Lenin, imperialism and muddleheads

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IN their eagerness to carry through the SO neutral position on the Falklands, some comrades are now fabricating the role and nature of the Argentinian state to the point of making the basic Marxist distinction between imperialist and dependent states completely meaningless.

This is the position put by comrade Stan Crooke (SO88). He carries forward what is the logic behind the neutralist position and asks, 'If we do not support Argentina against this imperialist attack, why should we support it against any other?' Comrade : Stan also argues that the appropriate analogy to use is the one of Lenin's position of defeatism towards Russia in World War I.

But if he wants to stand in the camp of Lenin, comrade Crooke and those in SO who think like him, will have to look at Lenin's position a little harder.

The reason that Lenin argued for defeatism in relation to Russia was because Russia was imperialist. It dominated a colonial empire and was the carrier of capitalist relations and the dominance of finance capital into the parts of the world which it dominated.

Now it is clear, on this basis, that we should always automatically be defeatist for Britain. But if the analogy is to have any usefulness, comrade Crooke has to show us that Argentina, like Russia, is an imperialist power.

He does not do this, because he cannot. The Lexia: Rustie was en imperialist power Argentinian state neither dominates a colonial empire, nor has it been the carrier of capitalist relations and the dominance of finance capital into any part of the world.

The European imperialist powers have played that role in relation both to Argentina and the rest of Latin America. All that the Argentinian regime does is to act like a lieutenant for the imperialists, to protect the dominance of the system which they have already established.

This situation is riddled with contradiction and conflict - at the core, that between the workers and the imperialists and their stooges. But there is also a secondary conflict between the national and the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Because they own the vast mass of finance capital, because they control the international banking system, because they can rely on massive military superiority, the imperialist bourgeoisies always have a guaranteed advantage.

Moreover, the national bourgeoisies depend on the imperialists and their governments to help prop them up and protect their local ownership. The only weapon which the national bourgeoisies can wield is the strength of the anti-imperialist masses, but this is a weapon which will put them in the firing line themselves.

So the dominance of finance capital means the dominance of the established imperialist powers. Only the proletarian revolution can break that dominance - only war can decisively shift relations within it.

This does not mean that there are not a few finance capitalists of Argentinian origin. There are a few. But that does not change the history of the state within which they live, or the system of international relations of dominance within which they have to operate.

When Indian capitalists buy a Swiss concern, they are not asserting national dominance over Switzerland or turning India into an imperialist power.

Very likely, they are buying the concern with money raised from, located within and accruing interest for a Swiss bank.

Lenin pointed out that:

•The world has been divided into a handful of usurer states and a vast majority of debtor states"

"Not only are the two main groups of countries, those owning colonies and the colonies themselves, typical of this epoch but the same is also true for the diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically, are formally independent but in fact are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence."

In the same work on imperialism, only a few paragraphs earlier, Lenin has identified Russia as one of the major imperialist powers.

From these views Lenin