The Travestys of "Anti-imperialism"

Abstract

Economic globalization and the transnational integration of capitals provide a centripetal impulse to global capitalism, while political fragmentation offers a powerful centrifugal counter-impulse that is resulting in an escalation of geopolitical conflict. The chasm is widening rapidly between the economic unity of global capital and the political competition between ruling groups seeking legitimacy and preventing the internal social order of their respective nations from fracturing in the face of the growing crisis of global capitalism. States are trying to shift the burden of the crisis onto the working and popular classes, as governments resort to more repressive, authoritarian and even fascist forms of government, as well as various ideological and rhetorical devices, to contain mass unrest. Much of the left not only seems unable to conceptualize the transformation that has occurred in these last decades of capitalist globalization, but clings tenaciously to a formula that ossifies a singular American empire seconded by the Triad countries and the rest of the world as victims of this empire. In this formula, anything that appears to challenge the Sole Enemy is seen as progressive, part of a just struggle of the oppressed and deserving of support. As a result, a self-declared "anti-imperialist" left condemns capitalist exploitation and repression around the world when practiced by the United States and other Western powers or governments they support, but turns a blind eye to, or even defends, repressive, authoritarian and dictatorial states simply because these states face hostility from Washington. I will discuss here the cases of China, Nicaragua, the BRICS and multipolarity as they expose the convoluted logic and retrograde politics of the "anti-imperialist" left.