Kees van der Pijl writes on a macro level of analysis that sees the vast sweep of conflict between capitalism and other forms of economic organization. I don't think it is fair to dismiss his work so glibly. I appeared on a panel with him in Switzerland (along with Holly Sklar). I thought he had some important perceptions. His book is quit good. He has been predicting this precise type of hegemonic US imperialism for some time, and the conference was built around this concept.
http://www.unil.ch/GRC/docs/ain/USA/grc.colloque.prg.html
-Chip Berlet
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Dennis Robert
> Redmond
> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 8:29 PM
> To: lbo-talk
> Subject: Re: Kees van der Pijl, "The Aesthetics of Empire and
> the Defeat
> of the Left."
>
>
> On Sun, 2 Mar 2003, Michael Pugliese crossposted:
>
> > <URL: http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/212vanderpijl.htm
> > The unification of global space under Western hegemony and under
> > capitalist discipline has reached a stage where no separate
> trajectories
> > of social development can be allowed to persist. As Mark
> Duffield argues
> > in a seminal study, the Western approach towards the
> outside world is no
> > longer inspired by a concern to aid indigenous processes of
> development,
> > but to impose, if need be by force, the Western social
> model altogether
> > (Duffield, 2001).
>
> What unified global space? The EU sure doesn't take orders from the US
> these days, and the countries of East Asia are beginning to
> run their own
> show. The totality is false (cue to Adorno) through and through, which
> means there are all sorts of structural contradictions (for one thing,
> every local mediation starts to transmit global
> contradictions). Example:
> the EU is shelling out huge chunks of money to its
> semi-periphery. That's
> a productive contradiction which needs to be pushed in the
> direction of
> multinational socialism -- not condemned in advance for being
> part of the
> totality (as if any of us or our institutions could possibly
> be entirely
> free of such).
>
> -- DRR
>
>