Tom, it's not flaming or bashing you to disagree wth your argument.
And that IS, reduced down to its essence............. If not us on
top?, then someone worse than us (the us being.. The United States).
So Tom will stick with the home team.
Julien, I also am not flaming you, if I say that I again disagree here
with what you wrote......
<Another problem is that financial capital is a highly instable abstract
construct dependant on the real world relations of production and even
on other stuff. And still another is the fact that finance capital as a
whole acts without purpose.>
Finance capital acts with great purpose in trying to maximize profit,
Julien. In running governments. In setting monetary policies.
And suppressing resistance to its rule.
You continue in the same vein......
<One could thus argue that, barring exceptional cases, finance is more
an instrument than a driving force. What does financial capital *want*?
I know it has needs and desires, but they are the product of the rules
of the game, not of a *will*.>
You seem to be saying that finance capital JUST IS, therefore we should
just take it for granted, and not give it importance or centrality in
being the cause of imperialism.
<No. Central economy are not managers, only overseers. They have *very*
important powers, but they are very few and limited. They have nothing
to say about specifics of the real economy even if they sometimes give
their often idiotic opinions. They are also not autocratic rulers of
their "empire"........>
Once again, you seem to want to dismiss the financial sector in the
imperialist First World countries as having any real impact on anything,
let alone what these economic (and political, also) policies that they
issue, actually do to the Third World.
Imperialism to you... remains the bully in the back alley pummelling
someone smaller. But imperialism is more than that. I just
posted an article on another list, about how the main Guatemalan
business group had confesssed that 250,000 jobs were lost in that
country of 12,000,000, the last year alone. That is imperialism.
Or do you just think that there is some sort of defective gene in
Guatemalans? It is also hunger and disease for a lot of people.
And to my previous note that......
'The militarism that is promoted throughout the world by First World
neo-imperialism, has led to the military being the most destructive
force ecologically on the planet.'
Julien replys
<We want the facts! And the criterion used to grade different
destructive forces. Give them or be hanged by the people!>
Julien, I'm almost at a loss here with you. I know that you are not a
marxist, and that many differences we have in opinions are due to this.
But this is just pure basic understanding of the ecological impact of
the military on the environment. You don't have it.
What other sector of the economy even comes close to causing the
ecological destruction the military does? Farming, cattle grazing,
timber cutting, insurance?.... surely not. And much of mining and
oil extraction is directly and indirectly related to military usage.
The militarism of capitalist society pervades all its economic
actiivites. How can anyone even begin to discuss avoiding The Crash,
without taking into account the ecological destructiveness of modern
capitalist, enhanced and promoted warfare? A question that
non-marxists should ask themselves, please.
Or do you, Tom and Julien, believe that China, Cuba, and the fSU are the
causes of military proliferation?
And to close.....let me just briefly reply to those that are implying
that these discussions are related to talking about the number of angels
on a pinhead. There are a lot of discussions like that on the
internet. But talking about the reasons for war, defining
imperialism in its realities rather than the media imagery of it, and
discussing military impact on environment, surely do not qualify in that
category.
Tony Abdo
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