Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation reviews SR 2005

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Book Review

Socialist Register 2005

- PB

Socialist Register (SR) 2005 is a companion volume to
the 2004 register on imperialism. The essays are
focused on financial and cultural aspects as well as
regional organisation of imperialism. The focus is on
US imperialism and the penetration of globalised
capitalism in most of the world.

Varda Burstyn?s first essay on ?The New Imperial Order
Foretold,? is rather weak. It takes themes from
Huxley?s Brave New World and Orwell?s Nineteen
Eighty-Four, to write an ?Empire? genre essay. It
makes some naïve political assertions such as after
the fall of Soviet Union the ?Big Brother had
relocated to United States, where, grown huge on the
fear generated by September 11?. he morphed into a
hybrid creature.? It has some bits of interesting
information on newer concepts and technologies such as
neuromarketing and nanotechnology.

?The Contradictions of US supremacy? by Stephen Gill
discusses the long term strategy of US to secure a
world market where capital largely determines social
development. This US strategy is not without
contradictions, crises or resistance. Using the
example of Walmart, the world?s biggest retailer and
the second largest US employer after the Pentagon it
illustrates how ?everyday low prices? are ensured with
?everyday low wages? of the non-unionised employees.
This monopoly retailer with $ 256 billion in annual
sales is the 8th largest trading partner of China. It
forces supplying companies to dramatically lower
prices and ensure low wages everywhere. In this era of
plummeting wages, federal debt of US is $ 6.5 trillion
and the situation is worse at the state level. The
continuous balance-of-payments crises have ensured
that foreign investors own $ 8 trillion of financial
assets. When liabilities related to social programs
are taken into account the fiscal policy is
off-balance by $ 43.4 trillion. This financial
situation might worsen because of the increasing costs
of war and the expense of maintaining between 700 to a
1000 bases worldwide and 6000 within US territories.

The most insightful essay in this volume is Leo
Panitch and Sam Gindin?s ?Finance and American Empire?
that analyses the importance of US financial capital
in the historical reconstruction of capitalism under
US hegemony post World War II. The Bretton Woods
arrangements planted the seeds of the new trading
order that contributed to the influence and power of
financial capital. It then evolved amidst the
inflationary pressures and sharpening of class
struggles of the 1960-70s, which was followed by the
Volcker shock of the 1980s. Presently there are not
only crises and contradictions in the relationships of
finance, production, and imperialism but also immense
synergies that can be ignored at our own peril. The
last several decades have witnessed the deepening and
extension of financial markets internationally that
have contributed to the increase in power and
influence of American imperialism. In the present
context working class cannot ally themselves with an
almost non-existent ?national bourgeoisie? or bank on
the contradictions between finance and industrial
capital. They have to build an anti-imperialist and
anti-capitalist class struggle.

Christopher Rude has a complementary essay on ?The
Role of Financial Discipline in Imperial Strategy,?
which investigates the role that the US state plays in
regulating, but not eliminating, the financial and
economic crises. It examines the hedge fund and Asian
economic crises of the late 1990s and explains how the
inherent financial instability of capitalism is
employed by US imperial state to discipline countries.
In order to manage the turmoil it regulates and
controls the global financial markets systemically
with the latest international financial architecture
of G7 countries. The US is able to maintain it
hegemony in the financial markets not just through the
US stock market but more importantly through the US
treasury market.

Another essay on culture examines how Hollywood now
consists of international oligopolies that have
dramatically increased control of the production and
distribution of entertainment in most countries.
Despite protection other countries? film industries
have become branch plants for Hollywood supplying
cheap skilled labour, inspiration of innovative styles
and new stars. This has been termed the US dominated
international division of cultural labour. The article
does not elaborate more on this aspect but rather
focuses on the action film genre. The action film
embody and depict the hegemony of US capital and
technology with narratives and ideologies that glorify
American individualism, the (America?s victory of)
good over evil with repetitive crushing of foes. It
provides good examples of how post September 11th, the
Pentagon and the White House have worked closely with
film corporations to produce ?patriotic themes?
appropriate for the times. It would have also been
informative for SR?s readers if Forsyth?s ?Hollywood
Reloaded? had elaborated on the organisation of the
international film industry under US hegemony.

Harriet Friedmann discusses globalised agriculture in
?Feeding the Empire.? It presents a detailed analysis
of the changes in social relations across the whole
spectrum of activities in the international production
and consumption of food. A historical background of
the two food regimes under the hegemony of Britain and
US is provided. The settler-colonial food regime,
which emerged from 1870-1914, centered on the Atlantic
trade between England and the Americas but also
included other regions from Danube basin to Punjab.
The mercantile-industrial food regime emerged after
the collapse of the Britain dominated food regime in
the post world war period. The essay starkly points
out that amidst a world food crisis the world food
summit of 1974 promised hunger free world in a decade.
Not only has that promise not been met but the
condition has significantly worsened since then. Giant
agrofood corporations now merged with tobacco
companies and agricultural chemical companies now
merged with grain traders and seed companies, dominate
this state subsidised regime especially in US and
Europe. These giant corporations along with the
imperial states have devastated livelihoods,
traditional food sources, and environment but the
social movements continue to challenge their hegemony.


In ?Reviving the Developmental State? The Myth of the
National Bourgeoisie,? Vivek Chibber discusses the
assumption about the national bourgeoisie of its
status as the natural social force for rapid
development. Employing instruments of tariffs and
subsidies the ?domestic capitalist class? grew by
feeding on the domestic market. There is a good
discussion of how state enterprises established in
sectors unattractive to the private sector, at the
expense of public, provided cheap inputs to private
sector and purchased private sector products at
inflated prices. The ?Korean miracle? is an
appropriate illustration of this policy. Chibber
claims that ?Marxists rarely if ever considered that
there would be tensions around the process of domestic
capitalist development itself.? A section of the
Indian Marxist have recognised that the character of
bourgeoisie was really ?comprador? and studied the
tensions. The Marxist-Leninist (ML) movement in India
has least been effected by this myth and have not
called for alliances with the ?national bourgeoisie?
but rather for the socialization of means of
production, a fact missed by Chibber. The article
could also have covered the newer forms that the
comprador bourgeoisie has evolved into.

Several essays in SR are devoted to imperialism in
South-East Asia, China, South Africa, Latin America,
Russia and Europe. The Greenfield?s essay on
South-East Asia focuses on the Thai, Indonesian and
Malaysian elite. It not only focuses on the links with
US and Europe but also the connections and investments
in China. It argues that the resistance should not
focus on ?divisions? between foreign capitalists and
local capitalists and then defend local capitalists.
This relationship elegantly exemplified in the
McDonald?s poster in Indonesia which reads ?In the
name of Allah, the merciful and the gracious,
McDonald?s Indonesia is owned by an indigenous Muslim
Indonesian.?

?The Media Matrix: China?s Integration Into Global
Capitalism,? is an essay by Yuezhi Zhao on the media
multinational corporations (MNCs) in China. From the
first MNC advertisements on Chinese TV in 1979 to the
lecture of Rupert Murdoch to the Central Party School
in 2003 requesting further liberalisation of media
market and Jiang Zemin?s admiration for Hollywood
blockbuster Titanic to Prof. Jianming of Qinghua
University proclaiming the global popularity of
Hollywood as the triumph of ?advanced culture? of one
nation over the ?backward culture? of others, China
has come a long way from a revolutionary socialist
state. Hollywood is re-emerging to a dominant position
that it had prior to 1949 at the expense of the
indigenous film industry established after the
revolution. Sony alone has invested $ 100 million in
China?s music and movie industries in a period of 3
years. The capital flight ? mostly in the form of
illegal transfer of state assets ? of  $48 billion
compared to $ 47 billion foreign direct investment
(FDI) makes this situation quite grim. In this
context, Mao has re-emerged as an anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist political and cultural symbol for
millions of Chinese workers and farmers and plays such
as ?Che Guevara? are receiving overwhelming
popularity.

Patrick Bond?s essay details how Mbeki is situating
South Africa as the continent?s leading
bourgeois-aspirant country by ?talking left and
walking right.? The African National Congress
government while opposing the Iraq sold $ 160 million
worth of armaments to Britain. South Africa continues
to pursue neoliberal policies and attacking labour.
The situation is Sub-Saharan Africa with debt soaring
to 66% of GDP in 2000, leaving Africa to repay $ 6.2
billion more than it received in loans. Doug Stokes?s
essay on Colombia, describes US imperialism and
Columbian elite perpetrating state terror to suppress
the revolutionary guerrilla movement. Most of more
than 8000 political assassinations were conducted by
the paramilitaries allied to the military. Bush?s
Andean Regional Initiative continues to provide
millions in yearly funding to continue this terror.
Paul Cammack?s short essay also details how the rest
of Latin American is suffering because of the
international organisations push to create bourgeois
hegemony through developing competition cultures at
the global and regional levels. The net FDI inflows to
Latin America and Caribbean have gone from $ 78
billion in 2000 to $ 36 billion in 2003.

The two essays on Europe describe the relationships
between US and Europe. The first one on the European
Union (EU) discusses political, economic, and
financial hegemony of US over EU based on Panitch and
Gindin?s work. Bohle?s essay describes the
contradictions in the expansion of EU and US capital
in Eastern Europe. The essay on Russia focuses on the
state and its dependence on US imperialism. There is
an essay on critique of Habermas?s manifesto on the
renaissance of Europe. These four essays are general
in nature with minimal new insights. Tony Benn?s
interview is disappointing, not surprisingly though,
on many fronts but especially the illusion he creates
about the Labour party. He states ?We?ve got many, too
many, different socialist parties in Britain ? if you
can?t win the Labour party you can?t win Britain.? The
Labour party which has historically been part of the
British imperialism and continues to perpetrate crimes
against humanity is what has to be saved!

In SR?s second volume on imperialism, one would have
expected a more profound analysis of resistance to
imperialism. The resistance to imperialism and their
national allies is building, especially in the Middle
East that is struggling against latest imperial
onslaught. The resistance against imperialism is
taking various forms from Nepal to Brazil to US.
Besides some mentions of resistance, the SR has
interviewed a leader of the Stop the War Coalition of
England, Tony Benn. He is not a grass roots socialist
organiser but rather embodies the social democrats
working within the system. The space could have been
better used by interviewing organisers from Nepal,
Iraq, Afghanistan, or other hotbeds of resistance. Two
volumes of essays on imperialism in the Socialist
Register should have provided enough space for the
peoples? struggles, the only force that can wipe out
imperialism. Nevertheless, SR 2005 has numerous very
important essays on imperialism and should serve as an
important resource.

Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org