>Anthony D'Costa
>>Is this development by invitation a la Wallerstein? Dependent development
>>or that imperialism does not necessarily mean pillage as you underscored
>>earlier.
>
>Right. In a few exceptional cases, third world countries benefited from an
>infusion of capital because of their strategic military value. This is like
>winning the lottery in a sense. A progressive economist would not recommend
>to working people that they get rich by buying a Lucky Strike ticket.
>Neither would a progressive economist recommend that Bolivia follow "the
>Korean model."
South Korea, etc. only possessed strategic values because of the rise of socialism in East Asia (China, Vietnam, etc.). Now that socialism is practically over in this area for the time being (Nixon in China, Albright in North Korea, & Clinton in Vietnam; both China & Vietnam have become incorporated in the world capitalist market & present no threat to the USA; North Korea will be uniting with South Korea shortly), East Asian nations will not receive the same treatment. The signs of change were already apparent even before the Asian financial crisis, and the crisis was used to restructure the nations afflicted with it.
The historical conjuncture we live in is the moment of simultaneous exhaustion of actually existing socialism, social democracy in rich nations, developmental states in semi-peripheral nations, & import-substituting dictatorships in poor nations.
Hence the neo-liberalization of NACLA that Lou mentioned in another post, with emphasis on NGOs, volunteerism, so-called "civil society," & humanitarian imperialism:
At 1:58 PM -0500 12/6/00, Louis Proyect wrote:
>To: marxism at lists.panix.com, pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu,
> SOCIALIST-REGISTER at YORKU.CA, wsn at CSF.COLORADO.EDU
>From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
>Subject: [PEN-L:5702] NACLA and Colombia
>
>The most recent issue (Sept-Oct. 2000) of NACLA Report on the Americas is
>devoted to Colombia. Since this is the most authoritative journal covering
>Latin America in the USA--the country now preparing a Vietnam type
>intervention in the region--it is necessary to review what it is saying,
>especially since its coverage on Colombia has been so flawed in the recent
>past.
>
>First a few words about the political evolution of North American Congress
>on Latin America (NACLA), the research group that puts out the magazine. It
>has its roots in the student radicalization of the 1960s when graduate
>students and left professors established working groups on a number of
>questions falling within the general rubric of American imperialism. This
>was around the time groups like Concerned Asian Scholars were also getting
>started. In general these outfits were inspired by the Vietnamese and Cuban
>revolutions.
>
>Now that many of the original founders have become responsible tenured
>professors with reputations to protect, the edge of some of these journals
>has grown dull. This is especially true of NACLA, which suffers the
>additional problem of identifying with a rightward drift in Latin American
>politics following the defeat of the Central American revolutions.
>
>The original impetus for this drift came from a layer of disillusioned
>Sandinistas such as Victor Tirado, who decided that the era of
>anti-imperialist revolutions had come to an end after the collapse of the
>USSR. Basically this was a form of leftwing TINA that ruled out creation of
>states based on the model of the October 1917 revolution. The alternative
>proposed by the FSLN in Nicaragua and FMLN in El Salvador was a variant on
>Swedish social democracy, in tune with the historical example of Costa
>Rica. Unfortunately, the "neoliberal" direction of world politics and
>economics over the past 10 years militated against such a possibility. In
>point of fact the model for Costa Rica in this period has been El Salvador
>rather than the other way around.
>
>In the USA, the academics grouped around NACLA embraced this retreat but
>put their own particular postmodernist spin upon it. Editorial board member
>Roger Burbach, who heads the Latin American studies department at U. of
>California at Berkeley, has been a forceful defender of this kind of
>postmodernist 'socialism'. In "Globalization and its Discontents" (Pluto
>Press, 1997) co-authored by FSLN intellectual Orlando Núñez and Boris
>Kargalitsky, we learn that "the Central America experience in the 1980s
>demonstrates even more conclusively the shortcomings of the 'actual
>existing' national liberation movements." (Kargalitsky repudiated this book
>shortly after it appeared on the shelves, claiming that he had no idea what
>Burbach had up his sleeve.)
>
>Not only does Burbach deny that lack of Soviet support was at fault, he
>also claims that dedication to "armed struggle" condemned these groups to
>oblivion. So what should the Latin American left try to do in the face of
>such insurmountable odds? Basically Burbach counsels they should join with
>NGO's in creating alternative, voluntary institutions in "civil society"
>that might be described in George Bush's terms as a "thousand points of
>light":
>
>"In both the developed and underdeveloped countries, a wide variety of
>critical needs and interests are being neglected at the local level,
>including the building, or rebuilding, of roads, schools and social
>services. A new spirit of volunteerism and community participation, backed
>by a campaign to secure complimentary resources from local and national
>governments, can open up entirely new job markets and areas of work to deal
>with these basic needs." (Globalization and its Discontents, p. 164)
>
>Examples of such initiatives include homeless men selling the monthly
>newspaper "Street Spirit" in northern California to cover the costs of a
>meal and a bottle of rotgut. (Globalization, ibid.) It would also include
>soup kitchens and slum housing squats. Nobody could ever accuse Burbach and
>company of raising the bar too high.
>
>Not content to propagate this new vision of a postmodernist socialism,
>NACLA has also gone out of its way to lecture an errant dinosaur left
>oblivious to new realities. This included Fidel Castro who had the nerve to
>crack down on NGO think-tanks in Cuba which had been advocating an end to
>the planned economy and which were funded by US universities. It also
>included the headstrong young US activist named Lorie Berenson who was
>jailed by Fujimori after being caught in Peru working with the now defunct
>Tupac Amaru guerrilla movement. A NACLA editorial lectured her the way a
>parent would lecture a teenaged daughter who had been caught driving drunk.
>
>It has been with respect to the guerrilla groups in Colombia that NACLA has
>been most ideologically strident. Either the FARC, ELN and EPL armed groups
>have allowed their subscription to NACLA Report to run out or are willfully
>unmindful of the need to sponsor soup kitchens in Colombia's slums under
>their own banner. Perhaps the presence of death squads in the cities might
>have something to do with this. In any case, the animosity toward the FARC
>in particular has been so pronounced that it allowed NACLA editorial board
>member Mario Murillo to falsely report that the FARC had massacred Indian
>villagers and burned their homes. This report was filed despite the
>evidence provided by a church group in Colombia that the murders were
>committed by rightwing militaries disguised as FARC combatants. NACLA has
>never corrected this misinformation.
>
>I am pleased to report that the current issue is a step in the right
>direction. Perhaps criticism from friends and supporters of NACLA has had
>an effect.
>
>The most useful article is by journalist Alfredo Molano, who is a weekly
>columnist for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. His writing has
>prompted death threats from the AUC in Colombia, the rightwing paramilitaries.
>
>The article, titled "The Evolution of the FARC: A Guerrilla Group's Long
>History," is a fair and informative overview of the group's origin and its
>role in recent controversies, such as the coca trade. Basically, Molano
>explains the growth of the FARC as a response to the 'hacienda' economy in
>the countryside:
>
>"In the 1970s, the National Front was still dominating political life, and
>on the economic front, the government of Misael Pastrana (1970-1974)
>adopted a rural development model that aimed to eliminate all obstacles to
>free investment in the countryside. This led to concentration of land
>ownership, the undermining of small-scale peasant producers and the rise of
>peasant proletarianization. Because of Pastrana’s program, thousands of
>desperate peasants were propelled into both organized and spontaneous
>invasions of rural properties. On the Atlantic Coast, for example, peasants
>invaded the large haciendas common to the region and distributed the land
>among themselves. Property owners, backed by the area’s aggressive
>political bosses, responded with public and private force, and succeeded in
>recovering their land. Pastrana’ s economic development model also drove
>many peasants to the cities, raising urban unemployment and setting the
>stage for the great National Civic Strike of 1977 and the Draconian
>Security Statute of 1978 that drastically reduced the right to protest and
>organize.
>
>"At the same time, there was repression of the peasant movement, expulsion
>of small tenants from the lands they cultivated and, in general, expansion
>of commercial agriculture to less populated parts of the country, as well
>as colonization of unused lands. Many of the most popular destinations lay
>in the same remote areas where the guerrillas were strong and where they
>constituted the only authority. During this period the FARC consolidated
>its influence, opened some new areas, and focused on training military
>leaders. These were the days when many students, intellectuals, workers and
>peasant leaders joined the guerrilla struggle."
>
>There is also an excellent interview with FARC Commander Simón Trinidad,
>who when asked why the FARC recruits children, answers:
>
>"We recruit 15 year olds and up. In some fronts there may have been some
>younger, but [recently] we decided to send them back home. But what is the
>cost? During the last year a girl arrived ... 14 years old and wanting to
>join the guerrilla... In March she was sent back home because the FARC's
>Central Command said they would return to their parents all those younger
>than 15.
>
>"Two weeks ago I met this girl... She said she was working in a bar from
>six p.m. until sunrise. I asked her what she was doing and she said, 'I
>attend to the customers.' When I asked her [how], she lowered her head and
>started to cry. She is a whore. She is 14 years old. A child prostitute.
>She was better in the guerrillas. In the guerrillas we have dignity,
>respect and we provide them with clothes, food and education. There are
>millions of others like this girl in Colombia who are exploited in the coal
>mines, the gold mines, the emerald mines, in the coca and poppy fields.
>They prefer that children work in the coca and poppy fields because they
>pay them less and they work more."
>
>"It sounds beautiful when you say that children should not be guerrillas,
>but children are in the streets doing drugs, inhaling gasoline and glue.
>According to the United Nations: 41% of Colombians are children, 6.5
>million children live in conditions of poverty, another 1.2 million live in
>absolute poverty, 30,000 live in the streets, 47% are abused by their
>parents, and 2.5 million work in high risk jobs. These children meet the
>guerrillas and they don't have parents because the military or the
>paramilitaries killed them, and they ask the guerrillas to let them join.
>We are carrying out our rule that no children younger than 15 years of age
>join."
>
>Despite the presence of these and other excellent articles, there is a
>piece by NACLA editorial board member and Georgetown University professor
>Marc Chernick that demonstrates a shocking inability to understand the
>nature of the conflict and--at least to his eyes--its intractability.
>Titled "Elusive Peace: Struggling Against the Logic of Violence", it wrings
>its hands over the FARC "overrunning small towns and pitting 200 guerrillas
>against, at best, 20 policemen." What is particularly troubling is
>Chernick's inclusion of this factoid in a paragraph with the leading
>sentence: "The military conflict is intensifying, with civilians bearing
>the brunt." Cops as civilians? Has anybody on NACLA's editorial board ever
>read Lenin's "State and Revolution"? Or Karl Marx for that matter? Cops are
>not civilians. A schoolteacher is a civilian, for pete's sake. If the
>guerrillas are to achieve victory, it will be as a result of militarily
>defeating the military, paramilitaries, and cops.
>
>The articles stresses the need for peace since "No side has the firepower
>or political to win militarily". Chernick looks to enlightened Colombian
>politicians such as Noemi Sanin and Horacio Serpa to negotiate a peace
>settlement. A "U.S. diplomacy of peace... could be crucial for pushing the
>process forward." One wonders whether Chernick is so steeped in his Latin
>American specialty that he has been unmindful of the aggressive posture of
>the U.S. government in other areas of the globe, beginning with the Balkans
>and Iraq.
>
>Most bizarre of all is the notion that peace can be hastened by a weakening
>of the paramilitaries through combined action of Colombia and the US
>military, as Chernick proposes in pollyanna fashion. The notion of the
>Pentagon being deployed to wipe out rightwing death squads is the height of
>foolishness and makes me deeply pessimistic about the future role of NACLA
>editors in keeping the American public informed about events in Colombia.
>The United States has been the prime sponsor of rightwing paramilitaries in
>Latin America for the past 40 years. It trains militaries in the use of
>torture at the School of the Americas. The CIA helped Pinochet identify and
>round up left wing opponents who were subsequently murdered. It also backed
>the notorious ARENA party in El Salvador whose homicidal leader D'Aubuisson
>was an open admirer of Adolph Hitler. What is the purpose of Chernick's
>preposterous appeal? To look "sensible" to his colleagues at Georgetown
>University, an institution whose tentacles reach deeply into the CIA and
>State Department?
>
>In reality, there can be no peace in Colombia as long as there is a
>situation Marxists have described as "dual power". In periods of deep
>revolutionary polarization, society tends to divide along class lines with
>respective allegiances given to radically opposed state structures. In the
>classic instance of Russia in 1917, the workers and peasants oriented to
>the Soviets while the bourgeoisie and middle classes defended the
>Constituent Assembly. When society confronts a situation of dual power,
>peace can only come about with the defeat of one side. It will be in that
>case either the peace of a victorious people or the peace of the graveyard.
>
>The reason that Colombia does not readily present itself as this kind of
>paradigm is that the insurgent forces seem fairly detached from the
>traditions of October, 1917. Although the FARC began as the rural
>detachment of the Colombian Communist Party, it has all of the
>characteristics of a classic peasant insurgency.
>
>Through a combination of fierce repression in the cities and its own talent
>for mobilizing the peasantry, the FARC has been able to seize control over
>a huge section of Colombia, about the size of Switzerland. The Colombian
>press calls this Farclandia and it behaves virtually like a state within a
>state. It taxes all businesses, including those involved in the cocaine
>trade, and delivers social services.
>
>In fact I would argue that the best prism through which to understand
>groups like the FARC (and the ELN to a lesser extent) is the Mexican
>revolution of 1910-1920 rather than Russia, 1917. If you read Trotskyist
>Adolfo Gilly's "The Mexican Revolution", you will discover that Zapata's
>forces stood in relation to the central government in much the same way as
>the FARC does today. The problem in both instances is that the peasant
>insurgencies lack the political and social orientation to the only class
>force that can rule society: the urban working class.
>
>Referring to Mexico, Gilly notes:
>
>"But the peasantry could not rise to a nation-wide social perspective nor
>offer a revolutionary solution for the insurgent nation. A national
>revolutionary perspective, counterposed to the goals of the bourgeosie,
>could only have come from the other basic class in society: the
>proletariat. Yet the proletariat lacked an independent leadership, party
>and class organization."
>
>Obviously it will be up to the Colombian people to assemble such an
>organization. Those of use in the United States have only one obligation:
>to rally the American people against imperialist intervention and create
>circumstances favorable to the revolutionary forces whatever their program
>or class composition.
>
>(The latest NACLA Report can be ordered at www.nacla.org)
>
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
In this context, Max Weber will be more useful than ever to devotees of "civil society."
Yoshie