In a message dated 9/27/00 12:50:45 PM Central Daylight Time, jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk writes:
> >The Indian writer Arundhati Roy put it best, writing about her crusade
> >against a World-Bank-funded dam: "Perhaps what the 21st century has in
store
> >for us is the dismantling of the Big. Big bombs, big dams, big heroes, big
> >mistakes. Perhaps it will be the Century of the Small."
>
> 'World-bank funded'? I thought that the World Bank had pulled out of the
> Narmada Dam, despite the determination of the Indian government to go
> ahead.
yes, it did, only because the project stunk so badly. for every narmada-dam pullout, there are a zillion projects that go ahead without even a review. so roy says -- i recommend you read her essay. it might make you think twice about your apparent valorization of the "great" for greatness' sake.
> Of course, it is very convenient to big capital to keep everyone
> else small. A century of small ambitions will leave capital's rule
> intact.
this just seems ingenuous to me. or do you really see projects like the narmada dam as some sort of proud proletarian rebuke to capital?? honestly!
smallness for smallness' sake is a silly notion, too -- but that's not roy's point, nor is it the point that anarchists are trying to make in opposing the machinations of huge global institutions bent on pursuing more huge developments for more huge profits at the expense of the huge majority. what is called for is a world of institutions scaled to the needs and capacities of (and therefore democratically controllable by) human beings. kirkpatrick sale's book *human scale*, for all its inability to bring "capitalism" into focus as an aspect of the general problem confronting us, deserves to be dusted off.
--jesse.