies.

In development as well as journalistic discourse, the BITS have replaced the NICs as models for developing countries aspiring to shed their backwardness. A common lesson to be learnt, we are ritualistically told, is to let the god of free market rule your economy. Is it that simple?

While, every member constituting BITS requires separate analysis, yet to properly understand the growth of Brazil, Indian, Turkey – China and Russia will be hard to include in this category – one must understand the sub-imperialist place these countries occupy in the global political economy and dependency chains.

But before exploring sub-imperialism, let me point out that imperialism is not just about ‘domination’. It is also about the periphery’s ‘dependency’ on the ‘centre’. Employing a Marxist approach, which I consider is best in explaining this phenomenon, imperialism can be defined as capitalist exploitation by the west (centre) of the rest (periphery). Finance, capital and monopolies, among other factors, are constitutive characteristics of imperialism.

Sub-imperialism refers to “the stage of monopolies and finance capital in the dependent capitalism of the periphery countries”. It is a phenomenon that emerged in the 1960s or so. Some observers in the 1960s and the 1970s, principle among them the Brazilian sociologist Ruy Mauro Marini, argued that Brazil had achieved a kind of local economic and political power, albeit with fundamental structural limitations, that was analogous in some respects – while subordinated – to the hemispheric economic predominance of the US.

This stage in developing (‘Third World’) countries has been possible only after political independence, which has brought about sufficient preconditions for the emergence of sub-imperialism. Analysing Brazil, Marini pointed out that the Brazilian military state of the 1970s had adopted the role of a ‘centre’ from which imperialist expansion in Latin America would radiate.

Identifying Brazil’s development as a manifestation of imperialism, Marini defined sub-imperialism as “the form which dependent capital assumes upon reaching the state of monopolies and finance capital”. However, he characterised Brazilian sub-imperialism as “the extension of North American imperialism”.

Therefore, in a way while sub-imperialism theories reject the ‘dependency school’s’ rigid centre-periphery paradigm, sub-imperialism also validates the widely quoted definition of dependency by Dos Santos, which asserts that the dependent country’s economy is “conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy”, that the dependent country can expand and be self-sustaining only as a reflection of the expansion of the dominant countries, “which may have either a positive or a negative effect upon their immediate development”.

An oft-quoted illustration of the sub-imperialist phenomenon is the relationship Brazil has with Paraguay: “The Brazilian cultural mission reigns over the philosophy and education departments of Paraguay universities, but North Americans now run Brazil’s universities. The general staff of the Paraguay army receives advice not only from Pentagon technicians but also from Brazilian generals who, in turn, are an echo of [the] Pentagon. Through open contraband channels, Brazilian industry products invade the Paraguayan market, but the Sao Paolo factories that produce them have belonged to US corporations since the denationalizing avalanche of recent years”.

Sub-imperialism, as in the instance of Brazil-Paraguay, implies two basic components: on the one hand, a medium organic composition on the world scale of national productive apparatus, and, on the other, the exercise of a relatively autonomous expansionist policy, which is not only accompanied by a greater integration in the imperialist productive system, but also is maintained under the hegemony exercised by imperialism on an international scale. In other words, sub-imperial countries do not go in contradiction – temporary exceptions aside – with the imperial centre.

More concretely, as one scholar points out, the sub-imperialist process basically “represents a state strategy of industrial export that consciously replicates to some degree the pattern of centre-country capital export and, ultimately, unequal exchange with less developed countries in the periphery” – that is, the sub-imperial country becomes a regional centre lording over peripheral countries while remaining dependent and subordinate to the imperial centre. While Marini explored the case of Brazil, others applied the concept on India, Iran of the 1970s, Israel, South Africa, Portugal and Canada.

Noted Pakistani scholar, Feroz Ahmed, assigned the emergence of sub-imperialism to an “era of acute crisis within the imperialist world and partial loss of US hegemony, established after World War II”, necessitating “new forms and methodology of imperialist domination”. Hence, “selected resource-rich and strategically located countries” were chosen by imperialism as the watchdogs in different regions. However, certain other scholars have assigned centrality to the economic factor.

Vayrynen and Herrera, for instance, point out, “subimperialism is in other words military control by dominant actors through go-between armies, economic exploitation through go-between corporations and banks as well as political domination through go-between political elites. It is, however, misleading to assume that various dimensions of subimperialism are of equal importance; on the contrary a certain hierarchy can be established between them. This means concretely that the economic aspects of subimperialism are most central for the simple reason that they have molded the present international structure that allows (sub) imperialism to operate. The role of military and political control is rather to guarantee that this structure continues to exist”.

While sub-imperialism implies a trichotomy (consisting of three-tier dependence chain: centre, sub-imperialist countries and periphery), it is an element of the dominance structure of the international system and not an aberration. Sub-imperialist countries serve as nodal points in the south for an imperialist capital accumulation.

“In other words, sub-imperialist actors are conceived as intermediaries in the relations between centre and periphery when they are simultaneously both dominant and dominated units; more dominated than dominant, however”, claim Vayrynen and Herrera. But the emergence of sub-imperialism requires certain preconditions borne out of an ensemble of subjective and objective factors.

It is also important to note that imperialism reinvents itself and conceives new methods to skim surplus value and resources off the periphery. However, local ruling elites have to be incorporated in this process which lends native rulers ‘bargaining’ power.

This bargaining power is “determined by the abundance of natural resources, the local development of the productive forces, the class basis of the local government and the relative importance of the country in the regional context”. Attempts at independent development, on the contrary, “always risk violent overthrows of governments, military interventions, subversive and economic blockade”…(Chile, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Indonesia, Brazil, Iran, Cuba, etc).

Hence, under especially favourable conditions, the dependent local capital enjoys a capital accumulation process, as a meagre share of the whole imperial ravage. The super-exploitation of the labour force, the monopolisation of the economy, and the existence of abundant natural resources are the very basis of such a process. The place of BITS in the world economy has to be taken into account with their sub-imperialist status – or as junior partners of imperialism – instead of assigning their recent economic growth to the miracle of the free market.

(I have depended on, and mostly quoted, Vayrynen and Herrera, Ruy M Marini, Dos Santos, and Daniel Zirker to conceptualise the idea of sub-imperialism)

The writer is a freelance contributor.  Email: mfsulehria@hotmail.com