Global Learning
  • Home
  • Defenders of Cuban Socialism
    • UN Charter
    • Declaration of Human Rights
    • Bandung
    • New International Economic Order
    • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Substack editorial column
  • New Cold War articles
  • Friends of Socialist China articles
  • Global Research articles
  • Counterpunch articles
  • Cuba and the world-system
    • Table of Contents and chapter summaries
    • About the author
    • Endorsements
    • Obtaining your copy
  • Blog ¨The View from the South¨
    • Blog Index
    • Posts in reverse chronological order
  • The Voice of Third World Leaders
    • Asia >
      • Ho Chi Minh
      • Xi Jinping, President of China
    • Africa >
      • Kwame Nkrumah
      • Julius Nyerere
    • Latin America >
      • Fidel Castro
      • Hugo Chávez
      • Raúl Castro >
        • 55th anniversary speech, January 1, 1914
        • Opening Speech, CELAC
        • Address at G-77, June 15, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, July 5, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, December 20, 2014
        • Speech on Venezuela at ALBA, 3-17-2015
        • Declaration of December 18, 2015 on USA-Cuba relations
        • Speech at ALBA, March 5, 2018
      • Miguel Díaz-Canel >
        • UN address, September 26, 2018
        • 100th annivesary, CP of China
      • Evo Morales >
        • About Evo Morales
        • Address to G-77 plus China, January 8, 2014
        • Address to UN General Assembly, September 24, 2014
      • Rafael Correa >
        • About Rafael Correa
        • Speech at CELAC 1/29/2015
        • Speech at Summit of the Americas 2015
      • Nicolás Maduro
      • Cristina Fernández
      • Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations >
        • Statement at re-opening of Cuban Embassy in USA, June 20, 2015
        • The visit of Barack Obama to Cuba
        • Declaration on parliamentary coup in Brazil, August 31, 2016
        • Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba on Venezuela, April 13, 2019
      • ALBA >
        • Declaration of ALBA Political Council, May 21, 2019
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 17, 2015
        • Declaration on Venezuela, April 10, 2017
      • Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) >
        • Havana Declaration 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 26
    • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    • International >
      • Peoples’ Summit 2015
      • The Group of 77 >
        • Declaration on a New World Order 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela 3/26/2015
      • BRICS
      • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Readings
    • Charles McKelvey, Cuba in Global Context
    • Piero Gleijeses, Cuba and Africa
    • Charles McKelvey, Chávez and the Revolution in Venezuela
    • Charles McKelvey, The unfinished agenda of race in USA
    • Charles McKelvey, Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist Revolutionary
  • Recommended Books
  • Contact

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Recommended books on Amazon.com; click on image of book to connect

The neocolonial world-system

9/13/2013

0 Comments

 
     The United States emerged from World War II as a hegemonic core nation, more advanced than other core nations in military power, productive capacity, levels of capital, and technology.  The emergence of the Cold War doctrine, postulating the impossibility of a lasting peace with the Soviet Union due to its supposedly expansionist tendencies, served as a justification for the strengthening of U.S. military power and a militarism, in which government spending on the military became the stimulus for economic expansion and scientific development.  The doctrine of the Cold War also functioned as a frame of reference for responding to anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World, as such movements became defined as manifestations of Soviet and communist expansionism.  As a result, the post-World War II transnationalization of U.S. capital was accompanied by the transnationalization of the U.S. armed forces, and the global neocolonial system of the post-World War II era was developed on a foundation of military power (Arboleya 2008:132-35).

      In addition to military power, the post-World War II neocolonial system was dependent on a cultural and ideological component.  The doctrine of the Cold War was itself an ideological construction that distorted reality in two important respects.  First, in reality, Soviet foreign policy was not expansionistic.  Its basic intention was to create a geopolitical cordon of security in the territory that surrounded its frontiers, while seeking to establish peaceful coexistence with the capitalist powers.  Nor was its policy oriented to the support of Third World revolutions.  It was not based on a theory of a global revolution, but on the premise that revolutions, when they occur, emerge from unique factors in each country.  The Soviet Union sometimes supported Third World revolutions when doing so seemed consistent with its geopolitical strategy, and it refrained from economic exploitation of Third World nations, believing that in the long run this would serve to protect the security of its territory.  But its general orientation was to co-exist with the capitalist nations and to leave the Third World to its fate in the face of the imperialistic intentions of the United States (Arboleya 2008:134-37, 185-88).  
 
      In the second place, the Third World revolutions, although often inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution and influenced in varying degrees by Marxism, were fundamentally anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements, driven principally by an anti-imperialist frame of reference, claiming the right of autonomous economic and cultural development in opposition to the imperialist intentions of the United States and other core powers.  This was not the expansion of communism, in essence, but the expansion of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, seeking to construct a more just and democratic world-system.  
 
      By virtue of its enormous economic power, the United States was able to disseminate the Cold War ideological construction throughout the world, presenting itself as a defender of democracy, freedom, and liberty in the face of the threat posed by an international conspiracy of totalitarian communism, when in fact the United States itself was the principal undemocratic force in the world, imposing its neocolonial domination (Arboleya 2008:136-37).

       In addition to the diffusion of the Cold War ideological construction, the United States was able to diffuse throughout the world the supposed virtues of the “American way of life” through television and radio programs, films, and comic books, seeking to establish U.S. society as the ideal toward which all nations and individuals should aspire.  The effectiveness of this technological diffusion of culture depended on the extent to which a popular movement in the neocolony could formulate and disseminate an alternative ideology that explained the material abundance of U.S. society as rooted in neocolonial domination (Arboleya 2008:136).  

     Thus the neocolonial world-system generates a fundamental global political conflict between the core nations that benefit from structures of
domination and Third World movements of national liberation that seek to develop alternative structures that would make possible the autonomous economic and cultural development of their nations.  This is the foundation of the conflicts between the United States and Vietnam, Cuba, the Chile of Allende, and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as well as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador today.  The Islamic Revolution also represents a particular manifestation of this Third World quest for autonomous development.


References


Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana. La Habana: Editorial de
Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial


 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author: Charles McKelvey

    Retired professor, writer,  and Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist revolutionary

    Categories

    All
    American Revolution
    Blog Index
    Bolivia
    Charismatic Leaders
    China
    Critique Of The Left
    Cuban History
    Cuba Today
    Ecuador
    Environment
    French Revolution
    Gay Rights
    Haitian Revolution
    Knowledge
    Latin American History
    Latin American Right
    Latin American Unity
    Marx
    Marxism-Leninism
    Mexican Revolution
    Miscellaneous
    Neocolonialism
    Neoliberalism
    Nicaragua
    North-South Cooperation
    Presidential Elections 2016
    Press
    Public Debate In USA
    Race
    Religion And Revolution
    Revolution
    Russian Revolution
    South-South Cooperation
    Third World
    Trump
    US Ascent
    US Imperialism
    Vanguard
    Venezuela
    Vietnam
    Wallerstein
    Women And Revolution
    World History
    World-System
    World-System Crisis

    Archives

    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    January 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

More Ads


website by Sierra Creation