I substantially agree with your discussion below, Marvin. ( That post was from wikipedia, by the way). Interjections
From: Marvin Gandall ================================================== Charles would be the first to agree that Lenin and the other classical Marxists were influenced by and wrote for the period they lived in, and didn't hand down formulas valid for eternity. ^^^ CB: Yes, Lou Proyect has just articulated this well in his first post on _Imperialism_. The aphorism is Lenin did "concrete analysis of the concrete situation." And Engels said "Marxism is not a dogma , but a guide to action." "Eternity" they didn't write for. Caveat: they did make generalizations with varying lengths of validity. The fundamentals of capitalism, like working class vs bourgeoisie are sort of valid until capitalism ends. I think Lenin's observations on monopoly (oligopoly) capital are not confined to the early 20th Century. As to the _opportunism_ ( the dimension not mentioned here) of sections of labor...uhhh lets talk about it. And much of Lenin's thinking in _Imperialism_, development based on dialectical modification, is very pertinent to the era of WWII, which is 20 to 30 years on from the pamphlet, and even to the Cold War period. So, in that regard Lenin's writing was relevant and necessary for understanding periods beyond the one he lived in. A main change in the "behavior" of the imperialism of the era of the pamphlet by that name was caused by the existence of the Soviet Union (something which Lenin had a bit to do with) It was the bulwark for the end of the colonial system analyzed in _Imperialism_. The imperialist powers overcame their inter-imperialist rivalry ,especially post-WWII, to unite against the Soviet Union. This aspect is important for analyzing the whole Cold War era. So, sure we have to update the concepts of _Imperialism_, but that has to be done _starting_ with the concepts in _Imperialism_ , which a lot of those who want to say _Imperialism_ is outdated don't do. They just want to throw out _Imperialism_. ^^^^ They lived at a time when the working class in the West was growing in size and power and a sizeable part of it identified with the revolutionary left. They also witnessed first-hand the great scramble for colonies by the Europeans, the US, and Japan and the brutal misery inflicted on the colonial peoples which Twain, among others, documented in relation to the Belgian Congo and other super-exploited territories. So they properly characterized the period as a revolutionary and the age as one of imperialism. They thought they were on the threshold of capitalist collapse and socialist revolution, and their forecasts seemed to be strikingly vindicated both by the imperialist rivalry culminating in World War I, and by the subsequent wave of unrest in the armies and on the home fronts unleashed by the war which culminated in the Russian Revolution. In these circumstances, it was plausible to argue that the narrow craft unions and reformist leaderships of the workers' parties were running well behind the temper of the working class and delaying and obstructing the world socialist revolution which now looked all but inevitable. The materialist underpinning they gave to their analysis was that the craft unionists who controlled the embryonic labour federations and workers' parties had been effectively co-opted into supporting the system with the extra profits generated by imperialism. But, as Charles notes, they didn't extend the concept of the "labour aristocracy" to the growing army of industrial workers in the advanced capitalist countries who were just beginning to organize and on whom the revolutionary left pinned its hopes. I won't repeat my arguments except to say that I've balked at the much wider use of "labour aristocracy" to describe the mass of today's workers in the West; that, in general, working class conditions in the West are stagnating or declining while those in the periphery are improving; that the higher growth rates, rapidly developing home markets, and export of capital from the former colonial territories to the West suggests the age of Western imperialism is drawing to a close and that the analytical framework of unequal exchange through which we've understood the world over the past century needs updating; that the "crisis of leadership" theory is inapplicable in a period when the leadership reflects the liberal consciousness of the base, where the socialist left is now wholly absent; that we live not in an age of advance and revolution, but of retreat and counter-revolution, characterized above all by the collapse or transformation of the old anticapitalist states and movements, the contraction of the Western trade unions, and the expansion of capitalism into vast new markets. ^^^^ CB; Yes, you have sketched the features of even an further development beyond the WWII and post-WWII era. I'd say some of the features of imperialism, like monopoly and finance capital are still operating today. Some of Lenin's generalizations have longer applicability than others. Some of the concepts pertinent for analyzing today are best understood as negations of concepts in _Imperialism_. But , as I said , above, that means study of _Imperialism_ is still the first step for understanding those negations. It is foolish to just throw out _Imperialism_ and start from scratch . That's what the bourgeoisie want one to do. Imperialism today is different from imperialism in 1918, but it is different in ways that are orderly and logical negations , of the imperialism of 1918. The concepts in _Imperialism_ shouldn't be ignored, they should be used as a starting point of the logical evolution and development of imperialism. To fully and accurately characterize the current period, we have look at some of the features of the WWII and Cold War periods out of which the present grows , the features of the current period which are best understood as features of the previous period persisting or turning into their opposite. Neo-colonialism largely discarded European settler colonialization, but dominance through big wars and rapid military invasion and occupations was substituted , especially as the scientific and technological revolutions gave rise to big advances in the means and mode of destruction. I want to jump back to the WWII and Cold War period to point out that there were neo-colonialist dimensions echoing the colonialism of the early 20th and 19th centuries. The great power nation the US did inflict brutality on the Korean and Chinese people as late as 1950, the Vietnamese, Laotian, Kampuchean peoples as late as the 1960's and 1970's, the Nicaraguan ,Afghani peoples as late as the 1980's, the Iraqi people from the early 90's through 2008. So , ,modified versions of these generalizations from _Imperialism_ concerning imperialism seem to still have some validity. These events derive in part from the existence of the Soviet Union and socialist nations, one issue that I suggested should be the basis for modifying Lenin's analysis in _Imperialism_ . My point is again, the analysis in _Imperialism_ should be used to develop the analysis of the periods beyond the period in which _Imperialism_ is fully valid. This is one reason it is not correct to ignore _Imperialism_ entirely for later periods; the other reason is that some of the generalizations in _Imperialism_ are valid for a long period of time even to the present. And one point that is sort of sticky is that not only were the labor lieutenants of capital in the AFL-CIO very much in on these anti-communist wars, the soldiers who did the bulk of the warring work on those countries were largely from the US working class. This is not a moral point, but it is a critical aspect of the effect of the opportunism and anti-communism that the rank and file workers were not able to resist, whether because they were following their labor leaders ( lieutenants of capital) or they were embued with racism, nationalism and chauvinism. The US bourgeoisie were able to get the American workers en masse to act in a manner diametrically opposed to Marx and Engels' creed of "Workers of all nations , unite !". The domestic model and mental preparation for this tragic,politically corrupting, opportunist American creed was racism against Black , Brown and Yellow workers among White workers. White American workers were first "aristocrats" in relation to American workers of color, and this made it easy to be warriors against other workers of color around the world in neo-colonies throughout the 20th Century whether in Lenin's lifetime or beyond This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
