From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Fri Mar 10 2006 - 09:19:38 EST
> [...] it's definitely both... not to get hung up on semantics (for which > people get bashed in sometimes silly ways), Hi Patrick, On semantics, see below. > but the point is that > notwithstanding decolonisation of a sort, much of the residual character > of apartheid's class, racial, gendered, ecological oppression > reproduces, and that requires the regime's repressive apparatus to > hold in check. Agreed, and thanks for the references and for sending the clarification by Larry Gentle. I guess my point, in making the comparison of neo- colonialism to neo-apartheid, is that the current situation in South Africa is related to the ANC policy to seek reconciliation rather than to redistribute wealth and fundamentally challenge the system of economic relations which existed under apartheid: not only have many formerly pro- apartheid forces gotten away (quite literally) with murder but they have been allowed to keep the plunder accumulated under apartheid. If one is going to talk about "accumulation by dispossession" then, it seems to me, that the rights of the dispossessed to the wealth that was plundered from them needs to be addressed. Of course, this is an issue in many other social formations as well (e.g. the rights of Palestinians to the land and wealth that was stolen from them: there an be no 'peace' until these grievances are resolved). On the semantics on 'neo-' : I agree that people have been bashed in sometimes silly ways: e.g. Ernest Mandel was bashed from many quarters for the expression 'neo-capitalism" -- which he later dropped in preference for the expression 'late capitalism' (which, as I understand it, meant the same thing to him). Problem is that 'neo-' is often an ambiguous and confusing prefix. For instance, the expression 'neo-liberalism' is widely misunderstood: a student once asked me why the biggest advocates of neo-liberalism are often neo-conservatives. And the 'neo-' in 'neo-Marxist' seems to be added as a kind of pejorative by those Marxists who think that they are pure enough that they don't need a prefix added to their perspective whereas .... But, in that instance the issues aren't merely semantic: rather, the semantic designations are abbreviations for often real differences in perspective. In solidarity, Jerry
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