> I agree with that sense of priority-i.e., capturing,
>democratising and retooling the nation-state, which in turn entails
>rejection of international neoliberal policy pressure. What is
>advocated is no return to nationalism (even if it is apparently
>important for Sibanda to debunk Zanu PF's deformed, exhausted
>nationalism with a class-oriented 'chimurenga' discourse), but
>instead, a firm restatement of the need to rebuild national
>sovereignty (and later, regional coordination).[38] If this is an
>appropriate way forward, Zimbabwe's social movements can also take
>confidence from previous episodes of tough macroeconomic management
>throughout the country's history. Concrete strategies included
>imposition of watertight exchange controls; careful reflation of the
>economy through strategic state spending; prescribed assets on
>financial institutions; increasing nationalisation of strategic
>sites of the economy; directed investment requirements; creative
>juggling of import/export requirements; default on outstanding
>foreign debt; and a more general commitment to 'get the prices
>wrong,' if need be, to assure maximum local backward/forward
>linkages. The last two times such policies were adopted, during the
>1930s and just after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence was
>declared in 1965, the Zimbabwean (then Rhodesian) economy grew at
>nearly double-digit rates each year for a decade (Bond, 1998:
>Chapters Two and Five).
> On those occasions, growth through partial-delinking occurred in
>a way that amplified racial, gender and class divisions. Assuming
>the political balance of forces can be changed in coming years, it
>should be even more feasible, technically, to impose the same
>mechanisms but this time, to reorient production to meet basic
>needs, particularly of rural women, and particularly in areas that
>should be easy to expand-rural water/sanitation and small-scale
>irrigation systems, electricity, public works-without debilitating
>import requirements.
We anti-nationalists are not surprised at all that a nationalist/autarkic policy would "amplif[y] racial, gender, and class divisions." Nations thrive on exclusion and hierarchy. But Patrick, you concede this only to dismiss it, as if there weren't some deep problem with nationalism itself, as if the relations between SA autarky and apartheid or Rhodesian autarky and the amplification of divisions were purely an accident.
Doug