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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

On America's 'we don't do empire ' « Previous | |Next »
July 17, 2006

Bernard Porter, in an extract from his Empire and Superempire: Britain, America and the World, says that whether or not the US can be labelled an 'imperialist' power today matters very little, as it is the nature of the latter's imperialism (or whatever) that matters. He that the imperialism with which modern American foreign policy is most often compared is Britain's from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries: either as a contrast; or a warning; or an example to emulate.

What the present US administration would also have us believe is that America is not 'doing empire' (any more), but that it is 'spreading liberty'. Well, let's accept this, for the sake of argument, only. Is this what makes the Amercian empire different? Porter explores '‘imperialism' more in this context of ideals rather than material power, even though he accepts the theory that behind most modern imperialism lay the perceived need for the new dynamic capitalist economies of the West to expand their commercial and financial markets and sources of raw materials beyond their domestic bases. He says in reference to 'spreading liberty' that:

I was impressed, for example, when Abu Ghraib was revealed, by the close parallels with conditions in British prison camps in 1950s Kenya. Even the sexual humiliations were there.) But that is not the end of it. Firstly: 'spreading liberty', or professing to spread it, is by no means incompatible with 'imperialism'. Imperialism can be a means of spreading liberty ---in theory. Nor, secondly, does it distinguish America clearly from other empires in the past, many of which---the Spanish, Napoleonic and Soviet empires, for example---claimed to be spreading 'liberty' too. So did the British. So it isn't this that makes American 'imperialism' new and distinctive. It is special; but for other reasons.

So what constitutes the difference?

Porter says that for a student of British imperial history, four things stand out about present US foreign policy, and the ideology that seems to lie behind it:

Firstly, of course, there is 9/11, which has no exact equivalent in Britain's case....Secondly, however, there is America's huge military strength, both absolutely and relatively; with which the British Empire--- even counting the Indian Army--- could not begin to compete.....The present-day USA is far more powerful relative to all other nations than Britain ever was; certainly by comparison with the mainly incompetent British Army....Thirdly, America can't rule people like Britain could, because she doesn't have a significant ruling class. Nineteenth-century Britain did. Though she had developed a profoundly capitalist economy (before America), and the middle class to go with it, she also retained a powerful pre-capitalist upper class alongside this, antipathetic to capitalism ('trade') to a large degree, and with some very un-capitalist values attached to it, like 'paternalism'; which turned out to be well suited to governing Britain's new possessions when they needed to be ruled.

Porter says the last reason is is the major reason why Niall Ferguson's plea to America to emulate the British Empire more closely doesn't stand a snowflake’s chance in hell. Her social structure is just not made for it.

The fourth difference Porter says:

American 'imperialism' seems more ideologically driven than Britain's was. This connects with the previous point. Britain's ruling class was not on the whole 'ideological', except for a couple of decades prior to the Indian 'Mutiny', which event put a damper on its reformist zeal somewhat. Thereafter the main objects of its rule were to keep the 'natives' under control, and to 'develop' them slowly, and along 'their own lines'....Present-day America appears to be entirely different. Firstly, as we have seen, she has no desire to 'rule' other peoples in any direct, formal way. Secondly, however, she does want to change them, quite fundamentally. But thirdly: she seems to think that this can be done without 'ruling' them; for one simple reason. The changes she is asking of other peoples are not the kinds of changes that should need to be imposed on them. They are simply 'liberating'; uncontroversial, once people have been introduced to them ----'self-evident', to quote the USA's own Declaration of Independence.

America's values are assumed to be universal, or the idea that modern America exemplifies the 'end' of history ----that is, its final destination. Democracy, for the Americans is usually coupled, if not subordinated to, free markets. Its markets and democracy, as if democracy is dependent on free market capitalism.

Porter concludes by saying that American and British 'imperialisms' are a continuum, but with capitalist 'ideologism'-- one of the main differences between the two 'imperialisms' ---now triumphing; unmoderated by the old British 'paternalism'- which was the other main difference. This is new. That's why the British Empire is no longer a reliable historical precedent.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:49 AM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

"America's values are assumed to be universal."

Its always a choice.

Given all the options, US values may be the best of a bad bunch

WeekbyWeek
Porter has a nice quote by George Bush: America, said George W. Bush in August 2000, has been "chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world."
Porter observes that is one hell of a claim to make. It follows that there can be no doubting the objective validity of the 'American way' for the whole planet.

If this is the way history works then there is no choice. The end of history has only on destination: the planet made in the image of America.