Socialist Register: 2004: New Imperial Challenge

How should we face the new imperial challenge presented by the US today? How should we understand imperialism and its relationship to globalized capitalism? Essays on the unique nature of the new US Empire and on the new economics of imperialism both develop and challenges classical Marxist theories. Is imperialism a response to capitalist crisis, or does it arise from the distinctive capacities of the dominant capitalist state? Is the American economy caught in fatal contradictions ? or is it, on the contrary, being strongly reinforced by the American state?s uniquely powerful position in the global capitalist system? What has caused the accelerated imperialist ?accumulation by dispossession? of the South, and what forces are at work among the dominant capitalist zones in the context of the neo-liberal mode of rule they all now share? Other essays explore the invasion of Iraq, the morality of the so-called military humanism behind it; the fact about US military strength and strategic planning; US dependence on imported oil.