Imperialism and the United States: Responses to Michael Walzer
Brand, Horst
DURING THE beginning years of the twentieth century, the administration of the German colony of Southwest Africa (now Namibia) decided to construct a concessionary railroad linking a mining...
...thereupon Emperor William II dissolved the Reichstag, leading to new elections in which the Social Democrats lost nearly onehalf of their representatives...
...Kautsky's position was not adopted unreservedly until the party's congress in 1928...
...A socialist colonial policy, he argued, was a contradiction in terms: all colonial policy represented alien rule and thus was a denial of socialism's basic idea regarding the right to freedom and independence...
...Fall 2003) is at best artificial— it has no virtue of clarification...
...The Social Democrat congress of 1907 resisted adoption of Kautsky's unambiguous position...
...This loss, caused chiefly by the nationalist fervor of the electorate, aroused sharp inner-party disputes as to the "realism" of the party's colonial policy...
...That capitalism played a dynamic role in advancing the "forces of production," and that its achievements were to be the heritage of a socialist society, was not questioned by any of the leading thinkers of the left...
...Although the remark at the time applied chiefly to the Soviet Union, it was inconceivable to thinkers like Kautsky that capitalism at home or its imperialist form abroad could be a basis for democratic development...
...A socialist colonial regime might be benign but would nonetheless be based on force and oppression...
...Was the war against Iraq "imperialist...
...Call it imperialism, call it hegemony, both are forms of domination...
...The major intellectual contest was between Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein...
...The desire for political hegemony . . . cannot but be regarded as a form of imperialism...
...But such negotiations are unlikely to modify their fundamental purpose, which is to continue to commercialize the world economy, enlarge profits, insist on the unrestricted right to invest, and safeguard property rights broadly defined...
...It is patent that the war and the attempt eventually to install an Iraqi government sympathetic to American policy are means to ensure American hegemony in the Middle East, including of course the control of its petroleum resources...
...M. Rostovtzeff, the great historian of the ancient world, has written (if in a context different from the modern age), "Imperialism has not always involved the intention of acquiring an increase DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 95 ARGUMENTS in territory...
...There have been means less expensive than those applied in Iraq, but which today may be less practicable...
...The Hereros bitterly resisted, and large numbers of them, including women and children, were killed by German troops...
...Not one of them, however, confused democracy with capitalism and "the market...
...It constituted "the foundation" that would safeguard the process of lasting growth of the masses...
...The belief that, under humane regimes, colonialism would promote the forces of production had the effect of sustaining the rule of imperial countries and the belief in their cultural mission...
...Kautsky opposed colonialism and uncompromisingly demanded the self-determination of people...
...The distinction Michael Walzer makes between imperialism and hegemony ("Is There an American Empire...
...The removal of Saddam Hussein, unquestionably a plus, remains but a sideshow in the drama of hegemonic ambition, the successful outcome of which, in a historical era characterized by fervent nationalism and anti-colonialism, seems to me to be profoundly dubious...
...The institutions that channel those forces—the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank—may be amenable to negotiating with this or that nongovernmental organization...
...It is true that the hegemonic reach of the United States, as of any great power, has limits and can to an extent be constrained...
...Resistance to these forces may not always deserve the cachet of democratic struggle, but the drive for self-determination remains the precondition for that struggle...
...The congress accepted the position advocated by Bernstein (as well as by Jean Jaures, the French socialist leader), that it behooved the representatives of social democracy to fight the exploitation of native people and to demand reforms that would improve their condition...
...But the thrust of the hegemonic drive, fueled as it is by the expansionary dynamics of corporate capitalism and its links with the state, must not be underestimated, and must be part of the political analysis that Walzer calls for...
...Imperialism was first elucidated theoretically as part of evolving world capitalism by the European left (for example, Rudolf Hilferding) early in the twentieth century...
...DURING THE beginning years of the twentieth century, the administration of the German colony of Southwest Africa (now Namibia) decided to construct a concessionary railroad linking a mining area in the east of the colony with the coast, running straight through the pasture lands of the Hereros, a native people...
...Its own ambiguity was rooted in the thought of Bernstein and others that socialism must strive to place "the forces of production" at the service of all humankind, and so the party should view colonialism as an integral part of the universal goal of cultural advance borne by the socialist movement...
...the overthrow of the Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz or of Salvador Allende in Chile...
...No expensive military forces were required, only a willing strata of native-born collaborators and praetorian guards trained in the United States...
...In his bitter struggles with Lenin and Bolshevism, Kautsky wrote, "Democracy is now even more important than the economic elevation of the proletariat...
...HORST BRAND has frequently contributed to Dissent...
...Examples are the coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran in 1953...
...In late 1906, the German government requested additional credits for its warfare in Southwest Africa from the Reichstag, which the Social Democrats refused to approve...
Vol. 51 • January 2004 • No. 1
