Jim Devine:
>Don't you think that the UN statistics indicating a rise in mortality in
>Russia are valid, at least as ballpark estimates? why do you accept these
>statistics -- which make a newly capitalist country look horrible -- and
>not others, that might indicate that it's possible for workers to win
>longer life-spans under capitalism if they fight hard enough and they're
>lucky? Is it because you agree with the political conclusions that jump out
>of the one set of statistics (that the transition to capitalism is a bad
>thing) and not those of the other (that capitalism might allow some
>reforms)? If so, that's totally fallacious.
This is not about whether one should use or not use the enemy's statistics.
It is about using them in a reductionist way like Doug and Brad do. If
somebody asked me if South Korea was making progress or not making
progress, the last place I'd look is the HDI report. I'd look at Marty
Hart-Landsburg's books.
I have been studying Latin America closely since 1974 when I was involved
in a faction fight in the Fourth International over guerrilla warfare. As a
reporter for the anti-Mandel faction, I worked closely with Argentine
Trotskyists and learned a lot about the problems of the country through
discussions with them and reading their documents. In the early 1980s I got
involved with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
first and then with Nicaragua solidarity organizations from 1987 onwards.
Through a combination of studying, organizing and publishing a newsletter
for a city-wide coalition, I learned much about the region. If somebody
asked me how Central America was faring, I wouldn't dream of extrapolating
a column from a UN spreadsheet and saying, "Things are looking better." (In
fact, GDP was on the rise all through the Somoza era. But the social impact
of the economic changes wrought through the introduction of large-scale
cattle-ranching was what produced the Sandinista revolution.)
There is an implicit logic in Brad and Doug relentless touting of these
figures. If you take some god-forsaken third world country that is
experiencing something like a 10 percent growth rate over some defined
time-span, you might conclude that--ceteris parebis--the country would
eventually reach first world levels. This is a reformist illusion. It is at
odds with a Marxist understanding of how capitalism operates in places like
Argentina, South Korea, etc. I can understand why Brad would argue along
these lines. He is an outspoken neoliberal. Why Doug argues along the same
lines (while holding out for some vague classless "humane regime") is
another story altogether and a depressing one at that.
Louis Proyect
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