File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 628


Date: Thu, 26 Feb 98 15:31:48 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Iraq -- putting out fires with gasoline










		C. Russ,





	Look, I agree that we live in an Imperialist world.  As an
American I live in Imperialism Central.  The problems is that Imperialism
is a completely unavoidable fact.  In an already and increasingly
integrated global economy, autarky means isolation and stagnation.  The
question, then, is what sort of regime protects the people from the brutal
side of imperialism.  There are two choices.  One is the Sadaam Hussein
model.  That is militaristic authoritarianism.  That's fine when you are
doing the bidding of the West, but if you stop - boom - isolation and
stagnation.  The other way is to create a multi-party bourgeois democracy. 
Obviously that encourages capitalism, but the West has real trouble openly
trying to dominate or topple such a regime.  The reason is that if the
West can focus on the regime - the leadership - rather than the system,
they will always be tempted to topple the regime. 



	Take Canada.  Obviously the US bullies Canada on a great many
issues and inflicts its will.  However, military invasion is out of the
question. Bourgeois democracy, with its temporary leaders, spreads out the
locus of power to the point where toppling, as such, is impossible.  In
addition, imperialism against a true multi-party democracy undermines the
very system that the West uses to rationalize its power structures. 




	It's tempting to cheer a brute who has the nerve to thumb his nose
at US hegemony, and to deride a "democracy' that compromises with
Imperialist power.  Yet one must remember that a brute is still a brute
and a democracy is still a democracy.  While bourgeois democracy may
provide a sanitized playground for capitalism, brutes like Suharto inflict
it with medieval cruelty.  Sadaam Hussein didn't exactly balk at being the
West's official Iran-basher, either. 



	In short, I believe that Sadaam Hussein *IS* Imperialism.  He is
the product, effect and vector of Imperialism.  Even so, it's right to
oppose the West's trying to remove Hussein, because they are simply trying
to perfect their Imperialism, rather than reform it.  If, however, there
was a move to reform the military regimes that control so much of the
world and install bourgeois democracies in their place, I would swallow
hard and support it.  These regimes either super-exploit their people to
do the bidding of the west or super-exploit their people to fund
*military* independence and economic isolation.  If we in America and
Britain are years away from the socialist revolution, then the people in
Indonesia, Iraq, practically all of Africa, the Middle East, and other
countries too numerous to name, are light-years away. 



	Simple insurrection, no matter how broadly supported, doesn't
amount to anything unless the system you install can beat capitalism in
the global money economy.  Japan and the other Tigers come closest to such
a system, but have fallen from their own Keynesian weight.  Cuba is doing
interesting things.  The trick is to be open to trade, but closed to
capitalist ownership.  You have to participate in the credit economy with
money that is actually worth something (Cuba's currently is not).  You
have to provide value to the capitalist world, but expand the domestic
economy more rapidly.  Also, I think, you must have an open, multi-party
democracy so the West does not see a vanguard that it can turn or crush. 



	peace


 
  


     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005