Jurriaan wrote:
“[A nation-state] becomes imperialist rather when it can actually “dominate” foreign territories or foreign peoples, economically, politically, culturally etc”.
As we’ve been discussing, we are operating with very different notions of imperialism. As I see it, the trouble with equating imperialism with domination is that a) it makes the concept of ‘imperialism’ redundant, we might as well stick with ‘domination’, which is only one type of strategy or relation; b) ‘domination’ has been around for centuries, so the concept does not uniquely identify the current period in capitalist history, which is my concern here (but I understand, it’s not everyone’s concern); c) you then have to define ‘domination’, and explain, for example, whether Austria or New Zealand or Norway ‘dominate’ anyone, etc.
By contrast, direct domination is not a major or even a necessary feature of imperialism, if imperialism is understood as an epoch. Imperialist states do have to compete for INFLUENCE, and sometimes influence takes the form of domination, but in today’s world that’s not the norm. In any case, the important thing is not competition per se, but the close connection between the competing states and monopoly capital – a connection that exists in China just as it does in Austria.
Paula
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Received on Tue Apr 5 17:56:49 2011
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