>The theorists of underdevelopment themselves, however, also repeat a
>similar illusion of economic development.' Summarizing in schematic
>terms, we could say that their logic begins with two valid
>historical claims but then draws from them an erroneous conclusion.
>First, they maintain that, through the imposition of colonial
>regimes and/or other forms of imperialist domination, the
>underdevelopment of subordinated economies was created and sustained
>by their integration into the global network of dominant capitalist
>economies, their partial articulation, and thus their real and
>continuing dependence on those dominant economies. Second, they
>claim that the dominant economies themselves had originally
>developed their fully articulated and independent structures in
>relative isolation, with only limited interaction with other
>economies and global networks.'
Which theorist of underdevelopment makes the second claim: "the dominant economies themselves had originally developed their fully articulated and independent structures in relative isolation, with only limited interaction with other economies and global networks"?
The only nation that spent its late feudal/early modern period in "relative isolation" (= sakoku) & benefited from it seems to me to be Japan.
Hardt & Negri again:
>In other words, as an alternative to the "false development"
>pandered by the economists of the dominant capitalist countries, the
>theorists of underdevelopment promoted "real development," which
>involves delinking an economy from its dependent relationships and
>articulating in relative isolation an autonomous economic structure.
>Since this is how the dominant economies developed, it must be the
>true path to escape the cycle of underdevelopment. This syllogism,
>however, asks us to believe that the laws of economic development
>will somehow transcend the differences of historical change.
>
>The alternative notion of development is based paradoxically on the
>same historical illusion central to the dominant ideology of
>development it opposes. The tendential realization of the world
>market should destroy any notion that today a country or region
>could isolate or delink itself from the global networks of power in
>order to re-create the conditions of the past and develop as the
>dominant capitalist countries once did. Even the dominant countries
>are now dependent on the global system; the interactions of the
>world market have resulted in a generalized disarticulation of all
>economies. Increasingly, any attempt at isolation or separation will
>mean only a more brutal kind of domination by the global system, a
>reduction to powerlessness and poverty.
By "delinking," however, Samir Amin, Pat Bond, etc. don't mean what Hardt & Negri say that (mysteriously unnamed) theorists of underdevelopment mean:
+++++ ***** Patrick Bond, "Global Economic Crisis: A View from South Africa," _Journal of World-Systems Research_ 5.2 (Summer 1999): 413-455, at <http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/archive/vol5/vol5_number2/html/bond/index.html>
...From Africa's leading radical economist, Samir Amin, has come the theme of regional delinking:
The response to the challenge of our time imposes what I have suggested naming "delinking" ... Delinking is not synonymous with autarky, but rather with the subordination of external relations to the logic of internal development ... Delinking implies a "popular" content, anti-capitalist in the sense of being in conflict with the dominant capitalism, but permeated with the multiplicity of divergent interests.68
As unrealistic as this appears at first blush, the recent, present and forthcoming conditions of global economic crisis appear to both demand and supply the material grounds for a profound change in power relations. The ideological hegemony and financial stranglehold that neoliberalism and its sponsors have enjoyed are discredited and could fast disappear. Out of nowhere (East Asia!), after all, suddenly appeared system-threatening contradictions. [Yoshie: Now, the USA itself is about to contend with the economic fallout of neoliberalism that it has worked hard to make globally hegemonic, if California is a harbinger of things to come.]
And out of radical social and labour movements come, increasingly, demands that can only be met through greater national sovereignty and regional political-economic coherence. [Yoshie: How do we reconcile "greater national sovereignty" with "regional political-economic coherence"? A question that no one has answered yet, in theory and practice.] The global scale may one day appear as a likely site of struggle (for example, through the United Nations system which at least conceptually could be democratised, unlike the Bretton Woods institutions). [Yoshie: I see little hope of democratizing the U.N., unless movements on the left are powerful enough to abolish the Security Council & make the General Assembly the seat of real power, but let it slide for the moment.] But realistic "alternatives" are probably going to have to be fought for and won at national and regional scales.69 Such alternatives themselves need to be contextualised in power relations that are still to be fought for, Canadian labour radical Sam Ginden reminds us:
The real issue of "alternatives" isn't about alternative policies or about alternative governments, but about an alternative politics. Neither well-meaning policies nor sympathetic governments can fundamentally alter our lives unless they are part of a fundamental challenge to capital. That is, making alternatives possible requires a movement that is changing political culture (the assumptions we bring to how society should work), bringing more people into every-day struggles (collective engagement in shaping our lives), and deepening the understanding and organisational skills of activists along with their commitment to radical change (developing socialists).70
That commitment has already begun to take on international proportions through New Social Movements, Michael Lowy suggests:
Militant trade-unionists, left-wing socialists, de-Stalinized communists, undogmatic Trotskyists, unsectarian anarchists, are seeking out the paths to renewal of the proletarian internationalist tradition ... Concurrently, new internationalist feelings are becoming visible in social movements with a global perspective, like feminism and environmentalism, in antiracist movements, in liberation theology, in associations devoted to human rights and to solidarity with the third world ... It is from convergence between renewal of the socialist, anticapitalist and anti-imperialist tradition of proletarian internationalism -- ushered in by Marx in the Communist Manifesto -- and the universalist, humanist, libertarian, environmentalist, feminist, and democratic aspirations of the new social movements that can and will arise twenty-first-century internationalism.71
In a previous epoch -- one recent enough in the collective memory and still bursting with the pride of authentic struggle -- not more than a few thousand South African radical civil society activists took up a task of similar world-scale implications. In part, the struggle was to open up space for a developmental liberation (even if that space was quickly closed, and unnecessarily so, we have argued). A core component of the strategy was severing international elite relations with (and support for) apartheid, as Arrighi et al propose for the anti-neoliberal struggle. As impossible as the activists' anti-apartheid mission appeared during the darkest days, they won! Given the rapid shifts in power and the crisis of elite interests now being played out across the world, the multifaceted campaigns against Washington -- and against those in southern capitals who serve as its parrots -- still rank amongst the very highest priorities of South African progressives and their allies.
The era of an economic context in which Washington-oriented policy-makers went unchallenged is nearing an end, it appears. It remains for the world's various strains of progressive politics -- always in alliance with others concerned about meeting human needs and invoking ecological values -- to more forcefully show how the existing social and environmental programs of what we've termed New Social Movements can become (or contribute to) the foundation of an entirely different economic development strategy. Such efforts should receive the solidarity of progressives across the world-system--in activist and intellectual communities alike.
...68. Samir Amin, `Preface,' in A. Mahjoub (Ed), Adjustment or Delinking? The African Experience, London, Zed Press, 1990, pp.xii-xiii. See also his Delinking, London, Zed Press, 1990.
69. Alternative national- and regional-scale development policies have been established in several places, including the UN Economic Commission on Africa's AAF-SAP and the 1994 African National Congress Reconstruction and Development Programme (as well as other South African economic strategies offered by the Macroeconomic Research Group in 1993 and the Congress of South African Trade Unions in 1996). Such broad development policies should, naturally, follow directly from programmatic and project work being carried out by progressives in the field, because virtually all non-reformist reforms will run into strong opposition from economic policy-makers who are excessively committed to fiscal discipline, deregulating labour markets and promoting exports at all costs, and thus grassroots ownership of alternative strategies is vital to assuring they have popular durability under Washington Consensus duress.
70. Sam Ginden, `Rising from the Ashes: Labour in the Age of Global Capitalism,' Monthly Review, 49, 3, July-August 1997, p.156, cited in Moody, Workers in a Lean World, p.308.
71. Michael Lowy, `Globalization and Internationalism: How Up-to-date is the Communist Manifesto?,' Monthly Review, November 1998, pp.25-26. *****
The problem at present is that, on the ground in Africa (& elsewhere), there exists, as yet, no likely movement capable of exercising leadership & creating hegemony (in the Gramscian sense) necessary for the politico-economic program envisioned by Amin, Bond, etc. In the recent years, more people than before have become politicized & radicalized about the question of the neoliberal hegemony exercised through the Bretton Woods institutions and/or the so-called Washington consensus. Hence the hope that Pat Bond expresses for "New Social Movements." However, many activists involved in "New Social Movements" have yet to figure out the nature of today's imperialism, much less how to fight back against it (if leftists' responses to the recent expansion & intensification of imperial control over Iraq, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Congo, East Timor, etc. are any indications). In some cases, members of "New Social Movements" may be more part of problems than solutions.
There remain questions -- questions of political leadership & anti-imperialism in particular -- that should lead leftists (who are unsatisfied with the status quo & want to move forward) to a critical & knowing return to Lenin & Gramsci (= appreciation of the core insights of the two giants of what may be called the political side of the Marxist tradition, without being trapped in the unnecessary baggage created by various "Marxist-Leninist" parties).
Yoshie +++++
Yoshie