On the issue of a possible re-establishment of imperialism. An article in the Guardian last week argued that in Blair Britain has the first explictly imperialist prime minister since Eden. It argued that the intervention in Sierra Leone is a very deliberate and conscious policy to 'set things right' in Africa, and to teach lessons in 'good government' to failing states in Africa. This of course is similar to the sorts of rationales used for imperialism in the 19th century, and to an extent, the appearance of such rationales reflects common circumstances - the fact that the conditions for normal capitalist commerce do not exist in some areas of Africa. This provides a commercial motivation for armed intervention to establish conditions for capitalist firms to operate. The diamond mines in Sierra Leone would be the immediate motivation, but one should not be surprised if similar arguments were to be used with respect to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is however a long step from such initial re-establishments of protectorates to the possibility of inter-imperialist rivalries re-emerging. -- Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland 0141 330 3125 mobile:07946 476966 paul@cockshott.com http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/wpc/ http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html
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