Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 13:32:40 -0700
From: Max Anger <squert-AT-sirius.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Imperialism, Anti-Imperialism and such


I've cut things down as much to the chase as seems reasonable. You can go
down a page for my comment and back in the thread for the beginning of
Micheal's comments.

At 10:33 PM 10/9/97 -0500, Michael Novick wrote:

[Snip arguments about Lenin in particular - we don't agree but the question
has gotten obscure]
[Now skip to more nationalism stuff. ]
>
> As I noted
>>before, through the vast of "communist" parties, a new system was created
>>for managing the working for benefit of one or another nations.
>>
>>As you imply, and the fundamental positions of all of this line of thinking
>>are
>>A) Nationality/Race/Ethnicity is the most fundamental bond for the uniting
>>of a people with their leaders - nations are such cohesive structure that
>>they effectively can be treated as a whole.
>
>You may feel I imply that, but that's not what I'm talking about.  I think
>both bourgeoise and Stalinist definitions of "nations," based on the
>development of nation states in Europe in particular, abstract from the
>fact that those states were not nation- but empire-states, and thus all the
>definitions and strategies that follow from that fatal abstraction (a
>wilfull blindness) are fatally flawed.  Neither France, Germany, Italy,
>Britain (certainly not the UK) Spain, Czarist "Russia" nor any of the other
>European states every corresponded to a mythical "nation."  They were
>agglomerations, each and every one, cobble together by force of arms ruling
>over a territory, based on imperial models graven into European
>consciousness and often specifically proclaimed as such: the Holy Roman
>Empire, the Hapsburg empire; all the old imperial aristocracies and feudal
>ruling classes aspired to dominate and combine various of these imperial
>subsets.  Within which and out of which the bourgoisie emerged as a new
>ruling class that did not in fact do away with but rather absorbed and
>built upon those structures, bourgeoisifying but not eliminating them,
>despite the necessity of destroying feudal property relations in order to
>create a proletariat. 

Yes a nation, (including all nations up to now), never lives up to it's
ideology.  But ideological system never tell the whole truth (and seldom
very much of it). 

I notice in this discussion you step back from comdemning nations as such.
So what constitues a "good" or "real" nation in your thinking? (I suppose
that one could develop some entire different definition of nation that
would something good. certain Native American inter-tribal formations used
a name that has been translated as nation but I'm not sure they have much
to do with the history of nations as a world wide phenomon.) 

I do attack the nation as such myself.  A nation, which is a real entity
under capitalism,  is an inherently ideological construct - ideological not
in sense of being an illusion but in the sense of being part and parcel of
the entire system of thought/power relations that both keeps the working
class passive and adiministers capitalism in various areas. Nationalism
functions both in terms of putting forward propaganda and by material
ruling class impositions like television compulsory education - each of
whose keys purposes is to enforce a common language. 
It should be noted that nationalism/racism is a "natural phenomenon" - it
is a sort of consciousness that develops naturally in those who accept the
order of capitalist dailly life. Those who have a contemplative attitude
towards the world around them can believe that the simplest
phenomenonological similarities constitute the true division between people
(note for example an all-white mid-western American school where teachers
introduced an articial racism against blue-eyed whites. They were
destressed to find that this system took on a life of it's own even after
they adondoned their "experiment." Note also the construction of an
artificial "race" in Japan during the building of the Japanese nation.)

Essentially, nations have been created by various national entrepreneurs as
a means to unite various areas and populations which they wished to develop
in one manner or another. 
Racist/inter-ethnic attacks have also always been important cat's paw of
nationalism.  One can note how various Kurdish nationalists returned
deserting Iraqi soldiers to the Iraqi state during the uprising in Northern
Iraq after the gulf war. The use of inter-ethnic attacks is often intended
to go both ways - it is hoped that by making attack a minority, the minory
will make  a similar counter attack on the nationalist's group and thus
cement the loyalties of that group (Sometimes, the enterpreneurs will
simply stage an attack they blame on a minority or pick random event to
blame on a different  nation. ). 

The myth of absolute unity based on common language, heritage, and
territory are fundamentally lies because language, heritage and territory
are constantly mutating in any group - and especially under modern
capitalism.  Real communities do develop under capitalist normalcy, often
by subverting the dominant norms imposed by the culture of a nation, by
adopting the norms of other systems and so forth (We can see the use of rap
by white youth but we should note that rap itself constitutes the adoption
and alteration of various pieces of "white" culture). These can be either
communities of resistance or communities of happenstance but these are some
of the groups that constitute real inter-personal solidarity in periods
before/between the interectionary destruction of capitalist relations.

Real existing communities do not need imposed myths of unity to function as
communities  (while they may in fact accept various myths at one time or
another). These questions are dealt with more concretely by various authors
such as Stanley Diamond, who contrasted Jewish culture to the myth of the
nation manufactured by Zionism. 

>
>
>>B) Modern capitalism is based on one nation oppressing another nation
>>rather than one class oppressing another class. Those nations that have an
>>inferior situation on the world market are "exploited" and those that have
>>supperior position are exploiters.
>
>Again, this is not what I said.  

But do you agree or disagree? 

>I think capitalism from its inception is
>rooted in imperial relations out [of] which it created "modernity." The
>"national" bourgoisies and the "national" proletariats are not exactly
>figments of the imagination or propaganda creations or illusions, but
>manifestations of the fact that capitalism requires control over a state
>(and a population, territory, productive resources) to develop, and the
>states the bourgeoisie(s) could sieze hold of were denominated "nation
>states." The pre-existing aristocracy and clergy and peasantry were clearly
>"international" (perhaps not in the "modern" sense) and the bourgeoisie and
>the proletariat even more so.
>
>However, just as the bourgeoisie was a "middle" class, so too is the
>industrial proletariat.  

I believe "Middle" initially refered to the role of going between buyer and
seller and had nothing to do with simply between in the mid level of wealth
or income (which is how Americans doing define "Middle Class").

>There are many classes and strata beneath it.  

For me, the term Proletariat is the class of people who have nothing to
sell but their labor. Many people classified as peasants today are more
properly agricultural labors etc.. By this token, the Proletariat consists
of the vast mass of the dispossessed. Marx may have seen the industrial
proletariat as the "vanguard" - most advanced section, but I doubt he would
limit the proletariat to those who actually work in factories. 
In any case, even if both peasants or proletarian exist in a single nation,
like say Russia, neither is "above or below" the other - their distinction
is based on the social relations they are exploited under and not simple
income levels. 

>For
>proletarians to fulfill their class capability to eliminate all forms of
>oppression and class society itself they >>>must<<< unite with  oppressed
>people and 'nations.'  

What groups and formations do you mean specifically by "oppressed people
and 'nations.' " 

And what specific activities are involved in "uniting." I assume that you
mean the sorts of activities that leftist usually mean when they put
forward these rather vague terms.

It's critical to remenber that while some communities exist under capital,
the primary experiance of virtually everyone is extreme passivity. One
cannot simply go out and find a single existing "community of the
oppressed." One can find various leftist hucksters and all variety of
capitalist ideologues. 

The usual method of many left groups is indeed to claim that by uniting
with them, you are "uniting with the oppressed." But in fact, no matter
what the subjective will of a black, white or brown worker, one cannot just
go now and unite with a group of folks are essentially an atomized group of
spectators, like everyone under modern capitalism.

I should make it clear that while I believe in the proletariat constituting
itself as a unified group - a "class for itself,"  I don't see this
happening simply under the banner of those using the word workers or those
pushing my form of  "Left Communism" - people will describe the process
with many different terms and so forth. 
The level of unity of people on the streets during the LA riots is very
useful to look at.  But the question is the content - while essentially no
one in LA was using the term proletariat, the essentially understanding of
the unity of all dispossessed people had formed in many places. The next
step was to articulate this consciousness in terms that implied a new world
order. 

>This means recognizing that struggling against their
>own exploitation and oppression also means confronting and overcoming their
>own privilege and their own participation in a system that is founded on
>genocide, slavery, land theft, privatization of the commons (not only in a
>historical, one time only way, but continuing through a process of
>colonization and recolonization that is still going on).

This statement is very much put in the traditional moralistic terms of the
left. Now the point for me isn't a matter that those who fight "for
themselves" are necesarrily the most oppressed, more deserving or whatever.
The point is that by fighting for your real interests, you have the ability
to create a real community. Now I would say that the ultimate interests of
the working class is to stop being raw materials for capitalist production
regardless their exact wage levels. And thus all "previledges" of the
working class are ultimately false and most revolutionary position is to
see this falseness rather than apologizing for having a given wage level
etc..  (This doesn't mean that US workers should defend their level of
resources at the point of global revolution. But until the world proleriate
has constitued itself, the sitatuation will not be "less for American
workers, more for Senegalese workers" but "Less for American workers, more
for capital, less for Senegalese workers more for capital.")

Also, I am not happy that the labor that I'm forced to do reinforces the
system but as a single atomized workers I can't just wish this situation
away. The high wage I receive when working certainly is not "fair" but if I
got work as a day-labor, I would also be performing labor that reinforces
the system - and I'd further reinforce the system by reinforcing capital's
tendency to lower wages - directly by competing with other day laborers and
indirectly by accepting capital's logic. 

Again, what practice is involved in "confronting and over-coming your
participation" in the system? 
Encounter groups? (Indeed, I know that Praries Fire and others hold
anti-racist guilt sessions for white middle class folks wanting to
over-come racism but what material impact does this sort of activity have.
Moreover, Prairie Fire has the perspective that the white middle class is
much *better* than the white working class, most likely because middle
class people are willing to attend their guilt sessions).


>
> 
>>C) By supporting the liberation of oppressed nations, one ipso facto will
>>work for the destruction of capitalism and the creation of communism
>>(though the anti-Imperialist Mao finally decided that after communism there
>>would be nations - especially his).
>
>Again, whatever your critique of Mao, I don't think it applies to what I'm
>trying to get at.  I'm not a Maoist, although like many of my generation
>(I'm 50), I was influenced by his "thought." I never said and do not think,
>that either supporting national liberation struggles or "liberating" a
>nation >>ipso facto<< leads to communism. 

The left is a material force, nationalism is one of the key element of
leftistism. I'll certainly admit that you have described your own personal,
very vague, versionof national liberation. I still like making my critiques
relatively general and then showing how a particular situation fits in.
That way I've got something to use later. 
While you may not think that liberating a nation leads to communism, you
apparently see it as something useful. again, what in particular is usefull
about a nation?

>Nothing leads to the eradication
>of class society but conscious struggle for the eradication of class
This is bit tautological. What leads to the "conscious struggle for the
eradication of class."
If something leads to this, then that something should lead to "the
eradication of class."
If there is no cause at all for "conscious struggle for the eradication of
class," then this is an argument for empty free will, ideas coming full
formed out of the head of Jove without historical, material basis. 

>In the final version of a couple of the analyses I posted drafts
>of here, i tried to be clearer about the fact that there is no "magic key;"
>that we must struggle consciously and simulataneously against the
>oppression and exploitatioin of women, against the violations of the
>sovereignty of indigenous people and for an environmentally sound society,
>against white supremacy and all forms of racism, against economic
>exploitation, and that no one of those struggles is a guarantor of
>automatic success in any other sphere.

I would certainly say that we must struggle against all varieties of
economic inequality in the global dispossessed - but certainly by raising
the wage of the lowest rather than lower US wages to the level of India. 
But the essential struggle isn't against economic inequality but against
the economy. 

Tactics like riots or wildcat strikes both issue demands to change the
system (implicitly or explicitly) and involve people actually over-throwing
relations of exchange at the point they are at. 

Any struggle is guarenteed failure without the over-throw of the
powers-that-be. Certainly a succesfull movement would have to conscious
elimenate all of the things you mentioned. It's pretty obvious there is  a
clear break between our immediate effort to solve these problem while our
lives are pretty well dominated by capitalism and what we can do once we
get the power to create a new world. 

>>
>>This position is both anti-materialist and clearly in the material
>>interests of "owners" of third world classes such as Mao or Castro.
>>
>>>What alternative do you
>>>propose for explaining the existence of an identification with the
>>>oppressor (within oppressed and exploited groups in both colonized and
>>>colonizing nations), and what methods do you propose for overcoming it?
>>
>>Identification of the oppressed with the oppressor is hardly new nor are
>>explanations of it. 
>>"The dominant ideas of a epoch are the ideas of the dominant class" - Marx
>>(roughly).
>>Reich and other psychologists have also come up with psychological
>>explanation for the oppressed identifying with their oppressors - we could
>>go on a whole other thread just with this topic but suffice to say there
>>are many explanation.
>
>Talk about anti-materialist.  Are ideas infections that miraculously invade
>and inhabit the minds of people who have no material interest in them and
>whose every life expoerience is exactly contradictory to them?  I think
>not.  What are the mechanisms by which the bourgeoisie, as a particular
>ruling class rules?  Why the close association between most of the
>extensions of "democracy" and the intensification of imperialism and
>colonial domination.  Are you of the opinion that this identification is
>purely false consciousness propogated my media mesmerism?  The bourgoisie
>are masters at two aspects of rule: incorporating pre-existing forms of
>exploitation, oppression and domination, rationalizing and strengthening
>them; and very effective use of the carrot and stick. Global colonization
>was more than just a safety valve for restive and immiserated European
>proles, it gave (and gives) massive numbers of exploited people a stake in
>the empire that they have been willing to fight for.
>

Well, essentially, what we're talking about is a couple forms of
"self-interest" in terms of materialism.  
There's individual self-interest and collective self-interest, immediate
self-interest and long-term self-interest. 

You're point about people being given a stake in oppression is a bit
simplistic.  You could get even more simplistic and say that any worker who
is paid anything, even starvation wages, has a stake in the system since
they are getting something of the system - and indeed they usually work and
show they have a stake in their wages. Scabs are paid wages and are willing
to work against the 
Now the point is that those conform to the system, and that means just
about everyone, not just Western workers, sees things in terms of
relatively individual, immediate self-interest.  Capital can appeal to
longer-term interests or more collective interests for various folks in
various positions. But whatever system of appeal it uses, it is certainly
hoodwinking the collective, long-term interests of the dispossessed as a
whole. 
And such efforts at hoodwinking will continue as long as capital has
domination over this planet.

You asked for an explanation of why people indentify with the interests of
their oppressor. Your explanation, that the oppressor has given them some
immediate, individual promise of rewards, is no explanation since it does
not explain **why** the oppressed believe the oppressor. As I pointed out,
substantial explanations for take considerable discussion. 

>>>
>>Now the dominant idea of virtually all nations, their nationalist ideology,
>> is indeed that there is a common interest between ruled and ruler based on
>>blood, race, soil or other such nonsense - nonsense that is indeed widely
>>believed and which is a material force in society (in the US certainly
>>whiteness is one powerful subtext as to who a "real American" is). But
>>these ideologies and beliefs, destructive as they are, are simply an
>>example of the fact that under normal circumstances the ruling class is
>>able to impose it's beliefs on the population. There is nothing stranger
>>about racism than there is about people watching television.
>>
>>By this token, aspiring anti-capitalists certainly have to work against
>>this ideology in the same way they have to work against all capitalist
>>ideologies.
>>
>This is a difference between us.  I think that white supremacy and
>colonialism are not simply ideological manifestation of bourgois rule. they
>are material realities and social realities part of the actual class
>differentiation and composition of the society we live in. 

*All* ruling class ideology is a material force, no matter how
unbeleiveable or beleiveable it might be. I am not saying any of this can
be waived away by force of will. These things must be struggle against.
Unfortunately, they are also natural products of the system we live under -
whether you are talking about racism, sexism or consumerism. 

There are many differentiations in this society - they are certainly all
real. The question is what sort of divisions are proper to use the
technical term class. 

>Along with the
>exploitation and alienation of human labor, the private appropriation of
>land, "resources," nature and the rest of the commons, and the
>subordination of women, they are key components of the system within which
>we live and against which we struggle.
>
>
>>It's also worth noting that anti-imperialists put positions in terms of
>>material interests. The explanation for the working class of an oppressor
>>nation identifying with their oppressors that Micheal implicitly referes to
>>is that the "oppressor worker" is priveledged because the oppressed workers
>>are more exploited, have a lower standard of living and so forth. Thus to
>>avoid having their wages cut, the "oppressor workers" support the
>>oppression of those less priveledged than themselves.  
>>
>>This argument sounds good but really only duplicates the nationalist
>>ideology of capitalists - it substitutes immediate economic relations for
>>fundamental material relations. Indeed one can say everyone has an material
>>interest in conforming because otherwise they would be punished - so
>>everyone will always conform. 
>
>This is not what I am saying.  I am saying that even exploited people
>within colonizing societies have material stakes and participation in the
>system that exploits them.  I do not agree for example with the Maoist
>International Movement (MIM -- do you know them?) which says that only
>"Third World" workers are exploited, that the entire working classes in
>colonizing/imperialist countries constitute an aristocracy of labor that
>are not exploited but in fact live off the exploitation of the Third World.
> First of all there is social stratification and class differentiation
>within the "Third World."  A quick look at the various African liberation
>movements, Marxist Leninist or not, shows quite clearly that that there are
>"indigenous" classes and strata within oppressed and colonized nations that
>are quite happy to make common cause with the empire in exploiting "their
>own" people.  
When it fits their interests. Other times, these same strata are willing to
go it on their own and try to create a new form of capitalism. These
efforts are no more noble than their collaboration with world capitalists.

>On the other hand, capitalist exploitation of working people
>within the metropole, and its concomitant rule of the dollar,
>commodification of all human existence, alienation of people from their own
>productive and creative powers and sensuality, are obviously real. However,
>and this is a big however, workers so exploited, and societies so degraded,
>will not be able to end their own exploitation and degradation withoput
>making a fundamental break with the empires they are sustaining.

What do you mean by "making a fundamental break with the empires they are
sustaining"
>
>
>
>
>The argument further falls down because even
>>for third world workers, there are some workers somewhere who are worse off
>>- and indeed these third world workers can also be motivated at times to
>>attack other third world workers using their immediate material interests
>>as filtered by their rulers - even their third-worldist rulers. 
>>
>>The Marxist, Left Communist or simply my position is that the working class
>>has an ultimate material interest in abolishing it's condition as workers -
>>as long as wage exists, we will be fundamentally just raw material for the
>>capital machine regardless of our wage levels. To say one person is
>>exploited more than another is to say that both are still exploited. 
>>
>I don't disagree with this. I do think however, that privatization of land
>is an independent source of the capital from the exploitation of labor, and
>has its own set of social relations, just as "capital" that people usually
>think of, extraction of labor power as a commodity, is a set of social
>relations. There's a reason why the U.S. bourgeoisie wanted to control the
>entire continent, a reason why they gave away land to settlers, a reason
>why the tax code still subsidizes even home ownership -- because everyone
>who participates has a material stake in a system of empire even if they
>are simultaneously exploited as labor by that same system.  Think of
>colonialism as private property in land writ large.
>

This is the same incoherent, leftist concept of material interests I
mentioned earlier. 
Material interests in the long are more than "stuff" - they are based on
the total organization of society. The proletariat's long term interests
are not involved with a different allocation of resources but a different
method of production, a method that makes the whole concept of equal
ownership of resources meaningless. If you abolish ownership, you can't
fight for equal ownship. 
Short-term material interests can be anything. Land is convenient for
Micheal to justify the mix of his political economy but there no reason not
to say "[energy,peanuts, cultural creation] forms independent source of the
capital from the exploitation of labor." I won't go into all the arguments
of Marx against the political economy of his time but I'd suspect more
could be here against this approach. 

>
>
>>Now how well we can see our interests depends on how powerful our class is,
>>meaning power in many respects. In revolutionary situations, the
>>anti-capitalist aim to over-throw capitalist relations rather than create a
>>capitalism where everyone is exploited equally (such equal systems would be
>>impossible but they are the excuse for many "transitional programs" that
>>have been used to suppress autonomous anti-capitalist activity). The one of
>>many examples of these dynamics can be seen in the ICG's article on the
>>insurection in Iraq after the Gulf War (in the anti-capitalist document
>>section of my web site, www.webcom.com/maxang - exact link >>http://www.webcom.com/maxang/ANTICAPL/PBA/LAUF.html). 
>>
>>Also, this isn't saying the working class shouldn't fight for immediate
>>material concessions from capitalists - including demanding that different
>>sorts of inequality be abolished. They should.  Indeed, a local transit
>>(BART) made the demand that two-tiered wage system be abolished and thus
>>demanded that a devisive inequality be removed. 
>
>My father's union, no revolutionaries (District 65, "pink," now in the UAW)
>always used to demand raises in dollars and cents rather than percentage
>terms, in order, as my father explained, to narrow rather than increase the
>gap between the highest and lowest paid workers.
Bravo.
>
>
>
>
>Other strikes in the US
>>have demanded that racist divisions be removed (and others strikes have
>>been called by white workers to promote racist division - there's no rose
>>garden here).
>
>That's certainly more than a footnote.  Actually, it seems quite central to
>me -- is the purpose of labor organizing simply to control the competition
>among laborers, to advantage the organized over the unorganized (or the
>privileged over the oppressed) or is it to eliminate competition among the
>laborers, and cement their solidarity with other oppressed groups and
>classes in order to end all exploitation and oppression?

Your argument frames the question in the rather emty terrain of intentions.
The purpose of revolutionaries however is to abolish a world with money so
that unions also are abolished before we will ever have a chance to create
an ideal, well intentioned unionism. Thus it would be more useful to figure
out what unionism is rather than what it intends to be especially in the
abstract. 

In this historical period I'd say organized labor in general functions
mainly as a labor brokerage against the long-term, collective interests of
the working class to abolish wage labor.  But unionist put forward workers
immediate interests, at least hypothetically. I'd say also that once
workers reach a strong enough level of consciousness, they can struggle for
their interests more effectively by also struggling against unionism.

> 
>>
[Snipping string of sig lines, then adding mine]


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