I'm replying to the correspondent who says the Afghan war is evidence of
Soviet imperialism:
Anyone who thinks the Soviet actions in Afghanistan were like, say , the
US's in Vietnam, or Germany's, England's or France's in Africa, etc., etc.,
is duped by imperialist propaganda and ignorant of the history of
Afghanistan.
The forces who asked for Soviet help were the leaders of the democratic,
anti-imperialist, anti-clericist forces in Afghanistan.
Whatever weaknesses the conflict exposed in the USSR, that effort was heroic
and will one day be recognized as such. The US was preparing to make
Afghanistan a client in the geopolitical conflict. The USSR was not
bleeding the Afghan economy; the relationship between the states bore no
relation to imperialism.
I was in Afghanistan twice during that period. The other visitors from Cuba,
Vietnam, Nicaragua, South Africa, the Philippines, Thailand and many other
countries could set you straight on the kind of people who were trying to
democratize Afghanistan at that time. The flower of the country, people who
had endured jail,, torture and exile to build up the women's movement, the
health care system, trade unions, and religious tolerance and ethnic
harmony. They represented an example that the US and its supporters would
spend any amount to defeat. And as it turns out, they were rich and brutal
enough to do so. All of the organs of academic and media propaganda were
enlists, and that no doubt is how you came to your knee-jerk opinion.
Tony Abdo wrote:
> Tom wrote-
> <Wouldn't it be reasonable to consider the USSR's "client states" to be
> part of a Soviet empire? What was the debacle in Afghanistan if not an
> attempt by the Soviets to maintain their crumbling empire? Wouldn't it
> be reasonable to consider the Sino-Soviet alliance not very much
> different from the Austro-Hungarian Alliance?>
>
> No, it's not unreasonable at all. The Bolshevics gained power in a
> defeated, demoralized Russian Empire. They subsequently fought a
> civil war where their pro-capitalist and monarchist opposition was aided
> and joined by foreign imperialisms. The strategy was to hang on to
> the territory of the Russian Empire (as much as possible), and to extend
> the national revolution into being a world revolution.
>
> The Empire that the Bolshevics had inherited in the defeat of the Czar,
> did resemble in many ways, the Austro- Hungarian Empire and The Turkish.
> That was how world imperialism arranged itself in that particular
> political epoch. But much has changed since then.
>
> The financial aspect of imperialism is much more dominant in the
> concentrated neo- imperialism that rules the world today. This neo-
> imperialism usually is acting as a bloc, rather than confronting each
> other in a canabalistic struggle over military control over colonial
> terrain.
>
> <Tony, is it necessary to accept a Marxist definition to engange in the
> discussion? Cannot imperialism have Military, Economic, Social,
> Geographical,and Political factors combined? I also fail to understand
> the subtle difference in terminoloy between "FINANCIAL" and "ECONOMIC".>
>
> Well, as mentioned before, imperialisms of the beginning of the 20th
> Century did have military, economic, social, geopraphical, and political
> factors ALL combined in the oppression of other groups by the core
> oppressing group.
>
> But once again, what has changed with neo-imperialism, is the rise of
> financial dominance as being supreme.
>
> Marxists often talk of financial capital being the 'highest form' of
> capital. What that means, is that it is determinant over industrial
> and agricultural capital (assets). Farmers don't run the world
> today, nor even industrialists. It is the financial sector that
> does. It is the financial sector that dominates.
>
> Recently, I wrote that a triumvirate runs Mexico today (Zedillo, Fox,
> and Gurria). If Bush wins the election in November, one might even
> mention a US triumvirate of (Clinton, Bush, and Greenspan). The
> answer to defining imperialism might be best approached, by asking just
> who are these unelected people, like Gurria and Greenspan? We know
> Tony Blair, but who is his Alan Greenspan counterpart?
>
> What do these neo- imperialist governors (Greenspan) and lieutenants
> (Gurria) do, that diffenrentiates them from economic planners in the fSU
> or China? They preside over a world store of capital, that
> functions in the Third Wold, very much like the old company store in
> isolated mining areas used to function with the dependent and
> impoverished workers in the mines.
>
> Capital is food. Need capital for your family? then here is a loan
> and the interest requirements. Third World Countries are in hock,
> very much as miner families were in the olden, golden days of less
> concentrated imperialist extracture. Everything is on loan to the
> company store.
>
> Notice how the definition has strayed from the definition of imperialism
> being 'a bully that beats on the small guy' version? Now, we have
> more the real situation and definition of neo- imperialism as 'a banker
> that robs food from children'. Think Ebenezer Scrooge, not Milosevic
> or Putin, Suharto or Saddam.
>
> But Scrooge has associates that or not bankers, too. The Blairs,
> Clintons, and Schroeders of the world.
>
> <I realize I am temporarily omitting the idea that if it's Marxist it
> can't be imperialism. >
>
> Tom, communist countries have taken this financial sector out of private
> hands of ownership. The argument is made by some marxists, that the
> state is just turned into a capitalist of sorts, when this is done.
> This is a whole other, long and convoluted, historical dispute in the
> communist movement.
>
> I would briefly mention at this time, only that capital flows in the
> communist bloc countries often (though not always) were in reverse to
> capital flows between the First and Third World countries. The core
> nationality often was not as well off as some of the peripheral sectors
> of these multi-national planned economies.
>
> I'll stop here, because the subject is gigantic, and there are many
> angles and elements beyond those I briefly mentioned.
>
> No, nobody has to agree with marxism, or be a marxist, to engage in this
> discussion on CrashList over what constitutes imperialism. However,
> this is a pretty key point on why we are haeding for a crash
> ecologically.
>
> 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.
>
> Tony
>
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