Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This article aims to explore the relationship between imperialism and political ecology, the identifying characteristics of the historical development of ecological imperialism, and the ecosocial implications of its cosmetic adaptation—namely, green imperialism—in a context of growing threat and biophysical concern. We first provide a succinct updated definition of imperialism based on world-systems analysis, which serves to understand imperialism as the system of economic domination of global capitalism, placing countries at the core of the system at one pole of extraction of labor, energy, and material resources, and those at the periphery at the opposite pole of supply. This hierarchization helps to understand ecological imperialism as a series of externalizations that the core tends to implement globally, transforming the periphery into a drain for these externalizations. As part of it, green imperialism appears as a new mode of accumulation aimed at preserving the imperial mode of living in the core legitimized by supposedly environmentally beneficial policies and discourses. We conclude by addressing the need for a fruitful dialogue between the critiques of ecologically unequal exchange and the radical positions of contemporary degrowth in order to reduce the most harmful productive sectors and favor a socially just transition and development in the Global South.

The neoliberal forms of imperial rule that had destroyed the hopes of the liberation movements were under attack. In order to counter the possibilities for a massive breakthrough at the popular level, the Western forces mounted an invasion of Libya using the mantra of humanitarianism to disrupt, militarily, political and economic life in Africa. Imperialism in Africa had matured from the cruder colonial forms and worked through the Bretton Woods institutions while unleashing divisive ideas on cultural and religious levels. Yet, Africa remains the space of the worst forms of exploitation of the capitalist system and has inspired continuity in anti-imperialism from colonial times to the present. Today, in the twenty-first century, the older forms of class mobilization of the national liberation era have exhausted their potential and there are new social forces that have arisen that are fighting for reparative justice, peace, life, health, and the repair of the natural environment. These movements, and their anti-imperialist ideas, had kept the flames of African freedom burning. Adapted from the source document.

When international media were broadcasting live video footage of Tunisians gathering in hundreds of thousands in front of the central office in Tunis of the long-terrifying ministry of home security, chanting in one voice "the people want to bring down the regime," something had already changed: ordinary people realized they could make huge changes. Weeks later, the Egyptian uprising removed the Mubarak regime that had been entrenched in power for over thirty years&hellip;. The neoliberal forms of imperial rule that had destroyed the hopes of the liberation movements were under attack. In order to counter the possibilities for a massive breakthrough at the popular level, the Western forces mounted an invasion of Libya using the mantra of humanitarianism to disrupt, militarily, political and economic life in Africa. Later in collusion with the counter-revolutionary forces in the Egyptian military, Western imperialism sought to roll back the gains of people in the streets of Tunis and Cairo.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-3" title="Vol. 67, No. 3: July 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

Discusses US foreign policy, militarism, and geopolitics, focusing on the Middle East and Iraq War, and international activism in opposition to US global hegemony; 14 articles. Based mostly on papers presented at a conference organized in honor of Harry Magdoff's 90th birthday, held in Burlington, Vermont, May 3, 2003. Contents: The new age of imperialism, by John Bellamy Foster; Confronting the empire, by Samir Amin; U.S. weakness and the struggle for hegemony, by Immanuel Wallerstein; U.S. hegemony today, by Peter Gowan; The new geopolitics, by Michael Klare; The global minotaur, by Joseph Halevi and Yanis Varoufakis; The two wings of the eagle, by William K. Tabb; The grid of history: cowboys and Indians, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; Can U.S. workers embrace anti-imperialism? by William Fletcher, Jr.; Notes on the antiwar movement, by Barbara Epstein; Prospects for anti-imperalism: coming to terms with our own bourgeoisie, by Sam Gindin; Construction of an enemy, by Eleanor Stein; Homeland imperialism: fear and resistance, by Bernardine Dohrin; The parameters of resistance, by Amiya Kumar Bagchi.

The United States, since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has often been accused of exhibited a new imperialism or new militarism. However, the author argues that the United States has long had both imperialistic & militaristic designs on the rest of the world & that little actually changed with U.S. actions after 9/11. The most important change that he does see as having occurred is that the U.S. is more overt in its imperialistic actions & philosophy than it was before 9/11. A continuation of its current imperialism, & its current openness about this philosophy, will lead to "global barbarism or worse." However, while imperialism has long been the U.S. mode of action, the United States does not have to continue in this vein, for nothing in human history is inevitable. D. Knaff

Scholars of modern imperialism have conventionally defined it in clear contrast against the ostensibly legitimate rule of the sovereign territorial state. From this conventional perspective, the theoretical distinctiveness of imperialism as a phenomenon appears in juxtaposition against normal sovereign state rule and effectively 'begins' at the transgressions of state power beyond some accepted space of normalized sovereign dominion. While the spatial and temporal dimensions of sovereignty have been well explored and the spatial distinctiveness of imperialism has mirrored that of sovereignty, the temporality of imperialism has not been as carefully considered. While the problems of what imperialism 'is' and what it 'does' have been thoroughly examined, 'when' imperialism is has not. This article aims to correct this by offering a critique of the conventional temporality of imperialism and its subjection to a spatial ideology, and instead articulating a critical temporality of imperialism that avoids some of the conventional conception's limitations, especially that of naturalizing state rule and its claims to legitimacy.

Lenin, Bukharin, Stalin, and Trotsky in Russia, as well as Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Den Xiaoping in China, shaped the history of the two great revolutions of the twentieth century. As leaders of revolutionary communist parties and then later as leaders of revolutionary states, they were confronted with the problems faced by a triumphant revolution in countries of peripheral capitalism and forced to revise the theses inherited from the historical Marxism of the Second International. With the benefit of hindsight, the author will indicate the limitations of their analyses. Lenin and Bukharin considered imperialism to be a new stage of capitalism associated with the development of monopolies. The revolution, made in the name of socialism (and communism), was, in fact, something else: mainly a peasant revolution. In his opinion, Trotsky would certainly not have done better. His attitude towards the rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors and his later equivocations demonstrate that he was no different than the other Bolshevik leaders in government. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the political economy of French imperialism from a critical Marxist perspective. It demonstrates how France has maintained a major role on the international scene, especially militarily, despite experiencing a relative decline in world economic power since the 1990s. In this regard, three features have marked the French imperial project: (1) the core role of state institutions and corporate elites in making French capitalism, and the protracted closeness of the state-capital nexus; (2) the strength of militarism in economic, political, and social realms; and (3) the consolidation of rentier interests not only in the corporate power bloc, but also at a political level. Over the past century, these three dynamics have underpinned and reinforced a particular project of empire in France – one that bears relevance to current debates on globalisation and the 'new imperialism'. By examining these issues, this paper seeks to further develop the Marxist theory of international political economy.

The globalization of production (and finance)—which emerged along with neoliberalism out of the economic stagnation of the mid–1970s and then accelerated with the demise of Soviet-type societies and China's reintegration into the capitalist world system—has generated a more generalized monopoly capitalism, ushering in what can be called late imperialism. Late imperialism refers to the present period of monopoly-finance capital and stagnation, declining U.S. hegemony and rising world conflict, accompanied by growing threats to the ecological bases of civilization and life itself. It stands at its core for the extreme, hierarchical relations governing the capitalist world economy in the twenty-first century, which is increasingly dominated by mega-multinational corporations and a handful of states at the center of the world system. Just as it is now common to refer to late capitalism in recognition of the end times brought on by simultaneous economic and ecological dislocations, so it is necessary today to speak of late imperialism, reflecting the global dimensions and contradictions of that system, cutting across all other divisions, and posing a "global rift" in human historical development: an epochal crisis posing the question of "ruin or revolution."

This essay approaches the neoliberal tradition of thought through the lens of liberal imperialism. Seeking to bring scholarship on the history of neoliberal ideas together with research on liberal defences of empire, I show that the neoliberal tradition of thought contains a number of formal, explicit, and systematic defences of (European) colonialism. In the first section of the essay, I contextualise neoliberal imperialism by showing that many prominent early neoliberals had close ties to the British Colonial Office. I then offer a close reading of two highly influential instances of the neoliberal defence of empire. The first was articulated between the 1930s and 1940s by Herbert Frankel, who saw colonisation as a form of civilisational improvement that places a heavy ethical and political burden on the coloniser. The second was articulated by Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan between the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to Frankel's civilisational justification of colonialism, Gann and Duignan articulated a more dispassionate cost-benefit argument, claiming that colonialism's advantages outweigh its disadvantages. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this shift from a civilisational to a consequentialist frame both for the neoliberal tradition and for liberal imperialist discourse at large.