> > I do believe, and am presently working on this question and lots of related
>> ones, that the choice is between a plurality of national/regionalist models
>> of development, where first things come first, like eradicating poverty, on
>> the one hand, and a single global model of development under the rule of
>> the US, on the other.
>
>This is also being pursued by Bello, Amin and the like...
Is this like social democracy in one country?
Why have so many state-centered alternative development regimes in the so-called Third World gone bad? Hardt & Negri have a theoretical answer: that national liberation struggles turn sour once they achieve state power, because the nation-state is a realm of hierarchy and exclusion. They also argue that the "nation" doesn't exist separately from a state - that it is, in fact, called into being by state formation - so that ethnicized exclusion is part of the pacakge. I'm not completely convinced, but it's a coherent theory. It's not for nothing that I keep pointing out that Patrick's "technical" examples of how to do alternadevelopment - Smith's Rhodesia and apartheid SA - were odious regimes, which fit in rather well with the Hardt/Negri theory. And what about Mahathir - a repressive bigot, perfectly willing to oppress the Malaysian working class (and expel immigrants), but something of a hero to some of the left for his use of capital controls. Please convince me why H&N's theoretical argument is wrong.
Doug