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On 6/6/2010 5:33 PM, Shane Mage wrote: > Is India an oppressed or oppressing nation? If the first, who is > oppressing it? > Kashmir, as virtually all the Kahmiris know, is clearly an oppressed > nation--who is oppressing it? The Miskitu Indians of Nicaragua were --and remain-- an oppressed people. Nicaragua as a whole was --and remains-- an oppressed nation. Shane's rhetorical questions show he does not understand imperialism as a *system,* and not just a policy or a relationship of subordination between two nations or peoples. This is also my reply to Sartesian's argument about Argentina, Brazil and Haiti. How can I claim there is something progressive about the policies or Kirchner or Lula? The same way I claim there was something progressive about Lincoln despite the policy of outright genocide of the United States towards the indigenous peoples of North America before, during and after Mr. Lincoln's presidency. These arguments all reek of moralizing. To be even clearer: Does anyone doubt that native peoples in Bolivia have been oppressed and exploited? Does anyone doubt that Bolivia as a whole has been oppressed and exploited as a nation? That is true despite the fact that the white and mixed-race Bolivian population have been the instruments of, and in some senses benefactors from, the oppression of the indigenous people. You can make the same argument in relation to the Black and indigenous populations throughout the Caribbean as well as Central and South America. The "poor little Tibet and big bad China" or "poor little Kashmir and big bad India" arguments REALLY amount to saying everybody's an imperialist, thereby letting the real imperialists off the hook. Ah, you say. But weren't you arguing that imperialism is a system, and NOT a relationship? Yes, but it is a system whose most salient characteristic is the division of the world between a relative handful of oppressor nations and a big majority of oppressed nations. But "everyone" is an oppressor, you exclaim. Yes, but that Cuban whites and mulattos oppressed Black Cubans did not stop the country that those whites dominated, Cuba, from being oppressed and exploited first as a direct colony of Spain and then as a semicolony of the United States. And even MORE interesting in this regard is that a central demand of the liberation movement to win independence from Spain was abolition of slavery, and that rich Cuban patriotic landowners initiated the War for Independence in 1868 (known as the ten year war) by freeing their slaves so they could join with the former slaveowners as free men to battle against the Spanish. So, yes, the relationships and dynamics can be complicated, but they are far from impenetrable. The argument is deployed in terms of Kashmir and Tibet because those are distant places that comrades have no feel for. If Shane Mage had chosen to illustrate his argument with, for example, the oppression of Chiapas Indians in Mexico or Blacks in Puerto Rico, to argue implicitly that Puerto Rico is not a colony and Mexico is not a semicolony, it would only take comrades about a second and a half before deciding the argument was a phony, and its real import was to cover up U.S. domination. How to judge which are the oppressor countries and the oppressed countries? This has to be done on a world scale, considering the world complex of social, economic and political relations as a whole. But even more broadly, beyond national oppression: Does the very evident, even blatant privileges enjoyed by the average worker in the imperialist countries relative to the world working class as a whole mean that the working classes of the imperialist countries are not exploited and oppressed classes? I hope my critics will at least TRY to understand my view: imperialism is inherent in the social, economic and political space that we inhabit. It is analogous to Einstein's view of "gravity," which is NOT a relationship (in this case of attraction) between two bodies but rather the result of the "warping" of space-time by the masses of the bodies in that space. In discussing say, the relationship between the earth and sun, it is close enough to speak of attraction and so on. But if you want to deal with the universe as a whole, you *have* to go Einsteinian. Joaquín ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
