For instance when you say:
"I don't follow. I love examples, here's another one: US capitalists are presented by their think-tanks with the project of militarily invading the Gulf states in order to hike up the price of oil (and hence their profits), to wrestle oil rights out of the hands of the local rulers, to generate a healthy round of defense spending, and to dissuade the competition (Iran). The plan requires that Iraq be left bankrupt after its war with Iran, thus forcing it to squeeze its neighbors. The neighbors are told the US will back them if they tell Saddam to take a hike. Saddam get some nudges and winks that it's OK to grab Kuwait. When he does so, US troops move into Saudi despite Fahd's protests and make themselves at home. When the dust settles and the war bills + profits are collected by the US, US oil giants and banks move in and squueze the Sauds, and they walk away with oil rights concessions in their pockets. Saddam is left at the head of his still-formidable army so that the Saudis won't even think of ridding themselves of the US "protection"."
Which seems a reasonable rendition of an event which I know very little of, it fits the few facts I know and thus, at least for the sake of argument, I can take it as absolutely true.
What are we actually looking at here, Classic Imperialism or simply a powerful state serving sectional interests. Now from one perspective this type of division does not makes sense, after all does not classical imperialism also directly serve a section of capital? Well of course its does, but it ios the particulars which count.
Lenin distinguished between older empires and Imperialism as a particular epoch where national financial capital exported itself to "dominions" in order to render surplus. On the back of this industrial planning of monopoly capital rested and the returned capitalk was plowed back into productive developments in the "homeland" state. This had a wonderful symetry about it. It lead in a feeble way to greater productivity in the dominions but the essential point of the exercise (where the state, financial capital and monopoly) worked together the end result was the Homeland becoming ever stronger. I doubt that there would be much disagreement about this amongst us, and none would deny the beneficial effects on the US today.
However there is a substantial difference when one considers the work of states with empires before Imperialism. Here too exploitation of the dominions was used to strength homeland sections of capital.The Opium wars the destructiuon of looms in India - examples are not hard to find in the history books. Each move was made at the bequest of a section of capital and the state was only too willing to serve.
What is absent of course is Lenin's symetry which made Imperialism a partricular epoch in the development of capital and part of its further socialisation.
To return to your example, we have the US using its power to hike the price of oil in order to satisfy the profit craving of a section of capital. "Imperialism" in the broad sense but not necessarily in the epoch sense, imperialism in the sense that Rome was an Empire, but not in the sense of how Britain transformed its prior Empire into classic imperialism.
The criticial difference is not then that states will not use policy to benefit sections of capital within them, they did before imperialism and will no-doubt afterwards. It is that state policy is no longer the expression of national financial capital and Lenin's symetry no longer holds.
The leading end of finacial capital is more-or-less completely internationalisied (in a sense has exported itself altogther) - I am not referring here to the IMF though it has some of this character, but to the existence of credit capital which can be raised in any part of the world via assets which can rest in any part of the world. Likewise the old monopolies which were far more than simply having their headquarters in a particular state.
The present super-monopolies are not like the old fashion monopolies which to a large extent had their most productive assets in the homeland (the steel mills, the making of machines, often all the processes for making final products) whereas the resources which fed this productivity streamed in from the dominions. Today the productive assets tend to go to the cheapest labour sources across the world (and where credit capital can be realisied by shifting them there), while the old homelands tend towards non-productive activities associated with profit realisation (both are not absolute but clear tendencies which go against the logic of classic imperialism).
There has been a significant shift of productive capicities, a slow export of them (from the late 1970's onward) which is in stark contrast to the logic of classic imperialism. Now this clearly grows out of the history of Imperialism and as history would have it tends to follow the pre-established patterns which emerged from Imperialism - but is it useful to understand this epoch as one of Imperialism - that is the question (not that imperialist policies continue to exist and exert their influence).
My point is not that the US has ceased to be dominant, nor that it has ceased to use state policy to aid sections of capital close to it, but rather the critically important nexus which gave logic to classic Imperialism has long faded. Hence US policy has lost its rudder, hence it bounds between two extremely different policies (multilaterialism and unilaterialism). The weakening of its imperial venture is not the vacilation, but the inability to find a firm economic rudder outside the state (hence policy shifts bring about massive changes in state actions totally at odds with previous policy). The fight within the US seems to that between cavemen and courtiers - this does not seem to be something that will quickly vanish from the US.
Both cavemen and courtiers share a common interest in maintaining the dominance of their state in world matters, but the methods are so opposed to one another they undermine the purpose of both. In this the caveman approach is the logical dead end, the inevitable result of naked force being used for the sake of naked force, just as the courtier's approach inevitably leads to the US being reduced to being a state amongst many. Together the direction of policy is unmistakable - weakened by cavemen, courtiers must be brought back, weakened by courtiers cavemen return. However, due to historical circumstances (mainly the unbelievable extent of international ignorance fostered in Amercia) there will always be lots of cavemen.
Perhaps where what I am saying misleads people is in this - the epoch of imperialism is not a denial that imperial ambitions persist, just that they are no longer the dominant contradiction (this is just the same as Lenin's acknowledgement that imperial practices existed before Imperialism the epoch, that the latter was distinguished from the former by the particular nexus of monopoly and financial capital born together within particular states).
All things fade Imperialism is no exception.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia
--- Message Received --- From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com> To: "Lbo-Talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 17:28:11 +0200 Subject: S11 imperialism