I have no idea why but a lot of the messages from the Saturday 7 May 2004, are not showing up. So this comment is in response to various items proffered on the thread of Imperialist booty. I was able to read them yesterday - but was too tired to comment.
If I recall right - Charles brown called for some empirical calculations regarding the extent & numeric value of "super-profit' bribes.
This was done by Bland in relation to Maoist claims regarding the labour aristocracy embracing virtually all workers how were not either lumpen or black/immigrants. This can be found at:
http://www.allianceML.com/BLAND/ALLIANCE_SIZEOFCLASS_WBB.html
The analysis only goes up to the late 1960's, & I am trying to do something similar for more modern figures. Neither was Bill an economist, & I sure am not one. However... Naturally this list may well correct this simplistic methodology, and such corrections will be undertaken to employ in future analyses.
I was glad to see that this thread got a lot more discussion, than when I had first joined this list and tried to raise it. I recall being somewhat patronized. I was peremptorily told to go read Mike Davis - which I did - and no else really replied. It was not certainly not adequately dealt with on PEN then, nor by Mike Davis. [I cite Davis a lot by the way in various bits & pieces & thus respect his work]. So I am not at all surprised that some people basically still say, to paraphrase "cannot understand what all the furore on this question is all about".
If questions as to Who is the working class in a political sense - that one can anticipate in being part of mass movement - are relevant; "Then who has been bribed - and how has not been bribed?", surely are questions that are self-evidently of importance.
I would submit, that one feature of Maoism was to confuse developing radical movements in the West, as to who their first and immediate allies were. The substitution of the Angolan peasant as your immediate ally (for e.g.) rather than the white worker down the block or two or three etc - is pretty devastating.
Cheers, Hari Kumar
