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On 6/6/2010 9:32 AM, s.artesian wrote: > If people don't want to or are not able to deal with the issue > of the actual content of Lenin's imperialism, notions of > "semi-colonialism" and the actual mechanisms of accumulation > they should just say so, or do what Joaquin does, and just > not respond, or what MB does and refer such questions to the > intermediation of the apostles. That's what I get for taking the time to very carefully lay out what I think. Accusations of not responding. Ironically, Sartesian fired his pot-shot about "what Joaquin does" in not responding only a couple of minutes before I posted my response, so that they're together if you look at the posts chronologically. Although I guess one could say that in taking more than a week to respond, I laid a trap for Sartesian, and he fell into it. But if so, it was completely unintentional on my part. Though I will say I'm not surprised, and feel very good about, being on the same side as Manuel and getting lumped in with him. Now, on "the issue of the actual content of Lenin's imperialism." My impression is that for S.Artesian, Shane Mage, Angelus Novus and others "the issue" is the analysis of the economic mechanisms of imperialist exploitation presented in Lenin's booklet on imperialism. But as Lenin himself explained later, this pamphlet was tremendously constrained because it was meant for *legal* distribution in Tsarist Russia in the middle of World War I. Here is what Lenin says about "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism": * * * "This pamphlet was written with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, specifically economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in an allegorical language—in that accursed Aesopian language—to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up the pen to write a 'legal' work. "It is painful, in these days of liberty, to re-read the passages of the pamphlet which have been distorted, cramped, compressed in an iron vice on account of the censor. That the period of imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution; that social-chauvinism (socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds) is the utter betrayal of socialism, complete desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie; that this split in the working-class movement is bound up with the objective conditions of imperialism, etc.—on these matters I had to speak in a 'slavish' tongue, and I must refer the reader who is interested in the subject to the articles I wrote abroad in 1914-17." [That was from the introduction he wrote in April, 1917, shortly after returning to Russia. And what follows is from the 1920 introduction to a French and German edition:] "As was indicated in the preface to the Russian edition, this pamphlet was written in 1916, with an eye to the tsarist censorship. I am unable to revise the whole text at the present time, nor, perhaps, would this be advisable, since the main purpose of the book was, and remains, to present, on the basis of the summarised returns of irrefutable bourgeois statistics, and the admissions of bourgeois scholars of all countries, a composite picture of the world capitalist system in its international relationships at the beginning of the twentieth century—on the eve of the first world imperialist war." * * * Thus Lenin's pamphlet "Imperialism" is NOT NOT NOT the actual "content of Lenin's [theory of] imperialism." It was limited to economics by the tsarist censorship; and according to Lenin, was just a snapshot of pre-WWI international relations as revealed by the admissions of bourgeois scholars. So think of Lenin's theory of imperialism as an iceberg. The "Imperialism" pamphlet is what's above the surface. Most of it is under the surface, including, most significantly, the part that in going to sink the capitalist Titanic. And notice what he considered most significant for Russia right after the February revolution that was left out of the pamphlet: that the imperialist epoch is the epoch of socialist revolution and that the conditions that arise in imperialist countries are the material basis for chauvinism and opportunism in the working class movements of the imperialist countries. He returned to this theme in the second preface I cite: "[T]hat is just what the capitalists of the 'advanced' countries are doing: they are bribing them ['the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy'] in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert." * * * Fortunately we have a concise and accessible summary of Lenin's views on imperialism in the post-WWI period. They are in his theses on the national and colonial question and most especially in his report for the commission that studied, amended and adopted those theses. These are the first couple of sentences of that report: "Comrades, I shall only give a short introduction and then Comrade Maring, the secretary of our Commission, will give an exact report on the changes that have been made in the Theses. After that Comrade Roy, who formulated the Supplementary Theses, will have the floor. Our Commission adopted both the former and the latter unanimously. You will see from the Theses that we have taken unanimous decisions on the most important questions, and I should like now just to make a few short remarks. "What is the most important, the fundamental idea of our Theses? It is the difference between the oppressed and the oppressor nations." The DIFFERENCE between oppressed and oppressor nations. That is the HEART of Lenin's "theory of imperialism" if one wants to speak in such terms. And note: as is clear from context, when he says "our Theses" he is referring to the work product of the commission, *including Roy's theses*, which have been simply IGNORED by the big majority of socialist groups in imperialist countries in the post-WWII period. And what all these arguments about the economic mechanisms, Lenin's views on investments or capital flows being wrong, and so on and so forth amount to is usually a denial of the divide between oppressor and oppressed nations. It is, of course, completely wrong to singularize an explanation of the socio-economic roots of political views sticking them on an individual, and thereby transforming what is an explanation of social phenomena into an invidious attack on particular persons, imputing motives to them. But it is an integral, essential and extremely prominent part of Lenin's views on imperialism and I would be remiss to not mention it: the denial that there is such a thing as imperialism is based on imperialist privilege as a social phenomenon, and constitutes politically a defense of imperialist privilege. And again: this is not an attempt to explain why some individuals wrote some book, or impute to them views they don't explicitly express. It is an explanation of why the ideas of that book, depending on the case, one aspect or interpretation of the ideas in the book, gain widespread acceptance even, and sometimes I would say especially, among progressive-minded people in the imperialist countries. [I'm thinking here of "Empire" as an example of the phenomenon -- the other book that's been referred to in this discussion I'm not familiar with, and from the description that's been offered, I doubt I'll feel inclined to remedy that situation.] Joaquín ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
