<quote> Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 16:34:09 +1200 From: Philip Ferguson <plf13 at it.canterbury.ac.nz>
A few days ago I read an article in the Christchurch 'Press', one of the main dailies in NZ, which was reprinted from the British paper 'The Observer'. The pro-invasion author went through about four or five things the antiwar movement (in reality sections of it, rather than all of it) said would happen before the invasion. He was able to finish each paragraph quite effectively by saying 'Wrong'.
Moreover, most ordinary people reading the article would identify with his bold 'Wrong' statement at the end of each of the opening paragraphs.
This is one of the main reasons I have tried to draw attention to how idiotic it is for the left to continually invent the most apocalyptic scenarios and trot them out every time the imperialists do anything. It is like much of the left is stuck in a groove focussed on what the imperialists did during the Cold War, when they actually needed to implant military dictatorships and carry out mass murder, mass repression and mass terror.
But the imperialists have more than a big stick. They have some carrots, too. They also have the ability to change their policy as the world situation changes. Now they've seen off the Soviet bloc and defeated or co-opted most of the old national liberation liberation movements, they don't actually need the same policies on the ground as they pursued during the Cold War.
Marxists need a serious analysis of how the end of the Cold War, the defeat and/or co-option of national liberation movements, the growth of inter-imperialist rivalry etc, impacts on imperialist policy. If the best the left can do is dream up Apocalypse Now scenarios, we will be unable to counter actual imperialist policy and, frankly, we'll just look like fantasist nuts to ordinary workers.
A serious Marxist analysis, on the other hand, can show that the *new political forms* being utilised by imperialism in the Third World are the *necessary forms today* for the continued plunder of the Third World. The fundamental economic subordination remains but the changed global situation means the political forms which facilitate the economic exploitation have changed. Surely this sort of materialist analysis should not be beyond the left?
Philip Ferguson