[Marxism] Viewpoint magazine on imperialism

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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A great many interesting and provocative essays in the new issue of
Viewpoint - https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/issue-6-imperialism/

For example, the lead article by Salar Mohandesi at
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/the-specificity-of-imperialism/

“Lim­it­ing impe­ri­al­ism only to the “West,” or even just the Unit­ed
States, tends to obscure the impe­ri­al­ism of those states often
com­bat­ting that impe­ri­al­ism. Of course, there are enor­mous
dif­fer­ences between, for exam­ple, U.S. and Russ­ian impe­ri­al­ism,
which become espe­cial­ly impor­tant when con­sid­er­ing the strug­gles on
the ground today, but the fact remains that for those who call them­selves
social­ists, the ulti­mate objec­tive must remain the abo­li­tion of both,
not the defense of one against the oth­er.

“This point must be empha­sized, since there is a ten­den­cy among some on
the left today to defend what­ev­er regime oppos­es the Unit­ed States,
whether it be Iran, Syr­ia, North Korea, or Rus­sia. The under­ly­ing
con­cerns ani­mat­ing this response are often very real: a desire to block
the vio­lence of U.S. impe­ri­al­ism, a gen­uine com­mit­ment to peace in
war-torn regions, or an urgent need to counter most of the domes­tic left,
which still tends to implic­it­ly or explic­it­ly sup­port U.S.
impe­ri­al­ism. Nev­er­the­less, what­ev­er its moti­va­tions, this kind of
anti-impe­ri­al­ism runs the risk of sub­sti­tut­ing antag­o­nis­tic
rela­tions between the class­es com­pris­ing a state with the
antag­o­nis­tic rela­tions between nation-states. With class­es
homog­e­nized, and class strug­gle down­played, or even erased, the
sub­ject of lib­er­a­tion becomes the nation-state itself, not the work­ing
class­es. At its extreme, this kind of think­ing can lead to sup­port­ing
author­i­tar­i­an states found­ed on the destruc­tion of the left and the
repres­sion of work­ers’ self-activ­i­ty because they are said to be
embark­ing on an autonomous, anti-impe­ri­al­ist path of devel­op­ment in
the face of “West­ern” impe­ri­al­ist depre­da­tions.”
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