[PEN-L:9749] Re: Re: Mumford

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm curious about the political actualisation of needs-lists, beyond
the abstract basic-needs listings done by Sen, Doyal, Gough, etc. I
worked with the ANC to write up the 1994 "Reconstruction and
Development Programme" (the 160-page campaign platform for the first
election), which admittedly was terribly weak on macroeconomics
(those debates were lost by the Left in 1992-93) but was pretty damn
good when it came to promises on meeting basic needs
(scandinavian-style reformist plus promotion of `civil society'
radicalism). Some colleagues and I have just published a 1994-99
audit of the RDP, by the way (ordering info available from me
off-list).

Has any other political party, social/labour movement, or other
`progressive' outfit done any kind of similar programmatic-political
statement of what people need, what the barriers to meeting such
needs are, and how to overcome such barriers? By statement, I mean
serious documentation that flows relatively organically from
existing social struggles, and that gets used for
politico-developmentalist purposes?

> Jim Devine wrote:
> > but Peter, couldn't a list of objective conditions needed to allow human
> > flourishing be _part of_ the respectful dialogue among equals, helping to
> > inform the democratic process of trial and error?
Patrick Bond
email:  pbond@xxxxxxxxxx * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  bondp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729