Imperialism is the first stage of bourgeois political rule, not capitalism’s last

Evidence

Imperialism must be considered the first stage in political rule of the bourgeoisie rather than the last stage of capitalism. It is well known how little the owning classes had aspired to government, how well contented they had been with every type of state that could be trusted with protection of property rights. For them, indeed, the state had always been only a well-organized police force. This false modesty, however, had the curious consequence of keeping the whole bourgeois class out of the body politic; before they were subjects in a monarchy or citizens in a republic, they were essentially private persons. This privateness and primary concern with money-making had developed a set of behavior patterns which are expressed in all those proverbs—“nothing succeeds like success,” “might is right,” “right is expediency,” etc.—that necessarily spring from the experience of a society of competitors. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 377

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• DEFINE: Frames imperialism as a distinct political phase initiated by the bourgeoisie’s entry into rule, a key scaffolding concept for theorizing colonial/imperial state power.
• XREF: Feeds the Islamophobia toolkit’s understanding of how bourgeois class interests fuse with imperial and later racial-nationalist governance.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does this bourgeoisie-as-moral-force framing integrate with Arendt’s later account of the mob and racism in the same book?

Related

• Imperialism politically emancipated the previously excluded bourgeoisie (similarity 0.86)
• Imperialism politically emancipated the bourgeoisie after it had been excluded from national government. (similarity 0.86)
• The bourgeoisie ruled economically while leaving politics to the state (similarity 0.86)
• Imperialism was pushed by business and welcomed by educated elites (similarity 0.83)
• Totalitarian claims to totality merely reversed the bourgeoisie’s own political philosophy (similarity 0.79)
• Imperialism from 1884-1914 served as a preparatory stage for totalitarianism (similarity 0.79)
• The bourgeoisie’s alliance with the mob destroyed the nation-state it needed (similarity 0.79)
• Imperialism is capitalism’s political drive for the remainders of the noncapitalist world (similarity 0.78)