Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 22:34:36 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: Cold war ('Imperialism has never had it so good')


In an amazing piece glorifying the accomplishments and invincibility of US
imperialism, Doug H turns me into an ism:

>You assume toppling Saddam was the point of the war. It was to get Iraq out
>of Kuwait, and punish it for adventurism. Rodwellism to the contrary, the
>U.S. regards plenty of nonsocialist forms of behavior as hostile to its
>imperial interests. Iraq is a wreck.

My point has always been that the imperialist system is not identical to US
imperialism. The system can live with the decline of one of its
constituents, as has been shown with the decline of English imperialism. I
readily accepted that the loss of Saudi Arabia would be a blow to US
imperialist interests. I thought I was making myself very clear when I
wrote:

>You keep arguing as if US imperialism = imperialism, period.
>
>Obviously, losing an arselicking vassal state like Saudi Arabia is a loss
>for the US, just as the loss of the Shah and his state was. However, it
>would not necessarily be a loss for the imperialist system, which after all
>represents the capitalism of our epoch. The surplus value generated in
>Saudi Arabia would just get pumped somewhere else -- a bit more might stay
>in the pockets of local capitalists, the rest would go to British or French
>or German imperialists.

The Rodwellism you talk about has never existed. Not only do I consider that
'rogue' bourgeois states like Iran and Iraq are hostile to the US and its
imperial interests, I also consider that imperialist states like Britain,
France, Germany and Japan are hostile to the US and its imperialist
interests, as they are to each other.

You're descending to Olaecheaism and Proyectism if you're reduced to
erecting straw dummies to knock down instead of dealing with an opponents
actual arguments.

Like, I'm still waiting for an answer on the policy conclusions to be drawn
>from your line on Iran etc for comrades fighting in Iran etc.

Would Zeynep be better off fighting for a theocratic Muslim Turkey if she
really wanted to hurt imperialism? I mean, what's a workers' state compared
to bourgeois nationalists who turn the oil tap off for American companies?

Should our comrades in Iran (after returning from asylum in Sweden, say)
apply for government jobs to bolster the mullahs in their anti-imperialist
struggle? Or join the fundamentalist militias to boost popular support for
the government?

Why should we encourage anyone to weaken a regime that by your reckoning is
doing the best current anti-imperialist job?

So much for that question.

Another question. If Iran is the real enemy, why tolerate it for so long
and do business with it, while smashing Iraq to a pulp?

In general, if US imperialism is doing such a great job of empire
management and has never had it so good, according to Doug, who writes:

>What pit is that? From the point of view of U.S. capital it has done very
>well. Its enemy of 75 years collapsed, and there is almost no corner of the
>globe impenetrable to capital. Capital's ideological enemies are in dire
>shape, quoting 60-year-old texts to speak to their diminishing hordes.
>Profitability is up; all major obstacles to multinational capital - whether
>socialist, social democratic, or national-capitalist - have withered. The
>dream of NSC-68 came true. What more do you want?


If this is true, why is it proving so difficult to establish a stable
bourgeoisie in the ex-Soviet Union? Why are US initiatives in places like
Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia so trivial and ridiculous? Why
is working class resistance (the French rail strike, the half-million march
in Bonn, the events in Turkey, the strikes and occupations in the ex-Soviet
Union, even the formation of a new Labor Party in the US, etc, etc) growing
and becoming more and more explicit?

When you list 'all major obstacles to multinational capital', why do you
leave out the working class and only give superstructural examples?

Are you characterizing as 'socialist' the Stalinist regimes of the
ex-Soviet Union? Do you consider Swedish Social-Democracy to have been an
obstacle to multinational capital?

You write:

>there is almost no corner of the globe impenetrable to capital.

But this is hooray stuff worthy of the bourgeois press. What about the
mounting contradictions in China as capital gets partial penetration but is
chafing at the size and thickness of the condom that Madame CP insists on?
What about the fiasco of restoration in the ex-Soviet Union, where things
are so unstable the imperialists aren't even sure they want to stick it in
for fear of catching something nasty. And you don't mention the internecine
warfare between imperialist states to corner the shrinking profit pool. So
much silence on real contradictions just to make a debating point!

As for the 'diminishing hordes' of 'capital's ideological enemies', I bet
you're referring to the collapse of the Stalinist CPs. Let's talk about
capital's real enemies instead, radical workers mobilizing against attacks
by reactionary governments and rapacious bosses and gradually coming to an
awareness of the changes needed in society if their struggle is to bear
fruit. Stalinist and Maoist parties may have been big, but their policies
headed off revolutionary socialist solutions to the problems of capitalist
society (beheaded them quite literally in some cases, such as Shanghai in
1927 (Stalinist) and Indonesia in 1965 (Maoist)).

The only real threat to the revolutionary workers' movement has been the
real undermining of the existence of the workers' states embodying the
economic and social gains of October. But again, this is not so much a
defeat of the organized working class in direct struggle as the result of
capitulation by the Stalinist bureaucracy. The political defeat of the
Soviet working class was accomplished much earlier during the Stalinist
Thermidor counter-revolution. This was later compounded by the capitulation
of Pablo to the bureaucracy and the failure of the Fourth International
under his influence (and later Mandel's) to try to develop
Bolshevik-Leninist parties in countries under Stalinist regimes.

It's interesting to see the polarization developing on this issue.

On the one hand those who only see imperialist victories and see the
socialist struggle as a pretty hopeless, if perhaps heroic enterprise
(summed up in Gramsci's phrase about 'optimism of the will, pessimism of
the intellect').

On the other hand those who see how deep and acute the crisis of
imperialism is now becoming, and see the socialist struggle as a necessary
task that's never had such promising objective preconditions. And in the
midst of this struggle, stronger and better subjective preconditions are
growing.


Cheers,

Hugh




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