>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: cultural imperialism
>Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 09:28:54 -0500
>
>Mina Kumar wrote:
>
>>Yeah. The anti-imperialist movements in the third world were almost
>>all led by perfectly bourgeois people, sometimes from displaced
>>elites, sometimes from elites precisely created by the imperialist
>>powers. Does this delegitimize their anti-imperialism?
>
>No. But 1) the EU is not a colony,
<smile> Uh.... anyway, either a criticism is valid or invalid, but to dismiss it because the critic is themselves implicated in the regime their critiquing is not very useful. And I'm surprised you're reaching for this argument bc it equally affects the credibility of your own critiques of American imperialism.
I mean, "just the bellyaching of a displaced bourgeoisie"? The cheapness of the dismissal fails to address the actual content of the critique.
and 2) the social origins of the
>anti-colonial leaders help explain the disappointing course of
>post-independence life, which often involves betrayal, exploitation,
>and repression.
I don't know if you could make a fine-grained correlation, but like you said, this doesn't invalidate the critique of imperialism, so it's a red herring.
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