> I certainly agree that the left and peace movement need to remember
> our victories, not just defeats. But with 5 million dead and
> Vietnam begging for Nike factories, we might be tempted to quote
> the one line most of us know from Plutarch, quoting Pyrrhus of
> Epirus, in the 3rd c. BCE. --CGE
Many of the peoples who didn't win the minimum goal of national unity and political sovereignty like the Vietnamese -- Afghans, Congolese, Palestinians, Somalis, etc. -- aren't getting much investment of any sort, foreign or domestic, capitalist or socialist or natioanlist. Nike and other multinationals won't go where angels fear to tread, and the local ruling classes squirrel away their capital into Western banks and the like, instead of trying to build their respective home markets, which they regard as a lost cause.
Besides, we aren't at the end of history, despite what neoliberals say. Who knows -- one of these days, the Vietnamese people will rise up again, taking over factories built by Nike, et al.
The New York Times sounds like The Daily Worker when it comes to reporting on class struggle in China:
<blockquote>Last week, for example, the government announced it was setting up special police units in 36 cities to put down riots and counter what the authorities say is the threat of terrorism. With the exception of infrequent incidents involving Uighur separatists in the remote western region of Xinjiang, terrorism is all but unheard of in China. On the evidence, it would seem the authorities are most concerned about what Zhou Yongkang, the public security minister, told Reuters last month were the 74,000 mass incidents, or demonstrations and riots, that occurred in 2004, an increase from 58,000 the year before, and only 10,000 a decade ago.
Other signs of mounting concern over this unrest are just as telling. This week, The Liberation Army Daily quoted a notice by the armed forces warning soldiers that they would be "severely penalized" for taking part in petitions or demonstrations. The statement appeared to be prompted by a series of recent protests by veterans over their pension benefits at a People's Liberation Army office in Beijing.
(Howard W. French, "Land of 74,000 Protests (but Little Is Ever Fixed)," <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/international/asia/ 24letter.html>, 24 Aug. 2005)</blockquote>
"74,000 mass incidents" show that the Chinese haven't forgotten how to fight for themselves, and in their protests popular memories of earlier struggles are resurrected, interpreted to lend force to current ones:
<blockquote>Day after day recently, the angry complaints of citizens could be heard in the heart of downtown here [even in Shanghai, "a showcase city that is among the country's most tightly policed, and where public protests are relatively rare"], especially across the street from the elegant exhibition center where city government was in session. In one protest, middle-aged residents invoked rebellious slogans from their youth during the Cultural Revolution, reportedly saying things like "to rebel is just" as they denounced summary evictions to make way for high-rise developers and demanded fair compensation.
On another day, in the same spot, a separate group of elderly residents, also angry about evictions, chanted the name of the city's party secretary, saying, "Chen Liangyu, step down!" Nearby, a mother and her children, whom she has been unable to place in local schools, hoisted a sign whose bold characters read, "Why do we need to bear the consequences of government non-performance?"
A half-block away, restaurant workers massed to protest their dismissal by what they said were hired gangsters in favor of cheaper out-of-town employees. Taxi drivers, meanwhile, embittered over a steep increase in gasoline protests, have been discussing a mass work stoppage for Sept. 1.
(Howard W. French, "Land of 74,000 Protests (but Little Is Ever Fixed)," <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/international/asia/ 24letter.html>, 24 Aug. 2005)
</blockquote>
A similar wave of mass protests may rise in Viet Nam, too (it may be that there is already as high a level of protests in Viet Nam as in China, but they go unreported in the corporate media). The struggle continues.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>