What does it mean to be anti-imperialist?
Billy Bob's Blowback Roundtable
THE WORLD THROUGH AN INDEPENDENT LEFT LENS
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What does it mean to be anti-imperialist?
A wide-ranging discussion on imperialism. The panel discusses the nature of Western imperialism and its nasty tendency to use all manner of dirty tricks, from global demonisation to blackmail, regime change ops, including organising proxy groups such as ISIS, economic warfare (sanctions), long-term insurgencies, and vicious targeted terrorism. Billy Bob clarifies that usually "imperialism" is chiefly understood in two forms: The Marxist-Leninist way which sees imperialism as merely the latest and most developed (and decaying) phase of capitalism, finance capitalism, and the more bourgeois, liberal interpretation, which sees imperialism simply as a big nation oppressing and exploiting weaker ones. In general, the panel agrees that, as a rule, imperialism exists when an entity—Britain, France, the US—uses the powers of the state to conquer and maintain markets around the globe, largely because capitalism, especially in the imperialist phase, needs constant expansion to survive. Carlo and Ian point out that from domestic labour disturbances, where the state can intervene in favor of the oligarchs, or allow private armies (i.e., Pinkertons, etc.) to be used against the working class, to open international intervention using national state resources such as the armed forces (Marines, navy, army, etc.) the capitalists who control the bourgeois state as a class, utllize the national might to benefit their own interests, often at the expense of the masses.
Basically, and this is not widely understood in capitalist societies for obvious reasons, Marx saw all class-divided societies as "class dictatorships." Under regimes that call themselves feudal, the king and the nobles exert state class power. In "liberal democracies," the capitalist multimillionaires control the state —own the political, military, media and educational class—and exercise a class dictatorship over the vast majority of the population, the basically propertyless ordinary citizens. The state is then the instrument used by the capitalist in power to impose a social peace between two classes in which one is dominant and exploitative and another that is subordinate and without the means to impose its collective will, or even implement self-defence.
EDITOR'S NOTE
The above intro note was prepared by Patrice Greanville, who bears full responsibility for its possible inadequacies. For a full discussion of the role of the state in the transition to communism, please see V. Lenin's The State and Revolution, The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State. But, what is this "dictatorship of the proletariat" that worries so many defenders of capitalism? This excerpt from the aforementioned work by Lenin is helpful:
...The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence. Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he said, as the reader will remember, that "the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist". Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism. Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then "the state... ceases to exist", and "it becomes possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state. The expression "the state withers away" is very well-chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the spontaneous nature of the process. Only habit can, and undoubtedly will, have such an effect; for we see around us on millions of occassions how readily people become accustomed to observing the necessary rules of social intercourse when there is no exploitation, when there is nothing that arouses indignation, evokes protest and revolt, and creates the need for suppression. And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord. In other words, under capitalism we have the state in the proper sense of the word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one class by another, and, what is more, of the majority by the minority. Naturally, to be successful, such an undertaking as the systematic suppression of the exploited majority by the exploiting minority calls for the utmost ferocity and savagery in the matter of suppressing, it calls for seas of blood, through which mankind is actually wading its way in slavery, serfdom and wage labor. Furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the “state”, is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state. It is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage-laborers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. Naturally, the exploiters are unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple “machine”, almost without a “machine”, without a special apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed people (such as the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, we would remark, running ahead). Lastly, only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed--“nobody” in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population. We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away. |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCEBilly Bob is a dedicated anti-imperialist activist and blogger. He hosts the Blowback roundatable. You can reach him at his Facebook page HERE.
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