I. Introduction

The great battle of the post-war world has been, according to the typical narrative in history textbooks and various front-facing academics, the Cold War, which was more than just a struggle between imperialist powers a la World War One and the Colonial Period generally. Instead, the Cold War was a battle of systems. The atheistic socialists of the Soviet Union and affiliated nations, facing up against the God-fearing capitalists of the United States. The Soviets were equalitarian while the Americans were meritocratic. The Soviets were collectivist while the Americans were individualist. Because the war could not be fought on the battlefield for fear of mutually-assured nuclear destruction, it had to be fought in the mind, a war of ideas. As Marx would put it:

Of course, this narrative is ignoring the several places where the Cold War did in fact turn hot, such as Korea and Vietnam. These were not isolated events separate from the Cold War, but were, in fact, inexorably linked to the conflict of the Cold War. The battle of ideas often turned into a battle of physical violence.

The Cold War's narrative and the actions of the Soviet Union and China have left a lasting impression in the minds of people, namely the concept that Marxist thought and Christian thought are two wholly incompatible systems. They contradict each other, they would have to be applied inconsistently, they would compromise each other. For the more educated, Marxism is seen as a product of the Enlightenment, which itself was contrary to Christianity.

There are a few things wrong with this conception of history. The Soviet Union was not communist, they were state-capitalist. The Cold War was not an ideological one, but an imperialist one. Marxism is not a product of the Enlightenment; the discovery of things such as surplus-value and historical-materialism are products of the Enlightenment, but this does not make these concept any less universally-valid. Finally, the Enlightenment was not against Christianity, but was an expression of the progress of society towards centralization -- away from the influence of the clergy and church in statecraft as well as concepts such as divine-right.

II. The Soviet Union

Firstly, the Soviet Union. This must be explained in depth. If the Soviet Union claimed to have communism as an end-goal, that is by all means acceptable. But the claim that the Soviet Union was communist are absolutely false.

The workers of the Soviet Union were still wage-workers. Instead of renting from a landlord, the state was their landlord. Instead of selling their labor-power to a capitalist, the state was the capitalist. Instead of buying commodities from a business, commodities were bought from the state. The entire apparatus of capitalism was maintained, but under state supervision.

Under the early stages of communism, often referred to as socialism, there is no "wage-labor". Workers are not paid wages, but the full value of their labor. Under the Soviet Union, workers were paid wages, with the difference between the cost of their labor-power and their actualized labor going to the state treasury. The same capitalist relation reproduces itself on a larger scale, but merely under state guidance rather than private control. The state, in essence, becomes one giant monopoly over all industry.

The key characteristic of capitalism is the sale and purchase of wage-labor. Marx explains this as M-C(L+MP)-M'. This appears complicated at first, but is quite simple when some terms are defined.

Firstly, the difference between Labor and Labor-Power must be elaborated upon. A tribesman may hunt a deer and kill it, gather firewood, and mend his hut all in six hours. In this span of time, he has gained another day of life for himself. In other words, he has reproduced one day's labor-power -- his ability to labor -- in less than one day's labor. He did not spend twenty-four hours laboring, yet was able to reproduce a whole day's labor-power.

What significance does this have? The fact that exchange-value is an expression of the labor imbued in an object. A table has more exchange-value than the sum of its individual parts, because more labor was expended in the act of assembly of the table. A piece of gold has more exchange-value than a piece of iron of equal weight because the gold is far more scarce, meaning it requires far more labor to gather. Of course, this requires the objects to actually have a use when they are consumed (food being eaten, cars being driven, and so on), and this is only expressing the socially-necessary labor-time -- you cannot intentionally work slower to create more exchange-value, but the exchange-value is measured by the amount of time necessary given the conditions of production in a society.

This brings these two concepts together. Labor-power is able to be alienated. You can sell your labor-power to someone, and they will give you money or other items in exchange for this. However, the socially-necessary labor-time to reproduce that labor-power requires less labor than the consumption of that labor-power produces, as previously mentioned. Practically, this means that an employer can set a worker's wage lower than the value of his labor, forcing the worker to work for a longer time than necessary to reproduce his labor-power in the form of wages. This excess time, the difference between the labor and the labor-power, the difference between value generated and value paid as wages, is called Surplus Value. This is the basis of capitalist production. Those businesses who are able to generate more surplus value -- pay lower wages, work employees more intensely, etc -- have a greater capacity to expand, or in other words, to reproduce the entire capitalist circuit.

The other dimension of this, to be briefly explained, is constant and variable capital. When labor is performed, it passes exchange-value onto the objects. But when materials are used in the production process, their exchange-values are passed along through the process. Living labor becomes dead labor, which cannot create new exchange-value. This is called constant capital, in the capitalist production process. Variable capital is the capital, the part of the production process, associated with a varying amount of exchange-value, i.e. living labor.

With this necessary background, the circuit of M-C(L+MP)-M' becomes clear. Money-capital is invested to purchase commodities, consisting of labor-power and the means of production (tools, raw material, etc.), which are consumed in the production process to create finished goods that are exchanged for more money than what put into the system in the beginning -- the original value of the money-capital invested, plus the surplus value. This M' is then reinvested as M in the beginning of the circuit anew. The system reproduces itself, on a larger scale with each circuit.

This is the circuit which defines capitalism. Under Soviet-style economics, this process was not broken. The extraction of surplus-value continued. The process of accumulation and reproduction continued. The capitalist circuit was not abolished, but merely formalized as state policy.

A society is not defined by the policy of its ruling class. Germany is a capitalist nation. When it was ruled by a monarch, the Kaiser, or when it was ruled by a parliamentary system, or by a fascist dictator, the underlying relations of production remained intact. The ideology of the ruling class was irrelevant. The funamentals of the economic system, the capitalist commodity circuit, was the dominant relation of production. The Soviet Union operated off of the capitalist commodity circuit, and so was a capitalist nation, despite what its ruling class may claim.

From this perspective, showing what makes the Soviet Union not capitalist, we can see very clearly that the Cold War could not possibly be a conflict between 'ideologies'. It was a conflict between two large, developed, and capitalist states. It was an imperial conflict, for dominance of other smaller states, or rather, their markets.

III. Imperialism

When we talk about imperialism, imperial conflict, what does this mean? It may conjure up visuals of British soldiers in pith helmets shooting Zulus, or college students complaining about any sort of foreign action that a major nation like America does. But Imperialism, as discussed by people such as Lenin, Bukharin (quoted below), and Hilferding, is an expression of a capitalist system fully developed inside of a nation's borders.

Capital, money and machinery, tends to centralize into larger-scale factories and works, as well as concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. However, there is only so much development that can occur inside of a nation's borders. The capitalist commodity circuit becomes stifled, slow. The rate of surplus value lowers. And so, capital seeks to reproduce itself in foreign markets, or there are more profitable ventures overseas. In consequence, capital export occurs. We saw this in America in the 1960's, with capital outflow to East Asia, as well as to the profitable re-development in post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.

These developed economies only have a limited foreign-market to compete for. They must secure deals with states, they must develop factories rapidly, to secure these high-profits. This often brings the host countries of the firms into direct confrontation with each other. A classic example of military force being used for economic purposes is the actions of Commodore Perry, who used naval power -- military pressure -- to open the Japanese market to American imports. Another example were the Opium Wars, where the British army fought the Chinese to force the sale of opium to be permitted to the Chinese market.

In the Cold War, we saw this imperialist conflict between two matured capitalist economies, the Soviet Union and America. For example, a conflict in Korea and Vietnam, both seeking to draw these nations into the 'sphere', market, of these two imperial powers, disguised as an ideological or economic conflict. Would a Soviet-backed Vietnam have traded more with America or the Soviet Union? Would an American-backed Vietnam have traded more with America or the Soviet Union? These conflicts are about 'ideology' insofar as it corresponds to securing markets.