Imperialism and the Rhetoric of Democracy in the Age of Wall Street

摘要

This essay argues that the territorial fluidity of the process of surplus production has been accompanied by a new form of imperialism, resting on a structural separation of the processes of surplus appropriation and distribution from the processes of surplus production and a strengthening of the moment of appropriation and distribution under the control of the U.S. ruling class/es. The essay also argues that this new form can and should be understood as a form of imperialism sui generis. Contrary to a widely held view, most notably promulgated by Giovanni Arrighi's The Long Twentieth Century (namely, that the shift of the axis of power to the sphere of finance heralds a period of decline of U.S. hegemony), and contrary to the view promulgated by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire (namely, that a territorially centered imperialism is no longer possible), the essay argues that the new arrangement for the global slurping of surplus value constitutes a new project of U.S. imperialism with sufficient long-term possibilities. The essay links this new form of imperialism to the rise of a novel global crusade for bourgeois democracy on the part of the U.S. and argues that the resistance to this imperialism requires the Left, and Marxist discourse, to engage on the terrain of the idea of democracy.