"Economic Nationalism"? (was Re: Who Killed Vincent Chin?)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Angela:
>with little regard for what you here rhetorically emphasise -- ie., "under
>the present international conditions (capitalist and imperialist)"  -- and
>which i've already responded in part when i wrote in the previous post "in
>the current conditions, there's a profound contradiction between democratic
>control and a strong state, not least in the sense that a strong state
>means being able to impose austerity, or at the very least, a wage
>restraint bargain -- esp inasmuch as those economies aren't capable of
>drawing greater shares of a global surplus a la the US, EU and Japan.
>every time you emphasise the apparent need for a strong state in the
>'periphery', you occlude the fact that this means undemocratic."

Is Somalia more democratic than China?  If so, in what sense?  If not, why not?

>but, for the fun of it, let's take an example: indonesia.   show me how the
>problems of indonesian workers stem from having a weak state or weak border
>controls.

Perhaps you think that it would be better if Indonesia disintegrated into
many little islands without the central political authority, for then there
would be no "nation state."  It's my impression, however, that Indonesian
workers would want more democratic control over what its government does or
doesn't do.  Maybe you are saying that such a demand cannot be met under
the present conditions, so they might as well not bother?

>no, really, i'd like to hear it.  i can't think of one instance
>where your depiction of the problem as a weak nation-state and borders
>makes any sense at all.

Yugoslavia, with all its problems, was better than the sum of ex-Yugoslav
"republics."  The same goes for the USSR.  What about Albania, Somalia,
Congo, etc.?

>in any event, what you seem to call 'concreteness' is in fact a call for
>some non-existant vanguard to take state power

What's so good about not having state power?

>presuming as it does that
>the nation-state is a neutral (or at best, leftist, since you seem to
>beleive that the capitalism is exemplified by the market) instrument not a
>specific form of capitalist power, that any reforms are impossible without
>this taking of power (as if it isn't always a question of what the state is
>forced to do by us).

None of the above is in my assumptions.

>it's really a crude (and by now repetitive)
>vaguardist routine, which assumes that other politics ought to be judged as
>to how sufficient they are in providing an alternative vanguard programme.
>strange as it might seem, i never applied for the job, not least because
>what is at issue is not who has their hands on the levers of state power
>but what, for instance, the possible scope of state action is (referred to
>briefly above).

A possible scope of state action is of course severely limited within the
world market as it exists.  Hence my comment on debt cartel, regionalism,
etc. in my reply to Pat.  Anyhow, if you have any thoughts on better
alternatives, you might as well tell us, unless you are saying that the
only hope for the Third World masses are to immigrate to the capitalist
core.

>in fact, for the same reasons i've warned against the integrationist
>pressures to sit at the table of the IMF and WTO, i would regard this
>preoccupation with 'leftists taking state power' as itself a problem.
>what it does lead to, time and again, is a decomposition and demobilisation
>of those movements which are capable of pressing for reforms and/or
>transforming reforms and the crises they induce (because reforms in our
>interests will invite the weapons of capitalist crisis; cf. kalecki and
>bologna) into crises for capital and not for us.

You speak of decomposition and demobilization, *as if* movements capable of
inducing "crises for capital" existed now, only being tragically decomposed
and demobilized due to your imaginary vanguardists' nefarious
preoccupations with state power.  Well, well, maybe you live on another
planet than the Earth.

Yoshie