Re: [Marxism] Viewpoint magazine on imperialism

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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And then there is Patrick Higgins who describes Trump's "you have to take out 
their families" campaign as Trump striking "a posture against Hillary Clinton’s 
full throated support of liberal imperialism": 
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/enemy-home-u-s-imperialism-syria/

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Re: [Marxism] Viewpoint magazine on imperialism

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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I now see that Webber's article on Academia.edu is actually from the
Viewpoint issue as well.

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 11:08 AM, Fred Murphy 
wrote:

> ​...
> Meanwhile from another quarter, this just in -
> https://www.academia.edu/35821191/From_Nuestra_Am%C3%
> A9rica_to_Abya_Yala_Notes_on_Imperialism_and_Anti-
> imperialism_in_Latin_America_across_Centuries
>
> *WeltTrends* 136 Februar 2018
>>
>> Im November 2001 fasste der Chefökonom von Goldman Sachs die vier
>> „Schwellenländer“ Brasilien, Russland, Indien und China unter dem Akronym
>> BRICS zusammen. Aus der finanzstrategischen Überlegung wurde eine
>> politische der vier Staaten. Sie schlossen sich zu einer Gruppe zusammen,
>> später kam Südafrika hinzu. Jährlich finden Treffen statt, auf denen nicht
>> nur Positionen abgestimmt, sondern auch Institutionen aufgebaut werden. Im
>> *Thema* des Februar-Heftes wird eine kritische Bilanz der BRICS gezogen,
>> die deutlich macht, dass diese Gruppe trotz innerer Spannungen ein Pol der
>> multipolaren Welt ist.
>>
>
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Re: [Marxism] Viewpoint magazine on imperialism

[Patrick Bond via Marxism]

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My quibble with the sub- characterization of the BRICS is that it 
implies they act on behalf of one or another major or full-fledged 
imperialist power, whereas they are mainly acting out of their own 
self-interest, albeit in contexts where they are not the strongest powers.


Well Fred, what, in this sense, is an "imperialist power"? A country, 
and indeed one led by a con-man president such as Donald J Trump?


And from the standpoint of the BRICS, what is "their" self-interest? 
Who's 'they'? If the leading capitalist blocs (neoliberal, financial and 
export mining in my South African case) controlling a state are 
perfectly happy to endorse BRICS as sub-imperial within a world system 
from which they derive maximum profits and hide their wealth (as was the 
case until the 'Zupta' power bloc went out of control on corruption 
around five years ago), then sub-impi is what we can call it.


So isn't it more satisfying, politically and intellectually, to consider 
the broader imperial project of accumulation through global corporate 
power relations, and assess each conjunctural situation on its own merits?


a German journal, out today

http://welttrends.de/

Weltmächte im Wartestand?


   /WeltTrends/

WeltTrends 136 Februar 2018

South Africa suffers political-economic poisoning from its BRICS membership

By Patrick Bond

The emergence of an alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and 
South Africa in 2010 signaled enormous potential for a new political 
arrangement to challenge Western hegemony. The reality, however, has 
disappointed constituencies, especially in the most unequal and troubled 
of the five countries, South Africa, where leaderships talks left but 
walks right.


***

Jacob Zuma will likely exit the South African presidency earlier than 
the next national elections, due within fifteen months. He will leave, 
presumably, with certain guarantees against prosecution for large-scale 
corruption. He also must give sufficient time to his successor, Cyril 
Ramaphosa, to erase the electorate’s memory of the so-called ‘Zupta’ 
networks combining Zuma’s cronies with the three Gupta brothers, who are 
Indian immigrants. Their ‘state capture’ strategy since Zuma took power 
in 2009 included a luxurious family wedding in 2013 that notoriously 
violated immigration and airport security regulations; the costs were 
paid from agricultural support meant for black farmers in the Free State 
province. Nearly €1 billion per year was lost to Zupta looting, 
according to the former finance minister Pravin Gordhan.[1] (To be sure, 
that is a small fraction of the €15 billion lost annually to 
overcharging on state procurement contracts by what is the world’s most 
corrupt business elite, Johannesburg’s, according to 
PricewaterhouseCoopers polling.)[2]


Just before the December holiday break, Ramaphosa’s party presidential 
acceptance speech at the African National Congress (ANC) convention 
followed a tight election with former African Union chairperson 
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who if victorious was widely expected to pardon 
her ex-husband Jacob. Ramaphosa graciously thanked Zuma for promoting 
the 2012 National Development Plan (NDP) and providing four million 
South Africans with free AIDS medicines. Indeed, the latter 
accomplishment helped raise life expectancy by 12 years from the early 
2000s trough of 52. But the Treatment Action Campaign’s world-historic 
battle against Big Pharmacorp profiteering and President Thabo Mbeki’s 
AIDS denialism had already been won largely without Zuma’s visible 
assistance back in 2004.


Ramaphosa himself will proudly enforce the NDP in coming years, as he 
was its co-author. Lacking climate-change consciousness, the NDP’s top 
priority infrastructure commitment is a €55 billion rail line, mainly to 
export 18 billion tons of coal, entailing 50 major projects of which 14 
have already begun.[3] The rail agency, Transnet, has a €4.2 billion 
credit from China to finance Chinese-made locomotives that are 
sufficiently strong to carry 3 kilometre-long coal trains, though 
corruption is already a major problem with the acquisitions.[4] Zuma’s 
desired €100 billion purchase of eight nuclear energy reactors from 
Rosatom is now highly unlikely thanks to Pretoria’s worsening debt 
crisis, so that really leaves just one accomplishment as his legacy: 
annual networking with leaders in Beijing, Brasilia, Delhi and Moscow.


BRICS reforms?

Conventional wisdom, as expressed by foreign policy scholar Oscar van 
Heerden in late 2017, is that Zuma “ensured our ascendency into the 
BRICS Geo-Strategic grouping, made up of Brazil, Russia, India and 
China: 

Re: [Marxism] Viewpoint magazine on imperialism

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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A lot of names there new to me, which is good.

One, recommended by friends, is "Selections from Theoretical Preliminaries
to the Study of the Impact of Social Thought on the National Liberation
Movement (1973)," Mahdi Amel and Brahim El Guabli:
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/selections-theoretical-preliminaries-study-impact-social-thought-national-liberation-movement-1973/

Also some great old names, like Ian Birchall.

And there's this:
The Origins of Anti-Imperial Marxism: Rediscovering the Polish Socialist
Party
by Eric Blanc
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/origins-anti-imperial-marxism-rediscovering-polish-socialist-party/
Which I guess is to be read after or along with his reassessment of
Luxemburg in Historical Materialism.

And then there's this:
Notes on Libya by Max Ajl
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/notes-on-libya/
A quick skim of a very long article leaves the impression that Max is still
giving "anti-imperialists a free pass, but that deserves to be more
thoroughly assessed (including because the article is a review of the
latest book by Horace Campbell, a significant figure.
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Re: [Marxism] Viewpoint magazine on imperialism

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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My quibble with the sub- characterization of the BRICs is that it implies
they act on behalf of one or another major or full-fledged imperialist
power, whereas they are mainly acting out of their own self-interest,
albeit in contexts where they are not the strongest powers. Who, for
example, would Russia be “subbing” for in Syria? Who is China or South
Africa subbing for in Africa?

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 10:25 AM Patrick Bond  wrote:

> ... we may want to take up the question of whether the Russian -
> and broader BRICS agenda (which will be on display when their
> head-of-states-summit comes here to Johannesburg in late July) for that
> matter - is better described not as anti- or inter- ... but as
> sub-imperialist.
>
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Re: [Marxism] Viewpoint magazine on imperialism

[Patrick Bond via Marxism]

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On 2018/02/02 05:14 PM, Fred Murphy via Marxism wrote:

... For example, the lead article by Salar Mohandesi at
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/the-specificity-of-imperialism/

“Lim­it­ing impe­ri­al­ism only to the “West,” or even just the Unit­ed
States, tends to obscure the impe­ri­al­ism of those states often
com­bat­ting that impe­ri­al­ism. Of course, there are enor­mous
dif­fer­ences between, for exam­ple, U.S. and Russ­ian impe­ri­al­ism,
which become espe­cial­ly impor­tant when con­sid­er­ing the strug­gles on
the ground today, but the fact remains that for those who call them­selves
social­ists, the ulti­mate objec­tive must remain the abo­li­tion of both,
not the defense of one against the oth­er.


Hear hear.

Ah, but there arise the dilemma of whether a country fighting on a 
specific geographic terrain (Russia in Syria) for specific territorial 
and geopolitical reasons is genuinely anti- or perhaps 
inter-imperialist... or whether this conjunctural battle occurs within - 
not against - the broader imperial project of accumulation through 
global corporate power relations. The latter I consider 'imperialism' 
proper, no matter the conjunctures in specific sites.


Which means we may want to take up the question of whether the Russian - 
and broader BRICS agenda (which will be on display when their 
head-of-states-summit comes here to Johannesburg in late July) for that 
matter - is better described not as anti- or inter- ... but as 
sub-imperialist.


More soon as this debate percolates, here and there.

Patrick


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