--- Message Received --- From: ALI KADRI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 23:34:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [PEN-L:20365] Re: Re: Re: Imperialism and "Empire" (by John Bellamy Foster) <Snip>
"The end of the cold war represents such a rift insofar as it leaves an unfettered room for the extension of capitalist accumulation abroad. More opportunities, so to speak." Hakki this process uncouples capital from a particular nation state, and aspect which was part and parcel and the distinguishing characteristic of Imperialism. Once uncoupled (a process which has been going on well before the end of the Cold-war) capital has two choices each represented by powerful contradictions. The first is that because of its historical growth it sticks with what it knows and operates its will through the last surviving superpower. Second it creates an internationally civility through which to operate and pushes as much as possible all states into a secondary managerial position (which of course has also gone on). What has disappeared is the close internal state hegemony where-by the imperial homelands by investing productively back into themselves used this as a basis to firmly hold its working class to its imperial agenda. Capital goes free and once free why sacrifice itself to a national homeland more than it has to in order to secure even more for itself. But here is the rub, capital no-longer enjoys an intimate relationship with the members of any state, hence it relies on an alien state (alien to it) and increasingly a state whose actions become more and more self-motivated. The US is pursueing an expression of state power, capital no-doubt scrambles for what it can get, but in a sense the state is no longer its board of directors, but its own corporate enterporise which must be bribed, flattered and bullied - a process which favours section interests above any generality of interest. Where is this different , especially in the history of the US where sectional capital interests have played such a decisive role, the process looks the same but many of the limits have withered away - hence we get not the US as an Imperial power, but as a rogue state. This is not Imperialism, nor is it super-imperialism - it is a monstrocity. The theoretical question is how long can it last and at what cost - our political question is how to kill the beast. "So that is simply more of the same on a larger and accelerated scale. if you agree with that then that is too simple to merit credit." I agree. Competeting imperial powers offered a constraint within which capital, class hegemony and the state had a necessary reliance on one another. Remove the constraints and the elements fly a part. In short the essence of the imperialist enterprise dissapates - it is not just greater opportunities but entirely new conditions where the old rules do not hold (and the new rules have not emerged). "But, what should be said is that the people that were responsible in the past for the blunders of history, and I underline responsibility, are simply more culpable now." Policy blunders (and needlessly bloody ones) is the common history of all imperial powers - but so is having definite objectives (even checking the USSR had this virtue even if it did not deliver Indo-China and was based on an illusion - it nevertheless had real purpose and was vital in capital investments in the rest of Asia). I don't think we are looking at blunders in this sense, as I said the US has been pugnacious from Bush's first days and the only object seems to be to rip down international treaties and make force the first and final arbitrator - this I believe is qualitatively different and has to be expected as one aspect of Imperialism being overshot. "There should not be any dilution of fact and cause. there are criminals and victims in history, anyone that says there are only differences of degrees between the two, will get a lot of coverage in the press that supports the criminals. " I suppose I would take this a point further, a real imperialist is a criminal in world affairs, the intent often read directly from the actions. However, the criminality we are now seeing emerged is somthing more like a serial killer, it would be easy to see this as some deft ploy for oil and in all of this oil plays a part, just as a serial killer might rape his victim, but is rape the objective for this type of criminal. I will use this nasty analogy, for once it is a fitting image. It is the difference between a rapist who kills his victim to silence her, and a killer who rapes his victim as part of degarding and killing her. Both end up with raped bodies, both are driven, but what serves to catch one will not catch the other - for that we need to understand the specifics of the crime. In terms of politics, we cannot get ahead of the game if we stick to the familar trail, the fact is our own history shows that we have been left well behind. It is this fact, rather than just some idele contemplation on the grand questions which is the practical motive to contemplate these grand questions, and when these are posed as questions rather than answers politically another direction starts to emerge. "Of course, in the end there is the ultimate question of method, from the little I know, H and N have little of that..." True enough and I agree, methodologically they are a complete mess... ", Meszaros is a logician and a good one from what I hear. In the classes he taught, he emphasises the concept of mediation, likes to say to students “where is the mediation”, which brings me back to our last conversation about reform, or how does reform in the centre mediate the working class divide with the periphery? If does not, then the national question may be allowing one working class to kill another." First I would suggest that the centre is dissolving, that is the centre as a collection nation states in the social and political sense. The centre has become a handful of cosmopolitian cities which the state almost seems to hang-off. Now I do not make light of the enornmous differences between the periphery as in Indonsesia as against what is becoming an internal periphery within the US. We need not conflate the two to also acknowledge that the US (or Australia for that matter) almost appear to be breaking up at the economic level, whereas previously we could see a spreading prosperity in such states. How far this goes, I honestly do not know. What I am aware of is that the room that use to exist for grand guestures of reform (which is how I would describe the majority of reformist reforms) simply seems to have disappeared in these states. Reformists have ceased to exist, they do not even try and foster enough class struggle even to sustain their own positions, for the most part they have become just softer conservatives. In Australia this is most apparent, perhaps because we have had such a long reformist/union based history. This whole side of politics has just collapsed in on itself - the international bourgeoisie does not give a bugger about them, so they prostitute themselves shamelessly. Much of the internal dynamics have diasspeared, where the socialist movement acted as the stimulus and bogey for the reformists (an essential part of the old system despite their protests of revolutionary purity). In this context old politics just don't make any sense. Propaganda, educational roles without even a spark of conflict become just whistling in the wind. The left here has just become a religious cult, the only signs of life being the anti-globalisation protests dominanted by the least sophistociated and most passionate. Hakki I am stating this not as some great rebuttal to your fears but as an honest appriasal of our position. In short, if I was to make my strongest argument it would simply be that nothing but practical reforms remains. Of course I could put this in a theortitical context, but I don't really know if that is required. The fundemental fact seems to me that we have been left stranded. Yes national struggles could lead to past errors, but I believe the foundations of this condition has passed. Secondly, I cannot concieve of an international democratic order that is not based on democratisied nation states at least in the first instance. For those of us that live in nominally democratic systems, the struggle is pass out of these constraints, elsewhere it might be a much hotter struggle even to get to the point of democratic reforms. Thirdly, no other class except the working class has an immediate interest in such reforms, other classes may benefit (will benefit no-doubt) but other interests close in, social leadership has become a primary question the proof of which lies all about us. Perhaps the surest course is that imposed on us, any other seems to point towards nothing at all. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
