[lbo-talk] hegemon succession

[Carrol Cox]

Hegemony (Imperialism) never did benefit _Nations_ as such; it
benefitted sectors of capital in each nation that had a piece of it.
British control of India probably hurt most of the people of England
(see the chapter on the working day)but it surely benefitted the textile
capitalists, not to mention one large chunk of the empire's civil
servants. U.S. imperialism benefitted United Fruit (Chiquita)
enormoously as a couple recent books point out, and of course thee's
oil. And during this period (c. 1870-WW2) it made a difference to a
nation's capitalists whether it was the "hegemon" or not. But to a large
extent since WW2 (and in spades since the rise of neoliberalism) most
capitalist sectors of any one core capitalist nation do NOT need their
nation to be hegemon. Consider all the BP (instead of Amoco) stations in
the u.s. They just need _some_ nation to maintain rough and ready
discipline over any so-called developing nation that mistreats
capitalist interests. So it doesn't really make any difference to French
or German or (most at least) U.S. capitalists what that nation is, and
hence no nation has any interest in competing to be the new hegemon. The
U.S., with its enormous military power (and its still enormous economy)
serves _all_ the capitalist interests around the world, with only modest
favors granted to a given Administration's buddies.

In any case, the theory of an Aristocracy of Labor benefitting from
superprofits of imeperialism never did really hold -- but that is
nothing against Lenin or Hilferding or Luxemburg. Everyone makes
mistakes, and nist make a lot more more than either Luxemburge or Lenin.
Their theories and varints did to keep some kind of opposition ot
capital and imperialism going for several decades. And they were, after
all, faced with the most destructive war in history leading to the
collapse of the international workers' movement. All praise and glory to
them.

What do people on t his list think of the concept of Chimerica that
whats-his-name from Harvard is throwing around?

Carrol

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> So the EU is refusing a bailout for Eastern Europe, and the ECB is
> still hanging pretty tough. I dunno, Dennis Redmond - the EU isn't
> really looking like it has what it takes to be the next hegemon. It
> sounds like the last bastion of the austere POV that Keynes mocked as
> "the Treasury view."
> 
> Doug
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