here is another example of where it isn't simply leadership, or
individuals, but systems that drive the situation. consider russia: the
minute it passed from a state controlled economy to a free market there
was a rush to accumulate capital by any means, with horrible scenes of
impoverished pensioners, of gross billionaires, of unreal criminality
extending its benefits from the property on the riviera to the banks of
brooklyn. and then the undemocratic strong arm, the imprisonment of
opposition politicians, the mysterious assassination of journalists, the
human rights abuses, and on and on. sound familiar?
same people, same history, same same, but new face of russia
instantiated by unrestrained capitalism.
when i use the work socialism, it is not for nostalgia. or if it is, it
is nostalgia for a just social order, based on principles that oppose
everything the results in the above conditions. the free market is a
recipe for an oppressive society, and we need to work for something better.
ken
On 12/16/10 9:42 PM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
> Peace All,
>
> Kenneth, that is great sketch of economic domination by remote
> control. I am African American. My African comrades and I go back and
> forth on this frequently. Whereas I tend to favor structural
> explanations, many of my African comrades tend to point to what is, in
> their view, corrupt African leadership. As you rightly note, all
> factors must be placed on the table. That said, brother Moses didn't
> dismiss structure outright. He acknowledges that its a "culprit," but
> a "more distant" culprit.
>
> That brings up a related issue that I wanted to toss out. I think we
> still have a poor grasp as to _how_ structural factors shape or
> influence human action. Which is not exactly the same as understanding
> how a given structure works or functions (your sketch, for example).
> And because we don't fully understand how structure constricts and
> induces action, we tend to conceptualize structure, spatially, as
> "distant." Last, I wanted to note that structural arguments push
> against our commonsensical ideas of self-actualizing autonomous human
> beings--that are actions are fully voluntary and self-actuated. So-
> called "free will" or what liberal academics call "agency." kzs
>
> On Dec 15, 6:10 pm, kenneth harrow<har...@msu.edu> wrote:
>> moses
>> while i agree largely with your careful reasoning, there is one point
>> where i stopped. see it below.
>> ok, you are a farmer: you are growing a crop that was introduced to your
>> region during the colonial period. call it, oh, cotton. why not.
>> the u.s. subsidizes cotton, thus enabling it to undersell mali. even in
>> the poorest and most dispossessed region, cotton is affected since the
>> malians cannot put up protective tariffs thanks to the stupid neoliberal
>> rules that govern the imf. and just in case we forgot, european
>> subsidies exceed, in percentage, u.s. subsidies, and both the eu and usa
>> are excempt from imf rules against erecting tariffs.
>> you live, let us say, in e congo where tin is mined. tin goes out, guns
>> go in, militias, uganda elites, rwandan generals, all get rich
>> you live, where? in senegal where those trawlers have harvested all
>> the damn fish in the ocean, driving thousands to take piroques north,
>> endangering themselves and drowning, only to get to a xenophobic europe
>> ready to lynch them en mass, especially in italy which is ruled by a
>> rightwing maniac.
>> should i go on? where is that corner, moses, where this economic order
>> does not matter??
>> please. i know the leadership works hand in glove with the corporations
>> that buy the diamonds, with the gun runners that sell the armaments. i
>> know the chinese stepped into s sudan oil fields when the westerners
>> moved out. please, where is this remote untouched corner?
>> i know, it is in the sahara. wait, what is africom surveilling? why are
>> they expending millions to expend rule over mauretania, why did the
>> chinese build a superhighway in mauretania. oh, oil. need i go on.
>> the order that is decimating africa reaches from elite to elite, and the
>> rest of us, trawled up by those inhumane monsters, are left to cheer on
>> bono.
>> we have to recognize ALL these forces if we are to establish a coherent
>> policy for change. i would very very willingly start with the bottom up
>> that you evoke, the subalterns that reach in peculiar ways across
>> countries. all countries, integrated now more than ever into mechanisms
>> of exploitation of resources and labor.
>> ken
>>
>> On 12/15/10 11:53 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
>>
>>> it is my view that for most peoples of the South and the North who are
>>> poor and dispossessed, the global neoliberal order is a more distant
>>> culprit in their predicament than are their proximate leaders and
>>> political actors.
>> --
>> kenneth w. harrow
>> distinguished professor of english
>> michigan state university
>> ph. 517 803 8839
>> har...@msu.edu
--
kenneth w. harrow
distinguished professor of english
michigan state university
ph. 517 803 8839
harrow@msu.edu
--
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