Subject: AUT: Tariq Ali vs. John Holloway
Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 21:35:44 -0700
From: "Michael Pugliese" <michael098762001-AT-earthlink.net>


<URL: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/593/593p24.htm >
Tariq Ali: Chavez will win in Venezuela
> ...Do you see the US empire absorbing this energy by proposing a softer  
> version of neoliberalism?

I don’t think [US rulers], at the moment, are prepared to do that. They  
will only do that if they feel threatened. And they don’t feel threatened  
at the moment. And one reason — I have to be very blunt here — they don’t  
feel threatened is because there is an idealistic slogan within the social  
movements, which goes like this: “We can change the world without taking  
power.” This slogan doesn’t threaten anyone; it’s a moral slogan. The  
Zapatistas — who I admire — when they marched from Chiapas to Mexico City,  
what did they think was going to happen? Nothing happened. It was a moral  
symbol, it was not even a moral victory because nothing happened.

I think that phrase was understandable in Latin American politics, people  
were very burnt by recent experiences: the defeat of the Sandinistas, the  
defeat of the armed struggle movements.

 From that point of view, the Venezuelan example is the most interesting  
one. It says: “In order to change the world you have to take power, and  
you have to begin to implement change — in small doses if necessary — but  
you have to do it. Without it nothing will change.”

Without adequately addressing state power, what alternative to  
neoliberalism is the global social justice movement offering?

It has no alternative! [These activists] think that it is an advantage not  
to have an alternative. But, in my view that’s a sign of political  
bankruptcy. If you have no alternative, what do you say to the people you  
mobilise? The MST [Landless Workers Movement] in Brazil has an  
alternative, it says, “take the land and give it to the poor peasants, let  
them work it”. But the thesis of the Zapatistas, is a thesis for  
cyberspace: let’s imagine. But we live in the real world, this thesis  
isn’t going to work. Therefore, the model for me of the MST in Brazil is  
much much more interesting than the model of the Zapatistas in Chiapas
-- 
Michael Pugliese


     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---