Patrick Bond wrote:
>
> Recall Keynes at precisely that time (in the famous 1933 Yale
> Review article), getting normative in the same kind of way that our
> leading internationalist thinkers are, right now:
>
> "I sympathise with those who would minimise,
> rather than with those who would maximise,
> economic entanglement among nations. Ideas,
> knowledge, science, hospitality, travel--
> these are the things which should of their
> nature be international. But let goods be
> homespun whenever it is reasonably and
> conveniently possible and, above all, let
> finance be primarily national."
>
> This line will become, I'll predict now, the watchword for the NGOs,
> church leaders, social movements, environmentalists and labour
> comrades who gather next week in Montreal at the parallel sessions of
> the Financial Stability Forum...
But how far are you willing to take this reasoning...into complete auturky? In the absense of a revolution, the only way I can see it happening is for the smaller (economically smaller,that is) nonimperialist countries to band into a bloc to pursue their mutually agreed upon national/popular interests. There will always be a need for a kind of international division of labor among nations and across geographical space. It has been along time since I've studied Samir Amin but I think he does advocate a division of labor based on horizontal, fair and non-coercive relations between the technologically rich countries and the others.
Sam Pawlett