A new American politics is definitely needed today. The problem we face is what kind? If the goal of "independent political action" is to gain "power," to "function effectively" as a means to "lobby" or "resolve" specific issues of practical importance, I have no doubt that the supporters of Jesse Jackson and his "Rainbow Coalition" have a workable formula. They are engaged in electoral politics with a vengeance. They have a charismatic leader, a corps of elite public figures, a semi-bureaucratic organization, a growing "following" of "masses," many of whom seem to be following their leaders with almost unswerving obedience. The program of this coalition is pragmatic, vague, and sometimes contradictory. The coalition's future-unless it splinters into independent grassroots tendencies-will be determined largely by the media attention its leaders, particularly Jackson, attracts. This is the oldtime electoral politics of the New Deal era with a slightly heightened shrill of "progressive"...
8/15/2008
8/12/2008
Imperialism and global political economy
It has become a cliche to say that the ideas of empire and imperialism have enjoyed a renaissance in the early years of the 21st century. The main reasons for this are, of course, the global primacy of the United States and the arrogance with which the Bush administration has flaunted this pre-eminence, above all in the military field. Marxists should be particularly well equipped to respond to this development, given the importance that their tradition has given to the concept of imperialism. More particularly, the Marxist theory of imperialism is distinctive in that it does not treat empire simply as a transhistorical form of political domination—as in, for example, Michael Doyle’s succinct definition of imperialism as ‘effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society’—but rather sets modern imperialism in the context of the historical development of the capitalist mode of production.1There are, of course, different versions of this intellectual...
8/11/2008
Capitalist Development And The State : Bases And Alternatives (1979)
The more developed countries of Latin America are attempting to defineforeign policy objectives that take advantage of contradictions in theinternational order and allow these countries some independent policy-making. But these countries remain dependent and assure an internalsocial order favorable to capitalist interests and consequently fail tochallenge one of the basic objectives of American foreign policy.Multinational enterprises continue to receive support from the foreignpolicies of their countries of origin, as well as from local states.How can these contradictory forces act together? It is throughcontradictions that the historical process unfolds. Dependentdevelopment occurs through frictions, accords, and alliances between thestate and business enterprises. But this type of development also occursbecause both the state and business enterprises pursue policies thatform markets based on the concentration of incomes and on the socialexclusion of majorities. These processes demand...