Development (Re: lbo-talk-digest V1 #4736)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Aug 13 16:11:56 PDT 2001


Ken writes:


>>Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 09:35:59 -0700 (PDT)
>>From: Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu>
>>Subject: Re: lbo-talk-digest V1 #4733
>>
>>And autonomy and solidarity are important because . . . they are
>>traditions in a particular society. So we must support this form of
>>rational argument because it supports a way of life (democracy,
>>individual autonomy, and so on) that we are used to. I still think
>>this stinks of ethnocentrism: concepts like rationality and autonomy,
>>created in a specific social nexus, are elevated to necessary
>>components of any "inclusive" society--and then we make profound
>>philosophical judgments about the moral inferiority of any society
>>that does not include these concepts.
>>
>>Miles
>
>You do realize that the charge of ethnocentrism comes with the
>implicit claim that non-western societies lack conceptions of
>autonomy and solidarity and reason.... but that isn't my primary
>concern.

It's not so much a problem of ethnocentrism -- "the West vs. the non-West" -- as a problem of "development of underdevelopment" (= the richer a peripheral nation becomes in absolute terms, the poorer it becomes relative to the core, with the exception of Africa which has become impoverished both in absolute and relative terms for the last couple of decades), though given the history of colonialism & imperialism, economic boundaries are largely racialized & ethnicized, with an important exception of Japan & NICs (= rich enough to become liberally democratic but usually not represented as part of "the West"). It's far more difficult to get liberal democracy going in Somalia than in Germany, to take just one comparative example. A Somalia needs a Machiavelli (= a bourgeois Machiavelli building the state & the home market, or better yet a socialist Machiavelli building a socialist developmental state perhaps a la the Cuban Revolution) before a Habermas can become in any way useful for it.

Yoshie



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