Leftists in the North basically act as if "criticisms" of parties, movements, and governments of the South are just a matter of pointing out this or that is wrong, which doesn't help activists in the South, most of whom already know _that_. Instead, they could say, "Look, A, B, and C are the biggest problems for you, I think you could be doing D, E, and F instead, and the way to make D, E, and F happen is to do G, H, and I, given what you have in the way of social forces, political factions, and objective economic and international conditions that face your nation, and besides, G, H, and I have been shown to work in a country that is like yours." Then, people in the South can actually take a look at the proposal and weigh its merits and demerits. But such a constructive proposal of an alternative to the status quo is rarely found in discourse on the Left in the North. -- Yoshie
Because everyone knows that those people in the South can't be trusted to know for themselves what needs to be done. They need smart people like intellectuals from the North to tell them what is wrong and how to fix it. That model has worked out so well for the World Bank and IMF, Northern intellectuals showing Southern states how to fix their problems, that we should adopt it as our model, rather than listening to those in the South and offering what support we can as they reason out their problems and solutions in a way that might never have occurred to us.
