[lbo-talk] Canada: imperialist or vassal?

[James Heartfield]

I remember Canada being cited in marxist debates as an illustration of the difference between economic imperialism, as Lenin meant it, i.e moribund capitalism, exporting capital to offset the overaccumulation of capital at home on the one hand, and political colonialism, i.e. the related drive to dominate the world through military might. The point was that over-mature capitalism was not necessarily syonyomus with colonial oppressor, though the one was the basis of the other.

The point of the illustration was that Canada was clearly one of the world's dominant centres of capital, but that did not mean that it was an important colonial power. On the contrary, rather like Switzerland, its political USP was verging on the pacifistic; Or as someone once put it to me, Canada's national identity is that it is not America, or that it is the more European part of north America. 'What's the biggest Canadian w[h]ine?' one Fijian riddled me: A: 'We're not Americans!' A year or so ago, my American students were advised to handle hostility  in Europe, due to US foreign policy, by pretending to be Canadians.
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