delinking does not equal autarky (J O'Connor)

Peter K. peterk at enteract.com
Sat Feb 17 11:32:40 PST 2001


Doug:
>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...

I'm very ignorant on these matters. Even so, I found the following article informative. It tells how in practice national liberation struggles are extremely complicated.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n04/john2304.htm

How Mugabe came to power
>From LRB Vol 23, No 4 | cover date 22 February 2001
R.W. Johnson talks to a war veteran

It's not an easy thing to have on your conscience that you were personally responsible for putting Robert Mugabe in power but Wilfred Mhanda has had to live with that knowledge for the last 24 years. You might think the last year, which has seen 32 murders, countless cases of rape, torture, arson and beating, all to help Mugabe steal an election, would have made it even harder, but the reverse is true. 'It's a relief now that Zimbabweans realise at last what sort of man he is,' Mhanda told me recently. 'It became obvious very quickly that we'd made a terrible mistake: that he was paranoid, authoritarian and ruthless, a man believing only in power. He hasn't changed. What's changed is that other people have his measure at last.'



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list