Re: marxism & (under)development

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

At 10:40 AM 4/10/96, Rahul Mahajan wrote:

>Why? All you first world intellectuals going to tell the huddled masses
>what to do?

Of course not. This isn't exactly a new controversy in the Marxist
tradition - can you have a socialist transformation of a partly
industrialized society? Or putting it into a global context, can a
socialist revolution survive in the Third World without any transformation
of the First; as Lou said, quoting Lenin, the Russian revolution would
perish without revolutions to the West. It took a while, but Lenin seems to
have been proved right?

Teleology is unfashionable these days, but Marx's point about socialism
emerging from developed capitalism is worth reconsidering after the
collapse of the USSR and the transformation of China into a giant export
processing zone.

>What would you suggest people living in places full of injustice and misery
>do, if it gets shown conclusively that attempts at building socialism are
>doomed from the start?

I don't know the answer to this, which is why I brought it up. Kerala is an
inspiring example, but hasn't it run into limits imposed by India's
poverty?

Doug

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