On Sun, 9 Jan 2011 10:11:48 -0600 "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
> Complications.
>
> First, the issue now concerns _not_ "western" imperialism but the
> Empire of
> Capital. Wood's approach is far superior to that of Harvey, Amin, et
> al.
>
>
>
> But most important is that the "Marxist" theory of imperialism was
> developed originally to explain WW1 and the "opportunism" of
> 'western'
> workers. And that linkage was grounded in the theory of
> "superprofits" from
> mperialism used to "bribe" Western workers. The purposes, then, of
> the
> theory of Imperialism made sense, and one need not sneer at Lenin
> or
> Luxemburg or Mao for holding the theory. But it was wholly false.
> "Superprofits" is an empirical concept, and it cannot be supported
> by
> empirical evidence. And it ought to be clear by now, in any case,
> that
> "bribery" (i.e., high wages and affluence in general) would lead to
> resistance more than would misery.
I think that in Lenin's day, "bribery" was only experienced by skilled workers in certain key industries, it was not something that the great majority of workers were experiencing at that time. Since skilled workers had been at the center of resistance to capital earlier in the Industrial Revolution, it would have made sense to try to bribe these workers to purchase their aquiescence. So that sort of thing would not have bred resistance in those days. Later on (during and after the Second World War), when relative affluence began to be experienced by a majority of workers in the advanced capitalist countries, that in fact did help to encourage them to resist capital, since they were now able to bargain with capitalists from a position of strength. Which is why since the mid-1970s, capital has been so eager to destroy any sense of economic security that workers had enjoyed up to that time.
> Misery and exploitation have
> never been
> the actual sources of resistance and they never will be. They crush
> the will
> to resist and fragment the working population. It is rising
> affluence that
> is most apt to be the source of demands that can only be met by the
> overthrow of capitalism.
>
> The concept of imperialism is no longer of any political use.
Perhaps, not in the advanced capitalist countries, but I suspect the concept is still useful politically in Third World countries. Certainly people like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez seem to think it still useful.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
>
> Carrol
>
>
>
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