When West Meets East: The Shifting Form of Imperialism Through Foreign Investment

Given the diverse and complex nature of defining neoliberalism which the roots source of imperialism that remain today, conceives neoliberalism as an economic and political ideology that aims to subject social and ecological affairs to capitalist market dynamics. These control are manifested through private property rights, free market, and trade neoliberalism with state supporting the environment for this functioning of the market. Doctrines of neoliberalism further emphasize virtues of economic scale, economic efficiency, and minimalist state.

Nowadays, most of the institutions have instantiated neoliberalism as asset of global rules to exploit in order to emphasize countries interest and own market. The ideological underpins of neoliberalism are based on Keynesianism which places emphasis on market triumphalism and creating mechanism for allocating goods and services through commodification.

The label of imperialism first launched by Kenneth Boldly in his 1968 Presidential address describing as an attempt on the part of economics to take over all other social aspects. It is consist aggressively to expand relationship between raw material exploitation and market behavior (supply and demand). In definition, imperialism can only be practiced by capitalist government and private sector who particularly denied of all boundaries for free competition. Based on Max Weber’s discussion, imperialism relation creates specific preconditions of an imperialistic capitalism, then still exist in non-colonial or non-maritime forms.

For Marx and Engels view, the framework of the socio-historical concepts conduct the mutual process consisted not in “underdevelopment” and “industrialization” in the contemporary sense, but in capitalist condition and inevitable capitalization of the world. In some part of the world, all foreign investment has come to be associated with imperialism. The entire nature of investment, imperialism matter, has been changed by the emergence and expansion of Multinational Corporation (MNCs).

Reflection on advancement will certainly reflect on globalization. The age of post-colonialism is simply the age of globalization. Historically, Western bourgeois class initiated and led the globalization movement. Moreover, the rules of globalization naturally formulated according to their interest. In this sense, globalization is a process which the West colonizes the East. The process of globalization itself create imperialism. This system nourish imperialism and makes it a global phenomenon.

Talking about foreign investment, that mean international economic domination and socio-political influence, the MNCs are clearly practicing it on a large scale. This kind of interpretation has departed further from the original concept of political and colonial history to economic domination with based on surplus accumulation of capital in countries of highly developed industrial development. Indeed, MNCs go into less developed areas in order to accumulate more capital there and export a large part of extra surplus back to their countries.

Developed more detail in The New Imperialism written by David Harvey, analysis of the spread of imperialism through series of foreign investment result uneven geographic development. Uneven development creates competition between regions which are forced to open their economies to foreign trade, investment, and loans. As Harvey write, the general progress of liberalization has therefore increasingly impelled through mechanism of uneven geographical development. Most of the facts were either non-existent or for less influential in older types of imperialism.