Date: Mon, 6 Feb 95 08:34:06 GMT From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org> Subject: National Democratic Movements Fascintating contributions on Peronism. What matters is not who is right or wrong, though just enough edge in the debate stirs the dynamic, but the overall result in bringing out the main features. It seems to me that the Althusserian overdetermination emphasis in analysis should be very happy. I read the debate as someone whose main efforts to understand Peronism have been to avoid the musical, but who is very concerned about the sister sub-continent. Efforts at socialism in Tanzania, Angola and Mozambique have been broken. Mugabe's ideals of autonomous development are being structurally readjusted. Kaunda has been ousted. What is the future for South Africa? The drum beat of economics is signalled in the contributions by the point that capital deserted Peron. In South Africa the options of the Government of National Unity are cruelly constrained by the fact that the attitude of international capital is on a knife edge about its sense of the credibility of the new regime. The development of ante-natal clinics to deal with the appalling number of infant deaths, may have to be cut back. It is surely just a matter of time before someone writes a musical about Winnie. But would I be mistaken for denying the complexity and subtlety of all the relevant phenomenon to ask a schematic question? Socialism in just one country seems increasingly improbable. To what extent however does the story of Peronism fit into an analysis of what is needed for a viable national democratic (national bourgois democratic, or new democratic) regime in a country of the economic south? Chris Burford Community Psychiatrist, specialising in schizophrenia. Member of the Forum for Marxism, Philosophy and Science, and the Southern Africa Economic Research Unit, SAERU. London "Only connect..." ------------------
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