Anti-imperialism, national liberation and Iraq - again

1. The WSM don't live on the internet or on libcom. Some members post here quite a lot but you shouldn't go getting the two confused.

2. Shouldn't you have mentioned that we once published an article in favour of voting for Des Derwin by now?

thankfully i would never pretend or seek to be the leadership of ideas.

Weird stuff and of course wrong.

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good theory

(I'm right in thinking your one of the ICCbots?)

As much as it highlights the WSM's leftist bollox, I don't think it's particularly relevant to a disucussion where Joe and Gurrier are trying to convince people that opposing the occupation is the same as supporting national liberation.

And if gurrier is serious in needing to have it pointed out how US imperialism is somewhat different to the European colonialisation, perhaps you and the other comrades that I've sullied by lumping in with him could buy him so books or even save up and get him a clue.

It might help to try to think through the issue from a different analogy.

When workers in the UK, or US or Ireland or whatever strike it's often under the control of the trade unions isn't it? That doesn't stop us supporting the workers in struggle. We do, though, oppose the control of the unions because we know it frequesntly leads to defeat. And we call for strikes to spread to other sectors.

So, if a workers have to fight against a capitalist class that is imposed from without or supported by foreign troops, we support their struggles, whilst at the same time opposing the nationalist ideology that compromises their struggles.

Thank you!

For one, US imperialism takes place in a world already totally colonised by capital. The US does not seek to build imperial palaces nor rule directly, nor does it introduce settlers, rather it seeks a heterogenous power, whereby the ruling classes are relatively autonomous within "acceptable" parameters. US imperialism isn't also merely about the grasping of raw materials but rather aims at creating consumer markets and intergrating them into the world market.

except I'd imagine heterogenous power and the relative autonomy of native ruling classes is possibly the most important distinction between early European Colonialisation and current US imperialism (again I think the term imperialism serves to hide more than it illustrates).

I can't remember the British pushing forward elections in India or Kenya.

Of course I'm not trying to claim that there is some clean break between the two, rather it's one of developed tendencies.

The US for example often championed national liberation movements, initially seeing Egypt as it's primary ally in the middle east. Then opposing economic nationalisation.

Sorry Gurrier, that's not true.

Right up to the end of the Cold War the different blocs were trying to nick parts of the world off each other - and were using surrogate armies as well as their own troops to do so. Imperialism has changed since then. It might be interesting to discuss how.

Empire. I believe is the term.

Leading intellectual? um, we're anarchists. The following people are key thinkers: Nicholas Pheabus, Mark Lasky, Flint Jones, and that guy from toronto whose name I always forget, as well as wayne.

Well, you're all in sad shape if I am one of the "key thinkers" of this outfit. More than anything this is a list of people who are the loudest mouths on the internet. When it comes to public speaking or writing for publications it is a larger and more diverse grouping of people.

That said, I think it is strange that people take individual opinions or writings and attribute them to a group as a whole. Wayne Price is often a minority opinion on alot of issues within NEFAC, and when it actually comes to federation position papers or policy or whatever I can think of a number of instances when his positions have not won a majority support. However, as he is retired he has alot of time to write for various publications and websites. I can't say I've seen anything written by him that would out-and-out contradict NEFAC vague "political line" (even if some of us might disagree with aspects of his work), but all the same they are his own positions and ideas and he does not claim them as anything else.

----MaRK

hang on Gurrier, I think we're at cross purposes. If you're saying that imperialism involves conflicts between different power blocs and that they use their own and surrogate forces to take over other countries and have been doing so for years, then I agree with you. I thought you were suggesting that all ended in the 1890s.

It seems to me that the yanks have different ways of doing things in different places - it's possible you're both right.

Certainly the way capital has globalised has changed the way it dominates the world.

the difference between imperialism then (1800) and now is that imperiallism was then connected to expanding capitalism to pre-capitalist areas where as now it is fighting over almost entirely existing markets

Do you think the mutinies and fragging's in the US military during Vietnam were in support of Ho Chi Minh, or were they a response to conditions in the US military, rising working class consciousness on the civilian population etc.? Making it impossible for the country you live in to go to war via strikes, street demonstrations, action in the military etc. is very different from lending support - either rhetorical (in the case of most Trot groups) or practical, to the resistance in the country being aggressed upon.

Wars have a number of effects on the countries embarking on them - the disciplining of labour, heightening of internal security and repression, diversion of resources from social programmes, social and economic conscription etc. The most effective anti-war movement acts against those tendencies, making it impossible to control the working class at home and therefore making any kind of prolonged military activity elsewhere impossible. That has nothing to do with national liberation.

Your humility always pissed me off for some reason. I guess because i was always a loud mouthed bastard fuck up with none of my own.

Really?

i think you'll find it was in the context of South Korean capital, that remarkably doesn't seem to fit so easy in your cack handed model of imperialism.

or have i imagined something and is South Korea a colonised third world country, used for it's natural resources, lacking in infastructure and with no internal development?

you fucking numpty, i'm not discussing national liberation struggles, i 'm discussing how US imperialism sought to create strong national capital in those countries.

so your saying that those countries that don't bother with a national liberation struggle end up doing better?

I assumed we were discussing countries that had been under US imperialism, so why would you imagine imperialism has no problem with native bourgeoises growing stronger in countries that have no national liberation movement?

gurrier, i agree that the scramble for Africa was largely to do with competing imperialism and was in many ways similar to modern day imperialism but i still think my point is valid taken as a general rule of thumb. Obviously the nature of imperialism didn't completely change overnight, there was a process which was connected to the setting up of a truly global economy at the beginning of the 20th century.

I wrote something about this during my A levels, basically i argued that a key reason why Britains empire was overtaken by America was that Britain tried to maintain a colonisation era empire in a different historic epoch, where as America used a style of imperialism more in tune with the new situation. This was because running whole countries in the traditional way became an economic burden as they could no longer expand into new markets when they did so. America on the other hand used its economic power to run countries by proxy.