[DEBATE] : Re: (Fwd) 'SA is subimperialist'

[Patrick Bond]

Peter Waterman wrote:
 > I note that the ILRIG, etc, roundtable exchange takes place entirely 
within
 > the parameters of classical Marxism and, in particular, of its 
imperialism
 > discourse.
 > In so far as we are now experiencing a different phase and type of 
global
 > capitalism from those of Marx, Rosa, Lenin or Trotsky, and in so far as
 > 'critical globalisation' theories have questioned the adequacy of 
classical
 > Marxist imperialist theory, I was wondering whether it was not either
 > possible or necessary to consider South Africa's role in such terms.

Ok, and what would you recommend?

Here's my quick/dirty report-back to our CCS folk:

* Yesterday in CT, Dennis and I had two rip-roaring debates, first with 
Ronald Suresh Roberts - who did jujitsu by invoking Cecil Rhodes as a 
hustler (implying that the genuine anti-imperialist Mbeki is 
successfully following in this tradition by pragmatically ripping off 
the North - hah) and by asking whether the NY courts were the right 
venue for the apartheid-reparations lawsuit that Dennis and I support (a 
fair point but hey, if SA courts had any vehicles like the Alien Tort 
Claims Act then there would be no problem) and by trying to insist 
Chavez is far more conservative than Mbeki by citing welfare statistics; 
and then with Shawn, Mzi and others from Ilrig and other comrades like 
Althea, who were most evocative in updating and applying the ideas of 
Lenin (from his great work Imperialism), against my Luxemburgist reading 
of North-South and capitalist/noncapitalist power relations. Very good 
information was exchanged, along the lines already circulated - even if 
we cannot really say that much was concluded from the standpoint of 
strategic implications. After all, imperialism or subimperialism may 
just boil down to semantics - though Mthetho from Ilrig said, wisely, 
that we both are referring to a 'minor imperialism'...