"Devine, James" wrote: > > > it's clear that the USSR subsidized its satellites, but that doesn't make it any > less of an empire, since the USSR didn't grant its "allies" independence until the > USSR itself was falling apart.
I'm not sure what to call the USSR "dominance" of its "allies," but I think it is misleading to call it an empire. As we ordinarily use the word (leaving aside the oddity of the Hardt/Negri "empire"), whether in reference to the present or even the distant past, the word carries a more complex intension than just "dominance," and part of that intension is, precisely, exploitation. We speak of the ancient Athenian Empire not merely (or at all) just because it dominated its "allies," but because it compelled those allies to contribute to the treasury of the alliance, and used that treasury for its own purposes, domestic and foreign. I think calling the USSR an empire interferes with understanding the actual material relations of the "alliance," and even points away from a full understanding of what was wrong with it. Put another way, to label the U.S. and the USSR with the same label, "empire" -- and hence to suggest that there is some analogy between the relationship "USSR/Cuba" and "US/Puerto Rico" -- is just too violent an abstraction, it leaves too little material content to what we mean when we speak of empire. Carrol
