[lbo-talk] Prosecute All - A brief take for the sake of discussion

[Ismail Lagardien]

There is a reference in one of the books I read on mafia in Sicily, John Dickie's "Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia", and which I inserted into a particular section of something lengthy I have been working on about post-war US hegemony. The particular section is on one of the theoretical underpinnings of "the American model" that has been exported to Africa; Neo-Classical Economics, what one of the senior World Bank officials referred to as "the preferred model".

I make the point (drawn from mafia in Sicily), that prosecuting one person (say an economist like Lawrence Summers) for crimes against humanity (based on the structural violence that was inflicted on societies through neo-classical/neo-liberal economics orthodoxy), is really futile because you would have to prosecute everyone in Sicily (all Economists). The point being, that it is impossible to take ONE person out of a village in Sicily and prosecute them, when EVERYONE is mafia (mafia here being social practice and norm, not a specific organisation or structure). 

So, Summers can't be guilty, when what he is doing/has done, is what is the social norm.

 

Ismail Lagardien

Nihil humani a me alienum puto

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