5. Mock ‘em, mock their lies to oblivion. James Herod gets to the core.
12th March 2006
Posting 5. to General (no specific category), James Herod’s comments, posted by George Salzman
James Herod <> doesn’t let ‘em get away with shit. Yesterday he sent me part of an exchange with Scott Pinkleman <> that reminded me of one of the first books recommended when Nancy and I went (for the first time) to Chiapas in 1996,
Hi Scott,
From your last email:
I read this report [Latin America’s Autonomous Organizing www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-03/13trigona.cfm] this morning actually. It is rather amazing. There seems to be such a different tone to something like this compared with NCOR [National Conference on Organized Resistance]. I guess that’s part of the difference between the first and third worlds. (By the way, what is your terminology for that; developed versus developing is ridiculous, core and periphery doesn’t seem to get it quite right. People have criticized me for using the numerical ranking, but I thought that was bullshit! What do you use?) Or maybe it’s brutal dictatorships followed by neoliberalism.
Good question, about what terminology to use. I’m afraid that I agree that Third World is no good. I turned against the term thirty-five years ago, although I occasionally lapse into it, out of laziness (its use is so predominant), or because it seems too complicated to use some other term. There was never a ‘third world’. What was called the third world were merely colonies, or former colonies, of the imperial capitalist powers (or a few rare countries who had more or less escaped colonization, or partially so, like Yugoslavia, which was finally subdued only after 78 days of bombing in 1999). For radical analysts who argued that the Soviet Union was just another form of capitalism, state capitalism, there was not even a Second World. These terms (First World, Third World, with the Second World, the Soviet Union, implied) were mainstream (i.e., capitalist, conservative, status quo) concepts. There has ever only been one world, a capitalist world, these past several centuries. Concepts like Third World helped to camouflage or suppress this fact.
Similarly, with Developed and Developing, which are actually third or fourth generation terms. Originally the term was Underdeveloped. Then Less Developed. Now Developing (with a couple of other variations in there somewhere). There was a whole academic field devoted to the study of ‘underdevelopment’. (I lost a whole decade on this misguided endeavor.) It was the dominant paradigm in the universities, and also in the popular culture at large, for decades. The theory was demolished in the ’60s by radical scholars, like Immanuel Wallerstein, but it continued on even so, in fossilized academic departments, but also especially in popular culture, as well as in ruling class ideology, where this conceptual framework is still deeply rooted. It carries with it a picture of how societies evolve. It takes the nation-state as the unit (rather than the worldwide capitalist system), and argues that each nation passes through stages of development. The task of national elites was to facilitate this process. The task for foreign aid from rich countries (according to capitalist ideology) was to help each nation along this road. The IMF is still hiding behind this ideology to this day.
Core-Periphery is accurate, but like you say, lacks something. People probably feel this lack because unless they know the theory behind it, namely Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, it is not quite clear what the terms actually refer to. And in the absence of that theoretical background, one tends to place value judgments on it, like core is better than periphery, whereas actually these are just terms which describe a nation’s location within the capitalist system. (There is also an intermediary term, semi-periphery.) Wallerstein invented these terms (I think, but he may have picked them up from some other less prominent marxist theorist).
Other terms have also been popular, like industrial versus nonindustrial, or North versus South. Both of these expressions are obviously inadequate, because many formerly nonindustrial countries are rapidly becoming industrial, and former industrial nations are reverting to nonindustrial, as capitalist production globalizes. Similarly, there were many colonized countries in the North, like in Eastern Europe. And how can South be used as a term to describe Northeast Asia, a rapidly emerging powerhouse of capitalism? For a while after the Bandung Conference of 1955, the term Nonaligned was used, instead of South, or Underdeveloped, or Third World. That expression rapidly fell by the way however.
I have struggled with this problem in my own writing too. I’m sorry to say that I’m unaware of a good solution to it. What I usually end up doing is reverting to the old marxist categories of colonial or neocolonial. Most countries in the world today are neocolonial, especially since the recolonization of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by Western Capitalists. Neocolonial, as a term, is a good one I think, as it recognizes the worldwide capitalist system, and locates a country within it. For example, the current very encouraging movements across Latin America are mostly just efforts (continuing, belated) to break out of the condition of being neocolonies of the USA and Europe. Neocolonial was a good term because it recognized that although the formal status of colonial had been overcome with the national independence movements, neocolonialism was rapidly established in its stead through economic mechanisms of dominance (of which IMF, World Bank, and WTO are the latest, with neoliberalism being the name given by exploited peoples — it is not used by the capitalist ruling classes themselves — to the most recent, aggressive, imposition of a more brutal form of neocolonialism on countries throughout the world). Colonial is associated with the capitalist empires of the European Powers, whereas neocolonial is associated with the capitalist empire of the USA. Neoliberalism (the so-called Washington Consensus, or the ’structural adjustment’ policies of the World Bank and IMF) is primarily a US offensive. This is why this current war in Iraq is such an anomaly. The US abandoned its decades old strategy of neocolonialism and reverted to overt colonial rule, in order to impose the Washington Consensus (corporate ownership of everything) on a country by military force, rather than merely through economic measures.
So in the world today, with the three way struggle for who is going to be the next hegemonic capitalist power, a tri-polar fight between the USA, Europe, and Northeast Asia (or rather, which block is going to replace the US as the hegemonic power, as it appears obvious that the US ruling class has just shot itself in the foot and is on the verge of losing everything), it becomes harder and harder to properly locate countries in the system. China, a former colony, is rapidly becoming a core country (to mix metaphors). The USA may regress into a ‘third world’ country, to use an unfortunate phrase. Russia, a former semi-periphery country, may merge with Europe (or the Far East) to become part of the next hegemonic capitalist superpower.
What are colonies, actually? They are just nations whose wealth is being drained out (stolen) by some more powerful capitalist nation or nations. So maybe we should talk about the “exploited countries” versus the “exploiting countries.” But now we are in a period of rather extreme fluctuation and transition between hegemons, and the status of various countries (their location in the system) may be on the verge of changing rather rapidly.
Or what about this? With the emergence of enormously powerful and rich transnational corporations, and the morphing of capitalism into this newly germinated monster, and with the emergence of this new kind of world capitalist ruling class, operating through these transnational corporations (but still with the assistance of nation-states), with the assistance of newly established world institutions (WTO, Gatt, Nafta), the whole world has become one huge colony, even the so-called developed nations (hence the frequently heard expression: the ‘third-worldization of America’). So you have a colonizing (exploiting) apparatus floating above the world, with all nations within it being preyed upon, by this parasite. We should probably just stop talking about nations (which assumes that they are legitimate units of analysis), but instead talk about the world ruling class, local ruling classes, and the masses of victimized, exploited people these ruling classes oppress and feed upon.
I regret that I couldn’t send you a less convoluted reply. But I hope this helps some.
Yours,
James
March 18th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
May I suggest a totally different approach in your quest for appropiate labels to put on the different actors on the scene?
For a moment, forget every single theory you have ever heard about, and empty your brain of any preconceived (and probably culturally indoctrinated) idea on the matter. We are trying to define concepts that accurately describe a situation, in such a way that the theory and terminology validates under every conceivable circumstance. Not understanding this is why you fail in identifying the right concepts to use.
You use geographically bound ones, that are not consistent through history because the known world they span has been constantly changing. Just consider the deep changes in society every time science changed our world view. The changes in celestial mechanics, the discovery of new continents, up until the global earth view we cherish, which is stable because the next identifiable milestone would be mankind colonizing mars or venus, and that will not happen anytime soon. So, while geographical awareness has been evolving through history, only recently we have acquired the global earth-spanning insight with which we want to build our world view. Hence it is not appropiate to use parts of theories built upon uncomplete datasets.
You also use socially built ones, and you easily forget you can not build your global and universal model on parts of theories that were non-existent before a certain date. The most striking example perhaps is that you can not build an universal model based on social class struggles because it could not apply to pre-industrial revolution societies. If I remember history lessons, the wage-slave labourer that constitutes the working class was not a distinct entity before industrial factorizing created them. The introduction of industrialization was a situational breakpoint. Another very important moment was the introduction of money as an intermediate stage in the bartering process. Not because it was handy in standardizing the fact that through its representation of cost you could trade away five kilos of potatoes for two kilos of apples without the need of the two owners to be present at the same moment at the same place to physically exchange the goodies, but because the money itself could be stacked and put away for later use without the inconvenient of organic commodities that simply rot away in a short timeframe. The stackability of money created the basis of modern wealth, and is a very basic piece that lay at the root of the problems we face today.
But forget all this for a moment and lets go back to the very beginning of mankind. From the very start of awakening into awareness people have been the only responsibles for their acts. They have evolved slowly stacking new knowledge on top of older one in any way it was able to fit, but seldom completely abandoning the old knowledge in favour of the new one, even if the latter proved the former wrong. Clans used their power to impose the old knowledge because its use benefitted them and they preferred that instead of some new knowledge that though being better should shift power into other hands. This is the way wrong situations and ideas have been accumulating and distorting the view on reality to favour the mighty one for centuries.
From the very beginning, up until now, and perfectly compatible with any particular moment in time and or space, mankind has known two kinds of people: the ethically aware ones that would not do harm to another even if their lives depended on it, and those who choose to ignore any kind of ethic whenever not doing so sacrifices any kind of advantage.
Yes, we arrive at the correct and consistent definitions you were looking for in your article but could not find by lack of a true deep insight:
1) the ethical ones, labeled the PREY
2) the unethical ones, labeled the PREDATOR
Some far reaching implications of the chosen terminology:
a) the PREY is named prey only because PREDATORS exist. Lacking predators, no need to call them prey would be.
b) PREDATORS existing, the only logical fate of PREY is extermination.
c) the best defense of PREY is to come together and organize joint defenses.
d) PREDATORS do not fight eachother unless there is not enough PREY to keep each of them satisfied.
e) PREDATORS know PREY will cease to exist one day, and they compete with each other in preparing themselves for the day they will have no other alternative than fight eachother.
f) two or more PREDATORS only collaborate with eachother if the joint effort guarantees all of them in the alliance will perform better than each of them separately, and stay together only while this remains true or deflecting to another alliance does not make any of them get better results than with the present one.
These six rules are enough to consistently fit any of the situations you might wish to consider, be it social, political or economical, past, present and future. Be they local or global.
There is no imaginable situation regarding mankind that can not be explained by combining some of these rules concerning Prey and Predators as sound CAUSES. Complex outcomes can be explained as the results of accumulated effects of applyable rules over a given time span.
Rules apply individually, even if PREY and PREDATORS can cooperate with others of the same category to achieve higher efficiency, and even ocasionally different numbers of PREY and PREDATORS can collaborate with each other if there locally is some mutual benefit to be obtained over a short time period.
The above mentioned mechanisms should be understood thoroughly before any suitable worldwide strategy could be thought of to achieve lasting survival of the PREY, as this can only be possible by erradicating the presence of PREDATORS, be it through active extermination, lack of generational renovation, or conversion to the prey psychology.
Comments are more than welcome!
Antonio.
March 19th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Oh, yes, I forgot to clarify something that might be useful to know:
The struggle we are fighting has nothing to do with ideologic or geographical limits. These are only confusing concepts that fuel a divide and conquer strategy that has been working remarkably well throughout history.
As I say, the roots of the problem are strictly individual and not geographically or ideologically predetermined.
Of course, the tendency of the prey to join together has shown through history by means of anarchist, communist and socialist ideologies, and its ethical and careminded thoughts have also given birth to environmental struggles and other alike.
Even so, the implicit nature of the predators makes them endorse any theory that does not limit in any way their ability to accumulate resources any way they can and see fit. Neo-liberalism and capitalism are their maxims, and they LOVE DEMOCRACY because it suits them better than any other alternative they could have dreamed of.
Some people shake their minds in despair trying to understand what is happening in the United States, but if you analize its situation thoroughly following the guidelines I provide then everything becomes crystal clear:
Good Old USA is divided into two classes of people:
the neo-con and most of standard con are PREDATORS,
the rest of US citizens are PREY
Predators have no respect for national sentiment whatsoever. They do not care about America’s reputation. Nations are organisatorial structures of PREY, and predators are individualists, though they will abuse any given structure if it suits their needs (American Congress, Senate, UNO, NATO, …).
One or two fair understandable example to illustrate the divide between PREDATOR and PREY in the USA:
After Katrina struck, the aid in the southern states is in the hands of NGO’s, which are PREY structures, while Bush knowingly prefer to ask public funding (PREY resources) to finance war (an PREDATOR activity).
The poor of America (PREY) are having a hard time surviving the hard winter, but as american PREDATORS keep stacking the oil reserves for their own future use, they have to be helped by other PREY (the people of Venezuela) to get the oil they need to survive.
There is no situation on earth that can not be analyzed this way to accurately asses what is realy going on, instead of the permanent despair that arises when anyone uses the traditional and intentionally misused political, social, economical and other theories that do not account within then for this separation of PREY and PREDATOR and their distinct behaviour.
Time to spread the word.