Lenin on Imperialism: Carrying the Essay

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In Lenin's view, 19th century industrialized colonialism was different than previous colonial endeavors in that it was far more economically driven: nations had once used colonies as political and military buffers against their enemies. Now they needed colonies to ensure that the system that enabled the capitalist elites to prosper would survive. Without colonies, the capitalist system would topple. Lenin was prescient in seeing that colonialism made the world inherently unstable -- secret alliances and colonial conflicts were two of the major causes of World War I. Ironically, the Cold War would also be spawned by a kind of colonialist conflict -- not only did the Soviet Union strive to use Eastern Europe as a political buffer, it also economically exploited many of the Eastern European nations in its sphere of influence and forced members of the Warsaw Pact to adopt the Soviet economic system. (Lenin pointed out that colonies were forced to become capitalistic, not for their benefit, but for the benefit of the colonizer).

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A reader does not need to be a communist to grant that Lenin had many valid points about the economic aspects of colonialism. Because the real reasons of colonialism were hidden with rhetoric about the need for Europeans to 'carry the white man's burden' and civilize non-white races, it is easy to forget the economically self-serving agenda behind so much of colonialism. Nations may have been initially driven to seek out colonies for slightly different reasons, some more for new markets, others to ensure that rivals did not dominate them in the race for new territories. But once the race to colonize the world was on, the economic component came to the forefront, given the 'solution' it provided to the problems of unchecked capitalism and the disparities in wealth nearly all nations were struggling with domestically......

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