Every liberal does it too, from center right radlibs to far-right “conservatives”: the most extreme right fringe liberals hate the mainstream liberals for not being bigoted enough, the mainstream libs hate the radlibs for not being cruel enough, and the radlibs hate the left for not being chauvinist enough.
Denouncing chauvinism in particular is like a liberal moral event horizon, a cardinal sin against their self-interested belief in the righteousness of the imperial hegemon that keeps the treats flowing at gunpoint.
Just to add a bit of context, there’s a quote about how ‘fascism is imperialism turned inward’.
It helps to think of the imperial core as like a hierarchy of layers. The US ruling class is at the top of this hierarchy, and the ruling classes of other imperialist nations are next. As the contradictions of capitalism continue to pile up, there is a cannibalization that starts at the furthest periphery. This started with colonization/exploitation of the global south. But over time this has become less effective for various reasons (BRICS being the new big one). There’s a lot of mechanisms the core uses to affect it’s desires on the periphery (IMF conditioned loans, sanctions, embargoes, currency manipulations, capital flight, etc). As these mechanisms are dulled, the exploitation in the periphery starts to encroach up the layers of the hierarchy over time.
The 2014 coup in Ukraine was a clear step along this path, but it was not the first one by any means. Balkanization was one of the earlier ones, as was Greece. So this is something that will continue as BRICS and other elements of multipolarity increase around the world and particularly in the global south. Capital wants profits via exploitation, and if the profits in the global south become marginal due to the eroding of capital’s power, then capital finds new places to exploit. Often that means turning inward.
Like the connectedness of their internet and the ability to share with many others when a company is exploiting resources?
Thanks for the in depth explanation. I had to read it a few times, but I think I understand. It’s so complicated, all the things the wealthy elite can do to change the outcome of things. What you said were strictly institutional, but they can do a lot of things to affect the way the public views these actions and their effects too.
The main reason imperialist exploitation becomes less profitable over time is pretty analogous to why domestic exploitation becomes less profitable over time. We call it the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
Profit always comes from the exploitation of labor and natural resources. Over a given cycle of production, a capitalist exchanges money for capital and labor, then sells resulting commodities for a profit that stems from the difference in what they paid for the labor and natural resources and the value added to the commodities over that cycle of production, i.e. profit. In a domestic scenario, each time a cycle of production happens, the capitalist will earn some profit that they will invest in more advanced means of production for the next cycle of production, cutting down the necessary labor to produce whatever commodities it is they are producing. At first, this gives them an advantage over other capitalists, but soon other capitalists will invest to adopt the same techniques, and what we call the socially necessary labor to produce this commodity will be reduced in accordance to the amount of capital invested. However, as I said earlier, profits always come from exploitation of labor and natural resources; if capitalists reduce the amount of labor that goes into each commodity they will be conducting less exploitation and the rate of profit is reduced.
Lenin described how that process took place in Europe in the turn of the 20th century, the formation of various capitalist cartels stabilized the situation a little bit as capitalists realized that as they competed with one another they were cannibalizing themselves, so they decided to divide up their countries between various cartels which could hold prices artificially high and not suffer as much from the falling rate of profit. However, this only lasted so long, and eventually capital needed to open new frontiers to begin new cycles of production, and facilitated by the advance of finance capital the advanced capitalist countries of Europe began dividing the world between themselves. But over the time same process took place, immense amounts of capital have been invested in imperialist projects which has also led to a falling rate of profit. Capital needs to renew itself continually by finding new ways to increase exploitation. Nowadays that usually means war and financial services (i.e. the type of imperialism Lenin described).
YouTube search: Yellow Parenti
Here’s the “Yellow Parenti” speech @Pandantic@midwest.social , originally titled “US Interventionism, the 3rd world, and the USSR”.
https://youtu.be/xP8CzlFhc14
A certified banger from 1986, smack dab in the middle of the Reagan years, when the USSR still existed. I relisten to this lecture at least once a year, Parenti is incredible
Holy shit I just wrote up a whole big long comment and accidentally deleted it. I will recreate it later on PC.
Thank you for sharing this, it was really great to listen to. I will respond more later… 😖
Been thinking about what he said about guerilla warfare: “Why do we support the guerillas there” (Ukrain), “and fight against guerillas there?” (Vietnam).