Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 23:03:13 +0200
Subject: Re: Imperialist rivalry and scenarios..


>Robert Malecki wrote:
>
>>Asian imperialism, naturally with the Japanese as the leader.
>
>Can we identify an Asian imperialist power that's really commensurate w/
>the other two blocs you propose?  I mean, not only does Japan not
>even have a "real" army, but it and S. Korea (and elsewhere) are under
>de-facto American military occupation (this is putting the case too strongly,
>I guess, but you can see the point I'm making).  Hell, aren't there talks
>now about re-establishing naval bases in Vietnam to make up for those
>lost in the Phillipines?
>
>In a military crunch, I don't see how the Asian capitalist countries could
>constitute a separate bloc.  Oh, and what about nuclear weapons?
>
>-- Matt D.

There are some very serious unknowns in the world balance of power at the
moment. With regard to the three Orwellian blocs mentioned:

a) The EU is as unified as 15 hungry cats tied in a sack and thrown down
some stairs

b) The US can get its way locally but only at great cost - comic opera
style operations in Grenada, Panama and Haiti, or winning politicians and
losing the people (even more) in most of Latin America. Internationally it
can bully the politicians (Iraq, Bosnia, Palestine) but achieves nothing
lasting and alienates the people (even more, except Bosnia where the people
have only recently been learning the real news about imperialism)

c) The Japanese don't have an openly military hegemony in Asia, and their
political/economic hegemony is almost as heavily qualified as that of
Germany in Europe

But the real problem for the imperialist world system is that the workers'
states are still loose cannons:

d) History is still out on the fate of the ex-Soviet Union. No stable
bourgeoisie has yet been established. There is huge popular support for the
collective ownership and management of big industries and agriculture.
While the fundamental nature of the state and its fundamental class
interests are in flux, no stable strategy can be elaborated to take Russia
etc into account.

e) China presents an equally hopeless problem. It's easier to deal with
because it's still an enemy state in its fundamentals, but unfortunately
for the imperialists it is the all-enveloping night in which other Asian
nations just huddle round their campfires hoping nothing will go bump. Also
it is pursuing an extremely destabilizing policy of class-collaboration and
back-door introduction of capitalism with enclaves of state-sanctioned
bourgeois property relations. Its huge market lures imperialist business at
a time when other markets are stagnant or dead. The extremely weak Cuban
regime can use the strength of a workers' state born of revolution to make
a monkey out of imperialism in a way that would be inconceivable if just
the empirical pros and cons of the two countries were put in the balance -
so just imagine the scope China has for pursuing its own agenda! In fact
the only thing that could give any hope to any imperialists would be a
Soviet-style development where the bureaucracy capitulated and handed over
to the bourgeoisie, but the degeneration of the Chinese bureaucracy doesn't
seem to be taking that form.
   So China is a basically hostile, unknown quantity.

To cap it all, India is also completely unpredictable and becoming more so
by the day as the stabilizing role of the ancient rural communities
evaporates and the class contradictions of a bourgeois state of almost a
billion people accumulate. And India borders on the Middle East, Russia and
China (by way of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tibet).

So to sum up, imperialism is saddled with a new world disorder of a most
unpleasant kind. And it can't buy its way out of anything, indicating a
serious domestic and international crisis. And the crisis is forcing it to
attack its own working class in a way it hasn't had to for many decades -
so it is beginning to alienate its own working class on a massive scale,
while aggravating the already virulent hatred for imperialism felt by the
semi-colonial peoples.

Where does this leave us in terms of long-term prospects?

I think the face-offs coming up seem more likely to be domestic than
foreign. They are likely to gather pace over a few years so that crises
such as occurred in France a couple of months ago could occur
simultaneously in two or three important countries. The hostility and
aggression felt towards the ruling bourgeoisie and their representatives
will be expressed in sharper and better organized fashion, though the
character of the trade union and political leaderships representing the
organizing will be in flux.

The real qualitative factor will be the political consciousness of the
working class as embodied in the political tendencies organizing the
mobilizations against the attacks of the bourgeoisie. This will develop
very unevenly depending on the roots of the tendencies in the class and its
struggles, on the clarity of the perspectives presented and on the actions
and positions of the class enemy and its mouthpieces.

Being nostalgic for the good old days of peaceful coexistence won't help -
those days have gone for ever with the fall of Stalinism. The ideology has
lost its clout, and the stabilizing presence of a sellout workers' state
encouraging an attitude of class collaboration directly and indirectly in a
huge proportion of the world proletariat is no more.

What you see is what you get. No clearcut lines. No clear hegemony. A great
deal of infighting among the imperialists. Lots of nasty deals satisfying
nobody and leaving lots of infected ragged edges. Individual leaders being
discredited and rendered useless at an increasingly rapid rate, so in the
end the policies become clearer than the people pursuing them.

In fact, comrades, it's almost like the really old days in the early
decades of the century - so what are we waiting for!

Cheers,

Hugh




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