Re: Feedback from Leo Panitch, plus my reply

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sasha Lilley wrote:
> Given that Leo Panitch's views are the subject of
> debate on this list, I also suggest that people listen
> to the program on globalization from last November
> which aired on Living Room on June 2nd, in which he
> lays out his ideas on how imperialism relates to the
> global expansion of capital.  In both discussions, he
> states fairly clearly that he believes capitalism
> should be replaced -- and not just in the center of
> empire but in the social democratic countries as well.

Unfortunately, this is not what my critique dealt with. Instead, it
dealt with how to theorize imperialism. I view Panitch's theory as
entirely inadequate and consistent with an analysis that arose in the
1970s as a reaction to what was seen as Monthly Review "Third Worldism".
That is why I made a point of comparing his views to John Willoughby's
in Science and Society. It is also the reason I referred to the
involvement of Colin Leys with the SR project. For most of the 80s Leys
was associated with an analysis similar to that put forward by
Willoughby, Bill Warren, Laclau, Brenner and others who found the
dependency theories of the 1960s and 70s lacking. In my opinion, they
bent the stick too far in the other direction as Phil Ferguson pointed
out on Marxmail:

While 'Socialist Register' has certainly published some useful stuff
over the years, it also suffers from the same disease that afflicts most
of these left academic journals - total lack of political engagement.

For these people the working class is, at best, an object to be written
about, rather than the active history-making subject (something E.P.
Thompson in the 60s and early 70s understood).  Their detachment from
the working class in the imperialist world where they are based is bad
enough; but it gets even worse when they have to deal with the Third
World and issues of imperialism.

It's important to understand here that, for all their pretence at being
driven purely be rational investigation and scientific analysis, a very
important element driving their analysis is hostility to national
liberation struggles, beginning with the Irish struggle.

Bill Warren wasn't *only* an academic who, through the application of a
detached marxist analysis, came up with his revisionist theory of
imperialism.  Warren was involved in the British and Irish Communist
Organisation (BICO), which had evolved away from a Marxist-Connolly-type
position in its earliest days as the Irish Communist Organisation (ICO)
and towards a basically pro-British imperialist position.  ICO was in
favour of Irish national liberation until the struggle for it got
seriously off the ground in the late 60s and early 1970s.  In
particular, the violence that was unleashed in Ireland by the British
imperialists, and the resulting resort to armed struggle by the
republicans, terrified the hell out of these middle class 'Marxists' who
preferred political debates in university bars to any serious struggle
in the streets.

Their hostility to the *actual revolution* unfolding in Ireland - a
struggle for socialism which, of necessity, went down the road of
national liberation (since Ireland was an oppressed nation) - required a
political rationalisation.  This was what was behind Warren's 'theory'.
Warren and BICO justified/rationalised their hostility to the actual
struggle in Ireland, as it was being waged by the Provos and the
IRSP/INLA, by arguing that Irish under-development was the product of
the laziness of the Catholic/nationalist bourgeoisie (what Catholic
bourgeoisie? we might ask, since one was prevented from development for
hundreds of years!)  It was imperialism which was therefore modernising
Ireland and creating the conditions for the possibility of socialism.

This 'analysis', of course, ran counter to Marx and Engels' work on
Ireland so, increasingly over time, this school began to attack Marx and
Engels' analysis of Ireland.  I should point out here that Marx and
Engels knew a great deal about Ireland and their writings on Ireland
amounted to probably the largest single segment of their entire
political writings.  Engels was romantically involved with several
Fenian women, visited Ireland three times, began to learn Irish so he
could read primary sources from earlier centuries, and accumulated a
mass of information for a history of Ireland.  Marx and Engels argued,
as did Lenin later, that Ireland was a touchstone in British politics
and that until British workers learned to solidarise with the struggle
for Irish freedom they'd never break from the apron-strings of the
British bourgeoisie and act as a class for itself or pose any serious
threat to the British ruling class.  And how right they were!

British Marxist academics have been notoriously weak on Ireland.  Look
at all the Marxist academic journals produced in Britain over the past
30 years, or journals in which they are heavily involved, and you will
find very, very little on Ireland, let alone on *British imperialism and
Ireland*, let alone anything that is clearly partisan towards the Irish
freedom struggle and the task of educating, agitating and organising
among people in britain, especially workers, on the issue.

An analysis of imperialism that began as an apologia for British
imperialism in Ireland, motivated by fear of the struggle for national
liberation, spread outwards from people like Warren and Cockshott.  It
has ended up being applied to Third World countries where political
independence has not led to economic independence and significant
development.  Like most bourgeois methodology, this approach is based on
surface appearances, rather than penetrating to the core of the problem.
 Thus, these analysts see that the imperialist powers no longer
politically rule the Third World, these countries have become
independent yet remain under-developed.  Therefore, they reason, the
problem of development must be mainly an internal one.

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