Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century: Reactualising the Theoretical Heritage of Friedrich Engels

Abstract

The article considers the theoretical legacy of Friedrich Engels within the context of the crisis transformation of the neoliberal world order at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The process of monopolization putting end to planlessness, which Engels noted in the early 1890s, resulted in a global production system organized within global production networks under control of giant transnational corporations. Further development of the stock exchange and fictitious capital noted by Engels more than a hundred years ago led to the dominance of the global finance capital which became the cause of financialization. In the context of the global recession, competition for sources of raw materials and sales markets is intensifying due to the geopolitical and economic rise of China and other large countries of the periphery which claim for redivision of geo-economic and geopolitical map. The unfolding of the late capitalism's contradictions restores the socio-economic relations similar to imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century and thus reproduces, with a new quality, the causes of the First World war, the military and political aspects of which were accurately predicted by Engels a quarter of a century before its beginning.