Imperialism

Solidarity with Iraqi workers

At the end of 2004 and beginning of 2005 there was a strike wave in Iraq, which affected many sectors of industry. The fledgling labour movement is beginning to raise its head. But it is still organisationally weak. It faces many dangers, both from the US/UK occupation which keeps Saddam’s labour laws on the books, and from the Islamist and neo-Ba’thist “resistance” gangs, which have killed and kidnapped trade unionists. Despite the urgent need for solidarity, it was only after a lot of dawdling and fumbling that the British labour movement began to organise for the Iraqi workers. The biggest...

The looting freedom

Pat Longman reviews “The freedom” by Christian Parenti, The New Press This book makes real for the reader the total chaos, brutality, madness, violence and corruption that is US-occupied Iraq. Parenti observes how the young US soldiers, “the grunts”, are completely bewildered by their role, and ignorant of Iraqi culture, language and politics. They have a seething hostility to their superiors. There are tensions between the multi-ethnic working-class ranks and the army of “freshly minted MBAs” and “self deluding zealots” holed up in the safer “Green Zone”. Parenti spent time with members of...

Aid and imperialism

While articles in Solidarity 64 and 65 on the politics behind tsunami aid and recovery have addressed general issues concerning the stinginess of western governments to give, and the inept and corrupt agencies on the ground in affected areas, a number of key political issues have escaped attention. As reported in Solidarity, the Australian government has led other western governments in “giving” million. Yet almost every cent given to recipient countries will benefit Australian business in some way. This “tied aid” ensures that recipient countries must purchase goods and services from donor...

What is New in Imperialism since the Iraq War?

This is a discussion article by Peter Hudis of the News and Letters group, an "organization of Marxist-Humanists in the USA", with supporters in the UK. It was written in November 2004. (www.newsandletters.org). The U.S. occupation of Iraq has turned into a quagmire of nightmarish proportions, with many now calling it the most serious setback for U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War. This is seen in everything from the way western Iraq has come under the control of Taliban-like fundamentalists to the fact that jihadists from neighboring lands are flocking to Iraq to take advantage of...

Balls on imperialism

Letter to Weekly Worker, from Paul Hampton, AWL John Ball’s uncritical summary of The Politics of Empire (Weekly Worker December 16) rehashes some “anti-imperialist” conventional wisdom but misses the flaws of the book – its distortion of reality and its terrible political conclusions. Alan Freeman, one of the book’s editors, is also a bag carrier for Mayor Livingstone, associated with Socialist Action and the recent ESF. The book reflects these politics. Beneath its urbane pessimism, it is nothing less than a manifesto for second-camp “socialism” that abandons the central role of the working...

Iraq Debate 1: Don’t think twice, it’s alright

A reply to Sean Matgamna’s “Reactionary Anti-Imperialism” Sean Matgamna’s article (“Reactionary Anti-Imperialism” [Solidarity 3/60]) was a useful brick to throw at reactionary anti-imperialists but was dishonest on three counts. First, Matgamna pretends the AWL has had a consistent position of clear support for the IFTU. In fact, the AWL joined the idiot chorus that attacked the IFTU after Labour Party conference. Martin Thomas wrote: “The actual effect of the Labour Friends of Iraq/Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions intervention at the Labour Party conference was to give Blair a free hand to...

Opposing both evils

Some people argue that we must support the US/UK occupation of Iraq, despite everything, because the US/UK forces offer the only realistic way of defeating the Islamists there. Similar arguments were used, for example, during the Korean War of 1950-3, to claim that socialists should back the USA’s war there because it was the only realistic option for defeating Stalinism. This reply by the American Marxist Max Shachtman to the argument about Korea remains relevant, in its essentials, to the arguments about Iraq today. Some people refuse to learn. Others refuse to remember. And still others...

Marxism and Imperialism



Marxism and imperialism


A seven-week discussion course

Course outline

Week 1. (a) Marx: On The Question of Free Trade

Week 1. (b) Engels on the Mexican-American war of 1846-8

Week 1. (c) Marx: The Future Results of British Rule in India

Week 2. Karl Kautsky: from Socialism And Colonial Policy (1907) (see also the full text and introduction to this text.)

Week 3. (a) Rosa Luxemburg: from Social Reform and Revolution

Week 3. (b) Rosa Luxemburg: from the Junius Pamphlet

Week 3. (c) Hilferding: Finance Capital - a summary, and a review by Kautsky

Week 4. Lenin: from Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Week 5. (a) Dependency theory: adapted from Workers' Liberty 28

Week 5. (b) Samir Amin on The Political Economy of the 20th Century

Week 5. (c) Decolonisation. From Workers' Liberty 63

Week 6. Globalisation. From Two Critiques, in Workers' Liberty 2/3

Week 7. (a) The Iraq war and perspectives (from Solidarity)

Week 7. (b) Ellen Wood: Back to Marx


Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 1. Introduction

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 2. The white man as cannibal

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 3. How Britain ruined India

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 4. Looting El Dorado

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 5. The spoils of the Sultanates

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 6. Levelling and uneven development

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 7. The grey revolution

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 8. Three variants

Background: Imperialism yesterday and today 9. Development: whose, and and what cost?

Publications
Marxist Theory and History
Issues and Campaigns

Amendments on imperialism and on Stalinism (English)

Amendments on imperialism and on Stalinism, from Paul Hampton 2. Imperialism During the nineteenth century the capitalist mode of production spread across the globe. British capitalists and their state promoted capitalist relations through trade and military rivalry with other European powers, through the establishment of formal colonial rule over territories and by informal control over politically independent states such as Argentina. During the period of high imperialism (1880-1945) the European powers, the USA, Russia, and Japan, waged a competitive struggle for the world's less developed...

Lorimer's dystopia

An outdated dystopia Review of Imperialism in the 21st century, by Doug Lorimer. Resistance Books, 2002, $4.95. According to Doug Lorimer, the Cold War of 1947-1989 was a conflict between "the world's chief imperialist power", the USA, and countervailing forces. Those countervailing forces he describes negatively as "an enormous wave of political rebellion and social insurgency" or "anti-imperialist rebellions", but positively as "the mass resistance of the Soviet workers and peasants and local worker-peasant movements under Stalinist leadership", "the Soviet workers and peasants in uniform"...

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