Professional Documents
Culture Documents
3
picture of social politically friendly
conditions than would be regimes in these
provided by a purely
economic analysis. countries, or at least
In terms of the human regimes who will act
development index, the Figure 2 to assist the US
United States has fallen national interests
from second place in
1990 (behind Canada) to
because they see that
twelfth place. This decline as vital to the world
continued through both economy. The US
the Clinton and Bush invaded Iraq, so the
administrations, with the argument goes,
US falling to sixth in 1995,
ninth in 2000, and twelfth because she needed
in 2005. to access to a second
In certain respects, the ‘swing’ producer
decline is even worse. besides Saudi Arabia
The US is thirty forth in infant mortality—with a
level comparable to Croatia, Estonia, Poland
to ensure that supply kept pace with
and Cuba. US school children perform demand. But even Saudi Arabia is reluctant
significantly below their counterparts in to increase oil flow in the present climate to
countries like Canada, France, Germany and bring down the price of oil, which has
Japan, and fourteen percent of the population, topped $140 recently. Many neo-cons hope
some forty million people, lack basic literacy
and number skills. that direct control of Iraq oil may set in train
Of the world’s thirty richest nations, which a process of de-nationalisation to enable
comprise the Organization for Economic the US and other oil dependent powers in
Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Europe and Asia to buy into them. This,
United States has the highest proportion of
children living in poverty, Fifteen percent, and however, does not seem likely without a few
the most people in prison, both in absolute more wars for oil. Figure 3 shows how the
numbers and as a percentage of the whole ownership of oil is distributed and we can
population. With five percent of the world’s see that US oil companies are very small fry
population, the US has twenty four percent of indeed compared to these national
the world’s prisoners. In overall life
expectancy, the United States ranks an corporations.
astonishing forty second, behind not only Bromley makes this further point to boost
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and his case.
all the countries of Western Europe, but also The routing of pipelines, the policing of
Israel, Greece, Singapore, Costa Rica and shipping lanes and the management of
South Korea. The US spends twice as much regional influences all depend heavily on US
money per capita on health care as any of geopolitical and military commitments. This
these countries, but its citizens live shorter means, in turn, that to the extent that US
lives. 4 companies and US geopolitics – and
especially military power – remain central to
This takes us to the wars in Iraq and ordering the world oil industry, the USA
Afghanistan as the defining acts of the US provides, in good times, a collective service to
post 9/11. In the differing analyses of that other states that enhances its overall
international hegemony. In bad times, this role
war we can see the conflicting views of the would provide the USA with a potential
US. Figure 2 shows that US military stranglehold over the economies of potential
spending is almost half the world’s total and rivals. Europe and Japan have experienced
that proportion is rising. this predicament since the end of the Second
World War. Current US policy may ensure that
It is therefore logical to assume that that China, India and others fall under the same
there is a direct correlation between umbrella. In this respect, control of oil may be
economic decline and military spending. viewed as the centre of gravity of US
economic hegemony and, thus, the logical
Simon Bromley’s Blood for Oil? makesa complement of its declared strategy of
powerful case for this. He points out that permanent, unilateral military supremacy.
US dependency on imported oil has
increased from 33% in 1973 to 58% today So we can regard the US as pursuing a
and projects it will be as high as 70% by dual policy here; a prime policy of ensuring
2020. Furthermore OPEC nations have all that its position as the world’s hegemon is
nationalised their oil industries and so direct unchallenged and a secondary policy of
access to that oil is always dependent on hedging its bets, if any of its imperialist
4
rivals does challenge them or begin to look America’s and the world’s problems – both
like they are forming an alliance against the same in many US eyes? Or is this not a
them then the demand that the
US can use poorest nations
its navy and open up their
air force to economies to the
choke off wolves of the
their oil. So free market? And
the US went Cox points to a
to war not further problem.
just for oil When the East
but, as Asian stock
Bromley says markets crashed
to ensure ‘an in 1997-8 the US
increasingly refused to allow
open liberal an Asian solution
international to the problem
order. US with the result
policy has Figure 3 that US and
aimed at European firms
creating a general, open international oil snapped up
industry, in which markets, dominated by embattled Asian firms at fire sale prices,
large multinational firms, allocate capital leaving behind a legacy of bitterness. The
and commodities’. outcome was that China and Japan began
to look to regional trading partners so as to
Robert Cox’s Beyond Empire is another escape too much dependency on the US
sophisticated view of US hegemony. He markets and vulnerability to US finances
develops the notion of legitimacy to explain (indirectly borrowed from them in the first
the continuing predominance of the US in place!) and ‘in the year 2000 a group of
world affairs but again points towards the Asian countries including China and Japan
decline. Americanism consists in confidence agreed to create a virtual Asian monetary
in her ability to lead the world economy and fund independent from the IMF to guard
this must mean that the American economy against a future Asian currency crisis like
is itself sound. Tied in with this is what is that of 1997’. And he further points out that
known in the left as cultural imperialism and EU integration, the Euro and the European
more generally as the liberal international Central Bank are all measures to likewise
capitalist order; the US has overcome the escape US domination. And there is the
protectionism of the European empires, the question of NATO and the future of the EU’s
danger of Hitler’s fascism and the threat of Common Foreign and Security Policy – will
world revolution and communism to impose the EU begin to develop its own army into a
and encourage the free market economies force capable of matching the US? The
of the world which defend individual and Guardian of July 2 2008 reported that
corporate freedom and prevent new world foreign Secretary David Miliband, with
war because ‘democracies do not go to war Downing Street’s approval, gave his
with each other’. backing to French president Nicolas
Sarkozy’s proposal to develop its military
But America has moved from the world’s capacity including sending troops into
creditor post WWII to the world’s largest combat zones. The US intervention in
debtor. Japan and China now provide the Yugoslavia’s civil wars which resulted in
finances for US and some of the rest of the one of the largest US bases in the world in
world economy to function smoothly. Any Kosovo still rankles with Germany, France,
hint that these might consider withdrawing and clearly to a lesser but nonetheless
this lifeline from the US would create a significant extent, with Britain.
huge crisis of hegemony. So was Bill
Clinton correct to hail the expansion of
liberal democracy as the solution to
5
No direct inter imperialist wars This means the exploitation of the world
working class by what is essentially a common
since WWII project of the unity and co-operation of the
major imperialist powers, or ultra-imperialism.
We have not seen direct inter imperialist The various forms of national capital are parts
wars since WWII but the great financial of a global capital, and it represents a
crises of 1971 when dollar convertibility was functioning in which co-operation has replaced
ended by Nixon was a turning point. Since inter-imperialist antagonism. Lenin did not
deny that ultra-imperialism was possible, “Can
the US defeat in Vietnam in 1975 what we one...deny that in the abstract a new phase of
have seen are huge proxy wars and wars capitalism to follow imperialism, namely a
against semi-colonies which were a shot phase of ultra-imperialism, is thinkable? No. In
by the US over the bows of their rivals. the abstract one can think of such a phase. In
These began with the Iran/Iraq war of 1980- practice he who denies the sharp tasks of
today in the name of dreams about soft tasks
88, the Malvinas conflict of 1982, the Gulf of the future becomes an opportunist.”(Lenin
war and the wars against Afghanistan and quoted by Martin Thomas, in his introduction
Iraq, wars in Africa etc. The AWL’s Martin to Kautsky’s article on Ultra Imperialism, 2002
Thomas, in a debate with the CPGB, makes p66)
the point that ‘The EU and Japan would not
have supported the US in the 1991 Gulf This is to misread Lenin; in fact the word
War, 1999 in Yugoslavia, or 2001 in ‘thinkable’ is in inverted commas in the
Afghanistan, if these wars were not in the original quote and Lenin goes on the
interest of big capital as a whole’. But this rubbish the notion, it is ‘in the abstract’ he
was enforced, diplomatic support through says dreamed up by people who do not live
gritted teeth. We clearly saw this by the in the real world and then says why it
time of the Iraq war, where no one apart cannot happen,
There is no doubt that the development is
from Britain and a few European countries going in the direction of a single world trust
and Australian sent troops and these mostly that will swallow up all enterprises and all
token forces. Faced with the accomplished states without exception. But the development
fact of a US army on the ground they felt it in this direction is proceeding under such
was necessary to get a piece of the action. stress, with such a tempo, with such
contradictions, conflicts, and convulsions-not
Comrade Sharpe says, only economical, but also political, national,
In other words, global capital was emerging etc., etc.-that before a single world trust will be
because the connections between the various reached, before the respective national
forms of national capital were no longer finance capitals will have formed a world union
characterised as dynamic dialectical of “ultra-imperialism,” imperialism will
opposites, and instead the rivalry between the inevitably explode, capitalism will turn into its
different national capitals was becoming
modified by relations of co-operation and opposite.5
convergence. The development of
international organisations like the IMF, WTO Is that not the case today? In fact Bukharin
and World Bank were an institutional makes a better point on why this can never
expression of this development of global
capital.
happen in Chapter 12 of the work in an
observation undoubtedly still relevant today,
The great stimulus to the formation of an
Here he is mistaking a conjunctional, international state capitalist trust is given by
temporary situation for a permanent change the internationalisation of capitalist interest...
and failing to see the growing inter- Significant as this process may be in itself, it
imperialist conflicts behind the surface of is, however, counteracted by a still stronger
tendency of capital towards
the diplomatic gloss put on them by nationalisation, and towards remaining
bourgeois politicians. The French and secluded within state boundaries. The benefits
Germans were seething with rage at the accruing to a ‘national’ group of the
blow to their economic aspirations in Iraq bourgeoisie from a continuation of the struggle
with the cancellations of their exploration are much greater than the losses sustained in
consequence of that struggle.
contracts etc. The Russians and Chinese
were equally upset at the blow to their One only has to look at the Bretton Woods
prospects in the region and the future Intuitions (BWI); the International Monetary
threats posed. Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the
International Trade Organisation (WTO
In making his case for ultra-imperialism successor to the General Agreement on
Comrade Sharpe says,
6
Tariffs and Trade, GATT) to see how to colonialism, so we can smugly point to
national governments fight the corner of the fact that Lenin was wrong to see
their own capitalists against their rivals. The colonialism and the division of the world
first two BWIs are more immediately under between rival imperialist as essential to
the control of US imperialism but even the imperialism, or on the other hand, we can
WTO, although formally democratic in imagine that imperialism is not imperialism
structure, has to bow to the pressure of the anymore because this has happened.6 A
major powers; it is their agenda and their great number of nominally sovereign states
priorities that dominate. In regions like with no real autonomy or effective
Africa and South Asia with weak state sovereignty in their economic relations with
structures IMF/WB aid programmes have the world market have emerged since
ripped the heart out of their economies by WWII. These semi-colonies – those which
their ‘structural adjustment’ programmes. were not quickly taken over by imperialist
The US government negotiates at the WTO stooges like Zaire’s Mobutu – , beginning
and outside of it setsup bodies like NAFTA with India, pursued a version of the Soviet
(North American Free Trade Association planned economy, with import substitution
between the US, Canada and Mexico), and subsidies to native industries because
imposes tariffs on the primary products of they were conscious that reliance on
the third world – far higher if these are primary produce left them vulnerable to the
processed – and subsidises its own world market where the price of primary
agriculture to overcome its rivals. The EU produce was relative inelastic. That is the
similarly proceeds in this way, e.g. the CAP, metropolitan consumers would only drink so
however with continuing internal conflicts, much tea and coffee, and require so much
as does China and Japan. And whilst they clothing and footwear no matter how cheap;
are destroying welfare benefits for their overproduction inevitable led to a drop in
poorest citizens the great imperialist the price.7 Increasing wealthy consumers
governments are intervening with welfare spent their spare cash on electrical
for great financial institutions, Bear Sterns household durables and later PCs and
and Northern Rock had to be nationalised in electronic gadgets. These infant industries
effect to save them. Is this ultra imperialism, needed a tariff barrier in the beginning to
is a new multi-national cartel about to take compete on the world market and the IMF
over or is it an instance of national allowed the Asian tigers to do that as a
governments defending its own capitalists bulwark against communism. But the rest of
against their rivals? To ask the question is the world, Latin America, Africa and South
to answer it. We cannot see where the ultra Asia faced huge crises after 1973 with the
or supra imperialism is about to emerge. No world crisis in the international economy
major corporation can operate on its own on and the huge hike in oil prices. Many
the world stage, governmental support is became effectively bankrupt and world
necessary and it must be its ‘own’ imperialism bailed them out with their brutal
government which provides that support, structural adjustment programmes which
negotiates international treaties and trade destroyed for a generation their ability to
blocks on its behalf and be ultimately plan anything in their own economy and left
prepared to go to war against its rivals on them at the mercy of the free market
its behalf. wolves. The triumph of neo-liberalism with
the fall of the USSR in 1991 opened the
Semi Colonies post WWII door for the present sub-prime crises, now
Comrade Sharpe says ‘The national aspect engulfing the whole world. So this is not a
of capital was increasingly being replaced world in which international relations have
by the organisation of production by fundamentally changed merely one in which
transnationals beyond national boundaries’ open inter-imperialist conflicts have been
but these transnationals repatriate their suppressed for fear of revolution. The
profits; they are still British, American, present low level of class struggle and
French, etc only now more developed and working class consciousness presents the
widespread than in Lenin’s time. There is imperialists, for the first time since 1939,
no qualitative change in these relations with the freedom to prepare another
beyond the fact that WWII produced an end imperialist world war.
7
Conclusion
Comrade Sharpe says, Endnotes
...the contradiction between the national forms
of capital and global capital has been
essentially overcome. This means it would be
irrational and catastrophic for this equilibrium
between national capital and global capital to
be disrupted by the generation of new forms of
inter-imperialist antagonisms. Consequently,
countries like China and Japan are not trying
to compete with American capital, and instead
the wealth generated by their exports to
America is used to buy dollars in order to
ensure continued the functioning of the world
economy on the basis of American hegemony.
Bibliography
Anderson, Perry New Left Review 17, September-October 2002
Chingo, Juan and Santos, Aldo Estrategia Internacional N° 19, January 2003, Imperialism, Ultra-
imperialism and Hegemony at the dawn of the 21st century. A Polemic with Perry Anderson,
http://www.ft.org.ar/estrategia/ei19/ei19inglesanderson.htm
Cox, Robert W. Beyond Empire and Terror: Critical Reflections on the Political Economy of World Order,
New Political Economy, Vol. 9, No. 3, September 2004, Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
Bromley, Simon, Blood for oil? Global capital, counter-insurgency and the dual logic of American energy
security New Political Economy, Volume 11, Number 3, September 2006 , pp. 419-434(16), Routledge,
part of the Taylor & Francis Group