Help! Debate with Teacher tommarow!

[Rafiq]

Hello everyone

Tomorrow I am going to have an argument with my Teacher about Whether America is an empire or not.

Obviously America is the biggest Empire in existence.

I know exactly what to say, but it may not be understandable to classmates.

So how can I, plain and simple, point out to her and the class America is an Empire?

[Peace on Earth]

Cite the history of U.S. military interventions in dozens of foreign nations, with the intent of preserving American (usually business) interests in the regions that it either influences, intervenes, or flat-out occupies for American gain.

You also should mention the hundreds of foreign military bases and troops that are stationed around the world.

And if you want to throw a curveball, there is the globalization aspect. That is, American corporations (with both overt and covert government help) have established hegemony of the global markets.

[communard71]

Students who are not as interested about this subject (and let’s face it, that’s nearly all of them) learn better visually. So, you can either create a quick PowerPoint or a short handout. On it, you could do a generic “conditions of empire” section/checklist and compare America to it. Or you could have a list of historical empires (only the biggies, Rome, Britain etc.) and compare the US that way. Whatever you do, be calm in your explanations and use irrefutable facts. Knowledge intimidates others, even your teacher, and makes your point easier to grasp and more difficult to counter. Good luck!

[Reznov]

First, cite Rome and explain it had a presence through a large part of the world and mainly did this militarily. (They had military bases in all the places they were)

Then, compare that to current day America.

If you could as suggested, it would be nice to have a map of Rome and their expansion with military bases around the areas they were located. Then, have a map of American military bases around the world.

The maps would make your classmates a lot easier to read and understand (Ten times better than just trying to listen to it, since most could care less already)

[Kotze]

Don't focus on history! If you copy a list of US interventions from the net, it will be a long list. If your teacher then picks any incident from that list, will you be able to explain how that was an act of imperialism? Besides, history is boring. Focus on the now.

Comparison of different countries' military spending in $:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures (includes also % of GDP)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures_per_cap ita (short list, but for missing countries you can get population figures from the CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html))

USA is the clear winner according to both measures (but not in the category % of GDP). It might be illuminating for some if you make comparisons with "rogue states" like Iran and the country of "strongman" Hugo Chávez.

Because it's Wikipedia, don't forget to take a look at the sources given (I didn't do that).

[Amphictyonis]

Hello everyone

Tomorrow I am going to have an argument with my Teacher about Whether America is an empire or not.

Obviously America is the biggest Empire in existence.

I know exactly what to say, but it may not be understandable to classmates.

So how can I, plain and simple, point out to her and the class America is an Empire?

The old empires like Britain and Spain depended on out in the open colonization. After ww2 the US/Britain changed the name of the game with the IMF and World Bank. England (god save the queen) would out in the open set up parasitic colonies in order to feed the metropolis or hive at home. It was the British Empire. They had a presence of military and white European colonizers in the host or victim nations. There were certain deals made between Churchill and FDR (many historians deny) which put the US in majority control of the neo colonial institutions- pre conditions for the US to help save England from the Nazi onslaught (Russians did most of the work).

Anyhow, after ww2 and the establishment of World Bank/IMF they no longer had to colonize as Europeans once did with military/white europium colonizers/the churches presence because they were going to control the economies of foreign third world nations via debt. The IMF and World Bank could both spread capitalist markets while siphoning wealth back to the western hives. Keynes thought he was going to "civilize" the savage globe and both the British ans Americans saw an opportunity to extract wealth without too much investment (financial/man power) up front. Anyhow, try this 8firb73r67g America is simply the capitalists sword and shield. They control the state.

(on an unrelated note) A question to other posters- is globalization a bad or good thing? Does capitalism need to exhaust it's productive forces before socialism can take hold?

[ckaihatsu]

A question to other posters- is globalization a bad or good thing?


Globalization is good insofar as it objectively transcends small-scale, local boundaries and introduces public works, standardization, and cosmopolitanism across broader areas. It's bad in that it's done in the interests of imperialism and domination of those areas it has conquered.





Does capitalism need to exhaust it's productive forces before socialism can take hold?





The social (productive) conditions to enable socialism could arguably have been around since about 1100 AD in Northern Europe, with the rise of nascent urban areas.





Harman, People's History of the World

Chapter 6 - European feudalism

[...]

Yet this most backward extremity of the great Eurasian continent was eventually to become the birthplace of a new civilisation which would overwhelm all the rest.

[...]

There was a corresponding slow but cumulative change in the social relations of society as a whole, just as there had been in Sung China or the Abbasid caliphate. But this time it happened without the enormous dead weight of an old imperial superstructure to smother continued advance. The very backwardness of Europe allowed it to leapfrog over the great empires.

[...]

There were horrific and pointless wars, barbaric torture and mass enslavement. Yet in the end a new organisation of production and society emerged very different to anything before in history.

[...]

On occasions the literacy of monks was used to gain access to writings on technology from Greece and Rome and from the Byzantine and Arabic empires: ‘If one is looking for the earliest mills, water mills or windmills, or for progress in farming techniques, one often sees the religious orders in the vanguard’.99

The full adoption of new techniques involved a change in relations between lords (whether warrior or religious) and cultivators. The great landholders finally had to abandon the wasteful Roman practice of slave labour—a practice that lingered on as late as the 10th century. Then they began to discover advantages in ‘serfdom’, in parcelling out land to peasant households in return for a share of the produce. The serfs had an incentive for working as hard as they could and employing new techniques on their holdings. As total output rose, the lords’ incomes also rose, especially as they used their military might to force previously free peasants into serfdom. What Bois calls ‘the transformation of the year 1000’ spelt the final end of agricultural slavery—and the final establishment of feudal serfdom as a more dynamic mode of production than the old Roman system.100

The importance of what happened in the countryside between about 1000 and 1300 is all too easily underrated by those of us for whom food is something we buy from supermarkets. A doubling of the amount of food produced by each peasant household transformed the possibilities for human life across Europe. Whoever controlled the extra food could exchange it for the goods carried by the travelling traders or produced by the artisans.

Crudely, grain could be changed into silk for the lord’s family, iron for his weapons, furnishing for his castle, wine and spices to complement his meal. It could also be turned into means that would further increase the productivity of the peasant cultivators—wooden ploughs with iron tips, knives, sickles, and, in some cases, horses with bridles, bits and iron shoes.

By supplying such things at regular markets the humble bagman could transform himself into a respectable trader, and the respectable trader into a wealthy merchant. Towns began to revive as craftsmen and traders settled in them, erecting shops and workshops around the castles and churches. Trading networks grew up which tied formerly isolated villages together around expanding towns and influenced the way of life in a wide area.101 To obtain money to buy luxuries and arms, lords would encourage serfs to produce cash crops and substitute money rents for labour services or goods in kind. Some found an extra source of income from the dues they could charge traders for allowing markets on their land.

Life in the towns was very different from life in the countryside. The traders and artisans were free individuals not directly under the power of any lord. There was a German saying, ‘Town air makes you free.’ The urban classes were increasingly loath to accept the prerogatives of the lordly class. Traders and artisans who needed extra labour would welcome serfs who had fled bondage on nearby estates. And as the towns grew in size and wealth they acquired the means to defend their independence and freedom, building walls and arming urban militias.

[...]

[Amphictyonis]

The social (productive) conditions to enable socialism could arguably have been around since about 1100 AD in Northern Europe, with the rise of nascent urban areas.

Don't be silly my friend. :confused: There were no industrial means of production then. Socialism, as in a society which provides material abundance via the industrial means of production, Marx thought, couldn't arise until capitalism had exhausted or at least reached the advanced stage of it's productive forces.

Of course primitive communism has existed as have egalitarian cultures but to say our idea of socialism could have manifested in 1100 AD is funny stuff. Marx (and pretty much everyone else) gave credit to capitalism for creating the industrial means of production. As in, this stage of human development couldn't have been achieved without it.

[Trigonometry]

American involvement in Latin America, suppression of elected democracies (Chile for example) illegal support for paramilitary groups (contras-iran)
America and Mexican wars (Texas etc)
Try get an American civil war, confederates and union thing going on if there are southerners in your class, that normally divides the audience.
The cold war, more than just ideology, but a conflict between interests of a Soviet empire and American empire

I would try throw in as much controversial ideas in there as I can, as normally calling America imperialists don't go across too well, try get issues that divide people, north/south, Israel/Palestine.

[Red Future]

There are some important comparisons you could make with, say the British Empire particularly in regard to their conquest of India and US policy say in the Philippines and Cuba

[∞]

Bring up these contentions

a) The United states has veto power in the UN, has funded regimes (Saddam, Batista, Pinochet, Yeltsin, anything Jeffrey Sachs had touched, etc. etc.)

b) The UN considers the US a 'rogue state', by invading regions like Iraq.

c) The US has the most advanced economic imperialism in our present day.
(Aiding the PRI in the NAFTA declaration, which violates Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution. Shock programs aiding Yeltsin which in turn destroyed democracy and created the Russian oligarchs. Aiding all kinds of military coupes, Chile is the easiest example.)

d. Present-day buearcracy, lobbyists buying off politicians who carry an agenda.

e. Read up on our military-industrial complex.

*If thats not an empire, idk what is

[The Idler]

What currencies is oil overwhelmingly traded in?
Which country has more bases abroad than any other?
U.S. military bases abroad as a form of empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism#U.S._military_bases_abroad_as _a_form_of_empire)

[The Hong Se Sun]

You could also point out how our only three friends in the middle east are also the three least democratic. Egypt bars the second largest party from their elections and the UAE and Saudi have never held elections.

There are a million ways to go at this one