uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
>
> snit snat:
>
> > What some have derisively called "third worldism" tends to have roots in a
> > kind of identitarian political theory and identity politics that suggested
> > that only the most oppressed could become the revolutionary subject of
> > history. Give up on Detroit autoworkers, 'cause they're reactionary
> > assholes who are just too identified with the U.S. elite to ever be on the
> > right side of history.
>
> North American "third worldists" usually know little about the "third world".
>
The theory was incorrect, but it was leaders in the Third World that invented it, and then it was imported by North Americans. So you are actually accusing the "later" Mao rather than "North Americans." Moreover, it came in many different varieties. The Weatherman faction of SDS (following an understanding of the U.S. very similar to Carl's) who carried it furthest. A local woman from that faction argued that the only way socialism could come to the U.S. was for the U.S. to be occupied by the PLA for a generation or so.
The error's source lay not in knowing little or much about the "Third World" but in misconceiving the level of abstraction involved in "Mao Thought." But Mao (or someone in the leadership of the CPC) made that error first. As originally developed, "Mao Thought" implied that each national movement had to work out its own strategy for revolution, and hence at the concrete level Mao thought to begin with applied _only_ to China. Then the post-1960 Chinese leadership generalized it to the whole world by a false analogy. The third world was analogized to the country side in China and the imperialist core was analogized to the cities in China. The Countryside (third world) would envelop the City (the imperialist core).
Wrong, yes. But you can't criticize a theory unless you have a much better understanding of it than you seem to have of the so-called "third worldist" theory. Its errors had nothing whatsoever to do with not understanding of the third world and everything to do with not understanding their own "First World."
Carrol