> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 17:47:25 -0500
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> appeared system-threatening contradictions. [Yoshie: Now, the USA
> itself is about to contend with the economic fallout of neoliberalism
> that it has worked hard to make globally hegemonic, if California is
> a harbinger of things to come.]
Yes, but unfortunately with a strong right/populist orientation
in national discourse which will be murder on the rest of the world.
I've always had deep qualms about the kinds of tactical convergences
of interest between left and right populists, and now we have some
crunch years coming to see whether the movement that mobilised to
promote Nader's candidacy can take up the range of conflict issues
that the Bush regime will introduce.
> And out of radical social and labour movements come, increasingly,
> demands that can only be met through greater national sovereignty and
> regional political-economic coherence. [Yoshie: How do we reconcile
> "greater national sovereignty" with "regional political-economic
> coherence"? A question that no one has answered yet, in theory and
> practice.]
True, the better people writing on this (e.g., Amin and Bello)
haven't got to the point of staking out concrete strategic
approaches (in the current issue of Socialist Register, two SA
comrades and I make some tentative arguments about regionalism from
below). In the southern African case, the logical trajectory is to
have Southern African people's movements unite to contest a)
neoliberalism, b) Pretoria's subimperialism, and c) particular
national regimes (like Mugabe's or Nujoma's). That process has begun
nicely, at last August's Windhoek meeting of Southern African
Development Community, where a superb collection of these movements
issued a dramatic statement against neoliberal regionalism
(http://www.aidc.org.za)
>The global scale may one day appear as a likely site of
> struggle (for example, through the United Nations system which at
> least conceptually could be democratised, unlike the Bretton Woods
> institutions). [Yoshie: I see little hope of democratizing the U.N.,
> unless movements on the left are powerful enough to abolish the
> Security Council & make the General Assembly the seat of real power,
> but let it slide for the moment.]
Yeah, I agree. That was a concession to the JWSR's editor (my former
prof and a world-party builder) and Iris Young (whose new book aims
in that direction) but you can sense my scepticism, right? Smash the
embryonic world state, I say.
> The problem at present is that, on the ground in Africa (&
> elsewhere), there exists, as yet, no likely movement capable of
> exercising leadership & creating hegemony (in the Gramscian sense)
> necessary for the politico-economic program envisioned by Amin, Bond,
It's slow, but coming. I've got a short piece on ZNet (October 17 I
think, at http://www.zmag.org ) and a forthcoming book
("Threatening Global Apartheid") trying to show how we are moving, in
many Third World sites, from mere "IMF Riots" as resistance, to
mass-democratic activism. It's happening all over the world, with an
intensity and magnitude that far outweighs Seattle/DC/Prague.
> etc. In the recent years, more people than before have become
> politicized & radicalized about the question of the neoliberal
> hegemony exercised through the Bretton Woods institutions and/or the
> so-called Washington consensus. Hence the hope that Pat Bond
> expresses for "New Social Movements." However, many activists
Ok, I'm not calling them "New Social Movements" anymore. Too many
semantic problems. What do you suggest? I'm favourable to "Global
Justice Movements" but help me out: have we got sufficient norms,
values, strategies/tactics and analyses to call what's going on a
"movement"?
> involved in "New Social Movements" have yet to figure out the nature
> of today's imperialism, much less how to fight back against it (if
> leftists' responses to the recent expansion & intensification of
> imperial control over Iraq, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Congo, East Timor,
> etc. are any indications). In some cases, members of "New Social
> Movements" may be more part of problems than solutions.
Sure, as always.
> There remain questions -- questions of political leadership &
> anti-imperialism in particular -- that should lead leftists (who are
> unsatisfied with the status quo & want to move forward) to a critical
> & knowing return to Lenin & Gramsci (= appreciation of the core
> insights of the two giants of what may be called the political side
> of the Marxist tradition, without being trapped in the unnecessary
> baggage created by various "Marxist-Leninist" parties).
Agreed! So, what's your formula for doing this?
>
> Yoshie
>
> P.S. I'm cc'ing this to Pat Bond, in case he has time to say
> something about it.
(Flattered for the attention, but you do realise, Yoshie, that I'm
merely a fast-typing mouthpiece for lots of much more organic
Southern Africa leftist work going on around here... and as an
expat--soon to be an SA citizen--I should be much more discrete,
really. But you can pass this on if it adds anything.)
Patrick Bond ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
phone: (2711) 614-8088
work: University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
work email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
work phone: (2711) 717-3917
work fax: (2711) 484-2729
cellphone: (27) 83-633-5548
* Municipal Services Project website -- http://www.queensu.ca/msp
* to order new book: Cities of Gold, Townships of Coal --
http://store.yahoo.com/africanworld/865436126.html
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