From: "commie00" <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: national question.
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:41:06 -0400


'alo tahir, my other sparring partner...

> 1. The federalism that you describe doesn't look like something new to me,
although you claim that it has only become dominant since the 1940s.

its not new in the since that, as a theory and as practice, it was been
around since the 1700s.

what is new, i think, is the federalization national ruling classes into a
global ruling class, and thus the end of imperialism since the 1940s.

> 2. The debate looks ominously semantic at this stage - like what do the
words nation and imperialism actually mean. To me its simply a question of
the national ruling classes of certain countries supporting and also
subordinating others to their national interest. Globalisation, whereby the
cheaper labour of other countries is exploited as a way of countering
organised labour at home, seems to me a rather typical imperialist strategy.
Maybe a somewhat different, somewhat similar one to what pertained in the
past.

but the question is: who is behind this subordination.

in the imperialist stage, the local ruling class was also subordinated (even
if this subordination was just being "bought off") to the forgien ruling
class. in the empire stage, local ruling classes are inceasingly
participating as equals... that is: are not subordinated to a foreign ruling
class.

> 3. I can't see a world without imperialism (in my simplistic sense) while
there are nation states and capitalism.

imperialism ends when the national ruling classes start moving toward
participation as equals, and thus federalize together.

within countries that have (con)federalist structures, each "state",
"province", etc. is its own nation state. and these nation states are
federlized into a large nation state.

> The state apparatus of a country gets its mandate from its own ruling
class to serve the interests of that class

as recent scandals in the u.s. have shown (with campain financing for
politicians here coming from nominally [tho actually multi-national]
chinese, german and japanese corporations, etc.), this is not entirely true
anymore. its a scandal right now because working class people here are
pretty nationlistic, but it shant be too long is suspect, if things
continue, that its just excepted as norm.

> - it mobilises the masses to support this through national chauvinism,
etc, and it acts to keep the support of the masses and to serve the ruling
class at the same time. This is a juggling act which requires now
collaboration, now antagonism with other ruling classes and states.

there's no denying that there will always be some level of antagonism
between nation-states... hell, the state i live in (west virginia) is openly
antagonistic toward every other state in the u.s. ... but that's not the
issue. the issue is the context they deal with these antagonisms: do they
deal with it in imperialist ways? or do they deal with it thru the imperial
bodies?

> This to me is the way that the US, for example, relates currently to China
and Russia as well as to Iran, Iraq, etc.

i have to honestly say that i think most of these antagonisms are made up.

its not uncommon in the u.s. (and i figure everyone else too) for two or
more opposing politicians to cooperate in staging events to display their
opposition to one another for mutually beneficial reasons. hell, this is
accepted as fact so much in the u.s. that they even did a law & order
(popular u.s. tv drama) episode about it a few years ago.

i figure that the bulk of these antagonisms, while possibly grounded in real
issues (which will, most likely, for the most part [with the possible
exception of iraq] be resolved thru the imperial bodies), are played up to
maintain national chauvanism to subvert international resistance and
maintain nation-based wage-differentials until the "races to the bottom" are
complete.

that is: its a mutually beneficial way to decompose national working classes
and distract people from the real enemy.

> 4. You ask me to believe in a world where the US, Britain, Germany,
Russia, China will all co-exist happily, within one supra-national
federation, a sort of cosy club of ruling classes.

i don't know is "happily" is the right word (given that there will be
antagonisms), but i think we already exist in that world.

> I may be naive, but I think you have intellectualised the notion of
imperialism into a very abstruse point. The test is this: what is the
practical significance of your sophisticated notion in comparison to my
simplistic one? If you can answer that then I might start to see your point.

i'm not entirely sure i understand your question... so maybe i already
answered it. if not, clarify and i'll do the best i can.



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