Law of the unevenness of the economic and political development of the capitalist countries
The law of the unevenness of the economic and political development of the capitalist countries is a central theorem of Marxism-Leninism and the Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism . Lenin first formulated this law in 1915 in his essay "On the slogan of the United States of Europe".
content
The law says that in the period of imperialism one capitalist country overtakes the other by leaps and bounds and thus comes into conflict with the existing property relations in the world. This makes a struggle for redistribution inevitable, and volatility is the immediate cause of imperialist wars. This exacerbates the internal contradictions of capitalism, which leads to the possibility and necessity of the victory of socialism in one country.
Reason
The uneven development is a characteristic of capitalism. With the increasing concentration of production in a few large companies, however, the uneven development takes on a volatile character. The countries that later embarked on the path of capitalist development take advantage of the results of technical progress and, by means of more modern production facilities, can outstrip their competitors with great speed, while the competitors have their outdated production facilities hanging on their feet like lead. According to this theory, this tendency is exacerbated by the export of capital and the parasitic character of the monopoly.
application
According to the Leninist view, the law plays an important role in explaining the particularly aggressive character of German, Japanese and Italian imperialism. Due to the belated development of capitalism, these countries were on the one hand late in dividing up the world, but on the other hand were able to build more modern production facilities. However, the production facilities required raw material sources, sales markets and investment spheres on a huge scale. This created a huge contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production , which they could only resolve through the struggle for a redistribution of the world, that is, in the struggle for world domination .
The fastest growing countries were in this order:
- Japan
- Italy
- Germany
- United States
- England
- France
Josef Stalin declared in a speech in Moscow on February 9, 1946 :
“The Marxists have repeatedly stated that the capitalist world economic system contains the elements of a general crisis and warlike clashes, that as a result the development of world capitalism in our time does not take place in the form of a smooth and steady forward movement, but goes through crises and war disasters. The point is that the uneven development of capitalist countries over time usually leads to an abrupt disturbance of the equilibrium within the world system of capitalism, with the group of capitalist countries that consider themselves to be less well supplied with raw materials and markets Attempts to change the situation and reallocate the 'spheres of influence' in their favor - by using armed force. "
The law also created the possibility of the doctrine of socialism in one country . The aggravation of the contradictions between the capitalist countries as a result of the uneven development weakens the world front of imperialism, therefore the chain of the imperialist front can be broken at its weakest link and socialism can triumph in a few countries or even in one country.
Web links
literature
- JB Turchins: The aggravation of the uneven development of capitalism by the second world war . Berlin 1956.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: On the slogan of the United States of Europe . In: The Social Democrat . No. 44 of 23 August 1915. Printed in: VI Lenin. Werke, Berlin 1960, Volume 21, pp. 342–346. On-line
- ↑ Cf. Eugen Varga : German imperialism, the historical roots of its peculiarities . Berlin 1946, passim.
- ^ Andrei A. Gretschko : History of the Second World War 1939–1945 in twelve volumes . Berlin 1975, Volume 3, p. 500.
- ^ JW Stalin : Works . Dortmund 1979, Volume 15, p. 33. online ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
