this makes sense to me. Nationalism of any sort has two faces. In the case of anti-imperialist nationalism, one face is the fight for national self-determination, while the other involves the fight for superiority vis-a-vis other nations. Vietnam ran the US off their territory but immediately fought with Cambodia and China. Likely those Vietnamese fights were justified, but the other sides (China, Cambodia) also represented anti-imperialist nationalisms.
Perhaps it's like the fight of petty-bourgeois interests. They sometimes look "progressive" vis-a-vis the big bourgeoisie but they usually want to join the latter not abolish it. And they're not in favor of empowering the working class. Matthijs Krul wrote: > I don't see how the theory of imperialism necessarily presupposes that the > imperialists are always the same people though. Not only are there and would > there be anti-imperialist, particularly anti-colonial movements which resist > the logic of imperialism, but there will also be struggle between the > various imperialist bourgeoisies over the hegemony over the system, and the > bourgeoisies of the subjugated nations will at some point quickly tire of > their 'gatekeeper' position and want to stake out a claim of their own. This > is how I interpret the developments since the 1960s, relying among other > works on Vijay Prashad's book on the Third World movement. The anti-colonial > independence movements were clearly directly anti-imperialist, both on the > part of the African and Asian workers involved as on their small local > bourgeoisie; but if the latter manage to defeat the former, as often > happened, there is every reason to expect the more powerful of those (or the > ones in nations with more potential power) to start out an imperialism of > their own. One can see this perhaps with the Soviet Union (although that's > contested), but certainly with Chinese activity in Africa today, with the > very traditional sort of territorial fights between Pakistan and India and > between India and China, one sees this most famously with the modern history > of Japan, and so forth. That formerly subjugated nations now become powerful > does not to me indicate that imperialism is at an end, just that the > imperialists are less white, to put it bluntly. > > As for your second point, that may well be true, especially once it becomes > more clear that the color and language of the oppressor matters practically > very little, and all the more now the Cold War is over. I sure hope that > this will lead to a reinvigoration of class struggle. > > Matthijs Krul > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
