The Atlantic is a big ocean on these questions. We have different perspectives and different background cultures to reference. I do not know Rieff at all, but I have just looked up on the web two articles in Newsweek that seem to me correctly to pose some very difficult questions for western, particularly US imperialism in its apparent hour of triumph.
The abstract of an earlier book on Slaughterhouse Bosnia I agree appears to come from a liberal imperialist perspective lamenting the loss of isolationism but again arguing how difficult pax americana has become. But times have moved on even from there.
So the short answer is no, I do not want the point I am making to be associated with the strengths or weaknesses of someone who may come from a very different position and which I do not know.
It is about an agenda of global governance which is not just a wishy washy third way phrase. Social order, even imperialist order, cannot be maintained in the world just by gunships, or their modern equivalent, the US bombing fleet. I think there are deep signs that the west knows how many problems were involved in the Kosovo war. Atasaari has just spoken of a Europe that will not have wars. That is code for saying the war was less than desirable.
Global governance involves all sorts of less cooercive measures and deliberate influences short of mass bombing. It is therefore a terrain of struggle between open imperialists and more democratic forces in the world.
We should be in on that terrain of struggle.
One of my differences with the left opportunist line is over the role of the state. For some it is enough to be a marxist to oppose everything that your imperialist government may do. That is not the marxist theory of the state. A ruling class cannot hold state power without at times having to promote an agenda that appears to stand above classes, is ethical, and legal. Thus the law becomes a semi-autonomous terrain of struggle. Why will the US not sign up to the Rome Court on Crimes against Humanity??!!
My use of the term fascist is not as a term of mere abuse. The defence of bourgeois democratic rights on a world basis is an important terrain of struggle. Have we really not learned that this century? Proyect apparently has not. Let him defend himself here instead of making sectarian remarks about LBO-talk repeatedly and censoring his own list.
In the former centralised socialist countries class struggle has taken extremely complex forms in the last 10 years. Some elements have gone towards laissez faire, neo-liberal, capitalism, some have gone for a social democratic mixed economy, some have gone for a nationalist solution, and some have combined that nationalist solution with frankly fascist rhetoric and behaviour.
I do not live in such a country but I suggest in these complex choices serious and courageous marxists may rightly prefer a retreat to some capitalist methods of bourgeois democracy rather than to side with nationalist and fascist elements. Solidarity by us with marxists in such countries should not automatically be with the self-proclaimed socialists if those socialists are vile chauvinists in deeds.
It is a mechanical reduction of marxism to say that marxism is against capitalism, capitalism has become imperialism, therefore we are against imperialism in all its forms, including when it violates national sovereignty.
Global socialism is better than imperialism, imperialism may sometimes be better than bourgeois capitalism, and is usually better than fascism. Context can alter all this but is such a proposition so novel in marxist terms?
After all, we want working people to unite and seize control of the productive forces world wide!
No it cannot but be that imperialist powers will seek to intevene in all countries. Preferably not by bombing. But in the case of Turkey surely we wish the European Union to continue to make clear to the Turkish government that entry to the European Union will be barred if they continue to oppress the Kurds and practice fascism in their internal politics.
What is the way ahead in terms of policy? I neither know David Rieff nor wish to tail after him. We need to be arguing our own democratic views of how communal conflict can be contained. Not by bombing, not by retrospective massive humanitarian aid, which then requires an organisation the size of NATO to manage it logistically.
We may often need to defend bourgeois democratic rights politically. But we must take the struggle to the economy where capitalism which has given birth to democatic rights of the individual, takes them away from people as groups and classes. This is the contradiction at the heart of the claim of modern imperialism to global governance. Its economic agenda destroys people socially even at the moment that it provides ever more use-values as commodities.
We need to demand that the management of global finances is done is such a way that people are able to continue their lives and develop their lives in their own environment.
For Christ's sake we need international taxation. We need a Tobin tax. We need a world development and stabilisation fund. This is not idealism. This is material ist politics. And it is urgent.
We need sterile left-opportunists who can only call out "reformism!" to drift off into the purity of cyberspace if they cannot justify their arguments in open forum.
This is not just abstract theorising or posing as marxists about global solutions. The contradictions bubble up independent of our wills.
The British bourgeosie is indeed scared of what happened in the City of London on June 18th. They are now trying to suggest that it was all the work of anarchists and they are going to smash cars in car parks in Cornwall during the eclipse next month.
But yes the Financial Times knows that it was much better organised than that. It cannot afford to underestimate the gravity of the challenge practically or philosophically. Yes indeed Edmund Burke will not protect capitalism for ever.
Many people directly or indirectly behind June 18th, (and I do not have contact with any of them) clearly knew their theory, their research, and their practice.
Not everyone can do everything. Just at the moment I a fighting to argue that marxism is not a pure arrow to be kept in a glass case separate from any activity. On the contrary it has to mix debate with a whole load of actions, demands, reforms, and agitations. Including with dreadful social democrats.
Doug has made a contribution by publishing an informative and readable book on Wall Street. It is not directly translatable into an agitators handbook. Nor should it be. But at least some experts in street theatre may learn better where they ought to put on their most relevant performances, subject to the benevolence of Giuliani. It does not have to be on this list but someone could be working out the best sites for street theatre. The metropolitan police think that a rerun in London on the first financial working day of the new millenium is a serious possibility. Maybe it will take place in New York too.
There is a whole raft of agitational, propagandist, and theoretical tasks, which cannot be done by one individual or one organisation. Nor can they even be comprehended by one brain because they involve the interaction of many aspects, some of them inherently contradictory. It is the sort of enterprise that is suited best to networking. And networking is here, and now.
Chris Burford
London