  This analysis leads to an understanding of imperialism as the political expression of competition among capitalists for “what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment” (Luxemburg 1913 [AK: 465]). Differently from the expectation of classical economists that the development of commercial relations would bring peace among nations, Luxemburg showed how “the harmony of interests between commercial nations in the East were proclaimed to the sound of gunfire in the Opium Wars” (Luxemburg 1913 [AK: 427]). And while imperial conquest, displacement and war guarantee the direct subjection of whole parts of the world to the political control of more developed capitalist countries, other subtle ways of control – for example, in the form of international loans – create political and economic dependency that places the foreign and economic policy of young capitalist states directly under the influence of their neocolonial masters.  International loans, as she explained, help dependent territories acquire the resources needed to modernise and develop their infrastructure while also financing the export of capital from advanced capitalist countries. However, in a financialized economy, with investment comes speculation, and when hopes of increasing rates of profit are disappointed, debt comes to haunt these vulnerable national economies and losses need to be socialized. This triggers a new, even deeper, crisis and the beginning of a new cycle of accumulation accompanied by militarism as a weapon in the competitive struggle among nations (Toporowski 2015).