Imperialism--Cold War--Imperialism

Friends,

     The "Cold War" was a multi-faceted enterprise, but its
foundation was always in imperialism.  That much was clear even
to me as a teen in the 1960s, and to those older than I all
along.  The period we call the "Cold War" was simply the form
imperialism took during one specific time.  But imperialism both
pre-dated and post-dated that time, so it would be an error to
assert that the cold war was in any way ESSENTIAL to imperialism
itself. Some of the imperialist facets of that "war":

1.   As Geo-politics, the cold war was a RESUMPTION of the
struggle against (the anti-capitalist ambitions of) the USSR that
had been so rudely interrupted by Hitler's invasion of France and
attack on England.  (Had Hitler constrained his colonial
ambitions to the USSR alone WWII would probably have been limited
to just Germany and the USSR in Europe--let us not forget the
strength of his support throughout the core during the 1930s!) 
The struggle against Bolshevism commenced with the revolution and
continued unabated until 1989.  The temporary alliance of the war
days was always one only of convenience against Hitler, and that
only because he had had the temerity to invade the rest of the
old European core.  That the war stayed largely frozen can be
laid at the feet of the bomb.  (Which collaterally explains the
betrayal of the Hungarian and Czech revolts by Imperialism. 
Their populations, like the Iraqi Kurds or the Vietnamese Hmong,
were expendable.)

2.   As Economics, it was a welfare program for the industrial
suppliers to the military and thereby fed the monopoly sector. 
It thereby vindicated Keynesianism when applied to that sector,
and indirectly sustained the welfare/social-democratic state--the
very one whose demise we have been discussing.

3.   As Ideology, it was a perfect legitimating doctrine for the
*REAL* struggle--the defense of Imperialism against the revolt of
the masses in the periphery that had continued *UNABATED* since
1920 and crested in the post-war period.  To that particular end
the "Cold War" was a convenient cover for countless imperial
interventions and covert leadership of anti-communist mercenary
armies from the Bay of Pigs to the Contras in Nicaragua and
Renamo in Mozambique and Savimbi in Angola etc etc....

4.   With the USSR now slain like the Ottoman empire after WWI
its population is at last FREE TO BE ENSLAVED, completing a very
long process of digestion by the capitalist world-economy that
has been at work since at least the 1960s.  This situation has
exposed the underlying reality that the *PRIMARY* function of the
cold war has always been reasons 2 and 3, --IMPERIALISM SIMPLE--
for whom the existence of the Soviet Empire was a convenient
excuse.  (Not that the nuclear confrontation was not a genuine
threat--only that its existence was a secondary contradiction.)

5.   Now things are moving very quickly, and we must use our time
effectively.  Triumphant imperialism can and is BROADENING the
reign of the law of value over the corpse of the former USSR and
client states (e.g.--Eastern Europe and Vietnam's yearning for
renewed enslavement to global capital).  However it's main
dimension for expansion lies with DEEPENING that law via
increasing enclosure & commodification of all possible aspects of
daily life.  That process of deepening commodification, when
combined with the simultaneous globalized integration of cross-
national commodity-chains, leads inevitably toward the
peripheralization of the working conditions within the core as a
by-product of the trend toward the global equalization of wages. 
Hence the militarization of the police so correctly noted by
Richard.
     One method of mobilizing a rear-guard fight-back is to make
this process as clear as possible to as many as have ears to hear
in every sector of our lives.  This is the kind of grass-roots
work that builds sincere political bases.  Part of this
coalition-building requires personally expanding the social
envelopes of our daily lives to take the time to actually TALK,
CONNECT, and BOND WITH people whom we might otherwise ignore as
we go through life.  This in addition to supporting such
progressive organizations as may exist in our local communities.

6.   One final point.  Really an aside: The nature of the USSR
and China.  Back in the 1970s Rudolph Bahro argued that the USSR
was structurally the same as Egypt of the Pharaohs--what Amin
would have called a "Tributary" state.  I agree.  All of the key
production facilities in both societies were owned by the state,
and all governing bodies were arms of that state.  Labor was
exploited by being paid less than the value it produced, and the
surplus generated was centralized for the purposes of re-
distribution in a manner designed to enable reproduction of the
state and workers while also providing adequate legitimacy. 
Finally, as in Ancient Egypt (or Rome, or China, or the Kmer
Kingdom), the essential legitimating ideology was a state-
sanctioned religion whose principle earthly embodiment,
interpreter, and priest was the person of the emperor.  A
perfectly common and mundane social formation having a much
longer lineage than capitalism.  Hardly mysterious!
     It clearly was not what the founders anticipated, not
"socialism" at all, but it would be unfair to blame them for the
failure and we have learned much since from those failures.  The
central--and DEFINING--difference between their creations,
Ancient Egypt, and genuine socialism was the ABSENCE OF
DEMOCRACY.  Had Egypt pitched out the Pharaoh and run itself
instead as a DEMOCRACY, then it would have been much closer to
the achievement of socialism than the USSR ever was.  This
challenge is the single most difficult one facing genuine
socialism, insofar as its persistent failure of implementation
bespeaks the tenacity of the problem.

--Peter

Relevant Books:


Ernest Mandel  _Late Capitalism_
Baran & Sweezy _Monopoly Capital_
James O'Connor _The Fiscal Crisis of the State_
Rudolph Bahro  _The Alternative in Eastrn Europe_
Charles Bettelheim _Class Struggles in the USSR_
Claudin(?)     _The Communist Movement: 
               From Comintern to Cominform_
Samir Amin     _Accumulation on a World Scale_
Samir Amin     _Unequal Development_
Samir Amin     _Imperialism and Unequal Development_