From: Matthijs Krul
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. ^^^^ CB: On this point, consider Lou Proyect and Marvin's points on the necessity for concrete analysis. History is really not likely to repeat itself on this. The European 20th Century imperialist system derived from the colonial system which had developed for 100's of years. The Chinese, Indian and other newly developing capitalist systems and their relations to other nations will not have that background. Especially, they will not have military superiority or inclination to conquer that the European powers did. Therefore , they are not likely to perpetrate colonialist wars and conquest of the nations with which they do business. Usually, it is important to note that Lenin's thesis in _Imperialism_ is an economic theory. Here it is important to note that the imperialism that Lenin wrote about had a very necessary aspect: the military domination and oppression of colonies that were economically exploited. Further, The colonial nations had various cultures and non-capitalist modes of production when the European colonizers came and conquered. The globetrotting of Chinese, Indian and other non-European economic traders will be completely different in their relationships with nations and cultures. Those nations have very different modes and forces of production than the nations and peoples that were conquered by the Europeans centuries ago. In addition , we can be sure that the US will not allow any new economically powerful nation , like China, to militarily conquer any nation. In fact, the real danger is the US militarily attacking China or Iran or some other economically rising nation, in a new version of old time imperialism. Another difference is that the European colonialists sent settler populations to occupy colonies. The whole US country is a European settler colony in which the indigenous peoples' land was utterly usurped. We are not likely to see anything like that from the newly prospering nations. So, actually, bluntly, the newly prospering nations are not at all likely to be conquering, dominating, warring, exploiters like the old, old European colonialists or the old European imperialists. ^^^^^ ^^^^ 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. ^^^ CB; The color will matter in the sense that the content of the color "white" was centuries of military conquest and warring, etc., and the new international traders are precisely not going to be oppressors in anything like the way the white colonialists/imperialists were oppressors. Might say the difference will be like that between night and day. ^^^ 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
