Re: Re: "The World We're In" by Will Hutton

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 17 May 2002 22:28:31 +0100, Chris Burford wrote:
>What the Marshall Aid plan was necessary to do
>was *political*: to protect  western Europe from
>going "Communist".

I didn't think it was necessary for me to point this out.

>If we apply a counterfactual argument to this -
>what would have happened in  western Europe had
>there been no Marshall Aid plan? - the work
>force would  have been as impoverished as say in
>Indonesia today.

This of course completely undercuts the first point you made. If
western Europe had gone communist, it would have grown at a faster
pace than Marshall Plan-subsidized capitalism. The CIA itself said
that the Soviet economy grew faster than Europe's (or the USA's)
during the 1950s. In any case, there is no amount of aid that will
relieve poverty in Indonesia since it is victimized by imperialism.
No amount of aid will make it into a G-7 type nation. By the same
token, the Marshall Plan was capable of restoring war-devastated
imperialist nations back to "health" so that they could once again
trample on the rights of Indonesia, Vietnam, the Congo, etc.

> The only future for  people
>trying to better themselves in Europe would have
>been to try to  migrate to the USA or being one
>of a narrow body of exploiters within their  own
>country, vulnerable to revolution.

TINA

>The
>urgency of a Marshall Aid  plan is  much less
>strong because there is no threat from the
>Soviet Bloc  as a rival pole of attraction.

It is urgent in moralistic terms. It is not urgent in economic terms.
More to the point, no amount of aid will transform class relations on
an international scale. Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" could not
eliminate the ghetto. We are dealing with ghettos on a world scale
here.

>Ten years ago the global sado neo-liberals we
>saying that Africa might as  well have dropped
>off the map. Nowadays under pressure of concern
>about  AIDS, there is some feeling in capitalist
>circles that there has to be a  policy for
>Africa.

Right, the imperialist shark Paul O'Neill and his stooge Bono are
visiting this part of the world making noises about how poverty can
be eliminated. An utterly grotesque spectacle.

--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 05/18/2002

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