SA: This thread started with the Swiss referendum on expelling non-citizens convicted of crimes, right?
I hate to be a spoil-sport, but where is the evidence that breaking the hegemony of capital results in non-citizens being treated better? North Korea?
This is the sort of bizarre question which makes me think that SA at heart is a deeply committed fan of rational choice individualism, and even leads him to fantasize a nation making such an abstract choice as though that nation were a single isolated individual.
There is no evidence whatever for _any_ prediction of what a nation would do coming out of a long, complex, probably bloody process by which a constituent assembly would come into existence.
Such a transformation would _also_ bring about an utterly unpredictable transformation of the residents of scuh a nation.
SA believes in making rational choices of pigs-in-the-poke.
Carrol
^^^^^ CB: I would respectfully criticize SA's approach in general as a bit overly empirical ( see his use of the term below). This is something of positivist error, and insufficient attention to the historical whole and context of actually and formerly existing socialist countries. SA _is_ dedicated to the socialist movement , and an honest critic of actually existing and formerly existing socialisms; he seems to be "executing" comradely and frank criticism/self-criticism in his posts on North Korea, Cuba, etc.
On 11/29/2010 10:22 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> Yup, you couldn't be more right. North Korea is absolutely, without a
> doubt, and clearly my fantasy socialist state. How'd you know?!
I know you're no fan of North Korea. I'll admit my post was probably too terse to escape being unfair. My point is just that, looking around empirically, if you're trying to put your finger on what makes some societies more xenophobic and others less so, the hegemony of capital doesn't seem to be a very significant correlate, does it? So why stress it the way you did?
SA