<nettime> Digital leftism in a globalised world?

[Alexander Bard <bardissimo@gmail.com>]

   Excellent points, dear Brian, and much agreed too.
   But is there somehow a widespread agreement that economic growth in
   China and India over the last 30 years has not benefitted the masses at
   all? That this is merely a "neo-liberal myth"? Sure we have seen enough
   Indian and Chinese billionaires on shopping sprees in Paris and New
   York to know how miserable the wealth vs poverty ratios are in these
   (as in most) countries, and we know how much of the profits from say
   the Pearl River delta sweatshops that have ended up in American,
   European and Japanese pockets (often not taxed as well). But to say
   that none of this was any good for the masses, who claims that? Any
   Indian or Chinese theorists? Or just the good old white male academic
   elite in Europe and North America? My not very liked Trumpist Left?
   India and China did live through decades of misrule under Indira Gandhi
   and Mao before getting caught in the globalisation maelstrom. But why
   not then in the good old Marxist tradition admit that capitalism is
   sometimes the least bad of all system? Definitely better than gandhiism
   or maoism for sure.
   While the solar panels now bringing the best hope of an end to the
   fossil fuel paradigm happen to be developed and manufactured in - China
   and India. Snow melting in China does scare the Chinese on all levels
   of society. For a variety of good reasons.
   Other than that, I could not agree more on the economic historical
   analysis. And indeed, let's move on.
   Best
   Alexander Bard

   2017-01-31 7:07 GMT+01:00 Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>:

     It's important for the political imagination to have these discussions
     about history.

     >   As for the examples from a British professor in Paris you mention
     >   they are all taken from a colonial past where the destructive
     >   colonialist effects of the measures involved were not taken into
     >   picture. Scottish trade barriers had a target and that target
     >   was hardly English or German producers but rather producers in
     >   colonised territories whose industralisation was delayed by some
     >   200 years due to racist trade barriers in colonial Europe in the
     >   18th and 19th centuries up to European trade barriers against
     >   African cotton and food products to this very day.

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