Three Paradigms in Contemporary Imperialism Studies

In June 2018, at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed: “China is currently in the best period of development since modern times; the world is undergoing changes unseen in a century. The two are interwoven and mutually reinforcing.” To elucidate the world’s “changes unseen in a century” and to answer the General Secretary’s epochal question—“What is wrong with the world, and what should we do about it?”—the key lies in analyzing the changes in the world’s political and economic landscape and their inherent contradictions. Imperialism theory primarily analyzes the political and economic relations between capital and the state, as well as among states. It is an important theoretical component of Marxism for analyzing the evolution of the world’s political and economic landscape and its inherent contradictions, and thus serves as an analytical paradigm for answering the General Secretary’s “epochal question.” Since its establishment by Lenin in the early 20th century, imperialism theory has undergone a century of development. From the classical imperialism theory of the period around World War I, to the monopoly capital theory, dependency theory, and world-systems theory after World War II, and then to various new imperialism theories of the 21st century, all reflect the epochal characteristics of Marxist scholars’ analyses of the world’s political and economic landscape and its inherent contradictions.

2018年6月，习近平总书记在中央外事工作会议上强调：“当前，我国处于近代以来最好的发展时期，世界处于百年未有之大变局，两者同步交织、相互激荡。”阐释世界“百年未有之大变局”，回答总书记“世界怎么了，我们怎么办”的时代之问，关键是如何分析世界政治经济格局的变化及其内在矛盾。帝国主义理论主要分析资本与国家以及国家之间的政治经济关系，是马克思主义分析世界政治经济格局发展演变及其内在矛盾的重要理论组成部分，因而是回答总书记“时代之问”的分析范式。帝国主义理论自20世纪初期由列宁创立以来，已有百年发展历程。从第一次世界大战前后的经典帝国主义理论，到第二次世界大战以后的垄断资本理论、依附理论和世界体系理论，再到21世纪的各种新帝国主义理论，都体现了马克思主义学者分析世界政治经济格局及其内在矛盾的时代性特征。

After the end of the Cold War, the world’s political and economic landscape underwent profound adjustment, economic globalization accelerated, neoliberalism spread widely, and the United States entered an unprecedented period of expansion, becoming “the only truly global power.” Against this backdrop, right-wing politicians and scholars in Europe and America called on the United States to assume a leadership role worldwide and to take the lead in building a prosperous and stable “new empire.” Most left-wing scholars did not endorse the “new empire” advocated by the right wing. Grounding themselves in Marxism, they analyzed the world economic order under U.S. hegemony from various angles under the name of “imperialism.” Since 2000, foreign Marxist journals such as *Monthly Review* and *Historical Materialism* have repeatedly run special issues on imperialism studies, sparking debates and discussions on contemporary imperialism and deepening the analysis of the evolution of the contemporary world political and economic order and its inherent contradictions. Domestic Marxist scholars have primarily focused on analyzing the contemporary application of classical imperialism theory. Scholars represented by Cheng Enfu, Wang Jincun, Li Cong, Jin Huiming, and Luo Wendong have dissected contemporary imperialism from perspectives such as international monopoly capital, U.S. hegemony, neocolonialism, and supranational monopoly capitalism. These studies have undoubtedly deepened our understanding of the contemporary capitalist world political and economic order and its inherent contradictions.

冷战结束以后，世界政治经济格局深度调整，经济全球化加快推进，新自由主义广泛传播，美国进入了史无前例的扩张期，成为“唯一的一个真正的全球性大国”。在此背景下，欧美右翼政要和学者呼吁美国在世界范围内承担起领导责任，并主导构建繁荣稳定的“新帝国”。大多数左翼学者并不认同右翼人士鼓吹的“新帝国”，他们立足于马克思主义，从各个角度以“帝国主义”为名分析了美国治下的世界经济秩序。2000年以来，《每月评论》和《历史唯物主义》等国外马克思主义类刊物多次开设帝国主义研究专栏，围绕当代帝国主义展开争论和讨论，深化了对当代世界政治经济秩序发展演变及其内在矛盾的分析。国内马克思主义学者主要围绕经典帝国主义理论的当代应用进行分析。以程恩富、王金存、李琮、靳辉明和罗文东为代表的学者，主要从国际垄断资本、美国霸权、新殖民主义和超国家垄断资本主义等视角剖析了当代帝国主义。这些研究无疑都加深了我们对当代资本主义世界政治经济秩序及其内在矛盾的理解。

Current research results on foreign imperialism theory are very rich. Some overviews, following a chronological thread, analyze imperialism theories from different historical stages vertically; others, following a thematic thread, integrate the representative views of different scholars horizontally. From the existing analyses and debates on imperialism among foreign Marxist scholars, two basic issues are primarily involved: first, whether contemporary imperialism has undergone a qualitative change compared with classical imperialism; second, whether contemporary imperialism possesses inherent stability. If contemporary imperialism has indeed undergone a qualitative change—that is, if monopoly capitalism has come to an end—then we must, as Lenin did a hundred years ago, redefine the stage of capitalist development. At the same time, only by elucidating the stability or instability of the contemporary imperialist order and its inherent contradictions can we grasp the direction of evolution of the world political and economic order and answer the “epochal question” raised by General Secretary Xi Jinping. Based on these two basic issues, we categorize the current imperialism theories of foreign Marxist scholars into three analytical paradigms: super-imperialism, hegemonic imperialism, and late imperialism. On the basis of sorting out the expositions of representative scholars within these three analytical paradigms, we offer a critical review, compare, absorb, and draw on these studies to analyze contemporary imperialism and answer the “epochal question” raised by General Secretary Xi Jinping.

当前对国外帝国主义理论研究的成果十分丰富，有的综述根据时间线索，从纵向分析了不同历史阶段的帝国主义理论；有的综述根据问题线索，从横向整合了不同学者的代表性观点。从已有的国外马克思主义学者的帝国主义分析及其争论来看，主要涉及两个基本问题：一是与经典帝国主义相比，当代帝国主义是否已经发生质变；二是当代帝国主义是否具有内在稳定性。如果当代帝国主义已经发生质变，即垄断资本主义已经终结的话，那么我们就必须像列宁100年前所做的那样，重新定位资本主义的发展阶段。同时，只有阐明当代帝国主义秩序的稳定与否及其内在矛盾，我们才能把握世界政治经济秩序的演变方向，才能回答习近平总书记提出的“时代之问”。根据上述两个基本问题，我们将当前国外马克思主义学者的帝国主义理论分为超级帝国主义、霸权帝国主义和晚期帝国主义三大分析范式，在梳理三大分析范式中的代表性学者论述基础上进行批判性评述，比较、吸收和借鉴这些研究来分析当代帝国主义，回答习近平总书记提出的“时代之问”。

I. Qualitative Change and Stability: Super-Imperialism

一、质变与稳定：超级帝国主义

Although “super-imperialism” is similar in name to Karl Kautsky’s “ultra-imperialism,” it is by no means a simple return of the latter in the era of globalization. Some scholars argue that the process of globalization has dissolved the hierarchical structure of imperialism, and that imperialism manifests itself in an invisible, abstract, and integrated form. For example, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that Empire is a borderless, stateless, decentralized global order. William Robinson and Leslie Sklair, among others, argue that in the era of globalization, capital has completely swallowed up the nation-state; freely mobile transnational capital has constructed a brand-new international order, forming a “transnational capitalist class” and a “transnational state,” manifesting as a super-economic empire. We summarize the imperialism theories that argue that imperialism has undergone a qualitative change and possesses inherent stability as the “super-imperialism” analytical paradigm.

超级帝国主义与卡尔·考茨基的“超帝国主义”尽管名称相似，但绝不是后者在全球化时代的简单复归。一些学者认为，全球化进程已经消解了帝国主义等级制度，帝国主义表现为一种无形化、抽象化和一体化的形态。例如，麦克尔·哈特和安东尼奥·奈格里认为，帝国是无疆界、无国籍、去中心化的全球秩序。威廉·罗宾逊和莱斯利·斯克莱尔等人则认为，全球化时代的资本已完全吞噬了民族国家，自由流动的跨国资本构建了崭新的国际秩序，形成了“跨国资产阶级”和“跨国国家”，表现为一种超级经济帝国。我们将那些主张帝国主义已经发生质变，且具有内在稳定性的帝国主义理论概括为“超级帝国主义”分析范式。

1. Empire

1.帝国

Hardt and Negri argue that in the era of globalization, imperialism has qualitatively changed into a centerless, borderless, stabilized Empire. “Along with the global market and global circuits of production has emerged a new form of sovereignty.” Compared with imperialism, Empire establishes no center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule. Empire is composed of a series of national and supranational institutions united under a single logic of rule. Within its open, expanding frontiers, this apparatus of rule continuously strengthens its integration of the entire global realm. The distinct national colors of the imperialist world map have been merged and mixed into the global rainbow of Empire.

哈特和奈格里认为，全球化时代帝国主义已经质变为一种无中心、无疆界、稳定化的帝国。“伴随着全球市场和生产的全球流水线的形成……一种新的主权形式正在出现。”与帝国主义相比，帝国不建立权力的中心，不依赖固定的疆界和界限。它是一个无中心、无疆界的统治机器。帝国由一系列的国家和超国家的机构组成，是在单一统治原则下结合起来的新全球统治形式。在其开放的、扩展的边界当中，这一统治机器不断加强对整个全球领域的统合。帝国主义世界地图中明显的民族国家色彩，已被合并、混合在帝国全球的彩虹中。

The global expansion of capital requires breaking down the boundaries of nation-states and capitalist monopolies; this process promotes the formation of the imperial order. Capital is inherently expansive and must inevitably break through its own accumulation barriers to create a unified world market. The development of capitalism led to the replacement of monarchical states by nation-states and the replacement of the order of subjects by the order of citizens; national sovereignty emerged accordingly. Because different nation-states occupy different territories, imperialist sovereignty is confined within specific territorial spaces. The process of economic globalization has shattered the limited sovereignty within the specific spaces of nation-states, replacing it with borderless imperial sovereignty. “The fundamental characteristic of imperial sovereignty is that its space is always open.” Furthermore, after capitalism entered the imperialist stage characterized by monopoly, the monopoly brought about by capital competition created obstacles to capital expansion. “The competition that is necessary for the operation and expansion of capital must proportionally decline in the imperialist stage relative to the development of monopoly. With the emergence of commercial monopolies and protective tariffs, and the appearance of imperialist states and colonial regions, imperialism continuously displays and reinforces its limited boundaries, hindering or directing economic, social, and cultural exchanges.” Monopoly restricts capital expansion; imperialism creates barriers to capital flow, hindering the realization of the world market. Capital will strive to eliminate monopoly, replacing imperialism with Empire, and once again create a smooth, broad space for capital expansion. The power of Empire operates through a three-tiered pyramidal structure, with different operations at each level. At the apex of the first tier is the United States, holding global hegemony; in the middle are the nation-states, primarily the G7; at the bottom are various international organizations. The second tier is mainly composed of multinational corporations and other nation-states. The third tier is mainly composed of the masses and non-governmental organizations, and so on. The process of the evolution of imperialist sovereignty into imperial sovereignty is realized through the United States’ extension of its constitution globally. “In fact, we are entering the process of the formation of Empire through the extension of a domestic constitution.”

资本全球扩张需要打破民族国家疆界和资本主义垄断，这一过程推动了帝国秩序的形成。资本天然具有扩张性，必然要冲破自身积累障碍，打造统一的世界市场。资本主义的发展使得民族国家取代了君主国家，公民秩序取代了臣民秩序，民族国家主权应运而生。因为不同民族国家占据不同领土，所以帝国主义主权被限定在特定领土空间范围之内。经济全球化进程将民族国家特定空间内的有限主权摧垮，取而代之的是没有边界的帝国主权。“帝国式主权的最根本特点在于：它的空间永远是开放的。”另外，资本主义进入以垄断为特征的帝国主义阶段以后，资本竞争带来的垄断对资本扩张形成阻碍。“作为资本运行和扩张所必备的竞争相对于垄断的发展必然在帝国主义阶段成比例地衰退。伴随着商业的专营权和保护性关税的出现，以及帝国主义国家和殖民地区的出现，帝国主义正持续显示和加强它的有限的疆界，阻碍或引导着经济、社会和文化的交流。”垄断限制了资本扩张，帝国主义为资本流动创造了壁垒，阻碍了世界市场的实现。资本会努力消除垄断，用帝国来取代帝国主义，重新为资本扩张建立平滑的广阔空间。帝国的权力是通过三个层次的金字塔型结构来运作的，在每个层次中又有不同的运作，第一层的顶端是掌握全球霸权的美国，中间是以七国集团为主的民族国家，底端是不同的国际组织；第二层主要是跨国公司和其他民族国家；第三层主要是大众和非政府组织，等等。帝国主义主权演变为帝国主权的过程，是通过美国在全球范围内拓展其宪法实现的。“实际上，我们进入的是由一部国内宪法的拓展走入帝国的形成过程。”

Immaterial labour is the economic foundation of Empire. Capital’s drive for stable and continuous accumulation stimulates a transformation in the mode of production, namely the shift from material labour to immaterial labour. Immaterial production, or postmodern production, is a mode of production dominated by service-sector production and information-based production. There are three main forms of immaterial labour: industrial labour that has been informatised and has absorbed communication technologies; labour involving analytical creativity and symbolic tasks; and affective labour related to social interaction. Immaterial production is a decentralised, deterritorialised network mode of production, giving rise to transnational corporations that transcend the traditional boundaries of nation-states, and also giving rise to Empire. Immaterial labour is not governed by external coercive forces as previous forms of labour were, but is immanent within the labour activity itself. The creation of surplus value also primarily takes place through linguistic, communicative and affective networks, adopting cooperative modes of interaction. Traditional industrial workers disappear with the rise of immaterial labour, replaced by a new subject of resistance against Empire—the “multitude”.

非物质劳动是帝国的经济基础。资本追求稳定的持续的积累，这刺激了生产方式的转变，即从物质劳动向非物质劳动的转变。非物质性生产或者说后现代化生产，是以服务业生产和信息化生产为主导的生产方式。非物质劳动主要有三种形式：已被信息化和吸收了通信技术的大工业劳动，带有分析的创造性和符号化任务的劳动，与社交相关的情感性劳动。非物质性生产是一种去中心化的、去地域化的网络式生产方式，孕育了超越民族国家传统疆界的跨国公司，也孕育了帝国。非物质劳动并非像以前各种形式劳动那样由外在强制力支配，而是内在于劳动活动本身。剩余价值的创造也主要通过语言、交际和情感网络，采取合作性的互动方式。传统产业工人随着非物质劳动的兴起而消失，取而代之的是新的反抗帝国的主体——“大众”。

2. The Super-Economic Empire

2.超级经济帝国

Robinson argues that imperialism in the era of globalisation has evolved into a “super-economic empire” constructed upon transnational production, composed of a transnational capitalist class and a transnational state. Robinson first uses Marx’s circuit of capital theory to analyse capitalist transnational production. In the era of globalisation, the expansion of transnational corporations has made capitalist production dispersed and fragmented on a world scale. In the pre-globalisation era, the first part of the capital circuit, M—C…P…C', occurred within individual nations. After commodities were sold on the international market, profits returned home to begin a new circuit. In the era of globalisation, P is highly dispersed globally, and thus the M—C…P part is also highly dispersed. In the era of globalisation, not only is production global, but the markets for commodities and services are also global.

罗宾逊认为，帝国主义在全球化时代已经演变为一种建构在跨国生产之上的，由跨国资产阶级和跨国国家组成的“超级经济帝国”。罗宾逊首先运用马克思资本循环理论分析了资本主义跨国生产。全球化时代跨国公司的扩张，使得资本主义生产在世界范围内变得分散化和碎片化。前全球化时代资本循环的第一部分M—C…P…C'发生在各国内部。商品在国际市场上出售之后，利润返回国内又开始新一轮循环。全球化时代P在全球范围内被高度分散化，因而M—C…P部分也被高度分散化。全球化时代不仅生产是世界性的，商品和服务的市场也是世界性的。

The globalisation of production provides the basis for the transnationalisation of classes and the rise of a transnational capitalist class. Robinson analyses the formation of the transnational capitalist class from the perspective of the contradictory movement of Marx’s economic base and superstructure. “As the entire circuit becomes transnationalised, so too do classes, political processes, states, and cultural-ideological processes… In the new era, the trajectory of class and group relations is not the nation-state, but the global system.” The transnational capitalist class are the owners of transnational capital, possessing the world’s principal means of production. They mainly include class-conscious transnational elites who constitute the internal circuit of transnational capital, as well as transnational managers, transnational bureaucrats, transnational technicians, and mainstream thinkers and intellectuals who serve the transnational capitalist class. The transnational capitalist class has become the new ruling class of the world, possessing class consciousness, and is increasingly organised, constantly seeking to maximise class interests.

生产的全球化为阶级的跨国化和跨国资本家阶级的崛起提供了基础。罗宾逊沿着马克思经济基础和上层建筑矛盾运动的视角分析跨国资本家阶级的形成。“随着整个循环变得跨国化，阶级、政治过程、国家以及文化意识形态过程也随之变得跨国化……在新的时代，阶级和集团关系的轨迹并不是民族国家，而是全球体系。”跨国资本家阶级是跨国资本的所有者，占有全世界最主要的生产资料。他们主要包括，构成跨国资本内部循环的具有阶级意识的跨国精英以及服务于跨国资本家阶级的跨国经理、跨国官僚、跨国技术人员和主流思想家及知识分子。跨国资本家阶级已经成为新的世界性统治阶级，具备了阶级意识，并被日渐组织起来，不断谋求阶级利益最大化。

Furthermore, the “economic dominance of transnational capital” will “turn towards its possible political form of domination”, namely the transnational state. The transnational state aims to maintain the collective authority of the global ruling class, can incorporate nation-states into larger organisational structures, and institutionalise the new class relations between global capital and global labour. The transnational state is “a specific cluster of class forces and class relations closely linked to capitalist globalisation and the rise of the transnational capitalist class, embodied in various political institutions. These institutions are transformed nation-states and various supranational agencies institutionalised to facilitate the rule of the hegemonic fraction of capital worldwide.” The transnational state is a network-like organisation serving world capitalism, including not only economic organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, but also political organisations such as the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the European Union. Robinson believes that the global rule of the transnational capitalist class and the transnational state, sharing common class interests, generally eliminates the basis for struggle among imperialisms, and global imperialism can remain largely stable.

进一步地，“跨国资本的经济统治地位”将“转向其可能出现的政治统治形式”，即跨国国家。跨国国家旨在维护全球统治阶级的集体权威，可以将民族国家纳入更大的组织结构之中，将全球资本和全球劳动力之间新的阶级关系制度化。跨国国家是“一种与资本主义全球化和跨国资本家阶级的崛起紧密相关的阶级力量和阶级关系的特殊群集，它具体体现在各种政治制度之中。这些制度是经过变革的民族国家和有助于世界范围内资本的霸权分支的统治而制度化的各种超国家机构”。跨国国家是一个为世界资本主义服务的网络式组织，既包括国际货币基金组织、世界银行和世界贸易组织等经济组织，也包括联合国、经济合作与发展组织和欧盟等政治组织。罗宾逊认为，拥有共同阶级利益的跨国资产阶级和跨国国家的全球统治，总体上消除了帝国主义之间的斗争基础，全球帝国主义基本上可以保持稳定。

II. Qualitative Change and Instability: Hegemonic Imperialism

二、质变与不稳定：霸权帝国主义

Hegemonic imperialism primarily refers to the United States using economic, political, and even military means to control the international political and economic order of other countries; that is, imperialism has evolved into US imperialism, but it possesses inherent instability. Examples include David Harvey’s new imperialism based on “predatory hegemony”, Ellen Wood’s “empire of capital” discussing the US using economic power to manipulate the international economic order, Alex Callinicos’s “competitive imperialism” based on geo-economic and political competition, and Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s “American empire” shaped by US international power.

霸权帝国主义主要是指美国利用经济、政治甚至军事等手段，控制其他国家的国际政治经济秩序，也就说帝国主义已经演变为美帝国主义，但其具有内在不稳定性。例如，大卫·哈维基于“剥夺性霸权”阐述的新帝国主义、埃伦·伍德论述的美国利用经济力量操纵国际经济秩序的“资本帝国”、亚历克斯·卡里尼科斯基于地缘经济和政治竞争提出的“竞争性帝国主义”以及莱奥·帕尼奇和萨姆·金丁阐明的美国基于国际力量塑造的“美帝国”。

1. New Imperialism

1.新帝国主义

Harvey argues that new imperialism primarily overcomes crises of capital overaccumulation through “spatio-temporal fixes” and “accumulation by dispossession”, manifesting as a “predatory hegemony”. Imperialism originates from the dialectical relationship between the territorial logic of power and the capitalist logic of power. The territorial logic refers to “the politics of states and empires”, that is, imperialism as a specific political project whose proponents’ power is based on control over a certain territory and the ability to mobilise its human and natural resources to achieve political, economic, and military goals. The capitalist logic refers to “the molecular process of capital accumulation in space and time”, that is, imperialism as a political-economic process diffusing in space and time, where the deployment and use of capital occupies the primary position.

哈维认为，新帝国主义主要通过“时空修复”和“剥夺性积累”来克服资本过度积累危机，表现为一种“剥夺性霸权”。帝国主义起源于权力的领土逻辑与资本逻辑之间的辩证关系。领土逻辑是指“国家和帝国的政治”，即帝国主义作为一种特殊的政治方案，其推行者的力量基于对一定领土的控制以及动员其人力和自然资源实现政治、经济和军事目标的能力。资本逻辑是指“资本积累在时空中的分子化过程”，即帝国主义作为一种在时空中扩散的政治经济进程，支配和使用资本占据着其首要的地位。

The “spatio-temporal fix” is a specifically capitalist way of resolving difficulties in capital accumulation. Simply put, overaccumulation in a specific territorial system produces a surplus of labour and a surplus of capital. This surplus may be absorbed through temporal fixes and spatial fixes. The former refers to temporal displacement through long-term capital projects such as education and scientific research, postponing the time when capital value re-enters the circulation sphere; the latter refers to spatial displacement by developing new markets elsewhere, with new productive capacities and new resources, new social environments, and idle labour. In the process of spatial fixes for surplus capital, new centres of capital accumulation and surplus capital constantly emerge. Faced with the powerful momentum of capital overaccumulation, various dynamic centres of capital accumulation compete fiercely on the world stage. To gain a dominant position in capital accumulation, the hegemon must seize favourable locations for spatial fixes through economic, political, diplomatic, and even military means, and must endlessly expand, extend, and strengthen its power.

“时空修复”是资本主义特有的解决资本积累困难的方式。简单来说，特定地域系统的过度积累会产生劳动盈余和资本盈余。这种盈余可能通过时间修复和空间修复来吸收，前者是指通过教育和科研等长期资本项目进行时间转移，以推迟资本价值在未来重新进入流通领域的时间；后者是指通过在别处开发新的市场，以新的生产能力和新的资源、新的社会环境和闲置劳动来进行空间转移。在过剩资本的空间修复过程中，新的资本积累中心和过剩资本不断涌现。在资本过度积累的强大态势面前，各个充满活力的资本积累中心在世界舞台上激烈竞争。为了在资本积累中占据优势地位，霸权必须通过经济、政治、外交甚至军事等手段抢夺空间修复的有利场所，必须无止境地扩张、延伸和加强它的力量。

“Accumulation by dispossession” is a means of appropriating surplus value without going through production, an important means adopted in the process of capital’s spatial fixes, and a core feature of new imperialism. What accumulation by dispossession does is to release a series of assets (including labour power) at extremely low prices (sometimes even completely free). Overaccumulated capital can seize these assets and rapidly use them for profitable activities. Privatisation, commodification, and financialisation are the main means of accumulation by dispossession. Arrighi argues that a model of the capitalist world-system encompassing the concept of liquidity hegemony can replace more complex analyses of imperialism. The decline of the nation-state in the era of globalisation means that imperialism and monopoly capitalism are obsolete, leaving only a world system filled with hegemonic struggles. Harvey absorbs Arrighi’s argument, emphasising that Arrighi’s concept of hegemony should replace the concept of imperialism, abandoning the rigid geographical division between core and periphery. The fragmentation of value flows and hegemonic competition and transfer in the era of globalisation are core features of contemporary imperialism.

“剥夺性积累”是一种不经过生产而占有剩余价值的手段，是资本空间修复过程中采取的重要手段，是新帝国主义的核心特征。剥夺性积累所做的是以极低的价格（在某些时候甚至完全免费）释放一系列资产（其中包括劳动力）。过度积累的资本能够抓住这些资产，并迅速利用这些资产进行赢利活动。私有化、商品化和金融化等是剥夺性积累的主要手段。阿瑞吉认为，涵盖流动性霸权概念的资本主义世界体系模型，可以替代更为复杂的帝国主义分析。全球化时代民族国家的衰落，意味着帝国主义和垄断资本主义已经过时，剩下的是一个充斥霸权争夺的世界体系。哈维吸收了阿瑞吉的论述，他强调，应当用阿瑞吉霸权概念取代帝国主义概念，放弃核心和外围之间僵化的地理划分。全球化时代价值流动散乱化以及霸权竞争和转移，是当代帝国主义的核心特征。

2. Empire of Capital

2.资本帝国

Wood argues that capital imperialism is a new stage of capitalist development in which the United States controls the world by manipulating the mechanisms of the capitalist economy. Tracing the historical evolution of capitalism from property empire, to commercial empire, to capital empire, she reveals the specificity of capital empire: economic power detaches from and supersedes extra-economic power. Property empires, represented by the Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire, primarily relied on extra-economic forces such as military conquest and political domination for colonial rule and economic plunder. "The empire's control over the economy was always limited by the capacity of extra-economic forces." Commercial empires, represented by the Arab Empire, the Venetian Empire, and the Netherlands, mainly profited by controlling international trade. Although economic power played an important role in commercial empires, extra-economic forces still held sway. "To call them commercial empires is not to say that their imperial rule was based on various forms of economic coercion... extra-economic forces remained the fundamental factor at work." The British Empire was in a transitional period from traditional imperialism to capital empire. The British Empire's colonization of Ireland relied entirely on economic power, while at the same time it relied on extra-economic forces to forcibly impose economic power worldwide. This can be seen as a period of capitalism's global expansion and the transition from extra-economic to economic forces.

伍德认为，资本帝国是美国通过操控资本主义经济机制来控制世界的资本主义发展新阶段。她从财产帝国、商业帝国到资本帝国的资本主义历史演进中，揭示了资本帝国的特殊性，即经济力量脱离并取代超经济力量。以罗马帝国和西班牙帝国等为代表的财产帝国，主要通过军事征服和政治统治等超经济力量进行殖民统治和经济掠夺。“帝国对经济的掌控总是受限于超经济力量的能力。”以阿拉伯帝国、威尼斯帝国和荷兰为代表的商业帝国主要通过控制国际贸易来获利。虽然经济力量在商业帝国中发挥着重要作用，但超经济力量依旧占据主导地位。“说它们是商业帝国，并不是说它们的帝国主义统治是建立在种种经济性压迫之上的……超经济力量依然是发挥作用的基本因素。”英帝国处于传统帝国主义向资本帝国的过渡时期。英帝国殖民爱尔兰完全依靠经济力量，同时其又依靠超经济力量来向全世界强制推行经济力量。这可以看作资本主义向全球扩张、超经济力量向经济力量过渡的时期。

After the Second World War, U.S. hegemony replaced extra-economic forces with economic power, and the capital empire was finally established. The Second World War destroyed the traditional imperialist order, and the vacuum in the world order presented the United States with a historic opportunity. Through international organizations such as the Bretton Woods system, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, the United States began to replace extra-economic forces globally with economic forces such as capital competition and free markets, and began to rule the world through economic power. This new imperialist relationship, which grew out of the ruins of the old imperialism, was no longer a relationship between suzerain and colony, but a complex interaction between sovereign states. By virtue of its superior economic strength and its manipulation of global economic organizations, the capital empire imposes economic laws on the entire world, forcing these economic laws onto formally independent countries. Although extra-economic forces can enable an empire to rise quickly, they are less stable and more costly. In contrast, economic power controls the world through the market, with less risk, lower cost, and greater profit. Only under the capitalist system can economic power truly function independently. "Capitalism has a unique capacity to separate the economic from the extra-economic... which means that the economic power of capital can far surpass any existing or conceivable political or military force." Wood argues that the more economic power replaces extra-economic forces, the more the hegemon needs to enhance its military power for global control, which inevitably leads to endless military operations, i.e., "endless war."

第二次世界大战以后，美国霸权用经济力量取代超经济力量，资本帝国才最终确立。第二次世界大战摧毁了传统的帝国主义统治秩序，世界秩序真空期给了美国历史性机遇。美国通过布雷顿森林体系、国际货币基金组织和世界贸易组织等国际组织，开始在全球范围内用资本竞争和自由市场等经济力量来取代超经济力量，开始通过经济力量统治世界。这种从旧帝国主义废墟中成长起来的新帝国主义关系，不再是宗主国与殖民地之间的关系，而是一种主权国家之间复杂的相互作用关系。资本帝国凭借其超强的经济实力和对全球经济组织的操控，向整个世界推行经济法则，将这些经济法则强加于那些形式上独立的国家。虽然超经济力量可以实现帝国快速崛起，但其稳定性较差，成本较高。与之相对，经济力量通过市场来控制世界，风险更小，成本更低，获利更多。经济力量真正独立发挥作用只有在资本主义制度下才有可能。“资本主义有其独一无二的能力将经济的与超经济的力量加以分离……意味着资本的经济力量能够远远地超越任何现存的、可以想象的政治与军事力量。”伍德认为，经济力量越是取代超经济力量，霸权越是需要增强军事力量来进行全球控制，这必然引发永无休止的军事行动，即“无限战争”。

3. Competitive Imperialism

3.竞争性帝国主义

Callinicos argues that imperialism must be understood through the interaction of economic competition and geopolitical competition. Regarding the meaning of the two types of competition and their interrelationship, he states: "About one or two hundred years ago, two logics of competition rooted in different modes of production were clearly distinct: one was economic competition in the early stages of the formation of the capitalist world system; the other was geopolitical competition, characteristic of feudalism, which drove the formation of the European state system, namely competition in military expansion and state-building. Imperialism is the product of the fusion of these two logics." Similar to Callinicos, Chris Harman also argues that new imperialism should be understood through the competition between nation-states and multinational corporations. Based on the different relationships between economic competition and geopolitical competition in different periods, Callinicos divides imperialism into three stages: classical imperialism (1870-1945), superpower imperialism (1945-1991), and post-Cold War imperialism (1991 to the present).

卡里尼科斯认为，需要从经济竞争和地缘政治竞争的交互关系来理解帝国主义。关于两种竞争的含义及其相互关系，他指出：“大约一两百年前，两种植根于不同生产方式的竞争逻辑泾渭分明：一是在资本主义世界体系形成初期的经济竞争，另一个是以推动欧洲国家体系形成的封建主义为特征，即在军事扩张和国家构建过程中的地缘政治竞争。帝国主义是这两种逻辑融合的产物。”与卡里尼科斯的观点类似，克里斯·哈曼也认为，应当从民族国家和跨国公司之间的竞争来理解新帝国主义。根据不同时期经济竞争和地缘政治竞争之间的不同关系，卡里尼科斯将帝国主义划分为三个阶段：古典帝国主义（1870-1945年）、超级大国帝国主义（1945-1991年）和冷战后的帝国主义（1991年至今）。

Classical imperialism was a phase in which economic competition and geopolitical competition reinforced each other, mainly manifested in the mutual reinforcement of world economic liberalization, political multipolarity, territorial expansion, and an arms race with state capitalism. This phase had two foundations: first, the emergence of a group of great powers following the unification of Germany and the end of the American Civil War; second, the formation of global capitalism. The new technologies created by industrial capitalism, especially railways, greatly reduced transportation costs. The compression of space, combined with the global economic network, facilitated the flow of commodities, money, and capital. At the same time, the spread of industrial capitalism intensified great power competition, especially when Britain found its industrial and maritime supremacy challenged by Germany. Driven by technological innovation, Britain initiated a naval arms race and joined the Allied military bloc in 1914. In a world dominated by a few European states, economic competition and geopolitical competition reinforced each other. The simultaneous growth of colonial expansion and capital export was a concrete manifestation of the mutual reinforcement of the two types of competition. "European colonies expanded from 2.7 million square miles and 148 million inhabitants in 1860 to 29 million square miles and 568 million inhabitants in 1914; at the same time, foreign capital exports ballooned from £2 billion in 1863 to £44 billion in 1914." The British Empire was heavily dependent on colonial expansion, deriving substantial returns from direct investment in the colonies. Other countries followed Britain's example, one after another embarking on the path of territorial expansion.

古典帝国主义是经济竞争与地缘政治竞争彼此强化的阶段，主要表现为世界经济自由化、政治多极化、领土扩张以及军备竞赛与国家资本主义的相互加强。该阶段有两大基础：一是德国建立和美国内战爆发后列强群体的出现，二是全球资本主义的形成。工业资本主义创造的新技术，特别是铁路，极大地降低了运输成本。空间的压缩与全球经济网络结合在一起，促进了商品、货币和资本的流动。与此同时，工业资本主义的蔓延加剧了大国竞争，特别是英国发现其工业和制海权受到德国挑战的时候。英国在技术创新推动下，开启了海军军备竞赛，并于1914年加入同盟国军事集团。少数欧洲国家统治下的世界，经济竞争与地缘政治竞争彼此强化。殖民扩张与资本输出共同增长是两种竞争彼此强化的具体体现。“欧洲殖民地从1860年的270万平方英里和1.48亿居民，扩张到1914年的2900万平方英里和5.68亿居民；与此同时，对外资本输出从1863年的20亿英镑，膨胀到1914年的440亿英镑。”英帝国非常依赖殖民扩张，从殖民地直接投资中获取了大量收益。其他国家纷纷效仿英国，相继走上领土扩张之路。

Superpower imperialism was a phase in which economic competition and geopolitical competition diverged, mainly manifested in the open economic policy led by the United States and the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. After the Second World War, the United States pursued an open economic policy aimed at projecting its formidable economic, political, and military power globally without becoming mired in colonialism, making capitalist accumulation beyond territorial limits possible. The greatest obstacle to this U.S. objective was the Soviet Union, so the United States began participating in the post-war reconstruction of Europe and Japan to contain the Soviet Union. Led by the United States, the capitalist countries of Europe and Japan actively promoted trade and investment liberalization, achieving economic prosperity. During this period, economic competition among the developed capitalist countries remained intense, with Germany and Japan accelerating their economic catch-up with the United States. However, this economic competition did not trigger geopolitical competition and conflict as it had in classical imperialism; instead, it manifested as a "partial separation of geopolitical competition and economic competition." There were three reasons for this: first, the Cold War with the Soviet Union constrained the alliance of developed countries; second, the United States, to maintain its hegemonic position, would strike hard at its challengers; third, despite economic competition, the economic integration led by the United States brought benefits to all capitalist countries, consolidated U.S. alliances with West Asia and East Asia, and promoted a long-term transformation of the competitive landscape.

超级大国帝国主义是经济竞争和地缘政治竞争出现背离的阶段，主要表现为美国主导下的开放经济政策以及美苏争霸。第二次世界大战以后，美国推行开放经济政策，旨在将美国强大的经济、政治和军事实力推向全球，而不必陷入殖民主义泥潭，使得超越领土限制的资本主义积累成为可能。美国上述目标的最大障碍就是苏联，于是美国开始参与欧洲和日本战后重建来遏制苏联。欧洲资本主义国家和日本在美国领导下积极推动贸易和投资自由化，实现了经济繁荣发展。在此期间，发达资本主义国家之间的经济竞争依旧激烈，德国和日本在经济上加速追赶美国。但这种经济竞争并没有像古典帝国主义那样引发地缘政治竞争和冲突，而是表现为“地缘政治竞争和经济竞争的部分分离”。其背后的原因有三点：第一，与苏联的冷战约束着发达国家同盟；第二，美国为了维持其霸权地位，会对其挑战者迎头痛击；第三，尽管存在经济竞争，但美国主导下的经济一体化给所有资本主义国家都带来了利益，巩固了美国与西亚和东亚的同盟关系，促进了竞争格局的长期转变。

In the post-Cold War era, imperialism is a stage of intense geopolitical competition, manifested primarily in US hegemonic rule over the world, shifts in global power, and a crisis of the profit rate. After the end of the Cold War, the United States became the sole superpower in the world. The global power structure is one superpower and four major powers, that is, the sole superpower, the United States, and the major powers (regions) of China, the European Union, Japan, and Russia. To maintain its hegemonic status, the United States has engaged in fierce geopolitical competition with other countries. Geopolitical competition has in turn triggered changes in the global power structure. Callinicos argues that the rise of China is reshaping global power structural relations. "The Wall Street-US Treasury-IMF complex has increasingly expressed dissatisfaction with China's investments and loans in Southern countries, because it gives poorer countries access to capital without attaching any neoliberal conditions." [1]1 V. I. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” *Collected Works*, vol. 22, p. 148. He emphasizes that post-Cold War imperialism faces crises such as slow economic growth, rising inequality, and a falling profit rate. The profit rate in the capitalist world peaked during the Golden Age after the Second World War and began to show signs of crisis from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, the profit rate has been declining, recovering somewhat in the 1990s, but then falling into a more serious crisis after entering the 21st century.

冷战后帝国主义是地缘政治竞争异常激烈的阶段，主要表现为美国霸权统治世界、全球力量变迁和发生利润率危机。冷战结束以后，美国成为世界上唯一的超级大国。全球权力结构是一超四强，即唯一的超级大国美国和作为强国（地区）的中国、欧盟、日本和俄罗斯。美国为维持其霸权地位，与其他国家发生了激烈的地缘政治竞争。地缘政治竞争又进一步引发了全球权力结构的变动。卡里尼科斯认为，中国崛起正在重塑着全球权力结构关系。“华尔街、美国财政部和国际货币基金组织复合体，已经越来越对中国在南方国家的投资和贷款表达不满，因为它给了更贫穷国家使用资本的权利，却不需要附加任何新自由主义性质的条件。”他强调，冷战后帝国主义面临经济增长缓慢、不平等加剧和利润率下降等危机。资本主义世界利润率在第二次世界大战后的黄金时代达到顶峰，从20世纪60年代末和70年代初开始显现出危机。自此之后，利润率一路走低，直到20世纪90年代有所复苏，但进入21世纪后又开始陷入更严重的危机。

4. The American Empire

4.美帝国

Panitch and Gindin argue that the new imperialism is rooted in the American Empire, a new world order intentionally shaped and maintained by the United States through state power. They believe that classical theories of imperialism have a color of economic reductionism and state instrumentalism, and therefore it is necessary to "break with the traditional conception of modern imperialism as determined by economic competition." [2]2 V. I. Lenin, *Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism*, *Collected Works*, vol. 22, p. 192. "Capitalism" and "imperialism" are not the same; the former is an economic relation, the latter a relation between states, and they belong to different levels. Although the economy is often an important dimension of imperialism, imperialism cannot be viewed merely as economic imperialism. The theory of imperialism cannot simply be extended from the economic theory of capitalism; rather, it must be constructed and refined by developing a theory of the capitalist state. The imperialist elements behind the state come not only from the economic level but also from multiple levels including the political, class, cultural, and military.

帕尼奇和金丁认为，新帝国主义根植于美帝国，是美国通过国家力量有意塑造和维持的世界新秩序。他们认为，经典帝国主义理论具有经济还原主义和国家工具主义色彩，因此要“打破关于现代帝国主义本质的传统观念，即认为现代帝国主义是由经济竞争决定的”。“资本主义”与“帝国主义”并不相同，前者是经济关系，后者是国家关系，两者分属不同层次。尽管经济通常是帝国主义的一个重要层面，但不能将帝国主义仅仅视为经济帝国主义。帝国主义理论不能仅仅从资本主义经济理论中延伸出来，而是要通过发展资本主义国家理论来加以建构和完善。国家背后的帝国主义元素不仅来自经济层面，还来自政治、阶级、文化和军事等多重层面。

The history of capitalist development after the Second World War shows that the birth of the new imperialism was not merely the result of capital accumulation, but the outcome of the continuous cultivation and management by the US state apparatus using its powerful political, economic, and military forces. Panitch and Gindin refer to the post-Second World War imperialist system as the "informal American Empire," to distinguish it from the "formal empire" that relied on colonial rule before the Second World War. After the Second World War, the United States built dollar hegemony through the Bretton Woods system, actively promoted the Fordist capitalist mode of production globally, used the Marshall Plan to rebuild the societies and economies of Western Europe and Japan and integrate them into the global capitalist system, controlled Europe by establishing the NATO organization, and dominantly constructed a new imperialist order. In the 1970s, the imperialist system established after the Second World War faced multiple contradictions and crises. Against this backdrop, the United States used its state power to forcibly implement neoliberal policies centered on privatization, marketization, financialization, and globalization worldwide, thereby restructuring the world capitalist system, overcoming the crisis of capital accumulation, and extending the sphere of influence of the American Empire globally.

第二次世界大战以后的资本主义发展史表明，新帝国主义的诞生并不仅仅是资本积累的结果，而是美国国家政权利用其强大的政治、经济和军事力量，不断培育和管理的结果。帕尼奇和金丁将第二次世界大战后的帝国主义体系称为“非正式的美利坚帝国”，用以区别第二次世界大战以前依赖殖民统治的“正式帝国”。第二次世界大战以后，美国通过布雷顿森林体系打造了美元霸权，积极向全球推行福特主义的资本主义生产方式，利用马歇尔计划重建西欧和日本的社会经济并将其纳入全球资本主义体系，通过建立北约组织控制欧洲，主导建构了一套新的帝国主义秩序。20世纪70年代，第二次世界大战以后建立的帝国主义体系面临多重矛盾与危机。在此背景下，美国利用其国家力量，在全球范围内强制推行以私有化、市场化、金融化和全球化为主要内容的新自由主义政策，以此来重构世界资本主义体系，克服资本积累危机，将美帝国的势力范围扩展到全球。

The United States has created a world that conforms to its vision, and the most prominent feature of contemporary capitalism is the rule of the American Empire. The United States attempts to incorporate all countries in the world into the American Empire system, making them identify with or submit to the rule of the American Empire. However, different nation-states have huge differences in politics, economy, culture, and other aspects, making it difficult to fully integrate them into the American Empire system. For those countries that do not accept neoliberalism or do not submit to US leadership, the United States will use state power to carry out political oppression, economic sanctions, or even military strikes. The hegemonism pursued by the American Empire is increasingly causing dissatisfaction among other countries. The conflicts and contradictions among different forces within the American Empire are constantly testing the inherent endurance of this system.

美国已经打造了一个符合其构想的世界，当代资本主义最主要的特征就是美帝国的统治。美国试图将世界上所有国家都纳入美帝国体系，让其认同或者服从美帝国的统治。但不同民族国家在政治、经济和文化等方面存在巨大差异，很难被完全整合到美帝国体系之中。对于那些不接受新自由主义或者不服从美国领导的国家，美国会动用国家力量进行政治压迫、经济制裁甚至军事打击。美帝国奉行的霸权主义正越来越引起其他国家的不满。美帝国内部不同力量之间的冲突和矛盾，正在不断考验着该系统的内在承受力。

III. Quantitative Change and Instability: Late Imperialism

三、量变与不稳定：晚期帝国主义

Late imperialism is a new characterization of the contemporary stage of capitalist development by John Bellamy Foster, built on the research of Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, and John Smith, among others. It is a new development of the imperialist theory of the US monopoly capital school, reflecting the global landscape and global contradictions of capitalism. Foster argues that late imperialism is a new stage of monopoly capitalist development, characterized primarily by the universality of monopoly finance capital, the globalization of production, new forms of extraction of surplus value from the periphery by the center, and epochal economic, military, and environmental challenges.

晚期帝国主义是约翰·福斯特在保罗·巴兰、保罗·斯威齐、哈里·马格多夫以及约翰·史密斯等人研究基础上，对当代资本主义发展阶段的新概括，是美国垄断资本学派帝国主义理论的新发展，反映了资本主义的全球图景和全球矛盾。福斯特认为，晚期帝国主义是垄断资本主义发展的新阶段，主要表现为垄断金融资本的普遍性，生产的全球化，中心榨取外围剩余价值的新形式以及划时代的经济、军事和环境挑战。

1. Monopoly Finance Capital and Globalized Production

1.垄断金融资本与全球化生产

After studying the degree of monopoly in industries such as manufacturing, finance, and retail since the 21st century, Foster points out that monopoly capitalism has evolved into a more universalized and globalized system of monopoly finance capital, which is the foundation of contemporary imperialism. Within the monopoly finance capital system, the total revenue of the world's top 500 enterprises accounts for 40% of the total revenue of all enterprises worldwide. Most other enterprises in the world are entangled in the production and sales networks of these giants, existing merely as their subcontractors. Contemporary imperialism, relying on its absolute monopoly position, can obtain rent on a global scale. Rent takes two forms: first, rent generated from the exploitation of workers in the South by imperialism; second, the extraction of natural resources from the South. Foster constructs an ecological imperialism theory to explain the second form of rent.

福斯特在研究了21世纪以来制造业、金融业和零售业等行业的垄断程度后指出，垄断资本主义已经演化为一个更加普遍化和全球化的垄断金融资本体系，这是当代帝国主义的基础。在垄断金融资本体系中，世界500强企业总收入占世界企业总收入的40％，世界上其他大部分企业都被这些巨头的生产和销售网络所缠绕，仅仅作为其分包商存在。当代帝国主义凭借其绝对垄断地位，可以在全球范围内获得租金。租金有两种形式：一是帝国主义剥削南方工人产生的租金；二是对南方自然资源的攫取。福斯特建构了生态帝国主义理论来阐释第二种租金。

In the era of globalization, monopoly capital in the North, based on wage differentials worldwide, exploits labor in the South through global labor arbitrage. Northern countries, through neoliberal policies, have dragged billions of workers and peasants in Southern countries away from the land and national industries they depended on, forming a massive global industrial reserve army. The globalized market is an imperfect market where capital and goods can flow freely; in contrast, workers cannot move freely due to geographical, social, and political constraints. The interaction between the suppression of labor mobility and the growing huge supply of labor has given rise to enormous international wage gradient differentials. From 1991 to 2011, the per capita GDP of workers in developed countries rose from $54,800 to $73,600, while that in developing countries rose from $7,460 to $14,220. In 2014, the unit labor costs of manufacturing in emerging economies such as China, India, Indonesia, and Mexico were only 46%, 37%, 62%, and 43% of those in the United States, respectively.

全球化时代北方垄断资本以世界范围内工资差异为基础，通过全球劳动套利的方式对南方劳动力进行剥削。北方国家通过新自由主义政策将南方国家亿万工人和农民从他们依存的土地和民族产业中拖拽出来，形成了规模庞大的全球产业后备军。全球化市场是一个不完全市场，资本和商品可以自由流动，相比之下，劳动者因为受到地理、社会和政治等各方面的限制而无法自由流动。劳动力流动性压制与劳动力日益增长的巨大供给相互作用，催生了国际工资巨大的梯度差异。1991—2011年，发达国家工人人均GDP从54800美元上升到73600美元，发展中国家由7460美元上升到14220美元。2014年，中国、印度、印度尼西亚和墨西哥等新兴经济体制造业单位劳动力成本，分别仅为美国的46％、37％、62％和43％。

The global wage differential for labor leads to different rates of exploitation across the world, forming a discrepancy between the value created by workers and the value paid to them. This is the internal driving force behind the rapid development of globalized production. Monopoly finance capital, represented by multinational corporations, replaces local high-wage workers with overseas low-wage workers through means such as industrial outsourcing, offshore operations, and cost control, fully utilizing global wage differentials to continuously extract value from the countries of the Global South. The globalization of production has prompted a large-scale transfer of manufacturing and industrial workers to the countries of the Global South. The share of global manufacturing exports from the Global South surged from about 5% in the pre-globalization period to over 40% in 2011; the proportion of manufactured imports from low-wage countries in the major developed countries also rose from about 10% to over 50% in 2011; and the share of manufactured goods in total exports from developing countries correspondingly increased significantly during the period of economic globalization to over 60%. Correspondingly, the global working class has also undergone a huge transformation. In 2010, approximately 541 million industrial workers lived in the countries of the Global South, accounting for 79% of the world's total industrial workers, compared with only 34% and 53% in 1950 and 1980, respectively. The globalized production driven by wage arbitrage is not the production of absolute surplus value, because extending working hours is not the main attraction of outsourcing; nor is it the production of relative surplus value, because outsourcing is precisely an alternative to investment in new technology. This outsourced mode of production is a third type of surplus value production that "depresses wages below the value of labor power."

全球劳动力工资差异引致了全球不同剥削率，形成劳动者创造价值与其被支付价值之间的差异，这是全球化生产迅猛发展的内在动力。垄断金融资本以跨国公司为代表，通过产业外包、离岸业务和成本控制等手段，将当地高薪工人与海外低薪工人进行置换，充分利用全球工资差异，不断从南方国家攫取价值。生产全球化促使制造业和产业工人向南方国家大规模转移。南方国家占全球制造品出口的比重，从前全球化时期的5%左右飙升至2011年的超过40%，主要发达国家进口制造品来自低工资国家的比重，也从10%左右升至2011年的超过50%，发展中国家制造品出口占其总出口的比重，也相应在经济全球化时期大幅上升至超过60%。相应地，全球工人阶级也发生了巨大转变。2010年大约有5.41亿的工业工人生活在南方国家，占世界工业工人总数的79％，而1950年和1980年该数据仅为34％和53％。工资套利驱动的全球化生产，不是绝对剩余价值生产，因为延长劳动时间不是外包的主要魅力；也不是相对剩余价值生产，因为外包正是新科技投资的替代选择。这种外包型生产方式是“压低工资至劳动力价值以下”的第三种剩余价值生产。

2. Financial Explosion and Economic Stagnation

2.金融爆炸与经济停滞

The global value transfer brought about by globalized production has driven the financialization of capitalism. Financialization, in turn, has deepened the monopoly and exploitation of imperialism on a global scale. In the 1970s, developed capitalist countries generally faced a stagflation crisis, and enterprises could only maintain rapid capital accumulation through financial investment and the global transfer of production. Globalized production can continuously obtain imperialist rent through unequal exchange. These rents, in statistical data such as GDP, trade, and financial flows, are simply recorded as value added in the Global North, directly removed from production costs. The value transfer brought about by globalized production has given rise to the problem of absorbing surplus capital. Foreign investment is not an export of domestic surplus, but the most effective means of transferring surplus generated abroad to the investing country. In this situation, foreign investment is clearly exacerbating, rather than alleviating, the problem of surplus absorption. In order to realize capital appreciation more quickly, an increasing portion of surplus capital has shifted from productive investment to various financial investments, and non-financial enterprises have become increasingly financialized. Enterprises invest large amounts of surplus into the financial system, using securitization to quickly obtain returns. The financial sector creates various financial instruments to speculate on future income streams and absorb surplus capital. As a result, the asset scale of the capitalist financial sector has continuously expanded from the late 1970s to the 1990s.

全球化生产带来的全球价值转移推动了资本主义金融化。金融化反过来又加深了帝国主义在全球范围内的垄断与剥削。20世纪70年代发达资本主义国家普遍面临滞涨危机，企业只能通过金融投资和生产全球化转移来维持资本快速积累。全球化生产可以通过不平等交换的方式源源不断地获取帝国主义租金。而这些租金在GDP、贸易和金融流动等统计数据中，被简单记录为全球北方的增值，直接从生产成本中移除。全球化生产带来的价值转移引发了过剩资本吸收问题。外国投资并不是国内盈余的出口，而是将国外产生的盈余转移到投资国家的最有效手段。在这种情况下，外国投资显然是加剧，而不是缓解剩余吸收问题。为了更快速地实现资本增值，过剩资本当中越来越多的部分从生产性投资转向各种金融投资，非金融企业变得日益金融化。企业将大量盈余投入金融体系，通过证券化来快速获得收益。金融部门创造了各种金融工具来推定未来收益流，吸收剩余资本，结果是从20世纪70年代后期到90年代资本主义金融部门资产规模不断膨胀。

Financialization has transferred control over the reproduction of the economic system to the oligarchic banks of the United States, Europe, and Japan, making the developed countries global financial centers and accumulation centers, and enhancing the control of imperialism over globalized production and value plunder. Together with communication and digital technology, financialization has promoted the process of commodification on a global scale, laying the foundation for the global accumulation of capital. Imperialist rent is continuously transformed into the huge profits of monopolists, with wealth increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies and the rich, squeezing labor compensation and the profits of non-monopoly capital. As a means of absorbing surplus capital, financialization further exacerbates monopoly and wealth inequality. Since the financial sector does not create value, the explosive growth of financialization is disconnected from actual investment growth and economic growth, manifested as a significant increase in the ratio of debt to GDP, worsening the problem of economic stagnation and spawning more surplus capital. At the same time, finance monopoly capital inherently craves debt growth, especially sovereign debt, which is a way to absorb monopoly surplus profits, while debt expansion undermines the stability of the financial system. The growth of financial assets relative to their production base will continuously give rise to asset bubbles that periodically burst, thereby threatening the stability of the entire global capitalism. The deepest cause of the 2008 financial crisis lies not in finance, but in production.

金融化将经济系统再生产的控制权移交给了美国、欧洲和日本的寡头银行，使得发达国家成为全球金融中心和积累中心，增强了帝国主义对全球化生产和价值掠夺的控制力。金融化与通讯和数字技术一起，推动了全球范围内的商品化进程，为资本全球积累奠定了基础。帝国主义租金不断转化为垄断者的巨额利润，财富越来越集中在少数公司和富人身上，挤压了劳动报酬和非垄断资本利润。作为吸收剩余资本手段的金融化，进一步加剧了垄断和财富不平等。由于金融部门并不创造价值，金融化的爆炸式增长与实际投资增长和经济增长相脱节，表现为债务占国内生产总值的比例大幅提升，恶化了经济停滞问题，催生出更多剩余资本。同时，金融垄断资本内在地渴望债务增长，特别是主权债务，这是吸收垄断剩余利润的一种方式，而债务扩张破坏了金融体系稳定。金融资产相对于其生产基础的增长，会不断催生出定期破裂的资产泡沫，从而威胁到整个全球资本主义的稳定性。2008年金融危机最深层的原因不在于金融，而在于生产。

The core of late imperialism is the extreme hierarchical relationship that rules the capitalist world in the 21st century, a relationship increasingly dominated by super-multinational corporations and a few Northern countries. The contradictions of late imperialism are more acute. Crises of unbalanced development, governance crises, financial crises, war crises, and environmental crises occur one after another. All these crises originate from the continuous accumulation of monopoly capital and are obscured by liberal ideology, continuously widening and irreversible cracks between the center and the periphery.

晚期帝国主义的核心，是21世纪统治资本主义世界的极端等级关系，这种关系正越来越被超级跨国公司和少数北方国家所主导。晚期帝国主义矛盾更加尖锐。发展失衡危机、治理危机、金融危机、战争危机和环境危机此起彼伏。所有这些危机都源于垄断资本的不断积累，并被自由主义意识形态所掩盖，不断加剧着中心与外围之间不断扩张又不可逆转的裂缝。

IV. Comments and Insights

四、评论与启示

Foreign scholars' research on contemporary imperialism analyzes from different perspectives the main characteristics of the contemporary capitalist world political and economic order, such as multinational corporations, globalized production, informatization and financialization, and US hegemony, reflecting the latest stage-specific changes in imperialism. This research has both theoretical highlights and theoretical blind spots. Scholars adhering to the super-imperialism analytical paradigm mainly analyze the contemporary capitalist economic order from the perspective of the global expansion of capital accumulation and global domination. Hardt and others, from a postmodern perspective, analyze the dematerialization of the mode of production in the process of capitalist globalization and the capitalization of the world driven by capital dominance. However, Hardt and Negri rely excessively on metaphor and theory, completely disregarding the concrete reality of the contemporary capitalist world economy and ignoring the combined and uneven development of capitalism. Their assertion that the North-South divide is gradually disappearing is clearly erroneous. The largest share of capital flows occurs between wealthy countries, and there is no equalization caused by the flow of labor from the South to the North. The multinational corporations that control the globalization of capital still rely on powerful "state" forces, and a "cosmopolitan" state transcending national borders has not yet emerged. The internal contradictions within developed countries such as the United States, Europe, and Japan do not arise from differences in interests among monopoly capitals, but are related to the diversity represented by national interests. They reduce the historical subject to the "individual" and then combine many individuals into the "multitude," which misplaces the epochal issue of redefining the historical subject. In reality, economic globalization is, to a certain extent, merely the "Americanization" of the world economy—coordinating the rest of the world to adapt to the rhythm and needs of the US economy. The current competition and confrontation within the empire are constrained by the United States, which always tries to restrict the development of its allies. Robinson, starting from globalized production, proposes new concepts such as transnational capital, a transnational capitalist class, and a transnational state, which only reflect one aspect of the era of capital globalization. As Wood pointed out, the nation-state can "backed by coercive force, maintain property relations, social order, and ensure the normativity and predictability of contractual transactions," which is crucial for capital accumulation. Transnational capital and the transnational capitalist class have not been denationalized. Different national bourgeoisies and nation-states cannot, as Robinson claims, integrate equally into a transnational capitalist class and a transnational state, but instead present a center-periphery structure.

国外学者对当代帝国主义的研究，从不同角度剖析了跨国公司、全球化生产、信息化和金融化以及美国霸权等当代资本主义世界政治经济秩序主要特征，反映了帝国主义的最新阶段性变化，既有理论亮点，也有理论盲点。坚持超级帝国主义分析范式的学者，主要从资本积累全球扩张和全球统治视角来剖析当代资本主义经济秩序。哈特等人从后现代视角剖析了资本主义全球化进程中生产方式的非物质化和资本主导推动下的资本主义的世界化。但是哈特和奈格里过分依赖于隐喻和理论，完全不顾当代资本主义世界经济的具体现实，忽视了资本主义的联合和不平衡的发展。他们关于北-南分野日趋消失的论断明显是错误的，资本流动的最大份额是在富裕国家之间进行的，并不存在劳动从南方向北方的流动造成的平均化。控制资本全球化的跨国公司仍然依靠强大的“国家”力量，超越国界的“世界性”国家仍未出现。美国、欧洲和日本等发达国家中的内部矛盾，并不是由垄断资本之间利益分歧产生的，而是与国家利益所代表的多样性有关。他们把历史主体缩减为“个人”，又把许多个人结合成为“大众”，这错置了重新界定历史主体这一划时代问题。实际上，经济全球化在一定程度上不过是世界经济的“美国化”过程——协调世界其他国家适应美国经济的节奏和需要。当前帝国内部的竞争和对抗受到了美国的约束，美国总是试图制约其盟国的发展。罗宾逊从全球化生产出发，提出了跨国资本、跨国资产阶级和跨国国家等新概念，只是反映了资本全球化时代的一个侧面。正如伍德指出的，民族国家能够“以强制力量为后盾，维护所有制关系、社会秩序并保证契约交易的规范性和可预期性”，这对于资本积累至关重要。跨国资本和跨国资产阶级并没有去国籍化。不同民族资产阶级与民族国家也不能像罗宾逊所主张的，平等地融入跨国资产阶级和跨国国家，而是呈现出一种中心-外围结构。

Scholars who adhere to the hegemonic imperialism analytical paradigm focus on the relationship between capital accumulation and state behavior, arguing that the essence of contemporary imperialism is an economic order in which US hegemony controls global politics and the world economy. Harvey creatively employs a spatial-geographical method to analyze “accumulation by dispossession” as a mode of accumulation in contemporary capitalism, revealing the law of contradictory movement between the logic of capital and the logic of the state, with “spatio-temporal fix” as the thread. However, Harvey overstates the importance of accumulation by dispossession and neglects the changes in the process by which capital obtains surplus value under globalized production, leading him to the erroneous conclusion that “global wealth is flowing from Western countries to Eastern countries.” Wood, based on a historical-analytical method, sorts out the evolutionary threads and characteristic differences of different imperial forms, revealing US economic control over the world and the essence of the nation-state. Yet she fails to grasp that the most essential feature of imperialism is monopoly, and neglects the changes in the specific forms of monopoly in the process of globalized production. Callinicos combines Marxism with realist international relations theory, analyzing imperialist state behavior from the perspective of competition and constructing a more realistic analytical perspective on the new imperialism. However, he overlooks the decisive role of economic drivers behind geopolitical competition, and the concepts of imperialist monopoly and exploitation are obscured by the concept of competition in his work. Panitch and Gindin analyze the important role of the state in imperialist expansion, particularly the US shaping and management of the global capitalist system. Yet their analysis is almost purely political, thereby generally downplaying the economic dimension of imperialism and failing to analyze the dynamic evolutionary process of capital accumulation.

坚持霸权帝国主义分析范式的学者，重点分析了资本积累与国家行为之间的关系，认为当代帝国主义的实质是美国霸权控制世界政治经济的一种经济秩序。哈维创造性地采用空间地理方法，分析了“剥夺性积累”这种当代资本主义的积累方式，揭示了以“时空修复”为线索的资本逻辑和国家逻辑之间的矛盾运动规律。但哈维过于夸大了剥夺性积累的重要性，忽视了全球化生产下资本获得剩余价值过程的变化，以至于得出了“全球财富正在由西方国家流向东方国家”的错误结论。伍德基于历史分析方法，梳理了不同帝国形态的演进脉络及其特征差异，揭示了美国对世界的经济控制和民族国家的实质，但其没有抓住帝国主义最本质特征是垄断，忽视了全球化生产过程中垄断具体形式的变化。卡里尼科斯将马克思主义与现实主义国际关系理论结合起来，从竞争视角剖析帝国主义国家行为，建构了一种更具现实性的新帝国主义分析视角，但他忽视了地缘政治竞争背后经济动因的决定性作用，帝国主义垄断和剥削在他那里也被竞争概念所掩盖。帕尼奇和金丁分析了国家在帝国主义扩张中的重要作用，特别是美国对全球资本主义体系的塑造与管理，但他们的分析几乎纯粹是政治性的，从而整体上淡化了帝国主义的经济层面，没有分析资本积累的动态演变过程。

In the era of colonialism, Lenin divided nations “into oppressor nations and oppressed nations,” pointing out that this is “the essence of imperialism.” [1]1 V. I. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” *Collected Works*, vol. 22, p. 148. He also emphasized that imperialism is “the exploitation of millions upon millions of people in the dependent nations by a few of the richest and most powerful nations.” [2]2 V. I. Lenin, *Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism*, *Collected Works*, vol. 22, p. 192. Lenin pointed out that monopoly is the key to understanding imperialism and the foundation for realizing its oppressive essence. Any study of imperialism that departs from the category of “monopoly” is incomplete. The evolution of capital accumulation and its fundamental contradictions causes imperialism to exhibit different characteristics in different periods. Scholars adhering to the late imperialism analytical paradigm analyze the global control of monopoly finance capital and the transnational exploitation of Southern workers by Northern capital in the processes of production globalization and financialization. However, their analysis of global labor arbitrage needs to be further deepened by integrating it with global production networks, and their analysis of the contradictions of imperialism requires further refinement.

列宁在殖民主义时代把民族“区分为压迫民族和被压迫民族”，并指出这是“帝国主义的本质所在”。他还强调，帝国主义就是“少数最富强的民族对附属民族的千百万人的剥削”。列宁指出，垄断是理解帝国主义的关键，也是实现其压迫本质的基础。任何脱离“垄断”范畴的帝国主义研究都是不彻底的。资本积累及其基本矛盾的演进，使得帝国主义在不同时期呈现出不同特征。坚持晚期帝国主义分析范式的学者分析了垄断金融资本的全球控制以及生产全球化和金融化过程中北方资本对南方工人的跨国剥削。但他们关于全球劳动套利的分析需要结合全球生产网络进一步深化，其对帝国主义矛盾的分析还需要进一步细化。

Imperialist theory primarily studies the contradictory movement between capital and the state, and among states, within a specific international environment in the process of capital accumulation. For the sake of endless capital accumulation, individual capital tends, on the one hand, to appropriate profits through speculative finance, which lowers the overall level of industrial capital accumulation. On the other hand, in the process of accumulation, industrial capital also tends to depress labor costs as much as possible, which lowers the overall level of consumption. Both tendencies can lead to the recurrence of economic crises. From a dynamic spatial perspective, there are also unavoidable contradictions within the circuit of capital between fixity and mobility, concentration and dispersal, and local commitment and global interest. Therefore, a distinct feature of capitalist history is the continuous search for and modification of organizational arrangements that can mitigate and suppress these contradictions. The result is the necessity of creating a nested, hierarchical organizational structure based on state power, linking local and particular factors to the global production and appropriation of surplus value, in order to resist the inevitable tendency of individual capital towards self-destruction. The essence of the world political-economic organization thus formed is always an imperialist order of oppression and being oppressed. Corresponding to the evolution of the capitalist mode of production and its inherent contradictions, imperialism in different periods assumes different forms.

帝国主义理论主要研究资本积累过程中国家与资本以及国家之间在特定国际环境下的矛盾运动。为了永无止境的资本积累，个别资本一方面具有通过投机性金融占有利润的倾向，这样会降低产业资本积累的总体水平；另一方面，产业资本在积累过程中，也具有尽可能压低劳动力成本的倾向，这会降低总体的消费水平。这两个倾向都可能导致经济危机的重复出现。从动态的空间角度看，资本循环中固定与移动、集中与分散、地方承诺与全球利益等之间也存在着难以避免的矛盾。因此，资本主义历史的一个鲜明特点就是持续寻找和不断修改能缓和、抑制这些矛盾的组织安排。结果是必须在国家权力基础上创造一种嵌套的等级制组织结构，将地方的和特殊的因素同全球范围内剩余价值的生产及其占有联系起来，来抵抗个别资本自我毁灭的必然趋势，这样形成的世界政治经济组织的本质始终是压迫与被压迫的帝国主义秩序。与资本主义生产方式及其内在矛盾演变相适应，不同时期的帝国主义就呈现出不同的形式。

Synthesizing the various analytical paradigms above, contemporary imperialism is in fact a stage in which the United States, in order to promote the accumulation of domestic monopoly capital, coordinates developed countries such as Europe and Japan with the help of international organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and even the United Nations, appropriates the surplus value of other countries through means such as global production networks and financialization, and supplements this with political and military means to control the political and economic order of other countries. It is also the latest stage of capitalist development.

综合以上各种分析范式，当代帝国主义实际上是美国为了促进国内垄断资本积累，借助于世界银行、国际货币基金组织甚至联合国等国际组织，协调欧洲、日本等发达国家，通过全球生产网络和金融化等手段占有其他国家的剩余价值，并辅之以政治和军事等手段控制其他国家的政治经济秩序的阶段，也是资本主义发展的最新阶段。

With the development of economic globalization, information technology, and transportation technology, multinational corporations from developed Northern countries such as the United States, Europe, and Japan decompose the globalized commodity production process through integration and modularization, carrying out networked collaborative production on a global scale and continuously absorbing the surplus value created by Southern countries. The monopoly mode of multinational corporations in global production networks takes two forms: one is a monopoly advantage in the production of use-values, and the other is a monopoly advantage in the realization of value. The former refers to multinational corporations occupying a dominant position in the production network by virtue of their monopoly over technological patents and control over key production links, outsourcing non-key production links and circulation processes, thereby appropriating a large share of added value. This producer-driven network is particularly evident in capital- and technology-intensive industries such as automobiles and semiconductors. The latter refers to multinational corporations playing a key role in the realization of the value of final products by virtue of their monopoly over brand marketing and distribution channels. This buyer-driven network is concentrated in trade-dominated, labor-intensive consumer goods industries, such as apparel, household goods, and consumer electronics. The monopoly position of multinational corporations in global production networks constitutes the most stable foundation for imperialist control over global material reproduction. Based on calculations using Marx’s labor theory of value, Kohpaiboon and Suwandi, among others, found that the main body of added value is occupied by Southern labor situated in the middle of the production chain. [3]3 See, e.g., S. Kohpaiboon, *Multinational Enterprises and Industrial Transformation: Evidence from Thailand* (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010); and I. Suwandi, *Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism* (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019). Kohpaiboon estimated that in 2011, the surplus value extracted by Northern countries from Southern countries was approximately 2.8 trillion US dollars. [4]4 This figure is cited from a study by Intan Suwandi, “The Labor-Value Theory and the New Imperialism,” *Monthly Review* 71, no. 3 (2019).

随着经济全球化、信息技术和交通技术的发展，美国、欧洲和日本等北方发达国家跨国公司通过集成化和模块化将全球化商品生产过程进行分解，在全球范围内进行网络化协作生产，不断吸收南方国家创造的剩余价值。跨国公司在全球生产网络中的垄断模式有两种：一种是在使用价值生产上具有垄断优势，另一种是在价值实现上具有垄断优势。前者是指跨国公司凭借技术专利的垄断和关键生产环节的控制，占据生产网络中的支配地位，并将非关键生产环节和流通过程外包，从而占据大量附加值。这种生产驱动型网络在诸如汽车、半导体等资本及技术密集的产业中尤为明显。后者是指跨国公司凭借对品牌营销和流通渠道的垄断，对最终产品的价值实现起着关键作用。这种买方驱动型网络集中于贸易主导的劳动力密集的消费品产业中，诸如服饰、生活用品、消费电子等行业。跨国公司在全球生产网络中的垄断地位，构成了帝国主义控制全球物质再生产最稳定的基础。科普和苏万迪等人基于马克思劳动价值论测算发现，占据附加值主体地位的是居于生产链中端的南方劳动力。科普估计，2011年北方国家从南方国家攫取的剩余价值大约为2.8万亿美元。

Developed countries such as the United States, Europe, and Japan plunder the value of other countries through financialization. Foster emphasizes that every form of financial transaction between developed and developing countries contains what Marx called predatory profit, behind which lies an unequal power relationship. [5]5 John Bellamy Foster, “The Financialization of Accumulation,” *Monthly Review* 62, no. 5 (2010). The United States can achieve global financial plunder through multiple means, being the creator, maintainer, and biggest beneficiary of the current world order of financial liberalization. First, the US dollar, as an international reserve currency, brings in international seigniorage revenue. The United States can directly issue dollars to purchase goods and services from other countries, directly plundering the resources of other countries without being constrained by foreign exchange reserves or balance of payments deficits. Second, the United States possesses a highly developed financial industry. Wall Street, as the global financial center, continuously develops various financial products and derivatives to control the pricing power of bulk commodities, and constantly arbitrages in financial markets through its institutional advantages and sophisticated financial operations, achieving the dispossession of the wealth of companies and individuals in Southern countries. Finally, US finance capital has intervened on a large scale in the privatization processes of Southern countries, acquiring large amounts of natural resources and infrastructure to obtain substantial monopoly rents. US finance capital also engages in large-scale speculative activities globally, continuously seizing wealth by creating and transmitting financial crises. Some research institutions estimate that since 1980, developing countries have lost 16.3 trillion US dollars due to balance of payments leakages, trade misinvoicing, and recorded financial transfers. [6]6 This estimate is drawn from research by the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) program, which tracks illicit financial flows from developing countries.

美国、欧洲和日本等发达国家通过金融化掠夺其他国家价值。福斯特强调，发达国家与发展中国家之间的每一种金融交易形式，都包含着马克思所说的掠夺式利润，其背后是不平衡的权力关系。美国可以通过多种手段实现全球金融掠夺，是当今世界金融自由化秩序的缔造者、维护者和最大受益者。首先，美元作为国际储备货币，可以带来国际铸币税收入。美国可以直接发行美元来购买其他国家的商品和服务，直接攫取其他国资源而不受外汇储备和国际收支赤字的制约。其次，美国拥有高度发达的金融业。作为全球金融中心的华尔街，不断开发出各种各样的金融产品和金融衍生品来控制大宗商品的定价权，不断通过金融制度优势和娴熟的金融运作手段在金融市场上套利，实现对南方国家公司和个人财富的剥夺。最后，美国金融资本大规模介入南方国家私有化过程，收购大量自然资源和基础设施来获得大量垄断性租金。美国金融资本还在全球进行大规模投机活动，不断通过制造和传递金融危机攫取财富。有研究机构测算，自1980年以来，发展中国家由于国际收支漏损、进出口贸易虚报以及有记录的金融转移而损失了16.3万亿美元。

Apart from a few countries, most Global South nations have consistently lingered on the periphery within the imperialist order under US hegemony. First, economic plunder continuously erodes the ability of Global South countries to escape their peripheral predicament. Global production networks and financialization have strengthened the developed countries’ occupation and control of Global South markets, turning these nations into sources of raw materials, markets for product sales, and destinations for capital export for the developed countries. The capital export of developed countries and the speculative nature of international financial capital have triggered debt crises and financial crises in Global South countries. The loss of wealth in Global South countries has deprived them of substantial resources that could have been used for their own economic development, causing them to lose the capacity for economic independence and self-determination. Second, the United States persistently suppresses Global South countries through political and even military means, forcing them to serve the economic development of the US and the developed capitalist countries of the Global North. The US reinforces the Washington Consensus through international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and even the United Nations, solidifying the existing international political and economic order. Since the end of the Cold War, the US government has successively proposed the “Engagement and Enlargement Strategy,” the “Global War on Terror Strategy,” the “Asia-Pacific Rebalance Strategy,” and the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” to consolidate America’s global leadership position and the dependent status of Global South countries. For those Global South countries that challenge the existing world order, when economic and political means prove ineffective, the US further resorts to military measures, forcibly locking them into the periphery.

除了少数国家外，大多数南方国家在美国治下的帝国主义秩序中始终徘徊于边缘地带。首先，经济掠夺不断侵蚀着南方国家摆脱边缘困境的能力。全球生产网络和金融化加强了发达国家对南方国家市场的占有和控制，将南方国家变成了发达国家的原料来源市场、产品销售市场和资本输出市场。发达国家资本输出和国际金融资本的投机性，引发了南方国家的债务危机和金融危机。南方国家的财富流失令其失去了大量可用于自身经济发展的资源，丧失了经济独立自主的能力。其次，美国不断通过政治甚至军事手段压制南方国家，迫使其服务于美国和北方发达资本主义国家的经济发展。美国通过世界银行、国际货币基金组织甚至联合国等国际组织强化华盛顿共识，固化现有国际政治经济秩序。冷战结束以来，美国政府先后提出了“参与和扩展战略”“全球反恐战略”“亚太再平衡战略”和“印太战略”，以此来巩固美国的全球领导地位和南方国家的依附地位。对于那些挑战现有世界秩序的南方国家，在经济和政治手段无效的情况下，美国会进一步采取军事手段，强制性地将其锁定在边缘地带。

The imperialist order under US hegemony faces multiple contradictions at both the domestic and international levels. At the domestic level, the US confronts the contradiction between maintaining the accumulation of domestic monopoly capital and preserving the legitimacy of the capitalist system. First is the unemployment crisis triggered by the globalization of production. The share of US manufacturing in GDP has declined from approximately 28% in the 1950s to 12% in 2010. In pursuit of profits, monopoly capital continuously relocates manufacturing to Global South countries, sparking an unemployment crisis in the US. Second is the economic stagnation crisis caused by financialization. The contribution of the “financial sector broadly defined,” comprising US finance, insurance, and real estate, to GDP rose from 15.70% in 1980 to 20.56% in 2016. Speculative finance in the US occupies a core position, inevitably crowding out productive long-term investment and driving economic development onto a debt-driven foundation. The combined effect of financial expansion and industrial relocation exacerbates the tendency of monopoly capital toward stagnation and crisis. Finally, there is the crisis of wealth polarization. The wealth generated by globalized production and financialization has not benefited the majority of the American people but has been monopolized by a small number of monopoly capitalists. In 2018, the US Gini coefficient reached a 50-year high, rising to 0.485. The worsening wealth polarization in the US has fueled the resurgence of neo-fascism, and neoliberalism is increasingly merging with fascism, giving rise to racism and vengeful nationalism.

美国治下的帝国主义秩序面临国内和国际层面的多重矛盾。在国内层面，美国面临维持国内垄断资本积累与维护资本主义制度合法性之间的矛盾。首先是生产全球化引发的失业危机。美国制造业占GDP的比重已经从20世纪50年代的28%左右下降到2010年的12%。垄断资本为了追求利润，不断将制造业向南方国家转移，引发了美国失业危机。其次是金融化引发的经济停滞危机。美国金融业、保险业和房地产业构成的“泛金融部门”的增加值对GDP贡献率从1980年的15.70%上升到2016年的20.56%。美国投机性金融处于核心地位，必然会挤出生产性的长期投资，促使经济发展建立在债务驱动的基础之上。金融膨胀与产业转移共同作用，加剧了垄断陷入停滞和危机的趋势。最后是贫富分化危机。全球化生产和金融化攫取的财富并没有惠及大多数美国民众，而是被少数垄断资本家独占。2018年美国基尼系数创50年新高，上升至0.485。美国不断恶化的贫富分化推动新法西斯主义再度抬头，新自由主义也正越来越与法西斯主义相融合，衍生出了种族主义和复仇式民族主义。

At the international level, in order to shift its domestic crises and safeguard US national interests, the United States continuously generates conflicts with other countries. While regarding the European Union and Japan as allies, the US also consistently views them as strategic competitors. The US seeks to restrict the development of other developed countries in certain areas, thereby maintaining its absolute advantage. For example, as early as the 1980s, the US struck at Japan through the Plaza Accord. [7]7 The Plaza Accord was a 1985 agreement among the G5 nations (France, West Germany, Japan, the US, and the UK) to depreciate the US dollar relative to the Japanese yen and the German mark, which severely impacted Japan’s export-driven economy and contributed to its subsequent “lost decade.” To control oil, strengthen the petrodollar alliance, and undermine the euro and the EU, the US launched a series of unilateral military interventions in the Middle East, including the Iraq War, the Libya War, and support for the Syrian civil war. To protect the interests of US financial monopoly capital and respond to the domestic financial crisis, the US repeatedly resorted to quantitative easing policies to shift the crisis onto the rest of the world, severely disrupting the international economic order. The Trump administration, in particular, adopted an “America First” strategy, raised the banner of nationalism, launched protectionist movements, unilaterally withdrew from more than a dozen international organizations or agreements, and initiated trade wars against many countries, including China, the EU, Canada, and Japan. The multiple contradictions of the new imperialist order under US hegemony have led global development to face four major challenges: a governance deficit, a trust deficit, a peace deficit, and a development deficit. The calls from the international community for change in the existing world order are consequently rising.

在国际层面，美国为了转嫁国内危机，维护美国国家利益，不断与其他国家发生矛盾。美国在将欧盟和日本视为盟友的同时，也始终视其为战略竞争对手。美国要限制其他发达国家在某些领域内的发展，进而保持美国的绝对优势地位。例如，早在20世纪80年代，美国通过“广场协议”打击了日本。美国为了控制石油，强化石油美元联盟，打击欧元与欧盟，对中东地区发动了伊拉克战争、利比亚战争和支持叙利亚内战等一系列单边军事干预行动。为了维护美国金融垄断资本的利益，应对国内金融危机，美国多次通过量化宽松政策向全世界转嫁危机，严重扰乱了国际经济秩序。特朗普政府更是采取美国优先战略，高举民族主义大旗，发起了保护主义运动，独自退出十多个国际组织或协定，对包括中国、欧盟、加拿大和日本在内的许多国家发动了贸易战争。美国治下新帝国主义秩序面临的多重矛盾，使得全球发展正面临治理赤字、信任赤字、和平赤字、发展赤字四大挑战。国际社会要求变革现有世界秩序的呼声随之不断高涨。

The international political and economic order continuously evolves under the impetus of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. The world is undergoing “changes unseen in a century.” China is one of the greatest variables in this transformation and one of the most important factors influencing it. Facing the multiple contradictions and challenges of the world order under US hegemony, our country must comprehensively coordinate both the domestic and international situations, unswervingly advance supply-side structural reform and the Belt and Road Initiative, and construct a new development pattern in which domestic and international dual circulations promote each other. Our country should actively promote the reshaping of the global governance system, improve the international political and economic order, promote the common development of all countries while pursuing our own national development, and strive to realize the “Chinese Dream” of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the “World Dream” of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

国际政治经济秩序在资本主义基本矛盾推动下不断发展演变。世界发生“百年未有之大变局”。中国是大变局中最大变量之一，也是影响大变局的最重要因素之一。面对美国治下世界秩序的多重矛盾与挑战，我国要全面统筹国内国际两个大局，坚定不移地推进供给侧结构性改革和“一带一路”建设，构建国内国际双循环相互促进的新发展格局。我国要积极推动重塑全球治理体系，完善国际政治经济秩序，在谋求本国发展中促进各国共同发展，努力实现中华民族伟大复兴的“中国梦”和构建人类命运共同体的“世界梦”。

Online editor: Zhong Yao, Zheng Yifan

网络编辑：钟尧 郑宜帆