See also: Empire and Hegemony

Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." Imperialism, as described by that work is primarily a Western undertaking that employs "expansionist, mercantilist policies".^[1]

Cecil Rhodes: Cape-Cairo railway project. Founded the De Beers Mining Company and owned the British South Africa Company, which established Rhodesia for itself. He liked to "paint the map British red," and declared: "all of these stars ... these vast worlds that remain out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets."^[2]

The term as such primarily has been applied to Western political and economic dominance in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some writers, such as Edward Said, use the term more broadly to describe any system of domination and subordination organized with an imperial center and a dominated periphery.

Overview[link]

Imperialism has been found in the histories of Japan, the Assyrian Empire, the Chinese Empire, the Roman Empire, Greece, the Byzantine Empire, the Persian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, ancient Egypt, and India. Imperialism was a basic component to the conquests of Genghis Khan during the Mongol Empire, and other war-lords. Historically recognized Muslim empires number in the dozens. Sub-Saharan Africa has also had dozens of empires that pre-date the European colonial era, for example the Ethiopian Empire, Oyo Empire, Asante Union, Luba Empire, Lunda Empire and Mutapa Empire. The Americas during the pre-Columbian era also had large empires in Mesoamerica, such as the Aztec and the Inca.

The word itself, derived from the Latin verb imperare (to command), the Roman concept of imperium, while the actual term 'Imperialism' was coined in the 16th century,^[3] reflecting what are now seen as the imperial policies of Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Imperialism not only describes colonial and territorial policies, but also economic and military dominance and influence.

Although normally used to imply forcible imposition of a more powerful foreign government's control on a weaker country, or over conquered territory that was previously without a unified government, "imperialism" is sometimes also used to describe loose or indirect political or economic influence or control of weak states by more powerful ones.^[4] If the dominant country's influence is felt in social and cultural circles, such as "foreign" music being popular with young people, it may be described as cultural imperialism.

"Imperialism has been subject to moral censure by its critics, and thus the term is frequently used in international propaganda as a pejorative for expansionist and aggressive foreign policy."^[4]

Colonialism vs imperialism[link]

Territories that were once part of the British Empire

The term 'imperialism' should not be confused with ‘colonialism’ as it often is. Edward Said suggested that imperialism involves “the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory’”. He goes on to say colonialism refers to the “implanting of settlements on a distant territory”. Robert Young supports this thinking as he puts forward that imperialism operates from the center, it is a state policy, and is developed for ideological as well as financial reasons whereas colonialism is nothing more than development for settlement or commercial intentions.^[5]

Age of Imperialism[link]

The Age of Imperialism was a time period beginning around 1870 when modern, relatively developed nations were taking over less developed areas, colonizing them, or influencing them in order to expand their own power. Although imperialist practices have existed for thousands of years, the term "Age of Imperialism" generally refers to the activities of nations such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States in the early 18th through the middle 20th centuries, e.g., the "The Great Game" in Persian lands, the "Scramble for Africa" and the "Open Door Policy" in China.^[6][7]

Scramble for Africa

The ideas of imperialism put forward by historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson during the 19th century. European imperialism were influential,and they rejected the notion that "imperialism" required formal, legal control by one government over another country. "In their view, historians have been mesmerized by formal empire and maps of the world with regions colored red. The bulk of British emigration, trade, and capital went to areas outside the formal British Empire. A key to the thought of Robinson and Gallagher is the idea of empire 'informally if possible and formally if necessary.'"^[8]

Europe’s expansion into territorial imperialism had much to do with the great economic benefit from collecting resources from colonies, in combination with assuming political control often by military means. Most notably, the “British exploited the political weakness of the Mughal state, and, while military activity was important at various times, the economic and administrative incorporation of local elites was also of crucial significance”. Although a substantial number of colonies had been designed or subject to provide economic profit (mostly through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), Fieldhouse suggests that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in places such as Africa and Asia, this idea is not necessarily valid^[9]:

Modern empires were not artificially constructed economic machines. The second expansion of Europe was a complex historical process in which political, social and emotional forces in Europe and on the periphery were more influential than calculated imperialism. Individual colonies might serve an economic purpose; collectively no empire had any definable function, economic or otherwise. Empires represented only a particular phase in the ever-changing relationship of Europe with the rest of the world: analogies with industrial systems or investment in real estate were simply misleading.^[10]

During this time period, European merchants had the ability to “roam the high seas and appropriate surpluses from around the world (sometimes peaceably, sometimes violently) and to concentrate them in Europe.”^[11]

European expansion accelerated greatly in the 19th century. In order to obtain raw materials, Europe began importing them from other countries. Europeans sought raw materials such as dyes, cotton, vegetable oils, and metal ores from overseas. Europe was being transformed into the manufacturing center of the world.^[12]

Communication became much more advanced during the European expansion. The invention of railroads and telegraphs made it easier to communicate with other countries. Railroads assisted in transporting goods and in supplying large armies.^[12]

Along with advancements in communication, Europe also continued to develop its military technology. European chemists made deadly explosives that could be used in combat, and with the advancement of machinery they were able to create lighter, cheaper guns. The guns were also much faster and more accurate. By the late 19th century (1880s) the machine gun had become an effective battlefield weapon. This technology gave European armies an advantage over their opponents, as armies in less developed countries were still fighting with arrows, swords, and leather shields.^[12]

Germany[link]

From their original homelands in Scandinavia and far northern Europe Germanic tribes expanded throughout northern and western Europe in the middle period of classical antiquity, and southern Europe in late antiquity, conquering Celtic and other peoples and forming in 800 the Holy Roman Empire, the first German Empire. However unlike China, there was no real systemic continuity from the western Roman Empire to its German successor which famously was "not holy, not Roman, and not an empire"^[13], and numerous small states existed in variously autonomous confederation. Although by 1000 Germanic conquest of central, western, and southern Europe west of and including Italy was complete, excluding only Muslim Iberia, there was no process equivalent to Han sinification, and "Germany" remained largely a conceptual term referring to an amorphous area of central Europe.

Not a maritime power, and not a nation-state, as it became one, Germany's participation in Western imperialism was negligible until the late 19th century and the participation of Austria was primarily as a result of Hapsburg control of the First Empire, the Spanish throne, and other royal houses. After the defeat of Napoleon, who caused the dissolution of that first German Empire, Prussia, and the German states continued to stand aloof from imperialism, preferring to manipulate the European system through polices such as those of Metternich. After Prussia unified the other states into the second German Empire, its long-time leader Otto von Bismarck (1862-90) had long opposed colonial acquisitions, arguing that the burden of obtaining, maintaining and defending such possessions would outweigh any potential benefit. He felt that colonies did not pay for themselves, that the German bureaucratic system would not work well in the easy-going tropics, and the diplomatic disputes over colonies would distract Germany from its central interest, Europe itself.^[14] However, in 1883-84 he suddenly reversed himself and overnight built a colonial empire in Africa and the South Pacific, and then lost interest in imperialism. Historians have debated exactly why he made this sudden and short-lived move.^[15] He was aware that public opinion had started to demand colonies for reasons of German prestige.^[16] Bismarck was influenced by Hamburg merchants and traders, his neighbors at Friedrichsruh. The establishment of the German colonial empire proceeded smoothly, starting with German New Guinea in 1884.^[17]

After the collapse of the short-lived Third Reich, and the failure of its attempt to create a great land empire in Eurasia, Germany was split between Western and Soviet spheres of influence until Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian and Communist imperialism[link]

See also: Criticism of communist party rule, Soviet Imperialism, and Soviet Empire

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961.

As Germanic tribes conquered western Europe, Slavic peoples gradually expanded their control over eastern Europe and northern Eurasia, and in the form of the Romanov Empire extended that control to the Pacific forming a common border with the Qing Empire.

Bolshevik leaders had effectively reestablished a polity with roughly the same jurisdiction as that empire by 1921, but with an internationalist ideology. Beginning in 1923, the policy of "Indigenization" [korenizatsiia] helped native peoples develop their national cultures within a socialist framework. This was never formally revoked. Its cultural and linguistic concessions to non-Russians, however, stopped being implemented and enforced. After World War II, the Soviet Union installed socialist regimes modelled on those it had installed in 1919–20 in the old Tsarist empire in areas its forces occupied in Eastern Europe.^[18] The Soviet Union and People's Republic of China supported post–World War II anti-colonial national-liberation movements to advance their own interests but were not always successful.^[19]

Trotsky, and others believed that the revolution could only succeed in Russia as part of a world revolution, which was in fact shortly after the Russian Revolution spreading in the defeated central powers of Europe. Lenin wrote extensively on the matter and famously declared that Imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism, which in his time it was. However after his death Joseph Stalin established Socialism in one country for the Soviet Union creating the model for subsequent inward looking Stalinist states, and purging the early Internationalist elements. The internationalist tendencies of the early revolution would be abandoned until they returned in a negative form in the competition with the United States in the Cold War.

"President McKinley fires a cannon into the Imperialist Strawman", cartoon by W.A. Rogers in Harper's Weekly of September 22, 1900

Though the Soviet Union declared itself anti-imperialist, critics argue that it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires. Some scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states. It has also been argued that the USSR practiced colonialism as did other imperial powers and was carrying on the old Russian tradition of expansion and control.^[20]

The United States as "the world's policeman"[link]

The early United States expressed its opposition to Imperialism, at least that distinct from its own Manifest Destiny, in policies such as the Monroe Doctrine. Beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century however, policies such as Woodrow Wilson's mission to "make the world safe for democracy"^[21] were often backed by military force, but more often effected from behind the scenes, consistent with the general notion of hegemony and imperium of historical empires.^[22][23]. In 1898 Americans who opposed imperialism created the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose the US annexation of the Philippines. A year later a war erupted in the Philippines causing business, labor and government leaders in the US to condemn America's occupation in the Philippines. They also denounced them for causing the deaths of many Filipinos.^[24]

After the second world war the United States became identified with Western interests generally in a global conflict of spheres of influence with the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States did not diminish its global ability to project force, remaining "the sole superpower" and what has been called a "unipolar" situation of domination by it globally came into force.

Since the end of the previous century Battlespace domination has been an open and variously reported policy of the U.S. Department of defense and U.S. Administrations stated and restated in various Quadrennial Reports, force posture statements, etc. in execution of its role as sole remaining superpower^[25][26]. The 2010 QDR indicates a change in perspective and it is unclear how the policy of the first decade of the 21st century would be sustained through the anticipated fiscal environment of the second.^[27].

In 2005, the United States had 737 military bases in foreign countries, according to official sources.^[28] As of 2010 US Military spending is about 43% of the world total.^[29]. Only a handful of countries spent a larger portion of GDP on military in 2010 and of these only Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates spent more than US$10 billion.

Justification[link]

A controversial aspect of imperialism is the imperial power’s defense and justification of such actions. Most controversial of all is the justification of imperialism done on rational grounds. J. A. Hobson identifies this justification: “It is desirable that the earth should be peopled, governed, and developed, as far as possible, by the races which can do this work best, i.e. by the races of highest 'social efficiency'.”^[30] This is clearly the racial argument, which pays heed to other ideas such as the “White Man’s Burden” prevalent at the turn of the twentieth century.

Technological and economic efficiency were often improved in territories subjected to imperialism through the building of roads and introduction of innovations. However, the majority of the rewards of such infrastructure improvements are usually shipped to the imperial state or utilized by the local administration. Similarly, the rapid adoption of the scientific method throughout the world was partly a side effect of the British Empire.^[31]

The principles of imperialism are often deeply connected to the policies and practices of British Imperialism "during the last generation, and proceeds rather by diagnosis than by historical description."^[32] British Imperialist strategy often but not always used the concept of terra nullius (Latin expression which stems from Roman law meaning ‘empty land’). The country of Australia serves as a case study in relation to British imperialism. British settlement and colonial rule of the island continent of Australia in the eighteenth century was premised on terra nullius, for its settlers considered it unused by its sparse inhabitants.

This form of imperialism can also be seen in British Columbia, Canada. In the 1840s, the territory of British Columbia was divided into two regions, one space for the native population, and the other for non-natives. The indigenous peoples were often forcibly removed from their homes onto reserves. These actions were “justified by a dominant belief among British colonial officials that land occupied by Native people was not being used efficiently and productively.”^[5]

See also[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Guy Ankerl, Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharatai, Chinese, and Western, Geneva, INU PRESS, 2000, ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
• Robert Bickers/Christian Henriot, New Frontiers: Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-7190-5604-7
• Barbara Bush, Imperialism and Postcolonialism (History: Concepts,Theories and Practice), Longmans, 2006, ISBN 0-582-50583-6
• John Darwin (author), After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000, Penguin Books, 2008, ISBN 0-14-101022-3
• Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Penguin Books, 2004, ISBN 0-14-100754-0
• Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-674-00671-2
• E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914, Abacus Books, 1989, ISBN 0-349-10598-7
• E. J. Hobsbawm, On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy, Pantheon Books, 2008, ISBN 0-375-42537-3
• J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, Cosimo Classics, 2005, ISBN 1-59605-250-3
• Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance, Pluto Press, 2003, ISBN 0-7453-1989-0
• V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, International Publishers, New York, 1997, ISBN 0-7178-0098-9
• Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital: A Contribution to an Economic Explanation of Imperialism
• Petringa, Maria, Brazza, A Life for Africa, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006. ISBN 978-1-4259-1198-0
• Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, Vintage Books, 1998, ISBN 0-09-996750-2
• Simon C. Smith, British Imperialism 1750–1970, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-59930-X
• Stuchtey, Benedikt, Colonialism and Imperialism, 1450-1950, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: July 13, 2011.

External links[link]

• J.A Hobson, Imperialism a Study 1902.
• The Paradox of Imperialism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. November 2006.
• Imperialism Quotations
• State, Imperialism and Capitalism by Joseph Schumpeter
• Economic Imperialism by A.J.P.Taylor
• Imperialism Entry in the Columbia Encyclopedia (Bartleby)
• [1] Imperialism by Emile Perreau-Saussine
• The Nation-State, Core and Periphery: A Brief sketch of Imperialism in the 20th century.
• Mehmet Akif Okur, Rethinking Empire After 9/11: Towards A New Ontological Image of World Order, Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Volume XII, Winter 2007, pp.61–93
• Imperialism 101, Against Empire By Michael Parenti Published by City Lights Books, 1995, ISBN 0-87286-298-4, ISBN 978-0-87286-298-2, 217 pages

Tariq Ali
Ali at Imperial College, London (2006)
Born	(1943-10-21) 21 October 1943 (age 68) Lahore, British Raj (now Pakistan)
Occupation	Military historian Novelist Activist
Alma mater	University of the Punjab Exeter College, Oxford
Genres	Geopolitics History Postcolonialism
Subjects	Historical criticism
Literary movement	New Left Review
Spouse(s)	Susan Watkins

Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی), (born 21 October 1943), is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator.^[1][2] He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.

He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970), Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), The Duel (2008) and The Obama Syndrome (2010).

Early life[link]

Ali was born and raised in Lahore. The city was part of British India at the time of his birth in 1943, but became part of the newly independent nation of Pakistan four years later. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab from 1937–1942).

Ali's parents "both came from a very old, crusty, feudal family".^[3] His father had broken with the family's conventions in politics when he was a student, adopting communism and atheism. Ali's mother also belonged to the same family, and became radicalized upon meeting his father. However, Ali was taught the fundamentals of Islam in order to be able to argue against it.^[3] He stated in Islam, Empire, and the Left: Conversation with Tariq Ali: "I grew up an atheist. I make no secret of it. It was acceptable. In fact, when I think back, none of my friends were believers. None of them were religious; maybe a few were believers. But very few were religious in temperament."^[4]

Emerging activism[link]

While studying at the Punjab University, he organised demonstrations against Pakistan's military dictatorship^{[citation needed]}. Ali's maternal uncle was chief of Pakistan's Military Intelligence^{[citation needed]} and he warned Ali's parents that if he didn't stop criticising the government, he'd be in deep trouble soon. His parents therefore decided to get him out of Pakistan, and sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.^[5] He was elected President of the Oxford Union, in 1965. Ali's tenure at the Union included a meeting with Malcolm X in December 1964 during which Malcolm X expressed deep consternation about his own risk of assassination.^[6]

Career[link]

His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. He testified at the Russell Tribunal over US involvement in Vietnam. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies. He is also well known for his satirical work. He was also a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy. He was one of the marchers on the American embassy in London in 1968 in a demonstration against the Vietnam war.^[7]

Active in the New Left of the 1960s, he has long been associated with the New Left Review. Drawn into revolutionary socialist politics through his involvement with The Black Dwarf newspaper, he joined a Trotskyist party, the International Marxist Group (IMG) in 1968. He was recruited to the leadership of the IMG and became a member of the International Executive Committee of the (reunified) Fourth International. He also befriended influential figures such as Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono.^[8]

In 1967 Ali was in Camiri, Bolivia, not far from where Che Guevara was captured, to observe the trial of Régis Debray. He was accused of being a Cuban revolutionary by authorities. Ali then said "If you torture me the whole night and I can speak Spanish in the morning I'll be grateful to you for the rest of my life."^[9]

During this period he was an IMG candidate in Sheffield Attercliffe at the February 1974 UK general election and was co-author of Trotsky for Beginners, a cartoon book. In 1981, the IMG dissolved when its members entered the Labour Party: the IMG was promptly proscribed. Ali then abandoned activism in the revolutionary left and supported Tony Benn in his bid to become deputy leader of the Labour Party that year.

In 1990, he published the satire Redemption, on the inability of the Trotskyists to handle the downfall of the Eastern bloc. The book contains parodies of many well-known figures in the Trotskyist movement.

His book Bush in Babylon criticizes the 2003 invasion of Iraq by American president George W. Bush. This book has a unique style, using poetry and critical essays in portraying the war in Iraq as a failure. Ali believes that the new Iraqi government will fail.

His previous book, Clash of Fundamentalisms, puts the events of the September 11 attacks in historical perspective, covering the history of Islam from its foundations.

Ali has remained a critic of modern neoliberal economics and was present at the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil where he was one of 19 to sign the Porto Alegre Manifesto. He is a fan of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.^[10]

He has been described as "the alleged inspiration" for the Rolling Stones' song "Street Fighting Man", recorded in 1968.^[11] John Lennon's "Power to the People" was inspired by an interview Lennon gave to Ali.^[12]

In an article published in CounterPunch, he responded to the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy and said, "The Bavarian is a razor-sharp reactionary cleric. I think he knew what he was saying and why. In a neo-liberal world suffering from environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, repression, a ‘planet of slums’ (in the graphic phrase of Mike Davis), the Pope chooses to insult the founder of a rival faith. The reaction in the Muslim world was predictable, but depressingly insufficient."^[13]

Screenplay[link]

Tariq Ali's The Leopard and The Fox, first written as a BBC screenplay in 1985, is about the last days of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Never previously produced because of a censorship controversy, it was finally premiered in New York in October 2007, the day before former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to her home country after eight years in exile.^[14]

in 2009, Ali, alongside Mark Weisbrot wrote the screenplay to the Oliver Stone documentary South of the Border.^[15] This gave a favourable account of Hugo Chavez and other left wing Latin American leaders.

Personal life[link]

He currently lives in Highgate, London with his wife Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review. He has three children: Natasha, Chengiz, and Aisha.

Works (partial)[link]

• Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970) ISBN 978-0-224-61864-9
• The Coming British Revolution (1971) ISBN 978-0-224-00630-9
• 1968 and After: Inside the Revolution (1978) ISBN 978-0-85634-082-6
• Chile, Lessons of the Coup: Which Way to Workers Power (1978) ISBN 978-0-85612-107-4
• Trotsky for Beginners (1980) ISBN 978-0-906495-27-8
• Can Pakistan Survive?: The Death of a State (1983) ISBN 978-0-8052-7194-2; (1991) ISBN 978-0-86091-260-6
• Who's Afraid of Margaret Thatcher? In Praise of Socialism (1984) ISBN 978-0-86091-802-8
• The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on 20th-Century World Politics (1984) ISBN 978-0-931477-56-0
• An Indian Dynasty: The Story of the Nehru-Gandhi Family (1985) ISBN 978-0-399-13074-8
• Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (1987) ISBN 978-0-00-217779-5
• Revolution from Above: Soviet Union Now (1988) ISBN 978-0-86091-268-2
• Iranian Nights (1989) ISBN 978-1-85459-026-8
• Moscow Gold (1990) ISBN 978-1-85459-078-7
• Redemption (1990) ISBN 978-0-7011-3394-8
• Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992; 1st in the 'Islam Quintet') ISBN 978-0-7011-3944-5
• Necklaces (1992)
• Ugly Rumours (1998) ISBN 978-1-85459-426-6
• 1968: Marching in the Streets (1998) ISBN 978-0-7475-3763-2
• Fear of Mirrors Arcadia Books (4 Aug 1998) ISBN 978-1-900850-10-0; University of Chicago Press (10 Aug 2010) ISBN 978-1-906497-15-6
• The Book of Saladin (1998; 2nd in the 'Islam Quintet') ISBN 978-1-85984-834-0
• Snogging Ken (2000) ISBN 978-1-84002-163-9
• The Stone Woman (2000; 3rd in the 'Islam Quintet') ISBN 978-1-85984-764-0
• Masters of the Universe: NATO's Balkan Crusade (2000) ISBN 978-1-85984-752-7
• Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002) ISBN 978-1-85984-679-7
• Bush in Babylon (2003) ISBN 978-1-85984-583-7
• Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (2005) ISBN 978-1-84467-029-1
• Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations with Tariq Ali (2005) ISBN 978-1-56584-954-9
• Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror (2005) ISBN 978-1-84467-545-6
• Conversations with Edward Said (2005) ISBN 978-1-905422-04-3
• A Sultan in Palermo (2005; featuring Muhammad al-Idrisi and Roger II of Sicily; 4th in the 'Islam Quintet') ISBN 978-1-84467-025-3
• The Leopard and the Fox (2006) ISBN 978-1-905422-29-6
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006) ISBN 978-1-84467-102-1; revised ed. (2008) ISBN 978-1-84467-248-6
• A Banker for All Seasons: Bank of Crooks and Cheats Incorporated (2007) ISBN 978-1-905422-65-4
• The assassination: Who Killed Indira G? (2008) ISBN 978-1-905422-85-2
• The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008) ISBN 978-1-84737-355-7
• The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom: and other Essays (2009) ISBN 978-1-84467-367-4
• The Idea of Communism (Non-fiction) (2009) ISBN 978-1-906497-26-2
• Night of the Golden Butterfly (2010; 5th in the 'Islam Quintet') ISBN 978-1-84467-611-8
• The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (2010) ISBN 978-1-84467-449-7
• On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation (2011) ISBN 978-1-60846-149-3

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Tariq Ali

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tariq Ali

• Tariq Ali Official webpage
• On History
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Tariq Ali at the Internet Movie Database
• Column archive at The Guardian
• Articles authored at Journalisted
• Works by or about Tariq Ali in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Tariq Ali: The Night of the Golden Butterfly - Shimmering Prose against the Clash of Civilisations

Interviews and speeches

• A Clash of Civilizations of Fundamentalisms? A Conversation with Tariq Ali on pg. 115
• Tariq Ali speaks at Harvard Law School on U.S. foreign policy and Afghanistan
• Tariq Ali: Neoliberalism and Protectorate States in the post-Yugoslav Balkans (ZNet)
• Tariq Ali transcript & video of Conversations with History - Islam, Empire, and the Left
• "Media Matters" interview with Robert McChesney, 14 November 2004
• "We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane" (essay) - Tariq Ali
• 12-19-02 "On the Verge of War" talk - Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Gilbert Achcar and Isin Elicin
• "Seven Oaks Magazine" interview with Charles Demers
• "Naked Punch Review" interview
• A Life in Writing: Tariq Ali by The Guardian
• 10-26-06 "The Latin American Challenge: Chavez, Morales, Castro" (audio recording)
• 10-01-06 W.B.A.I. Behind The News interview with Doug Henwood
• Audio recording of Tariq Ali speaking on his book Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope
• "The Ideas of Tariq Ali" on CBC Radio One’s Ideas
• Desert Island Discs Tariq Ali's choices for Desert Island Discs
• Ali: "Obama’s Afghan-Pak Syndrome" - video report by Democracy Now!
• Ali on his book The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad - video report by Democracy Now!

Profiles

• Tariq Ali at Contemporary Writers
• Biography from the international literature festival berlin

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Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti
Born	1933 New York City
Occupation	political scientist, historian, and media critic
Nationality	American
Education	City College of New York, B.A. Brown University, M.A. Yale University, Ph.D.
Subjects	History, Politics, Economics
Children	Christian Parenti
www.michaelparenti.org

Michael Parenti is an American political writer, historian, and culture critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at American and international universities and has been a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences.^[1][2] He has played an activist role in political struggles, and in various anti-war movements.

Background[link]

Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He is the author of twenty four books and many more articles. His works have been translated into at least eighteen languages.^[3] Parenti lectures frequently throughout the United States and abroad. He wrote The Assassination of Julius Caesar,^[4] He is the father of Christian Parenti, an author and contributor to The Nation magazine.

Parenti's writings cover a wide range of subjects: U.S. politics, culture, ideology, political economy, imperialism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, free-market orthodoxies, conservative judicial activism, religion, ancient history, modern history, historiography, repression in academia, news and entertainment media, technology, environmentalism, sexism, racism, homophobia, Venezuela, the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, ethnicity, and his own early life.^[5][6][7] Perhaps his most influential book is Democracy for the Few,^[8] now in its ninth edition, a critical analysis of U.S. society, economy, and political institutions^[9] and a college-level political science textbook published by Wadsworth Publishing.^[10] In recent years he has addressed such subjects as "Empires: Past and Present," "US Interventionism: the Case of Iraq," "Race, Gender, and Class Power," "Ideology and History," "The Collapse of Communism," and "Terrorism and Globalization."^[3]

Michael Parenti was raised in an Italian-American working-class family and neighborhood in New York City about which he has written.^[11] For many years Parenti taught political and social science at various institutions of higher learning. Eventually he devoted himself full-time to writing, public speaking, and political activism.^[12]

In 1974, Parenti ran in Vermont on the Liberty Union Party ticket for U.S. Congress and received 7% of the vote.^[13]

In Washington, D.C., in 2003, the Caucus for a New Political Science gave him a Career Achievement Award. In 2007, he received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from U.S. Representative Barbara Lee and an award from New Jersey Peace Action. In the 1980s, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

He served for some 12 years as a judge for Project Censored. He also is on the advisory boards of Independent Progressive Politics Network, and Education Without Borders; as well as the advisory editorial boards of New Political Science and Nature, Society and Thought.^[14]

Social and political analyses[link]

Parenti has covered many subjects in 45 years of teaching, writing, and speaking. The broad outlines of some of these are summarized below.

Racism[link]

Parenti argues that western racism is systemic and historical in nature and should be regarded as more than just an attitudinal problem^[15]. He identifies the origins of western racism in imperialism and slavery: To justify the colonial plunder of another nation or entire continent (as in the case of Africa) as well as the enslavement of conquered populations, imperialists and/or slave traffickers dehumanize their victims and define them as moral inferiors and subhuman.

Parenti maintains that racism serves several functions for ruling interests in the United States:^[16]

1. It divides the working class against each other.
2. It creates a "super-exploited" group of people who are forced to work at below scale wages thereby depressing wage levels for the entire workforce.
3. It distracts the (United States) white population from its own legitimate grievances by providing an irrelevant scapegoat in the form of minority populations

Culture and social structure[link]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, becoming increasingly critical of the existing socio-economic system, Parenti argued that images of the United States as a pluralistic, democratic society were more ideological than accurate. He did not deny the existence of a vast plurality of social, ethnic, and regional groups in America, but he felt that this group pluralism did not translate into a democratic pluralism in political life. Only limited portions of the political process are accessed by the general populace. Power in America is not broadly distributed, according to Parenti, but is highly concentrated in a social structure dominated by corporate moneyed interests, whose influence predominates in most mainstream institutions and major policy areas.^[8] Parenti maintains that the resources of power are lodged in the social structure itself, the culture, institutions, and established social roles, and that ruling elements maintain their dominant positions not only by raw economic power but by attaining “cultural hegemony,” a concept formulated earlier by Antonio Gramsci (whom Parenti cites).^[17]

Role of US media[link]

With respect to the US media Parenti has maintained that, while news coverage can be marred by problems of deadlines, space, and ordinary human error, much of the misleading coverage is the result of carefully honed ideological production. Reporters, he says, often exercise much skill to avoid the more important points of a story or news analysis so as not to offend anyone who wields substantial political and economic power, including their own bosses and corporate advertisers. Parenti concludes that their goal is to avoid fishing too deeply into troubled waters thereby maintaining an appearance of objectivity and moderation. Their careers, he suggests, depend in part upon their ability to equate centrist views with “objectivity,” and to stay within the prevailing ideological orthodoxy.^[18]

Parenti’s treatment of entertainment media (movies and television) continues the argument that the media are not neutral and favor elitist interests. Exploring a wide range of films and programs, he has attempted to demonstrate that the entertainment media do more than entertain; they indoctrinate by propagating values in keeping with their corporate ownership and corporate advertisers.^[19] Most recently, he wrote the foreword to Matthew Alford's Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy (Pluto Press, 2010).

Parenti often attacks specific examples of the misleading coverage provided by the US media. In Blackshirts and Reds^[20] he cites historian J. Arch Getty's figures to demonstrate the exaggeration elsewhere in the US media of the executions effected by Joseph Stalin in the Great Purge. Parenti critically reviews Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia^[21] in "The Demonization of Slobodan Milosevic"^[22] and To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia ,^[23] finding similar exaggeration of war crimes in the breakup of the second Yugoslavia. In "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth"^[24] he observes, "western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La" then goes on to detail what he feels were its negative aspects.

Culture across the globe[link]

Parenti maintains that, far from being neutral, culture is often ideologically driven in a highly skewed system of social power, benefiting some groups at the expense of others. “Growing portions of our culture are increasingly commodified and mass marketed.” “So we buy more and more of our culture and create less and less of it.” Rather than being accepted at face value, Parenti says that all cultures should be subjected to critical investigation to be judged by “universal human rights standards” and by the criticisms voiced by those who are victimized within the various cultures of the world. Parenti gives extensive attention to those who are regularly victimized by their own cultures, providing examples in chapters entitled “Custom Against Women,” “The Global Rape Culture,” and “Racist Myths.”^[16]

Role of voting fraud in US elections[link]

Parenti is among those who have cited a variety of studies claiming that the 2004 presidential election was fraudulent. In an essay entitled "The Stolen Election of 2004"^[25] he argued that modern voting technology allowed powerful corporations to manipulate the electoral results. He concluded the article by observing, about the forthcoming US election, "Given this situation, it is not likely that the GOP will lose control of Congress come November 2006. The two-party monopoly threatens to become an even worse one-party tyranny." In an updated analysis of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, he adds a postscript explaining why—despite the massive crossover reported in the polls away from the GOP-—the Democrats won only a slim victory in the Congressional 2006 elections.”^[26]

Class and class power[link]

Parenti stresses the role of class in all societies, particularly the purportedly classless US one. He extends the definition of class as a demographic trait relating to status, education, lifestyle, and income level to include the effects of social interrelationships. He observes that there can be no rich slaveholders without poor slaves, no powerful feudal lords without serfs, no corporate bosses without workers. The interrelationship is highly asymmetrical. It centers on the organized wealth of the society.^[8]

Parenti also believes that there is a third factor involved in class relationships, specifically the productive resources (land, agriculture, herds, natural resources, factories, technology, etc.). The dominant group in class relationships owns or controls these economic resources. The weaker class historically has had only its labor to sell. Hence the “dominant money classes” exercise a preponderant influence over workforces, markets, major investments, consumption patterns, media, and public policies. Parenti concludes that when discussing class, class power—how it is used, for whose interests, and at whose expense—must also be discussed.^[27]

US downplay of class[link]

Parenti has repeatedly criticized the tendency among many who profess to be progressive to downplay the importance of class and class power as a formative force as compared to race, gender, and culture. He allows that each of these other categories of social experience have imperatives that are distinctly their own, sometimes of a life-and-death urgency. Still they should not be seen as being mutually exclusive of, or in competition with, considerations of class power in society, he argues, and should not be used as a means of evading class analysis.^[28]

Democracy and capitalism[link]

From the late 60s well into the 80s, Parenti was one of many radicals and socialists who questioned the validity and value of what they called “bourgeois democracy,” seeing it more as a charade to mislead the people into thinking that they were free and self-governing. By the late 80s, however, he noticeably modified his position, arguing that democracy should not be thought of as merely a subterfuge or cloak created by ruling elites, although it certainly can serve that purpose. More often, Parenti claimed, whatever modicum of democracy the people attain in any society is usually the outcome of genuine struggle for a more equitable politico-economic order. He asks why the corporate class should be credited with giving people a “bourgeois democracy,” when in fact the ruling plutocrats furiously opposed most democratic advances in U.S. history, such as the extension of the franchise or the struggle for ethnic and gender equality, more direct forms of representation, more room for dissent and free speech, greater accountability of elected officials, and more equitable socio-economic domestic programs.^[8]

According to Parenti, reacting to mainstream commentators who turn every systemic vice and deficiency into a virtue, leftist critics of the status quo, seeing no real victories or progress in the centuries of popular struggle, have felt compelled to turn every virtue into a vice. To counter this trend, he says, people should recognize that real gains have been made, democracy refuses to die, and both at home and abroad popular forces, continue the democratic struggle, even against great odds.^[29]

For Parenti, democracy has two basic dimensions, the procedural and the substantive, both of which are equally important. Procedural democracy consists of the basic political forms: free speech and assembly, the right to dissent, accountability of officeholders, the right to vote in regular and honest elections, etc. Substantive democracy consists of egalitarian socio-economic outputs that advance the well-being of the populace, protect the environment, and curb the abuses and often untrammeled powers of great wealth. Parenti quotes the German sociologist Max Weber who remarked almost a century earlier that it remains to be seen whether democracy and freedom can exist under the dominion of a highly developed capitalism.^[8]

Parenti concludes that “there is no one grand, secret, power elite governing this country, but numerous coteries of corporate and governmental elites that communicate and coordinate across various policy realms. Behind their special interests are the common overall interests of the moneyed class,” which is not to say that differences never arise among these elites.

Technology, money, and deficit spending[link]

Parenti believes that people's thinking about past and present developments needs to be contextualized, that is seen in a social context of power and ideology. He gives the examples of technology and money. Both are seen as neutral entities that are inherently neither good nor bad. This may be true hypothetically, he writes, but, in reality, both technology and money have been developed within specific historical contexts by powerful interests that gained great advantage from their development. Almost all technology, he argues, is devoted to advancing the interests of higher circles, maximizing profits and corporate production, or in the case of government, maximizing surveillance, communication, and military striking power. New advances in technology are not neutral things. They impact upon us and our environment in ways that can advantage some and hurt others, according to Parenti. He writes similarly about money: "Like technology, money has a feedback effect of its own, advantaging the already advantaged", liquefying wealth, making it easier to mobilize and accumulate. With the growth of moneyed wealth comes a greater concentration and command over technology by the moneyed class.^[30]

Few phenomena in the social order can operate with neutral effect even if supposedly pursued with neutral intent, according to Parenti. The national debt is a good example. Considered merely as a “problem” of excessive government spending, the national debt in fact works well for certain interests, specifically the moneyed class, Parenti claims. By 1977,he noted how the national debt brought a transfer of income from the taxpayers to the wealthy creditors, the holders of government bonds. The greater the debt, the greater the upward transfer, as the government continues to borrow money from those they should be taxing (the big money interests). Parenti concludes it is no accident that the biggest deficit spenders have been conservative presidents like Ronald Reagan and both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. The national debt is in effect a way of privatizing public spending and defunding the federal budget, Parenti argues. The bigger the debt, the less money available for domestic programs, and the more money that goes from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers to rich creditors.^[8]

Fascism[link]

Parenti’s treatment of fascism differs from that of the many writers who stress the irrational features of fascism: its state idolatry, nationalistic atavism, and leadership cult. While not denying that these are key components in the propagation of fascism’s appeal, he invites us not to overlook the “rational politico economic functions” that fascism performed. “Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols,” he claims. The emotive appeals of fascist ideology have served a class-control function, “distracting the populace from their legitimate grievances and directing their frustrations at various scapegoats.”

Most of the immense literature on the subject of fascism and Nazism focuses on who supported Hitler’s rise to power. Relatively little, Parenti writes, is said about whom the Nazis supported when they came to power. In both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, he points out, wages were cut drastically, domestic programs were rolled back, huge subsidies were given to heavy industry, labor unions were broken, taxes on the very rich were greatly reduced or eliminated altogether, and workplace safety regulations were ignored or abolished. Fascism, he concludes, has a much overlooked politico- economic agenda; it involves something more than just goose stepping.^[31]

Empire[link]

U.S. foreign policy is neither confused nor bungling, according to Parenti. It is quite consistently directed toward certain goals, and is largely successful. For the most part, U.S. leaders have maintained friendly relations with those governments that have opened up their countries to Western corporate investors, and have shown hostility toward those countries that have tried to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets for their own self-development, Parenti believes. Iraq was targeted for “having committed economic nationalism,” with a state-run economy that pretty much shut out Western investors. The same holds true for Yugoslavia, he claims. Both countries were bombed and invaded, and their public economies were shattered. Parenti believes that Yugoslavia was transformed from a viable social democracy to a cluster of little right-wing mini-republics.

Parenti's beliefs led him to become head of the United States chapter of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević,^[32] in which capacity he added to the criticisms of bias in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia^[33][34]

Parenti also maintains that the U.S. empire feeds off the U.S. republic. The empire’s expansion abroad entails increasing costs for the republic. Ventures that are profitable for military contractors and overseas investors have to be paid in blood and taxes by the American populace. The many third world countries that are the targets of colonial intervention pay the highest price, he writes. They suffer not from underdevelopment, but from “maldevelopment,” a result of generations of overexploitation.^[35]

Communism[link]

Many on the left continue to deliver impassioned and blanket condemnations of deceased communist countries, Parenti states. “Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anti-communists as ‘Soviet apologists’ and ‘Stalinists,’ even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society.”^[20]

Parenti did in fact make a number of criticisms of the Soviet Union. In 1986 he wrote: "In the USSR there exist serious problems of labor productivity, industrialization, urbanization, bureaucracy, corruption, and alcoholism. There are production and distribution bottlenecks, plan failures, consumer scarcities, criminal abuses of power, suppression of dissidents, and expressions of alienation among some of the population."^[36]

More recently he wrote that the state-owned economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union suffered “fatal distortions in their development” because of the years of “embargo, invasion, devastating wars, and costly arms buildup; excessive bureaucratization and poor incentive systems; lack of administrative initiative and technological innovation; and a repressive political rule that allowed little critical expression and feedback while fostering stagnation and elitism.”^[6] Some on the left heavily criticized Parenti for what they saw as his defense of such regimes, however, in his book Blackshirt and Reds.

Parenti argues that “despite the well-publicized deficiencies, crimes, and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, such as the free medical care and human services; affordable food, fuel, transportation, and housing; universal literacy; gains in women’s rights; free education to the highest level of one’s ability; a guaranteed right to a job; free cultural and sporting events, and the like.”^[6] He supported Gorbachev’s campaign of perestroika and glasnost until 1990 when it became evident to him that the Gorbachev reforms were leading to the implantation of free-market capitalism and were, as he saw it, bringing hardships to the common people.^[37]

Social democracy[link]

Parenti maintains that the structural problems of free-market transnational capitalism will only worsen the living standards of people in the United States and abroad, while deepening the environmental crises. He advocates a greater measure of public ownership in the USA. Parenti asks “can socialism work? ... Is it not just a dream in theory and a nightmare in practice? Can the government produce anything of worth?”^[8] He goes on to point out that it already does, citing publicly owned transportation systems, utilities, banking, education, and health services that are run efficiently by the governments of the USA and various social democracies and at a far lesser cost than their private counterparts.

Ecology[link]

Parenti points to the increasingly catastrophic droughts, storms, floods, and abnormally high temperatures in many parts of the world to justify a hypothesis that the widely discussed ecological crisis of global warming will not be upon us “by the end of the century” or “in the lives of our grandchildren,” but is already happening today. He builds on this in an essay, "Why the Corporate Rich Oppose Environmentalism,"^[6] to argue that immediate and immense profits that come at a cost to the environment are of more concern to corporate investors than the diffuse and long-run damage done to the global ecology.

History and historiography[link]

Much of Parenti’s work draws upon history. In his History as Mystery^[38] he takes the old adage that history is written by the victors and fleshes it out with examples drawn from ancient and modern times. In regard to early Christianity, for instance, he maintains that, contrary to popular notions, the “Jesus worshipers” did not gather most of their followers from the poor and downtrodden but from the more affluent strata. Some Christian leaders discouraged slaves from converting to Christianity. Slaves were prohibited from becoming church deacons or priests, he maintains. Contrary to conventional US notions, he argues that the Christians were not the keepers of learning and scholarship during the Dark Ages but played a relentless role in destroying all the advanced learning and all the libraries of antiquity that were in their reach.

In The Assassination of Julius Caesar,^[4] he states that many historians, both ancient and modern, have treated popular insurgencies and the common people with fear and loathing, depicting them as mindless rootless mobs of ne’er-do-wells. He also argues that Caesar and other popular reformers of the Roman Republic before him were assassinated not because they were violating the Roman constitution but because they were advocating reforms that benefited the commoners at a cost to the aristocracy. He does not draw a link between Caesarism and the eventual descent of the Republic into the despotism of the Empire.

References in popular culture[link]

• New York City based punk rock band Choking Victim use a number of samples from Michael Parenti's lectures in their album, No Gods, No Managers.

Appearances in Film and Television[link]

Apart from several recordings of some of his public speeches, Parenti has also appeared in the 1992 documentary Panama Deception and the 2004 documentary Liberty Bound as an author and social commentator.

In addition, he was interviewed for two episodes of the Showtime series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, speaking briefly about the Dalai Lama (Episode 305 - Holier Than Thou) and patriotism (Episode 508 - Mount Rushmore).

Bibliography[link]

• The Anti-Communist Impulse, Random House, 1970.
• Trends and Tragedies in American Foreign Policy, Little, Brown, 1971.
• Ethnic and Political Attitudes, Arno, 1975. ISBN 0-405-06413-6
• Democracy for the Few, First Edition circa 1974, Eighth Edition 2007.^[8] ISBN 0-495-00744-7, ISBN 978-0-495-00744-9
• Power and the Powerless, St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-312-63372-6, ISBN 0-312-63373-4
• Inventing Reality: the Politics of News Media. First edition 1986, Second Edition 1993. ISBN 0-312-02013-9, ISBN 0-312-08629-6
• The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race, St. Martin's, 1989. ISBN 0-312-02295-6
• Make-Believe Media: the Politics of Entertainment, St. Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN 0-312-05603-6, ISBN 0-312-05894-2
• Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, St. Martin's, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09497-3, ISBN 0-312-09841-3
• [1] Against Empire Published by City Lights Books, 1995, ISBN 0-87286-298-4, ISBN 978-0-87286-298-2, 217 pages
• Dirty Truths, City Lights Books, 1996. Includes some autobiographical essays. ISBN 0-87286-317-4, ISBN 0-87286-318-2
• Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1997. ISBN 0-87286-329-8, ISBN 0-87286-330-1
• America Besieged, City Lights, 1998. ISBN 0-87286-338-7, ISBN 0-87286-338-7
• History as Mystery, City Lights, 1999. ISBN 0-87286-357-3, ISBN 0-87286-364-6
• To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Verso, 2000, ISBN 1-85984-776-5
• The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond, City Lights, 2002. ISBN 0-87286-405-7
• The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, The New Press, 2003. ISBN 1-56584-797-0.^[4]
• Superpatriotism, City Lights, 2004. ISBN 978-0-87286-433-7
• The Culture Struggle, Seven Stories Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58322-704-0, ISBN 978-1-58322-704-6
• Contrary Notions, City Lights Books, 2007.^[6] ISBN 0-87286-482-0, ISBN 978-0-87286-482-5
• God and His Demons, Prometheus Books, 2010
• The Face of Imperialism, (Paradigm, 2011)

References[link]