Re: on David Harvey

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxx>]

It looks like two people sent me private messages today but cc-ed
them to the whole list accidentally.

Ben Cashdan is a Harvey PhD student who agrees to some extent with
Louis. Like me he works hard on understanding the details of the
sell-out underway now in South Africa, hence the obscure nature of
our dialogue. We've both worked in positions near the top of the SA
state (me very temporarily, Ben lots more) and such experience does
indeed leave one hopeless... or Trotskyist... or bending backwards to
accommodate and serve whatever radical prospects there are in civil
society.  But sadly, Ben, the state of worker-community alliance is
weak, with the most interesting campaigns coming in the fight-back
against municipal privatisation. Civic associations in some areas are
finally coming aboard, with prospects improving with Mzwanele
Mayekiso this month setting up an alternative to the waning national
civic movement, beset as it is with corporatism and patronage
relationships. But Mzed moves over to Columbia U to start a planning
PhD where no doubt he will run into Louis and leave us all far
behind.

The "Bundy" that Ben refers to is Colin, a Marxist historian who
last month was inaugurated as vice-chancellor (president) of Wits
University, SA's premier liberal capitalist institution. It will be
interesting to see whether he lubricates or gums up the
neoliberalisation of higher education here -- not clear at present.
At least his legacy on explaining peasant underdevelopment using very
tough class analysis is unassailable.

If anyone else on Pen-L is working on LED (local economic
development) and wants to watchdog our efforts to counter what's
known as urban entrepreneurialism with a bottom-up, basic-needs
(especially water, energy, housing and small-scale irrigation)
strategy, and can contribute to doing so in SA's second poorest
province (the Eastern Cape), it'd be nice to chat, also privately, so
as not to bore the list.

To comrade boddhisatva, surely Pen-L folk will forgive your
personality mischaracterisation of David Harvey...

Ciao!