Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The main task of imperialism in our time is to prevent, or, if that is impossible, to slow down and control the economic development of underdeveloped countries.  While there have been vast differences among underdeveloped countries. The underdeveloped world as a whole has continually shipped a large part of its economic surplus to more advanced countries on account of interest and dividends. The worst of it is, however, that it is very difficult to say what has been the greater evil as far as the economic development of underdeveloped countries is concerned: the removal of their economic surplus by foreign capital or its reinvestment by foreign enterprise. — Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, 1957

No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.  —  Lenin  referring to an earlier statement by Marx. “[I]t was the combined effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the subsequent wave of globalization, and Washington’s aggressive drive for a unipolar order that led to much more open denials of imperialism on the left. Ironically, at a time when liberals were celebrating a new naked imperialism, much of the global left jettisoned all critical notions of imperialism theory, even, in some cases, offering support for the new empire ideology.  Here the ideological hegemony exerted by capital over the Western left was on full display. [with its derivatives and distractions: identity politics, ‘democracy promotion’, ‘the threat of Islam’, ‘humanitarian intervention’, expansion of NATO, ‘it’s in their culture’, ‘saving Muslim women’, ‘we are all middle class now’, ‘human rights’, liberal feminism, celebrity culture …] “[T]he gap between the views of imperialism...