Starting from economic 'scratch' in Afghanistan

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Characteristically weak article on the Afghan economy perpetuating the
patronising myth of neo-liberal economics that it is starting from scratch.
Compare the sneering about former socialist countries being "basket cases"
throughout the 90's.

http://www.iht.com/articles/43022.htm

Dismissively it says the country is largely a land of farmers and herders
instead of positively analysing the human and social capital that it
already has in millions of people.

But Marxists will probably be no better at offering a critique of the
Imperial economic dispensation that will now be imposed after the peace
making and the peace keeping, because they usually interpret Marx's
analysis in a mechanical way, ignoring the amount of productive human
activity that exists in any society alongside commodity exchange and with
which it vitally equilibrates.

The blindness behind this humane neo-liberal article also prevents them
commenting more than ironically on the fact that 90% of the heroin consumed
in Europe comes from Afghanistan, and that heroin is its export commodity
most able quickly to recover an ability to draw in foreign exchange.

In short, instead of referring to the intelligent and resourceful people of
Afghanistan as mediaeval, they should be planning, and we should be
criticising their plans, on the basis of a bottom up approach, not a top
down approach of patronising saviours.

That would be by far the quickest way to stabilise economic activity and to
help it start growing again.

But will serious marxists grasp the challenge of the necessary critique of
what the IMF and the European Union is now going to do to Afghanistan?

Of course those marxists who would be contaminated even by criticising
international plans of reform will be unable to say anything apart from
calling for a proletarian revolution in Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Others I am more hopeful of.

Chris Burford