Re: liberal opposition, empire, imperialism, etc. was : Re: AUT: RE: civil society

["cwright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

commie00,

Sorry for the long delay.  I like the basic idea, although you would have to
recognize that many Leftists and 'radical nationalists' want to turn back to
the 'democratic welfare' nation state that never was.  I am not sure we can
talk about liberalism and conservsativism in this way.

I do agree with your second part more so and I think that I would argue that
we are in a state of flux, a crisis which has not yet been resolved.  It
could go to full blown empire, or something else pro-capital or it could
really blow up and mean that anti-capitalism builds a deeper base and
furthers the crisis.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "commie00" <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 7:00 AM
Subject: liberal opposition, empire, imperialism, etc. was : Re: AUT: RE:
civil society


> this may be way off topic, and i'm not sure i can completely articulate my
> thoughts on it (and perhaps i'm just saying things that other people have
> said a million times when i wasn't paying attention), but:
>
> i've been giving a lot of thought lately to the disappearance of this
> liberal opposition, and given that i'm used to thinking of "liberal" and
> "conservative" in terms of different moments of capitalist ideology, it
> struck me that "liberalism" may very well have faded into a certain  side
in
> globalization.
>
> to wit: i was thinking about bush, conservativism and the current "war on
> the flavor of the month" in regards to imperialism, and this thought
occured
> to me:
>
> could it be that the different moments of capitalist ideology now look
> something like this:
>
> *the liberals are those who support and try to further the empire-ization
of
> everything thru the democratization of the global bodies, thus building a
> global ruling class, etc.
>
> *the conservatives are those who are trying to maintain western (which,
for
> the sake of brevity, includes japan, et al.) hegemony over the global
> organizations, thus maintaining a kind of new / old imperialism.
>
> the implications of this are interesting to me, and show a possibility of
> why, each time we've been discussing this on the list here, i got the
> feeling that people theorizing about empire and people theorizing about a
> maintained imperialism were both, somehow, not wrong.
>
> a particular interesting implication of this is how the existance of both
> serves the needs of capital: the former is necessary to further capitalism
> in a way necessary, i think, for its survival, etc.; while the later is
> necessary for the disciplining of "rogue elements" (such as the taliban),
> etc. this strikes me as being much like how the liberal / conservative
game
> plays out in u.s. "politics". that is: two sides of the same coin,
reaching
> for the same goal, each rising to the occasion as needed.
>
> there is no question in my mind about what this goal is (in that i think
> imperialism, just like social democracy, is an element of capital's past
> which is quickly dying due to being defeated by working class opposition
> [go, team, go!]), but this explains why it is possible to give examples
> which support notions of empire and western imperialism, etc.
>
> hrm...
>
>
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