Re: [PEN-L] question about left nationalist experiments in rural Third World

[soula avramidis]

the Nassraerite example in the near east initiated strutural reforms in land and industry, capital account control and heavy industrial development. many developmental gains were made but successive military defeats to israel eroded national security and then sovreignety the external shock revertibrated on the inside some were completely demolished i.e. iraq syria is under heavy embargo on all sides but agricultural reforms allow many a 2800 Kcal with little malnutrion. egypt went a compltete reversal meaning regression in the countryside and malnutition on a massive scale only compared to yemen. but here one must that external political risks were internalised leading to intransigence on the inside and an internalisation of risk through institutions meaning the state survived by augmenting the external risk component and allowing the new military elites to extort national wealth by means of coercion or by exercising public office for personal gains on a grand scale.so to transform syria no into a qaddafi type model is one way out

Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

maybe the problem is that the intellectuals at the center did not have
the means to institute the changes they wanted. They had to order the
changes via cadres who were undisciplined and ignorant because the
organization had not matured. The cadres went for their own
self-serving goals because the organization did not have sufficient
safe-guards. But then the intellectuals at the center had little
choice but to back the cadres because they didn't have sufficient
support outside the organization.

or could it be something else?

On 4/7/06, John Gulick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> Does anyone know of good comparative studies that focus on the following
> issue?
>
> In 1950's China, both land reform and the Great Leap Forward did not come
> off exactly as intended by CCP authorities because (among other reasons)
> local cadres implemented directives from Beijing too aggressively
> (unsanctioned killings of landlords during land reform, e.g.) or too
> ambitiously (overnight creation of ill-equipped communes during GLF, e.g.).
>
> In late 1960's/early 1970's Tanzania, attempts to set up "ujamaa villages"
> mostly failed in large part because local functionaries in TANU coerced
> livestock farmers and shifting cultivators to settle in the villages, even
> though according to Nyerere and his closest advisors the program was
> supposed to be voluntary. I am confident that parallel examples can be found
> with other ostensibly progressive initiatives in Third World rural
> modernization.
>
> There seems to be a repeated pattern of revolutionary nationalist
> intellectuals (of various stripes) launching potentially promising radical
> experiments from the center, only to be undermined by some combination of
> overzealous/incompetent/corrupt bureaucrats in the provinces. Moreover,
> there also appears to be a pattern of disappointed and/or wronged peasants
> contrasting the admirable ideals of the center to shoddy implementation in
> the provinces when criticizing local functionaries. In some ways this
> reminds me of muzhiks in Romanov Russia celebrating the "Good Tsar" in
> comparison to the wicked service aristocracy.
>
> Suggestions or comments welcome -- and thanks.
>
> John Gulick
> Knoxville, TN
>


--
Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence
of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles

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