Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 19:40:06 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: Jeux sans frontieres? 


To: marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: Re: Jeux sans frontieres? 
Cc: marxism-and-sciences-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
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Candice writes:

>Ireland's modern fate is the clearest refutation of Anderson's
>thesis (to which you apparently subscribe); the Irish Republic
>emerged from centuries of foreign domination,  through civil
>war,  grinding poverty,  massive emigration,  long-smoldering
>conflicts,  economic dependence,  and the near-extinction of 
>the national language.    Yet can anyone honestly believe that
>Irish cultural identity is lost,  dying or even dangerously
>threatened? 

The obstinate persistence of cultural,  religious or even political
peculiarities should not obscure emerging patterns of class domination that
are contemporaneous throughout the post-communist new world order.
Afghanistan is a late and extreme case of religious fundamentalism in the
service of capital, in this instance that of Saudi Arabia,  Germany, and the
United States.     There are numerous other models stretching back to the
pre-Vietnam era.    Indonesia,  with the largest Muslim population on earth
(some 200 million souls) has fulfilled this role for more than three
decades.    Briefly,  it comes down to local clerical reaction allied
internationally with the major corporations and banks of the G7.    Hamas
has recently announced that it is willing to do business with Western
financiers who cut their ties to Israel.    The IRA has since 1990 been
warmly solicitous of American banks.     Turkey has an ostensibly pro-Moslem
government that in the course of events is turning out to be a wholly-owned
subsidiary of the U.S. State Department.     Much of what passes for
"Anti-Imperialism" in the third world is,  on closer inspection,  a farrago
for local elites to perpetuate their class rule under the aegis of
"internationalism."         

Generations of sustained capital penetration,  however well it is
camaflouged by the fig-leaf of  "national autonomy" or "cultural identity"
will in the end obviate most of what is unique in the national culture.
Why should this surprise you?    Culture itself-- including religious
superstition-- is an accoutrement of economic development,  is it not?

Louis Godena



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