Julien, your culling the dictionary to find your acceptable definition
of imperialism is of the same cloth as if you were to start throwing
around the word totalitarian.
It is an outdated definition of what imperialism was in the 17th and
18th centuries, for example. Then, Europeans would pull up a boat,
and start looting and robbing, and would then haul the spoils back to
home. Or alternatively, they would land and murder off the
indigenous, and then take the land.
Nowadays, imperialists have already landed with their banking and
financial institutions, hooked the local elites into it, and continually
draw off uncompensated labor from the natives. It is a different
thing than in the past, and that's why one will see the usage of terms
like .....'modern day imperialism', instead of just your dictionary word
definition.
One of the problems with using the dictionary, is that it allows the
ruling class to confuse the issue. They want you to have an image
of imperialsm as being.... a bully on the playground beating up a weak
kid to take his lunch money. Neo-imperialism is something that
dictionaries and imperialists don't want to define. It involves
linkage into an international banking system, that systematically robs
labor value from the Third World.
Now, do you see why it is false to include Indonesia and Russia as being
imperialist countries? Money flows out from labor in those two
countries, into imperial coffers located in the real imperialist
countries, where the world financial institutes are located.
Some have tried to pose that Indonesia is an artificial construct linked
to Javanese imperialism. The Javanese do dominate governmental
strctures, but that is not the same as modern day neo-imperialist
extraction of labor value.
Domination of one ethnic group by another ALONE, is not imperialism.
Just because the Javanese are the dominant national grouping in
Indonesia, does not invalidate their right to self determination in not
having all the ethnic divisions split off at will, by the real imperial
powers involved, the US and Australia.
Self determination is more than just a question about what the Aceh or
Timorese want to do. It is also a matter of what will be done to
the Javanese majority by powers manipulating the situation from outside
the region.
These powers, use an alternating strategy of both funding repression,
and then criticizing it's lieutenants amongst the Javanese for being
barbarians, and saying that the situation must be corrected by the
master taking charge.
Western Leftists do a wonderful job of exposing Suharto, etc., and their
cronies for being genocidal thugs. But then they come on board the
imperial game plan with the attitude of yeah......master needs to go in
there and correct things done by that cruel overseer.
This is the net result of Left haziness about defending self
determination of Indonesia, Russia, and Yugoslavia, as well as other
places like Iraq. And being hazy on what constitutes imperialism,
and what doesn't also adds to the problem.
So, I'd like to repeat once again, an ethnic group bullying a
neighboring ethnic group in a Third World country, does not constitute
modern day imperialism.
What if every little group in the Indonesian archipelago was given their
own little dependent country? Would that constitute self
determination? No, it would be an even greater violation of self
determination by imperialism. So be careful in calling for that.
Imperialism does not want regional economic cohesiveness. The
struggle to dismantle regional cohesiveness is really what this new wave
of euphoria over the 'global economy' is all about.
It is sheer madness if the Left refuses to defend the self determination
of countries like Russia and Indonesia. A Left that acts as an
ideological ram against the Third World, is worse than having no Left at
all in the industrialized countries.
Tony Abdo
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