THE USA IS NOT THE ROMAN EMPIRE

It is rather easy to make analogies between the modern imperialist states and the ancient empires such as the Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, for instance.

At the surface appearances, they all disperse to a wide territory which they cannot control after a point once they lose sufficient financial and military sources. They retreat and then collapse.

Here, I argue that, modern capitalist-imperialist powers cannot be likened to their pre-modern counterparts. First, their wealth had been fixed on land. Second, they had lacked a global division of labour and an ability of shifting their power over the global space.

Dutch capital was succeded by British one, which would have been replaced by the American imperialism. Holland-Belgium transferred its industry to England and became a financial power. England then would give way to America in terms of its industrial productivity and specialised mainly on finance as seen in the financial position of London. Now, the same shift is occuring for America towards the newly industrializing, or to say, emerging markets.

The Roman slave economy, based on agriculture, was not dynamic and flexiable in time and space.

Therefore, its decline meant a collapse into the variants of  feudalisms.

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The US is not Rome, or one of other empires seen in history. It is just an imperialist power  that gathers around it the small and medium sized capitalist countries that find their fates and future in international capitalist order under the leadership of the US.

Such an order looks like a confederation of those countries that had been united against communism. As communism is no longer a threat, each country  within the confederation achieved a free space to act locally and regionally. 

The US may look like Roman Empire with its directly and indirectly controlled territories from which it could demand a tribute.  However, does it look like Rome which was divided into East and West territories, into decentralized and centralized feudalisms, and into Orthodox and Catholic faiths?

More importantly, does it look like Rome which was divided into Feudal Europe to be capitalist or centralized feudalism to be dependent on the rising capitalism?

American capitalism that symbolizes international capitalism covers not only a part of globe as Rome did. Thus, with the fall of the US,  a regional dominant economic territory does not collapse or is not replaced by another. With the dominant existence of the US, there are already many regions of global capitalist significance. Thus, the fall of US just means several shifts in the capitalist centers. 

As the US falls, this just means the shift of US’ capitalism into other centers such as England, Mexico, China, Singapore, among others. 

Therefore, the US is capable of shifting its power to survive with different geographical names. 

In addition, the fall of Rome corresponded to the fall of slave labour which had been replaced by serfdom and free peasantry.  Does the fall of US correspond to the fall of wage-labour, for instance?

Such a change in the mode of production can imply only a change from wage-labour into socialist,  freely associated labour, as Marx predicted. Yet, is this sort of transition possible with the fall of the US?

Possible answer can be given on the base of whether newly developing capitalisms and markets such as China, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, can lead into socialism. 

Do this countries with the rising middle classes which newly taste the fruits of capitalism develop a socialist reaction?

Do those countries develop in the capitalist way under global capitalism?

I suggest that if those countries want to develop under global capitalism, they have to pay not only wage for their labourers, but also rent  and interest for global and “national” capitalists. Surplus value they have to produce has also to include monopoly rent, or extra profit for global imperialists.

Therefore, the US and its allies need extra, monopoly profits to maintain global order. Developing and emerging markets have to meet such an imperialist demand. Underdeveloped countries have no any chance to survive without the production of their minimum needs at most. Or else, as in today, they necessarily die by hunger. 

Rome was replaced by feudalism with serfdom and lordship.  It was divided into two administrative and political units.

The US is about to be divided into several regions to which it locates itself as foreign capital. Europe, Mexico, Canada, China, Korea, among others, will be the metamorphosised forms and new territories of  the US capitalism. After It cooperates with London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Peking, etc. , it will have located itself in those territories. 

Rome was not capable of shifting its wealth to other places. The US, like British and Dutch imperialisms of the previous periods, has the capacity to shift and renew itself in other territories with new forms. 

The US’s capitalism is about to disappear but only to change into new forms within new territories. 

Furthermore, the Rome was confined to a territory from Scotland to the North Africa, from Spain to Syria.  The territory of the US is nearly all world. Its weapons and dollar only meet the small borders of Europe, Russia and Japan. China still invests its surpluses on the US's state bonds. 

In sum, the US is not the Rome and its future depends on the mobile, flexible and spatially ever-shifting characteristics of its power, which are beyond its own local power.