Out of My Element

(Please note – the following is an exercise in polemics by the author with an eye towards our discussion)

V.I. Lenin was right: Imperialism is the highest form of Capitalism. And the American war in Vietnam was an imperialist war. “The present world order is very profitable for capitalists in the United States, who sit at the top of the heap,” wrote Michael Novak in 1967 while the war raged on. He used the phrase “dollar imperialism” to describe the economic benefits of enforcing the status quo, but a new, more insidious term has proliferated: “globalization.” Globalization is late-stage capitalist ideology triumphant.

Seen in this light, the Vietnam War was not about dominos or communists or humanitarian ideals, but about money. That and the viral spread of capitalist ideology, which is the same thing in the end – capital. To crib a phrase that Noam Chomsky nicked from John Dewey: government is the shadow cast by business over society. The American government may have signed the papers to go to war in Vietnam, but be sure that business interests sold them the pen to do so.

 Lenin again: unless the “economic essence of imperialism” is studied, “it will be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics.” Dorothy Day does not go far enough when she writes that “it is not Christianity and freedom we are protecting, but our possessions.” The economic essence of the Vietnam War has nothing to do with protection and everything to do with expansion – Eastward, ho. Question:  Was American “intervention” in Vietnam a war or a crisis (like our recent financial crash)?

“Moribund capitalism” is how Lenin defined the economic essence of imperialism. Lenin is dead. Capitalism lives on, or at least dies so very slowly.