Saturday, November 28, 2009

The imperialist state's first concern is not to protect the direct investments of any particular company, although it sometimes does that, but to protect the global system of private accumulation from competing systems.

--Michael Parenti, Against Empire: A Brilliant Expose of the Brutal Realities of U.S. Global Domination

2 comments:

  1. what is the 'global system of private accumulation' and what does he mean by competing systems? competing systems of what?

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  2. The global system of private accumulation = global capitalism dominated by large corporate interests that have one purpose, to make money for their shareholders.

    Competing systems = political/economic systems that challenge capitalism (socialism, communism, regional economic groupings developing in South America, ect.), especially the sort of capitalism that has dominated the global economy since WWII. The IMF, World Bank, and WTO are completely dominated by the capitalist class, and countries that challenge or object to this exploitative economic system are subject to reprisals by these organizations. Latin America is a good example. The Ecuadoreans, Bolivians, Venezuelans, and others are not allowing the Washington Consensus dictated by the IMF, World Bank, and US Treasury to dominate their economies any longer. They are directly challenging the obviously flawed and exploitative capitalist system dominated by large corporate interests. It will be interesting to see how the situation develops from here, especially given the lack of credibility in the prevailing capitalist economic ordering of society due to the recent economic collapse.

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