Imperial relations : Britain, the sterling area, and Malaya 1945-1960

The thesis examines the relationship between Britain and Malaya in the post-war period from 1945 to 1960. It provides a development of existing accounts in the literature that either acknowledge the importance of Malaya to Britain but do not provide any details of the relationship, or provide only historical accounts of Malaya’s changing importance over the same period. The thesis argues that there is a clear continuity in this relationship, conditioned by the nature of capitalist social relations, and this relationship should be characterised as imperialist. The thesis adopts an archive-based analysis of the period, using an open Marxist theory of imperialism. This approach argues that the state is an inherent feature, or manifestation, of capitalist social relations and acts to regulate the circuit of capital in order to avoid or resolve the crises that beset it. Imperialism then is understood as this action undertaken internationally, through the domination of one state by another, to improve conditions for capital accumulation nationally, and in the interests of capital generally. Imperialism is then seen very much as an action undertaken by the state, rather than an historical or necessary stage of capitalism. The thesis argues that the over-production crisis that characterised the inter-war period continued after the war, finding expression in the trade disequilibrium between Eastern and Western hemispheres resulting in a global dollar shortage. Malaya remained important to the Sterling Area through its large surplus of dollar earnings, which it contributed to the Area’s dollar pool and were earned through its rubber and tin exports to the United States. The thesis charts the expression of imperial relations through British use of colonial import restrictions, the sequestration of dollar earnings, and the imposition of exchange controls to minimise the dollar deficit, and attempts to develop Malaya’s economy for eventual independence. However, the thesis argues that even independence does not see a significant shift in the fundamental relations between Britain and Malaya, with the Sterling Area still providing a mechanism through which the imperial relationship is enforced. The thesis does not argue that Malaya’s dollar earnings were the only defence against economic collapse but, rather, without Malaya, Britain would have had to impose much more austere measures both domestically and on the Sterling Area in order to survive the post-war crisis, making the task of reconstruction after the war much more difficult

Eliminating Network Protocol Vulnerabilities Through Abstraction and Systems Language Design

Incorrect implementations of network protocol message specifications affect the stability, security, and cost of network system development. Most implementation defects fall into one of three categories of well defined message constraints. However, the general process of constructing network protocol stacks and systems does not capture these categorical con- straints. We introduce a systems programming language with new abstractions that capture these constraints. Safe and efficient implementations of standard message handling operations are synthesized by our compiler, and whole-program analysis is used to ensure constraints are never violated. We present language examples using the OpenFlow protocol

Revisiting the debate on open Marxist perspectives

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. This article seeks to review the recent incarnation of a long-standing engagement in international political economy (IPE) and critical theory between open Marxist perspectives (OMPs) and their critics. The article aims to identify the enduring relevance of this debate in order to think about the possibility and future of critical social inquiry in our time constructively. It criticises elements on both sides of the debate that no longer serve but rather hinder achieving this objective. We argue that the recent criticisms make a number of important constructive points that could help enhance the explanatory power of OMPs yet still portray the latter uncharitably. We propose to take the emphasis on openness in OMPs seriously as a scholarly and political orientation without immersing the debate with the charges of reductionism, instrumentalism, determinism and functionalism which are frequently raised by various versions of Marxism against one another—often to little avail

Network meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy studies identifies and ranks the optimal diagnostic tests and thresholds for healthcare policy and decision making

Objective: Network meta-analyses have extensively been used to compare the effectiveness of multiple interventions for healthcare policy and decision-making. However, methods for evaluating the performance of multiple diagnostic tests are less established. In a decision-making context, we are often interested in comparing and ranking the performance of multiple diagnostic tests, at varying levels of test thresholds, in one simultaneous analysis. Study design and setting: Motivated by an example of cognitive impairment diagnosis following stroke, we synthesized data from 13 studies assessing the efficiency of two diagnostic tests: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), at two test thresholds: MMSE <25/30 and <27/30, and MoCA <22/30 and <26/30. Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, we fitted a bivariate network meta-analysis model incorporating constraints on increasing test threshold, and accounting for the correlations between multiple test accuracy measures from the same study. Results: We developed and successfully fitted a model comparing multiple tests/threshold combinations while imposing threshold constraints. Using this model, we found that MoCA at threshold <26/30 appeared to have the best true positive rate, whilst MMSE at threshold <25/30 appeared to have the best true negative rate. Conclusion: The combined analysis of multiple tests at multiple thresholds allowed for more rigorous comparisons between competing diagnostics tests for decision making

Generalised comedy production: British political economy and stand-up

Building on recent work on the political and everyday nature of comedy, this paper seeks to situate the genre of stand-up comedy as a form of capitalist social relations. The paper focuses on the emergence of Alternative Comedy in the 1980s in contrast to the comedy of Working Men’s Clubs. This cultural development is placed in the context of Marx’s understanding of capitalist society and a critique of Adorno’s notion of the culture industry. The paper argues that this radical change in British comedy was only made possible by the policies of the British state in the 1980s. In particular, the paper considers the changing ideas comedians had of property, propriety and performance. While Alternative Comedy was highly critical of Thatcherism and neoliberalism, it owed its existence to these modes of state management. The paper contends, then, that comedy can be seen as a form of class struggle and should not be judged by its capacity to be a mere instrument of resistance, or condemned by some spurious inability to achieve this. The paper concludes by considering the development of comedy production since the 1980s

Towards an open Marxist theory of imperialism

The purpose of the paper is to provide the basis for a theory of imperialism that is consonant with open Marxism. The need for an open Marxist theory of imperialism derives from two sources: firstly, a critique from open Marxism of extant theories of imperialism that they treat contingent factors as necessary elements of imperialism. Secondly, and certainly a less theoretical point, is the obvious and intuitive value of an account of imperialism. Where states compete to immobilise capital within their own territory, this leads to unequal relationships between states, one of which is imperialism. It is essential to understand what the nature of this relationship is if we are to understand capitalism on a global scale, which is to say at all. This can only be accomplished by understanding what the state is, how it is constituted and what its function is within society. Open Marxism is particularly well placed to accomplish this. The paper argues that accounts of imperialism heretofore have been contingent and focused on the appearance of imperialism and spent little time considering its essence as a manifestation of the state’s power and desire to maintain the circuit of capital both nationally and internationally. The paper then seeks to show that open Marxism is well placed to achieve this and to move towards an idea of an open Marxist theory of imperialism

Marxism and Imperialism

The relationship between Marxism and imperialism has been established since the writings of Marx himself. Particularly in Capital, Volume I, Marx discusses the international division of labour caused by the expansion of capital in Ch.15, English capital in Ireland in Ch.25, as well as engaging with a theory of colonialism in Ch.33 ([1867] 1992a). Marx’s own views on both colonialism and imperialism have been well discussed in critical analysis of both his well- and lesser-known texts, many of which are presented in the compendium text ‘On Colonialism’ (Marx & Engels 2001; see, also, Pradella 2013; Nimtz 2002). However, the study of imperialism post-Marx grew from a belief that, while some analysis of imperialism was present in the works of Marx, a dedicated analysis of the state and the international sphere had been left at an embryonic stage. This is broadly true but this view has received criticism based on historiographical analysis of both Marx and the earliest authors on imperialism (Pradella 2013). The phenomenon of imperialism, while still discussed by Marx in a number of instances, was not given the same sustained critical attention as other issues in Marx’s work. This is the point at which Marxism’s engagement with imperialism becomes more profound and substantial. Imperialism, therefore, to Marxism has always been a ‘problem’ of some form. Indeed, the ‘problem’ of imperialism derives from a number of perceived sources: gaps in Marx’s own writing; an explanation for why capitalism endures; an account of the phenomenon of globalisation. It is the contention of this chapter, then, that the on-going relationship between Marxism and imperialism reveals one of Marxism’s main strengths, and its clear weaknesses. It reveals Marxism’s capacity to explain new phenomena coupled with a rigorous and critical method; however, it also reveals a reliance on systemic explanations for contingent developments, and a considerable partisanship between radical thinkers. This relationship between Marxism and imperialism therefore begins early in the 20th Century with the work of the ‘classical’ authors of imperialism, building on the work of Marx and critiquing extant understandings of imperialism, particularly John Hobson’s. This chapter charts the origins of this relationship and its various iterations throughout the 20th century until the present. This relationship has, fundamentally, changed very little, deriving largely from Marx’s own work, and the work of the first Marxist theorists of imperialism. Indeed, the relationship is iterative rather than developmental, with particular ideas within Marxist theories of imperialism recurring perpetually. Most notably, the overarching power of Finance, or monopoly capital, within capitalism, and the idea of imperialism as a qualitatively distinct ‘stage’ of capitalist development are extremely powerful ideas within the tradition of Marxist theories of imperialism. The paper will be split into three sections according to various ‘phases’ of Marxist thought on imperialism: firstly, the ‘classical’ Marxists, from Hilferding to Lenin; secondly, the ‘neo- Colonialist’ thinkers; and finally, the ‘New’ imperialists