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 ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005