>So won't you agree it's both/and? That's the character of uneven
>development, right? So capitalism isn't necessarily a `progressive'
>mode of production everywhere. We have really BAD capitalism in this
>part of the world, Doug, but one day we'll get you around to see for
>yourself.
I've never contested that, so I don't know why you keep reminding me of it. And every time you say it, I reply that I see plenty of bad capitalism here in New York City.
>Well, answer this next query and you'll have at least one insight:
>How is that the Zapatistas fit into the international neo-liberal
>movement, pretty much at the vanguard?
Is there a word missing from this?
> (I did a couple of weeks
>in Chiapas on one of those Global Exchange tours in 1998, and found
>it an exceptionally enlightening experience, with a dual-power vibe
>like mid-1980s SA townships, where collectivity,
>identity/consciousness, and concrete social struggle against military
>*and economic* oppression were synthesised wonderfully.)
I wonder. I've recounted what Zeynep Toufeckcioglu, a Turkish marxist-feminist, told me after a long visit to Chiapas: the Zaps have almost no connection to actual village life as it's lived on the ground, where everyone works from dawn til dusk, and women don't speak until spoken to.
But let's talk about the Zaps. They're internationalists who've used the Internet, images, and clever and literate communiques to make their points. The leaders are all educated urban cosmopolites. They coyly pretend to take direction from below, but no one would have ever paid any attention to them - nor would the movement ever have gotten started - had it not been for those leaders. So this is not a revolutionary movement emerging authentically from traditional rural social structures.
>Max S is right that arguing we must not waste time with the
>nation-state and instead liberate Empire is terribly naive (my
>Inside-Beltway, Geneva and Berkeley friends have been trying for two
>decades to reform these institutions, with very little to show for
>it).
I don't think they're talking about reforming the BWI's. They're talking about a new prole internationalism. But I've only read half the book so far.
> Better to smash Empire (e.g., http://www.worldbankboycott.org )
>and thereby get the neoliberal boot off the nation-state so we can
>win that scale of politics back, to start.
That boycott, and the fact that you cited a URL, seems exactly the kind of movement they're suggesting, at least from what I've read so far - international solidarity accomplished in no small part through technology.
Further, Patrick, *you* seem like the kind of guy they're talking about too. Born in Belfast, educated in the U.S. and Britain, living in SA. I bet some nationalist purists would look skeptically on you as an outsider, in fact.
>Is this too unfair a reading of H&N? I've been too busy to give it
>really full attention. But I think there are lots of other, better
>books out there now about globalisation and its discontents
>(especially for the intelligent activist). What have you been
>reading, Doug? (And when do we get your New Economy?)
Soon. As soon as I figure this Empire and Imperialism thing out.
Doug