At 08:44 AM 10/30/98 -0800, you wrote: >Louis, did you write this piece yourself or are you quoting someone? It is from the new book "1898" by David Traxel. > >two comments: > >it's implict in the essay but should be made explicit that the turning >outward of US (white male) ambitions was in some ways simply the >continuation of a trend: immediately after the US conquered the Indians, it >turned to conquering new areas. Yes, this of extreme importance. I doing research for my next article on Marxism and the American Indian that will focus on the question of how the United States should be viewed historically. There is a tendency to see imperialism as something that was introduced in the late 1800s and to elevate the pre-imperialist United States as some kind of model for countries with semifeudal trappings. For example, Trotsky wrote an article on the US which is included in the Deutscher collection that is almost rapturous in the way it looks at our "great democracy". The Russian social democracy was fascinated by the US as well and thought that one possible outcome for the Russian revolution against tsardom was an American-styled republic. I will argue that something was rotten at the core of this republic from the inception. I am particularly interested in the whole question of Manifest Destiny, which foreshadows imperialism not only in its understanding that the US must expand outwards but in its racism as well. This weekend I will scan in and post something from a fascinating book that compares the late 1800s wars against the Zulu and the Sioux. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
