On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > raghu: >> I don't think there is a single overtly racist law on the books any >> more in the US or in any of the developed world. > > In the US, we learned a long time ago that _de facto_ discrimination > and segregation can be just as bad as (and sometimes worse than) _de > jure_ (overt) discrimination and segregation.
No doubt. But it is important to acknowledge that de-jure non-discrimination represents revolutionary progress compared to what preceded it. In that sense, Obama is not completely wrong (though tactless and insensitive) when he said the fight against racism is 90% won. It is important to put the present circumstances in the context of just how much worse things used to be. > The imperial system changes over time, going from looting colonies > (the initial stage in Leopold's Congo, for example), forced-labor > colonies (early Haiti), and settler colonies (the US, Israel, New > Zealand, etc.) to neo-colonialism and then to dependency, with some > areas being stuck in the "earlier" stages. This occurs due such > phenomena as diminishing returns to looting and (more importantly) the > efforts by the locals to win independence. I rather think the diminishing returns is a more important reason for the end of colonialism than any resistance by the locals - even though that is a rather bleak and pessimistic assessment. The British didn't leave India until they had bankrupted and reduced to abject poverty a formerly proud and prosperous territory - no matter how hard the locals resisted. Passive resistance, I am afraid, is just no match for a technologically sophisticated military force that is sufficiently ruthless. > My gut feeling is that imperialism is "progressing" toward a situation > where it's pretty much the same thing as global capitalism, divided > primarily along class lines (though gender and ethnic hierarchies > persist) with the development of a global capitalist ruling class and > a global proletariat. (NB: this does not say that local states are > going away: order must be maintained!) Such a global capitalism, I should say, for all its evils, would still be a big step forward from the old-style racist imperialism. Equal opportunity exploitation is a big improvement over discriminatory exploitation. > I don't see at all how fixed investments in China undermine > imperialism. Not if it remains confined to China alone, but if it extends to other developing countries, then imperialism will be truly finished. As someone said, most developing nations would love to be exploited by greedy capitalists and to some extent this is indeed true. It is better to be exploited than to be left out of the system altogether. For instance the net result of the globalization driven outsourcing of the last 20 years is a transfer of wealth from the US working class to the educated (but largely poor) classes in India and China. This is a progressive change - though of course it'd be much more preferable if the wealth is transferred from the US elite rather than the US working class. That is why I cannot completely condemn globalization - it really did have some overall positive results though I don't expect many on PEN-L will agree with that sentiment. -raghu. -- The meek shall inherit the earth, if that's OK with you. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
