When I was looking at this thread, I saw that an article of the WSM called "Capitalist Globalisation and Imperialism" was posted. (http://www.wsm.ie/story/825) I saw some deep problems with the economical analysis as well as the political analysis presented by the WSM, but I didn't want to distort the original topic about Platformism so I'm starting this thread. The text by the WSM starts with this sentence: "Imperialism is the ability of countries to globally and locally dictate trade relations with other countries. This means the term can only be usefully applied to a few countries, in particular those composing the permanent members of the UN security council and the G8."
Which is the crux of the entire text and it is unfortunately bullshit. First of all, I have to say that this definition contradicts itself. Much more than a "few countries" can dictate at least local trade relations with other countries. All that is needed to dictate trade relationships of a country is having something they depend on. So US dictates Venezuelan trade relationships to some extent for example, but Venezuela also dictates US trade relationships to some extent. Or Brazil and Argentine would dictate the trade relationships of each other or Morocco and Egypt. In fact it isn't even necessary to be a "country" in order to dictate trade relationships. Even within the borders of a "country", the central superstructure dictates trade relationships on internal autonomous superstructures and of course those autonomous superstructures dictates trade relationships with each other. All that is necessary is having mass capital. Mass capital is created by accumulation, and capital is accumulated by the exploitation of the surplus value and the surplus value is created by the investment on (or exploitation of) variable capital (labor power) and constant capital (raw materials + means of production). In the bottom line it boils down to having authority over a certain area and over a certain mass of population. Therefore every socio-political superstructure has to be imperialist if it has a capitalist infrastructure. Now, hopefully there is no doubt that the entire infrastructure of the world is the capitalist system. So imperialism is the natural political framework of every socio-political superstructure (every nation-state) of the capitalist infrastructures (national bourgeoisies). Therefore not only countries belonging to the G8, UN Security Council and whatever are imperialist but all nation-states are.
The second point is that it is very weak to explain imperialism by showing the ability of countries to globally and locally dictate trade relations with other countries. In fact it is imperialism that describes and defines the ability of countries to globally and locally dictate trade relations with other countries. This ability is a side effect of imperialism rather than being the main purpose or the definition. Imperialism is an unchangeable part of capitalism, every "country" has imperialist ambitions but more importantly every country use their imperialist ambitions to deal with the internal problems, such as dealing with their reserve army of labor for example.
Finally, the political and practical implications of this analysis comes to a point where the world is divided into two: "oppressed nations" and "imperialist nations". Or to put it simpler, "good nations" and "evil nations". Although the WSM says that they don't support the nationalism or joining forces with the "progressive" bourgeoisie, what they say that they don't support is the only implication of their understanding of imperialism and anti-imperialist struggle, and in fact while praising the Zapatistas, the WSM does in fact support a nationalist "progressive" bourgeoisie that aims to line the working class behind the national flag they (literally) wave, as the Zapatista program is merely social-democratic, and openly focused on creating the greater "Mexican" imperialism instead of the "Yankee" one... So initially not only their analysis comes to dividing the workers to ones from "oppressed nations" and "imperialist nations" and therefore rejecting internationalism, it also denies the workers from the "oppressed nations" the chance to organize independently from their exploiters as all they are supposed to do is to oppose the "big and real(!)" imperialists. This understanding of imperialism is fundamentally not different from the Maoist conception of imperialism, of course both has little ideological apologies, and polishes but the practical applications are identical. Might I kindly suggest the WSM to label itself Anarcho-Maoist?
I'm really interested to see how I'm gonna be accused with "unrecognised Big nation nationalism".
Negri has, as you say, problems. The bigger problem in Negri's problems is that mystical concept of "the multitude" which is simply a more intellectual term for "people". His concept of Empire is interesting, but I do think that without "multitudes" and post-modernism it becomes nothing more than some sort of an empty concept. I like Luxemburg's analysis plus the analysis ICC and the IBRP makes.