Re: Re: Argentina, Australia and Canada

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 14 Apr 2002 10:23:17 +0800, Grant Lee wrote:
>Louis:
>
>If it isn't already clear, I find references to
>monolithic, single-minded exploitative entities
>called "Great Britain" or the "United States" to
>be untenable generalisations, which ignore the
>complexity of real class structures and the
>historical agency of indigenous layers of
>capital (in particular).

But I am trying to address the question of whether Argentina is
qualitatively different from Great Britain. My purpose in these posts
is to answer a current within Marxism that asserts that there is no
difference. Not surprisingly, these currents flourish in Great
Britain and were either neutral during the Malvinas war, or damned
Argentina with faint praise. I am also trying to explain why the
"national question" is on the agenda for Argentina, while it would
not be for Canada, for example. Recently, a founder of Canadian
Trotskyism named Ross Dowson passed away. He developed the rather
novel theory late in life that Canada was semicolonial and promoted a
kind of left-nationalism. He was quite wrong. I am trying to help
Marxists make elementary distinctions that will help them carry out
solidarity work, not develop a class analysis of Great Britain or
Canada. If I were to do so, I would be posting for the next 10 years.
My time is limited.

>No, Whitehall didn't have to send gunboats to
>Australia because British state force was there
>in large numbers from day one. And they were
>also quite willing to use force against their
>own subjects.

I am not sure what you are driving at. The USA used state force
against miners in Colorado and Philippine freedom-fighters in the
early 1900s. But the USA was qualitatively different from the
Philippines. I am dealing with the question of national oppression,
which became the focus of revolutionary socialism during the early
years of the Comintern:

At the fourth session of the Baku Conference on July 26, 1920, Lenin
said, "First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is
the distinction between oppressed and oppressor NATIONS." He also
referred to Comrade Quelch of the British Socialist Party who said
that "the rank-and-file British worker would consider it treasonable
to help the enslaved NATIONS in their uprisings against British
rule."

These are the sorts of distinctions I am trying to make.

>To say that you have never heard anybody refer
>to "Australia" as a victim of imperialism is to
>also overgeneralising;
>obviously millions of Australians were and are
>victims of imperialism, if not necessarily in
>the same ways that workers in Nepal or the
>Netherlands are victims.

But Australia is not a semicolony in the sense that Argentina is.

>British finance capital used its market
>dominance to "rip off" everyone in the 19th
>Century, including other layers of British
>capital. One kind of rip off was bullying weak
>states to pay exorbitant amounts for
>infrastructure.

You don't seem to find the category imperialist meaningful in the
sense that Lenin did.

>Yes, they did this to the weak 19th Century
>colonial states in Australia. Is that
>surprising? US-based capital still does it to
>Australian governments.

Pushing countries around is not the same as imperialism. Because the
USA is hegemonic, it can influence economic and political affairs
across the globe. But it has a different kind of relationship to
Latin American countries than it does to European countries. There is
a wealth of literature that has explained this, from Baran-Sweezy to
Wallerstein. Those are my ideological influences. What are yours?

>"Was Australia based on something like the
>latifundia?" Not in the sense of peasant
>agriculture; however in some ways Australia was
>arguably more "backward" prior to 1850 and until
>well into the 20th Century in northern
>Australia, since the main productive activities
>in those times/regions, especially large scale
>pastoralism, relied on unfree labour: at first
>British convicts, later Aborigines, South East
>Asians and Pacific Islanders.

That is only aspect of Australian class society. There is also a
powerful bourgeoisie that includes people like Rupert Murdoch.

>A pertinent metaphor, since the
>economies focused on exports of raw materials,
>like Argentina, Australia and Canada were
>actually the worst affected by the Great
>Depression. "Eventually a mass radical movement
>gave them the understanding that the fault is in
>capitalism, not theirs. This is the lesson I am
>trying to impart for Argentina." I fully
>appreciate that; but why let Argentine
>capitalists off the hook?

Let Argentine capitalists off the hook? If you want to have a
discussion with me, don't put words in my mouth.

--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 04/14/2002

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