Soren wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2011 at 9:12am:


You haven't heard of Hmong women's groups or Shan freedom fighters?

Soren wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2011 at 7:54pm:


Not sure about their metaphysics - I'd say that US foreign policy has a lot to do with it.

Soren wrote on Mar 4^th, 2011 at 9:27am:


You're right. But surely you don't think resistance and "liberation" comes only from the West.

What about Aboriginal resistance movements in the early colony, particularly around the Hawkesbury River?

There was no "black power" movement happening then.

Soren wrote on Mar 4^th, 2011 at 10:23am:


Very true. No one assumes that the proletariat will take over the bourgeoisie anymore. No one believes in a proletariat anymore. The economy has changed.

Fukayama's Hegelian thesis was, in some ways, right. The "telos" of Western reason is - so far - liberal democracy - not an early Marxian utopia. Marx, of course, saw this coming in Capital, where he veered towards social democracy over the state taking over the entire means of production.

And, in his later years, he definately changed his stance on a proletarian telos, and a resulting end to all class struggle. In this sense, Marx influenced the English Fabians and European social democrats, where capitalism would be tempered, not uprooted.

However, the influence of Mao should not be underestimated, particularly in places like India and Nepal today. For Mao, the agrarian classes in pre-industrial societies are the ones who shape history, and this belief probably comes closest to having influenced freedom movements throughout Asia, particularly in the 1960s and 70s. The fundamentalist extreme of this ideology can be seen during the days of the Khmer Rouge.

Like Islamic militants today, most of these movements saw their enemy as American, or Western, imperialism. Vietnam followed the Soviet route, but cast this off as it transitioned to capitalism - the reverse of the communist take on history, where capitalism must come before socialism, which preceeds communism.

In the 1960s, the Soviet model was seen as a beacon for the developing world. The Soviets had transitioned from an agrarian, feudal economy to a powerful industrial economy in the space of 50 years.

The Soviet model became unhinged with the new communications technologies of the 1970s, and came into competition with manufactured goods from East Asia, especially Japan. In a "metaphysical" sense, a form of consumerism took hold in post-war developed societies that spread across the globe.

The Soviets could not compete. The Chinese changed tack. The GATT "quad" countries; Canada, Japan, the US and European Community, achieved economic supremacy. The Soviets dwindled and eventually collapsed. China, however, quietly developed.

Today, the bourgeoisie still run the world. And all over the post-colonial world, societies who have developed to a certain point, want a form of liberal, social, or at the very least, representative democracy.

Hegel, it seems, was right.

Soren wrote on Mar 5^th, 2011 at 8:04pm:


In the colonies, we English societies didn't start out reasonable. We swapped glass beads for land, gave out blankets laced with smallpox and lived on rum, sodomy and the lash.

The English were hardly a civilizing force outside their own country, and even in their own country, their solution to the growing poverty caused by the industrial revolution was forced transportation to colonies like Australia: seven to fourteen year sentences for crimes such as petty theft.

We captured slaves in Africa, sent them to the Americas to pick cotton, and sent the cotton to England where it was turned into Manchester for the world to buy.

Of course, we had many civilized English people like Wilberforce, who argued for an end to slavery, but it wasn't easy by any means. The English in the Confederate states in America rebelled against reason and fought a civil war. They lost.

And the machines won.

We swapped opium for luxury goods in China, and when the Chinese didn't like it, we made them take our opium by force, getting Hong Kong in the bargain.

We played very clever politics with the crowned heads of Europe, and managed to take hold of the global economy. For a while there, half the globe was coloured pink - the sun really didn't set on the British Empire. Our navy was tasked with keeping security, and our army had to keep the riff-raff in line. To keep a colony the size of India under control, for example, was no small feat. We trained local troops and created tinpot despots. When they eventually kicked us out, the despots took over. Our man in Uganda - Idi Amin - learned everything he knew from the English.

Was the British Empire really a reasonable society - a proportionate accommodation of mind and heart? Were we really any better than the Germans or the French?

It's a nice idea, but when you listen to other stories, you witness the dark side of our history. In this country, for example, how could a state-managed project like breeding out the blacks be considered reasonable? How is such social engineering any different from German rationalism, or French scientific socialism?

Did we inherit eugenics from the Germans? No, it filtered down from Charles Darwin and into the theories of Francis Galton. Eugenics, captured and practiced so ingeniously by the Germans, was an English invention - just one of the many gifts we gave to the world.

Karnal wrote on Mar 7^th, 2011 at 9:11pm:

Probably was no coincidence that British sanctioned slavery ended so soon after the loss of the American colonies and a new kind of bonded servitude (convicts) grew with the need for slaves in the new colony of Australia.

I wonder how many ex-slave traders and overseers were deployed in the management of convict transportation?

Britain was a slave-using nation until well into the 19th century.

Burmese Days is a great read, like every single book Orwell wrote. It explains how he turned from a cop in Burma into a communist, and then an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War (Homage To Catalonia), and then a tramp in Down and out in Paris and London.

Orwell is an excellent example of the English at their best - and one of the best writers in the English language. But he never sang Land of Hope and Glory. Like Marx and Engals' The Conditions of the English Working Class, Orwell showed how the British Empire really worked.

muso wrote on Mar 8^th, 2011 at 1:50pm:

But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us--who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand, because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign--and no memories.
"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there--there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were-- No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you-- you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell? --but truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder--the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff--with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags--rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row--is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe.