Dennis wrote:
>
>> 5. Since the times in which Baran & Sweezy wrote Monopoly Capital
>> (early 60s), resistance to U.S. centered global capitalism has
>> suffered a series of defeats both in its internal core class
>> struggle aspect and at the peripheries of the system. This is to
>> some degree offset by successful acts of resistance, notably the
>> resistance signified by the names Castro and Chavez.
>
>
> Hey, let's not forget the Japanese postal savings bank, the East
> Asian developmental states, the European Union, the information
> commons and the videogame culture -- flourishing non-market
> institutions and cultural spaces, seething with anti-capitalist
> resistances.
Hi Dennis. I was trying to set out the common ground based on what Doug had last said. He agrees that there is an important anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist resistance, based on an underlying broad rejection of neoliberalist ideology and practices, (in particular) in Latin America. But he was afraid, as i read what he wrote, that reliance on the individuals Castro & Chavez is excessive, so that a few more US arranged murders & assassinations might set the resistance way back. I was suggesting a general agreement with that point, but adding that the resistance exists apart from the names associated with it. Something i'm sure Doug will agree with.
Successful acts of resistance to U.S. centered global capitalism are, as you say, taking place all over the place. To me the importance of whether such acts are described that way by the actors, or the importance of whether they take place within collective social structures - say, cultural communities or states - that would not describe such collective acts that way, is an open question. I admit a bias that acts of resistance that describe themselves that way, that are self-consciously part of an historical practical program of resistance in which we co-operate and try to learn from the mistakes of those who consciously and co-operatively resisted before us, are more likely to be succesful. Like a team playing GTA San Andreas and together moving up the levels as we learn. [did i get that right?]
john