An interesting argument...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [DEBATE] : Re-Reading Ahmadinejad: Towards a
Neo-BandungConfiguration
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:01:02 +0200
From: Ran Greenstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: debate: SA discussion list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: debate: SA discussion list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
References:
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My point was that Nasser embarked on an ambitious social reform programme inside Egypt:
nationalization of the Suez canal, fairly radical agrarian reform, construction of the Aswan
dam, industrialization, expansion of education, and so on. Whatever value his global rhetoric
might have had (or lacked), what really mattered was his contribution to his own country's
development. In retrospect, many things were flawed in his approach, but he was following
the development commonsense of the time. His popularity across the Arab world stemmed
from real social achievements, not only or primarily from empty rhetoric, and in that he is
very different from Ahmadinejad, and others like Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein. When
Saddam embarked on the 1990 campaign against Kuweit, he also gained massive support
in the region, especially among Palestinians, but they were also the first to suffer from his
collapse. Anti-imperialist rhetoric without social substance may be appealing to desperate
people, but cannot really help them much (except for giving temporary gratification - we dare
speak loud to the US or Israel)
On 11 Oct 2007 at 9:47, peter waterman wrote:
There may be more in the comparison with the Nasser-Nehru connection and
Bandung than you care to recognise. I would have thought that the
Ahmadinejad-Chavez relationship (personalised as is appropriate for
authoritarian or personalist regimes) is for me powerfully reminiscent of
the earlier one.
There is a whole mythology around Bandung which fails to recognise that it
was a relationship between states, and that these were mostly
authoritarian/military regimes, as busy repressing their own people/s as
they were with anti-imperialist and developmentalist rhetoric. In any case,
the limits of this 'thirdworld bloc' were demonstrated within a few years by
the Indo-China border war of 1962.
These limitations were reproduced in the Cuban-sponsored OSPAAL (growing out
of a Nkrumah-ist conference). Officially, the Organisation for Solidarity
for the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, this was a
state-sponsored operation. Its main achievement, as far as I am concerned,
was its Cuban-based magazine and its brilliant Cuban-designed posters.
One would like to hope that the international Left has learned something
from these experiences, though - with the respect to the Left - optimism of
the will needs to be combined with maximum scepticism of the intellect. Thus
even with the World Social Forum increasing questions are being raised about
state and corporate sponsorship. The state sponsorship comes in various
forms - local municipality or regional support in cash or kind, the same
from national governments/ruling parties, and then the disguised funding by
(commonly social-reformist) core capitalist states, channelled through
state-funded development agencies and foundations.
Conclusions? We need to reinvent the notion of 'international solidarity'
for this century. I start off by calling it 'the new global solidarity',
thus surpassing the reference to relations between nations, nationalities,
nationalisms. A meaningful internationalism for our age has to be autonomous
of capital and state. This autonomy has to be demonstrated by an open break
with the relationships customary to those between states and capital. This
would mean that such relationships would need to strive to be at the base,
horizontal, equal, open, dialogical (I could continue).
Ran Greenstein
Johannesburg, South Africa
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