Steve: 1) I most emphatically and positively was NOT including China in the category of "poorer countries." That was your phrase and I took it as implying the Third world countries that are suffering under world capitalist imperialism. 2) "How does one discern between one who is advancing a socialist argument when denouncing imperialism and one who is just using it as a shield against internal attacks? I've heard such arguments lead to praise of Mahathir, as I've mentioned before...I'm aware that you would not make such an argument (neither would Brenner btw), but others have, on this list, and I don't see how your theoretical approach leads us to a better capacity to argue with such mush." I. personally, have rarely heard such muush. It seems to me that all the bleating about "oh, they are not paying enough attention to the local bourgeoisie and the local class struggle" generally comes from people who themselves know and care little about the internal struggles in Third World countries. In my experience, those among us who are sensitive to the reality of imperialism also are the ones who most strongly support the classs struggles within imperialized countries. To claim the contrary seems to me to be, usually, a political smokescreen to cover Eurocentrism. (The Third world just aint important if even it still exists, etc.). As I said once before on this list, in the Puerto rican struggle we are constantly being given this advice by sectarian North ASmerican Marxists who didn't know that we independentistas, not they, are in the forefront of labor's sturggles in Puerto Rico. They, often ennough, counselled us to quit fighting for independence becauxse it is a bourgeois goal and, instead, join the US proletariat in fighting for socialism in the US, the US proletariat of course being 79 comrades in one's own pure party. "It seemed to me that the powerful element of Brenner's argument was that it emphasised the particular class relations within countries and how they reproduced or presented barriers to escaping greater inequality. Yet the way you would seem to have Brenner is as a person who could care less that the world's wealth is unequally distributed... I hasven't followed Brenner's writing since the Brenner Thesis book and the article in the Roemer et al. book. I'd likme to be shown that Brenner "emphasized [and emphasizes] the particular class relations within countries," and doesn't merely announce summarily that his enemies don't do that. In the NLR paper there is no more than a weak paragraph or two about the need for classs struggle within Third world countries. Where does Brenner come down to particulars and state where and how the "Thirdworldists" are hampering class struggles in Third world coujntries? EEnlighten me, Steve. I don't charge B with not caring about inequality in Third World countries. Thats totally beside the point. Cheers Jim B
