anti-Imperialism vs. Internationalism??!!??

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(was:  [PEN-L:18063] Re: Re: Re: Anti-Eurocentrism: Idealist )

At 02:19 AM 4/13/00 -0400, you wrote:
> Anti-imperialism as a strategy for socialism is dead, dead, dead. It died
> with the Vietnam War. There is only one strategy that has any hope.
> International solidarity against capitalism. The old wobbly slogan "World
> Labor Needs a Union" comes to mind. Or the even older one of Karl and
> company. "Workers of the World Unite."

I don't see how anti-imperialism contradicts "workers of the world unite"
or "world labor needs a union." Why the opposition between these two
"strategies"?

If the US (to choose a country randomly) decides to smash a little country
in the Balkans because it differs from the neo-Liberal consensus that it
and its NATO allies want to impose on the world, that seems to an example
of imperialism. It's a different _kind_ of imperialism that  that of, say,
the inter-imperialism rivalry that helped spawn World War I (the subject
matter of Lenin, Bukharin, et al) or the kind of imperialism that involves
the US sending troops to, and bombing the bejesus out of, Vietnam during
the Cold War (the kind of imperialism that many on the left cut their teeth
on). But imperialism, like capitalism itself, changes its spots. The form
of imperialism changes, but the song remains the same. Anyway, even though
Milosevic (like Saddam Hussein or Noriega) may be the kind of thug that the
US usually allies with (until a tame democracy is established, under the
IMF's thumb), US victory against Serbia strengthened its hand against other
dissidents against the neo-Liberal system, including those opposed to the
"race to the bottom" (the competition to cut wages relative to
productivity, environmental standards, etc. to attract private capital,
IMF/World Bank favors, US arms sales, etc.) These dissidents includes labor
unions and those struggling to create unions. (Not all of these dissidents
are like Milosevic.)

Those who want an international workers' union should oppose the
international capitalist union formed by the US/NATO/IMF/World Bank combine
(i.e., the newest form of imperialism). (Anti-imperialism isn't the same as
naive third-worldism, which used to interpret the world between the evil
North and the good South.)

It also seems to me that anti-imperialism isn't really "a strategy for
socialism" as much as a socialist principle. That is, one reason I'm a
socialist is because I want to abolish imperialism.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine