The following is excerpted from an article in the Christian Science Monitor. In an era where Marx and Lenin were declared irrelevant a few years ago, it is interesting to see how even mainstream commentators are grappling with the debates and concepts today.
Readers are encouraged to go to the original site of the CSM for more information. We can find lots of useful information in the mainstream press if we read with a critical eye....
I agree with this unsectarian and enquiring approach. But such articles need careful reading.
Published in the Christian Science Monitor: "Lenin and Globalization"
Lenin and globalization or Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as imperialist
rivalry and war
Benjamin Schwarz
For better or worse, today's international market didn't simply
emerge. It was deliberately constructed.
A false dichotomy, and fundamentally incorrect to say that the international economy was deliberately constructed. Neither Lenin or Kautsky would have made such an unmarxist statement.
The marxist point is that conscious actions occur in the context of the development of a process that is beyond the conscious control of any one person.
US foreign policy has been based in essence on a hybrid of Lenin's and
Kautsky's analyses.
This is bizarre.
Lenin was wrong to say that war between imperialist powers was inevitable but he was not in a position to anticipate other ways in which they can mediate their conflicts.
It is however a fundamental distortion of Lenin's position to imply that it is merely "Hobbesian"
Capitalism - at least the advanced state of capitalism
represented by the global economy - may collapse as the political order
that nurtured it crumbles.
This article is clever journalism, by a marxistish commentator, who learned marxism at college and knows how to turn a clever idea around.
What it cannot do is analyse the underlying contradictions, of which theories or policies are a mere reflection.
There is both collusion and conflict between imperialist powers. That is the contradiction that must be addressed. The left generally forgets the existence of the conflicts, or knows no way to intervene in them without becoming hopelessly opportunist.
In economic terms we see a laissez faire climate of relatively unregulated global capitalist trade, accentuating the uneven accumulation of capital, in a way that greatly favours the US.
The fragility to the system comes not from other states trying to regroup to preserve their interests. It is they, being more in the periphery, that will bear the burden of the periodic recessions or crashes.
It is true that the US needs to be a little more prudent and play clever games, for example over the appointment of the head of the IMF, in order to appear to listen to third world opinion more than the Europeans do.
The issue that marxists should pose directly is that of democratic global governance of the world economic system. Only with that perspective is it possible to judge each of the moves of the imperialist powers as to whether they are primarily progressive, or more probably reactionary. Only from this perspective is it possible to analyse the serious contradictions between imperialist powers which Lenin pointed to.
Chris Burford
London
