[Marxism] [ Marxism] Inflation Delivers a Blow to Vietnamâ?Ts Spirits

[Ruthless Critic of All that Exists]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Marvin Gandall
<marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:

> I'm not clear as to your meaning. That international relations is not
> relevant? Or that there is a different economic impact on the different
> classes within "countries"? There always is. Unfortunately, we have much
> less empirical evidence of how the Chinese masses view the FDI or the WTO,
> or to what degree they attribute their various discontents to China's more
> open economy. What evidence there is suggests that most support the overalll
> direction in which the CCP and the aspiring Chinese bourgeoisie are taking
> the country, which doesn't preclude protest over specific local grievances.
> There is at present no mass political organization in China calling for
> withdrawal from the WTO or a ban on foreign investment, which would reliably
> allow us to make the kind of distinctions you seem to be suggesting.

Here's a view from India that might partially address your query about
what alternatives the third world left may be thinking of:

From:

Capitalism in Asia at the End of the Millennium
by Prabhat Patnaik

<http://www.monthlyreview.org/799pat.htm>

[Prabhat Patnaik is an Indian economist and political commentator. He
is a professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the
School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
He is currently Vice-Chairman of the Planning Board of the Indian
state of Kerala.]

"There is a view that restrictions on capital flows and regulatory
oversight on financial sector liberalization are adequate for
combatting the danger of getting caught in the vortex of international
finance capital. This view is a facile one. If these restrictions were
part of an international understanding, so that all countries imposed
them, then no single country would face any hardship arising from
capital flight. But globalized finance capital would oppose such
restrictions tooth and nail. The advanced capitalist states, which (as
a surrogate for the nonexistent single global imperialist state) act
in unison to provide support for such capital, would buttress its
opposition. The Bretton Woods institutions would fall in line, no
matter how many well-meaning economists they have on their staff. If,
perchance, some understanding were reached, it would be too qualified
to be of much significance to the third world.

"On the other hand, if restrictions were imposed by particular
countries unilaterally, those countries would certainly face immediate
hardships as capital flight occurred or as financial flows bypassed
them. In short, the tragedy of the present predicament of the third
world is that if getting caught in the vortex of globalized finance is
painful, getting out of it is equally painful.

"Getting out, therefore, must be supported by the people. This means
that even restrictions on international finance have to be accompanied
by an alternative economic program, bringing palpable benefits to the
people, and an alternative political agenda entailing thoroughgoing
democratization of society and the polity. People must be directly
involved in decision-making and hence remain politicized and able to
confront imperialism.

"The precise contours of this program would vary from country to
country. But land reforms (where they have not been carried out); a
revival of public investment, especially in rural infrastructure and
employment generation programs, financed by taxes on the rich; a
reduction of income inequalities to generate domestic demand for a
range of simple and non-import-intensive commodities; decentralization
of resources and decision-making to directly elected bodies at the
local level; the strengthening of democratic institutions and
enforcement of greater accountability of the state, would constitute
some of the essential ingredients of such an alternative program.
There would, of course, have to be controls over capital flows, over
the financial sector (especially including political control over the
central bank) so that it serves the needs of development, and over
trade, so that domestic food availability is not reduced through
agricultural exports, and domestic industry is not destroyed through
indiscriminate imports or dumping.

"With bourgeois nationalism in a cul-de-sac, an alternative
anti-imperialist national struggle based on the workers and peasants
is the order of the day; such an alternative program would facilitate
this. For socialists to talk of a national agenda against
globalization which, after all, represents a form of
internationalism—albeit of the bourgeois variety—may seem odd. But
there is no escape from the fact that the nation still remains the
only practical point of intervention in the struggle against
imperialism. In the transition from the bourgeois internationalism,
signified by the current globalization, to a new internationalism
based on the unity of the working people, there has to be an interim
anti-imperialist national agenda carried forward by the workers and
peasants.

"A new internationalism is not mere wishful thinking. Since the
workers and peasants are being adversely affected all over the third
world (and the former socialist countries), an objective basis clearly
exists for unity among them against the hegemony of international
finance capital; and this unity can also, in due course, include the
working class in the first world, which is losing out through
stagnation, unemployment, welfare cuts, and attacks on trade unions.
But the route towards such internationalism lies in an
anti-imperialist national agenda.

"This route is not easy. The collapse of actually existing socialism
over large tracts of the globe, and the fact that inter-imperialist
rivalries are relatively muted, implies that imperialism will have an
easier job snuffing out any challenge mounted against it in some
particular corner of the world. But if the challenge emanates from a
large enough country or group of countries, if it is based on broad
popular support, and if it is accompanied by a strengthening of
democratic institutions through which the people can remain
politically active (unlike under old socialism, in which they became
rapidly depoliticized and power was exercised in their name by what,
in effect, was a dictatorship of the Party), then it may well prove a
harbinger of a renascent socialism."