>It is interesting that the academic Patrick Bond's analysis gets spread
>through the US left press quite a bit.
Your point being?
>In my view it tends to discredit him.
Really? Why's that?
>I think he is a bit too much interested in a political line of a smaller,
>marginalized -- as Nzimande might say "ultra-left" -- political party than
>the actual conditions under which the majority of South Africans struggle
>in SA and up against gloabl capitlaism.
Don't know for sure about Patrick's actual politics, but I think I recall the list of neo-liberal accomplishments (privatization, deficit reduction fetishism, lack of gouging the capitalists via progressive income and wealth taxes, and some others) he tagged (or didn't in the case of taxes) in his lecture as coming from the SA ANC government. I doubt that had less to do with research than ideology.
While I think I have some faint understanding of those actual conditions and sympathy for any left group seeking to make a difference by capturing power in today's global capitalist world, I'm still left wondering at the overall hesitancy and timidity I see in the present SA government when they run up against capital and at such obvious neo-liberal moves as GEAR.
Maybe Patrick might appear as an ultra to the ANC and SACP simply because they've moved far enough to the right that nearsightedness has set in.
>I doubt very much that if the political forces to which Bond aligns himself
>were in power that they would do anything different or, if they did, that
>they would survive. Perhaps that is the point?
<shrug> Maybe so, maybe no. But what I do know is that the SA government has been (and seems to be still) carrying out stuff very reminiscent of policies I've seen coming from right-wing, right-center, and left-center governments here in Canada.
I keep hearing this refrain of "it's really hard" coming through from SA political elites, and, like I've said before, I'm sympathetic: there really is only so much room for maneuver without pulling idiocy like socialism in one country. And left groups in center countries haven't helped by occupying their respective governments (either literally or figuratively). However, a situation like this calls for something beyond everyday nostrums and mediocre achievements. It requires the best SA comrades can produce. If the best is what's being offered at this point, they need better ASAP.
>I'd be more interested in seeing MR actually reproduce the argument
>Nzimande makes in a sympathetic manner.
Hear that, John?! MR's been invited to be the party organ! How nice!
Todd
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