[lbo-talk] hegemon succession

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Mar 2 15:47:38 PST 2009


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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