We’ve discussed these processes in numerous ways over the years, but perhaps we can try yet another angle so that we can better plug it in to the present analysis.
When we were talking about the economic imperialism and warfare of the United States, we glossed over the actual mechanics of the economic warfare, which is an important part of the story. Naturally, there is a lot going on here, but we can at least illustrate some of these mechanics and tease out some of the patterns that structure them, which could prove to be illuminating.
Economic imperialism is striking in that it turns creative production itself into a mode of warfare. This sort of warfare seems to emerge – and is only possible with – extraordinary wealth accumulation. It takes a massive surplus to marshal enough material flows across borders to overcome the material powers of outside societies and reverse their own surplus flows. This is a process whose initial stages are backed by military power, which is able to agitate outside production enough to get that suction and that reverse flow going, so that the productive forces of that outside power are directing the surplus away from that power and into the hegemon. And then this implies existing trade and transportation networks which can facilitate those flows, oftentimes which are rebuilt in the target societies after warfare or colonial devastation, retooled to favor the machinations of the hegemon.
There is a soft and cultural power that comes with hegemonic dominance, which provides an ideological and magnetic pull to assist that suction as well. Outside powers look up to the hegemon and want to be like the hegemon, and so enter into economic and military relations with the hegemon so as to partake in that power, even if at the expensive of a siphoned off surplus, which shouldn't be a problem as long as the pie isn't shrinking too much and too quickly. Oligarchies then develop among the outside ruling classes and the points of contact with the hegemon, and in the case of somewhat wealthier vassals, middle classes through skimming off of the resource flows, greasing the wheels of extraction. Typically, it is the direct producers and laborers lower on the value chain which are squeezed the hardest. And so these gradations of economic class and relative benefit in the political system can introduce additional social and political complexity, allowing for additional leverage in propaganda efforts, slowing the accumulation of antagonism to the extraction.
With the United States presiding over what is considered to be the most wealthy and powerful empire in human history, it is tempting to point to the superiority of economic imperialism as a mode of violence, but it wasn’t always that way. The Spartans with their military power were the dominant force for a large portion of ancient Greece’s history, edging out the economic imperialism and naval power of Athens in the Peloponnesian War in particular, and then the military society of Rome was able to defeat Carthage – itself considered to be an economic society – in the Punic Wars. There are plenty of other examples. And of course, these various powers waxed and waned throughout the passage of history.
However at present, we have the formidable power of the U.S. economic empire to contend with, coming right on the heels of Britain's powerful economic empire, both of which were nestled in a particular stage of history, with numerous interacting and sympathetic political, social, cultural, material, and technological dimensions to account for.
On a basic and individual level, if you're looking to physically threaten someone, or even destroy that person, what is happening there is readily apparent. The same is the case if you simply take something from someone without consent. The calculus is fairly clear: the value of what was lost can be determined, and whether the loss of that value is enough of a threat to justify the organization and exercise of power to get that value back, or otherwise simple retribution is a clear enough motivating force.
But what if you make a trade that ends up being detrimental for the other person? Maybe you got something good, the other person got something bad, and then the other person ended up worse off. Well that failure could be attributed to the misapprehension of the situation by the losing party, written off as a loss. Ain't the winner's fault; let them have the winnings. Better luck next time.
With a growing concentration of power in the winner however, it becomes easier and easier to manipulate these trades, making them look equal to the perception, when they are in fact steadily draining the resources and faculties of the losing parties. You can run with this sort of slow violence for quite a long time, constantly patching up the worst of its effects with overwhelming power, perpetual growth, and the steady application of propaganda.
The brutality of this process is slower to suss out, though it can certainly be done with enough clarity to indicate its effects. Say, on the individual level if you are being assaulted economically, it is the case that the same amount of energy and exertion it takes to reproduce the basic fundamentals of daily living - food, water, shelter, heat, clothing, medicine, tools, transportation, etc. - is garnering less and less of those things over time, and in late stage cases it takes more effort to get less resource in the trade.
Decisions have to be made regarding the general economy of the household: get enough food to stave the wasting away of the body? Clean water to keep away illness? Maintenance of the shelter to avoid exposure? Purchase of energy to allow for heat, cooking, various forms of production and leisure? Purchase of medicine to stave off ill health? Some of these decisions are foregone entirely by the geographies of impoverishment and the depredations of class and intersecting identity markers. And so the self contracts and degrades at an accelerated rate in relation to natural baseline.
Systemically, one witnesses the gradual crumbling of one's home and one's neighbors' homes, as well as the disrepair and degradation of community infrastructure, the creeping in of numerous poverty-related social problems and conventional violence, the prevalence of disease and hunger, debt stresses and related violence, applications of state violence, steamrolled by urban renewal and gentrification and so on, and so whole communities too are sucked dry and then abandoned to degrade and disintegrate.
There is an overlaying element of psychological warfare and its attendant pathologies as well, as all of these pathological effects of economic warfare prefigure some kind of justifying ideology which posits the actual fairness and justness of such a state of affairs, so as to maximize the effectiveness and duration of the numerous modes of extraction. And so the afflicted are not only cast in a low grade state of perpetual strain and suffering, but it is their fault for being in such a position, an attitude that is often internalized and which manifests in various forms of community sanction, substance abuse, and self-flagellation.
This would all be bad enough, but the real trouble with this is that with empire, the modalities of domination typically have to be reproduced and multiplied in a fractal manner throughout the empire as it sustains itself. There is never one monolithic economic empire, but a complex of powerful economic actors conspiring together to coordinate their class interests so as to sustain their assault on both their own populations and foreign populations as well.
Within such an arrangement is a multitude of perpetual exploitation, with each actor angling to accumulate more than the other to avoid going under, and then so on down the line, multiplying the reach and effects of exploitation, degrading everything simultaneously. It is the constant rolling ambition of newer generations coming upon the old, looking to overcome and outdo previous generations, that drive the process on for centuries, with ever-increasing instability and political strife within the sacrifice zones, and even attrition within the richer and more fortunate sectors of competing powers. The precariat grow, the rich grow in power, and the middle hollows out.
And then such a process of corruption and disintegration endangers the entire geopolitical and environmental arenas through a growing coarsening of public feeling and mounting mismanagement and an eventual return to hard power, as there is nothing soft left to offer.
It can take decades for these effects to gain real traction, but when they do, not only are they devastating, but also immensely confusing and bewildering. Eventually more conventional warfare is breaking out, often to the surprise of the more fortunate, rationalized as some materializing evil proceeding from the unknown: the inscrutable birth of a supernatural antichrist from a dubious but otherwise earthly mother.
