ABSTRACT
In recent years imperialism has been something of a growth industry, both in the
military-industrial complex and academy. In the latter, scholars of critical bent have
asked to what extent reviving classical Marxist theories of imperialism can help us to
understand contemporary global power or whether some more radical innovation
might be necessary. Among the contested issues central to these discussions are
whether geopolitics and globalizing capitalism ought to be understood in terms of
‘one logic or two’ (Hobson 2007), or indeed whether the problem of capitalist geo-
politics can usefully be reduced to some abstract causal logic or logics. Breaking with
classical theories of imperialism, Hannes Lacher and Benno Teschke (2007) argue that
a formal or deductive approach which imputes imperialist tendencies to an essential
logic of capital is misguided:
While geopolitical competition characterizes the entire period of capitalist
modernity, the specific dynamics of international competition (and cooperation)
underwent conjunctural transformations that have to be set in the context of the
variable resolution of specific social and international conflicts in the political
and economic organization of capitalist modernity.
