What is wrong with Empire?

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by Mouse: Hierophant, you are obviously thinking very deeply on this subject. At the moment I'm at work and don't really have time to answer. However, just consider where we would be without the dynamic of social change that conquest/imperialism brings. Surely the result would be an increase in social and cultural stagnation ? I don't consider that all examples of the subjugation and assimilation of the weak by the strong are to be applauded. However, and even with my Western/liberal upbringing I can see how this process can bring positive benefits.

Hey, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I wish I could use computers at my work [img]smile.gif[/img] No pressure, I was just wondering what your thoughts were.

But yes, I'd be inclined to agree. It would appear that struggle, the human intellectual practice of opposing thought, leads to diversification of the meme-pool (memes being human cultural thought processes on a social rather than individual scale). Yet when struggles are eccentuated too vigorously, and opposing thoughts are allowed to be stamped out and forgotten, it leads to an increased stagnation of social thought, just as you said. Very interesting. I suppose another important question to ask is do we really care? Should we really care?
What do you think?

[Mouse]

Hierophant, try wrapping your brain cells around this. [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img]

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by Mouse: Hierophant, try wrapping your brain cells around this. [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img]

Yeah, [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] is right.
This is gonna take some time. It's 3am right now, and my eyes are aching [img]smile.gif[/img]

[The Hierophant]

Positive feedback processes also have an intrinsic tendency to reach a limit and they often are characterized by path dependency, instability and amplification of shocks. Thus, such processes and models based on them are characterized by catastrophic discontinuities, and by chaotic, far-from-equilibrium dynamics (Hallinan, 1997; Wallerstein, 1997). Such processes often generate tendencies toward increased inequality and polarization, especially when applied to control of scarce resources such as wealth or land, power or influence.

The self-reinforcing character of Collins's geopolitical arguments (1992) can be simply represented by a positive feedback loop of domination, directly analogous to the positive feedback of advantage and accumulation. Control of population, coercive resources or strategic areas may help a power to acquire further resources. The game of Risk in which territories yield armies, and armies yield territories, is a simplified archetype of this dynamic. Myrdal stresses that the loop of cumulative causation is unstable -- the way up is the way down. The amplification of advantages generates a beneficent cycle, but if anything brings that process to an end the amplification of deficits will generate a vicious cycle (unless one happens to end on the knife edge of an unstable equilibrium). The process of domination is unstable and path dependent in the same way. The accumulation loop generates inequality, which is reinforced by the transfers of resources from the poor to the affluent, and the process of domination should generate power inequality and concentration of power in the same way.

Though not global, they were world-systems in exhausting or nearly exhausting the reach of commercial, political and cultural networks. Thus they constitute a reasonably large universe of inter-societal systems that came into existence, expanded and then been merged or incorporated into larger systems. Chase-Dunn and Hall's analysis of the dynamics governing the "rise and demise" of such systems marries a theory of semiperipheral institutional innovation to the model of circumscription developed by Carneiro, Harris, and Cohen (Chase-Dunn & Hall 1997; Sanderson, 1995). The theory of semiperipheral innovation has roots in Trotsky's concept of uneven and combined development, Gershenkron's analysis of the "advantages of backwardness," Service's distinction between adaptation and adaptivity, and Quigley's concept of the institutionalization of an instrument of expansion (Chase-Dunn & Hall 1997: 78-82). The dominant core states are institutionally inflexible because of the sunk costs of commitment to institutional forms which are the basis of their core position. Peripheral areas are also locked into the existing institutional structures both by their poverty and by ties to the core, but some semiperipheral societies are in a position where it is possible to make structural innovations and to implement them.

Well, indeed. [img]smile.gif[/img] Ownership and productivity eh? The core of modern economics, and the basis for human imperialism throughout the ages.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Shaide: -Romans first state imperialist in the world. .

Babylon?
Persia?
Macedonia?
Assyria?
The Hittites?
Chaldea?
Media?

All these predate Rome.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Mouse: Hierophant, you are obviously thinking very deeply on this subject. At the moment I'm at work and don't really have time to answer. However, just consider where we would be without the dynamic of social change that conquest/imperialism brings. Surely the result would be an increase in social and cultural stagnation ? I don't consider that all examples of the subjugation and assimilation of the weak by the strong are to be applauded. However, and even with my Western/liberal upbringing I can see how this process can bring positive benefits.

Trade and immigration can bring the same benefits Mouse. In fact, under an empire it's the trade and immigration that brings the dynamic social changes. When bronze working swept through Europe there was no Empire. When the prinitng press radically altered human societies, it was not confined to one empire but crossed borders. So too the information revolution, and the industrial revolution (though Britain exploited a head start )

Italy gets it's pasta from China. Something definitively Italian, yet the result of trade with a behemoth of a nation on the other side of the landmass.

[Mouse]

Quite right, Yorick [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] Trade and the free flow of information/knowledge also help to drive social development. I never meant to suggest imperialism and conquest by force of arms was the only way to achieve societal evolution.

[Barry the Sprout]

A lot of stuff is said on the left-wing in the UK about Imperialism, so I thought I might as well put in the Marxist/Leninist definition and analysis of the concept.

Lenin originally defined Imperialism within Marxist terms as a final stage of advanced Capitalism - one that would basically create a global working class thoroughly interlinked and therefore more able to start a revolution. In some ways the theory of Imperialism plugs many gaps in the traditional ideas of Marxism - they state that each stage of history will be ended from within (in other words each stage produces its own conditions for destruction), but they also state that the stage after capitalism is worldwide revolution and communism. So ultimately some logical basis must be given to the strengthening of worldwide working class activism - this basis is Imperialism. Hence I personally think Marxism needs it in order to explain revolution on a global scale.

And, Heirophant? I think western consumerist culture is definately one facet of Imperialism under this definition. Its the result of globalising capital-labour relationships.

Just my 2 cents...

[Yorick]

A link to "Reason for the Hated War"

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Barry the Sprout: Lenin originally defined Imperialism within Marxist terms as a final stage of advanced Capitalism -

Interesting. What did he call the FEUDAL Russian Empire then? Feudalism was not capitalism. What did he call Tamerlanes Empire? Or the Erminarch's Ostrogothic Empire?

What did he call the Soviet "Empire"? Oh that's right... a Union. A Union that attempted to repopulate it's provinces of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia with a Russian majority. A Union that repressed the subjects of it's Empire, that included the conquest-gained provinces of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. An Empire more expansionistic and repressive than the Czarist Feudal Empire it replaced.

I prefer Lennon's words "Give peace a chance" myself. You could call me a Ghandist/Lennonist.