My sharp polemics with a member of the British Revolutionary Communist Party, publishers of Living Marxism. Louis P. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 14:38:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis N Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Third World economic decline World Bank Statistics on the 47 poorest capitalist countries (from WWW.WORLDBANK.ORG) Pop. GNP Poverty Life Illiteracy in Growth % Expct. rate Mill. 85-95 1 Mozambique 16.2 3.6 n/a 47 60 2 Ethiopia 56.4 -0.3 33.8 49 65 3 Tanzania 29.6 1.0 16.4 51 32 4 Burundi 6.3 -1.3 n/a 49 65 5 Malawi 9.8 -0.7 n/a 43 44 6 Chad 6.4 0.6 n/a 48 52 7 Rwanda 6.4 -5.4 45.7 46 40 8 Sierra Leone 4.2 -3.6 n/a 40 n/a 9 Nepal 21.5 2.4 53.1 55 73 10 Niger 9.0 n/a 61.5 47 86 11 Burkina Faso 10.4 -0.2 n/a 49 81 12 Madagascar 13.7 -2.2 72.3 52 n/a 13 Bangladesh 119.8 2.1 n/a 58 62 14 Uganda 19.2 2.7 50.0 42 38 15 Guinea Bissau 1.1 2.0 87.0 38 45 16 Haiti 7.2 -5.2 n/a 57 55 17 Mali 9.8 0.8 n/a 50 69 18 Nigeria 111.3 1.2 28.9 53 43 19 Yemen 15.3 n/a n/a 53 n/a 20 Cambodia 10.0 n/a n/a 53 35 21 Kenya 26.7 0.1 50.2 58 22 22 Mongolia 2.5 -3.8 n/a 65 n/a 23 Togo 4.1 -2.7 n/a 56 48 24 Gambia 1.1 n/a n/a 46 61 25 Ctl.Afr.Rep. 3.3 -2.4 n/a 48 40 26 India 929.4 3.2 52.5 62 48 27 Laos 4.9 2.7 n/a 52 43 28 Benin 5.5 -0.3 n/a 50 63 29 Nicaragua 4.4 -5.4 43.8 68 34 30 Ghana 17.1 1.4 n/a 59 n/a 31 Zambia 9.0 -0.8 84.6 46 22 32 Angola 10.8 -6.1 n/a 47 n/a 33 Georgia 5.4 -17.0 n/a 73 n/a 34 Pakistan 129.9 1.2 11.6 60 62 35 Mauritania 2.3 0.5 31.4 51 n/a 36 Azerbaijan 7.5 -16.3 n/a 70 n/a 37 Zimbabwe 11.0 -0.6 41.0 57 15 38 Guinea 6.6 1.4 26.3 44 n/a 39 Honduras 5.9 0.1 46.5 67 27 40 Senegal 8.5 n/a 54.0 50 67 41 Cameroon 13.3 -6.6 n/a 57 37 42 Ctte d'Ivoire 14.0 n/a 17.7 55 60 43 Albania 3.3 n/a n/a 73 n/a 44 Congo 2.6 -3.2 n/a 51 25 45 Kyrgyz 4.5 -6.9 18.9 68 n/a 46 Sri Lanka 18.1 2.6 4.0 72 10 47 Armenia 3.8 -15.1 n/a 71 n/a total population 1739.1 Comments: -------- 1) Poverty percentage is defined as percentage of people living on less than $1 per day. 2) Of the 47 countries listed, 38 were able to provid figures on GNP growth rate. 17 reported positive growth, while 21 reported negative growth. 3) In the 16 high-income countries, only 3 reported negative growth rates in the 85-95 period (Sweden, Finland and United Arab Emirates). Japan, with 125.2 million people, had a growth rate of 2.9 and Italy one of 1.8. Their life expectancies were 80 and 78 respectively. Illiteracy rates and poverty rates were too low to compare to poorer countries. 4) James Heartfield's Revolutionary Communist Party is a peculiar organization. It shares optimism about Third World economic growth and social improvement with publications like the Wall Street Journal or the Economist. This optimism is, of course, nonsense. The Third World, as the figures above show, has been in steep economic decline over the past decade. Furthermore, the causes of the economic decline are endemic. These comrades, who tend to be middle-class professionals and academicians, are allowing their privileged social position to cloud their understanding of the real world. There is also a grave theoretical error they have committed. They have applied a schematic understanding of the Communist Manifesto to the Third World. Their Marxism has little use for what Lenin called Imperialism, a curious oversight for people living in the twentieth century. The dynamism that Marx and Engels were talking about in the 19th century was based on the existence of a revolutionary class --the bourgeoisie-- which was spearheading the elimination of feudal relations. The net result of the bourgeois revolution was capital accumulation and rapid technological and industrial transformation. This has nothing to do with the situation of countries such as Madagascar and Cameroon, with negative growth rates of -2.2 and -6.6. The net effect of economic stagnation is human suffering. This is the reality for Third World peoples. It is shocking that a "revolutionary communist" does not perceive it. The Spoons Lists are a curious place. We are visited by snake-oil salesmen on a weekly basis. One week it is somebody who claims that Cuba is not socialist. The next it is somebody who argues that the Third World is not sinking lower into economic depression. Should we require sanity clauses for participation in the Spoons lists? I suppose not. Louis Proyect