http://www.google.com/search?q=Colonialism%27s+Back+--+and+Not+a+Moment+Too+Soon&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.workers.org/marcy/1993/sm930429.html
>...Epochal revolutionary developments like the October socialist
revolution in Russia or the Chinese socialist revolution throw
the imperialist bourgeoisie into a tizzy
(Stalin, "Dizzy With Success, " Stalin Library
... POL) (65k); Stalin's Speeches on the CPUSA (83k) --1930--.
Concerning the Policy
of Eliminating the Kulaks as a Class (POL) (17k); Dizzy with
Success (POL) (19k ...
Description: A hefty collection of Stalin's articles from 1905
to 1952.
Category: Society > Politics > Socialism > Marxism > Communism
> People > Stalin, Josef
http://www.gate.cruzio.com/~marx2mao/Stalin/Index.html
- 25k - Cached - Similar pages
Books ... of Stalin's article of March 2, 1930, in which he blamed the violence and chaos of the winter months on local cadres who were "Dizzy with Success." Parts three ... http://www.utoronto.ca/serap/books.htm - 8k - Cached - Similar pages
History of Russia ... Stalin, Dizzy with Success (1930). Basic Data on Collectivisation (1929-1940). Stalin, Reply to Collective Farm Comrades (1930). ... http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/econgs/Rusland.html )
Back to Sam... . And its ideologues invariably reflect the mood of the ruling class, often in great literary strokes.
Thus Oswald Spengler wrote The Decline of the West in the 1920s. It was largely a lament over the rising proletariat and the socialist revolution in particular.
Spengler represented the pessimism of the ruling class, particularly in Europe. The victory of the October socialist revolution in Russia, the growing revolutionary crisis in Germany, and the generally sad state of European capitalism were soon to be greatly magnified by the worldwide collapse of the economic system, led by the Wall Street crash of 1929.
A more extensive and learned form of the same phenomenon is contained in Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History--a massive exposition on the decline and fall of what he refers to as many civilizations. It conveyed a mood of pessimism for which he blamed the Cold War.
But in reality his disappointment reflected the rising insurgency of the Western proletariat--including the coming to power of the Labour Party in Britain--immediately after the Second World War.
There have been innumerable examples of optimism or pessimism playing a great role in connection with the objectives of this or that ruling class.
Pessimism, however, can never be an instrument for class liberation of the workers, even though the ability to describe with talent and foresight the sordid character of capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression is an instrument of class deliverance. Revolutionary optimism is congenital to the proletarian movement, which doesn't have the luxury of an extensive outpouring of pessimism that only facilitates the ruling class attack.
Eulogy to colonialism
We are reminded of all this by an utterly incredible article in the April 18 (1993) New York Times Magazine of April 18 with the startling title: "Colonialism's Back--and Not a Moment Too Soon." In case this might be regarded as facetious, the secondary head made it clear: "Let's face it: Some countries are just not fit to govern themselves."
It was written by Paul Johnson, who is described as the author of Modern Times--who ever heard of that?
http://www.salon.com/media/1998/05/28media.html
http://businessphilosophy.com/business/PaulJohnsonbusiness/mobydick.html
--and is "at work on a history of the American people."
We wonder whether the Johannesburg Post would care to publish such an article at this time. We surmise that the publishers would shake in their boots at the very thought of putting something like that in print at a time when the South African working class has achieved, in depth and in numbers, a virtually unprecedented level of proletarian activity. So far, no amount of terror has been able to subdue them. Nor do we hear of the ruling cliques, from Pretoria to Johannesburg to Cape Town, exuding any of the confidence displayed in this utterly incredible article in the New York Times.
Evidently his article was written before the magnificent general strike that took place after the assassination of South African Communist leader Chris Hani. However, the Times must have thought his article was still valid in light of the Pentagon's recent victories in Somalia.
We cannot but conclude that Johnson's paean to colonialism is representative of the mood of at least a section of the ruling class, if not the orientation of contemporary imperialism in general.
This article concludes that people in the former colonies are clamoring for Western intervention, and that "the civilized world has a mission to go out to these desperate places and govern." By "civilized world," Johnson writes he means first and foremost the United States, Britain and France, but also their opponents in the last world war--Germany and Japan.
In return, says Johnson, they will earn "the unspoken gratitude of millions of misgoverned or ungoverned people who will find in this altruistic revival of colonialism the only way out of their present intractable miseries."