Imperial capitalism governed by dispersing local power under distant authority

Evidence

Revealing that the brain is neither a rigid structure nor a centralized machine is not enough to stave off the threat of alienation. In fact, neo-liberal ideology today itself rests on a redistribution of centers and a major relaxation of hierarchies. Domination and the crisis of centrality, in a merely seeming paradox, are perfectly matched with each other. The restructuring of capitalism (post-Fordist capitalism of the second industrial revolution) was accomplished at the price of substituting control by self-organization for planning decided and overseen by a formal centralized authority within the company. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 141 (#expands, via linked claim)

On these grounds, he praised the Opium Wars that had ‘opened’ China to British trade; ‘no barriers ought to be put in the way even of the trade in poisons’, he argued, it being up to each individual to restrain himself. The unequal and extraterritorial treaties imposed on China established a precursor for neoliberal forms of empire ‘predicated on legally protected freedom of trade without formal territorial control’. In a different context, the challenge for the neoliberals was to conceptualise the institutional and legal conditions that would compel postcolonial states to offer their resources on the market’s terms. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 262 (#expands, via linked claim)

According to Rosa Luxemburg’s brilliant insight into the political structure of imperialism (op. cit., pp. 273 ff., pp. 361 ff.), the “historical process of the accumulation of capital depends in all its aspects upon the existence of noncapitalist social strata,” so that “imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competition for the possession of the remainders of the noncapitalistic world.” This essential dependence of capitalism upon a noncapitalistic world lies at the basis of all other aspects of imperialism, which then may be explained as the results of oversaving and maldistribution (Hobson, op. cit.), as the result of overproduction and the consequent need for new markets (Lenin, Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism, 1917), as the result of an undersupply of raw material (Hayes, op. cit.), or as capital export in order to equalize the national profit rate (Hilferding, op. cit.). — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2224 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: A dominant imperial power can cap sectarian violence while institutionalizing its basis. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 2238; Nineteenth-century European imperialism often worked through debt rather than direct rule; Neo-liberal capitalism decentralizes authority yet intensifies domination. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 141 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Neo-liberal capitalism decentralizes authority yet intensifies domination. #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 141
• Unequal treaties prefigured neoliberal empire without formal territorial control #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 262
• Imperialism is capitalism’s political drive for the remainders of the noncapitalist world #expands (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2224
• Imperialism as policy emerged from nineteenth-century European capital stagnation #expands (0.70)