I don't think this is very applicable to the U.S. in 2021. Lenin was not a prophet -- no matter how good his ideas were when he wrote them, conditions can change, and something written a century ago might cease to make sense.
This doesn't apply that well today because we've had a few generations of propaganda intended to disconnect the business end of imperialism from the benefits it produces for the metropole. When Lenin wrote this, the concept of empire was not nearly as controversial as it is today. It was largely taken for granted, especially in Europe. Even in the United States there was this sense of "we've conquered the frontier, we're an emerging world power, it's only natural we take our place among other empires." You could write openly about "American Empire" in major publications and that was a totally acceptable part of mainstream politics. Overt racism played a large role, too -- you could openly, explicitly talk about "the white man's burden" (published in 1899, written about the U.S. colonizing the Philippines) as a justification for enriching America at the expense of the global south. Imperialism and its economic benefits for the U.S. were clearly linked and discussed as a matter of fact. In that context it makes sense to say that bourgeoisified workers accepted imperialism at the expense of their foreign comrades. Open racism meant they didn't view those foreign comrades as comrades, and open discussion of imperialism-as-imperialism made the economic benefits of empire explicit.
But in the century that followed, imperial powers took great pains to obscure their exploitative practices, and significant strides have been made in making rank-and-file workers in the imperial core less virulently racist. It's much less acceptable (and much less common) today to directly make the case for imperialism -- look at all the flack Trump caught for suggesting we steal Syrian oil as part of our presence there, look at how much effort was put into justifying the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as anything but neo-colonial pursuits, etc. Propaganda works, and it's been deployed for decades now to make the case that whatever the U.S. is doing to foreign countries is totally not imperialism. We've been told we're the good guys, that we're fighting for human rights and democracy and freedom, not that we're nakedly using our military to extract resources. Paternalistic excuses for this (rooted in racism) don't track nearly as well, either.
In short, imperialism was openly sold to the American working class in 1921 in a way that it's not in 2021. What's sold today is exactly the opposite of imperialism -- it's the idea (obviously not the practice) that we're doing good things abroad not because it benefits us, but because we want to help the poor, oppressed foreign masses under the yoke of horrible dictators. It's not bribing bourgeoisified workers; it's lying to them. That means we should be approaching workers as people who can come around with the right education, not as knowing participants in imperialism who are happy to perpetuate it so long as they get their cut.
Tell that to the AFL-CIO and all the unions building bombs for Ratheon. Neo-colonialism/neo-imperialism is still imperialism. They still have everything captured in the same way they just learned that media monopoly allows you to lie.
Neo-imperialism is still imperialism, but I'm talking about how people understand what they're doing. There's an incredibly powerful propaganda machine running 24/7/365 selling people on the idea that neo-imperialism is not imperialism, so I don't think most people outside of leftist spaces understand it as such. The harm is still the same, of course, but this informs how we should treat those people/how we should try to reach them.
I believe you have a point about the overt discourse, but the material relationship is still there: the comparative comfort that the middle class in the imperial core has comes at the expense of the subjugated periphery states, racism and chauvinism are still heavily ingrained in the American conscience even if the very most mask-off promotion of them is frowned upon enough that doing so will result in a lucrative career on youtube and the reactionary talk show circuit, and there's a massive amount of propaganda aimed explicitly at tricking anyone with a conscience into thinking that everything from brutal wealth extraction to the arming of white supremacist militants is actually a benevolent act of charity from the "developed" world to the "developing" world which Americans are eager to accept because it eases their conscience as they consume mountains of luxury trinkets made in the periphery.
And that's before you get to the real, educated neoliberals who fully understand the evil that their comfort is predicated upon and who declare that it must be good and right because it benefits them personally, resolving their cognitive dissonance by explicitly embracing evil rather than trying to doublethink it away.
I agree that the material relationship is the same -- neo-imperialism is still imperialism -- but the extent to which people understand that is important to how they should be treated/how we should attempt to get through to them. If someone is knowingly hurting others we should handle that differently than if they're hurting others because they think they're bringing freedom or democracy or whatever.
Of course, the latter is still bad, and someone can be responsible for harm even absent the intention to harm. But it's a different type of responsibility, and more immediately, it speaks to what might convince them to stop. Someone who understands what they're doing and still does it won't be swayed by merely being educated on the subject, for instance. But if someone thinks they're spreading freedom and democracy and they learn about how something like sanctions on Venezuela or the DPRK actually hurts people? That might move them.
"freedom and democracy" is "the white man burden" of today. It is paternalism in both, but it is this way because western chauvinism is deep within the culture and does not cross the mind consciously.
this mf hasn't heard of the AFL-CIO or 90% of American unions. This stuff is more pertinent to today than ever. They aren't propagandized, they're captured. The US government basically replaced all union leadership in the US with their own agents a while back (either through pressure on unions or literal agents (I'm guess on this part)) and they expelled the communists. The US has probably used labor unions more for counter-revolution than they've ever been used for revolution itself. downvote downvote downvote. We're not talking about just rank-and-file union members here. I mean look at the Culinary Union leadership's opposition to Sanders while the membership seemed to be for him. That's a clear disconnect between the rank-and-file and the leadership.
I don't think this is very applicable to the U.S. in 2021. Lenin was not a prophet -- no matter how good his ideas were when he wrote them, conditions can change, and something written a century ago might cease to make sense.
This doesn't apply that well today because we've had a few generations of propaganda intended to disconnect the business end of imperialism from the benefits it produces for the metropole. When Lenin wrote this, the concept of empire was not nearly as controversial as it is today. It was largely taken for granted, especially in Europe. Even in the United States there was this sense of "we've conquered the frontier, we're an emerging world power, it's only natural we take our place among other empires." You could write openly about "American Empire" in major publications and that was a totally acceptable part of mainstream politics. Overt racism played a large role, too -- you could openly, explicitly talk about "the white man's burden" (published in 1899, written about the U.S. colonizing the Philippines) as a justification for enriching America at the expense of the global south. Imperialism and its economic benefits for the U.S. were clearly linked and discussed as a matter of fact. In that context it makes sense to say that bourgeoisified workers accepted imperialism at the expense of their foreign comrades. Open racism meant they didn't view those foreign comrades as comrades, and open discussion of imperialism-as-imperialism made the economic benefits of empire explicit.
But in the century that followed, imperial powers took great pains to obscure their exploitative practices, and significant strides have been made in making rank-and-file workers in the imperial core less virulently racist. It's much less acceptable (and much less common) today to directly make the case for imperialism -- look at all the flack Trump caught for suggesting we steal Syrian oil as part of our presence there, look at how much effort was put into justifying the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as anything but neo-colonial pursuits, etc. Propaganda works, and it's been deployed for decades now to make the case that whatever the U.S. is doing to foreign countries is totally not imperialism. We've been told we're the good guys, that we're fighting for human rights and democracy and freedom, not that we're nakedly using our military to extract resources. Paternalistic excuses for this (rooted in racism) don't track nearly as well, either.
In short, imperialism was openly sold to the American working class in 1921 in a way that it's not in 2021. What's sold today is exactly the opposite of imperialism -- it's the idea (obviously not the practice) that we're doing good things abroad not because it benefits us, but because we want to help the poor, oppressed foreign masses under the yoke of horrible dictators. It's not bribing bourgeoisified workers; it's lying to them. That means we should be approaching workers as people who can come around with the right education, not as knowing participants in imperialism who are happy to perpetuate it so long as they get their cut.
Tell that to the AFL-CIO and all the unions building bombs for Ratheon. Neo-colonialism/neo-imperialism is still imperialism. They still have everything captured in the same way they just learned that media monopoly allows you to lie.
Neo-imperialism is still imperialism, but I'm talking about how people understand what they're doing. There's an incredibly powerful propaganda machine running 24/7/365 selling people on the idea that neo-imperialism is not imperialism, so I don't think most people outside of leftist spaces understand it as such. The harm is still the same, of course, but this informs how we should treat those people/how we should try to reach them.
I believe you have a point about the overt discourse, but the material relationship is still there: the comparative comfort that the middle class in the imperial core has comes at the expense of the subjugated periphery states, racism and chauvinism are still heavily ingrained in the American conscience even if the very most mask-off promotion of them is frowned upon enough that doing so will result in a lucrative career on youtube and the reactionary talk show circuit, and there's a massive amount of propaganda aimed explicitly at tricking anyone with a conscience into thinking that everything from brutal wealth extraction to the arming of white supremacist militants is actually a benevolent act of charity from the "developed" world to the "developing" world which Americans are eager to accept because it eases their conscience as they consume mountains of luxury trinkets made in the periphery.
And that's before you get to the real, educated neoliberals who fully understand the evil that their comfort is predicated upon and who declare that it must be good and right because it benefits them personally, resolving their cognitive dissonance by explicitly embracing evil rather than trying to doublethink it away.
I agree that the material relationship is the same -- neo-imperialism is still imperialism -- but the extent to which people understand that is important to how they should be treated/how we should attempt to get through to them. If someone is knowingly hurting others we should handle that differently than if they're hurting others because they think they're bringing freedom or democracy or whatever.
Of course, the latter is still bad, and someone can be responsible for harm even absent the intention to harm. But it's a different type of responsibility, and more immediately, it speaks to what might convince them to stop. Someone who understands what they're doing and still does it won't be swayed by merely being educated on the subject, for instance. But if someone thinks they're spreading freedom and democracy and they learn about how something like sanctions on Venezuela or the DPRK actually hurts people? That might move them.
"freedom and democracy" is "the white man burden" of today. It is paternalism in both, but it is this way because western chauvinism is deep within the culture and does not cross the mind consciously.
this mf hasn't heard of the AFL-CIO or 90% of American unions. This stuff is more pertinent to today than ever. They aren't propagandized, they're captured. The US government basically replaced all union leadership in the US with their own agents a while back (either through pressure on unions or literal agents (I'm guess on this part)) and they expelled the communists. The US has probably used labor unions more for counter-revolution than they've ever been used for revolution itself. downvote downvote downvote. We're not talking about just rank-and-file union members here. I mean look at the Culinary Union leadership's opposition to Sanders while the membership seemed to be for him. That's a clear disconnect between the rank-and-file and the leadership.