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MONTHLY REVIEW’S November 2001
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For a long time radicals have
characterized the electoral systems in capitalist societies as "bourgeois
democracies." At times, this term has been used in a strictly pejorative
sense, to dismiss any electoral work as inconsequential or merely a device for
legitimating capitalism in the eyes of the poor and working class. Our view of
left electoral work is less doctrinaire; we think there is an important place
for such activity as a part of a broader socialist organizing agenda, though
the degree of importance in any particular instance varies depending upon many
factors. We also think that such a categorical dismissal of electoral politics
misses the critical significance of the term "bourgeois democracy."
It means an electoral system in which the rule of capital—i.e. bourgeois
social relations—is taken as a given, and the range of electoral debate is
strictly limited, never challenging the class basis of society. REVIEW
OF THE MONTH Only a little more than a month ago at this writing, before September 11, the mass revolt against capitalist globalization that began in Seattle in November 1999 and that was still gathering force as recently as Genoa in July 2001 was exposing the contradictions of the system in a way not seen for many years. Yet the peculiar nature of this revolt was such that the concept of imperialism had been all but effaced, even within the left, by the concept of globalization, suggesting that some of the worst forms of international exploitation and rivalry had somehow abated. The Challenge of
Sustainable Development and the Culture Two closely connected propositions are at the center of this intervention: If development in the future is not sustainable development, there will be no significant development at all, no matter how badly needed; only frustrated attempts to square the circle, as in the last few decades, marked by ever more elusive "modernizing" theories and practices, condescendingly prescribed for the so-called Third World by the spokesmen of former colonial powers. The corollary to this is that the pursuit of sustainable development is inseparable from the progressive realization of substantive equality. It must also be stressed in this context that the obstacles to be overcome could hardly be greater. For up to our own days the culture of substantive inequality remains dominant, despite the usually half-hearted efforts to counter the damaging impact of social inequality by instituting some mechanism of strictly formal equality in the political sphere. World Conference Against Racism: The significance of the World Conference Against Racism lies in the new prospects that it has opened. A breath of revival was clearly palpable in Durban arising from the solidarity of the Afro-Asian peoples attending. In fact, a renewal of this solidarity is one of the essential, or rather fundamental, conditions for building a more equitable form of globalization than the present system, which the G-7, led by its North American boss, wants to impose on the peoples of the planet by every means possible including extreme violence. The Roots of International Racism
Racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia are a social, cultural, and political phenomenon, not a natural instinct of human beings; they arise from wars, military conquests, slavery, and the individual or collective exploitation of the weakest by the most powerful throughout the history of human societies. DOCUMENT The following testimony by John J.
Maresca, a vice president of Unocal Corporation, was presented to a
Congressional Committee on February 12, 1998. The hearings were held before a
subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations that was
concerned with Asia and the Pacific. The subcommittee dealt extensively wih
Central Asia oil and gas reserves and the shaping of U.S. policy. It has not
been our practice to publish documents. Given the size of MR, we need to stick
to our last. We felt, however, that an exception had to be made in this case.
We think you will understand why. Lake Victoria: Casualty of
Capitalism Lake Victoria, the world's second largest fresh-water lake (after Lake Superior), has long been East Africa's chief environmental, economic, and nutritional asset. Its four hundred species of native fish have traditionally provided local fishermen with their livelihood and East Africans with their primary source of protein. BOOK
REVIEWS A Collective Past
Within Us Radicals Known
and Unknown |
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