Charles Pierson — The Day the US Became an Empire

One could argue that the US has always been an empire. Thomas Jefferson called the US an empire, but an “empire of liberty” dedicated to spreading freedom around the globe. Tell that to the Native Americans killed and dispossessed by White Settlers. Tell that to the Mexicans. The US seized a third of their country through war. Still, it wasn’t until 1898 that the US acquired its first overseas colony.

Hawaii had been an independent nation. In 1887, American planters in the islands had forced a change to the Hawaiian constitution which largely disenfranchised ethnic Hawaiians to the benefit of wealthy Whites. By 1893, with US support, American and European businessmen on the islands had staged a coup d’êtat, overthrowing the monarchy,[1] and establishing a Republic of Hawai’i; from there, they maneuvered for Hawaii’s annexation in 1898. That same year, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam would be gathered into the fledgling American Empire, fruits of the US victory in the Spanish-American War....

"Thomas Jefferson called the US an empire, but an 'empire of liberty' dedicated to spreading freedom around the globe." This is the basis of liberal internationalism, liberal interventionism, and neoliberal globalization under American "leadership."

Counterpunch
The Day the US Became an Empire

Charles Pierson

Branko Milanovic — Is “neo-imperialism” the only path to development?

As is well-known (or should be well-known) Marxism has gradually developed two approaches to imperialism....

Global Inequality
Is “neo-imperialism” the only path to development?
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Brad DeLong — Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek

More about tensions within liberalism than just about Hayek. Good introduction to the basic issues and challenges in political economy as a combination of philosophy, law, political science, sociology, etc., with economics.

Economic (classical) liberalism and social liberalism (utilitarianism) are antithetical, that is, neoliberal and anarcho-capitalism are incompatible with social democracy, e.g., owing to conflicting rights such as the property rights with the right to life and liberty. In one view, property rights prevail and in another, property is subservient to people (the general welfare) and the environment (externalities).

The modern compromise is republics that are dominated by the haute bourgeoisie rather than the landed aristocracy as it feudalism. The result is inequality of income and wealth owing to the institutional arrangements rather than just deserts or merit, as claimed. Thus the need for accommodation to avoid social unrest and political turmoil. The outcome has been mixed economies in which there is a ongoing tension between money and machines, and people and the environment.

Marx and Engels, Lenin, Polyani, Keynes, and Hayek all recognized this as a challenge to the present liberal order and offered different solutions.

WCEG — The Equitablog
Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek
Brad DeLong

William Davies — Neoliberalism and the revenge of the “social”

Neoliberalism’s abiding passion was always to destroy socialism, but in practice it may have ended up with far more of the technocratic elements of ‘actually existing’ state socialism than its ideologues could ever imagine (as I discuss here). When one considers our current predicament, in which our social and private lives are subjected to relentless quantification and optimization, the following prediction looks prescient: “the whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory”.

This was in fact expressed as an optimistic vision of what a good society might look like in the future. And the visionary was none other than Vladimir Lenin.

Open Democracy
Neoliberalism and the revenge of the “social”
William Davies