American Imperialism

[che-cuba]

Since WW2 the united states has interfered with other nations' issues. examples of this would be cuba, israel, iran, and many others. the constant policing of the world has caused radical groups like al Queda, the taliban, the 26th of july movement, and even whole nations to engage in violent conflicts with the u.s. the capitalists think that the world is the enemy and that communism is evil. well comrades i have to say this is absurd! as long as communism has illuminated the youth we will stand strong and win this war against america and imperialism

[Red Commissar]

I wouldn't say just since WW II. The US has been participating in Imperialism since the turn of the century. The Philippines and Cuba being turned into protectorates shows as much.

[The Ghost of Revolutions]

I wouldn't say just since WW II. The US has been participating in Imperialism since the turn of the century. The Philippines and Cuba being turned into protectorates shows as much.
One of the aims of the war of 1812 was to gain canadian territory. So I would say US imperialism started from the beginning of the country.

[El Salvador]

Well, I don't think that communism is better than capitalism, but I agree with you that the imperialism of the West is one of the main sources of evil in the world, and that we must fight against it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

One of the aims of the war of 1812 was to gain canadian territory. So I would say US imperialism started from the beginning of the country.Well I think there is a qualitative difference between the conquest of territory and modern Imperialism coming out of industrialism and a more developed state of capitalism. So I would place the beginnings of modern US imperialism with the Spanish-American war and definitely by the time of the wars in the Philippines and Cuba.

But you are totally correct that the US has been taking land since the beginning - mostly from native Americans, but also from the French, Spanish, English, and Mexican states.

[Martin Blank]

Am I the only one who noticed that the OP lumped al-Qa'ida and the Talib'an in with J26 and ... us? Fuck that and anyone willing to accept that.

[Robocommie]

Am I the only one who noticed that the OP lumped al-Qa'ida and the Talib'an in with J26 and ... us? Fuck that and anyone willing to accept that.

It's a pretty disjointed comparison. It's practically like saying, "The Klan, the Brownshirts, and the Sans Culottes."

[FreeFocus]

American imperialism began with the founding of the state, not with WWII or the Spanish-American War.

I don't think the OP was lumping us together qualitatively with al-Qaeda, just stating that they are an example of blowback from American imperialism.

[075]

America should be burned to the ground with the corpses of its leaders

[Jimmie Higgins]

American imperialism began with the founding of the state, not with WWII or the Spanish-American War.If by imperialism you mean wars for land, then yes the US was taking land from the time of it's own colonial struggle to today. But by this general definition of imperialism, almost any war waged by a ruling class since the beginning of class society is an imperialist war and the term looses any specific and descriptive meaning.

In terms of specific capitalist imperialism the US wasn't really in the game until the Spanish American war.

[FreeFocus]

If by imperialism you mean wars for land, then yes the US was taking land from the time of it's own colonial struggle to today. But by this general definition of imperialism, almost any war waged by a ruling class since the beginning of class society is an imperialist war and the term looses any specific and descriptive meaning.

In terms of specific capitalist imperialism the US wasn't really in the game until the Spanish American war.

The presence of foreign investment and other such features of what you consider "specific capitalist imperialism" isn't of the utmost importance to my conception of imperialism. Capitalism, in my opinion, was introduced to the Americas with European settlement, and it was forced onto pre-Columbian peoples and nations from the get-go. The land rushes, the gold rushes, mining, building railroads - this is all capitalism. It was driven by investment and invasion. Nations were attacked, occupied, and removed. This is all imperialism.

Theoretical nuances mean little when it comes down to people and nations being attacked, destroyed and manipulated for profit.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The presence of foreign investment and other such features of what you consider "specific capitalist imperialism" isn't of the utmost importance to my conception of imperialism. Capitalism, in my opinion, was introduced to the Americas with European settlement, and it was forced onto pre-Columbian peoples and nations from the get-go. The land rushes, the gold rushes, mining, building railroads - this is all capitalism. It was driven by investment and invasion. Nations were attacked, occupied, and removed. This is all imperialism.

Theoretical nuances mean little when it comes down to people and nations being attacked, destroyed and manipulated for profit.

Sorry to nit-pick, I think it's just a semantic difference, but also I think this is an important distinction to make. The ruling class of the south and (at the time of the revolution) the ruling class of the north are totally different in goals and class needs than the post-civil war industrial ruling class. The civil war would not have happened if there were not two competing modes of production: on based on land and slaves, the other based on trade and industry.

It wasn't until the 1830s that the first mills and largish production plants were developed and so until and through that period most production in the north was done through farms and craft-shops that usually used an apprenticeship system rather than a regular wage system. Until the introduction of industry, wealth in the US was even between the north and south, but after, there is a qualitative change that happened in the north and it's power and importance began to quickly outpace the south where the older system remained. After the civil war, large industries such as rail and steel became the dominant forces in capitalist society rather than the large land-owners and plantation owners who made up the pre-civil war US ruling class.

So why is this important - because the motivations for robbing native land are completely different than the motivations behind the US taking on Spain's aging empire. When the US ruling class stole land from natives or other empires during this period, that land itself was the prize and was used as the source of ruling class power (promising free land to people in exchange for service, using the land for plantations etc). From about the Spanish-American war itself, land was not the motivation for conquest and imperialism, global capitalist competition was the motivation that made this necessary.

To say that imperialism is simply the powerful grabbing territories is how academics usually describe imperialism. So globalization in this case is not imperialism to most people in the establishment because there is no military force directly behind it. This leads to a simplistic and non-class based understanding of modern conflicts - such as simply thinking that the US invaded Iraq for a simple oil-grab. Of course that's part of it, but it's not the determining factor - Vietnam and Afghanistan are not that useful for plundering resources alone.

[syndicat]

It wasn't until the 1830s that the first mills and largish production plants were developed and so until and through that period most production in the north was done through farms and craft-shops that usually used an apprenticeship system rather than a regular wage system. Until the introduction of industry, wealth in the US was even between the north and south, but after, there is a qualitative change that happened in the north and it's power and importance began to quickly outpace the south where the older system remained. After the civil war, large industries such as rail and steel became the dominant forces in capitalist society rather than the large land-owners and plantation owners who made up the pre-civil war US ruling class.

So why is this important - because the motivations for robbing native land are completely different than the motivations behind the US taking on Spain's aging empire. When the US ruling class stole land from natives or other empires during this period, that land itself was the prize and was used as the source of ruling class power (promising free land to people in exchange for service, using the land for plantations etc). From about the Spanish-American war itself, land was not the motivation for conquest and imperialism, global capitalist competition was the motivation that made this necessary.


Okay, you have a point. But we can distinguish even further. After Civil War, the north was able to impose a high tariff, which the south had blocked. This facilitated a vast expansion.

But note that the form of American imperialism in the 19th century was different than the European form. The American elite's form of imperialism was conquering the continetn, and aborbing that into a single national market....pushing aside and expropriating the indigenous Indians, seizing the northern part of Mexico, taking the Hawaiin Islands.

But European imperialism was based on a mercantilist poicy of conquering and controlling colonies all over the world, and limiting access to their markets and resources to capital from their home country.

By the end of the 19th century the American elite were becoming worried about their growth of industrial power outrunning the expanded national market. This was given as an excuse for conquering the Phillipines & Puerto Rico, putting Cuba on a leash. But colonialism was still not the dominant form of American imperialism.

This is important because the U.S. elite favored a policy of expanding the single market. And the European and Japanese mercantilist forms of imperialism led to suicidal wars...two world wars. Hence at the end of WW2, the U.S. imposed its "single market" conception of imperialism on its defeated imperial rivals. Thus you had the dismantling of colonialism, and the creation of GATT...creating a single world market. This led eventually to the WTO in the '90s.

Since WW2, the dominant foreign policy of the USA has always been to attack and pressure countries that for any reason were not open to free exploitation of their workers and resources by foreign capital coming into that country. The whole WTO-neoliberal regime expresses this approach. But it also works to the advantage of other advanced capitalist countries as well, as American butt-kicking enforces a world wide regime of open exploitation by capitals from the advanced capitalist countries. This is why the other major capitalist powers are sort of junior partners of the US.

Imperialism has basically two forms, economic and military. The economic form is where the dominant owners of capital are able to use that dominance to extort higher interest, have their big companies dominate or seize markets from smaller producers in the 3rd world, and so on. So there is an unequal exchange between core and peripheral countries, not only the military dominance of USA, which now is having a harder and harder time affording its role as supreme enforcer for the first world capitalists.

But the US was imperialist from the beginning. On that point I am in agreement. That's because the territorial states of the world vary in their power...in their ability to militarily and economically dominate others. The greater power of the US elite's state at the beginning of the 19th century was shown in their conquest of the lands of the Indian nations, their defeat of Mexico and seizure of its lands.

Even today there are smaller countries that nonethless dominate weaker neighbors and are a form of miniimperialism...such as Israel in relation to Lebanon, or Vietnam in relation to Cambodia.

Imperialism is not just a product of capitalism but is created by the competitive struggle between territorial states, and thus existed before capitalism, tho capitalism has greatly altered its character.

[bcbm]

Capitalism, in my opinion, was introduced to the Americas with European settlement, and it was forced onto pre-Columbian peoples and nations from the get-go. The land rushes, the gold rushes, mining, building railroads - this is all capitalism. It was driven by investment and invasion. Nations were attacked, occupied, and removed. This is all imperialism.

i wouldn't say this was the introduction of capitalism, but rather part of the primitive accumulation that was happening in europe and other places as well, which laid the foundation for capitalism.

[AK]

Well, I don't think that communism is better than capitalism, but I agree with you that the imperialism of the West is one of the main sources of evil in the world, and that we must fight against it.
You're looking at a long hard stint in OI, boy.

[Small Geezer]

American imperialism is bad.

[AK]

American imperialism is bad.
Shitty one-liners that serve no purpose and state the obvious are worse.