As I see it, the recent developments which might pose a challenge to how we understand current imperialism, are precisely those that define its contemporary existence as a world order structured by the systematic exploitation of incipiently-capitalist economies by the core capitalist states.
The current political moment, when grasped through the property logics discussed above, requires us to consider how ideologies of ownership, including expectations to secure privileges and entitlements are enwrapped within xenophobic, racist, and gendered discourses of sovereignty and nationalism. National brands derive their power from a propertied lifeworld in which individuals and communities make emotional investments in the fantasies of a return to a more simple, secure time of plenitude.
But let’s return again to Charonne. I find it very revealing of the Party’s attitude which, both today and yesterday, glorifies the fallen comrades but never recalls why the demonstration was held in the first place. One hears only of an abstract and mythic anticolonial struggle. Many of us can bear witness with lucid memories: if there was a February 8, 1962 and before it a December 19, 1961, these united demonstrations in which everyone’s divisions and sectarianisms were put aside, it is only because the terrible event of October 17, 1961 happened, of which the Party never speaks, nor anyone else for that matter.
The Sankarist Revolution was the peak of a series of revolts, the breakdown of an inept cycle, and the beginning of a historical sequence that would see Upper Volta become Burkina Faso and, to deal with its critical situation, “dare to invent the future.”
Debt is neo-colonialism, in which colonizers have transformed themselves into “technical assistants.” We should rather say “technical assassins.”
Tags: From the Archives, Imperialism + Internationalism + Migration, In Translation
In this work we want to consider the question of the construction of politics in relation to the tension between authoritarian forms and democratic movements, considered in their points of origin. According to a certain Latin American irredentism, there are no national histories. What would usually be categorized as such are only repercussions in this territory of the history of the core countries. Dependency would permanently beget dependency. What is important is to define, however, is the degree of self-determination that a national history can have, the conditions in which a self-determining process is produced.
Tags: From the Archives, Imperialism + Internationalism + Migration, In Translation
From its birth in 1892 onwards, the Polish Socialist Party developed a strategy of merging working-class and anti-imperial struggle, presaging an orientation championed by the early Communist International and socialist activists across Asia, Africa, and Latin America throughout the 20th century.
The new Soviet state needed allies – either socialism would extend its victory, or exploitation and oppression would continue and new wars would break out. It was with this perspective that the Comintern was founded in 1919, with the object of encouraging world revolution. And with the Baku Congress of September 1920, the Bolsheviks made a symbolic declaration of their opposition to imperialism and attempted to lay the foundations for an organizational expression of this opposition.
I have defined the colonial mode of production as a historical form that is distinct from the capitalist mode of production. It is specifically the form of capitalism that is connected in structural dependency with imperialism in its historical formation and current development.
What if rather than starting from Tunisia’s “border problem,” analysis instead started from problematizing the very concern with “border violence” itself? How can a longue durée approach to Tunisia’s borders help us understand not only the nature but also the kinds of work Tunisia’s borders do in terms of producing certain political and socio-economic realities?
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