File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 214


Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 08:56:19 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Marx on India


On Sun, 7 Dec 1997, James Heartfield wrote:

> On the other hand, if you want a practical example of how imperialism
> has frustrated social development in India, there is no need to look as
> far back as the 1880s - the decision by the World Bank to stop the
> funding of the Narmada Dam puts the interests of the Western Creditor
> nations, whose wealth has been appropriated from the third world, above
> those of the people of India.

This is claptrap. Imperialism is the World Bank. It, along with the IMF,
have been instrumental in attacks on the living standards of peasants and
workers in the Third World. In most cases, the IMF and the World Bank have
been successful in the recent period because the working-class movement
has been in disarray. For example, Nelson Mandela has caved in to these
institutions.

When there is resistance to a World Bank project designed to assist
wealthy farmers--in other words, to promote capitalist
development--Heartfield the spin-doctor says that the resistance does not
come from the disenfranchised but from imperialism itself.
Anti-imperialism is converted into imperialism. Dialectical? No,
Orwellian.

Louis Proyect



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