Right. The struggles among the big powers under the capitalist imperialism of the pre-WW1 and inter-WW eras were quite different from that today. The Lenin/Bukharin story is pretty dated, to say the least. Today, there's a much smaller military dimension, as Charlie suggests. The US/PRC contention is mostly on a pretty superficial level, involving political and exchange-rate rivalry.
The US is a declining hegemon (it seems), though imperialism doesn't seem to be declining as a system (despite the world economic crisis). Along with India and maybe Brazil, China is a rising nationalist economic power within that system. Incidentally there are some parallels between the economic relationship between US and the UK during the 19th century and that between the PRC and the US today: the UK invested a lot in US industry, inadvertently helping to create an economic & political rival. But individual capitalists don't care about such niceties and instead keep their eyes on the profit prize. On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Charlie <[email protected]> wrote: > raghu wrote: > > Let's face [it], this is two ugly imperialists facing off against > each other. > > Well, it is two big capitalist regimes facing off each other. In the > past imperialists fought over colonies, raw materials, and markets. The > key feature of the China-U.S. relation is the joint exploitation of > Chinese workers by the Chinese regime (and semi-independent Chinese > capitalists) and also by U.S. and other foreign corporations, which must > go through the former for access. So far as I know, such involvement by > two imperialists in feasting over the low-wage goose in one of them was > non-existent or insignificant in the imperialist contradiction 70 to 110 > years ago between Britain and Germany and between the U.S. and Japan. > > And U.S. workers are naturally bitter about the U.S. corporate rush to > use low-wage Chinese labor. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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
