Today I heard Henry Veltmeyer, a Marxist sociologist, talking about his new book Empire with Imperialism (co-authored with James Petras.) The book's goal is to debunk the Hardt & Negri 'Empire' thesis that the state no longer has a role to play in promoting capitalism, a thesis the American state is all too happy with. Veltmeyer and Petras trace the last 50 years of the U.S. state's plan to establish military-economic hegemony.

Cover design courtesy of the Weekly World News, it appears

I'll say more when I've actually read the book, but for now, I was very impressed by Veltmeyer's take on the imperialism of development. He started by showing that capitalism sucks money from underdeveloped countries - $100 billion a year more than they receive in aid. So-called development, which often depends on poor countries privatizing their public assets, enables this process. So far, fairly uncontroversial (for leftists, at least!)

Reform vs. revolution

But he also framed the debate. During the Cold War, development was seen by rich countries as a 'reform vs. revolution' choice. Anti-colonial movements, national liberation struggles, and the Soviet bloc all posed threats to the world market. The first two were infused with socialist & radical ideas. (And so was the last one, at least in the minds of American cold warriors.) Free market capitalism had to prove it could develop, so poor people wouldn't be drawn to revolution. And develop they did: large sums of money flowed to development projects, aided by pragmatic 3rd World leaders themselves, who knew a good deal when they saw it. At least until the early 70s, living standards in the 3rd World rose steadily.

Neo-liberalism vs. reform

This didn't last. The end of the gold standard, the oil shock, the financialization of capital - all were symptoms of capitalism's inability to maintain profits. Radical left movements threatened the very conditions in which capitalism operated. But ruling classes, who are nothing if not resilient, fought back. They attached strings to development money. They encouraged cash crop & resource extraction, opening national economies further to the whims of the market.

I'm still not quite clear on the virtues of capitalism... Patrice Lumumba

And the ebbing tide of socialist movements changed the terms for debate. By the end of the Cold War, revolution was no longer on the agenda in most of the world. Now, those very developments that the 1st world had encouraged, as a bulwark against communism, became obstacles. Previously a healthy public energy sector showed everyone the virtues of capitalism. Now it got in the way of more profits, and the western financiers began demanding privatization. The task of capitalism was no longer to stabilize - it was to destabilize, ripping apart the very structures imperialism had helped to create.

This longterm shift in imperial strategies had its consequences beyond the immediate loss of independence. Horizons narrowed in the 3rd world, possibilities disappeared. Where previously, collective revolutionary transformation was an open question, now it became a matter of surviving within the strict confines of neoliberalism. The IMF, World Bank, multi-national corporations held the strings, and everyone jerked & bobbed to the market's tune. Within this context, development became micro: now the talk became 'empowering local producers', micro-credit - in other words, developing within the system. There was no more talk of changing the rules, just of surviving as best you can.

Which is completely against the very nature of capitalism: the big always get bigger, swallowing up the small. The drive to accumulate profits is what sends imperialist armies abroad in the first place. The same people who are making the development rules, benefit from their implementation: free trade always favours the rich. (Which is why the U.S. and the EU push for opening 3rd World markets but maintain their own strict import regulations.)
Imperialism??? But... we're about motherhood!

Interestingly, where armies aren't necessary, development NGOs fill their shoes, promoting 'local development strategies'. The point is not whether development is local, in of itself: it's that a world system of profit accumulation structures the opportunities for the local. NGOs, wittingly or not, promote that system. And another word for that promotion is imperialism.