[lbo-talk] Maximise or satisfice?

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Thu Sep 30 07:57:11 PDT 2004


In criticizing "our own" imperialism first and foremost we follow the principle of criticism-self-criticism. Get your own house in order first, before you go around criticizing others. There is some analogy to WWI, where all the imperialist nations were worthy of criticism, but leftists opposed their own imperialist nation especially - revolutionary defeatism, yes a bit of revolutionary defeatism in our focus on our own capitalists.

Also, the New Left metaphor that we here are in "the belly of the beast" , is not politically incorrect. We have a special job on behalf of the rest of the world to get the U.S. mainmean force off of their backs. Who else has armed forces in over 100 countries around the world ? I can't think of another imperialist power like that today. Imperialism has changed shape, as well noted "in the literature". Who else is building Star Wars technology ? Who has the most goddamned nuclear, biological and chemical weapons , W'sMD, in the world ? Not Japan . What country poses a threat to countries like Venezuela or Cuba who pursue revolutionary paths ? It is the Yanquis.

U.S. out of North America !

Charles

From: ravi

Chris Doss wrote:
> It's the same impulse that blames all economic
> problems everywhere and in every instance on the IMF
> and structural-adjustment policies. It's part of
> Americocentrism. America as the root of all evil.
> Really I think a lot of it is just intellectual
> lazyness, the lack of taking time to understand the
> outside world.
>
> --- uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
>
>>Sorry for overposting, but I suspect a very large
>>section of the US Left
>>tends to put all goodness in the Universe outside
>>the US. US is either an
>>Evil Empire or a Dumb one.
>

i do not see this from most of the US left i encounter, or in the writings of the intellectual leaders of the left. chomsky, for instance, points out that he reserves his criticism mostly to US action (though he has written for example of british sabotaging of colonial india's industries) because (a) it is what he knows the most about and experiences directly and (b) it is what he can influence or change.

howard zinn has similarly limited his historical study mostly to america, and while eschewing the creation of mythical figures, he has highlighted the heroic actions ("goodness") of ordinary individuals.

others have mentioned that while the US may not be the best or the worst, it is the most powerful, and the effects of its negative actions are more pervasive.

otoh, people, like arundhati roy, IMHO the latest star in global pop leftism, do fly by NYC every few months with stinging, if shallow, critiques of the US.

i guess the analysis also depends on how we define the "US left". does it include [what seems to be] the million or so members of moveon.org? or is it restricted to strict marxists (how many of those are there)? or the few hundred cheering roy fans at riverside church? new age or hippie groups/individuals with misinformed ideas of eastern philosophy/religion?

--ravi



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