On Fri, 21 Jan 2000 16:55:50 -0800 Barbara Laurence <cns at cats.ucsc.edu>
writes:
> 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).
If you are going to talk about how many of the Populists were imperialists as you do below then I would also point out that at that time so were many European socialists. In Britain most of the Fabians including G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells amongst others were enthusiastic imperialists as were probably most social democrats on the Continent at that time as well. And of course we know that with the outbreak of WW I most of the parties within the Second International rallied to the support of their respective governments so that we saw the German Social Democrats rallying to the Kaiser and the Fatherland while the British Labour Party rallied to King and Country, and most of the Russian Social Democrats were similarly patriotic at least in the beginning. And even decades later it was not uncommon for socialist and even communist parties in Europe to support the retention of their countries' colonial empires. Thus in France, the CP there for a long time supported keeping Algeria French. However, to the extent that all this was true then all these self-defined radicals reinforced the status quos of their respective countries. I think that Carrol's point is that until self-defined radicals are willing to break with their countries' imperialisms then they cannot be in any objective sense instruments for radical social change. And I think that history would bear him out on this point.
>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.
Aren't you asking how is it possible that radical opponents of the system can still be blinded by bourgeois ideologies and thus still buy into illusions concerning the countries in which they live? The short answer to that is Marx's aphorism that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas. That of course still leaves open the question of why presumably sincere opponents of the system should still embrace ideological illusions such as the myth that the US is not an imperialist country when they have managed to reject other illusions that are perpetuated by the ruling class.
>
>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.
Possibly also because this is not a Marxist list. In case you haven't noticed ideologies like pomo are pretty pervasive here so I guess it is possible that some or even many people on this list share in the kinds of illusions that you have been referring to concerning the US.
>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.
Yes, the famous 'State Department socialists' like Sidney Hook, the later Max Shachtman and their disciples.
>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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