" Has there ever been a left regime anywhere that you find admirable, even in part?"
Carroll I bolded the part of the question that "stunned" me (though I do apologize for the hyperbole). And Doug, there are many triumphs of European Social Democracy that I can appreciate, even of the welfare state elsewhere, the October Revolution, even a few of the gains of the Cuban Revolution. I just think it's absurd to say that Chavez isn't an important part of the world capitalist economy. It is also a shame that people don't recognize that portions of the bourgeoisie have benefited enormously from Chavez's reign.
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 8:28 PM, <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> On Thu, October 1, 2009 2:21 pm, Eric Beck wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 4:00 PM, <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> >
> >> I think it's deeply important for a world political leader to raise the
> >> issue of Empire and colonialism in 2009.
> >
> > I think it's more important for people who oppose Empire and
> > colonialism to investigate how all world leaders, even and maybe
> especially
> > those who criticize Empire and colonialism, contribute to and help
> > perpetuate the worldwide capitalist market and its exploiting labor
> > regimes and violent enforcement.
>
> Leaders and governments are only a small part of the historical process.
> Social movements, juridical institutions, power-relations, economic
> structures, gender, ethnicity, and a thousand other things are in play,
> too. So by "thinking colonialism", I don't mean sterile denunciations of
> how the Brits, French, or US authorities committed X atrocity on Y
> territory in Z time-frame, I mean grasping this history in its full
> complexity.
>
> -- DRR
>
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