Bullish on America? (was Re: What the heck?)

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Dec 15 08:48:41 PST 1999


At 03:10 PM 12/14/99 -0600, Joseph Noonan commented on Hitchen's piece on America:
>Whatever was he rambling on about? That was the worst piece of
>tripe I've ever seen from him.

Tripe? He asserts facts visible with a naked eye. US is the center of the political, economic, miliatry and cultural world. Calling undesirable facts 'tripe' will not change reality.

The only counter-argument against Hitchens' piece I can think of is that he incorrectly stipulates that all the economic/political/military/scientific/cultural success have the American origin. Nothing is farther from the truth. America owes its success to its immigrants, its cultural/ethnic mix, and its absence of traditional / feudal social institutions of Europe and Asia (and Latin America too) that acted as a major obstacle to capitalist progress. In that sense, America reflects a triumph of a capitalist economy and bourgeois culture developed elsewhere, but transplanted to a much more fertile ground. Marx was right when he equated capitalist progress with the destruction of the ancien regime.

wojtek



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