>>> pbond at wn.apc.org 01/30/01 06:36AM >>>
Absolutely. I've never understood the innovations of autonomism, even if in my SA circuits good comrades like Peter and Franco Barchiesi give us lots of inspiring tales. I always just thought it was an interesting way to link a lot of resistance processes. But in doing so, even the very best of the autonomist writers (here I also mean those who write clearly and "meaningfully," unlike Negri)--Cleaver, Caffentzis, Federici--tend to bend the stick way way over towards a class-strugglist analysis of crisis formation. (I personally come from the school that says regardless of the stage of class struggle, intrinsic crisis tendencies within the accumulation cycle--rising K/L ratios, overproduction, disproportionalities, etc-- always bubble up, and those engaged in any kind of anti-capitalist activism should be attuned to such dynamics at least as much as they are to the capital/labour relation.)
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CB: And even in the non-crisis times , there is always mass unemployment and poverty.
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Patrick Bond (Indeed, international power relations don't allow the "taking" of states and the winning of social progress in the Third World, these days.)
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CB: What about Venezuela ?
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>>> dhenwood at panix.com 01/29/01 05:00PM >>>
The critiques of the developmentalist view that were posed by
underdevelopment theories and dependency theories, which were born
primarily in the Latin American and African contexts in the 1960s,
were useful and important precisely because they emphasized the fact
that the evolution of a regional or national economic system depends
to a large extent on its place within the hierarchy and power
structures of the capitalist world-system. The dominant regions will
continue to develop and the subordinate win continue to underdevelop
as mutually supporting poles in the global power structure. To say
that the subordinate economies do not develop does not mean that they
do not change or grow; it means, rather, that they remain subordinate
in the global system and thus never achieve the promised form of a
dominant, developed economy.
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CB: Indefinitely long colonialism ,and combined and uneven development.
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In some cases individual countries or regions may be able to change their position in the hierarchy, but the point is that, regardless of who fills which position, the hierarchy remains the determining factor.'
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.'
From these two more or less acceptable historical claims, however, they then deduce an invalid conclusion: if the developed economies achieved full articulation in relative isolation and the underdeveloped economies became disarticulated and dependent through their integration into global networks, then a project for the relative isolation of the underdeveloped economies will result in their development and full articulation.
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CB: Well, self-determination and national liberation is the goal, yes. But not isolation: Alliance with other freed colonies.
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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.
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CB: Not because the big imperialist power nations did it that way ( did they ? ; they were always exploiting colonies) , but because the imperialists enforce subordination and relative poverty on the colonies. Duh .
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This syllogism, however, asks us to believe that the laws of economic development will somehow transcend the differences of historical change.
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CB:Well, the imperialists do not have the best interests of their colonials at heart; that is a law of economic development.
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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;
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CB: Dominant countries were always dependent upon the global colonial system since they became dominant. Slavery and colonialism were the chief momenta of the primitive accumulation of all of capitalism. Dominant nations are parasitical in relation to the colonies.
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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.
Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp. 283-284
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CB; What do they think of Venezuela 2001 ?