raghu wrote: >>> I agree with the above. Indeed in the 20'th century, overt racism has >>> been substantially eliminated. I think the letter of the law (though >>> maybe not the practical enforcement) in most Western countries today >>> is completely non-discriminatory. Note that imperialism has also >>> substantially declined in the same time-frame.
me: >> completely??? substantially??? please explain. raghu: > I don't think there is a single overtly racist law on the books any > more in the US or in any of the developed world. In the US, we learned a long time ago that _de facto_ discrimination and segregation can be just as bad as (and sometimes worse than) _de jure_ (overt) discrimination and segregation. The former can persist because a lot of people don't think it's real or as important as the latter. But it is real: for example, there's no law that says that leftist political economists should have a much harder time getting promotion in academia than orthodox ones with similar talents, but it's true nonetheless. In the grand scheme of things, that's a pretty minor case, but it's representative of the important role of _informal_ institutions in society. Both _de facto_ and _de jure_ discrimination and segregation should be opposed. > Simultaneously, there > is no major territory in the world that is held by a foreign country > as a colony. Puerto Ricans might disagree. In any event, imperialism involves not only classic overt colonization but also neocolonialism (external domination of a nominally independent country) and dependency (inability to prosper economically if a country doesn't "play ball" with the big powers). The imperial system changes over time, going from looting colonies (the initial stage in Leopold's Congo, for example), forced-labor colonies (early Haiti), and settler colonies (the US, Israel, New Zealand, etc.) to neo-colonialism and then to dependency, with some areas being stuck in the "earlier" stages. This occurs due such phenomena as diminishing returns to looting and (more importantly) the efforts by the locals to win independence. My gut feeling is that imperialism is "progressing" toward a situation where it's pretty much the same thing as global capitalism, divided primarily along class lines (though gender and ethnic hierarchies persist) with the development of a global capitalist ruling class and a global proletariat. (NB: this does not say that local states are going away: order must be maintained!) Another way of saying this is that the imperial system is becoming more like the non-ethnic Roman imperium. But making it different from Rome is the division of the world into competing statelets (Serbia, Montegro, Bosnia, etc.) that can't deal with the multinational institutions are are slowing coalescing into a world state. (Currently, US hegemony counts as a multinational institution: it isn't just the IMF _et al_.) me: >> definitely in Serbia, while the US intervened substantially in the >> political processes of both France and Italy after WW2 and in >> Australia (an honorary European country) more recently. The fact that >> the US doesn't intervene very often in rich countries (as far as we >> know) likely has more to do with the military power of those >> countries, along with the fact that US business invests a lot in them >> (while their biz invests in the US). It's a more a matter of power >> than ethnicity, as indicated by Kolko's study (_the Limits of Power_). raghu: > Indeed, but this only begs the question: why is it that Western > capitalists are less willing to invest in Asia, Latin America and > especially Africa than in Europe and when they do "invest", it is in > the form of highly unstable "hot money" inflows? (Admittedly this has > changed in the last 2 decades or so with China receiving a lot of > investments, but I'd argue that this only further undermines > imperialism not strengthen it.) I don't see why this question is begged, but never mind. Part of the this phenomenon is that it takes fewer dollars (per factory, for example) to invest in low-wage countries than in high-wage countries, so that looking at total amounts of money spent (even as a percentage of GDP) can be deceiving. In any event, direct fixed investment in non-rich countries has been accelerating during the last decade or so. There has been a lot of non-"hot money" investment in those places. I don't see at all how fixed investments in China undermine imperialism. One might say that it undermines US hegemony within the system (by creating an alternative big power), but that's different from undermining the system. (The imperial system centered on competition among nation-states 100 years ago.) Also, I'd say that the main thing in the imperial system that's been undermined is the ability of people in high-wage countries to benefit from it. The companies like Wal-Mart that are involved in China have made mucho profits on the deal, partly from the low wages there and partly from the lowered wages here (lowered partly by competition from China). raghu: >>> I don't think capitalism depends on racism to the same extent that >>> imperialism does. me: >> explain. The Roman empire wasn't racist, but it was quite an empire. raghu: > Quite simply that I can easily imagine a capitalism without racism > where all workers are exploited in an equal opportunity manner by the > capitalists. Under imperialism, whole nations - workers and > capitalists - benefit at the expense of other nations, and is > necessarily racist at its core. You _define_ imperialism as racist, but there's no way to argue with definitions except to say that there aren't very many people who use that definition. It's possible to imagine capitalism without racism (and I think that at present, with the election of BHO, we're inching in that direction). But note that without racism, the tactic of "divide and rule" is much harder to pull off. That makes proletarian unity more possible and creates threats to capitalist power and possibly class warfare (with more of a "from below" aspect than the current one-sided class war). Capitalism doesn't _need_ racism for its very survival, but capitalists use it when they can and the existence of racism sure helps the system persist. raghu: >>> Simple definition: a system of international power relations under >>> which one ethnic group systematically dominates and exploits another >>> for economic gain. me: >> so you're defining "imperialism" so that it will fit your thesis (and >> doesn't fit ancient Roman or Persian imperialism). > I was just trying to explain my understanding of the term. I think it > is pretty close to Wikipedia's definition: "Imperialism is the system > of building foreign empires for military and trade advantages or in > other words, the practice of extending the power, control or rule by > one country over the political and economic life of areas outside its > own borders which may be accomplished through military or other means, > and particularly through colonialism." Contrary to your definition, this doesn't seem to involve ethnic domination at all. That's likely because the Wikipedia had Rome in mind (in addition to other empires). It also only describes _expansion_. An empire can also stay the same size (as when the Romans defended their empire against the so-called "barbarians") or shrink (as they increasingly lost these wars and found that many of their troops were "barbarians"). It's also just a common-sense (descriptive, empiricist) definition. I prefer a definition which helps the world make more sense (to me, at least) because it fits within a larger theoretical framework. The Marxian tradition in political economy has provided that (to me, at least). me: >> Are you an academic? it sure seems so. raghu: > I hope to be! There's another kind of logic where one proves one's point by defining terms: Jesuitical casuistry. Have you thought of joining the Society of Jesus? I understand that the benefits are pretty good. And you could become Pope. -- 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
