Economic nationalism puts the willies up the intelligence and media snipers
the slightest hints of economic nationalism ... That’s what scares ‘em. In the crosshairs are those who try to build, sustain, defend or articulate, even for a historical moment, a project at local, national or regional level that is secular, and even mildly Keynesian. This makes for a motley mix of torch-bearers who are in the firing line, or were in their time. Spot the players, mark out the board, in today’s Great Game.
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Even democrats will kill social democracy, or will see the mildest of reforms as subversive, especially in the third world…But I would say the role of Harold Geneen’s ITT in Chile, of Kissinger and the encouragement of the truckers strike were all stronger interventions than could be dismissed as mere encouragement, and a little money.
In a ‘new’ nation, there has of course been no time for a ‘permanent government’ to form which has the same objectives and interests as the elected government. Thus continues a permanent government – corporate – culturally and historically alien to the new elected government until it can buy the key people in the elected government – and use its media to spread corruption charges against those who are not yet, or may not stay, bought. SA is such a poignant example at the moment (2004). But this is what neo-colonialism has been all about…In these new countries, permanent government, pursuing genuine national interests, can only be built up through post-liberation and often one-party rule.
The case of Uganda is a very interesting one: after years of terrible upheaval, Museveni came in with a very wide and deep-rooted popular base from which he proceeded to apply strategies which brought real gains:
. promoting free cross-border trade at local market level
. bringing back the Bagandans’ Kabaka – as a constitutional monarch
. encouraging the most committed and long term kind of ‘foreign direct investment’ by inducing those big Asian industrialists to come back from exile and reopen their factories and plantations
. rehabilitating the health and education infrastructure
. reducing HIV/AIDS.
So this Dar campus radical, admirer and acolyte of socialist Frelimo, seemed to have cut across ideological boundaries – actually used his powerful political mandate to act something like a genuine national bourgeois leader,* to bring home some bacon.
He was also a Napoleon. He and his former army chief Paul Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi, overthrew those who carried out the Rwanda massacres, went on west, to overthrow Mobutu. The fact that Museveni is now passing his rule-by date, and the military operations, lacking the international support they deserved, were overextended and went pear-shaped, takes nothing away from those epic years. Here perhaps, in its continuity of one-party rule, is one third-world ‘permanent government’ in the making. Let us see if it can put forward an effective multi-party democratic front.
Other ‘dark horses’ come to mind in this category of independent/reformist national bourgeois rulers: Mahathir Mohamed, in a very brief leadership, is already an epic story of independent economic strength, and secular government of an Islamic society in Nigeria. Mwai Kibaki, after the depredations of Kenyatta, then Moi, may become an effective reformer, to the point of developing a genuinely national elite.
*But if Museveni has developed something of a national bourgeoisie, why is he an American favourite – seems to knock my ‘social democracy as the enemy’ thesis on the head, doesn’t it? Unless maybe there is room in American policy – when it is pursued by (social) Democrats – for genuine economic nationalism, provided it is more alongside than confronting international capital. The US-Uganda entente is not one the present White House bunch 9At the time Bush) would have fostered, even if they are keeping it up.
The notion of benign permanent government rapidly unravels from about 1970-75. It certainly was never a good traveller, outside the North Atlantic, except as a mutant more evil than good. In its relatively benign form, it appears to be in the redoubts of Brussels, Paris, Berlin...
In much of the previous era, the Soviet Union, however hugely flawed (and only the SU, not China) was a moderating influence on capital’s wilder ravings. Only since the Wall came down has Wall Street been free to punch hole after hole in the ozone layer protecting the global socio-economy…
Tony Hall, 2004
Aldo Moro was murdered when he was close
to bringing the Christian Democrats and
the Communists to an understanding in Italy.
For many decades around the world and most crucially now, in the Euro-American war, it’s so often social democracy that is at stake, and under fire. The intelligence and media snipers, and the economic and military weapons are aimed not at the chimera of socialism or communism, but at even the mildest forms of state regulation (that swearword!), the slightest hints of economic nationalism.
That’s what scares ‘em. In the crosshairs are those who try to build, sustain, defend or articulate, even for a historical moment, a project at local, national or regional level that is secular, and even mildly Keynesian.
This makes for a motley mix of torch-bearers who are in the firing line, or were in their time. Spot the players, mark out the board, in today’s Great Game.
In my eyes, using Marxist language, certainly in the colonial and post-colonial context, for ‘social democrats’ you could read ‘national bourgeoisie’ as opposed to compradors
Remember how Aldo Moro was murdered when he was close to bringing the Christian Democrats and the Communists to an understanding in Italy. There was also, a few years before then, the head of an Italian oil company (can’t remember his name) who was trying to do oil trade deals the seven sisters didn’t like, and he died in a plane crash.
________________________________________the slightest hints of economic nationalism ... That’s what scares ‘em. In the crosshairs are those who try to build, sustain, defend or articulate, even for a historical moment, a project at local, national or regional level that is secular, and even mildly Keynesian. This makes for a motley mix of torch-bearers who are in the firing line, or were in their time. Spot the players, mark out the board, in today’s Great Game.
________________________________________
Even democrats will kill social democracy, or will see the mildest of reforms as subversive, especially in the third world…But I would say the role of Harold Geneen’s ITT in Chile, of Kissinger and the encouragement of the truckers strike were all stronger interventions than could be dismissed as mere encouragement, and a little money.
In a ‘new’ nation, there has of course been no time for a ‘permanent government’ to form which has the same objectives and interests as the elected government. Thus continues a permanent government – corporate – culturally and historically alien to the new elected government until it can buy the key people in the elected government – and use its media to spread corruption charges against those who are not yet, or may not stay, bought. SA is such a poignant example at the moment (2004). But this is what neo-colonialism has been all about…In these new countries, permanent government, pursuing genuine national interests, can only be built up through post-liberation and often one-party rule.
The case of Uganda is a very interesting one: after years of terrible upheaval, Museveni came in with a very wide and deep-rooted popular base from which he proceeded to apply strategies which brought real gains:
. promoting free cross-border trade at local market level
. bringing back the Bagandans’ Kabaka – as a constitutional monarch
. encouraging the most committed and long term kind of ‘foreign direct investment’ by inducing those big Asian industrialists to come back from exile and reopen their factories and plantations
. rehabilitating the health and education infrastructure
. reducing HIV/AIDS.
So this Dar campus radical, admirer and acolyte of socialist Frelimo, seemed to have cut across ideological boundaries – actually used his powerful political mandate to act something like a genuine national bourgeois leader,* to bring home some bacon.
He was also a Napoleon. He and his former army chief Paul Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi, overthrew those who carried out the Rwanda massacres, went on west, to overthrow Mobutu. The fact that Museveni is now passing his rule-by date, and the military operations, lacking the international support they deserved, were overextended and went pear-shaped, takes nothing away from those epic years. Here perhaps, in its continuity of one-party rule, is one third-world ‘permanent government’ in the making. Let us see if it can put forward an effective multi-party democratic front.
Other ‘dark horses’ come to mind in this category of independent/reformist national bourgeois rulers: Mahathir Mohamed, in a very brief leadership, is already an epic story of independent economic strength, and secular government of an Islamic society in Nigeria. Mwai Kibaki, after the depredations of Kenyatta, then Moi, may become an effective reformer, to the point of developing a genuinely national elite.
*But if Museveni has developed something of a national bourgeoisie, why is he an American favourite – seems to knock my ‘social democracy as the enemy’ thesis on the head, doesn’t it? Unless maybe there is room in American policy – when it is pursued by (social) Democrats – for genuine economic nationalism, provided it is more alongside than confronting international capital. The US-Uganda entente is not one the present White House bunch 9At the time Bush) would have fostered, even if they are keeping it up.
The notion of benign permanent government rapidly unravels from about 1970-75. It certainly was never a good traveller, outside the North Atlantic, except as a mutant more evil than good. In its relatively benign form, it appears to be in the redoubts of Brussels, Paris, Berlin...
In much of the previous era, the Soviet Union, however hugely flawed (and only the SU, not China) was a moderating influence on capital’s wilder ravings. Only since the Wall came down has Wall Street been free to punch hole after hole in the ozone layer protecting the global socio-economy…
Tony Hall, 2004
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