“Imperialism in its contemporary phase: global crisis, territorial domination and dependence”

Few works have marked such a decisive course in the history of humanity as the Manifesto of the Communist Party, a declaration of war by the proletariat written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels more than 170 years ago. The Manifesto will capture within its pages a series of theoretical and political revelations about the contradictory nature of modern society and the
inevitable havoc that accompanied its development. In one of the most remembered passages to this day, due to the very accurate forecast that today is revealed in its maximum splendor, the universal character of capitalism was described, illustrated in those memorable words:
“Spurred by the need to provide ever greater outlet to its products, the bourgeoisie travels all over the world. It needs to nest everywhere, establish itself everywhere, create links everywhere [...] it forges a world in its image and likeness.”[1] This categorical statement would synthesize the unification of all relationships between human beings through the formation of a world market, would allow us to distinguish the basic coordinates of its planetary order and
would expose all its different faces and facets, on which global domination would be configured by part of certain capitals, economies and regions.
It will be under this line that at the beginning of the 20th century the analyzes and theses on imperialism as a higher phase of capitalism become present within Marxist theory. Imperialism became the distinctive element of the so-called third generation of classical Marxism, who, in addition to the reflections and theorization on revolutionary strategies and the role of the bourgeois State, always had their sights set on the universality of the processes of domination and capitalist accumulation. For the historian Eric Hobsbawm, this constituted the starting
point for other broader analyses, since there is no doubt that the term imperialism was
incorporated into the political and journalistic vocabulary during the course of the debates that developed about the colonial conquest. Furthermore, it was then that it acquired, as a concept, the economic dimension that it has not lost since then. The analysis of imperialism carried out mainly by Lenin, became a central force of the revolutionary Marxism of the communist movements after 1917 and also of the revolutionary movements of the third world.[2]
In this way, for Lenin, imperialism meant “capitalism in the phase of development in which the domination of monopolies and financial capital has taken shape, the export of capital has acquired a first-order importance, the distribution of capital has begun of the world by international trusts and the distribution of its entire territory among the most important capitalist
countries has been completed.”[3] This allowed us to understand various processes such as colonial expansion, wars between powers, dependence and subordination of countries and regions in the world market, the internationalization of capital and financial, political, military, intellectual and technological hegemony as linked historical forms. with an uneven and combined development process.

Today, far from these processes disappearing, they have become more acute and
exacerbated. Since at the end of 2008 an earthquake shook the world economy. The epicenter of this movement was the United States and the fall of the investment bank Lehman Brothers.
The severe difficulties in financing housing and its impact on the entire US financial and
banking system, as a consequence of the over-indebtedness caused by several decades of a deregulated market, generated major problems for practically all sectors of the US economy.
Its effects quickly spread to the rest of the planet, leading to a widespread recession. Although initially expressed as an exclusively financial problem, at its core it meant the deep and lasting decline in the global rate of return due to overcapacity in global manufacturing industries that
caused the collapse of trade and the world economy, which It resulted in the most pronounced global slowdown since the great crisis of the 1930s. This caused capital movements and the international economy to stop during the subsequent decade, to such a degree that some observers even spoke of the end of globalization. However, rather than declaring the beginning of de-globalization or an economic reglobalization as some authors declared, this episode expressed the force towards a new readjustment in the deployment of imperialism, and more
precisely in the inter-imperialist struggle and dispute or, as Ernest Mandel would say, in the
accentuated inter-imperialist competition.[4]

Under this context, it becomes appropriate to place on the table the theoretical, historical, and current study of imperialism and its different manifestations, dimensions and processes, so that it can be recognized that imperialism is a set of mechanisms of economic and political domination that operate at the service of the hegemonic powers of world capitalism, where
the struggle between capitalist nation-states persists for dominance of the world system and territorial control. In this way, this call seeks to analyze the central aspects of the global and territorial expansion of imperialism in its historical and contemporary phases. Particularly, it proposes to deepen the knowledge of the economic, political and military processes and consequences generated by the ongoing global crisis, especially in the inter-imperialist
struggle for the division of the world and the strategic solutions of capital to reverse the fall in its profit rates. It will address the different readings of classical and contemporary authors on imperialist domination. The different debates on the causes and repercussions of the current global crisis will be addressed, and the main structural and conjunctural problems faced by
dependent and underdeveloped countries in the face of the power of imperialist economies
will be addressed. All proposals for theoretical reflections, analytical and/or explanatory
research and case studies at local, national, regional, and global levels are invited to
collaborate.

Suggestions for subtopics to develop:

• Theory, history and classic theses on imperialism.
• Imperialism and dependent capitalism: underdevelopment, unequal development and subimperialism.
• Contemporary processes of capitalist internationalization: FDI, monopolies and global value chains.
• Inter-imperialist wars, political-military interventionism, and territorial domination.
• Crisis of capitalist globalization: productive restructuring, trade (dis)integration and
  geopolitical dispute.

Guidelines for authors:
The submission rules are in the “About the journal” and “Submissions” sections of the
Revista de Estudios Globales website, which can be consulted at the following link:
https://revistas.um.es/reg/about/ submissions

Deadline for submissions: May 31th, 2024.

[1] Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, in Karl Marx, Anthology.
Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI, pp. 120-121.
[2] Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire. 1875-1914. Barcelona, Criticism, 2009, p. 69.
[3] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism, the highest phase of capitalism. Moscow, Foreign Language
Editions, 1947, p. 116.
[4] Ernest Mandel, The Marxist theory of crises and the current economic depression. Coyoacán,
(17/18), 1985, pp. 1-8. Retrieved from http://gesd.free.fr/mandel83.pdf