Ian I had always assumed that the raw inter-state rivalry (most obviously 1914-1945) had overtime given way to "oligopolies securing markets via state intervention" and hence Imperialism persisted. Indeed up until the 1970s there is good reason to see this as a simple outgrowth.
However, connected with the collapse of the USSR maintaining that the simple growth of Imperialism does not get us very far. Perhaps it was the existence of a second super-power which maintained it, perhaps it was overcome due to internal developments, but Imperialism as a conjunction between national finance capital and an Imperial state ceased to be a dominant contradiction very clearly by 1991. History has played a trick on us in this, I believe, we transformed the concept of Imperialism in order for it to be compatible with observed reality - hence the formula you use "oligopolies securing markets via state intervention" which originally rested on the conjuncture of national finance capital and an Imperial state became a general substitute for this specific historical phase of capital's development. That is a generalisation substituted itself for a specific historical dialectic and made Imperialism a truism. I have no doubt that in the foreseeable future "oligopolies securing markets via state intervention" will continue but the form of the intervention and the nature of "markets" have changed dramatically - the export of capital is no-longer recognisable in its older form and national financial capital has ceased to be a major player let alone a dominant form of capital. Of course older forms persist but they do so as secondary and subordinate features. To add to the confusion whatever is happening now does so disguised in its former history, the last super-power standing remains the major state player, but capital itself has got itself from under any particular state however much one particular state is favoured to do its bidding. Ian do not for one instance believe that my attempt to bury the concept of Imperialism has anything to do with painting a kinder face on capitalism, bourgeois rule remains a fundamental obstacle to social improvement and the machinations of capital in their hands a grinding burden on humanity. The point is to find those concepts which come to grips with the new possibilities the development of capital also brings forth. If we can correctly find the dominant dialectic of our period we will be in a position to politically know what to do at the state and international level. The tendency of the "left" to dissolve every action into a generalisied truism of Imperialism does not make anything clearer, despite the fact that it appears to be confirmed by the actions which so dominant in the news. Aside from any particular event there are areas which need to be explored - the further socialisation of the means of production and appropriation, the role of international credit capital (which I believe is the dominant form of capital and one much neglected - credit capital being the ability of international corporations to raise capital in any particular "market" based on their reputation a dividend providers ), the changing role of the state and its effects on social hegemony and of course international relations themselves.. Somehow all of this has to be brought under a single dialectic - something quite beyond my powers but not I think beyond our collective efforts. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 09:44:22 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:18961] Re: Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg Schofield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > 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. ========= By imperialist competition do you mean raw inter-state rivalry or oligopolies securing markets via state intervention in the politico-econ. affairs of another state. > 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). ========== Got it; except that the contradiction that emerged was socialization of MOP while deepening the legal appuratuses of liberal-private property. Powerful states use a vast array of techniques to induce other states to adopt property and contract law to secure stable expectations for investors from the 'home' state. In the long run [Keynes aside], standards for property and contract law are in the interests of all states; to be sure there can be variances but those variances can only thrive to the extent they share common prerogatives--capital accumulation under stable expectations. > 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. ========= I don't think the exhaustion has occurred by any means. The institutional bases of finance capital vis a vis states has created competition for which types of administrative models will be implemented. IMF/WB/US Treas. vs. the 'central' banks outside the G8; clearly the latter are losing this one. To the extent that the former just *are* the institutional backbone of the imperial project it is crucial to keep the light and heat on them for the whole host of reasons that have put activists in the street. The question is what models of financial administration can replace the current one. Here *new* economic theory in it's prescriptive/normative mode is totally crucial as are maxims for how to implement them either via the current institutional arrangements [:-(] or in a call for a new Bretton Woods type Conference that is respectful of democratic norms [broadcast for the world to see, citizens from all countries vote on the representatives to attend the conference, citizens across the planet vote on the proposals etc.] > 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. ========== Well I do think we're at an aporia of a Gramscian sort. This is why, in my view, looking at how the imperial 'structures of intentionality' are produced in the academy [before one is a diplomat, State Dept. functionary, corporate manager, entrepeneuer etc., one is a student-member of a family] is crucial right now. > Obviously I saw the reverse, but let it hand for a while just as a possiblity. > 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. =========== OK. I agree with this but there has not been a substantive change in the property form of capital. Here's just one example: < http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011015&s=greider > Libertarian justifications for property rights have nowhere near lost their appeal in the US. This is a *big* problem. Max Sawicky says the left fetishizes ownership, but more importantly property rights are a powerful form of governance that we can no longer afford to overlook given not only the complex relations it creates among people but what it enables in terms of embedding technologies into ecosystems and the concomitant distribution of risks and benefits. Further greening of the left on this issue and linking it up with both the theorizing and policy proposals for dealing with the ecological costs of how various forms of capital formation lead to bad technological choices. > 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. > ========== Me neither. > 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). ======== Well to the extent that subsitution costs are high for certain resources and the territories that hold them are 'weak states' whose camprador elites have been removed via competition with aspiring compardors [a simple positional goods argument suffices here]; the need to sustain access to resources leads to the corporation's lobbying with their host state to do something--"find the right compradors and give 'em some weapons dadgummit', here's $100,000 for your political party." > 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. =========== The debate opened with at least the publishing of Giovanni Arrighi's "The Long 20th Century"--if not before that work--Amin's "Empire of Chaos." We could go on, but yes the book's strongest points need to be discussed. The question is whether it's weakest points overwhelm the good ones. > > 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. ======== This is in Braudel and Arrighi and in some of the more nuanced versions of the public choice literature that conservatives favor. 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. ========== Well that's what happens when the control of credit is in 'private' hands. States can't antagonize too much via monetary, tax, or fiscal policy since the dynamics of investment are substantially beyond their control given the property rights paradigm we're currently locked into. Ian
