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February 22, 2004
REVIEWS: In the shadow of empire
London, once the capital of an empire on which the sun never set, has lately been the centre-stage of the burgeoning global movement against what many perceive to be American Imperialism. Demonstrations opposing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq held in the city were probably far bigger and better organized than similar protests elsewhere.
One of the active players in this movement is the radical publishing house, Bookmarks, its offices and bookshops in the historical Bloomsbury Street, being a favourite hideout and resource centre of sorts for left-wing students and activists. Recently, the publisher brought out a sleek, tiny collection of essays called Anti-Imperialism: A Guide for the Movement. Edited by Farah Reza and with an introduction by Tariq Ali, the book makes a lucid and informative read, even as some of the contributors, quite frustratingly, slant too much to the old left to avoid grand simplifications and rhetorical flourishes.
The introduction by Tariq Ali and an interview with former British MP Tony Benn set the tone for the essays by articulating the idea that contemporary American hegemony in political, economic and militaristic terms amounts to the existence of an empire and imperialism analogous to European colonialism. “This is the only time in world history,” notes Tariq Ali, “when we have a globe dominated by a single empire.” The empire wields its hegemony in the name of higher moral ideals, masquerading its real motives.
As Tony Benn elaborates on the theme in his essay, “People were told that the British were in India to prevent widows being thrown on the funeral pyres of their husbands, just as today we are told that the US and Britain went into Afghanistan to prevent women being forced to wear the burqa.”
Tariq Ali dismisses as naive the assertion that the opposition to the US hegemony could come from supranational organizations, NGOs, the UN and dominant nation states. Ali sees the hope in “the real multitudes, peasants in Latin America, workers in China, India, etc”. However, he glosses over the fact that the global movement against American hegemony is also being led largely by trans-border civil society groups. While sections of global civil society might be seen as instrumentalities of the Empire for forging consent in Gramscian terms, it also provides an avenue for the expression of growing discontent with international injustice and oppression.
Lousie Christian’s essay on erosion of civil liberties and human rights in the post 9/11 period highlighting arbitrary detentions, curbs on asylum seekers and mistreatment of prisoners in Guntanomao Bay shows how the United States is now being challenged on the very same moral grounds that it once deployed to censure communist regimes. The left may have once considered civil liberties as being a part of an elitist, liberal ideology; it now seems to be rediscovering its utility in the face of military might and political repression.
Hassan Mahmadallie in his article, “Racism”, analyzes the demonizing of Islam and Muslims in the West in the aftermath of 9/11. Like many other contemporary commentators, Mahmadallie sees the phenomenon of Muslims being typified as sand-niggers and terrorists as having blown the myth of Western secularism and state neutrality. Regrettably though, he does not have anything to say about the counterpart phenomenon of Occidentalism, which entails stereotyping of the entire West and all white people as being racists and anti-Islam.
Most contributors to the volume betray a fixation with state-centric political perspective and underestimate the importance of non-state actors. Similarly, their focus on relations between the global centre (United States) and the peripheral states so to speak, serves to overshadow essentially domestic problems borne out of the ravages of modernity and ill-conceived attempts at nation-building. As Anthony McGrew and David Held have argued elsewhere, “the state is being re-formed from above by the tugs of economic globalization and from below by the pull of sub-nationalism”. The latter trend hardly features in the book under review.
The essay on the relations between India and Pakistan by Barry Pavier, for example, sees the protracted conflict between the two states simply as a result of the capitalist elite in India and its military counterpart in Pakistan maintaining the political status quo. Although, the assertion is partially true, it takes a very narrow view of an animosity rooted in history and inter-tangled with domestic politics of the two squabbling siblings.
Similarly, the chapter on IMF and the World Bank reads as an exoneration of governments by placing the blame for all that is wrong in the developing world squarely and exclusively on Bretton Woods Institution. Any alternative conception of global economic governance that might do away with the current sorry scheme of things is sorely missing in the analysis.
While the book provides a useful overview of the extent to which the world is today dominated by the United States and how its policies have contributed to aggravation of poverty and strife around the globe, it falls short of being a guide for anti-imperialism as it purports to be. If only the detractors of the global political order could infuse their writing with some semblance of objectivity and match their passion with analytical rigour, anti-imperialism would have found stronger intellectual moorings to hang on to.
Anti-Imperialism: A Guide for the Movement
Edited by Farah Reza
Bookmarks, London
ISBN 1898876967
248pp. £10
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