And when I say I am bored with third worldism, to avoid what I can see will be inevitable misunderstandings, I do not mean that I am bored with the third worldism that I do not think that the underdeveloped countries do no matter, that we should not consider them, that we should factor them out of our equations, that the Western left ought to abandon international solidarity and tell the poor in Mexico or the working class in Zambia to go to the devil.
To to put it positively, I think we need international solidarity more than ever, that like Western civilization, it would be a good idea (Gandhi's joke, when asked what he thought of Western Civilization; "It would be a good idea," he said), that if we could support in concrete ways the oppressed in the third world and vice= versa we should make strenuous efforts to do so. Idle declarations of support for this are that are pretty irrelevant, of course.
By "third worldism" I mean the substitution in out theoretical analysis and practical work of (support for and exemplification of) the struggles of third world peoples for organizing the working class of the industrialized West -- the US working class, if we are Americans. Maoism is the classic example, now a fossil, of course, but the idea was, things are going great guns in China, support the cultural revolution, that is the future of the revolution, the US (German, etc.) working class is either hopeless or possibly to be inspired by the efforts of the Chinese masses, etc. Been a long time since anyone could say that about China, but you still hear it about Cuba or Venezuela, etc. Monthly Review under Sweezey and Baran used to be a big locus of this sort of idea, and in a way it follows from the the CPUSA's idealization of the FSU as the locomotive the Revo and the model and inspiration for the Western working class, something it hadn't been,
seriously, since the early 20s, although that dragged on with decreasingly plausibility till the late 30s. Well, despite die-hard to still point backwards to the real if mixed achievements of the FSU or Maoist China, that's over, but as I say the temptation to find the revo anywhere but home remains. That is third worldism and that id what I am bored with.
Where the bailout money comes from and more broadly our support for Venezuela, Palestine, etc., those remain crucial.
--- On Mon, 10/13/08, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> From: dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] David Brooks, so worried
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, October 13, 2008, 1:21 AM
> On Sun, October 12, 2008 6:23 pm, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > Anyway, I'm bored with third world-ism.
>
> The bailout funds won't come from the periphery, but
> from the global
> semi-periphery. The latter has sixty percent of the
> world's population,
> and owns somewhere around 6 trillion EUR of rocksolid forex
> and sovereign
> wealth assets.
>
> Right now, it looks like the EU is implementing Project
> SuperSweden -
> recapitalizing its banks, guaranteeing all deposits, and
> triaging defunct
> institutions, in exchange for ownership stakes. They'll
> ride out the storm
> with minimal damage, the question is how bad things get for
> the US. And
> they could still get very, very bad indeed, if that
> semi-periphery stops
> buying T-bills.
>
> -- DRR
>
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