>G'day all,
>
>"The most politically encouraging event on the horizon -- which is a very
>bleak one politically -- is the possibility of fusion or synthesis of some
>of the positions of what is to be called left and some of what is to be
>called libertarian."
>
>Er, ain't there something to this? In fact, ain't it absolutely spot-on?
Considering there's not much of a radical left, the politcal horizon does seem very bleak. Although, consider how much bleaker the scene would be had Seattle, Genoa, etc. not occurred. Had 911 not happened and had the IMF/WB meeting taken place, mayhem would have ensued I bet. Not the best way to build a movement, but maybe it would lead to a stronger left. However, I agree with what Hitchens has to say:
"There was a long lapse where it seemed that nobody took to the streets at all, and where the idea of taking to the streets had begun to seem like something really from a bygone era. It came back very suddenly, initially in Seattle. In some kind of promethean way, the idea was passed on and contained, perhaps like fire in a reed, only to break out again.
In a way I should have been pleased to see that, and I suppose in some small way I was, but a lot of this did seem to me to be a protest against modernity, and to have a very conservative twinge, in the sense of being reactionary. It’s often forgotten that the Port Huron Statement, the famous Students for a Democratic Society document, was in part a protest against mechanization, against bigness, against scale, against industrialization, against the hugeness and impersonality of, as it thought of it, capitalism. There were elements of that that I agreed with at the time, particularly the interface between the military and the industrial [segments of society].
I do remember thinking that it had a sort of archaic character to it, exactly the kind of thing that Marx attacked, in fact, in the early critiques of capitalism. What SDS seemed to want was a sort of organic, more rural-based, traditional society, which probably wouldn’t be a good thing if you could have it. But you can’t, so it’s foolish to demand such a thing. This tendency has come out as the leading one in what I can see of the anti-globalization protesters. I hear the word globalization and it sounds to me like a very good idea. I like the sound of it. It sounds innovative and internationalist.
To many people it’s a word of almost diabolic significance -- as if there could be a non-global response to something.
REASON: This anti-global approach seems especially surprising coming from the left.
Hitchens: The Seattle protesters, I suppose you could say, in some ways came from the left. You couldn’t say they came from the right, although a hysterical aversion to world government and internationalism is a very, very American nativist right-wing mentality. It’s the sort that is out of fashion now but believe me, if you go on radio stations to talk about Henry Kissinger, as I have recently, you can find it. There are people who don’t care about Kissinger massacring people in East Timor, or overthrowing democracy in Chile, or anything of that sort. But they do believe he’s a tool of David Rockefeller, and the Trilateral Commission, and the secret world government. That used to be a big deal in California in the ’50s and ’ 60s with the John Birch Society.
There are elements of that kind of thing to be found in the anti-globalization protests, but the sad thing is that practically everything I’ve just said wouldn’t even be understood by most of the people who attend the current protests, because they wouldn’t get the references."
Not if Pugliese can help it! (or is he talking about more than the Birchers?)
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>Where I do disagree with Hitch is in his rather carefree elision of the
>capacity and proclivity of current-day capitalism to stifle imaginations,
>erase options and deny fulfilment, not all of which - not even most of
>which - is imposed through the medium of the state.
>
>Reckon he needs to develop that point just a tad if it is to be made even
>remotely comprehensible ...
>Cheers,
>Rob.