There's nothing particularly vague about the deformation that Nestor was referring to. Allende could have been overthrown without the U.S. intervention, but not so easily. Imagine what Chile might have been like if it had transformed itself under Allende and his allies, not Pinochet. Think about the aborted literacy campaign, agricultural co-ops, etc. that the Sandinistas initiated. What might Guatemala be like now without the 1954 coup organized by the CIA? What if Vietnam had been able to become socialist without having to wage war against the USA?
Relative differences, all, but those are the only kind that would have been possible given historical conditions. And such differences do matter -- otherwise, why were imperialists so keen on thwarting attempts to enhance the well-being of the Third World masses?
>that nestor invokes bolivar's aspiration for letting a thousand little
>absolutisms bloom also explicitly indicates why -- for me at least -- it's
>necessary to talk about the role of nation-states in the formation of
>enclosures through which proletarianisation occured in europe, and without
>which -- in current circumstances -- austerity, wage restraint and the
>restructuring of regional and highly segmented (more often than not by the
>mechanisms of guest worker systems esp in asia) labour markets would not be
>enforceable. restructurings, esp of the kind we have been experiencing
>over the last twenty or so years, has relied on nation-states. from our
>perspective, rather than from the perspective of employers, capital and
>merchants, the world is a much more regulated place.
Maybe it doesn't matter to you if a country is independent or an outright colony, since independence within a capitalist international system is merely a relative affair. It's a good thing that Third World revolutionaries did not subscribe to pure anti-nationalism.
Anyhow, the world is now much more directly regulated by the ruling class and the governing elite of the imperial core, even where states actually still exist in the periphery. Austerity policy has become the condition of remaining in the world market. The Third World masses without state power are in no position to reject it, and if any of them try to take a measure of control over their own lives, they will have to take state power and come up with a way to embark upon non-capitalist development (which would probably be labeled "nationalism" by the media and leftists like you). On the other hand, the non-existence of a state doesn't empower the masses at all -- think of Somalia, Congo, Bosnia, etc.
>aspiring to one's own little absolutism is either nostalgia for
>something that never existed or, if it does take political form beyond
>cyberspace, may be just a glorified way of vying for position in the
>carving up of regional territories, labour markets, resources and
>surpluses.
Saying all or nothing, as basically you are doing here, sounds dogmatic to me. Even with all its difficulties, Cuba is better than Haiti, China is better than India, etc, though such differences may not seem significant to you.
>> Look, whenever Patrick Bond speaks about South Africa, should he put it
>> between quotation marks or under erasure, just to make sure he won't even
>> remotely be associated with an "idealist definition"?
>
>he's talking about SA, right?
So, what about South Africa? What is to be done if not what Pat proposed as a point of departure?
>- and will you give me a dollar (ted too!) for every post of ours you
>haven't replied to?
Not if your posts are practically empty except in abstract oppositions to abstract "nation states," "economic nationalism," etc. any time, anywhere. There's not much one can say about such oppositions.
>- what exactly is a nation?
For instance, a question like that already implies a kind of Platonic essence. There's no such thing as an ideal type of nation. What a country can be said to be -- its laws, borders, place in the world market, etc. -- is what has historically evolved -- the sum of its domestic and interstate relations.
Yoshie