Tristan Shan P.

Fuentes Professor Issabel Sallador

Political Economy of Imperialism

Imperialism is a policy in which a country extends its power into other territories or
nations with the purpose of acquiring economic and political gain through either diplomatic
actions or military force. Lenin's theory of imperialism defined imperialism as the monopoly
stage of capitalism. He indicates that the special features of this monopoly stage of
capitalism. First is the monopolies play a decisive role in the economy because of the
concentration of production and capital. Second is the creation of finance capital through the
merging of bank with industrial capital. Third is the development of the export of capital
through the export of commodities. Fourth is the formation of the international capitalist
monopolies that shared the world among themselves. Lastly, the division of the world among
the great imperialist powers.

Lenin traced the process of development of imperialist powers. He states that the export
of capital gives rise to the annexation and subjugation of colonial territories to the imperialist
dominators. Thus, this denotes that in the 20th and 21st century setting, globalization
contributes to the propagation of imperialist powers.

In the contemporary world, the most prominent imperialist are the U.S. imperialists. Towards
the goal of hegemony which is hidden under the mask of various benevolent approaches but
have malicious imperialist goals, they took advantage of the spread of globalization around
the world. One of such approaches they used is the expansion of their economy through
empowering international trade and raising the rate of surplus value. Second is through
cultural dissemination. By promoting the "American way of life" as a standard of living
through U.S. commercials icons such as Mc Donald’s, Levis, Hollywood, etc., imperialism is
propagated by spreading cultural influence to other nations. Third is the spread of political
influence through instituting the United Nations (UN), World Bank, World Trade
Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) in which initiated diplomacy to other countries and offered help to
weaker countries but only to strengthen their hegemony through political influence. Lastly,
through strengthening military force by building military bases all around the world and the
creeping wide information gathering through the National Security Agency (NSA) which is
coordinated by the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The NSA eavesdrop the entire world's communication using a global surveillance system.
Such are the methods that contributed to the hegemony of the U.S. imperialists.
 Nonetheless, nations must develop their own economy and political force to stop the
spread of imperialist powers. A socialist revolution must also be fueled to stop the spread of
capitalism.

Keynesian Political Economy

The Keynesian economic theory is mainly focused on the circular flow of economy. The
goal was to preserve capitalism by analyzing thoroughly how the economy works as a cycle
with all of its failures and the cure for such failures.

It was October 24, 1929 when the Great Depression happened in United States of
America. After the succeeding years of economic success and abundance, an unexpected
depression occurred which greatly reduced the economy. It almost led to the end of the
capitalist system. John Maynard Keynes, one of the greatest economists provided a solution
to the Great Depression and to preserve the capitalist system in his famous book, The General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. He theorized the Keynesian economic theory
that focuses on how to maintain the flow of the economy. In his theory, it was explained that
the economy works as a cycle. The economy is at equilibrium as the business firms produces
goods and services, the consumers buy them. This is the first level of the Keynesian theory
where it assumes that the income that the household sector receives is solely used for
consumption of goods and services. However, it gets complicated when the household sector
chooses to save that income. Thus, it becomes a leakage to the economy because instead of
the income being spent on the consumption of goods and services, it goes to financial
institutions.

Other examples of leakages aside from savings are money being spent on foreign imports
of goods and taxes. The solution for these leakages is to level the amount of leakages using
injections. Investments can offset savings as business firms can burrow from financial
markets to use it for capital expansion. Exports of goods can offset imports to receive income
from foreign merchants. Lastly, the government can use the taxes to finance the purchase of
goods and services. Thus, the Keynesian theory indicates that no matter what leakage or
failures an economy will have, a cure can be used to solve such failures to preserve the
capitalism system. In addition, the Keynesian theory also explains that the cost of production
and profits are all incomes because of the sense that a cost of production is an income to an
individual or another firm.
 In 1955, Paul A. Samuelson offered his grand neoclassical synthesis. It was the
combination of Keynesian theory and neoclassical economy. In the grand neoclassical
synthesis of Samuelson, the Keynesian theory will be the framework that will maintain a full-
employment economy and the market system will operate in order to allocate resources
according to the standards of neoclassical ideology.

The efficiency of Keynesian Theory cannot be measured completely because of the

Political Economy of Globalization

Since 1990, the beginning of academic inquiries into multiple process of globalization.
Various approaches to the study of globalization have been created. Such approaches are
globalization as "Globaloney," as Economic Process, as Political Process, and as Cultural
Process.

Some academic scholars they suspect that general observations about existing accounts
of globalization often amount to little more than "globaloney." Rejectionists dismisses the
usefulness of globalization as an analytical concept. Sceptics points out the limited nature of
globalizing process that the world is not as globally integrated. Lastly, modifiers believes that
the term "globalization" is inaccurate for the actual state of affairs. Globalization as
Economic Process indicates how international trade has been growing because of
globalization. Countries can trade their surplus products to other countries as imports and
exports. Globalization as Political Process shows how diplomatic intentions are being enacted
within countries and how policies are being shared. Lastly, Globalization as Cultural Process
talks about how culture are being shared with other nations. These shared cultures are being
adapted by other nations.