(From Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, fall, 2004)

A review of:

• The New Imperialism by David Harvey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
• Incoherent Empire by Michael Mann (New York: Verso Books, 2003).
• Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq by Tariq Ali (New York: Verso Books, 2003).

Leftists often point out that the terror attacks of September 11 th 2001 were an enormous gift to President Bush: they created the political context he needed to launch the repressive campaigns long planned by his aides and that now characterize his presidency. It was a golden opportunity and he seized it.

Yet it is important to remember another fact of equal or perhaps greater significance: Bush’s “War on Terror” has also been a gift to us . Specifically, his hyper-aggressive, ultra-brutal neo-colonialist policies have nurtured the growth of massive international resistance to American imperialism. From Baghdad to Madrid, and in endless cities and towns across the globe, ordinary people have risen up to denounce the center of world power and now genuinely restrain if not threaten its activity.

Opposition to US imperialism has grown to such proportions since the start of the Iraq war that Noam Chomsky now describes world public opinion as “the second super-power.” However, we are actually witnessing something much more exciting than the term “public opinion” suggests: the beginnings of an international anti-imperialist movement . This movement is mobilized against a common enemy and has begun to forge a shared discourse about imperialism, self-determination, and the destructive effects of the market. Something of this scale has not occurred since national liberation movements swept the globe in the 1960s.

This new movement is also deeply conflicted. Quasi-fascist religious militants, liberals, and anarchists all uneasily share a place on the new spectrum of dissent; despite this newfound common cause, we remained divided in important ways.

How should we respond to the diversity of this movement? First of all, we should not allow it to “shock and awe” us. Significant historical changes always produce contradictory responses that draw, to an extent, from the same source: the old labor movement had its fascist and socialist wings, there were neo-Malthusian as well as anarchist tendencies in the ecology movement, and both the Black Panthers and Ron Karenga’s US organization grew out of America’s black liberation movement.

What we need to do is engage this new movement and nurture the worldwide mobilization against American imperialism. We must fight its regressive tendencies, radicalize and deepen its discourse, and press it towards the most systemic and utopian solutions to the present crisis. Specifically, we must devote ourselves to cultivating a vision that articulates a coherent critique of the “War on Terror” and a positive view of ourselves as revolutionary-or potentially revolutionary-actors.

Unfortunately few works are available that will help us in this effort. The established theorists, as often happens when new movements emerge, are of little use. They tend to wave the flags of defeated causes, are resigned to the status quo, or simply lack the depth necessary to embrace the fullness of the potentialities before us.

It is our responsibility to write the literature of future revolutions and, as daunting as that is, we can begin now by critically examining some of the existing books on the “War on Terror.” At minimum, this can help us identify some of the theoretical challenges we face.

The books reviewed here-all written around the time of the US/UK invasion of Iraq-offer insights into the nature of present international conflicts and contain premises that either enhance or undermine our capacity to envision our activity as dissidents.

Defeated Causes

David Harvey, a British-born scholar now residing in the United States, is the author of significant interdisciplinary studies in contemporary social theory, such as The Condition of Postmodernity (his best known book). His work is characterized by a non-dogmatic, Marxist analysis of changes in political, cultural, and economic circumstances and, accordingly, it is easy be excited by the publication of The New Imperialism . There is good reason to hope that he would relate the “War on Terror” to a broader critique of capitalism as well as the oppositional forces generated within the social order.

Although Harvey does link his analysis of the “War on Terror” and the “new imperialism” to a critique of capitalism, readers will find little of significance in his commentary on the war or the broader theoretical perspective with which he frames it. Only two of the book’s five chapters treat current militarist campaigns in any detail and the others really only exist to set the stage for his very Marxist argument that the Iraq war is an expression of underlying developments in the economic base. Unfortunately the book is also terribly ponderous, devoid of a narrative center, and awash with the sort of pompousness typical of those who spend the greater portion of their lives lecturing to graduate students.

The book’s first and best chapter, “All about Oil,” demolishes the various claims made to justify the war on Iraq and situates it within political pressures facing the Bush administration (both domestic and international). This prompts the reader to consider the deeper, systemic reasons for the adventure and it is here that the most substantive-and laborsome-part of the book begins. After long detours through the history of imperialism, capitalism, and conceptual distinctions of varying relevance, Harvey comes to his main point: the war in Iraq is a super-structural expression of long-standing pressures in the economic base (stated in non-Marxist parlance: the economy is making states fight each other). These pressures have been maturing since the 1970s, were intensified in the 1990s, and now must be resolved: specifically, it is necessary to find a way to avoid a crisis of overaccumulation that could potentially threaten the future of capitalism (this occurs when the system produces more commodities and capital than it can profitably absorb). The leaders of the system thus undertake what Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession,” which he regards as a “primary contradiction.”(1) This term describes the process wherein capitalism destroys areas of the world and/or parts of the social structure to create new areas for the investment of surplus capital and labor, thus forestalling generalized breakdown and ensuring the continued accumulation of capital. Although the state and capital partake of different logics-what he calls “the logic of territory” and “the logic of capital”-they often act in concert to produce singular historical results, such as war. In other words, Harvey explains the war in Iraq with the stunning insight that capitalism destroys in order to create.

Harvey’s truism about capitalism is only meaningful in the context of broader assertions about the trajectory of the social order. Presumably, as a Marxist, he would be inclined to locate the war in Marx’s teleological vision of history: he could argue that the war is a necessary step in the universalization of capitalism, which must occur in order to lay the foundation for the inevitable emergence of the proletariat as the agent of world revolution. This would be a very orthodox Marxist reading and he seems inclined towards this when he notes (elsewhere) that he shares “with Marx, the view that imperialism, like capitalism, can prepare the ground for human emancipation.”(2) However, Harvey backs away from this and even divorces himself from the key Marxist claim that the proletariat (or any other social force) will emerge as a transformative, revolutionary class. Although I share his pessimism about the revolutionary destiny of the industrial proletariat, Marxism-a theory of class struggle-falls apart when not linked to a theory of the proletariat’s revolutionary agency. Harvey’s reworked Marxist vision only accords historical agency to the capitalist-but not the dispossessed-class and thus depicts capitalism as an overwhelming, unstoppable force that does not contain the seeds of its own negation. And of course this perspective also deprives those who oppose capitalism of any theoretical framework in which to ground their efforts.

This is why it makes sense that Harvey’s proscriptions for the future are so dismal. Instead of demanding a radical transformation of social affairs, he meekly calls for “the construction of an updated ‘New Deal’ led by the United States and Europe, both domestically and internationally, [which] in the face of the overwhelming class forces and special interests ranged against it, is surely enough to fight for in the present conjuncture.. [T]his might. actually assuage the problems of overaccumulation for at least a few years and diminish the need to accumulate by dispossession and might encourage democratic, progressive and human forces.. This does seem to propose a far less violent and far more benevolent imperial trajectory than the raw militaristic imperialism currently offered up.”(3)

Of course Harvey should be commended for relating his analysis of the “new imperialism” to systemic pressures emerging within capitalism, as they are doubtlessly among the key factors driving the Bush administration’s adventures. However, the core assumptions of Marxism cannot be sustained here or elsewhere, and Harvey’s version is particularly corrosive for those who would nourish the new anti-imperialist movement unfolding across the globe.

All Hail the Status Quo

Michael Mann is a noted social theorist of British ancestry as well. His two volume Sources of Social Power (A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 and The Rise of Classes and Nation States 1760-1914, respectively) is a leading work of comparative sociology. We also have good reason to expect that he will place the “War on Terror” in a deeper historical context.

Mann’s Incoherent Empire is a powerful indictment of the “new imperialism” advanced by the Bush administration (and the American government generally). Mann’s central thesis is that the attempt to create an American empire-a goal articulated by many of Bush’s ideologues and advisors-is doomed to failure and that pursuing it will needlessly damage the United States and produce unnecessary suffering worldwide.

Drawing on his previous work, Mann distinguishes between four types of power-military, political, economic, and ideological-and, in the first four chapters of his book, examines the United States’ possession of these powers and argues that the country does not possess them to the degree required for full imperial dominance. The later half of the book illustrates this through the examination of the war in Afghanistan, the “War against Terrorism,” the United States’ response to North Korea and “rogue states” generally, and the war against Iraq.

The new imperialists’ attempt to build an American empire is restricted in manifold ways, both domestically and internationally. Ideologically, Mann writes, “American democratic values are flagrantly contradicted by an imperialism, which is strong on military offense but weak on ability to bring order, peace and democracy afterwards [which the Bush administration claims it will do].” 4 Likewise, internationally, the new imperialism is at variance with the principle of national self-determination, which is imbedded in very structure of world politics and leads people to oppose imperialist ventures. Economically, the United States is a formidable power, but still only what Mann calls a “back-seat driver” of the global economy, because it cannot control foreign investors or economies and is incapable of fully overcoming resistance to its global economic policies. Politically, he describes American power as schizophrenic because of its oscillation between unilateralism and multilateralism. The US is a giant on the military terrain, but still unable to commit the resources necessary for real imperial control (specifically, as we now see in Iraq, it can win wars but cannot provide the much larger number of troops and materiel necessary to sustain imperial domination).

According to Mann, the consequence of the US’s unique possession of these powers is that the longed-for “American Empire will turn out to be a military giant, a Back-seat economic driver, a political schizophrenic and ideological phantom. The result is a disturbed, misshapen monster stumbling clumsily across the world. It means well. It intends to spread order and benevolence, but instead it creates more disorder and violence.”(5) That is, it will become an Incoherent Empire if Bush’s planners continue to pursue their imperial designs.

Mann’s sharp analysis of the individual campaigns paints a picture of an Administration that is stupidly pursuing polices that actually undermine its own ambitions. Among other examples, he shows that the brutal, indiscriminate nature of the “War on Terror” actually creates more terrorists and that the increasingly military (as opposed to diplomatic) response to “rogue states” actually prompts states to acquire weapons of mass destruction (because they are threatened).

This book is also well written and fortunately not plagued by the same ponderousness found in The New Imperialism (although there are an unusually large number of errors-like “The strong are become fearful,” 6 etc-that presumably reflect the rush to publish the book).

But Mann is no radical. In contrast to David Harvey, Mann does not question the market economy; the idea that there could be an alternative to capitalism is simply beyond consideration for him. He believes that “the Age of Class Struggle is in decline”(7) and, in this spirit, sums up his feelings on the issue by writing that “Sweatshops are better than no shops, child labor is better than child mortality. To be exploited by capitalism is better than to be excluded from it.”(8)

He also has a well-developed commitment to the American state. For Mann, “getting back to the Clinton years would now be a great achievement. But if we have learned anything, it should be to move toward a better future through combining American leadership and the acceptance of international law and norms regulating world conflict.” 9 And, in the book’s last sentence, he writes “Luckily, the United States is a democracy, with the political solution close at hand in November 2004. Throw the new militarists out of office. Otherwise the world will reduce American’s power still further.”(10) His convictions are also evident in his constant us of the pronoun “we” when referring to the United States government-e.g., “We cannot simply remove him [Saddam Hussein] and bring order to Iraq”(11) -and he seems to think he is giving advice to policy makers (the book is full of policy recommendations like “The US should leave alone conflicts involving national liberation fighters.. The US should denounce terrorism and state terrorism equally.”(12) )

His naturalization of capitalism makes it impossible for him to explain things that Harvey would regard as an inevitable consequences of the dominant social relations. Whereas Harvey casts the “War on Terror” as a necessary, ineluctable result of the existing patterns of social development, Mann believes that many important aspects of our present predicament merely reflect inexplicably dumb choices. For Harvey the “War on Terrorism” is part of a broader strategy to carry out “accumulation by dispossession” in order to open up more of the world to capitalism and, for example, he would presumably regard the fact that it has become a war on Muslims as a predictable aspect of the overall project. But, for Mann, the fact that the “war on terror” has become a war on Muslims as a whole is simply “stupid.”(13) In a similar vein, he describes British participation in the Iraq war as “tragic mistake”(14) as opposed to the expression of systemic imperatives. (He even declares that he feels “sympathy” for Blair, given his entanglement in American foreign policy.(15 )

Although the parameters of Mann’s critical stance are far less appealing than Harvey’s, his emphasis on the frailty of the new imperialist project is refreshing when compared to the former’s depiction of the inexorable march of capitalism. Mann does identify real vulnerabilities, but wants to rectify, not exploit them. Unfortunately he is fully resigned to the status quo.

A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

Bush in Babylon by Tariq Ali–a Pakistan-born writer who now lives in London–aims to place the present war against Iraq in the long history of conflicts between that country and the West and to encourage resistance to the occupation. “Without knowing the past,” he explains in the Introduction, “it is impossible to understand what is happening today, and the history is presented here as a warning to both occupier and resister. The occupier will learn from it that Iraq has a very rich history of struggle against empire. The resister will, I hope, avoid the mistakes and not repeat the tragedies that permitted the occupation to happen.”(16)

This book contains a sweeping history of the Iraqi encounter with colonialism from the 13 th century to the contemporary era. After setting the stage with a discussion of the present conflict and citations from many fine Iraqi poets, Ali jumps into the earliest historical accounts of Iraq, traces the emergence of modern Iraq from British colonial rule, analyzes the ouster of the British puppet regime in 1958, looks at the emergence of the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein’s rise to complete dominance, and, in the final chapters, examines the war and the prospects for resisting it.

Ali’s work is much more amenable to activist concerns than the previous two. Unlike Mann, he is explicitly hostile to capitalism and, unlike Harvey, convinced that we need not limit ourselves to meager demands for a “New Deal.” He explicitly calls for militant action against the United States and UK’s imperialist aggressions and even writes that “if there is one area where the cliché that classical revolutions are a thing of the past is likely to be proved wrong, it is the Arab world.”(17) His commitment to activist intervention is also implicit in the emphasis he places on political struggles in the history of Iraq (i.e., they matter).

Ali is sharp stylist and it is hard not be pleased by the barbs he throws at various figures and to see that at least one prominent writer is willing to dispense with academic pleasantries. For example, he describes Kofi Annan as “a dumb-waiter for American aggression” 18 and points out that “the British prime minister now seems to regard the posterior of a US president as his natural habitat.”(19) (This is a welcome contrast to Mann’s sympathies for Blair).

One of Ali’s objectives is to help orient opponents of the occupation and he provides explicit proscriptions for action. He states that “the immediate tasks that face an anti-imperialist movement are support for Iraqi resistance to the Anglo-American occupation, and opposition to any and every scheme to get the UN into Iraq as retrospective cover for the invasion and after-sales service for Washington and London. Let the aggressors pay the costs of their own imperial ambitions.”(20) He also calls for the strengthening of opposition in the imperial homeland and the expansion of the World Social Forum’s agenda from its economic focus to the political issues of imperialism and war. However, his recommendations raise more questions than answers: for example, he does not elaborate on what it means to “support the resistance” or indicate how we could distinguish between different tendencies in the resistance or between genuine resistance and simple jockeying for power. Likewise, his demand that the UN not be allowed into Iraq is premised on the idea that its absence would incur greater political costs for the occupiers-not upon what might or might not be good for the Iraqi people. Unfortunately he does not speculate on the existence of Iraqi democratic traditions or practices that could provide the basis for a non-coercive alternative.(21)

There are several other problems with his analysis. First, his book is largely a study of political parties, states, and politicians, specifically those representing the imperialist West, which is bent on destroying the Arab world, and those of the Arab elites, who invariably sell their people out. The only other category he advances-and the only one referring to popular social action-is “the Arab street,” an entity he does not define and, as such, has no more content than we find in the nineteenth century “mob.” His analysis is not built upon a deeper vision of the social forces that drive the actions of the various parties, such as the conflict between classes or the imperatives of state power and, as a result, his sweeping treatment tends to remain on the surface.

I suspect that the lack of theoretical depth explains his tendency to romanticize communists (like so many thinkers who emerged from the New Left and now reject communism’s politics, he holds onto the tradition as an aesthetic or myth). Although he offers many criticisms of the Iraqi Communist Party-he notes its presence in the Governing Council created by the US after victory and points out its deference to the Soviet Union during earlier years-he does tend to present it as the only genuinely oppositional force. This is reinforced by repeated references to Che Guevara and his (admittedly moving) eulogy for Khalid Ahmed Zaki , a Communist Party activist whom he knew and whose death in struggle, he says, “symbolized the defeat of an entire generation.”(22)

His failure to present a deeper analysis of social affairs is not an issue of mere academic interest, but of great strategic and political importance for our response to the war. It is not enough to merely denounce the greed, stupidity, or brutality of the imperialists-as Ali does so eloquently-because that is not, in itself, an argument against the occupation: would the occupation be just if it could be ascertained that the occupiers are less greedy, stupid, or brutal than other potential governing forces in Iraq? Our resistance must be grounded in a broader vision of the historical potentials at hand if it is to be genuinely cogent.

It is instructive to think about how the revolutionaries of the classical period framed this issue. They had rich debates on the national question: some supported national independence (Lenin) and others did not (Luxemburg); and Marx, for example, even believed that British colonial rule in India was fundamentally progressive. Their various responses to colonialism and demands for national liberation reflected broader estimations of the meaning of these things within the historical trajectory of the social order as a whole. And, although we do not want to resurrect their formulations, they point to an enduring question we must answer if we are to do more than chatter about the world and actually advance compelling solutions to current social problems. What is and is not historically progressive? Is it capitalism? Is it the emergence of old tribal forms in a modern guise? Is it something else? Ali does not speculate on these questions and thus his outrage at the occupation lacks a solid foundation. Although the strong aesthetic virtues of the book-his stylistic strength and use of poetry-hint at a connection to a larger totality of human experience, this is only implied.

Ali’s book is the least rich theoretically and yet the most rewarding politically. Despite its problems, it at least brings us to the threshold of some of the complicated and compelling enduring problems we must confront.

These books will not provide the resources we need to strengthen and radicalize the anti-imperialist movement that Bush’s “War on Terror” has helped forge for us. Harvey offers a critique of capitalism, Mann points to the fragility of American imperial designs, and Ali depicts the long history of conflicts in and over Iraq, but the two works with real depth are antagonistic to revolutionary action, while the one that cultivates a sense of revolutionary potential only skates on the surface.

These books’ shortcoming have less to do with their respective analyses of the “War on Terror” than problems inherent in the theoretical frameworks they use to make these analyses. This is to be expected, although we should also remember that the world’s response to the “War on Terror” will have an effect on what is regarded as permissible in the theoretical realm.

It is imperative that we engage the worldwide movement against American imperialism and find a way to advance a coherent critique of the prevailing social order as well as a positive vision of ourselves as revolutionary agents. Although the established theorists may, in the end, only indicate problems to avoid, that alone is instructive and something we should learn from as we press ourselves to imagine a revolutionary response to the “War on Terror.”

Endnotes

1. David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 176.
2. Nader Vossoughian, “Interview with David Harvey: Questions about The New Imperialism” http://agglutina-tions.com/archives/000013.html
3. David Harvey, The New Imperialism , 210-211.
4. Michael Mann, Incoherent Empire (New York: Verso Books, 2003), 120.
5. Ibid., 13.
6. Ibid., 43.
7. Ibid., 88.
8. Ibid., 66.
9. Ibid., 265.
10. Ibid., 267.
11. Ibid., 87.
12. Ibid., 189.
13. Ibid., 178.
14. Ibid., 263.
15. Ibid.
16. Tariq Ali, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq (New York: Verso Books, 2003), 17.
17. Ibid., 166-167.
18. Ibid., 160.
19. Ibid., 137, Note 80.
20. Ibid., 168.
21. Ali advances a particularly sharp critique of the UN, which I regard as a useful corrective to the tendency among Leftists to appeal to the UN and international law in times of crises. He writes that “the world has changed so much over the last two decades that the UN has become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial adventures.”(194)
22. Ibid., 100.

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