Subject: Re: liberal opposition, empire, imperialism, etc. was : Re: AUT: RE: civil society
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 21:14:06 -0000


This is picking up a point from ages ago, so apologies to folks for the
temporal dislocation

commie00 speculated:
> could it be that the different moments of capitalist ideology now look
> something like this:
>
> *the liberals are those who support and try to further the empire-ization
of
> everything thru the democratization of the global bodies, thus building a
> global ruling class, etc.
>
> *the conservatives are those who are trying to maintain western (which,
for
> the sake of brevity, includes japan, et al.) hegemony over the global
> organizations, thus maintaining a kind of new / old imperialism.

My own speculations are related and similar in places but different in
others.

My starting point was watching Bush Jr's declaration of UDI in relation to
the Kyoto protocol on CNN in March last year. The result filled me with
depression because, in the context of other previous signs, it convinced me
of the distinct possibility of "war in our time", i.e. that the
uncompromising unilateralism of the US administration (and I do not think
this is restricted to Bush Jr's administration but is a reflection of
general capitalist interests stemming from the current material capital
infrastructure of US society - e.g. on environmental issues, what would the
effects of quadrupling US gasoline pump prices - to bring them up to
european levels - have on the economy there?) would lead to an inevitable
conflict between the US and the other dominant capitalist powers, europe in
particular.

It was a depressing picture but was in many ways a view formed in the
context of the bipolar world order that had collapsed in 1989. I was still
thinking of the current unipolar world order as a form of interregnum, a
transitional phase soon to be overcome by the rise of a new global adversary
that would establish the "normalcy" of bipolarism. Certainly in this I was
following the fears of some conservative political elements in the US who
were viewing the EU project, the euro and eurocorps as signs of the rise of
a new global competitor in the guise of the EU. Similar ways of thinking led
the same currnet to see China as the new replacement for the USSR as global
adversary (indeed there were hints, from the bombing of the Belgrade Chinese
embassy through to the spy plane debacle last year, that this current had
become influential in the administration overall).

Then last year I read Empire and despite disagreeing with much that didn't
just baffle me, I found enough inspiration within it to begin to revise my
picture of the current international direction in ways that did not so much
look back to the past (bipolarism and neo-imperialism) as towards an
approach more open to the possibilities of a new situation producing a new
composition of the international capitalist order. I offer the following
then, not as a serious analysis, but rather as speculation intended only for
future development (or refutation).

Consider, in terms of international epochs, the period from 1900 to the
present day to be divided into three. First we begin with a mulitpolar era
of european colonialism. The extension of the command of european capitalism
over the rest of the globe is accomplished through military means of
conquest and colonial investment (in several senses of the word). The second
phase of bipolarism rises out of the ashes of WW2, the ruined european
colonial powers unable to remain independant from the cold war division
between the US & USSR. Neither the power of the old colonialists, nor the
market capitalist superpower is sufficient to hold back the decolonisation
struggles of the third world (attempts in Algeria, India, Korea & Vietnam
notwithstanding). We move to an era of bipolarity where most colonial
regions are nominally independent although subjected to neo-colonial
domination via the international money and commodity market. Thirdly the
collapse of the USSR brings about the collapse of "the three worlds" into
one (as per H+N) dominated by one global military superpower and an
unrestrained world market.

Like H+N I will leave the actual processes that brought all this about for
the purposes of keeping this schema on the "forest" level. If we assume that
there is no one nation-state left in the world ready to take on the mantle
of global antagonist to the US (and here we could have arguments about China
but I'll pass on this for now) then the US's ability to use it's predominant
position to further its (percieved) national interests even at the expense
of possible other global capitalist interests can only be limited by a
coalition of "anti-US" states. Given the differences of national or
sectional interests amongst said states, the only agency that has the power
to unite this disparate and selfish interests in a common front against the
arbitrary exercise of US power is... the US itself. At the risk of
introducing an inappropriate metaphor from the past, the best illustrative
parallel I can draw is that of the struggle between the principles of the
absolutist "grace of god" monarchies against the constitutionalist forces,
be they roundheads or jacobins, in the european transitions from ancien
regime to modern constitued sovereignity. Just as historians of a certain
perspective lament the seemingly "suicidal" tendencies of Charles I, Louis
XVI (or even Nicholas II although the outcome was different) as being the
"errors" without which their power would not have been overthrown, so, from
a different perspective, we can see that only the excesses of the dominant
superpower can bring about the limitation of its power.

It is the nature of the opposing force as a coalition which means that this
limitation of power must be expressed as the valorisation of a new
supra-national power rather than the increase of the power of a potential
new state hegemon. In this context protest at the arbitrary exercise of US
power can easily be recuperated in the formation of an Imperial (in the H+N)
order. In this sense "anti-americanism" is no longer simply the "radicalism
of fools" (as one participant in the UK anarchist bookfair put it last year)
but, in practice, a reformist demand reinforcing the tendency to dismember
US power into Imperial power. In this sense I think H+N are misleading in
saying that the transformation to Imperial order is the outcome of US
hegemony (although in a negative sense this is the case). Although I can see
the strategic value in emphasising the role of Wilsonian global
constitutionalism in originating the project of Empire (so as precisely not
to fall into the anti-americanist trap), I still think there schema
mystifies the passage from old-style imperialism to imperial power by
covering over the process of conflict that actually drives it forward. Of
course this schema, no less than that of Empire parts I & II (at least) is
itself mystifying in that it covers over the processes of class struggle
that drive the actions of state powers in the international arena. [Perhaps
this is a problem of the whole discourse of international politics as I have
yet to see any such schema that fully integrates the class struggle at the
base with the developments of international politics - any offers?]

OK, I hope that gives whoever's interested something to think on...




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