nationalism & imperialism (jim o'connor)

Barbara Laurence cns at cats.ucsc.edu
Fri Jan 21 16:55:50 PST 2000


Carroll and James F, Tautologies shed no light on anything except perhaps the style of argument of those who use them. You're saying that radicals by definition are anti-imperialist, to which there's no reply, except to recall that many self-defined radicals, yesterday and today, see America as a God-given blessing not terrible ugly American (apologies to my favorite story-teller, Graham Greene). The tautology obscures the basic question: How is it that some people some of the time can take very radical stances, in fact, risk their lives and honor, for a domestic cause, still believing that America is not imperialist, but just makes mistakes, etc.

I add that I don't find the expression US imperialism used very much at all by lbo-ists. Because it's so obvious? Maybe. But I find rarely any discussion of the nature of, contradictions of, evils of, etc., US imperialism. So many Populists were imperialists, it would curl your hair, and that's a major radical movement. Check out William A. Williams work. And there were self-defined cold war radicals as well as cold war liberals. If radical means going to the roots of things, clearly the roots are so twisted, mixed-up with one another, numerous, etc., that one can have arguable evaluations of the nature of the US in the world.

Jim O'Connor



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