>
>If a term alienates people who could be potential allies, don't use it.
>That's basic propaganda 101.
Sure, one chooses one's vocabulary depending on the context. Come on, Nathan, we;ve all been around the block. Now right now I haven't been organizxing on the street, but jujst in causail conversation, I don't notice the wariness and drawing back that I used when I use words like "imperialism." Actually, it's a bit more scary. It's not that people will think you're a red if you use words like that. It's that they are opening to debating the pros and cons of imperialism when it is so called. I am spoeaking anecdotally, of course. Frankly, i'd rather have them be allergic to it.
>First, the prowar crowd is not using empire consistently,
It's on the table, though.
but as Negri and
>Hardt argue in their book, empire and imperialism have very different
>meanings.
Sure, but the point is mostly lost on the ordinary folk who haven't read H&N, much less Lenin and Luxemberg. Btw, confession, I couldn't make it through H&N; I thought it was a lot of wind and hot air, poorly written, uninformative.
My point was precisely that imperialism had a very different
>meaning-- it was not a system of international policing and argued for
>peace, but a competitive system of global conquest paralleling capitalist
>competition BETWEEN countries.
Quite right, and if I had time, I'd argue that that's precisely what is going on here. It's the US's attempt to beat European capital out in terms of direct access to oil revenues, and to prevent Euroipe from ever being economically independent of the US by getting our foot on the throat of its oil suuplies. What do you think was the target of Bush's statement that no omne would ever be allowed to rival the US again--Iraq? Come on. He's talking to the Germans and the French. I wrote up a version of thsi for Against the Current at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, I think Jan-Feb 1991. What I said there is still accurate and with necessary changes applicable. Also short. I bet it's on ATC on the web. Btw, I did not use a single word of Marxsit jargon, including "imperialism," in the article.
jks
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