With reference to the war in Iraq, I recently encountered this argument on another blog, which was gloating over some "pro-occupation" Iraqis’ rage at what they saw as imperialist attitudes of their Euro-American supporters:
“There is an inherent connection between national independence and individual autonomy; in colonial situations, the self-determination of peoples is contiguous with the self-determination of people. It is a sad reminder of how far we have fallen back that it is necessary to disinter these elementary lessons of Empire.”
My first thought was, “No, mate. What’s sad is seeing the same tired old categories still being applied as though they provide an incontrovertibly correct interpetation of events and prescription for socialist action.”
Nations are not individuals, they are imagined communites, and nationalism, above all, serves to disguise conflicting class interests (remember that line about the history of all societies being that of class struggle?). Members of a colonized nation are oppressed to the extent that their labour is exploited and their universal human rights denied; they do not possess some common mythical essence that requires independent expression through their ‘national being.’
Nor is there anything progressive about national liberation: As a movement, those who benefit most from it are society’s reactionary elements, such as the military, the church, and other forces that require of labour that it compromise its demands for the sake of the national good. (Of course, Marxist-Leninism doesn’t mind a bit of militarism. It'd militarize the factories if it could). Support for national liberation does not distinguish, moreover, between progressive and reactionary forces in a society that is always already riven with class conflict. Instead, it requires of us, as foreign, albeit internationalist, socialists, to reinforce and support social elements in the colonized nation that may happily slaughter or enslave labour once the ‘war of national liberation’ is won. What sense does it make for us to weaken the position of our class allies vis-a-vis their postwar enemies by bolstering the latter and their nationalist ideology, an ideology that is designed to disguise divergent class interests?
In some quarters that haven’t got past New Left 101, any war that involves the United States is de facto an imperialist war, notwithstanding the absence of a U.S. colonial administration in, say, Guatemala, Nicaragua, or Afghanistan, and hence the willingness of the Trots to support what they perceive to be the national liberation movement in Iraq.
The absence of a colonial administration has always previously been obviated by identifying the extant government as U.S. puppets; this is not to deny that there was always massive influence wielded by the U.S. government in order to defend U.S. interests, but this isn’t the same thing as an imperialist war or war of national liberation. Moreover, since the end of the cold war, there has been no need for “our bastards,” the puppets and dictators that, according to U.S. realpolitik, kept the Soviets at bay. Since then, the watchword has been transparency, and the U.S. has done everything in its power to engage in a "mopping up" operation, discarding those bastards that are bad for business.
Free-market capitalism wants guaranteed access to resources that the nepotism and corruption of Marcoses and Pinochets and Fujimoris prevent. Far better that economies, markets, and accountancy practices be open to scrutiny, as far as big business is concerned, because the multinationals always have the advantage when bidding for contracts. What so many of the old-fashioned anti-imperialists have failed to see is that democracy in the developing nations is no longer anathema to imperial interests. Indeed, it adds legitmacy.
Two old Marxists who've come round to understanding this are Hardt and Negri, whose book Empire, while horribly jargon-laden, does a pretty good job of dissecting the post-cold war world and distinguishing between imperial and imperialist behaviour.
For a valuable assessment of their book, I also recommend Andrew Flood's review, available in pamphlet form as a pdf file here. Print off as many as you can and circulate for discussion.
As for nationalism, I recommended Bookchin before, but here he is again.
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5 comments:
"Nations are not individuals, they are imagined communites, and nationalism, above all, serves to disguise conflicting class interests."
I suppose I might have some cause for depression at the thougt that you believe you are disagreeing with me, if not with the damp sarcasm that pervades the post.
Before getting to that, I assume you raise the spectre of 'Marxism-Leninism' as a deliberate provocation, but the term denotes the official ideology of Stalinist Russia, which I am not ideologically indebted to.
On 'imagined communities', or the nation as a cultural artefact, I am with you. However, and I don't mean to insult you with the obvious, the nation is more than that: it is a legal entity, a polity, a subject of international law, a source of legitimacy, possessing the monopoly of legitimate violence over a defined land-mass. It is in this sense that Iraq is occupied, not as an 'imagined community'.
"Members of a colonized nation are oppressed to the extent that their labour is exploited and their universal human rights denied."
True, and this is done to them precisely *as* Palestinians/Irish/Iraqis etc. There are forms of oppression that cut across class boundaries (racism, imperialism). At the same time, these forms of oppression are confluent with class exploitation. To the extent that this is the case, the oppressed should unite on a minimal programme and divide over issues which naturally ought to separate them. Hence, a black Lord may join an anti-racism campaign, but absent himself from the black caucus of the T & G branch.
"What sense does it make for us to weaken the position of our class allies vis-a-vis their postwar enemies by bolstering the latter and their nationalist ideology, an ideology that is designed to disguise divergent class interests?"
Either one should support the ousting of US troops, with their record of murder, rape and torture, or one should not. Our class allies, in my view, have nothing to gain and everything to lose from this occupation. Hence, it should end. How it ends, and how one supports the resistance is a different question.
For the rest of your post, I will say that you conflate colonialism with imperialism, miss the fact that the regime in Iraq could be seen as a colonial one anyway, and make the odd step of taking US 'realpolitik' theorists at their word - 'we' only supported 'our bastards' against the Soviets. A transparent absurdity, unless you accept the US line that the Soviets were creeping up the Southern hemisphere in the Americas, sending tentacles into Europe in the Middle East and turning South Asia blood-red. Isn't it just possible that what the US actually worried about was independent political movement within its spheres of influence? (Nicaragua, Indonesia, Guatemala etc). You say that 'free market capitalism' wants access to the resources that yer Marcoses and corrupt oligarchs prevent. Saudi Arabia? Indonesia (until recently)? Tajikistan? Musharraf? Mubarak? Vietnam? If the Taliban had been more stable, secular 'bastards' they might well still be in power. Etc. 'Free market capitalism' is a myth. There are territorial states and companies that operate in them; business rely on states to provide the best conditions for investment, and this doesn't entail democracy or free-markets; often it involves the suppression of workers organisation, and thus wages. Contrary to popular mythology, multi-nationals don't always prefer free-markets and competition (cf Microsoft). Nor, I am alarmed to report, do they prefer transparency (Enron, Halliburton) - especially not in Iraq.
True enough, though, "democracy in the developing nations is no longer anathema to imperial interests. Indeed, it adds legitmacy."
Provided the risk is taken out of democracy, that can be true. But there is a considerable risk in allowing full democracy in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, just as there is in Venezuela. Although you shouldn't say 'no longer' as if it was once the case that imperialism was necessarily in each case strictly opposed to some kind of formal democracy. Elections were also held in Vietnam (and in Grenada, and El Salvador etc).
In summary, I don't quite hold the views you impute to me, don't disagree where you think I do or ought to, don't accept your assessment of US foreign policy (it is remarkably glib for someone with obvious theoretical rigour on his side) and don't think I've licensed your tone.
Lenin--
apologies for the tone. As noted in my posting on psychopaths, I can be glib and superficially charming.
My point, largely to do with the irrelevance of nation-states to matters of human liberty, was that, while people might be oppressed AS Iraqis, Palestinians, Irish, etc., it doesn't automatically follow that the establishment of a nation-state in any way provides the working classes of that country with anything related to or recognizable as freedom. Nation-states, as far as I can see, serve only the state's mandarins and the nation's ruling classes.
I think we largely come to the same conclusions, only from different angles. My wariness of state formations or statist solutions to oppression is where I think our lines diverge.
Cheers for that. You may be interested in the debate that has taken place in the comments box about this post at the Tomb. Savonarola and Bat make good points if you ask me...
cheers. I'll take a look.
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