On Apr 30, 2008, at 6:11 AM, Patrick Bond wrote:
>> Well, no. I thought my critique was fairly detailed, or as detailed
>> as you can get in 2700 words.
>>
>
> Details offered in a distorted way and a snarky tone, comrade. Not
> worthy of you, comrade!
Snarkiness is in the eye of the beholder, I guess, but I thought I was respectful and took Naomi seriously throughout. She's not Stanley Aronowitz, after all.
> There was a decisive shift to a different kind of accumulation and
> ruling strategy, though. And it's very important to remind everyone
> that
> Keynesian failures were behind that shift. And Harvey does that very
> well, I'd say.
As I said, I liked Harvey's book a lot, and admire his work a lot in general.
>>> The history of the USA is practically synonymous with
>> dispossession - slavery and the effacement of the Indians are our
>> foundational events.
>
> Yes, so here you mean the primitive accumulation processes.
No, not really. The eradication of the Indians was a project of many decades. Stealing land from Mexico, too. Stealing resources from Latin America and the Caribbean, that's the work of more than a century. Eminent domain in our most built-up cities today. It never stops, man.
> And you don't consider Naomi a central ally in this project? She's as
> thoughtful as any other intellectual guide - Bello, George, etc - I
> know
> of in the global justice movements.
I think Naomi is extremely talented and smart. I wish she'd use that talent - and fame - to tell a more accurate story.
> As Nandigram showed last year, there's not much of an electoral
> alternative to neoliberalism there, eh.
Well that's an interesting story, isn't it? Why, in more-or-less democracies without death squads has there been so little resistance to neoliberalism? How'd the ANC get away with it? There's a tremendous intellectual and rhetorical vacuum on our side. Jesson was onto something, and not just about NZ.
Doug
>