Imperialism
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Paved with Good Intentions
Canada’s Development NGOs on the Road from Idealism to Imperialism
Nik Barry-Shaw, Yves Engler, Dru Oja Jay
“NGOs are as Canadian as hockey,” declared a 1988 Parliamentary report. Few institutions epitomize the foundational Canadian myth of international benevolence like the non-governmental organization devoted to development abroad. This book raises important questions about these organizations and their development projects: Just how “non-governmental” are organizations that get most of their funding from government agencies? What impact do these funding ties have on NGOs&… (more information)
Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror
U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia
Drew Cottle, Oliver Viller
Since the late 1990s, the United States has funneled billions of dollars in aid to Colombia, ostensibly to combat the illicit drug trade and State Department-designated terrorist groups. The result has been a spiral of violence that continues to take lives and destabilize Colombian society. This book asks an obvious question: are the official reasons given for the wars on drugs and terror in Colombia plausible, or are there other, deeper factors at work? Scholars Villar and Cottle… (more information)
Three Kings
The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II
Lloyd Gardner
From F.D.R. to L.B.J., Three Kings reveals a story of America’s scramble for political influence, oil concessions, and a new military presence based on airpower and generous American aid to shaky regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq. Marshaling new and revelatory evidence from the archives, Lloyd Gardner deftly weaves together three decades of U.S. moves in the region to offer the first history of America’s efforts to supplant the British empire in the Middle East. From the… (more information)
Brown Skin, White Masks
Hamid Dabashi
Brown Skin, White Masks provides a critical examination of the role that immigrant “comprador intellectuals” play in facilitating the global domination of American imperialism. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon explored the consequences of inferiority that colonized people felt, leading them to identify with the ideology of the colonial agency. Dabashi picks up where Fanon left off and extends Fanon’s insights as they apply to today’s world. Dabashi examines the ideology… (more information)
Decolonization and Empire
Contesting the Rhetoric and Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond
John S. Saul
What does Empire mean today? There is the unalloyed working of capitalism, the manufacture and exacerbation of a global hierarchy, reinforced by the “free” workings of the market, creating unequal windows of opportunity and material outcomes. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow, not exclusively along geographical lines (there are, after all, many poor in the global North and some rich in the global South) yet, nonetheless, principally along these lines. This hierarchy is… (more information)
Creating a Failed State
The U.S. and Canada in Afghanistan
John W. Warnock
By the end of 2001, the United States and its local allies had chased the hated Taliban government out of Afghanistan. A process had begun to create a new constitution and elect a democratic government, and the United Nations was leading a broad coalition starting reconstruction and development. Canada made major commitments to this project, but the Taliban are back. The war restarted and looks to have no end in sight. As John Warnock so deftly explains, this situation is only understandable within… (more information)
The Socialist Register 2008
Global Flashpoints Reactions to Imperialism
Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch
Socialist Register 2008 takes a look at the forces at work in opposition to the American Empire and analyzes their nature—are they reactionary or progressive? Further, what are the prospects for the Left, in the Islamic world, in Latin America and in the capitalist north? The contributors seek to identify the distinguishing features of neoliberalism today and point out its emerging contradictions. (more information)
Development After Globalization
Theory and Practice for the Embattled South in a New Imperial Age
John S. Saul
This reflection on the situation in the countries of the global South examines their shared but diverse experiences of the hard facts of poverty and exclusion in the world of capitalist globalization. It probes the reality of ‘underdevelopment’ in an unequal world, driven by western power and capitalist profit-seeking and supported by inequalities within the countries of the ‘third world’ themselves. John Saul suggests fresh ways to consider the dynamics of this situation… (more information)
The Socialist Register 2005
The Empire Reloaded
Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch
In the Socialist Register 2005, the contributors examine, through a multitude of lenses, how the American Empire works. They take a comprehensive look at who holds the balance of power and how this affects stability. What is most interesting is the way these essays look at the impact that the new American Empire has had and is having throughout the world. The topics discussed include how the shift in global political relations has influenced gender relations, the media and popular culture. (more information)
Deglobalization (Second Edition)
Ideas for a New World Economy–Updated Edition
Walden Bello
This is a short and trenchant history of the organizations — the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and Group of Seven — which have promoted economic globalization and which are now trying to manage the unmanageable. Walden Bello points to their manifest failings, seen in recurrent financial crises, the ever widening gulf between developing and industrialized countries, the persistence of gross inequalities and mass poverty. He examines new ideas for reforming world economic management, and argues… (more information)
Global Capitalism & American Empire
Sam Gindin, Leo Panitch
The American Empire has usually come in through the back door rather than the front door: its own empire of business was made plausible and attractive by the American state’s insistence that it was not imperialistic. The USA presented itself as the scourge of the old colonialism, spreading democracy and freedom of opportunity, rather than an old-style Empire of armed conquest. Its informal empire, uniquely combining, as Thomas Jefferson put it, ‘extensive empire with self-government… (more information)
Globalization
Tame It or Scrap It?
Greg Buckman
Greg Buckman discusses the two main approaches within the anti-globalization movement. The ‘Fair Trade and Back to Breton Woods’ school argues for immediate reforms of the world’s trading system, capital markets and global institutions, notably the World Bank, IMF and WTO. The ‘Localization’ school, takes a more root and branch position and argues for the abolition of these institutions and the outright reversal of globalization. Buckman explains the details of each… (more information)
Globalization and Development
A Glossary
Michael Mason
This comprehensive and up-to-date glossary provides the definitions needed to navigate the labyrinth of terms and phrases used in development literature. Unlike traditional dictionaries, this guide places definitions within the historical context of the literature. Mason has also included information on development institutions and on many of the journals and publications that have emerged in the development field. (more information)
Imperial Overstretch
George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire
Roger Burbach, Jim Tarbell
George W. Bush has fundamentally changed America’s place in the world. In some neo-conservative circles the word “empire” is back in fashion, and a great republic that broke away from the British Empire is now supposed to be proud of its new imperial role. This book explains how the neo-conservatives and the petro-military complex have hijacked US foreign policy. It examines the price that Americans will have to pay for this new era of unlimited US military might—a never-… (more information)
After Iraq
War, Imperialism and Democracy
Jim Harding
The war on Iraq is a geopolitical watershed. The invasion is not about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction or even just about oil. Rather it signifies a profound shift in U.S. doctrine in a post-Soviet world. After Iraq traces Iraq’s colonial history, Saddam Hussein’s brutal rise to power and their relationship to Iraq’s major oil reserves. Jim Harding also explores the rise of Pax Americana and the worldwide military expansion of the U.S. following Bush Junior’s presidency… (more information)
The Socialist Register 2004
The New Imperial Challenge
Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch
The essays in this fortieth volume of The Socialist Register analyze the unique nature of the new U.S. empire and challenge the left to develop a better theory of imperialism and its relation to globalized capitalism. Other essays examine the limits and contradictions of “Americanization” as a dimension of U.S. global power; the facts and myths surrounding U.S. strategic interests in Iraq and the “war on terror”; ecological imperialism, and the significance of international… (more information)
The Three Waves of Globalization
A History of a Developing Global Consciousness
Robbie Robertson
A new reading of western history argues that human interconnections achieved global proportions for the first time 500 years ago, producing three waves of destabilizing globalization. The first wave, post-1500, devastated America and contributed to European wars and revolutions. In the nineteenth century, the rush to monopolize wealth and power escalated into rivalries between classes, nations, empires. After 1945, a new global social architecture with transnational capital as its main factor… (more information)
System In Crisis
The Dynamics of Free Market Capitalism
James Petras, Henry Veltmeyer
In the late 1960s the operating world capitalist system hit a snag, exposing cracks that went to its very foundations. At first, this crisis was viewed as part of a normal business cycle of capital accumulation in which markets become saturated. The reaction created a mass of unemployed workers, reduced purchasing power and consumption capacity which initiated a further downward cycle of disinvestment and recession. The efforts to revitalize the capitalist system included the restructuring of world… (more information)
The Socialist Register 2002
A World of Contradictions
Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch
The contributors, from many countries, discuss the contradictions that exist world wide and the resulting human suffering and misery that emerges. Contrary to the idyllic picture being painted by the promoters of globalization, we learn that workers are without work, that cultural, political, gender and racial conflicts abound, and that contradictions between countries and regions lead to an ever widening gap between the “haves” and the “have nots’”as health care and… (more information)
Globalization Unmasked
Imperialism in the 21st Century
James Petras, Henry Veltmeyer
In this book, the authors contend that “globalization” is little more than imperialism in a new form. They argue that the “inevitability” of globalization and the adjustment or submission of peoples all over the world to free market capitalism depends on the capacity of the dominant and ruling classes to bend people to their will and convince people that their interests are the people’s interests. A key element in theorizing about globalization and in organizing to… (more information)