> I've always been weak on that center-periphery stuff. You (Mark) think I am
> missing the point. I think you are missing the point, which is sovereignty.
> I think this is a big point to miss for those of us who are residents of the
> U.S. and its Establishment's teacher, the English ruling class.
Sovereignty is indeed the key issue here. I disagree with your and Nestor's take, as
argued in this thread.
Of course, the same issues recurs all the time, usually in the form of discussions
about self-determination. For those interested, some of Jim Blaut's articles on the
subject are archived on the crashlist website and ought to be essential reading.
Where I disagree with Nestor is his conflation of national autonomy with popular
sovereignty. No state in the world enjoys complete freedom of action, including the
US. All are bound by multilayered, complex systems of international law and of
reciprocal obligation, treaties, alliances, and participation in supranational and
intrastate institutions of many kinds. Sovereignty was always an abstraction which
can never be realised in practice, and the fact that nations sometimes dominate and
colonise other nations has always coincided with the fact that those SAME nations
are sometimes SIMULTANEOUSLY in the process of being colonised and dominated by
other, third, powers. Since international relations really is a wilderness of
mirrors and only Machievalli's rules apply, nothing is what it seems and we have to
look beneath the surface to see what's really going on.
We have to take a class view of the question, ie, we start by analysing the
underlying class realities in each situation, and we interpret our findings in the
light of marxist theory. In other words, we start from the position that the working
class is the only true international class, which consists of the vast bulk of
humankind, but that this class is corralled off within arbitrary territorial borders
on the basis of ethnic, linguistic, geographical and economic factors. Common
culture, language and tradition and the existence of longstanding markets are some
of the factors which help legitimate the nation-state to its working class. But this
whole historical and spatial dimension of the world system of nation-states and
complementary supranational instances, is only a *form of appearance* of world
capitalism, ie of capital-in-general. It is one of the key ways in which class
struggle between the (world) working class and the (world) bourgeoisie is mediated
and an important mechanism of bourgeois political hegemony. In imperialism, all
subordinate states enjoy only the most relative forms of autonomy, and today all
states are to some degree (much more than most people realise) US dependencies. Even
Germany is fundamentally dependent on US geopolitical power. Russia is now simply a
satrapy ruled by quislings who enjoy popular hatred and would not survive a weekend
without US support.
While struggle for national self-determination and for working class popular
sovereignty within a state is a necessary and important form of struggle, and may be
the highest possible form of struggle at any one time, it is nevertheless only a
*contingent* form of struggle, it is only a *form of appearance* of working class
struggle.
Neither the capitalists nor thr workers have a real interest in preserving the
nation-state. It is a device which sometimes suits their purposes and sometimes not.
What workers are involved in (if they are involved in anything at all) is not a
struggle for national independence but for *Class* independence, not for national
autonomy but for *class* autonomy.
Once you start to fetishise nationalist issues and make them an end in themselves,
you start to put the cart before the horse and you start to play the bourgeois' own
game of fetishing the nation-state. You cannot put the struggle for national
sovereignty above class struggle. And that means, inter alia, you cannot spend your
time defending "your own" Pinochets, Borodins, Noriegas etc on the basis that they
may be SOBs but at least they are our SOBs. In fact, there is a certain principled
unity between the capitalists and the workers -- both are looking for the state to
uphold certain principles of law, equity, justice, security etc. It would be absurd
to get into a position where bourgeois politicians are calling for the law to be
upheld, and criminals brought to justice, while the workers' representtaives were
calling for these same criminals to be wrapped in the, made objects of patriotic
fervour, and let off scot-free! It makes more sense for us to cheer on every attempt
to bring financiers, bankers and other swindlers to book, and to call for more of
the same, as you rightly say.
In short, bourgeois society depends upon observance of the law, and that includes
international law, and that is also a proper concern for us. However hypocritical
their reasons are, when they stop turning a blind eye to the criminal behaviour of
their own creatures and start arresting them and calling them to account, it is not
the business of the workers' movement and the workers' parties to start defending
these same criminals. It was absurd to attack the British government for arresting
Pinochet. It is as absurd to attack the Swiss for having Borodin arrested. Let them
all arrest each other, there are plenty of grounds. Let us celebrate the good start
they have made by arresting Borodin. Defending Borodin will not help Russian
workers. Creating a strong Russian capitalist state will not help Russian workers
either, but in fact these are OPPOSITE THINGS and your idea that arresting Borodin
is somehow an attack on Russia is utterly wrong.
Defending Pinochet will not help Chilean workers. This is just ABC. Creating a
strong Russian capitalist state will not be a bulwark for Russian workers against US
capitalism. Was Pinochet's strong state a bulwark against US imperialism?
>I think we
> need to rather strongly expose the attempt to justify attacks on sovereignty
> cloaked in attacks on corruption - which are, as it happens, the rage.
> (Philippines, Russia, Zimbabwe, Congo, and on and on). Let the Russians
> decide who is what in their country - we should be focusing on what England
> and the U.S. are doing: humiliating and demoralizing citizens of the Former
> Soviet Union, targeting Lukashenko, using the Borodin arrest as a way of
> putting leaders of Russia to the test: will they crawl and obediently get rid
> of Lukashenko, or not?
Are you seriously saying that "the Russians" decided they wanted to be robbed by
"their own" Borodin? That Russians decided they wanted to be looted and condemned to
freeze and starve by a RUSSIAN rather than a Swiss banker or American cola salesman?
Are you seriously saying that there *IS* such a thing as "Russian democracy"? If so,
you are surely doing your best to legitimate the post-Soviet robber regime in
Russia. As for Lukashenko, there are no arrest warrants out for him, as far as I
know. You seem to begin with the idea, to my mind completely absurd, that this
defeated, destroyed, humiliated, ravaged, plundered country, Russia, would actually
enjoy 'sovereigny' if not for these 'outrages', the arrest of some of the worst
plunderers. (Altho I never hear you even mention other arrests, including but not
only, Gusinsky for eg. Why are you silent about them?) Instead of weeping loudly
about Borodin, let us shed a few tears for the TEN MILLION (by some estimates)
Russians and former Soviets who are no longer alive because of the genocidal
activities of the West and their Russian quislings, Borodin, Yeltsin etc. There is
no logic to your argument.
>
> I think what I am saying is a projection of your own basic views. But this
> avalanche of propaganda on corruption gets even very smart guys like you to
> forget the key question: since when do the mass murderers who own the U.S.
> and Switzerland and England have the right to arrest and lecture the Russian
> government? Jail THEM - Jail Solana, Clinton, Blair. Jail is to good for
> Blair. Free Borodin.
There is no avalanche of propaganda about corruption that I can see, it is business
as usual, but this is very two-edged sword, isn't it? I agree, let them arrest ALL
those tainted with illegalism and corruption. It's a good demand. 'Free Borodin' is
not a good demand. It is a senseless demand. A more sensible demand would be for the
normal laws of bourgeois civil society to be upheld in Russia, so that such
outrageous, indecent, public displays of corruption as those by Borodin, Berezovsky
etc, would be unthinkable to begin with. But if you argued for that, you'd be
agreeing with the FBI, the State Department and all those other agencies which keep
calling on the Russians to get their act together, crack down on corruption etc. No
doubt it will happen and indeed IS happening. And thus a stronger capitalist state
is indeed being forged in Russia, which is a sad state of affairs; but such is the
contradictoriness of life.
Borodin has been arrested for malfeasance. Mark Rich, his billionaire pal and
arch-plunderer of Russia, has just been given a presidential pardon by Bill Clinton.
That is obviously wrong. Rich (a onetime FBI 'public enemy No. 1', who now lives
quietly in Switzerland) is a notorious swindler wanted by the FBI for wire scams,
fraud, embezzlement and more. It is a hypocrisy that the Swiss have sheltered him
and his billions for so long. It is monumental hypocrisy and a disgrace that the
Swiss have not arrested Rich (whose ex-wife but still business partner, Denise Rich,
is helping fund the Clinton Library in Arkansas) but HAVE had Borodin arrested.
Almost certainly, Putin not only agrees with the arrest but even persuaded the
Americans to do it, as part of his campaign against the corruption of the Yeltsin
era. Putin wants to clean up Russia and make its oligarchs obey the law. The US not
only tolerates this, they are urging Putin to be a strongman, and to make Russia
more law abiding. The reason for this is that western investors find Russia
impossible to work in. They need proper laws, law-enforcement and efficient banks
and markets, in order to plunder Russia properly and exploit its markets and workers
properly. Of course there is a danger that Russia may become so strong that it will
be a real competitor for the US, geopolitically, militarily, strategically. But that
is not likely, not for decades if ever. Russia is too pitifully weak and backward,
and the US too strong and technically advanced.
Thus Borodin is a pawn sacrificed by both sides for the greater good of the
bourgeoisie. An unpleasant man, he will hardly be missed. Your idea that what is
going on is the US trying to cow poor 'sovereign' Russia is wide of the mark. You
are extrapolating from what you suppose is the situation with Milosevic. You should
remember that the reason Milosevic lost in Kosovo is because the Russians (meaning
Yeltsin AND Putin) sacrificed him. There is no honour among thieves. Find a worthier
cause to fight for.
Mark
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