delinking doesn't equal autarky (Jim O'Connor)

[Barbara Laurence]

Maybe "national liberations regimes turn sour once they achieve state
power" (Doug's exegesis of H and N) also because:
1.	They are immediately attacked, or counter-attacked, by deadly
imperialist force, and need military discipline to defend themselves.
2.	They aren't Leninist enough to acknowledge that the point of
revolution is to "abolish the state," by which he meant "abolish the
distinction between law-making and state administration; make the elected
representatives carry out their own laws" as a key project of any
transition.
3.	National liberation struggles are by definition against two things:
1. imperialist and their local Quisling rule, thus the need for armed
struggle which in turn easily turns into a state-centric society and 2.
Underdevelopment, which means that the agenda is dominated by economic
development projects, and the abolition of poverty, a goal to which
everything else has to be subordinated.  This is linked to both 1/ and 2/
above.

Cuba is instructive.  Fidel has succeeded in building a real nation, which
is respected around the world, where before Fidel there was none -- just a
whorehouse for Americans.  It's a good thing for there to be more
independent nations in the world because it is one thing that US
imperialism cannot abide.  Makes no difference whether the nations are
right or left.  To build a nation, which also means using national symbols
(which don't have to be anti-minority) to motivate people to work and
invest (Malaysia), presupposes forces against nationhood.  Would the Dutch
have been so nationalist and also democratic had they not been exploited
and butchered by the Spanish, for example?  Nations develop through
struggle.  If you don't have one, you'd better find a way to get one,
because otherwise you have no standing anywhere, from the UN to the missile
targeting devices of the US Navy.  But Cuba of course, too, builds a single
party-rule nation, in which initiatives on any level coming from civil
society are ignored or treated with no respect or repressed.  The idea
being that if something is worth doing, the party has or will see it, and
do it...the idea being that the party is that wise, competent, good etc.

To the degree that alternative material life, projects of all kinds, like
water management and allocation, are done by unions and other non-state
bodies...the H and N problem is a non-starter.  Perhaps Patrick will
enlighten us more on this point.

There's lots more to say about this theme.  A final thought:  In my opinion
the key to unlocking the secrets of T. Negri's thought is to understand or
come to realize that he doesn't have much use for, or make much of,
mediations in theory and intermediaries in practice.

Once he told me that "labor mobility" means for the worker to go where he's
not supposed to go, e.g., for a postal customer to try to do her business
on the other side of the window, in the quarters where the workers labor.
This is very clever and has its uses, but practically, things happen in the
world through all kinds of mediations, ideological, institutional,
practical-natural, etc etc.  Thus the need for social theory.
Jim O'Connor