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> /S. Artesian wrote/ > > It would help if could define what you mean by imperialism. Are you using > the terms as defined by Lenin? > > And semi-colonial. Exactly what constitutes a "semi-colonial" country. > > And last but not least. Capitalism is a mode of production. Is imperialism > a different mode of production? If so, how is it different? On modes of production, not going there. Sorry. It's about four levels of abstraction above where I usually hang out and I get dizzy at those altitudes. On Lenin's definition, and what constitutes a "semi-colonial" country, I'm also giving that a miss insofar as it's not covered by what's below. On what I mean by imperialism: I mean the domination of many poorer countries by richer and more powerful countries in today's world. * * * I agree with the main social, economic and political conclusions of Lenin and his friends about imperialism, but not necessarily on the specifics of his analysis of how it worked back then on the level of economic mechanisms. As they were understood in the early 1920's these conclusions include: a) Imperialism divides the world into a handful of exploiting nations and a big majority of exploited nations. The exploiting nations enjoy huge flows of superprofits. b) These superprofits make it possible for the bourgeoisie to create a privileged strata of workers within the imperialist countries and to make the working class of those countries in their big majority privileged in comparison to the world working class as a whole. This is the material basis for opportunism in the labor movement as well as national chauvinism among workers of dominant nationalities in the imperialist countries. c) Imperialism has exacerbated national oppression and strife. d) the world system of states and political situation as a whole is shaped by the struggle of the imperialist nations against the USSR and what Lenin calls "the Soviet movement" which encompasses the national revolutionary movements. e) There can be no socialist revolution in most of the imperialist countries until and unless they are deprived of imperialist superprofits. * * * This last point is likely to prove especially unfamiliar to comrades so I'll start my discussion of those points with where this one can be found. It is in M.N. Roy's supplementary theses on the national and colonial question which were adopted by the Second Congress of the Comintern with Lenin's explicit and very prominent support. Lenin presented the report of the commission that reviewed (and touched up) both his theses and Roy's. One part of Roy's theses refers specifically to revolution being impossible in the European imperialist powers unless imperialist superprofits are "stopped up"; the United States is not mentioned. My opinion is that the U.S. was not included in this judgment because of the Black question and the reality that a majority of the industrial working class at that time were immigrants. Roy had spent the previous decade or so in the U.S. and Mexico, so the omission wasn't simply due to a lacunae of the author. The congress had heard under this agenda point substantial contributions on these two aspects of American reality, with the one on immigrants affirming that they "are in fact in the same position as a colonial population" and that this accounted for the extremely violent suppression of strikes in the United States. In other words, that the class struggle in the United States was intertwined with national questions. * * * In addition, there is a fair bit to update on those five points. On point d), the post-WWII world showed even more clearly this tendency toward imperialist powers cohering around the struggle against the opposite "camp," facilitated by what emerged as a de-facto agreement or modus vivendi among the imperialists. This imperialist cohesion was facilitated by the granting of formal independence to most colonial territories. That meant that these countries would be exploited, not exclusively by one monopolizing colonial power (like Britain or France), but by the cartel of all imperialist countries, and largely through the mechanisms of the world market (unequal exchange and usury, in addition to direct investment). The country that most benefited from this was the United States, which had few direct colonies because it was a relative latecomer to the colonial game (its bourgeoisie had an immense contiguous land mass to bring under its sway first). The more traditional powers, above all Britain, had to accede to sharing as they no longer had the resources to police their empires. There was also an urgent need to counteract the natural alliance between the Soviets and national liberation movements, which in the judgment of the U.S. imperialists was best done by granting formal independence -- at least in the case of everyone else's colonies. The disappearance of the USSR did not lead to a fundamental change in this configuration of the world imperialist system because what the USSR represented --its positive side-- was a contingent or battle front in the world struggle against imperialism. This struggle was weakened and thrown into disarray by the collapse of "really existing socialism" but it did not end. And history had shown there were tremendous obstacles to the further advance of the socialist revolution with that pre-1989 political configuration. Bureaucratic degeneration --what many of us call "Stalinism"-- not only made imperialist propaganda against socialism very believable; it also meant there was a permanent (and very powerful) fifth column inside the "world progressive movement" or whatever other terms one might choose. Che's famous 1967 message to the peoples of the world through the Tricontinental unmasked this treachery decades before it finally culminated in the collapse of the USSR and the reintroduction of capitalism in China. From Che's message: * * * There is a sad reality: Vietnam — a nation representing the aspirations, the hopes of a whole world of forgotten peoples — is tragically alone. This nation must endure the furious attacks of U.S. technology, with practically no possibility of reprisals in the South and only some of defense in the North — but always alone. The solidarity of all progressive forces of the world towards the people of Vietnam today is similar to the bitter irony of the plebeians coaxing on the gladiators in the Roman arena. It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory. When we analyze the lonely situation of the Vietnamese people, we are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity. U.S. imperialism is guilty of aggression — its crimes are enormous and cover the whole world. We already know all that, gentlemen! But this guilt also applies to those who, when the time came for a definition, hesitated to make Vietnam an inviolable part of the socialist world; running, of course, the risks of a war on a global scale-but also forcing a decision upon imperialism. And the guilt also applies to those who maintain a war of abuse and snares — started quite some time ago by the representatives of the two greatest powers of the socialist camp. We must ask ourselves, seeking an honest answer: is Vietnam isolated, or is it not? Is it not maintaining a dangerous equilibrium between the two quarrelling powers? * * * The two quarrelling powers being, of course, China and the USSR. The two decades since the toppling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 have seen the emergence of two broad areas in open conflict with imperialism in the Third World. One is in the Arab and Muslim world, which has taken on religious garb because Stalinism so thoroughly discredited Marxism and socialism. The other is the current of the socialism of the twenty-first century, which has arisen in Latin America because of the example of the Cuban revolution, the progressive revelation of the real class character and content of national liberation as these processes have unfolded, and the patient and systematic work of Fidel especially in helping figures like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales in deepening their understanding of imperialism and the real alternative to it. Point c --increasing national strife-- should of course be understood as encompassing ethnic, religious and racial conflicts. The fascination of some leaderships of left groups with defining with razor-sharp precision what is a nation, what is a nationality, what is a national minority, as well as which struggles of oppressed peoples supposedly are regressive and who doesn't really fit at all, has been shown to be foolish and worse. These things are decided through social and political motion, as can be seen in the case of Bolivia or what is currently going on with Latinos in the United States. Point b --privilege as the material basis of opportunism/reformism-- needs substantial updating to take into account a more acute expression of the same tendency. There has been a qualitative deepening of the phenomenon that I believe is very evident in the United States and to a significant degree in other imperialist countries. And that is the disappearance of the working class as a "class for itself," in other words, the disappearance of a self- and other-identified social and political movement of workers as such, as *workers.* In the United States, this has been accompanied by making the "ethnics" --Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, etc.-- white. Even as late as the 1960's, the dominant nationality grouping was often defined as WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Today virtually no one would say that. [This is just one aspect of a complex transformation: others included the legalization of unions; the creation of social security in the 1930's; generational changes; changes in the volume and origin of the flows of immigrants; the transformation and proletarianization of the Black population and various other factors.] Point A --the division of the world between oppressor and oppressed nations-- seems to be the one that S. Artesian has the hardest time with. I think his questions amount to what we call in Spanish "trying to block the sun with one finger." For me the living conditions of masses of people is proof enough. As for the economic intricacies of how it works, meta-analysis of whether it is a new mode of production, a new stage of capitalism, a new phase of the imperialist stage, and so on, I leave that to others. Everything I've lived, seen and learned tells me that the essential analysis and approach worked out by Lenin and his friends and presented systematically at the second congress of the Comintern on the national and colonial question is correct; and that this question --the national question, or the question of the struggle against imperialist domination-- is the key, central question in the advance of the socialist revolution in the world I've lived in. At the risk of oversimplifying, and with caveats in this regard, my point is: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPERIALISM BY WHAT LENIN CALLED 'NATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS' IS THE MAIN FRONT, THE MAIN EXPRESSION OF THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CAPITALISM, OF THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS SOCIALISM, IN THE WORLD TODAY. This is not, and is not meant to be, a prescriptive statement of how things MUST be. It is NOT deduced from some schema, analysis, discovery, new synthesis, probing of the hidden meaning of things, or revelations of a Delphic oracle or a Lenin of our times. It is, first and foremost, simply a *description* of the world in which I have lived. For Marxists, of course, saying it is simply a "description" is an understatement, as we strive to understand the factors that made it so --historical, social, political and economic-- and its implications for ongoing struggles. If not prescriptive, the idea is at least indicative of the likeliest course of development at this time. Having said that, let me add that I remain completely committed to the idea that political activities should be determined not by projections about the future but by what IS --illuminated, of course, by an understanding that goes beyond the surface appearance of things-- and especially that organization should be a function of political tasks, not some meta-historical narrative about what supposedly will be required to make a revolution or what the Bolsheviks had in 1917. Joaquín ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
