Yup comrade, for the moment, but generally too paralysed to get into discussion, sorry! Will be in NY on 30 June for a day so let's do a beer.
> I saw you saying elsewhere that Hardt & Negri underestimate the
> progressive potential of the nation-state. Has the rather bad
> experience of the ANC in South Africa caused you to rethink this
> position?
No, because the sell-out wasn't necessary. There were lots of agency problems, not just structural degeneration.
Anyhow, my worst case argument would probably be Zim, and I try to address Hardt/Negri forthrightly on this problem of national-scale politics, at http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr ("this issue" on "Radical Rhetoric and the Working Class during the Dying Days of Zimbabwean Nationalism")...
> I see at least two specific problems of broader
> theoretical/strategic interest: 1) a poor, lightly industrialized
> country doesn't have much scope to act on its own, leaving it
> extremely vulnerable to external pressure, and the temptations of
> World Bank loans; and
Well, that requires case by case analysis. Again, right now, Zimbabwe is holding up sort-of-ok (i.e., not a full-on meltdown, at least not yet... do you see that the 3/00-3/01 stock market rankings put Zim at #1?!) notwithstanding international financial sanctions, prolonged and severe petrol shortages and amazing price distortions given a currency peg that is 50% off at least. Sure, Mugabe is a "talk-left, act-right" despot, and when I regularly visit it always shocks me how people can soldier on. But you can't argue that "extreme vulnerability" translates necessarily into compliance with Washington's dictates (since around September 1997 in Zim's case, though Mugabe was a Bank/IMF lackey for 15 years prior to the recent zigzagging).
> 2) the rhetoric of nationalism can calm popular
> aspirations for more substantive radical change by emotional appeals
> to independence, sovereignty, national pride, etc., which make
> excellent cover for a sellout.
Yes, it can. But it generally leads to a kind of Bad Nationalism, and people see through that fairly quickly. The question, especially in Zim, is whether leftward forces can cohere quickly and decisively around a radical programme. Actually in both SA and Zim, that's the ongoing practical project. And yes, Bad Nationalism is getting in the way. But within five years, both the SA and Zim Left will have achieved that coherence, I'd argue, based on a universal opposition to neoliberalism and an increasing adoption of entitlement-based programmatic demands. At least that's the hope!
Come out next September to Rio+10 in Jo'burg and see for yourself. Big planning meeting of the social movements today, as they ask "fix it or nix it?"
> Doesn't the fact that one of the most admirable national
> revolutionary movements in modern times, the ANC, ended up as loyal
> servants of capital, give you pause?
"Admirable" in some ways, but for an antidote see Dale Mckinley's The ANC: A Political Biography, London, Pluto, 1997. (Or my Elite Transition, Pluto, 2000.)
> Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 18:33:25 -0400
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> What for socialists is the practical alternative to aiming for state
> power, in cooperation with other socialists trying to do the same
> elsewhere? A town meeting? A U.N. protectorate? A zone of
> autonomy a la EZLN or FARC? Petition the U.S. government or the
> European Union to officially incorporate your nation as part of the
> Empire, aspiring to the status of Puerto Rico or Turkey?
I think we're all sort of "aiming" for state power but in ways, following the Zapatista lead, that don't require -- at this early stage of Left regrouping -- actually taking over a state, which we would probably quite decisively screw up. As have virtually all the Left-popular projects over the past two decades. So the point is that socialist DEMANDS upon the state are intensifying, along with concrete projects that reflect grassroots/shopfloor control. The slogan here has been "a strong but slim state"... but of course the primary struggle remains defensive, against privatisation, cut-off of basic services due to lack of affordability, resistance to nationalist demobilisation of the working-class social/labour movements, and then of course linkage of issues and linkage of movements across borders...
All told, we're not doing too badly, losing most of the day-to-day struggles but putting in place the organisational forms and consciousness to keep fighting back on virtually every issue that's up for social contestation.
What, Doug, did your Essen experience and internationalist strategizing generate, as an alternative to this slow, grinding approach??
Cheers, P.