Since I had really come of age politically with the rise of the anti-globalization movement, this week felt familiar, which actually enabled me to quickly take everything deeper. We looked at the fallout of September 11, in the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuous colonization of Palestine and the war machines that support that, the attempts of the majority nations to create an alternative world vision (i.e. the Third World project) and the success of the South African anti-apartheid movement and the Zapatista uprising.
Empires: Large, composite, multinational unit, usually created by conquest and divided between a dominant centre and subordinate peripheries
Imperialism: actions and attitudes which uphold empires (without direct political rule.)
Together we crafted a streamlined theory and definition of neoliberalism, which is also referred to as globalization, building on our understanding of the rise of capitalism from last session:
How Neoliberalism Came About, I think.
There was feudalism, which had lords and serfs where serfs still worked the land directly to meet their needs and there was little wage exchanged. Then as the serfs began to resist being lorded over, the ruling class changed the game, privatized the common lands, and forced some people into waged jobs, and others into unpaid labor – i.e. capitalism. This built up the power of European nation-states (governments) which allowed them to roam the globe and colonize 80% of the world. Then as other places began to resist, overthrow the colonizers, and create their own nation-state powers, and unite together under various coalitions, including the United Nations, the European/US ruling class, were like, crap now how do we overpower all these nation states? So they began to focus on corporate power, which doesn’t have to play in the same arena as governments – they are accountable neither to common citizens (as governments have to pretend to be) nor to the UN or other international bodies. So they started to erode the power of states. Now, corporations have more wealth and more power than most countries.
To recap: feudalism -> peasant resistance -> capitalism (state power) -> national liberation (development of Third World nations) - > neoliberalism (corporate power).
Structural Adjustment in the World and in the United States of Amerikkka
A lot of this happened via the World Bank/IMF’s structural adjustment programs, which basically preyed on countried in need, giving them loans with really strict requirements that they cut social spending (education, health, etc), stop protecting their local economy via labor unions, labor laws, subsidies, and environmental regulations, and forced them to open up to international corporations.
From here, it’s really interesting to see how similar strategies get employed in the US. In schools, for example, with things like the No Child Left Behind Act, where schools now have to “perform” according to a strange set of national standards, or lose their funding and get privatized via charter schools, whose teachers don’t have the power of teachers unions. Similarly, we looked at the sub-prime mortgage crisis, whereby oppressed peoples (people of color, poor) were given loans with really unrealistic terms and super high interest rates, which then resulted in foreclosures and thus the robbing many poor people and people of color of what little capital they’ve been able to amass. Note that in most cases, the same banks which profited from these loans are the same banks that benefit from structural adjustment-based loans to poor nations.
Some more things that stuck out:
- Just like white privilege, US citizens benefit from imperialism whether we support it or not. When people go to the gas pumps and can fill up their tanks, they are feeling the benefits of our oil wars. When we go to the grocery store and can buy bananas and chocolate and coffee, we are reaping the benefits of CIA-backed coups in central America.
- Radical movements being co-opted into the imperialist way looks like a move from struggles for LIBERATION (self-determination for all peoples) to demands for EQUALITY (one group getting the privileges of white hetero males). Two specific examples: Queers – from rebellion and deep solidarity with other oppressed people to a gay rights movement for equality (to the privileged hetero white male class) - and then a push for say, gays in the military, a military which has been constantly involved in imperialist war for the last 50 years. Women – from liberation and connection with non-privileged groups to accepting the vote/places in the economy while leaving people of color behind, to then allowing the war in Afghanistan, an imperialist war, to be framed as a feminist mission.
Anti-Imperialist Movement
We also had some rad guest speakers, and one of them laid out a framework within which to be doing just activism/organizing:
1) Starting within a strategic alliance with a rights-based approach to policy, 2) with an agenda that is mass-based and movement building, 3) characterized by grassroots, localized resistance, using 4) direct action to achieve goals.
The Readings
September 11
There was a pretty awesome speech by Arundhati Roy, Come September, available here as a video. Speaking about all the meanings and consequences of September 11, she brought up some really lucid quotes from people in power that showed some pretty intense racist ideology, namely:
- Former British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour (1919): “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
- Winston Churchill (1937), who is often spoken of as a hero for his stances during World War II, speaking also of Palesinians: “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger...I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians fo America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”
- US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright spoke of the half a million Iraqi children who died because of US backed sanctions: “We think the price is worth it.”
Here's another shocking quote, not from Arundhati Roy's work, but from an essay by the Notes from Nowhere Collective:
“To attract companies like yours… we have felled mountains, razed jungles, filled swamps, moved rivers, relocated towns… all to make it easier for you and your business to do business here.”
– Philippines government advert in Fortune, placed in 1975
The Third World as a Collective Project
I also came to learn through the readings that the "Third World" which I long thought was a euphemism for a derogatory perspective of worlds outside US, European, USSR power, was actually a self-determined label by those countries as they organized collectively to create an alternative world vision. It started with the Non-Aligned Movement, which first organized in the 1950s to ensure "the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries" in their "struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics."
Want an action item? How about this? Support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel, which you can learn about here. This is a strategy that proved successful in bringing down south African apartheid.
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