| IMPERIALISM TODAY By PROFESSOR ESKOR TOYO. Presented under the auspices of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the Assembly Hall, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria - 11th January, 2001, on behalf of the Human Rights Committee of the Academic Staff Union of Universities. INTRODUCTION Capitalism and imperialism are two terms very often used but very seldom understood. In Nigeria and elsewhere >imperialism= was used interchangeably with >colonialism= even during the struggle for independence. In Nigeria the talk was by and large about colonialism; imperialism was hardly ever mentioned. In Nigeria and the rest of the world such a state of defective cognition created an illusion when the colonies were >freed= after the Second World War. This was especially so when the erstwhile colonies and semi-colonies were admitted as sovereign nations into the United Nations Organization (U.N.O) and the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F). It was not too long, however, before it became clear to patriots in the former colonies and semi-colonies that their sovereignty was largely a legal form; the reality was in the main different. This awareness and some analysis gave rise to such terms as >neo-colonialism=, >flag independence=, >peripheral country=, and >dependency=. Among non-patriots, however, even these things do not exist; the terms are seen as inventions of >communists= or >radicals=. In his work, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, written before the First World War, V. I. Lenin made a very valid theoretical and empirical analysis of modern= imperialism as the post-1860 basis of global capitalist economic and political relationships. Though described by Lenin as a >popular= essay, the book is a no-nonsense, logically regorous, scientific classic on the subject. It is justly famous. Lenin did not live to see the progress and influence of socialism on the world after the 1920s and did not see the Second World War and its stormy aftermath. The present writer has been a close observer of the facts and keen reader of the theories of this aftermath. What we shall do in this lecture is to proceed as simply as possible to paint the picture of >modern= imperialism as it has evolved after the Second World War and as it exists today in the year 2001. Obviously we shall be painting with a large brush. Details are well-known or can be found out. MODERN IMPERIALISM Imperialism is a form of international or inter-people relations in the epoch of states. The epoch of states in the world started with the earliest civilizations some five thousand years ago. Apart from the currently evolving socialist-oriented states that started with the Soviet Union after 1920, the state has been the polity of a predatory society. Polities of predatory (or class) societies are of two types: chiefdoms and states. A chiefdom is a kingdom having a powerful paramount ruler who, though the most powerful chief, has no monopoly of armed force. A state is a polity where the ruling group alone has legitimate armed forces and a right to armed coercion. Because the ruling group in a predatory state is predatory, strong states have embarked on conquest, the destruction of rivals to wealth and power, and the subjugation of weaker states or communities. Empires, sometimes very extensive, have thus, come into existence in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and transcontinentally. These empires formed by very powerful states have been very predatory both nationally and internationally. Modern imperialism is called >modern= because it is connected with capitalist industrialism. This industrialism is called >modern= because it uses the power machine in all productive and transporting processes. The most modern stage of capitalist industrialism is the stage characterized by the formation of large joint-stock companies, the rise of very large-scale industries, the formation of industrial and commercial monopolies, and the rise of finance capital, which is the capital of large banks able to finance large-scale industry and commerce. All this development of very large-scale business through the formation of joint stock industrial, commercial and banking companies began in the 1860s. Prior to this, the rise of commerce and industry in Western Europe from 1450 had witnessed merchantilist trading imperialism, merchantilist and embryonic capitalist plantation-owning imperialism, and capitalist free-trade imperialism. Modern imperialism started in a situation where very predatory international trade and plantation owning - with West European nations as the predators - had existed for four centuries. Late in the nineteenth century, capitalist organization passed from sole proprietorship and partnership to large joint-stock companies and from so-called free competition to monopoly. Monopoly arose from the kind of industry that now emerged. Railways, steamship building, large-scale steel production and other large-scale metallurgical plants, large-scale production of chemicals, electricity generation, the motor-car and truck industry, the laying of electric and telephone cables - all this supplied such a large market and required such large capitalist investment that only one or a few firms could stay in these branches of business. Joint-stock company organization made such firms possible. The firms could not afford to compete in the manner of small firms. They resorted to forming various kinds of price controlling, production sharing, market sharing, and entry-excluding arrangements. They were monopolies in the sense that the supply of each was so large that it could force its own policies on the market. They reached collusions that gave them a joint monopolistic power. Being very large-scale operators these joint-stock firms needed steady markets and dependable sources of raw materials to ensure continuous production. All the markets could not and need not be found at home, especially as the workers were poorly paid. Already capitalism even from the beginning had some international markets. Larger markets had to be found. Apart from markets, the raw materials for all the industries could not be found at home. Even if they could be, not enough might exist for continuous full-capacity production, and cheaper sources might exist elsewhere. These necessities drove the large-scale capitalists to seek markets and raw material sources in foreign parts of the world. The foreign territory could not be the territory of another capitalist great power whose firms had the same financial power and needs. The obvious field of search was territories outside Western Europe and the smaller United States of America of that time. There took place a scramble for territories in Africa, Asia, Southern America and Ameridian North America to seize and control. To ensure a steady market and source of raw material, a territory once seized had to be permanently retained and opened up. The seizure required armed action or the threat of it. The seized territory became either a colony or a sphere of influence secured actually by the threat of war but formally by treaties of trade and friendship with local rulers. In a colony the indigenous political rulers lost legal sovereignty and the imperialists mounted their own colonial administration. Where indigenous rulers were fairly strong and colonies could not be established, these indegenous rulers retained their legal sovereignty, but had to sign treaties of protection, friendship and trade with the foreign adventurers. Extra-territorial rights, such as the right to certain harbours, exemption from taxes, the right to have military bases and train and supply the indigeneous army, and the right to open mines and own plantations, were extracted by an imperialist power from a so-called sovereign State whose territory was called the >sphere of influence= of the imperialist power. Such a territory came to be called a semi-colony. One distinguishing characteristic of the imperialism that developed especially from 1880 is that it was connected, as we have seen, with the problem of larger and steadier markets and raw material sources for firms in industrial capitalist countries which were in Western Europe, in the United States of America and later in Japan. Because they were industrializing, Czarist Russia and Japan joined in the territory grabbing in order not to be done out of potential markets and raw material sources. A second distinguishing characteristic is that the colony or sphere of influence was exploited not simply through the establishment of isolated trading posts but primarily through investments that opened up the whole colony or semi-colony as a market or raw material source. Ports, railways, mines, roads, communication channels and plantations were opened as well as plants to process raw materials for export, shops to sell imported manufactures and banks to finance these activities. The banks required new currencies which were then evolved. Some loans were raised in the financial market of the imperialist power for operations in the colony or sphere of influence. In a colony an administration was established by the colonising power. In a semi-colony there was actually a dual administration - by the indigenous rulers and by an overseeing imperialist power whose sphere of influence a territory was. A third distinguishing characteristic of this imperialism is the influence of banks. Since investment was important both for the monopoly enterprises themselves and for the opening up of overseas markets and raw material sources, the banks played a key role. Increasingly capitalist business is done through credit and the system becomes dominated by a smaller group of financiers who own banks and other companies. A fourth characteristic of this imperialism is that it can depend on economic and military hegemony rather than a colonial-type occupation of territories. Since modern imperialism is really a matter of economic exploitation through trans-national hegemonic investment, it can exist without the kind of administrative control associated with >colonialism=. This began to be seen in the cases of semi-colonialism and the dominion territories like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It is seen in the satellite position of Canada whose main industries are dominated by investors in the United States of America. This control through exploitative investment rather than territorial colony or semi-colony formation became the form of modern imperialism after World War-II. So-called neo-colonialism belongs to the kind of predatory domination. Actually imperialism does not consist in the exclusive possession of territories or spheres of influence as colonies. Imperialism generally is exploitative hegemony over other countries or peoples. In modern imperialism this hegemony is exercised by monopolistic investment backed by military superiority. The hegemony is such that the firms and government of a great power can dictate terms of co-existence to the sub-ordinate power. Even among imperialist countries we can have a super-imperialist one. Economically modern imperialism, as we have urged, is the exploitative hegemony over the economic fortunes of other countries through the power gained by trans-national capitalist monopolistic investment. Politically modern imperialism in the backing up of the transanctional exploitative interests of its investing citizens by an economically and militarily strong state in the international system. Militarily imperialism is the use of a stand-by armed threat to brow-best military weaker countries in the international system. POST-WAR REORGANIZATION OF IMPERIALISM One characteristic of imperialism after the Second World War is the dominance of the United States of America. A second characteristic is its reorganization as neo-colonialism. The third characteristic is the emergence of imperialist collaboration in place of the fierce inter-imperialist rivalry which existed before World War-II. The fourth is the heightening of technological competition as a form of monopolistic competition. The last is the re-emergence of inter-imperialist competition. The Second World War virtually eliminated German, Italian and Japanese imperialisms and greatly weakened British, French and Belgian imperialisms. For one thing Japanese, German and Italian industries and economies suffered much destruction during World War-II. For another, Germany and Japan had their capacity to manufacture arms limited by the peace treaties that ended the Second World War. Moreover, the Second World War itself witnessed the development of new technologies in which Western Europe and Japan were deficient. By contrast the United States of America, herself a large market, suffered no economic destruction during the Second World War. On the contrary she was then the supplier of arms and other vital goods. She also made a lot of money from these supplies. In short, the United States of America emerged from the Second World War as the world=s supplier of arms, the world=s foremost workshop, and the world=s leading exporter. One advantage of the United States of America was her lead in new technologies like nuclear technology, electronics, robotics, the computer, artificial material, and biotechnology. Other capitalist countries spent up to 1970 learning and catching up. With her enormous arms, technological, and industrial advantage, the United States of America also had financial advantage. She was the world=s foremost money lender. The Dollar competed with gold as the standard international currency, putting the Pound Sterling, the Franc, the Mark, the Lira and the Yen in the shade as international currencies. The United States of America could virtually dictate to the other capitalist powers. The joint opposition of the capitalist powers to the advance of the socialist revolution made them political and economic prisoners of the United States of America. The domination of the United States of America has been technological, military, industrial and communication domination. We have mentioned that the second characteristic of post-Second-World-War imperialism is the reorganization of control over less developed economies as neo-colonialism. This structural phenomenon has the following characteristics: 1. The subject country is legally sovereign and is formally ruled by indigenous rulers. 2. The private economy of the subject country is dominated by firms owned largely in metropolitan monopoly capitalist countries. 3. The dominant firms are reorganized as subsidiaries of metropolitan firms in a joint-venture kind of arrangement. Although in terms of share ownership these enterprises are supposed to be joint-ventures, the technology, knowledge of international markets, and international connection belong to the expatriate owners who, therefore, are able to dominate the firm=s operations. 4. The international division of labour between the subject country and metropolitan powers is still of the colonial type. The subject country exports largely raw materials; it depends heavily on the import of industrial goods from metropolitan capitalist countries. Among these imports, equipment, investment funds and arms are crucial and are key marks of its dependence on imperialist powers. 5. The subject country operates in an international market dominated by finance from imperialist countries and by industrial, commercial and communication firms in these countries. 6. The subject country depends on some imperialist country or group of countries for support in the event of an international controversy. 7. The indigenous bourgeois class goes into an alliance with imperialism for the joint exploitation of the workers and peasants of the subject country. In this alliance the imperialist firms gain peaceful exploitation and support in the event of conflict with the people; the indigenous bourgeoisie gain capital from loans, agency services and joint-ventures and a powerful backer in the event of a dispute with the people or with other countries. 8. Imperialist statesmen are able to interfere in the internal and external affairs of the subject country because of the de-facto control that imperialist big-business has in the country and the sycophantic character of the indigenous bourgeois ruling class. 9. Usually the exports of the subject economy are dominated by one or a few raw materials which are usually processed by foreign firms for export. The imperialist country whose metropolitan monopolies largely own the exporting firms in the subject country can thus dictate to the latter. This is especially so because the metropolitan firm with a subsidiary in a subject country is invariably a giant monopoly almost as rich or as rich as, if not richer than, many a government. These firms are also much more sophisticated in the business world in which they operate than governments are. They are in a position to browbeat government - especially those of underdeveloped countries. 10. The subject country is usually weak in foreign exchange earning, except in rare cases where the country is small but has a rich deposit of a stragegic mineral, like oil in Kuwait and uranium in Lesotho. Because of developmental needs a subject country not so lucky runs into foreign exchange deficiency. The attempt to solve this problem by borrowing from imperialist financial circles creates a chronic debt problem which accentuates dependence and sycophancy. We must mention, however, that in the capitalist part of the world there are many gradations of dependence by other states and economies on those of the imperialist powers, these powers being those in which the major trans-national companies are owned. We can distinguish relatively independent industrial countries like Denmark, Austria and Sweden; satellite industrial countries like Canada and Australia; relatively independent under-developed countries with India and Iraq as the main examples; lackeys of imperialism like Brazil and Nigeria; and hostages of imperialism like Israel, South Korea and Taiwan. We noted as the third distinguishing feature of imperialism after World War-II the emergence of collaborative imperialism. Bitter rivalry among the imperialist powers for spheres of influence characterized imperialism from 1860 to 1945, giving rise to two devastating inter-imperialist world wars, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. This bitter rivalry was replaced by the unchallenged supremacy of one super-imperialism (namely that of the United States of America) and the willing collaboration of the other imperialist powers with the United States of America from 1945 to date. This collaboration has two causes. The first is the financial, technological, military and industrial superiority that the United States of America has long enjoyed. Even if this superiority has been whittled down in the industrial, technological and even financial fields, it remains without any vitiation in the military field. Since imperialism implies hegemonism, monopolism, grabbing and control, military superiority is the most important. Corresponding with United States strength in the military, etc., sources of power is the weakness of the other powers. They can have borrowed strength only by leaning on the United States of America. The second reason for the emergence of collaborative rather than tugging relations among imperialist powers is the emergence after World War-II of the national liberation and socialist revolutions. These revolutions weakened the ideological, organizational and territorial hold of imperialism on the world. They combatted forcefully the doctrines of conquest and domination, of exploitation of other peoples, of intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. We can recall China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, Israel and Palestine, South Africa, Congo, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Angola, and a long string of other cases. Never before have the people combatted imperialism and made revolutionary history on such a large scale as since the Second World War. For the first time, modern imperialism was thrown on the defensive and was entirely on the defensive until Mikhail Gorbachev arrived. The onslaught of the people forced the imperialists to club together. They formed alliance after alliance for the joint management in their own interest of the affairs of the world. They formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Group of Seven, all because no imperialist power could prevail unilaterally against a world awakened by the two revolutions. It must be remarked that no one asked the Group of Seven to club together around the United States of America to >lead the world=. They treated their predatory hegemony as natural. The fourth major feature of post-Second-World-War imperialism which we observe is the overshadowing of price competition by product variation, heavy multi-media advertising, and technological competition, especially the last. This phenomenon has arisen for a number of reasons. The first is the weakening of expansion through territory seizing and increasing volumes of raw material production. The second is that we have arrived at an epoch when science is increasingly being directly applied in production. The third is the great need in Western Europe and Japan to recapture markets from the United States of America which they could do only through catching up with her technologically. The fourth is the discovery that advance in technology is one main force behind the rapid growth of socialist-oriented countries. In Europe and Japan competition in growth with the states building socialism could not be ignored. Firms were given tax bonuses to encourage technological innovation. The effect of relying on technology and product variation is to render less necessary the possession of specific territories as colonies or spheres of influence by any one power. A giant monopoly can beat anyone in any market by innovation and new brands of a commodity. It is in this way that Japanese monopolies took the lead in the world=s motor-cycle market and made great strides in the motor car and electronic markets. The fifth feature of post-Second-World-War imperialism emerged prominently after the period of more or less sustained capitalist growth, 1950-1970. By 1970 the European and Japanese economies had fully recovered from the Second World War ruin, armed with new technologies partially learnt from the United States of America. Then followed a revival of inter-imperalist rivalry for markets. This time technological innovation, product differentiation, joint ventures, and brand advertising, are the main instruments of competition. There are no exclusive spheres of influence, although the imperialist powers individually are more influential in some areas than in others. One aspect of this competition is that in some consumer goods like textiles and shoes some under-developed countries (styled >Newly Industrializing= by economists) are also competitors. Two effects of the competition are increase of protectionism in each imperialist country against goods from other countries and the closing of ranks by imperialist countries against the export of manufactures from Newly Industrializing under-developed countries. Today, therefore, imperialist policy is torn between on the one hand concert in the opposition to socialism and national liberation and on the other inter-imperialist competition in raw material possession through world-wide investment, and in gaining export markets through sophisticated technology and brand advertising. The formal independence of Third World countries also make it impossible to mount the kind of exclusive territorial acquisition that had been possible before. Imperialists have to work out some common policies and yet compete. Even in the early days of modern imperialism, however, the imperialist powers often reached agreements which prevented competition among them from leading to inter-imperialist war. The Berlin Conference over territorial claims in Africa, the grudging acquiescenece in the Monroe Doctrine with regard to the Americas, and agreements over extra-territorial rights in China are examples. Imperialists have been concerned with how to live in the World after the Second World War. This involved policies by each country to revive her industrial strength while tolerating the hegemony of the United States of America. Further, it involved ironing out common policies under United States leadership concerning opposition to the socialist and national liberation revolutions and how to manage inter-imperialist rivalries. There have been economic and political policies in each of these areas. IMPERIALIST ECONOMIC POLICIES AFTER WORLD WAR-II Through the Marshall Plan, the formation of the European Economic Community, capital imports and import of new technology from the United States of America, and special relations like the expansion of the British Commonwealth with >British= dropped and the >Association= of former French Colonies with the European Economic Community, imperialism revived its production base in Western Europe and Japan. Neo-Colonialism with its concept of >joint venture= was a very important means of sustenance of dominant presence in the third World by imperialism. Against the socialist revolution the imperialists, led by the United States of America, conducted a policy of comprehensive trade embargo aimed at preventing these economies from benefiting from advances in technology in the United States of America and the rest of the industrial capitalist countries. For under-developed countries the imperialist power, working through the World Bank, dictated a set of so-called development policies that led to a catastrophe. This was a policy of >attracting= imperialist investors by all sorts of imaginable concessions to invest in mining, agriculture, import substituting industries and the development of infrastructure. The import of capital was by way of loans and direct investment. The doctrine was that less developed countries were poor because they had no capital, no entrepreneurship and no attitudes and institutions conducive to progress in economic growth. The sustained industrial and financial growth of the imperialist economies (1954 - 1968) led to a great depression as is usual with capitalism. This happened basically because the impetus to growth due to technological innovations diminished as soon as Europe and Japan installed new capacities. Moreover, the impetus from post-War reconstruction of the infrastructure and productive capacities ended. In less developed countries the policy of concentrating on agricultural and mineral exports faced a fiasco when terms of trade turned against such exports from 1955. The policy of attracting foreign investment into mining, agriculture and import-substituting industries ended up in a chronic indebtedness by the end of the 1960s. The great depression that started in the imperialist economies in 1976 brought disaster everywhere. The Structural Adjustment Programme (S.A.P) dictated to the world by the messengers of imperialism was purported as a solution to prolonged depression. It was based on the wrong attribution of the depression to supposed >rigidities= due to excess of governmental >intervention= in the economy. Its first real purpose was to destroy Keynesian welfarism in the imperialist countries. Its second purpose was to steer the Third World away from the socialist road to which it was increasingly turning. Its third purpose was to halt the national liberation efforts that led to government-promoted Industrialization in the Third World, to the North-South dialogue, to the concert of Non-Alligned Countries, to the concept of a New International Economic Order, to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (O.P.E.C), and to the thought of forming other organizations of raw material exporting countries like O.P.E.C. Of course, welfarist, socialist and national liberation actions were actions by governments. However, since the anti-state Structural Adjustment Programme (S.A.P) was launched we have not seen a definite end to stagnation, let alone sustained growth either in the imperialist economies or in their satellites around the world. On the contrary, what we have seen is the usual slow recovery after the worst of a depression as well as a continuation of instability and chronic indebtedness. We have also witnessed that since the whole capitalist world has been in stagnation since 1976, the soialist-oriented economy of the communist ruled People=s Republic of China has been growing very fast and steadily since 1978, i.e., after the reforms under Deng Xiaoping. The great capitalist stagnation from 1976 led to an increase in protectionism in the capitalist world. Thus, while the imperialist countries are preaching trade liberalization to the rest of the world, they have themselves been increasingly practising trade restriction. To prevent others from following their example, they have launched >globalization=. The real meaning of >globalization= is that the imperialist trans-nationals should be free to invest and sell anywhere. Any national policy restricting them in the name of economic autonomy will invite retaliation by restriction on the trade of the offender. POLITICAL POLICIES OF IMPERIALISM In world politics the main aims of imperialism are to contain the socialist revolution, frustrate the deepening of national liberation revolution, and create in the developing countries a >middle class= of lackeys of imperialism. It is well known that since the end of the second world war the United States of America, a super-imperialist >great power=, has tried to halt and turn back the socialist revolution wherever it can do so, beginning from Greece. In order to combat the socialist revolution it got its allies to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. This has remained an alliance of the imperialist camp against the group of socialist states, led by the Soviet Union, that emerged between 1945 and 1950. The socialist group of states responded with the Warsaw Treaty Organisation - an alliance to defend the socialist revolutions in Europe against imperialist aggression. It is also well-known that the U.S.A., the leader of the imperialist powers, then set itself the task of gaining military superiority over the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union resisted this and this led to what looked like and was popularly styled an arms race. The United States followed this up by establishing military bases wherever it could around the Soviet Union, giving military aid to anyone ready to oppose the socialist revolution by war, and generally, grooming reactionaries in the world against the socialist revolution. The Soviet Union, aided by other socialist countries, did what it could to contain this predatory hegemonism. The world knows how Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende and Ernesto Che Guevara died - to name only three well-known cases among several. One way by which the U.S.A. especially has opposed the socialist revolution has been to set her face against any radical government in the Third World whose leaders are bent on pursuing economic independence or have sympathy for socialism. This was the case with the leaders of the revolution in Guatemala and in Nicaragua. To oppose socialist and national liberation revolutions, the U.S.A. has a ubiquitous cloak-and-dagger organisation, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The U.S.A. especially, as the spearhead of imperialism has set herself the task of promoting everywhere what her rulers call >democracy=, >market economy= and >human rights=. >Democracy= in this case is the holding of some election, no matter what happens to the people. The aim of the advocacy is to ensure that only the rich in the >middle class= rule, thanks to the indefeasible influence of money on elections in bourgeois society. Among the >middle class=, i.e. the rich bourgeois grabbers of wealth, lackeys of imperialism are preferred. It is for this reason that Patrice Lumumba and Salvador Allende, for instance died, and Jonas Savimbi enjoys imperialist support in Angola. In advocating >democracy=, the imperialists pretend to be opposed to authoritarian rule, but the U.S. policy makers do not distinguish between fascistic and racist authoritarianism, militarist authoritariansm, bureacratic commandism, and the suppression of counter-revolution by a revolutionary dictatorship of the people. As far as they are concerned, in spite of its fascistic and racist terrorism against the black poor, racist South Africa was, at least partially, a >democracy=, since there was >election= among the whites. As they see it Cuba and China are not >democracies= no matter in what form the government ascertains and fulfills the actual wishes of the people. So long as the counter-revolutionary emigres in Florida do not return to conduct corrupt millionaire-dominated >elections= in Cuba, and similar people in Taiwan connot return to hold similar >elections= in China, the people=s republics of Cuba and China are not >democracies= and must be destroyed to make way for bourgeois >democracy=. In the conception of the imperialists only the bourgeoisie styled >middle class= are capable of >democracy=. It is believed in imperialist circles that only bourgeois individualism, predatory private enterprise and market economy are compatible with >democracy=. Even if the markets are actually controlled by a few powerful oligopolists and bureaucractic commandism is omnipresent and omnipotent, the state is a >democracy= provided there are millionaire-dominated >elections=. When the CIA orchestrates the toppling of or does topple a Third World government not wanted by Washington or NATO, imperialist propaganda comes out with a long catalogue of >human rights= abuses. Since such a catalogue can be compiled for any government in the world and the catalogue can be quite long for governments in acute crisis situations, the imperialists have a field day of self-justification. The CIA itself often promotes the crisis leading to the toppling of a government that Washington does not want, as happened in Chile, Iraq, Guatemala and Nicaragua. These were places where the U.S.A. has special >national interests=. One may ask in passing what >national interest= the U.S.A. has in the affairs of countries in Latin America and the Middle East or in China which U.S. capitalists see simply as a huge potential market exploitable in all ways. However, this is a rhetorical question. We are discussisng imperialism, and monopoly captalist global >national interest= is imperialism. With other imperialist countries the U.S.A. conducts a policy of alliance whose instrument is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. With other industrial capitalist countries, she pursues policies of a camp leader of all >industrial market economies=. The organization for this purpose is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D) and others like the World Trade Organization, the Secretariat of the General Agreemtent on Tariff and Trade, the International Monetary Fund, the International Finance Corporation, and the World Bank. With Third World countries, the U.S.A. pursues a policy of propping up lackeys like Taiwan, Isreal and South Korea; of hostility towards socialist-oriented and independent countries like Cuba, North Korea, Libya and Iraq; and of veiled dictation through so-called >international community= organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Towards countries building socialism (countries of former USSR, Eastern European countries, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Kampuchea, Loas, Afghanistan, etc), U.S. super-imperialism has pursued three lines of policy: confrontation, divide and rule, and propping up counter-revolution in each country. The economic and political policies of imperialism are backed up in the realm of ideas by imperialist ideology. To this let us now turn. IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY It is not possible in the complex tangle of ideas to see what is imperialist ideology and what is not. Broadly, >ideology= means the outlook of a class or a broad collectivity of people in society, which consists of the values according to which policies are devised or justified. In class society we have class ideologies. Broadly speaking bourgeois ideology is liberal, fascistic or welfarist. Capitalism generally is promoted by the ideology of the sacrosanctity of private property and the alleged >rationality= of profit-seeking enterprise. Monopoly capitalism is promoted by the ideologies of >rationality= and >efficiency=. From the start modern imperialist ideology consisted of the monopolistic ideology of >rationality= and >efficiency= and the specific colonial ideologies of the civilising mission= of Western man and the global efficiency of colonial trade and investment. >Civilising mission= had a large dose of racism. The doctrine of >global efficiency= featured in economics in the neo-classical trade theory concerning the gains to all from factor-induced specialization and factor-flows. This is not the place to explain these theories. However, civilising mission, rationality and efficiency ideologies were undermined by facts showing that imperialist activity led to gross international exploitation, discrimination and inequality. These facts and the love of sovereignty in all men led to the development of national liberation and even socialist-oriented revolutionary movements in the colonies and semi-colonies. After the Second World War imperialism was served by the communist threat, two super-power, peaceful change, free trade, painless development, partnership in progress, and new world order ideologies. The >communist threat= ideology made socialism the enemy of every country=s sovereignty and every person=s personal freedom=. The two super-power ideology was intended to hide the aggressive character of imperialism and NATO militarism. It concealed the fact that the imperialist powers were the first to form NATO and that the socialist countries responded only some years later with the Warsaw Treaty Organisation as a defensive alliance. U.S. imperialist hegemonism was concealed by picturing the U.S.S.R. also as a hegemonic state. In fact, there was talk in some circles of >Soviet imperialism=, a phenomenon whose reality even more honest bourgeois scholars denied. The fact that the NATO powers were trying to gain arms superiority over socialist states and ring round the Soviet Union and China with military bases was revealed to no one. The support of the socialist states, led by the Soviet Union, for revolutions in the Third World against imperialism was equated to and seen as justifying intervention in the Third World by imperialist powers to prop up counter-revolution. People like Henry Kissinger in the U.S.A. led imperialist ideology by presenting the matter in terms of power-block politics - the >balance of power= theme of Matternich and his admirers - rather than in terms of the choice of roads by mankind between humanism and predation. The >peaceful change= ideology presented revolution simply as violence. The suppression of revolutionary movements by counter-revolutionary violence was swept under the carpet. Violence was seen only when revolutionaries in response to the anti-people violence of the armed forces and thugs of the predators took to armed struggle as a last resort. People were >democrats= only when they were anti-revolutionary or renounced armed struggle. We can say that Salvador Allende=s regime was overthrown and he was killed only because he allowed himself and his followers to be browbeaten by imperialist propaganda about the >peaceful road= to change and about who was a true >democrat=and who was not. Free trade ideology preached the international utility of free trade, picturing all countries as the same. Actually, the doctrine was an open-door advocacy aimed at freeing markets for transnationals. The ideology of painless developmenrt was launched to turn the Third World from the Soviet, East European, Chinese and North Korean developmental miracles between 1920 and 1939 in the USSR and between 1948 and 1960 in Eastern Europe, China and North Korea. The path trodden by the socialists under the leadership of Communist and Workers= parties was pronounced too costly. It was >costly= on a number of counts. First, it required a revolution which the imperialists interpreted as wanton bloodshed and as violent >injustice= to private property rights. Secondly, it required an enormous sacrifice to save in order to magnify investment. Thirdly, it gave preference to basic industries, thus in the eyes of enemies of socialism denying consumer goods to the population. It was claimed that an easier and less painful road to development was possible. This >less painful= road would require no revolution. It would not require a drastic saving effort because foreign capital could be >attracted= by a set of attraction policies. Instead of a priority for basic industries a piecemeal approach of >attracting= foreign investors to establish import substituting consumer goods and to develop mining for export could be pursued. This >painless= road was the one actually prescribed by the World Bank and pursued by Third World leaders like those of Nigeria that took lessons from imperialist ideology. We now know how >effective= and >painless= indeed this road has turned out to be. The partner-in-progress ideology came to justify neo-colonialism. The continued presence and dominance of transnational firms, the importation of imperialist capital, and the adoption of the growth prescriptions of imperialism were dubbed >partnership in progress=. The partnership was the alliance between imperialism and indigenous bourgeois allies. >Partnership in progress= also featured in the ideologies of >industrial peace= and >social stability= preached against militant trade unionism and other popular movements. It is against >partnership in progress= if workers in transnationals go on strike, if youths in anger turn against expatriate oil companies, if peasants in Bakolori protest against ruins inflicted on them by a World Bank financed project, or if workers threaten action over a fuel price increase that may result in saving some foreign exchange for foreign debt servicing. >Stability= means no strikes, demonstrations, riots, uprising, or patriotic coups d=etat, no matter the degree of hunger or injustice. It is the leaders of the United States that preached a >new world order= led by the U.S.A. It was not clear what was inteded. It is now obvious that this world order is a uni-polar order dominated by a super-imperialist power; that whatever the U.S.A. accepts as stability, democracy, or human rights is what must prevail; that the economy must be a market and private enterprise one; that a socialist revolution is taboo; and that such an act as the nationalisation of imperialist enterprieses is contrary to the requirements of the world order and can be visited with any sanction by imperialism. The >new world order= is, in effect, pax Americana. In recent years democracy, human rights, environment, and poverty alleviation have come to feature as issues in imperialist ideology. These all have specific causes. For instance, democracy arises from imperialist oppostion to revolutionary regimes and from mass opposition to militlary dictatorship. >Human rights= is an advocacy meant to give content to bourgeois opposition to socialism, which is negative, philistine and banal as the Vietnam War and the Cold War exposed it to be. The alarm about environment arises from the actual environmental losses in Western Europe and the U.S.A., the gross injustice involved in this loss and the concern of the population generally about this matter. The campaign on the environment is orchestrated internationally to purpot the >care= of the imperialists for welfare and because of the profits to be made by transnationals from the tackling of the environmental problem. >Poverty alleviation= arises because it is no longer possible to keep silent about the scandal of mass poverty in the midst of plenty in industrial capitalist countries, or to ignore the stupendous efforts and impressive achievements made in socialist countries towards the eradication of poverty. The case of socialist-oriented China, as opposed to, for instance, capitalist-oriented India, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea or Pakistan, became better known to development economists. However, imperialist ideology gives the contents to democracy, etc. compatible with capitalism and imperialist domination. Democracy is to be understood as the mere holding of elections and not in terms of the working people=s access to economic and political power and culture made possible by their access to the means of poweer and enjoyment of culture. >Human rights= are to refer to only such rights as the right to fair trial recognised in bourgeois courts. It must not extend to the people=s right to means of production, the right to work or the right to education, health, decent housing, etc. recognised by socialism. Besides, no one asks about the practical access to the rights recognised by bourgeois liberalism available to the majority in bourgeois society. No bourgeois asks how one can base a serious advocacy of human rights on the thesis of a society as anti-human as capitalism. What meaning does >human rights= have concerning slaves in a slave society? And capitalism is a modern slave society. The noise about the environment is hypocritical. Socialists have bothered about the threat of capitalistic industrialism to the environment since the nineteenth century. What capitalists do is to spoliate and ruin the environment, make profits from this, impose the cost on current society and posterity, and make gains from the means used by anyone, if ever, to try to ameliorate the harm. Poverty alleviation is pure hypocricy. For the past five thousand years from time to time governments in predatory societies have launched schemes of poverty alleviation. They all achieved little or nothing. All the great religions arose out of frustration about staggering mass poverty. When statesmen could do little or nothing, religious leaders arose who taught the masses to attempt to live more happily by simply ignoring their poverty and putting their faith in spiritual salvation. This was a spiritual or eschatological form of poverty alleviation. Every predatory system, however, reproduces mass poverty even as some statesman is claiming to alleviate it. The recent loud drum beating about poverty alleviation has much to do with the intensification of mass poverty around the world by the capitalist Structural Adjustment Programme (S.A.P) which merely intensified unemployment and misery. It is known that in every capitalist depression mass poverty is reproduced on a largerl scale and intensity to permit profits to be squeezed from the people for capitalist entrepreneurs. No bourgeois person has thought or can think of eradicating poverty from human society. Only the socialist can think such a thought. The eradication of poverty is one of the basic aims of socialism. The socialists alone also have thought of and do advocate the effective road to this. It is to turn every able-bodied man into a working man in the first place; to turn over all means of production and distribution in the society to the working people themselves to own and manage; and to effect the distribution of the net income generated according to work and social need as assessed by the working people. CULTURAL MANIFESTATIONS OF IMPERIALISM Society is made up of economic, political, ideological and cultural aspects. Imperialism is a social system and has a cultural impact. This impact is very serious; it is the shaping of the very modes of life, the mentality and the responses of people. Culture goes along with ideology and social psychology. Culture is the peculiar way of doing things common among a people and passed on from generation to generation. International and inter people contacts involve a transfer of cultures. This transfer can be fairly two-sided or it can be predominantly one-sided. Under various imperialisms economic and political domination almost always goes with cultural domination. Modern imperialism has complex cultural impacts. In the first place, since modern imperialsim is capitalist it imposes on society the dominant behavioural propensities that drive, legitimise, and are reproduced by capitalism. These are selfishness, greed, coveteousness, egotism, opportunism, grabbing competition, possessiveness, a concentration on material things especially money, callousness, a suspicious attitude to people, a tendency to cheat and lie, and a tendency to steal. One cultural impact of modern imperialism is that it creates in people a love of things modern even when they cannot produce or afford them. This change in taste is deliberately promoted and exploited by imperialism to create a market. While creating this market with borrowed tastes, imperialism is careful to prevent the colonial, semi-colonial or neo-colonial country from producing the foods themselves. This creates a consumption dependence which inclines the colonial economy to indebtedness. Current imperialism being modern uses modern education and science as aspects of its culture. However, the education is pregnant with imperialist indoctrination. In Nigeria, for instance, the history taught in schools was History of the British Empire. The science taught was sufficient to create a few technical workers for expatriate firms and colonial government creations like railways. The teaching of science, modern literacy, modern languages and modern administration went along with a wholesale deprecation of indigenous culture. Education and social science have become very powerful instruments of imperialism, Education in neo-colonial countries like Nigeria has never been for self reliance. As for social science, in the late nineteenth century the social sciences degenerated from being instruments of critical examination of traditional society in Europe to being instruments of apology for capitalist individualism, greed and exploitation. Then as imperialism started in the late nineteenth century, the social sciences became means of justification of imperialism. The social sciences developed an individualistic and mechanistic-technocratic outlook that tended to ignore the important questions that imperialism raised. Even imperialism or colonialism themselves are not spoken about in the conventional books. Only a few so-called Fadicals= care to mention them. Something as important as revolution is ignored as a non-reality, although students of history may learn that the English, American and French revolutions existed. After the Second World War, a part of the socialist and national liberation revolutions that occurred was a Marxist or patriotic criticism of cultural imperialism. However, in the Universities established in neo-colonial countries, three things have happened. First, hardly are the scholars equipped to pursue fundamental research, and such research is not considered a priority. Secondly, the mental tools for the pragmatic researches that are preferred are taken over from Europe and the United States. Thirdly, the imperialists under the guese of aid have taken over the developmental problems of Third World countries and are financing researches which see these problems as they are seen in Western Europe and the U.S.A. An aspect of cultural imperialism is the influence of imperialist mass media. Though these media the people in the subjected world are being made to see modernity through imperialist spectacles. How otherwise would it come to pass that the writings of Chinu Achebe, John Pepper Clark and Wole Shoyinka are not appreciated in Nigeria till they are appreciated in Europe and America? There is, of course, a developing world culture. All means of transport, communication and information aid this culture. It pop music, the computer and internet become important in the U.S.A., they suddenly become important everywhere. Because the culture thus globalised is capitalist, the spread of modernity has a capitalistic cultural content. This brings about a conflict between capitlaism and the more humane teachings of the great religions. This accounts for the rejection of some aspects of Western culture among religious people in Asia, the rebellion Moslem fundamentalists in capitalistic countries with Moslem populations and the riot of religious revivalism among Christians. Imperialism itself turns round to exploit for divide and rule the conflicts generated by the capitalistic mentality which it generates. Since the so-called collapse of communism, which is actually a recess in socialist revolutionary offensive, the world has seen what it is to live under the unipolar cultural influence of the globalisation of selfishness, greed, individualism, collousness, seeing other people as mere means of one=s self-enrichment, worship of material wealth, coveteousness, commercialism (readiness to sell everything, even honour) for money, mendacity and kleptomania. CONCLUSION All we can say is that we hope that all those who do not like exploitation and domination and therefore resent their international varieties will gain clarity from this lecture. The clarity is necessary to free the world from wolves in human skin. |
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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 07:56
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