[lbo-talk] Narmada Dam (was Arundhati Roy etc.)

[Miles Jackson]

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Michael:
> 
> 
> Woj's idea is that all countries must follow the West's technological path.
> 
> 
> [WS:] Not slavishly, with local modifications, but more or less.  For
> example, the Soviets modified the Western cartel system to their local
> conditions - the state took the role played by the banks in the West, but
> the core was more or less the same.  There is no reason why other states
> cannot take the role of investment banks, except perhaps in Africa where
> structural conditions would make that difficult.  But the bottom line is
> that one has to build modern economy - industry, commerce, financial system,
> because that is the only this that has been empirically proven to work.
> Nothing else has - various excuses notwithstanding.

"Proven to work"?  Human beings have been around on this planet for many 

  millenia; all the hunting and gathering societies that existed over 
the past 100,000 years "worked" just fine (otherwise we'd never be 
here!).  Woj can only make the claim that nothing but industrial society 
"works" by smuggling in the standards of the Good Life from--industrial 
societies!  Judged by the standards of the typical hunting and gathering 
society, our industrial society doesn't work well at all: massive 
economic and political inequalities, large scale wars, the weakening of 
family functions by independent social institutions like medicine, 
religion, and education.  --So given the lack of universal consensus 
about the Good Society, it's a political question: who gets to decide 
which standards we use to determine which societies "work"?

Miles


> 
> As to Cuba - Cuba survived peak oil because it initially invested heavily in
> fixed and human capital by following the Soviet model.  Without that
> investment it would be reduced to the level of the neighboring island
> economies (Haiti, Dominican Republic).  The main problem of Cuba is its
> geography.  If Cuba were located where, say, Brazil is - its development
> program would turn it into a regional superpower.
> 
> Another point.  The problem with the Soviet style accelerated development is
> not that it does not work, but that it is working too well, and moving too
> fast, and it is leaving large segments of 'rural idiocy' behind.  Stalin's
> solution to that problem - marginalization, suppression, and starvation is
> not acceptable in the modern world anymore.  If memory serves, Cuba
> conscripted its 'surplus of rural population' and sent them off to fight
> wars in Africa, but that is not a viable solution either.  Of course,
> capitalism leaves them behind in shanty towns and does not give a shit.  But
> either way, the problem of surplus rural or 'pre-modern' population is there
> and no effective and acceptable means of solving it exist.
> 
> Wojtek
> 
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