"Which of course had nothing to do with the heritage of imperialism? Add up the body count for the colonization of the Americas, Africa, and South Asia, plus two world wars, plus Indochina, plus Iraq sanctions - an incomplete list - and you've got 500 years of bloodbaths."
I think part of the difficulty dealing with this history is that there are two related but distinct theoretical approaches confused. Both come from Lenin. The first is his theory of economic imperialism, the second, arising from but not identical with the first is his geo-political theory of oppressed and oppressor nations, and the division and redivision of the world between the oppressor nations.
Lenin did not divide the world into imperialist and non-imperialist nations, seeing imperialism as an historical epoch and a world system. What he did say was that there was a tendency for the developed nations to divide the rest of the world between them to secure raw materials and fields of investment. But there was no mechanical relationship between developed nations and the subjugation of the less developed. So Switzerland, most definitely a centre of finance capitalism, is wholly un-belligerent, and never held a single colony.
The geo-political theory of oppressed and oppressor nations assumes the distinction between developed and backward countries, but it also assumes much more: namely the generalised struggle for democratic rights, principally the right of nations to self-determination, which Lenin identified as the crucial issue of his times. It was the political logic of the oppressor nations' subjugation of the oppressed which led him to brand them the force behind militarism and imperialism.
Since Lenin's day, one feature that he identified as important (though not, on my reading, essential) to the theory of imperialism went into reverse, namely the export of capital, or investment from the developed world into the developing. After the cycle of world wars capital contracted back into its metropolitan centres to participate in the reconstruction of Europe and Japan. The regions that capital was repatriated from were Eastern Europe, China, the Middle East, Africa - all the regions that were characterised by nationalist revolts against imperialism. (Since the mid eighties, more regions have been drawn into the capitalist orbit, but not on the basis of a lack of investment opportunities at home, as far as I can see.)
In retrospect, and without wishing to diminish the subjective factor in those movements, they were largely nationalist or socialist movements that were built upon impoverishment and underdevelopment. Mao's China, the Stalinist states of Eastern Europe, and the de-colonised African states were left trying to build the new society on the basis of investment starvation. And no doubt there was a dynamic towards brutality in those conditions.
I agree with Doug that imperialism - as a world system - was responsible (if that's the right word) for the impoverished conditions these states were created in. Of course, people make their own history, too, and the way that the Khmer Rouge or Mao or Ceaucescu or Mobutu played the hand that was dealt them is down to them. And the brutality imposed upon them from outside was easily a match for the internal atrocities.
What is left of the theory of oppressed and oppressor nations today? One factor means that it is difficult to apply that logic. Oppression is not simply an objective condition. You cannot deny people rights that they are not asking for. In so far as the nationalist tide in the developing nations is exhausted there is not the same systematic denial of national rights that we saw in the colonial system. The developed nations do arbitrarily interfere with the less developed, as in Iraq, but this is much more episodic than before. None of which is any consolation to the people of Iraq, of course, some 25 000 of whom are reckoned to have died in this crackpot venture. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050720/d1ca1337/attachment.htm>