The Theater of Inequality

In his essay, "What is Enlightenment", Immanuel Kant talks about the various types of self-anointed social guardians who "having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure such docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them should they attempt to walk alone." This makes salient the point that fear is the primary tool in the oppressor's bag of tricks. But, being the great genius that he was, he then warned against what might seem a logical step once you begin to see the vicious nature of the guardians snares--"for they may finally take revenge upon their originators, or on their descendants. Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Perhaps revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering, or power-grabbing oppression. But it can never truly reform a manner of thinking. Instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking masses." Kant's essay was written in 1784, four years before the start of the French Revolution. And while my essay discusses what I view as the current version of social oppression in the form of neoliberalism, I agree with Kant that dealing with oppression externally without addressing the internal psychological conditions that enable oppression is an exercise in futility. In his essay Kant diagnoses the problem as a lack of rational maturity: "Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men...gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardian: It is so easy to be immature." Rather than relying on external forms of authority for rational and moral guidance, Kant urges us to rely on the sovereignty of reason. I bring this up in the abstract, as it is not my intention to imply a radical overthrow of external authority is a remedy for various economic and political forms of oppression, as doing so would not address the internal root causes that leave us vulnerable to the oppressors fear tactics. Nevertheless, I feel a crucial first step is to to clearly perceive the tangled web the oppressor weaves.

2004

Contribution to book symposium on Capital, the State, and War: Class Conflict and Geopolitics in the Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914-1945, The Disorder of Things blog, 2015

Monthly Review, 2006

Past and Present, 2020

Socialist Register, 2009

I begin with the phrase 'imperialism of our time' as homage to Michal Kalecki who wrote his seminal essay 'Fascism of Our Time' at the juncture when the American far right had made a serious bid for the Presidency with the emergence of Barry Goldwater as the Republican candidate in the 1964 US election. Kalecki did not refer to Mussolini directly, although he might have, since it was after all Mussolini who first said that fascism is simply that form of rule in which government unites with 'corporations'-a term which for Mussolini meant something not unlike what President Eisenhower meant when warning of the US government's convergence with the 'military-industrial complex'. Kalecki's analysis did suggest, however, that in its extreme form industrial capitalism does have an inherent fascist tendency, and he wondered what fascism would look like if it ever came to the United States in conditions of prosperity and stable electoral democracy. Kalecki's intent was not to suggest that the US was becoming fascist, nor do I mean to imply that we are living in fascist times. Nonetheless, one of the salient features of the present conjuncture is that the United States, the leading imperialist country with historically unprecedented global power, is today governed by perhaps the most rightwing government in a century. The chickens of the most hysterical forms of authoritarianism that the US has been routinely exporting to large parts of the globe seem to be coming home to roost, with national as well as global consequences, including military consequences. I also use the simple phrase 'imperialism of our time' with the more modest aim of avoiding terms like 'New Imperialism' which have been in vogue at various times, with varying meanings. Imperialism has been with us for a very long time, in great many forms, and constantly re-invents itself, so to speak, as the structure of global capitalism itself changes. What is offered here is a set of provisional notes toward the understanding of a conjuncture, 'our time', which is itself a complex of continuities and discontinuities-and, as is usual with

rougeforum.org

Third World Quarterly (25th Anniversary Issue), 2004

The East Asian financial crisis, the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the launching of the war on terrorism can be seen as three aspects of a single historical moment that marks the passage from one strategy of US imperialism to another. No longer based primarily on financial globalisation as the means through which the power and control of the corporations and government of the USA is extended over the world, as it was in the 1990s, US strategy is now more openly based on the direct control of productive assets and territory. This historical moment has also marked the definitive end of the idea of the Third World and its associated ideology of Third Worldism. Although this end has, of course, been repeatedly proclaimed, and contested, over the past two decades, this article argues that the idea of the Third World, and the associated ideas of development and non-alignment, were predicated upon the core concept of the national bourgeoisie and associated notions of the inherently progressive potential of nationalism. It traces the historical emergence of this idea in the work of Lenin and its subsequent trajectory during its cold war heyday. I emphasise that the idea of a united and rising Third World had a greater reality as a hope than it had as an objective historical possibility. The present moment in US imperialism is one where even that hope cannot be sustained—thus the definitive end of the idea of the Third World.