Jim Devine:
>Since there hasn't been an International Convention of Marxist Experts to
>standardize Marxist terminology, saying that there are no "non-capitalist
>forms of imperialism" in "a Marxist sense" is exactly the same as saying
>the non-capitalist imperialisms weren't "imperialism in the sense that I
>[Louis] use it." (BTW, I hope that there never is such a Convention.)
This is evasive. In all the literature of 20th century Marxism, there is no
confusion over the social system in 3rd century Rome and 19th century Great
Britain. There is, of course, confusion about Soviet "imperialism" but I
personally am loath to get into that can of worms right now.
>Instead of arguing by reference to a non-existing convention, a political
>argument is required: for example, one might argue that the Roman
>imperialism wasn't _really_ imperialism the way capitalist imperialism is.
>This argument would involve using facts, logic, etc. But we can't say stuff
>like "if the Romans had been Marxists, they wouldn't have called their
>system an 'empire' or 'imperial'."
I am not going to get into the political economy of Rome. It would divert
me from other more pressing tasks, like airline deregulation.
>I dunno. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia sure looked like an aspect
>of an imperialist system (one different from the capitalist one, of
>course). If you want to call it "foreign aid" or something like that, go
>ahead, but that simply reveals your political position. (Why not call the
>US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 "foreign aid"?)
Looked like? Yes, that is true.
>sure, there are a lot of similarities between the two capitalist
>imperialisms prevailing in 1901 and 2001. But they differed, say, from the
>imperialism of the Cold War.
I have no idea what the "imperialism of the Cold War" means in Marxist
terms. The USA saw the Soviet Union as a potential market for manufactured
goods and a source of raw materials and cheap labor just the way that Great
Britain saw China in the 19th century. The difference is that the USSR was
off-limits because a socialist revolution had taken place. End of story.
>There are also differences. The imperialism of 1901 involved the contention
>of rich nation-states involving tariffs, a scramble for colonies, military
>build-up, and eventually war. In 2001, the rich nation-states have
>basically buried the tariff and military hatchets, so that war between them
>seems unlikely at best. Instead of formal colonization (which divided
>Africa, for example, into separate blocks dominated by different powers) we
>see the effort to create One Big Market dominated by a developing world
>ruling class. There's more of a unified rich-country war against the
>periphery and deviant states (Iraq, for example) that won't march to the
>neoliberal drum -- rather than a competition among rich nation-states.
>Corporations are competing more than nation-states. Even the rich countries
>are becoming dependent, joining in the "race to the bottom" to some extent.
>(I speak as a resident of greater Los Angeles, a place that seems to be a
>branch of the Third World if you leave the West Side.)
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
I am aware of all this, but why interject the Roman Empire or Stalin into
the mix. It only confuses things.
Louis Proyect
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