Two Imperialist Tactics

Reading through an article on Iraq in the most recent New Left Review I was reminded of the subtlety of imperialist tactics. Imperialism,of course, is not simply a matter of overt military conflict and violent intervention. It's a much more complex process, capable of taking a number of different forms. I want to look at two examples drawn from the excellent article mentioned above.

The first is probably the oldest and most infamous imperialist tactic of the them all: divide and conquer. There are numerous examples of how this tactic has played out in the course of Washington's occupation of Iraq, but I'm only going to look at one. When US "advisors" oversaw the 2005 Iraqi Constitution, it was deliberately designed in such a way that "the specific division of powers between national and regional authorities--a central function of any constitution--was left undefined, thus inviting the struggle vigorously on display at present."

What's more, "a further article pledged both federal and regional governments to 'formulate the necessary strategic policies' to develop Iraq's oil and gas wealth, 'using the most advanced techniques of the market principles and encouraging investment'. Numerous international advisors were on and to elucidate what these were."

By asking both federal and regional governments to formulate "necessary strategic policies" regarding Iraq's oil and gas wealth, the Constitution invites conflicts between them. This intra-national conflict is great for imperialism. First, it forestalls the sort of national unity that would enable the government to have a relatively strong bargaining position vis-a-vis multinational oil corporations (or, worse yet, to nationalize oil fields entirely). Second, struggles between federal and regional governments enable Washington or oil majors (to the extent that there is a clear line of demarcation) to step in and "play the role of helpful catalyst" between them. Exxon-Mobil, who has a "commanding position" in Iraq's newly opened oil/gas sectors, is doing just this:

"In October 2011 Exxon became the first oil major to sign deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), winning six oil blocks in the Kurdish region despite vocal opposition from Baghdad... Exxon has emerged as the pivotal actor, with a crucial hold over Iraq's future oil output and the means to play Baghdad and Arbil off against each other."

As I say, this is but one example of divide and conquer in the context of Washington's imperialist venture in Iraq. There are numerous others.

The other tactic I wanted to examine concerns arms sales and the political relations of dependence that they entail. The Maliki government is currently buying military equipment from the US, especially F-16 fighter planes. As the authors of the article make clear, this "isn't just a matter of the White House exploiting their position to ensure the sales of American defense contractors... It also serves to bind Iraq more tightly into the American system of dominance in the region."

Kenneth Pollack, National Security Council director under Clinton, is as excellent a proponent of the imperialist point of view here as we'll find:

"one of the most important lessons from the Arab Spring and Mubarak's fall bas been the tremendous utility American arms sales can have in the Middle East... the modern military history of the Arab states makes clear that Arab allies of the US become dependent on the US and lose the capacity to project power without American support (and therefore approval). Today, Jordan, Egypt and all of the GCC states coordinate all of their major, external military activities with the US."

This is insidious but refreshingly honest. It nicely illustrates how dynamic imperialism can be.

Predictably, Obama will want to portray the shift of December 2011 in Iraq as a "victory" for his Administration that he can use in the election to tout his competence as commander-in-chief. But, in reality, December 2011 was nothing more than a re-configuration (or re-positioning) of US forces in the region, not a retreat. The basic fact is this: "Iraq lies along the major faultline of Middle Eastern security, a crucial geostrategic arena for the world's most powerful firms and states. As long as the world turns on oil, the US will never leave the region."

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Roundup: "Kony 2012" and "Humanitarian" Imperialism

I don't really have anything new to add to the (growing) camp of left-wing criticisms of the completely ridiculous, politically insidious "Kony 2012" campaign. The people behind it are total douche-bags. The campaign itself uses moralism to cloak its imperialist "humanitarian intervention" politics. Here are a handful of pieces that I've found especially helpful on this question (feel free to suggest more in the comments):

Richard Seymour, whose excellent book The Liberal Defense of Murder is well worth reading to get a deeper understanding of "humanitarian intervention", has an excellent blog post here and a great article in ABC Australia here.

A comrade over at Needs Moar Class War has a detailed piece here that is well worth reading as well.

SW.org printed an article that nicely skewers the racist, colonial attitudes implicit in the "Kony 2012" campaign.

American Leftist has some thoughtful remarks and a link to a few interesting videos by Ugandans here.

Mahmood Mamdani, who's usually quite good on African politics (esp. on Sudan and Zimbabwe), has a short piece here on the controversy.

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What is Imperialism?

"Imperialism" is a concept that is used often enough on the Left, but what exactly does it mean? There is no doubt that it has, like many other political concepts (e.g. freedom), been cheapened by frequent misuse. Still, if one doesn't need a complete theory of imperialism to know that what Washington has done in Iraq is clearly wrong, there is a lot to be gained from clarifying the basic contours of this important political idea.

In what follows I'm going to move through the basics of Lenin's account of imperialism in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. I'm simply going to strip his approach down to its barest elements. I wont offer any analysis of the context in which Lenin was intervening, nor will I illustrate the operations of his approach by considering concrete examples of imperialism. My aim is to do no more than to put us in a position to put forward a clear, succinct statement of what imperialism is.

***

As Lenin describes it,

"Private property based on the labor of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy, i.e. all the catchwords with which the capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants—are things of the past. Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries. And this "booty" is shared between two or three powerful marauders armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who involve the whole world in their war over the sharing of their booty."

This is a convenient starting point for our discussion of imperialism. Riffing off of what Lenin says above, we can say that imperialism refers to the division (and constant re-division) of the globe by the strongest and most powerful nations. Imperialism, therefore, involves the domination and exploitation of weaker nation-states by the more powerful ones. By "domination" we mean nothing more than a relationship in which the dominant nation exercises power/control over a weaker nation in such a way that it can interfere in its affairs on an arbitrary basis. Importantly, interference can take many forms: colonial rule, direct military coercion, "financial strangulation", explicit or implicit threats of punishment, or manipulation/agenda-fixing. Domination too comes in many forms: direct colonization, semi-colonization, debt peonage, client regimes, and so forth. By "exploitation" we mean any process whereby the dominant state extracts profit from the subjugated nation.

Broadly speaking, then, imperialism refers to the competitive struggle among stronger nations to dominate and exploit the weaker nations. But what do we mean by "stronger" and "weaker" nations? And what forces lead the "stronger" nations to struggle among one another to divide (and redivide) the globe to increase their spheres of influence and control?

In fact, this competitive struggle is not simply a struggle among nation states. It is always also a struggle among big capitalist firms for the profits to be had from the global economy. "Strength", then, has something to do with a nation state's connection to concentrations of economic power. Lenin's account here is excellent:

The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of economic concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to get profits. And they divide it in proportion to "capital", in proportion to "strength", because there cannot be any other system of division under commodity production and capitalism. But strength varies with the degree of economic and political development.

What this and the earlier block quote make clear is that imperialism is rooted in the structure of the global economy. It is not, as liberals would have it, one particular school of foreign policy which, in principle, could be set aside if only the "right candidate" were elected. Lenin correctly derides the hope that imperialism could be done away with through such superficial changes as a mere "pious wish." Neither is imperialism, again, as some liberals would describe it, a purely war-mongering or purely nationalist phenomenon adopted only by right-wing politicians. And neither is imperialism always overtly aggressive or always connected to saber-rattling from heads of state and military generals (although, to be sure, it often involves its fair share of saber-rattling and aggression).

Imperialism is nothing more than a rather basic feature of global capitalism. As long as we have global capitalism, we'll have imperialism.

Of course, this is not to deny that the particular foreign policy strategies of certain states change over time, that some periods are punctuated by acute military conflict while others aren't, etc.. But these changes are only changes in the forms that imperialism takes. It's basic class content—and the object of the competitive struggle—remains the same as there is a global capitalist economy. As Lenin puts it:

...the forms of the struggle may and do constantly change in accordance with varying, relatively particular, and temporary causes, but the essence of the struggle, its class content, cannot change while classes exist... it is in the interests of the bourgeoisie... to obscure the class content of the present struggle and emphasize this or that form of the struggle...

But what is the nature of this class content? And what is it about capitalism as such that generates this kind of competitive struggle for control over the conditions for accumulation?

***

The first thing we'll need to say is that capitalism has developed historically in such a way that it has become a global economic system. Capitalism is not a discrete feature of this or that nation, it is an international set of economic relations through which various nation-states—as well as non-state actors such as multi-national corporate firms—compete for control of raw materials, exploitable labor, markets for goods, investment opportunities to absorb surplus value—in short for all of the conditions necessary to accumulate profit.

Just as capitalism breeds ruthless competition for profit among various firms in a single country, it also engenders competition at a global level as well. This competition, in turn, is what fuels, for example, colonial oppression and financial strangulation of half the world's population by the wealthy industrial countries.

Intense global economic competition is not a 21st century development. Although we're often taught that "globalization" is a relatively new phenomenon, Marx and others argued that, as early as the mid 1800s, capitalism was already well on its way to becoming a global economic system. Take, for example, the following quotation from the Communist Manifesto (written in 1848):

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets... Modern industry has established the world market... [which] has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land... The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country... All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose... products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations...

Marx is discussing how the internal development of capitalism leads it to expand and grow into a world system. This expansionary process isn't incidental—it is a fundamental aspect of capitalism. But what exactly is it about the internal development of capitalism that leads to this globalizing development?

For Lenin, the key mechanisms driving this process are: 1) the concentration of production and capital to such a degree that massive corporations—monopolies, trusts, syndicates, etc.—come to play a dominant, decisive role in economic life, and 2) the growth of "finance capital" through the merging of big banks with industrial firms. These two developments make possible a third process, namely, 3) a big increase in the international export of capital (as opposed to the mere export of ready-made commodities). This, in turn, creates 4) the formation of international capitalist monopolies which is what drives 5) the territorial division (and constant re-division) of the whole world among the strongest capitalist powers.

Lenin identifies 1-5 above as the "essential features of imperialism". These processes are all rooted in the workings of the capitalist economic system. This is what grounds Lenin's claim that "imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed."

Still, this is all highly schematic. We need to look a little closer at 1-5 so that we can see how the argument is supposed to work.

***

The concentration of capital in the hands of a shrinking number of ever larger firms is a driving force behind imperialism. Lenin's writings on imperialism date from 1916, but it is obvious that this process of concentration has accelerated greatly over the course of the last 100 years.

What happens is that the "natural" inner-workings of "free market" capitalism give rise to concentration and monopoly. Concentration is therefore not some corruption of "pure" capitalism, but an inevitable outgrowth of "free competition". This is rather intuitive if we just think for a moment about how capitalism works. Firms are privately owned and controlled and the owners are forced, by competition in the marketplace, to maximize profit. What's more, competition forces capitalists not just to maximize profit, but to reinvest a portion of yesterday's profit into expanded production for tomorrow. Those firms that don't expand and grow—other things being equal—will be run out of business through competition by those firms that do. This process, in which losers drop out or get purchased by the winners, creates an internal tendency toward concentration.

What's more, as a profit-driven system, individual firms are not motivated to preserve an overall system of "free competition" among equals. They are motivated only to maximize their own profits. But profits for any individual firm are not maximized by competition. Competition increases risk and uncertainty and, among other things, can undermine the individual market power of any particular firm. Thus, from a purely profit-seeking perspective—which is the only perspective that matters in this context—capitalist firms have an interest in reducing competition and moving toward concentration. Besides mergers, take-overs, bankruptcies and all the rest, concentration can occur through informal agreements struck between big firms in which they decide not to compete among one another for certain markets (e.g. "you can have this market, we'll have this other one, and this will make our power in each of our spheres of market influence nearly absolute"). This is akin to mobsters dividing up turf and pieces of "action". It makes sense from the perspective of each, but it is also an inherently unstable agreement (think of the threat of sudden betrayal or back-stabbing in every gangster movie you've ever seen). Because such agreements are struck for merely profit-seeking self-interested reasons, any shift in the balance of power can lead one of the parties to break the previous agreement and try to grab more "turf".

This instability arises from the fact that capitalism is a highly uneven system marked by profound contradictions. We have been considering how there is a tendency toward concentration, but it is worth pointing out that this is only one tendency in the complex web of uneven, contradictory forces that constitute global capitalism. Lenin emphasizes the fact that our theories are likely to miss the mark if they fail to capture these "profound and radical contradictions", as between "the gigantic operations of finance capital and the "honest" trade in the free market...between cartels and trusts, on the one hand, and non-cartelized industry, on the other." Competition and struggle among various groupings tends to upset the stability of large concentrations, causing fractures, splits, internal conflicts, outright confrontation and the like.

Still, it remains true that capitalism, if left unchecked, tends toward the concentration of production in the hands of a shrinking number of large firms. But this is only part of the story. Capitalism doesn't simply encourage concentration within any particular industry. It also tends toward concentration across industries and even across national boundaries. As capitalism develops, industrial capital and finance capital merge together as the forces who own and control banks and financial institutions become bound up with those who own and control industry.

***

Thus, a key feature of contemporary capitalism—as opposed to early capitalism—is the "coalescence or merging of banking with industry." But, importantly, this development is not uniform or linear. It is uneven and spasmodic. In certain areas this development is advanced, others less so.

In the places where this development is furthest along, a problem arises, the problem of a "superabundance of capital" accumulated within the rich countries. Accumulation in the rich countries occurs so rapidly that the amount of surplus available far outstrips the profitable investment opportunities within the national borders of the rich nation. Capitalism becomes, so to speak, "over ripe" in the core advanced industrial nations. This drives the owners of this abundance of capital to scour the earth looking for places to absorb it profitably.

In earlier epochs of capitalism, manufacturing in the advanced industrial nations grows to an extent that industrialists start searching the globe for new markets to flood with the commodities they manufacture at home. They search the globe because they produce more commodities than they can profitable sell at home. But the growing concentration of capital and the merging industry and finance means that an overabundance of capital develops. This drives a sharp increase in the export of capital abroad. As Lenin puts it, "the necessity for exporting capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become over-ripe and capital cannot find "profitable" investment" at home.

Why should finance capitalists with masses of surplus capital on their hands want to look abroad for profitable investments? Aside from the fact, already mentioned, that there are no such profitable investment opportunities within the "over ripe" core capitalist nations, capitalists stand to gain considerably from establishing "sphere of influence" abroad: they gain access to sources of cheap raw materials and more easily exploitable labor, places where surplus capital can be exported and absorbed, opportunities for deals, concessions and monopolist profits from loans and the like, as well as new markets to flood (or "dump") large quantities of goods at cut-rate prices (thereby wiping out any local competition and creating relations of dependence). We could go on. But we note that this isn't just an attractive way to increase profits. It is necessary for the expansion and continuing viability of capitalism as an economic system, because when capital becomes over-accumulated in the core countries it must find profitable investment opportunities or else the system stagnates and decays as profits decline.

This quest to find places to absorb surplus capital, however, is not a peaceful, harmonious process of "free trade". In reality, it creates an international competitive struggle for the control of foreign economic territory. This, in turn, drives the territorial division (and re-division) of the globe among the most powerful core capitalist countries which creates a state of affairs in which swaths of the globe come under the domination and exploitation of more powerful states.

***

Of course, by the time capitalism reaches this stage, the globe has already been divided into spheres of colonial domination or semi-colonial influence. By 1900, for example, nine-tenths of Africa had already been seized and occupied by European powers. Thus, contemporary imperialism is not about acquiring and dividing up previously "unoccupied" territories. Rather it is about the re-division of the world. As Lenin describes it,

"The colonial policy of capitalist countries has completed the seizure of the unoccupied territories on our planet. For the first time the world is complete divided up, so that in the future only redivision is possible; territories can only pass from one "owner" to another, instead of passing as unowned territory to an "owner"."

If earlier epochs of colonialism were about a mad dash to "acquire" lands hitherto unexploited by core capitalist nations, contemporary imperialism is a competitive struggle among the core nations to re-divide territories in a way more favorable to the strongest nations at any particular time. As the balance of power shifts (as a result, largely, of economic shifts), the previous configurations become unstable and more powerful elements are emboldened to contest previously stable spheres of influence. "Stability" always favors the strongest grouping at any point in time. When Washington, then, calls for "stability" in the Middle East, they are calling for no more than the preservation of the existing configuration of influence and power which they enjoy. Any instability favors other forces—whether it is anti-imperialist forces from below or other imperialist elements—and introduces the possibility of re-dividing the terrain in a different way.

***

But what about violent conflict and war? Isn't war really about the "national interest", glory, honor, religion, "our way of life" and all the rest? Or isn't war really just an expression of the "inherently violent" character of human beings?

Modern war has little to do with national pride, glory, religion, honor or any of it. This is mostly window-dressing. This is how you try to drum up support for imperialism among social groups who have no direct interest in imperialist wars for the 1%. And neither is modern war an expression of some timeless impulse toward violence. The vast majority of human history has been peaceful and cooperative rather than destructive and violent. Violence and war are products of the interests of elites in class societies—that is, societies in which a minority ruling class stands over and above the toiling majority.

Modern warfare is about profit. It is about securing all of the conditions necessary for ruling classes to accumulate, which means fighting among imperial powers to secure "spheres of influence".

War and violent conflict in the international arena are merely particular forms that imperialist rivalry and competition can assume in certain conditions. As I say above, "peace" and stability don't entail a decline in imperialism whatsoever; they merely indicate the temporary stability of a certain configuration of power (both economic and military). And, what's more, beneath the surface of such superficial stability there are often subterranean forms of conflict, less severe than direct military confrontation, that involve tension and struggle nonetheless. Imperialism is not simply visible when military conflicts arise. It is manifest in virtually all of the major economic and political actions occurring at the global level.

***

Let's close by examining two objections to this idea of imperialism. The hope is that this will further sharpen our highly schematic and brief overview of the concept.

The first was articulated by Kautsky in the early 1900s, but it is a favorite argument of the likes of Thomas L. Friedman and others. It goes as follows. Since capitalism is growing and expanding to such an extent that economic power is becoming more and more concentrated, huge regions of the globe that were hitherto independent are now hugely inter-dependent. This dense web of interdependence means that war will be unlikely because too expensive. Friedman once predicted that no two nations with a McDonalds would ever go to war with one another (this has, of course, been proven false many times over, but set that to one side for the moment). Although Friedman might not like to put it in such terms, his argument is that wars will cease under capitalism when economic power becomes so concentrated and intermeshed that it is more profitable for the global ruling class to join together and jointly exploit the rest of the world.

Lenin offers a trenchant critique of this argument in his text. Readers of Friedman would do well to consider it. Lenin's reply is that this view mistakes particular forms of imperialism for its basic class content. Huge international cartels only reveal the object of the imperialist struggle, that is, they only show us what it is that all the various imperialist players are fighting to win. It's the imperialist Lombardi trophy, so to speak, that we come to see when we observe huge multi-national cartels whose influence covers entire regions of the globe. Such configurations do not portend a decline in imperialism, on the contrary, they show us the basic motivation to play the imperialist game in the first place. And, as we know, it is unlikely that any one grouping will be able to hold on to the trophy forever. Sooner or later, internal fractures, economic stagnation within, shifts in the balance of power without, etc. will dislodge the stability of the configuration and the contradictions and unevenness of the world economy gives rise to conflicts.

Again, to repeat, imperialism is not a specific foreign policy preferred by certain groups and rejected by others. It is a structural feature of the global capitalist economy. Different capitalist groupings compete—utilizing the national governments which serve their interests—with one another in the global economy. They compete for control of raw materials, labor, markets for goods, that is, for "spheres of influence" which equip them with the necessary conditions for continued accumulation. The "stronger" nations, or group of nations, win larger spheres of influence—and "strength" is strongly correlated to level of economic and political development. And, inevitably, this economic struggle and competition gives rise to military struggle and competition. The two go hand in hand.

The final objection we shall consider is the following. Since imperialism is the result of concentration, what's needed is not an overthrow of the global capitalist order, but a re-introduction of the sort of "free competition" characteristic of econ 101 textbooks. This would create parity and would encourage non-violent trade interactions that would better everyone. As we know, trade always benefits the trading parties (otherwise they wouldn't engage in the transaction), so emphasizing genuine "honest" competition and "free trade" would undermine the material conditions which give rise to imperialism. To this end, we should oppose all tariffs and forms of protectionism and seek to create a maximally open, maximally "free" global market where violent conflict would be minimized.

This is frequently heard argument these days. But Lenin already refuted it in 1916. The first thing we'll say is that the opposition between "free trade" and "protectionism" is facile, abstract and highly misleading. It has nothing to do with the realities of global capitalism.

First of all, global capitalism is a highly uneven, contradictory constellation of different economic forces. In this context, one size does not fit all, not even among all of the imperialist powers. In certain circumstances, it befits one imperialist power to endorse "free trade" precisely because it undermines the influence or power of another imperialist power who, for this very reason, opposes "free trade" and opts for protections and tariffs. But the former, who pushes "free trade" in this particular circumstance, is likely to oppose "free trade" in all sorts of other instances where it makes more sense—from the imperialist point of view—to have protections, tarriffs, and all the rest.

Second, the period of high concentration, monopolies, syndicates, international cartels, etc. is one that precisely grew out of "free competition". Capitalist competition, as we saw above, naturally leads to concentration. To call for a return to "free competition" as an answer to imperialism is a mere "pious wish" that has no material basis in reality.

To pose the question as a tension between "free trade" and protectionism is to entirely misunderstand what's going on in the world. As Lenin puts it:

It is known...that the cartels add finance capital have a system peculiar to themselves, that of “exporting goods at cut-rate prices”, or “dumping”, as the English call it: within a given country the cartel sells its goods at high monopoly prices, but sells them abroad at a much lower price to undercut the competitor, to enlarge its own production to the utmost, etc. If Germany’s trade with the British colonies is developing more rapidly than Great Britain’s, it only proves that German imperialism is younger, stronger and better organised than British imperialism, is superior to it; but it by no means proves the “superiority” of free trade, for it is not a fight between free trade and protection and colonial dependence, but between two rival imperialisms, two monopolies, two groups of finance capital. The superiority of German imperialism over British imperialism is more potent than the wall of colonial frontiers or of protective tariffs: to use this as an “argument” in favour of free trade and “peaceful democracy” is banal, it means forgetting the essential features and characteristics of imperialism, substituting petty-bourgeois reformism for Marxism.

Lenin is exactly right here. The opposition is between two rival imperialisms, not between some abstract choice between "free trade" or protection. There is no neutral vessel standing above rival imperialisms who, impartially, aims to decide whether to push for universal "free trade" or universal protection. Rather, the global arena is nothing more than blocs of powerful capitalist nations (and their spheres of influence) who push for liberalization of trade or protection as needed. They have no principled preference for one or the other. Their only preference is for ever increasing control and power, because increased domination of spheres of influence means increased exploitation. All of this, of course, means an increase in accumulation, the basic driving force of the global economy.

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Externalizing Evil

Richard Seymour has an excellent post at Lenin's Tomb dealing with the media reception of the recent atrocities committed in Norway by a hard-Right, Christian fanatic (who boasted of ties to the British far-Right). Seymour's running commentary (see here and here) on the "West" vs. "Jihadi" narrative has been spot on. The following is exemplary:

However, if you want to understand the attitude of the punditocracy to fascist terrorism, consider the query put by BBC News to the former Norwegian Prime Minister yesterday: "Do you think not enough attention was paid to those unhappy re immigration?" Or, consider this New York Times article blaming the failure of multiculturalism. Or, look at this Atlantic article, which describes such racist terrorism as a "mutation of jihad" - that is "the spread of the 'jihad' mentality to anti-immigrant and racist groups". You begin to get the picture. The idea is to find some way in which all of this is still the fault of Muslim immigrants. The logic will be: the fascists express legitimate grievances, but go too far. Or worse, in their natural outrage, they have allowed themselves to become like them.

Let me say what I think is going on here. The move is to externalize evil, that is, to say that this atrocity could not have come from "within" but had to have been inspired from "without". Hence the suggestion that the gunman has either lapsed into "being like them" or has been "infected by the spread of jihad" and so forth. The language of "spread" and "infection" is interesting- it evokes a sense of "Western" purity that is contaminated by the evils of the "Orient". Then there's obstinate insistence, despite what's happened, that the racist thesis that "multiculturalism has failed" is still valid (see here and here). It's as if to say: "yes, this is ugly, but it doesn't refute the basics premises of xenophobic racism". What's most interesting of all, however, is that the media continues to propagate such racist ideologies at the same time that they continue to be baffled as to where the sort of reactionary fascist hate on display in Norway came from. Something similar was true of the coverage terrifying shooting that took place in Arizona months ago.

I've also been struck recently by the air of disbelief expressed in the press: "why would a far-Right, gun-toting fanatic want to kill socialists?", "how could a European have done something like this?". The AP found it to be a "complete mystery". But this naiveté is not just innocent ignorance. It is political distortion that derives from a distorted view of the world. Countless examples (Oklahoma City, Tuscon shooting, Greensboro Massacre, Chattanooga shooting, etc.) of "homegrown" right-wing terrorism cast doubt on the validity of this manufactured disbelief.

Marcuse's idea of "repressive tolerance" is also worth invoking here. When the media isn't busy stirring up islamophobia, survivalism and orientalist hysteria, it's putting forward the claim that the far-Right deserves to be "tolerated" and heard just like everyone else. This is non-sense. Fascists aren't just "polarizing" figures who have a "different" flavor of opinions in the "food-court/marketplace of ideas"... they are a violent, racist force that corrodes the very possibility of having a just society, of living with each other terms of equality and respect. To tolerate such hate is to be complicit in its capacity to oppress marginalized groups.

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Marxism is Incompatible with a Two Camp Perspective

A couple of quick, unsystematic jottings:

1. I'm thinking of sort of "two campist" politics that sees the entire field of global struggle in black and white. That is, the sort of crude political perspective that accepts as exhaustive a distinction between (a) the imperialist governments of the major capitalist powers, and (b) any state formation whatsoever that is antagonistic to them. The task of leftists, then, is an easy one: unconditionally side with (b) against the aggression of (a). I think one could plausibly argue that this basic perspective shapes the politics of groupings like the Party for Socialism and Liberation. This is how they wind up unconditionally defending the likes of Gaddaffi, Hussein, Milosevic, Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, and so forth. This is nothing more than a crude inversion of liberal Cold War politics.
   
2. "Two campists" get one thing absolutely right: imperialism on the part of major capitalist powers is never a force for good and must always be staunchly opposed.
3. A basic argument for "two campism" goes something like this. The Left must fight against capitalism because it is an exploitative and oppressive system. Thus the Left must uncompromisingly oppose imperialism, that is, the subjugation of the people of poorer nations by the ruling classes of richer nations. (I'm still on the bus at this point). Opposing imperialism means unconditionally standing behind any state formation that brushes against the grain of imperialism. (This is where I get off). Thus, the Left must unflinchingly defend all states that part ways with the imperialist powers. (To be fair, there are many other arguments for a two-camp position not covered by the above.... e.g. that there is (or was) such a thing as "really existing socialism" that justifies two campism... or that any Left alternative to two-campism is merely utopian dreaming in need of hard-headed realpolitik).
   
4. Though the argument above has an anti-capitalist edge to it, it is not Marxist. Whatever else is true, Marxism is not a state-centric social theory. It does not tell us to understand the world by fetishizing the state as an explanatory device. It enjoins us to focus on production, on class struggle. When looking at any social formation whatever, Marxism asks us to see it as a dialectical totality, i.e. as a constellation of different elements (different social institutions, organizations, interests, classes and so forth) which mutually constitute one another and co-evolve in complex ways. Of course, in stressing the concept of totality, Marxism isn't an "anything goes" social theory in which we're told nothing more than "everything relevant affects everything relevant". As I said above, Marxism understands production to be in some sense fundamental to social explanations. But two-campism rejects this basic insight of Marxism. In the case of the major capitalist powers, two-campists employ a more or less Marxist analysis. But when it comes to allegedly "anti-imperialist" regimes like Mugabe or Gaddafi, the Marxism falls by the wayside. Whereas any Marxist worth her salt would want to understand, say, the Gaddafi regime the same way she understood any other state, two-campists refuse to undertake such an analysis. It is for this reason that two campers couldn't offer a genuinely Marxist analysis of the rise of Stalinism and the unraveling of the gains of October.
   
5. Marxism is about working-class self-emancipation. It's therefore not a politics suited to supporting state formations that oppose the interests of their own working classes. Yet that is precisely where two-campism leads. When the Left should be defending the interests of workers full stop, two-campists defend despotic regimes that oppose the interests of workers. They are pushed into this position for a number of reasons, e.g. because the despotic regimes allegedly represent the interests of workers, or because the regime's opposition to imperialism abroad somehow mitigates its repression at home. Neither of these reasons are adequate.
   
6. I'm not against black and white assessments tout court. Marxism, after all, is a politics that, in opposing capitalism, opposes ruling classes as such. It therefore rejects reconciliation with the capitalist class. Class struggle is thus a black and white struggle between oppressors and oppressed. But class struggle is one thing, and the head-butting of state formations on the global stage is another. Two-campists confuse the two. I'm fine with seeing the global political arena in black and white if that means, more or less, seeing nothing but oppressed peoples and oppressors. So let's not forget, as two-campers do, about the oppressed peoples of marginalized nations who are dominated by regimes that happen to oppose the interests of the US in the global arena. They, not their governments, are the ones in need of unconditional support from the Left.
   

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Another Chavez Middle East Blunder

Here. Combined with his remarks re: Gaddafi, this is a real whopper. The contradictions within the Venezuelan revolutionary process are on full display here. To be sure, we should steer clear of a moralistic foreign policy in which the demands of international realpolitik are ignored. But this isn't mere realpolitik- this is the self-anointed leader of the Latin American Left more or less shitting on a rebellion from below. This is the "anti-imperialism" of fools. Now, predictably this will be manipulated by the bourgeois press to "prove" that Chavez is a "tyrant", "dictator", etc. because he's supporting the Syrian ruling elite (as though Obama doesn't support similarly repressive, and authoritarian regimes!). But this facile conclusion hardly follows. This doesn't "speak volumes" about the ALBA Left in Latin America. This isn't going to equip us with some "deep" insight as to the "true motivations" of the Left movements challenging U.S. imperialism in Latin America. But it does show those on the Left some of the drawbacks and difficulties facing the Chavista path to socialism. As always, the Venezuelan Left (as with the Left writ large) needs an increase in struggle from below -precisely of the sort exemplified in the (ongoing) struggles in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.

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Wikileaks: Colombia Planned "Leaks" to Link Chavez to FARC

Here.

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A Couple of Thoughts Re: Libya

Since the intervention began, I have been having some difficulty figuring out exactly what the imperialist powers think they are going to gain from it. What exactly are their specific goals? One thing is clear: they haven't even attempted to do much in the way of offering a specific set of "official" goals. To be sure, Washington has draped itself in a generalized language of "humanitarian intervention" and has argued that the basic goal is one of preventing slaughter. But that is an imprecise goal at best (how will it be prevented? what are the short and long-run means of doing it?), and, as we know, there is always a massive gap between the "official" and actual foreign policy objectives of Washington. One reason to suspect a gap here is that the imperialist powers have been silent re: the atrocities being visited upon protesters within the pro-imperialist regimes of Yemen and Bahrain. Why? Because they (the U.S. in particular) have a lot to lose if the repressive regimes in those countries are overthrown by democratic movements. Moreover, let us not forget that "Officially", the 2003 Iraq invasion was waged in order to preemptively destroy an "imminent threat" to U.S. national security owing to an alleged stockpile of WMD (which never materialized). The actual goal, however, was strategic and political/economic; the basic task was to pulverize an uncooperative regime and replace it with a structure more favorable to U.S. interests in the region. To say that the invasion had nothing whatsoever to do with the massive oil reserves in Iraq would be ridiculous.

But, as I say, even the "official" justification for intervention in the case of Libya is imprecise and underspecified. It is unclear exactly what the intervening nations, according to their own advertisements, are trying to accomplish, and this is just what has been baffling me of late. I've ventured a couple of guesses as to what might be going on- and I'm firmly convinced of the more general claim that U.S. foreign policy tends to track the strategic interests of the U.S. ruling class. But that more general claim doesn't enable us to simply deduce what's going on here- we need to work back and forth between the general claim and the particulars of this situation in order to reach a suitable conclusion.

So, the case for intervention is unclear, the goals underspecified, the arguments and debates rushed. But rather than be baffled by this (as I've been for the last few days), we should see this as itself significant. We already know that imperialism has nothing to gain by announcing its goals openly. But what we should also have noted by now is that imperialism also has nothing to gain by being specific about even it's "official" goals. The more specific and explicit the goals, the easier it is for criticism to get off the ground since this makes it easier to identify failures or divergences from the stated objectives. It suits the P.R. needs of imperialism far more effectively to offer underspecified, vague goals that can be re-interpreted, massaged, stretched, and spun in various different ways to meet various different legitimating demands. So we should expect that the "official" goals (themselves nothing more than window dressing for power plays) are vague and unclear.

As always, the U.S. is doing its best to spin this as a broad, cooperative effort among many different nations so as to stave off the suspicion, common around the world and true enough, that the U.S. is pursuing narrow strategic interests rather than genuinely humanitarian ones. This is to be expected. But one of the arguments deployed in defense of this P.R. move, which I've been reading everywhere, is that "even the vast majority of the "Arab powers" have signed on to the intervention" so it must be legitimate. But so far as I know, only the UAE and Qatar have signed on in full. They make up 1% of the Arab world population-wise. The Arab League endorsed the no-fly zone, but is already criticizing the intervention. Moreover, Egypt (which has a large army bought and paid-for by the US) is refusing to intervene (a fact that has everything to do with the massive political transformations occurring there in spite of the fact that the military is basically trying its best to preserve the old order).

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US Imperialism and Democracy Abroad

The architects of US foreign policy aren't dumb. They're extraordinarily clever and, if nothing else, deft public relations managers. A month ago, the notion of "humanitarian intervention" (itself a re-packaging of earlier colonial and imperialist concepts- see this) was dead in the water. Now imperialism has seized upon a golden opportunity to rehabilitate it while pursuing other regional geopolitical goals.

Why is Libya a "golden opportunity"? First of all because Gaddafi is so roundly despised in the Arab world and elsewhere. Of course, it wouldn't be quite right to say that he's been roundly despised among Western elites for some time- just a month ago the likes of the IMF were still singing his praises as a neoliberal reformer and friend of the West. Still, Washington and others have reason to think that they could fine a more willing client in Libya than their present business partner. Another reason that this is a "golden opportunity" for imperialist powers is that Gaddafi's regime is brutal. He has beaten back the uprising with ruthless military might and has promised to do terrible things to those involved if he triumphs. In the context of the region-wide uprisings, imperialist powers can couch themselves as the saviors of opposition leaders rather than the forces of reaction. Let us not forget that the Egyptian state used weapons produced and paid for by the US government to try to stop its own people from rising up. Mubarak's regime was defended by Washington in the face of mass revolt. Now Washington can sell itself as a progressive force in the region while doing what it has been struggling to do all along: re-establish control of a region where democratic uprisings have been tearing asunder the old regional order that the US (and others) had helped to create.

I must say, from where I'm sitting it feels as though the imperialists are winning the war of ideas at the moment. They've managed to hoodwink handfuls of liberals who opposed the Iraq War into believing that, this time around, Washington really has shed its recent imperialist encumbrances and intends to do nothing but selfless good for an oppressed people. They ought to know better.

Just recall, for example, the defense of Mubarak that many Administration officials gave. "He's no dictator" they said. We're worried about "stability" in the region, they said. They're prepared to say things about Gaddafi's authoritarian reign that they wouldn't dream of saying about Yemen, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. Let's stick with Yemen for a moment: there has been an almost total media blackout of Yemen in the english-speaking press for the most part of late . Yet there have been atrocities there recently, with military firing on protesters and killing and wounding hundreds. I've also heard almost nothing about the Bahrain- where the Saudi's put down protests with brutal military force recently. If the Saudi's had not intervened, the US would have had to consider doing so themselves- Bahrain is an extraordinarily important strategic outpost for the US in the region and they have massive military bases there. In this case, two of the biggest allies of the US (Saudi Arabia and Bahrain) are the most authoritarian. So much for the tight link between Washington and democracy in the region.

Another comparison: take Israel's brutal assault on Gaza in 2009:

To take an obvious example, when Israel spent three weeks pummeling Gaza's 1.5 million residents, there was never any talk among U.S. political leaders about "stopping a massacre" or "protecting civilians from a deranged dictator." That's because unflinching support for Israel's war on Palestinians is part of the long-term objective of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

And for the liberals who want to believe that US foreign policy has undergone a radical shift since Obama took office, recall that this was after Bush had left office.

The evidence just doesn't sit well with the "humanitarian intervention" line overall. I can't simply forget about the prolonging of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, brutal drone attacks in Pakistan, the sponsoring of coups, imperialist bullying in Latin America, assaults on democracy in Haiti, and too many other historical examples to count (from the Balkans to Somalia). Any plausible theory of international relations must contend with the data, and liberal interventionist gloss on the actions of capitalist states in the global arena does not capture even a sliver of the available evidence. It only looks plausible on the condition that one blot out the past entirely (even the recent past of a few weeks ago!). And although the effacement of memory and the sense of the past is a hallmark of social life in contemporary capitalism, this elision is never complete or totalizing. Recent data is still to fresh to push aside completely, no matter how quickly the ephemeral swells of mass media coverage shift.

The basic fact we must confront is this: US foreign policy tends to serve the interests of domestic elites. US foreign policy aims at securing more control and power abroad. Moreover, the US ruling class is in competition with other ruling classes and states. The basic goal is to secure access to resources, favorable terms of trade and bargaining, dominance and hegemony. The refreshing thing about the hard-right is that they are quite up front about this, whereas the "dovish" liberals tend to dress the same policies (or slightly less bold versions of them) in the language of human rights, cooperation and democracy.

We forge at our own peril that for our foreign policymakers, it is a necessary condition of any and all interventions abroad that they further the geopolitical interests of the wealthy and powerful. That is the meaning of "the National interest". This is not a humanitarian enterprise in the slightest. And where the US is involved in humanitarian crises it nonetheless exploits them to further dominant interests. Sure, in some cases food and medicine is dispensed here and there- but the necessary condition of furthering strategic interests is always at the same time satisfied. Let us not forget all of this in the case of Libya.

Evidently, Administration officials are already talking about partitioning Libya in the event of a stalemate. That is unsurprising- partition is step 1 in the imperialist/neo-colonialist play-book. It is part of a more general ruling class tactic known as "divide and conquer".

So although the rhetoric is one of a "gamble", make no mistake: foreign policy-makers have run the cost/benefit analyses and they have some kind of plan. Of course, they'll continue to say this is a "huge gamble", and in some ways it is, but in reality they've intervened at a time when they feel they are on rather secure footing. They waited until the opposition was on the ropes, thus ensuring both that they could (a) favorable bargaining terms with opposition leaders (many of whom are former regime officials) and that (b) they would look more like saviors than aggressors meddling in foreign affairs. What will the concessions that Washington and others have exacted amount to? Will it mean more access to Libyan oil resources? Military bases? A quasi-client regime subservient to Washington that is internally oppressive? These are all distinct possibilities and well within the range of options acceptable to imperialist powers. To suppose that they are losing sleep praying for real democracy from below is to abscond from earth entirely. Though that's what they'd like you to believe, that's not at all what the facts on the ground suggest.

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On the Uprising in Libya

On the whole, the global Left seems more or less united in thinking that the overthrow of Gaddafi would be a step forward for the revolutionary upsurge in the Middle East. But not all agree. There is some disagreement on the Left as to how to react to the recent events in Libya. For example, there is a very small set of folks (e.g. here and here) who are clinging to a pro-Gaddafi argument that runs as follows: Gaddafi is a progressive champion of African solidarity and liberation whereas the opposition is racist and pro-imperialist. The trouble with this line is that it simply has no basis in fact. First off, Gaddafi has cozied up to imperialism in recent years in various ways. He has joined in participating in the "War on Terror", he has unsavory ties to Italy's Berlusconi, and he's been at pains to prove to world imperialist powers that he has "seen the light" and deserves to be integrated into global capitalism. Multinational capital has obliged and foreign direct investment has soared in Libya since the 1990s. At the same time, unemployment has soared and wages plummeted. Moreover, as Immanuel Wallerstein has pointed out, until recently Gaddafi was getting nothing but good press in the Western press (from the likes of Giddens, Blair, etc.). To say that Gaddafi stands for anti-imperialism, African solidarity and global emancipation is to say something that has absolutely no basis in fact.

Though this facile pro-Gaddafi position is not widely endorsed, there are still some on the Left who seem to be on the fence as to how we should adjudicate the civil war between the opposition and Gaddafi's regime. The arguments from those on the fence seem to run as follows. The political character of the opposition is unclear at best, and reactionary (even Monarchist) at worst. In this context, the argument goes, the least worst option for progressive may be to side with the Gaddafi regime against the revolt, unless it turns out that the opposition is more progressive than it appeared at first blush.

Let me say why I think this argument misses the mark. First of all, it seems to assume an unduly narrow scope of analysis. To genuinely be a Leftist today is to be an internationalist. And right now, we're living through an epoch of revolutions in the Middle East generally, and in North Africa in particular. We can't even grasp what's happening in Bahrain, Algeria, Yemen and Libya without talking about Tunisia and Egypt. This is an international explosion of struggle. Our assessment and evaluation of each uprising must at the same time answer to this international context.

Of course, each national conjuncture has its particularities, and Libya is no exception. I'm not saying that we should crudely paint each uprising with the same brush. Still, our evaluation of the struggle in Libya must not be narrowly national- ours isn't simply a question of Libya vs. Imperialism. The global Left must also confront the relation between this uprising and the context of the revolutionary upsurge sweeping the Middle East writ large. What happens (or doesn't happen) in Libya will have effects elsewhere in the region.

And it is in this context that Leftists should have no qualms about rejecting the Gaddafi regime root and branch. Whatever might replace it in the event that the opposition prevails (which is looking less and less likely, unfortunately), the Gaddafi regime has proven itself to be a permanent roadblock to the kind of robust, participatory democracy from below that socialists fight for. Even from an anti-imperialist standpoint he is a roadblock. In a word, his regime is an obstacle to further revolution in the region writ large.

Let us not forget that Gaddafi's response to the heroic (and ongoing) Tunisian uprising was that the masses were "foolish" for rejecting the "admirable" Ben Ali. Nor should we forget Gaddafi's ties to the Mugabe regime (which has said it would take him if were he to be ousted), which has recently jailed and tortured socialists for holding mass meetings discussing Egypt and Tunisia. The deep conservatism of figures such as Mugabe and Gaddafi is on full display here. There can be no doubt that they are stalwart obstacles to continent-wide revolutionary struggle. In the long-run, nothing good will come from the continuation of the Gaddafi regime- any destabilization of the regime that creates space for increased struggle from below is to be preferred (some will retort that this seems to give cover to imperialist intervention- but I register my deep skepticism that such intervention would actually create space for increased struggle from below). The regime is so ossified and repressive that a new configuration would very likely be more favorable from the standpoint of the possibility for mass struggle. The sooner the dictatorial, top-down regime in place is unseated the better for leftists in Libya.

Moreover, in the context of region-wide revolution, there is good reason to think that opening up the society to mass struggle is the most progressive way forward(within and without Libya). There is already a large gap between the ideals of the masses of people involved in the opposition and the embodiment of such ideals in the practices of the leaders of the opposition. That gap can only grow in the context of increased struggle. The future of struggle in Libya depends upon an opening that will not obtain so long as Gaddafi retains his grip over the nation.

Of course, it should go without saying that none of this commits us to enabling or otherwise supporting Western intervention. The whole point is that the Gaddafi regime is a fetter on the region-wide revolutionary surge, so it stands to reason that Western intervention would be an even more cumbersome fetter on that revolutionary energy. So it's not as if unremitting opposition to imperialist intervention commits us to defending the Gaddafi regime one iota- the whole point is that we should oppose both Gaddafi and intervention insofar as both deeply impinge upon the capacity of poor and working-class Libyans to rise up and fight for their own liberation. There is no reason that we should think we must choose between Gaddafi or imperialism- this is a false dilemma. We should be uncompromising in standing with the masses of Libyans who share neither the interests of the elites on either side of the Civil War, nor the interests of the imperialist powers looking to get a foothold in a region that is quickly slipping out of their control. There is no plausible argument for intervention- that is something leftists cannot endorse. But refusing to endorse intervention says nothing of whether we should give cover to Gaddafi- that is an entirely different question. And if the analysis above is sound- the answer to that separate question is obvious: Gaddafi is a repressive, conservative force that is a roadblock to the escalation of the region-wide revolutionary upsurge.

The basic question for Leftists is this: What is the best way forward for poor and working-class people in Libya and the region writ-large? I'm firmly convinced that the answer has to be: revolutionary mass struggle. The context created by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions (which are still underway) has spilled over into heretofore unthinkable locales, provoking strikes and direct action in Saudi Arabia of all places. This cannot be underestimated- and one has to believe that the momentum in the region is such that the old "stability" of years past is precisely what we don't need right now.

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IMF Reviews Praised Libya

Less than two weeks ago, the International Monetary Fund’s executive board, its highest authority, assessed a North African country’s economy and commended its government for its “ambitious reform agenda.” The I.M.F. also welcomed its “strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector,” and “encouraged” the authorities to continue on that promising path.

By unfortunate timing, that country was Libya.

Read the rest here (via NYTimes).

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Hypocrisy On Display

Compare and contrast the following.

First, this from when the protests first broke out in Egypt:

Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

Today:

The Obama administration was continuing its efforts to influence a transition. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Mr. Suleiman on Tuesday to ask him to lift the 30-year emergency law that the government has used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders, to stop imprisoning protesters and journalists, and to invite demonstrators to help develop a specific timetable for opening up the political process. He also asked Mr. Suleiman to open talks on Egypt’s political future to a wider range of opposition members.

Hmmm. So first he staunchly refuses to recognize Mubarak as a dictator (for reasons that are instructive). Then, in the face of unremitting struggle from below, he is forced to eat his words and "call on Mr. Suleiman", i.e. Torturer-in-Chief, "to ask him to lift the 30-year emergency law that the government has used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders, to stop imprisoning protesters and journalists, and to invite demonstrators to help develop a specific timetable for opening up the political process". But none of that should be necessary if, as Biden so vehemently maintained a few weeks ago, Mubarak really was not a dictator presiding over an authoritarian regime.

Now, we should be clear that this is basically just a rhetorical about face. I don't think the underlying objectives of Washington have changed one bit. But it's important to note how mass struggle and pressure from social movements can force elites to change, revise and adapt their legitimating narratives. And even more important is the obvious fact that the protesters aren't susceptible to such rhetorical flourishes or subtle revisions in the old legitimating stories. They're fed up with this brand of filth, and they don't want a new narrative from the old leaders. They want the old leaders to be history.

I'm watching very closely the emergence of mass strikes and the direct interventions by the working class in recent days. Washington has recently moved aircraft carriers to Suez ostensibly to "enable the evacuation of US citizens" from the area, but the more likely story is that they're trying to make sure that the canal, which facilitates close to 8% of worldwide trade, remains open.

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Kristoff: "They want to be just like us!"

When I recently criticized the "Western" ideology which contorts the events in Egypt to fit the pre-packaged "they want to be just like us!" mold, this is precisely the sort of filth I had in mind.

The entire set of assumptions that Kristoff uses to "understand" recent events in Egypt are problematic. Take, first of all, his invocation of us "Westerners". I ask, again, who is this we? Next, consider the following paragraph:

In 1979, a grass-roots uprising in Iran led to an undemocratic regime that oppresses women and minorities and destabilizes the region. In 1989, uprisings in Eastern Europe led to the rise of stable democracies. So if Egyptian protesters overcome the government, would this be 1979 or 1989?

This is an excellent distillation of the ideological framework undergirding what Kristoff says. One could, in effect, simply take this framework and churn out the rest of his conclusions without even so much as gathering a single piece of information about the concrete conditions in Egpyt. It all follows frictionlessly from a certain framework of discussion that is presupposed and unacknowledged.

But what is content of this ideological framework exactly? It's first component becomes clear if we collapse the interests of all the different groups and classes in the United States into this mythical notion of the "national interest". This is the "we", the "Westerners" of whom Kristoff speaks. All of us, from the Washington foreign policy insiders and multinational corporate elites to the jobless and the disempowered... yes, all of us have the same interests at home and abroad. Yes, we are to believe that all ordinary Americans benefit equally from the foreign adventures put together by the Military-Industrial complex. The slogan "money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation" evidently has no merit whatsoever.

Next, having sold the lie that poor workers and rich corporate elites have the same interests here and abroad, we must explain what these allegedly coinciding interests are. Unsurprisingly, these "national interests" are precisely the same as the interests of the ruling class: e.g. "stability in the region" means stable US dominance and control, "moderation and tolerance" means tolerance of US imperialism, "democracy" means capitalism, etc. Thus the 1979 Iranian revolution was "bad" from the get-go because it through out the US-backed Shah and was therefore hostile to Washington's geopolitical and economic interests in the region. By contrast, the 1989 anti-Stalinist revolutions in the East Bloc were "good" because many of them ended up being subordinate to US interests in the region and were willing to accept neoliberal "economic shock therapy". Again, we see here a perfect embodiment of the binary between "anxious" imperialism and "co-opting" imperialism. At the end of the day, it hardly matters whether the interests of the peoples of these respective regions were well-served by what occurred there: the only criterion for "good" and "bad" here is good or bad for U.S. imperial interests.

A more sober, and factually accurate, analysis of 1979 and 1989 would go as follows: 1979 was an emancipatory, mass-democratic event in which a (deeply unpopular) US-backed and funded dictator was overthrown by an uprising from below. This event opened up space for all kinds of possibilities, and it was not fomented from above by the clerics who subsequently squelched it. It was not inevitable that the revolutionary eruption that created it would be extinguished, it's most impressive gains rolled back. But of course, Washington hardly cares that the gains of the revolution were rolled back, democratic participation drawn down. They only see two states of affairs: one in which they had control, and another in whic they don't. That is, one in which they had a client regime with the Shah, and another in which they no longer had the influence and power that client regimes afford. If Iran is not democratic today, Washington isn't losing sleep over that fact. After all, the US's closest allies in the Middle East are the most repressive and opposed to democracy.

1989 was, for Washington, sort of the opposite of 1979. Again, set aside empty rhetoric from US officials about "democracy" (if you want to know what they think about democracy see what they did in Chile in 1973). What happened, from a ruling class perspective, was this. A global power opposed to US interests (Stalinist Russia) disintegrated into a large number of smaller states that could be, for the first time in decades, brought into the orbit of US influence. Despite the fact that many involved in 1989 uprisings opposed both Stalinist domination and Washington-backed global capitalism, these events are all contorted into the model of pro-capitalist triumphalism: "Finally, now they fulfill their deep desire to be just like us!". This is the manic, co-opting/appropriating maneuver which often figures opposite the fearful, survivalist maneuver that captures the anxious, imperialist response to 1979.

So, the question Kristoff is really asking is this: will this revolution result in conditions favorable or unfavorable to the interests of the US ruling class? The perverse thing, whether he realizes it or not, is that he is substituting this narrow question for the following, more general question: "does this revolution create conditions favorable or unfavorable to the interests of the masses of ordinary Americans?" The obvious answer to the general question is "yes". The clear answer to the narrow question is "no". Anytime the oppressed fight for their own self-emancipation it is a boon to the interests of ordinary people everywhere, and, a threat to the rule of elites everywhere. As I've said, there is a lot we can learn from Egypt right here at home. It's not as though we live in a classless, horizontal society.

Though Kristoff tries to offer, within this frustrating ideological framework, the "counter-intuitive" insight that democratic struggle in Egpyt "might not be that bad after all", I don't think this means we should let him off the hook here. Once we make the distinction between "soft" and "hard" imperialism, between appropriating and anxiety-ridden imperialism, it becomes clear that Kristoff is no progressive. I genuinely believe that he means well, but that's simply not enough. Perhaps some colonial officials really did believe that they were on a civilizing mission in what was called the Third World. But that hardly obscures the barbarity of colonialism and the unequal social relations it presupposes. Moreover, that things should look so distorted from the top should not come as a surprise. It would be stranger, in fact, if the "natural" way that things appeared to a person like Kristoff were clear-eyed and unsentimental about power.

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What we can learn from Egypt

Egyptians are revolting over rising costs of living, soaring unemployment, economic misery, and an ossified political system that is hardly democratic and which is unresponsive to their needs. They're sick and tired of crony capitalism imposed on them from above.

How different are things right here in the good ol' USA? To be sure, we're better off with Obama than with Hosni Mubarak. But that doesn't obscure the fact that many of the deep problems facing Egyptians are afflicting our society as well, and for similar reasons.

As Bob Herbert makes clear in a recent column on the suffering caused by the crisis in the US:

What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in spreading the wealth around.

The people running the country — the ones with the real clout, whether Democrats or Republicans — are all part of this power elite. Ordinary people may be struggling, but both the Obama administration and the Republican Party leadership are down on their knees slavishly kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.

I love when the wackos call President Obama a socialist. Wasn’t it his budget director, Peter Orszag, who moved effortlessly from his job in the administration to a hotshot post at Citigroup, beneficiary of tons of government largess? And didn’t the president’s new chief of staff, William Daley, arrive in his powerful new post fresh from the executive suite of JPMorgan Chase? And isn’t the incoming chairman of Mr. Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness very conveniently the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt?

You might ask: Who represents working people? The answer, as Tevye would say with grave emphasis in “Fiddler on the Roof,” is, “I don’t know.”

He's talking about the US, not a the strange "Other-ized" image of Egpyt produced by mass consensus media.

And, as I said in a recent post, the inference to draw from Egpyt isn't that we should pat ourselves on the back and rejoice in how eager the Egyptians are to join us in the world of freedom and prosperity. No, the inference to draw is that the Egyptians are showing us something about how power works and how social change happens. They are standing up to an uncaring political/economic strata of elites who have profited from their immiseration for decades. It's time for Americans to do the same. Real change, the sort of change we can really "believe in", is not going to come from on high by way of the usual suspects in the two major corporate parties. It will not be handed to us after a mass email-campaign to our senators or a funding-drive organized by MoveOn.org. It will be won in the same way that all progressive changes have been one in this country: through hard-fought struggle.

The sooner that ordinary people in the US begin rising up, demanding that their government assuage their suffering and economic misery, the better. The sooner we begin demanding real health care reform for all, full employment, and a re-investment of war funding in education and infrastructure, the better. Tunisia and Egypt are teaching the world a valuable lesson. The first step to understanding it is to open ourselves to the raw facts of our situation in the US, and those facts are not pretty.

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Two Left Views of the Revolutionary Situation in Egypt

Žižek has a piece in The Guardian here, which skewers the "cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilized through religious fundamentalism or nationalism". Indeed, he also puts a lie to the even more cynical wisdom that liberation can only be "brought" to the Middle East by way of U.S. military occupation.

Also, see Ahmed Shawki's excellent update on the situation from SW.org here. As he notes, "Right now, the movement is united around the political aim of getting rid of Hosni Mubarak. But hopefully, once Mubarak is unseated, the political questions will then mesh with social questions that still remain unresolved...If that happens, there will be a really explosive mix of political and social issues that represents the possibility of political and social revolution."

Both focus in on the most exciting thing about what's happening in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere: the fact that there is a space being opened up in which social transformation is possible. Comparing recent events to the early, emancipatory stages of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Žižek argues that "it did lead to a breathtaking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. This genuine opening that unleashed unheard-of forces for social transformation, a moment in which everything seemed possible, was then gradually stifled through the takeover of political control by the Islamist establishment."

It is always easy to say, in a cynical deterministic way, that unsuccessful revolutions were always fated from the very beginning to turn out as they did. But this facile bit of cynicism is not grounded in fact. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was not fated to turn out as it did from the very beginning, and, though seldom discussed, there were many emancipatory possibilities in its early stages. We must learn from such failures, such "revolutionary rehearsals", so that we can do better the next time around. The same is true right now: we cannot say what the result of these uprisings will be a priori. The exciting thing is precisely that, unlike the normal functioning of an oppressive society, space is being opening up in which people may have the opportunity to determine their own fate, to shape society in a humane, democratic way that brushes against the grain of neoliberal capitalism.

To fear this opening as such, to distrust this new possibility in itself, is just to side with the status quo. It is also to verge on an old colonial kind of racism which suggests that "I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process", i.e. "the Arabs are not yet ready for self-governance". To fear incredible possibility of a free and democratic society created by these uprisings is to fear freedom and democracy themselves. It is to be content with the slow-grinding, everyday, ordinary oppression and exploitation that characterizes an unjust social order. No one except the most inveterate conservative could take such a position.

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Sort-of Update: I might have added a third, namely, this piece by Noam Chomsky in the guardian. Echoing the views above, Chomsky holds that "It's not radical Islam that worries the US – it's independence...The nature of any regime it backs in the Arab world is secondary to control. Subjects are ignored until they break their chains."

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"Why... they want to be just like us!"

The imperialist orientation toward "events" elsewhere in the world typically falls on one or other side of the following dichotomy.

On the one hand, there is the survivalist, frightened, anxious gaze that "Otherizes". On the surface, it can be relatively collected or vitriolic, but the basic attitude is the same. Such a gaze regards that which is "other" as nothing but a threat. Underlying all of this is a rigid unwillingness to question the basic beliefs and ideological framework that legitimate the status quo.

On the other hand, there is the co-opting, appropriating gaze that obliterates all difference. This orientation tends to project a great deal onto other people (expectations, presumed endorsement of one's own politics, etc.). This gaze appropriates movements elsewhere on the globe, and contorts them in such a way that they are entirely consistent with the status quo at home. Again, underlying all this is a similar unwillingness to question or revise basic status quo beliefs and ideological coordinates.

I think we could plausibly argue that the Anglophone media has covered the events in Egypt in one or other of these two ways. Whereas the first response from the US ruling class was one of disbelief, shock, and anxiety, the most recent news from Washington suggests that a shift is underway toward a more co-opting, appropriating gaze. Again, this is typical: when power is in a position to do so, power often reacts swiftly to put down resistance that is visible enough as to not be ignored. But when conditions are such that resistance is growing in confidence and numbers, powerful groups often attempt not to simply "oppose" resistors directly, but to "accommodate" or "co-opt" them in such a way as to undermine their potential as a threat. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is absolutely a case of the latter, whereas the indifference and direct violence against the black liberation movement that preceded it seems more like a case of the former.

It has been obvious from the beginning of the Egypt protests that the US could not directly intervene, for both political and logistical reasons. Politically, there would have been very little support or legitimating grounds for a direct US intervention. The fallout within and without Egypt would have been massive for a US war machine that is already held in contempt by much of the world for its brutal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the US has indirectly lorded over Egypt by "soft imperialist" tactics, and a move toward direct, "hard imperialist" intervention would breach this longstanding approach. Logistically, the US is over-extended and facing a deep economic crisis at home. It simply could not afford an adventure or increase of military expenditure in Egypt. Thus, the only available course of action for Washington is to work its connections and to try to manage "damage control" via PR. The PR effort, predictably, has shifted back and forth between chastising the protesters and expressing anxiety on the one hand, and appearing to support them and "democracy" on the other.

Now that Mubarak is on his way out, now that it is clear that the protesters will prevail, it comes as no surprise that Obama and Co. have come out as tentative supporters of some kind of "regime change". How could they take any other position at this point? They are merely being dragged along with the tide of this revolution. The interesting question is not "is Washington publicly taking a "pro" or "con" position vis-a-vis the protests?" The question is "what kind of "alternative" is Washington pushing for, and what sort is it pushing against"? Once power realizes that something must change, its task is to influence and mold the alternative in such a way that as little changes as possible (e.g. this is more or less exactly what happened to health care "reform" the US).

So, now that much of the outright anxiety and fear (what about our oil?, what about the "islamofascists"?, etc.) has given way to appropriation, the line coming from the "soft imperialists" is "Look! The Egyptian people want to have freedom just like us!".

Thus, the inspiring revolutionary uprising in Egypt is de-fanged, sanitized and re-packaged for mass consumption. Rather than implicitly criticizing our own society and proposing ways that we, Americans, could change it... the protests are merely an affirmation of our status quo. It's as if they're simply holding a big 4th of July BBQ celebration in our honor in demonstration of their "desire" to "graduate" and join "us" at the adult table.

The reality, of course, is precisely the opposite of this rose-tinged fantasy. The Egyptian people are sick and tired of a frozen, ossified political system that is unresponsive to their needs and interests. They are sick and tired of skyrocketing food prices, high unemployment, repression of labor, neoliberal policies and economic insecurity. They are, in short, angry about problems that are angering Americans every single day. They want changes that Americans desperately need: a complete transformation of the political institutions in society, an overturning of the existing strata of elites, a turn towards more Left economic policy, a full-employment economy, etc. etc.

To say that there is no friction between Egyptian protests and the political situation in the USA is to deeply misunderstand both Egypt and the US. It is to walk about covering ones eyes and chanting the trite slogans that cover up the deep cracks in the status quo. The Egyptian people aren't "trying to be like us". They are doing something that we should take note of, that we must learn from: real change only comes as a result of mass struggle from below. The protesters are bearing witness to a basic fact about entrenched power which Fredrick Douglass captured nicely when he said:

"The whole history of the progress of human a
liberty shows that all concessions yet made
to her august claims have been born of
earnest struggle.... If there is no struggle,
there is no progress. Those who profess to
favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation
are men who want crops without plowing up
the ground, they want rain without thunder
and lightning. They want the ocean without
the awful roar of its mighty waters. The
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a
physical one, and it may be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will."

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