Re: Still baffled

At 08:51 AM 4/30/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>So the issue is "what is the political significance of what the 
>"residents" (workers? capitalists?) of those countries thought. 

It's the ideology that gained preeminence among the governing elite, and
seems to have been supported by many among the working and middle classes,

>And what 
>is the political significance of whether "totalitarianism" (your word, 
>not mine, a horrible word that lumps together the Nazis who committed the 
>holocaust with the Soviet-led international partisans and Red Armymen who 
>defeated the Nazis)

I've already stated that unlike the Nazi regime in Germany, the Communist
regime in the Soviet Union and its satellite states did have _some_ durable,
positive achievements. Nazi Germany only destroyed; the Soviet Union also
created. 

But still, there were the gulags, and the famines (as artificial as the
Potato Famine in Ireland from 1845 to 1848, or the Bengal famine under the
Rajh in 1943). And the Soviet conquest of the Baltic States, for instance,
was as blatantly imperialist as the Nazi absorption of the Sudetenland.

>is one place rather than another? 

As I have said already, it is of significance mainly to those people living
in countries that felt that imperialism is the only way to survive power
differentials with other aggressive states, particularly totalitarian
states. It is of significance since in the future, the Triad's component
regions, along with the more ambitious of the Second World states, may turn
again to imperialism as a perceived refuge against the horrors that may grow
up worldwide if the Kondratieff up-cycle doesn't lead to a greater
dispersion of wealth. It is of significance since most people, when
presented with a choice -- false dichotomy or otherwise -- between
oppressing people living outside of their national/regional in-group and
oppressing in-group members, they'll go for out-groups.

?You must say why you 
>think any of this has significance for what we should do to fight for the 
>interests of workers everywhere. If you make a distinction between 
>workers in one place and those in another and imply that this is 
>important, you must say why. As I said, the obvious account of its 
>significance is a racist one.

I am reporting on the distinction, not advocating it. It _is_ a racist
distinction, though not necessarily so -- why isn't it possible to imagine a
non-Western nation-state engaging in a kind of defensive imperialism against
the West, or a part thereof? If most of the world's wealth is concentrated
in the Triad and a few favoured Second World partners, then imperialism may
well come into vogue as a means of supposed self-defense. It'll probably end
up in blood and fire, but that may not stop imperialism's resurgence. It
will lead to a racist world, very probably one that will be the perfect
tinder for global socialist revolution.

What should be done to ward of this possibility? Well, we should try to
generate more wealth worldwide, and to ensure that it gets distributed with
a reasonable amount of equity on national, regional, class, ethnic, gender
terms. A good way to do that is to oppose exploitative economic institutions
such as the IMF, and to favour the adoption of fair trade measures and
perhaps even a global keynesianism/social democracy. If Kerala can do it,
then why not the entire world?

>Paul