Nathan, you cut me to the quick when you say I am a pessimist. You know I am hopelessly romantic about the chromium plated future. But the realist in me says that one has to have a bit of distance from the so- called 'new social movements'.
These movements are generally very small indeed, with much less democratic accountability than even the old Stalinist parties. More to the point they are, as a rule, the client groups of Western-funded "Non- Governmental Organisations", mobilised to secure some pay-out from government.
Having come into contact with the NBA anti-dam campaigners (originally created by Buddy Rich's Washington based Environmental Defence Fund) I wouldn't call them anything other than US patsies. As it happens, the EDF set up Chico Mendes as a spokesman as well, having recruited him from the Brazilian Workers Party. Similarly, the UN secretary general took over running Rigoberta Menchu as an agent for a US-designed package of 'indigenous rights' from her original sponsor, Elizabeth Burgos- Debray. Not surprisingly the entire UN/Menchu collaboration collapsed when Guatemalans voted down the package by an overwhelming majority: they could see that this was a scam to undermine their political representation.
These groups come and go according to whether their is an aid package attached to the end of their agitation. They are as much a social movement as native converts to the mission churches in the British Empire were. And like them, they are loyal to their sponsors. So not surprisingly, they are generally the key spokesmen for intervention.
In message <001501bf048e$ef9eeba0$baf38482 at nsn2>, Nathan Newman <nathan.newman at yale.edu> writes
>Now, this may be the crux of our differences. I see a world of quite
>"buoyant" grassroots movements worldwide, in many aspects far more vibrant
>than even a decade ago. Fewer "left-aligned" movements control
>nation-states than at points in the past, but in some ways that is an
>advantage, since so many of those (as in the East Bloc and a number of
>allied third world states) repressed their grassroots movements and (as you
>noted in your post about the PDS) were an embarassment to the very idea of
>radical social change.
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>Whether we are talking about the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, the
>Indonesian labor movement, the South Korean democracy movement, or the
>upsurge of latino power in California, there are incredibly dramatic
>examples of movements that have continued to grow globally. And - given the
>topic at hand - there is a network of human rights activists that has
>continued to grow throughout the last decades.
>
>The defeat of "fast track" trade legislation in the US was matched globally
>by the worldwide mobilization that forced the shelving of the first round of
>the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). There are mobilizations
>against the IMF in countries around the world.
>
>I find the thumb-sucking pessimism of so many left activists really bizarre.
>Maybe it is a failure by Marxists to acknowledge movements that are not tied
>to party formations. Or maybe it is nostalgia for the Soviet patronage of
>the Cold War that gave an artificial heft (and often funds) to certain kinds
>of "left" voices in the world. Or maybe it is the reasonable disorientation
>of the wrenching economic changes occuring due to both new forms of
>globalization and technology.
>
>But the reality is that we have an incredible network of activists in the
>world and across the United States with global labor movements far more
>willing to challenge global capital today (as in trade legislation) than
>they were a generation ago when the divisions of the Cold War made them
>sacrifice global class solidarity in the name of "fighting Communism."
>
>So, yes, despite in some ways incredibly hard economic and technological
>conditions to operate within, I think the self-defeating pessimism of many
>leftists is far overblown.
>
>And you may find my optimism on the state of the global left as bizarre as
>my position on Kosovo, but you may have hit the nail on the head in noting
>the link.
>
>--Nathan Newman
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-- Jim heartfield