My apologies to Toor for confusion. But, if you look at the communist currents in Pakistan*, one of the basic principles of Marxism** is still that imperialism is a deep structure of capitalism.
> > but it is most likely that Toor agrees with Carrol that
> > imperialism is not a policy but a deep structure of capitalism, which
> > is one of the common ideas among modern communists, especially
> > Marxists.
>
> So then why did you quote her on the need to change U.S. government
> policies?
The point is to remember that changing the US government's policies has to be our primary focus, rather than changing other governments' policies, let alone jumping into global activism without doing homework. That's the point that both Toor and Shemirani emphasize.
Listen to Toor, and you realize that she says that the _number one task_ for us here in the USA is "reforming" and "reining in" the US government -- nowhere does she suggest that successfully doing so (e.g., bringing the Iraq War to an end, stopping the escalation of economic sanctions on Iran, etc.) is the same as overcoming imperialism.
Likewise, exploitation is a deep structure of capitalism, but that doesn't mean that people can't reform the government and rein in corporations to make the degree of exploitation less, rather than more, even under capitalism.
Beyond the question of principle there is the question of our capacity.
To what extent reining in the US government's military, economic, and political interventions is possible depends on a lot of things, above all, how many people are motivated to do so and how well they are organized for that purpose. It's difficult to see what impacts anti-war activists have had on US politics with regard to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars: about the latter, few minds have changed, and about the former, minds seem to have changed mainly because of insurgents who made it impossible for Washington to clearly "win." Regarding smaller interventions like Somalia, the Philippines, etc. it is safe to say that we have had none.
Given that, it is not easy to offer effective global solidarity, even after we do home work and really understand what's going on. Take the teachers' demos and strikes in Iran. All American leftists could do seems to me to be to sign online petitions put out by human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and things of that nature. It's doubtful that many people would show up if an organization, say the IWW, were to call a solidarity demo in front of the Iranian Interests Section, when we could get few out even for issues that far larger numbers of Americans care about, like the Iraq War and climate change. In another thread, we talked about SEIU's problems. Workers who can't reform their own unions are unlikely to be able to reform other people's governments.
* Communism is a much smaller political current in Pakistan than India, but communists do exist in Pakistan, and a couple of years ago the CPI(M) sent the first ever delegation to meet with the Joint Left Front of Pakistan comprising the Communist Party of Pakistan, the Communist Mazdoor Kisan Party of Pakistan, and the Labour Party of Pakistan ("First Ever Communist Delegation To Pakistan," People's Democracy, 29.9, 27 February 2005, <http://pd.cpim.org/2005/0227/02272005_murali.htm>).
** As I said, it's hard to find any Marxist anywhere who doesn't think that imperialism is a deep structure of capitalism. (All I can think of are Hardt & Negri, but, even in their case, empire, though different from imperialism in their opinion, seems to me to be still a deep structure of capitalism, or just another name for it.) -- Yoshie