Dear Doug,
A couple of days ago on another list an Italian comrade suggested that not merely Lenin's theory of imperialism (which I reject) but the very concept of imperialism was superannuated today, if it ever had any meaning. I wrote the following reply, and decided I'd be interested in broader feedback. Would you mind posting this on your list serve?
Imperialism a Myth?
Question for Antonio: if the U.S. is not imperialist, or if, as you say, imperialism was only ever a theory or an ideology, why does the U.S., long after the supposed end of the Cold War (not including of course the little lingering questions of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba) maintain a military presence, overt and covert, in 110 countries?
Why did the U.S. become so involved in counter-insurgency in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1980's (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, the invasion of Grenada)? Why did it provide military advisors to the Mexican government's military action against the EZLN after 1994? Why,in 2002, did it attempt to overthrow Chavez?
This is not imperialism?
How exactly would you characterize the various "revolutions" backed overtly or covertly by the U.S. in Serbia, Georgia and the Ukraine? Why does the U.S. embassy in Kiev have 750 employees? Some of us think that's connected to a geopolitical strategy aimed at controlling the borderlands of Russia and China, a classic remake of the 19th century "great game". Why has the U.S. backed the extension of NATO to include most of the former Warsaw Pact states? Why did the U.S. (oops, sorry, I mean NATO) intervene in the wars in ex- Yugoslavia and militarily humiliate Serbia?
This is not imperialism?
What was the meaning of the 1993 intervention in Somalia? Why is the U.S., officially and unofficially, so concerned about China's new presence in Africa, particularly where oil is concerned? This great power rivalry over raw materials in Africa, Asia and Latin America-- don't we vaguely remember this from an earlier era?
This is not imperialism?
In East Asia, the U.S. maintains 35,000 troops in South Korea, important bases in (and a close alliance with) Japan, naval fleets ready to defend Taiwan, all of this aimed at containing what the CIA openly identified as the main future rival of the U.S.: China.
And of course the U.S., whose military expenditures are 8 times the rest of the world combined, reserves the right to wage "pre-emptive war" against any perceived future rival.
This is not imperialism?
And should I bother mentioning the Middle East? Support to the hilt for Israel, helping foment the (how short lived!) "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, close ties with NATO partner Turkey as a counter-weight to Iran. The U.S. has more military hardware in little Gulf State Qatar than in any other country in the world except Germany.
This is not imperialism?
Turning away from the U.S. for a moment, what about the French role in the French zone in Africa? Troops in Chad and Mali and the Ivory Coast? The French role in the Rwandan bloodletting? The strong support for the FLN government in Algeria during the civil war against the FIS?
And the Japanese outsourcing system throughout Southeast Asia?
This is not imperialism?
You will of course have noticed that I have limited myself to the mainly military and counter-insurgent level. Let's not--without being reductionist or vulgar, God forbid!--forget the 200+ multinationals, most of them American, which still constitute the lion's share (and an increased share) of world production.
The weight of the U.S. through "international" institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, imposing "structural adjustment" programs on 100 developing countries, producing 60+ failed states or near-failed states?
The "fact" that the income ratio of the West to the developing world has greatly INCREASED (I don't have the exact figures) in the past 30 years, in spite of important development in countries such as China, Brazil, India during that time?
How do YOU explain such a phenomenon, if imperialism no longer exists and (if I understand you) never did?
You ask what imperialism means when a country such as China, with an average per capita income of $1200 a year, has lent something like $1 trillion to the "lone superpower", the U.S. while masses of people in the U.S. have become impoverished?
Well, that's a very good question, and if you read Michael Hudson's excellent book, Super-Imperialism (1972; new edition 2002) you will see that U.S. imperialism since World War II has not, indeed, followed Lenin's model (which was always flawed), but has perfected the strategy of "managing empire through bankruptcy". You overlook the fact that that $1 trillion consists of little green pieces of paper exchanged for real Chinese goods produced by the exploitaiton of Chinese workers, pieces of paper then re-lent to the U.S. consumer so he/she could buy more of those goods. Nice system! Perhaps you think that $1 trillion will ever be seriously repaid? Not if U.S. policy makers get their way and the Chinese revalue to the desired level of 4 renminbi=$1, cutting the value of those reserves in half. Ask the Japanese, who saw THEIR dollar holdings reduced in value by 32% by Nixon's dissolution of Bretton Woods in 1971.
Yes, Lenin's theory of imperialism is out of date, and was seriously flawed even when it was written. So having dispensed with the kind of military, geopolitical and obvious phenomena that any vulgar leftist could point to, and let's down into the "deep" economic questions.
I'm sure you throw Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital into the same historical dustbin as Lenin's Imperialism. Well, I don't. I won't presume to guess your reasons for this, but whatever her flaws, she was absolutely right about the permanence of primitive accumulation in capitalism. Primitive accumulation means accumulation that violates the capitalist law of value, i.e. non-exchange of equivalents. Perhaps you think that the mathematical formulas in the first partof vol. III of Capital adequately describe how capitalism works. They certainly do: IF the concrete processes of social reproduction to which they refer are in fact reproducing themselves. Rosa (and here i follow her 100%) argued that this is not a matter of mathematics, but of concrete analysis of real processes. When Western capital sucks Third World petty producers whose costs of reproduction it did not pay for into the world division of labor, whether in Indonesia or in Los Angeles, that's primitive accumulation. when capital loots the natural environment and does not pay the replacement costs for that damage, that's primitive accumulation. When capital runs capital plant and infrastructure into the ground (the story of much of the U.S. economy since the 1960's) that's primitive accumulation. When capital pays workers non-reproductive wages, that's primitive accumulation too. Lenin never discussed these things (if I recall, he rarely ever mentioned social reproduction) but Rosa Luxemburg wrote a whole book about it. You want to dismiss these ideas with a complacent wave of the hand? Be my guest; it's your loss.
I could go on. I daresay that a good book illustrating nothing but what I have mentioned could be written, and there's a lot more, which we can get into if Meltdowners take up the debate.
In conclusion, let me say that I posted the article on Third World investment in the West precisely to get some debate going with people who still defend the Leninist view (and there are plenty). What exactly can Lenin's theory of imperialism mean in 2006 when the two highest bidders to take over a major Dutch steel company are from Brazil and India respectively? But it never occurred to me that there were people out there who question the very idea of imperialism itself. So be it.
Let me be clear: I absolutely reject Lenin's model of imperialist "super-profits" earned by "monopolies" paying off a Western "aristocracy of labor". So did Rosa Luxemburg, who in 1913 (how antiquated!) argued that the taxation of workers to pay for armaments was part of the imperialist project. Some aristocracy!
For several decades, I have been attempting to develop an alternative view of imperialism to that of Lenin (still upheld today by myriad Trotskyists, for starters). Lenin's intention in 1916 was to explain the "betrayal" of socialism by the Western European parties of the Second International, thereby showing that he believed their earlier avowed statist model to have been "socialist"to begin with. The issue as I see it is not so much imperialism, whose existence I never questioned, but the ideology of "anti-imperialism", which today enlists such "progressive" forces as Chavez, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iranian mullahs, the Taliban, the Iraqi "resistance" and perhaps now the unreconstructed Stalinists of Belarus; yesterday it included Saddam Hussein. For the Trotskyists, it's anyone from outside the "charmed circle" of Western powers of 1914 who points a gun at someone from within the charmed circle. In my opinion, such a view, with the contorted calls for "critical support" and "military support"to the oddest political formations, such as the Taliban, abandons the main thrust of the great Zimmerwald Conference of 1915: the main enemy is at home. I know perfectly well the arguments from the other side: World War I was an inter-imperialist war, the 'anti- imperialist" wars are something else.
I believe (and the purpose of posting the Financial Times article was to show) that post-1945 and particularly post-1973 developments have been blurring the lines on the old 'anti-imperialist' road map. We see U.S. world hegemony disintegrating faster than we ever imagined possible (almost recalling the speed of the collapse of the Soviet bloc). Out of this disintegration, what will emerge? Proletarian revolution? I hope so. But what could also emerge, as the U.S. emerged in 1945 on the ruins of the British empire, is a new center of world accumulation. My favorite candidate for that new center is East Asia. Suppose, in some yet to be imagined scenario, China and Japan (who, despire rhetoric, have ever-closer economic ties), along with the Tigers (e.g. Korea, Taiwan) and the 'flying geese" (Malaysia, Thailand, etc.) manage to constitute an economic bloc, an Asian currency and really dethrone the dollar? It's hard to imagine this happening without some equivalent of World War III, or an actual World War III. If this became the basis of a new phase of capitalist expansion, comparable to the U.S. centered expansion of 1945-1975, would it somehow be any more "progressive" than the U.S. dominated phase? No way.
The question, then, along the way, is how to situate the various world forces in play as the U.S. declines. Chavez recently made a world tour that included Belarus, Russia, Iran and China. Latin America is booming right now because of exports to China. Parts of Africa are reviving for the same reason. I am perfectly aware that, for now, all this comes back to the "indebted U.S. consumer" and a collapse of the dollar empire would stop the music...for a while. But as a Japanese minister, weary of the growing dollar reserves in the Bank of Japan, said not too long ago: "give us 15 years, and we won't need the U.S.". With the dollar declining by the day on world exchanges, how much longer will the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese, the Middle Eastern oil sheiks, the Russians, the Venezuelans, and the Medillin drug cartel--all major holders of dollars--be willing to hold onto a depreciating asset? And if out of this debacle emerges a new pole of capitalist accumulation, whether or not it includes "old" imperialist powers (e.g. Japan) will it be "progressive"?
That, to me, is THE question today which the theoreticians, still working off the Leninist model of "anti-imperialism" have to answer. How much longer can the international left be offering "critical support"' or "military support" to the Taliban before it finds itself, as so many times in the past, the ideological midwife of a new reactionary constellation?
Loren (reply to lrgoldner at yahoo.com)