Ian thank you for you reply and I will do my best to respond to it.
--- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 20:13:55 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:18922] Re: Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01 From: "Greg Schofield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > "Empire" in essence only makes one grand point, a point that has been religiously avoided - Imperialism is over and is in the process of being transformed into a "new world order" [Empire?] - of which we seem to get not even a glimmer of its true form. "What would constitute empirical evidence for the above claim? Just because colonization of territories via invasion and the installation of administrative appuratuses by/of conquering states no longer occurs along the same vectors does not mean that the dynamics or structures of intentionality that we associate with the imperialist mindset have disappeared." Ian, I would put to you that given the concept of Imperialism developed by Lenin (which I believe lies at the core of our collective understanding) - the evidence is in a sense just in such an exhaustion of the means of Imperialist competition. Bear with me a little. Lenin's Imperialism was conceived as a transitional stage, part of the process of further socialisation of the means of production and property as such. In this it was defined by the conjunction of national finance capital with existing states, which established the basis for imperial competition (and the nature of Imperialism as such). The exhaustion of the means of Imperialist struggle, is in essense the exhaustion of the conjunction beween finance capital and particular states. If this persisted then the contest itself would have the means for just that type of traditional territorial division and administration. In this sense there is no material grounds for the persistence of the Imperialist "mindset" except of course the wieght of previous history, which of course produces this very type of persistence (that is persistence in form not in essence). The mindset persists but only to clothe new movements and new contradictions. In short, given a close reading of Lenin's Imperialism, the real shock is not that Imperialism is over (Lenin himself lays the groundwork for this) but in the way the "left" persists in prolonging it conceptually. What I like in your response is that you follow your own logic well, the vectors and mindset you see are real - they appear to dispute what I am saying and this is properly said. But it hinges on appearance, moreover you correctly describe them as vectors and mindsets with which I would very much agree. Now the querstion is whether this actually supports the notion of Imperialism as still active or the reverse. Obviously I saw the reverse, but let it hand for a while just as a possiblity. "To assert that would be equivalent to stating that "the left" or some other group of self-identified agents had succeeded in transforming the way international relations theory, diplomatic history, international economics and a host of other disciplines taught in the US academies had succeeded in producing a sufficient number of dilpomats, bureaucrats etc. [not to menation business persons] who had managed to free themselves from the cognitive frameworks that drive capital accumulation. Just because international commercial law [law of contracts, property rights etc.] and jurisprudence is being changed and deepened in front of our very eyes does not mean that 'Empire' is the result of a counterfinality we can only dimly apprehend. The 'capitalists' and their managerial proxies no longer need to conquer with armies, they do it with legal doctrine that strives for invariances in a whole host of organizational/political contexts." We need to go back a few steps in this. First I by no means embrace the book "Empire" as a whole. Second I would not pin the transformation on a change of the intellectual apparatus of bourgeois rule but rather on the transformation of the property form of capital. This would, following Lenin, be a transformation which have two distinct but related aspects. The further socialisation of the means of production (including the means of appropriation to mainatain Lenin's important distinction) and the loosing of finance capital from the shackles of the protection of a particular state (ie one is no longer an expression of the other) - I would term the latter not in terms of the creation of international finance capital (IMF etc) but the emergance of International Credit Capital levered by international monopolies - (I may well be wrong on this). In a sense the training which has become so professionalised of the General Staff and personal servants of capital has gonbe hand in hand with the transformation itself which I would date its beginings in 1944, the childhood in the 1970s and the adolescence in the 1980-90s. At the same time the training of professionals has followed these developments and thus I believe expresses them in a form of hieghten bureacratic abilities. The transformation of terriorial struggle into "legal" means bespeaks also of a major shift in the basis of the highest forms of capital. None of this makes capital any kinder - it follows its relentless bourgeois logic, but no longer in the same way. It is understanding the specific nature of our period, and how it differs from the past on which a modern political platform can be built. The alternative is to say nothing has changed. Now you are not saying this, you are conceding change, it seems at this point we only disagree on the degree and to what ends. In this our disagreement would seem to turn on whether we should bless our times with a new title or not. Well if we can cover the same territory without the help of distinguishing this period from the one that proceeded it - then I am in no disagreement. "Additionally, as long as ecosystem services are made available on the market to the highest bidder there is no need for invasion to secure access to timber, minerals etc. To be sure we see scattered episodes of the sort that once those microterritories within states are secured by property rights, corps. defend them via novel forms of privateering-security services; post-modern Pinkertons and the like. The question remains as to whether 'weak' or 'quasi' states will be able to withstand the kind of consequences that result when corps. continue to extract wealth from various ecologies when the living conditions of local communities continues along the vector[s] of immiseration. To the extent those communities fight back, the greater our need not to be fooled by rhetorics of 'terrorism' and the like. One need not be a Malthusian to see that the proclivities for ever more intense forms of social competition for resources may increasingly generative of political instability." I am not sure that a struggle for diminishing resources (an historically relative idea) necessary needs to cloak of state Imperialism, but you have said as much by relaligning the state question (in this I again agree with your logic) when saying whether states (increasingly any of them) can resist the relentless coorporate plunderings of our common wealth. In a sense political instablity is a direct outcome of the new forced alignment of states (a very unimperialistic move) whereby something external to a state is imposing its will on states (including the US). For a number of reasons "Empire" is not a satisfying concept for our times, the book certainly opens up the debate but it has not produced anything close to an answer. My defense of it is that it does open up these questions and should be treated seriously on its strongest points. In reading your response I cannot see that we are in any real dispute, though obviously we would express ourselves very differently. I will go a step further than simply alluding to "Empire" and state that in my opinion the concept of "Empire" as the dominant concept is wrong headed, that the reality is that the Bourgeoisie have created there own form of Socialism (that is a form of property in their interests - not the rest of us), that Bourgeois Socialism more accurately places the role of capital in relation to nationa states as a force of capital which stands above them and attempts to direct them in its interests. It appears an Empire because it has an apparantly unified form (this is mostly an allusion but has a basis in reality), however, we make a mistake in trying to sense out the logic by following the events of states, rather the logic lies in the plans employed collectively by international corporations and how these can be opposed practically. No one need follow me to this extreme, however, in a sense the point of "Empire" has already been proved in the distance we have moved from Imperialism as it evolved under Lenin's eye and what he said so clearly what it must become, even if the class content is nothing he would wish to inflict on the world.. Greg Schofield, hoping I have not confused matters even further, Perth Australia
